,,the ,,life ,,of ,,reason ,the ,phases of ,human ,progress ,volumes ,one ,through ,five ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,in ,five ,volumes ,introduction to ,life of ,reason ,volume ,one ,volume ,two ,volume ,three ,volume ,four ,volume ,five ,,reason ,,in ,,common ,,sense ,volume ,one of 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,,contents ,,introduction ,,the ,,subject ,,of ,,this ,,work1 ,,its ,,method ,,and ,,antecedents ,progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates4--,efficacious reflection is reason4--,the ,life of ,reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness4--,it is the sum of ,art4--,it has a natural basis which makes it definable4--,modern philosophy not helpful4--,positivism no positive ideal4--,christian philosophy mythical3 it misrepresents facts and conditions4--,liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world4--,the ,greeks thought straight in both physics and morals4--,heraclitus and the immediate4--,democritus and the naturally intelligible4--,socrates and the autonomy of mind4--,plato gave the ideal its full expression4--,aristotle supplied its natural basis4--,philosophy thus complete1 yet in need of restatement4--,plato's myths in lieu of physics4--,aristotle's final causes4--,modern science can avoid such expedients4--,transcendentalism true but inconsequential4--,verbal ethics4--,spinoza and the ,life of ,reason4--,modern and classic sources of inspiration4 ,pages #a-cb ,,reason ,,in ,,common ,,sense ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,birth ,,of ,,reason ,existence always has an ,order1 called ,chaos when incompatible with a chosen good4--,absolute order1 or truth1 is static1 impotent1 indifferent4--,in experience order is relative to interests which determine the moral status of all powers4--,the discovered conditions of reason not its beginning4--,the flux first4--,life the fixation of interests4--,primary dualities4--,first gropings4--,instinct the nucleus of reason4--,better and worse the fundamental categories4 ,pages #ce-dg ,,chapter ,,ii ,,first ,,steps ,,and ,,first ,,fluctuations ,dreams before thoughts4--,the mind vegetates uncontrolled save by physical forces4--,internal order supervenes4--,intrinsic pleasure in existence4--,pleasure a good1 but not pursued or remembered unless it suffuses an object4--,subhuman delights4--,animal living4--,causes at last discerned4--,attention guided by bodily impulse4 ,pages #dh-fc ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,discovery ,,of ,,natural ,,objects ,nature man's home4--,difficulties in conceiving nature4--,transcendental qualms4--,thought an aspect of life and transitive4--,perception cumulative and synthetic4--,no identical agent needed4--,example of the sun4--,his primitive divinity4--,causes and essences contrasted4--,voracity of intellect4--,can the transcendent be known8--,can the immediate be meant8--,is thought a bridge from sensation to sensation8--,mens naturaliter platonica4--,identity and independence predicated of things4 ,pages #fd-hc ,,chapter ,,iv ,,on ,,some ,,critics ,,of ,,this ,,discovery ,psychology as a solvent4--,misconceived rle of intelligence4--,all criticism dogmatic4--,a choice of hypotheses4--,critics disguised enthusiasts4--,hume's gratuitous scepticism4--,kant's substitute for knowledge4--,false subjectivity attributed to reason4--,chimerical reconstruction4--,the ,critique a work on mental architecture4--,incoherences4--,nature the true system of conditions4--,artificial pathos in subjectivism4--,berkeley's algebra of perception4--,horror of physics4--,puerility in morals4--,truism and sophism4--,reality is the practical made intelligible4--,vain 8realities0 and trustworthy 8fictions04 ,pages #hd-aag ,,chapter ,v ,,nature ,,unified ,,and ,,mind ,,discerned ,man's feeble grasp of nature4--,its unity ideal and discoverable only by steady thought4--,mind the erratic residue of existence4--,ghostly character of mind4--,hypostasis and criticism both need control4--,comparative constancy in objects and in ideas4--,spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature4--,vague notions of nature involve vague notions of spirit4--,sense and spirit the life of nature1 which science redistributes but does not deny4 ,pages #aah-acf ,,chapter ,,vi ,,discovery ,,of ,,fellow-,,minds ,another background for current experience may be found in alien minds4--,two usual accounts of this conception criticised3 analogy between bodies1 and dramatic dialogue in the soul4--,subject and object empirical1 not transcendental1 terms4--,objects originally soaked in secondary and tertiary qualities4--,tertiary qualities transposed4--,imputed mind consists of the tertiary qualities of perceived body--8,pathetic fallacy0 normal1 yet ordinarily fallacious4--,case where it is not a fallacy4--,knowledge succeeds only by accident4--,limits of insight4--,perception of character4--,conduct divined1 consciousness ignored4--,consciousness untrustworthy4--,metaphorical mind4--,summary4 ,pages #acg-afj ,,chapter ,,vii ,,concretions ,,in ,,discourse ,,and ,,in ,,existence ,so-called abstract qualities primary4--,general qualities prior to particular things4--,universals are concretions in discourse4--,similar reactions1 merged in one habit of reproduction1 yield an idea4--,ideas are ideal4--,so-called abstractions complete facts4--,things concretions of concretions4--,ideas prior in the order of knowledge1 things in the order of nature4--,aristotle's compromise4--,empirical bias in favour of contiguity4--,artificial divorce of logic from practice4--,their mutual involution4--,rationalistic suicide4--,complementary character of essence and existence4 ,pages #afa-ahc ,,chapter ,,viii ,,on ,,the ,,relative ,,value ,,of ,,things ,,and ,,ideas ,moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle4--,concretions in discourse express instinctive reactions4--,idealism rudimentary4--,naturalism sad4--,the soul akin to the eternal and ideal4--,her inexperience4--,platonism spontaneous4--,its essential fidelity to the ideal4--,equal rights of empiricism4--,logic dependent on fact for its importance1 and for its subsistence4--,reason and docility4--,applicable thought and clarified experience4 ,pages #ahd-bjd ,,chapter ,,ix ,,how ,,thought ,,is ,,practical ,functional relations of mind and body4--,they form one natural life4--,artifices involved in separating them4--,consciousness expresses vital equilibrium and docility4--,its worthlessness as a cause and value as an expression4--,thought's march automatic and thereby implicated in events4--,contemplative essence of action4--,mechanical efficacy alien to thought's essence4--,consciousness transcendental and transcendent4--,it is the seat of value4--,apparent utility of pain4--,its real impotence4--,preformations involved4--,its untoward significance4--,perfect function not unconscious4--,inchoate ethics4--,thought the entelechy of being4--,its exuberance4 ,pages #bje-bce ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,measure ,,of ,,values ,,in ,,reflection ,honesty in hedonism4--,necessary qualifications4--,the will must judge4--,injustice inherent in representation4--sthetic and speculative cruelty4--,imputed values3 their inconstancy4--,methods of control4--,example of fame4--,disproportionate interest in the sthetic4--,irrational religious allegiance4--,pathetic idealisations4--,inevitable impulsiveness in prophecy4--,the test a controlled present ideal4 ,pages #bcf-bee ,,chapter ,,xi ,,some ,,abstract ,,conditions ,,of ,,the ,,ideal ,the ultimate end a resultant4--,demands the substance of ideals4--,discipline of the will4--,demands made practical and consistent4--,the ideal natural4--,need of unity and finality4--,ideals of nothing4--,darwin on moral sense4--,conscience and reason compared4--,reason imposes no new sacrifice4--,natural goods attainable and compatible in principle4--,harmony the formal and intrinsic demand of reason4 ,pages #bef-bfh ,,chapter ,,xii ,,flux ,,and ,,constancy ,,in ,,human ,,nature ,respectable tradition that human nature is fixed4--,contrary currents of opinion4--,pantheism4--,instability in existences does not dethrone their ideals4--,absolutist philosophy human and halting4--,all science a deliverance of momentary thought4--,all criticism likewise4--,origins inessential4--,ideals functional4--,they are transferable to similar beings4--,authority internal4--,reason autonomous4--,its distribution4--,natural selection of minds4--,living stability4--,continuity necessary to progress4--,limits of variation4 ,spirit a heritage4--,perfectibility4--,nature and human nature4--,human nature formulated4--,its concrete description reserved for the sequel4 ,pages #bfi-bia ,introduction to 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,sidenote3 ,progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates4 ,whatever forces may govern human life1 if they are to be recognised by man1 must betray themselves in human experience4 ,progress in science or religion1 no less than in morals and art1 is a dramatic episode in man's career1 a welcome variation in his habit and state of mind2 although this variation may often regard or propitiate things external1 adjustment to which may be important for his welfare4 ,the importance of these external things1 as well as their existence1 he can establish only by the function and utility which a recognition of them may have in his life4 ,the entire history of progress is a moral drama1 a tale man might unfold in a great autobiography1 could his myriad heads and countless scintillas of consciousness conspire1 like the seventy ,alexandrian sages1 in a single version of the truth committed to each for interpretation4 ,what themes would prevail in such an examination of heart8 ,in what order and with what emphasis would they be recounted8 ,in which of its adventures would the human race1 reviewing its whole experience1 acknowledge a progress and a gain8 ,to answer these questions1 as they may be answered speculatively and provisionally by an individual1 is the purpose of the following work4 ,sidenote3 ,efficacious reflection is reason4 ,a philosopher could hardly have a higher ambition than to make himself a mouth-piece for the memory and judgment of his race4 ,yet the most casual consideration of affairs already involves an attempt to do the same thing4 ,reflection is pregnant from the beginning with all the principles of synthesis and valuation needed in the most comprehensive criticism4 ,so soon as man ceases to be wholly immersed in sense1 he looks before and after1 he regrets and desires2 and the moments in which prospect or retrospect takes place constitute the reflective or representative part of his life1 in contrast to the unmitigated flux of sensations in which nothing ulterior is regarded4 ,representation1 however1 can hardly remain idle and merely speculative4 ,to the ideal function of envisaging the absent1 memory and reflection will add 7since they exist and constitute a new complication in being7 the practical function of modifying the future4 ,vital impulse1 however1 when it is modified by reflection and veers in sympathy with judgments pronounced on the past1 is properly called reason4 ,man's rational life consists in those moments in which reflection not only occurs but proves efficacious4 ,what is absent then works in the present1 and values are imputed where they cannot be felt4 ,such representation is so far from being merely speculative that its presence alone can raise bodily change to the dignity of action4 ,reflection gathers experiences together and perceives their relative worth2 which is as much as to say that it expresses a new attitude of will in the presence of a world better understood and turned to some purpose4 ,the limits of reflection mark those of concerted and rational action2 they circumscribe the field of cumulative experience1 or1 what is the same thing1 of profitable living4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,life of ,reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness4 ,thus if we use the word life in a eulogistic sense to designate the happy maintenance against the world of some definite ideal interest1 we may say with ,aristotle that life is reason in operation4 ,the ,life of ,reason will then be a name for that part of experience which perceives and pursues ideals--all conduct so controlled and all sense so interpreted as to perfect natural happiness4 ,without reason1 as without memory1 there might still be pleasures and pains in existence4 ,to increase those pleasures and reduce those pains would be to introduce an improvement into the sentient world1 as if a devil suddenly died in hell or in heaven a new angel were created4 ,since the beings1 however1 in which these values would reside1 would1 by hypothesis1 know nothing of one another1 and since the betterment would take place unprayed-for and unnoticed1 it could hardly be called a progress2 and certainly not a progress in man1 since man1 without the ideal continuity given by memory and reason1 would have no moral being4 ,in human progress1 therefore1 reason is not a casual instrument1 having its sole value in its service to sense2 such a betterment in sentience would not be progress unless it were a progress in reason1 and the increasing pleasure revealed some object that could please2 for without a picture of the situation from which a heightened vitality might flow1 the improvement could be neither remembered nor measured nor desired4 ,the ,life of ,reason is accordingly neither a mere means nor a mere incident in human progress2 it is the total and embodied progress itself1 in which the pleasures of sense are included in so far as they can be intelligently enjoyed and pursued4 ,to recount man's rational moments would be to take an inventory of all his goods2 for he is not himself 7as we say with unconscious accuracy7 in the others4 ,if he ever appropriates them in recollection or prophecy1 it is only on the ground of some physical relation which they may have to his being4 ,reason is as old as man and as prevalent as human nature2 for we should not recognise an animal to be human unless his instincts were to some degree conscious of their ends and rendered his ideas in that measure relevant to conduct4 ,many sensations1 or even a whole world of dreams1 do not amount to intelligence until the images in the mind begin to represent in some way1 however symbolic1 the forces and realities confronted in action4 ,there may well be intense consciousness in the total absence of rationality4 ,such consciousness is suggested in dreams1 in madness1 and may be found1 for all we know1 in the depths of universal nature4 ,minds peopled only by desultory visions and lusts would not have the dignity of human souls even if they seemed to pursue certain objects unerringly2 for that pursuit would not be illumined by any vision of its goal4 ,reason and humanity begin with the union of instinct and ideation1 when instinct becomes enlightened1 establishes values in its objects1 and is turned from a process into an art1 while at the same time consciousness becomes practical and cognitive1 beginning to contain some symbol or record of the co-ordinate realities among which it arises4 ,reason accordingly requires the fusion of two types of life1 commonly led in the world in well-nigh total separation1 one a life of impulse expressed in affairs and social passions1 the other a life of reflection expressed in religion1 science1 and the imitative arts4 ,in the ,life of ,reason1 if it were brought to perfection1 intelligence would be at once the universal method of practice and its continual reward4 ,all reflection would then be applicable in action and all action fruitful in happiness4 ,though this be an ideal1 yet everyone gives it from time to time a partial embodiment when he practises useful arts1 when his passions happily lead him to enlightenment1 or when his fancy breeds visions pertinent to his ultimate good4 ,everyone leads the ,life of ,reason in so far as he finds a steady light behind the world's glitter and a clear residuum of joy beneath pleasure or success4 ,no experience not to be repented of falls without its sphere4 ,every solution to a doubt1 in so far as it is not a new error1 every practical achievement not neutralised by a second maladjustment consequent upon it1 every consolation not the seed of another greater sorrow1 may be gathered together and built into this edifice4 ,the ,life of ,reason is the happy marriage of two elements--impulse and ideation--which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac4 ,the rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters4 ,he is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which have ceased to be vain4 ,sidenote3 ,it is the sum of ,art4 ,thus the ,life of ,reason is another name for what1 in the widest sense of the word1 might be called ,art4 ,operations become arts when their purpose is conscious and their method teachable4 ,in perfect art the whole idea is creative and exists only to be embodied1 while every part of the product is rational and gives delightful expression to that idea4 ,like art1 again1 the ,life of ,reason is not a power but a result1 the spontaneous expression of liberal genius in a favouring environment4 ,both art and reason have natural sources and meet with natural checks2 but when a process is turned successfully into an art1 so that its issues have value and the ideas that accompany it become practical and cognitive1 reflection1 finding little that it cannot in some way justify and understand1 begins to boast that it directs and has created the world in which it finds itself so much at home4 ,thus if art could extend its sphere to include every activity in nature1 reason1 being everywhere exemplified1 might easily think itself omnipotent4 ,this ideal1 far as it is from actual realisation1 has so dazzled men1 that in their religion and mythical philosophy they have often spoken as if it were already actual and efficient4 ,this anticipation amounts1 when taken seriously1 to a confusion of purposes with facts and of functions with causes1 a confusion which in the interests of wisdom and progress it is important to avoid2 but these speculative fables1 when we take them for what they are--poetic expressions of the ideal--help us to see how deeply rooted this ideal is in man's mind1 and afford us a standard by which to measure his approaches to the rational perfection of which he dreams4 ,for the ,life of ,reason1 being the sphere of all human art1 is man's imitation of divinity4 ,sidenote3 ,it has a natural basis which makes it definable4 ,to study such an ideal1 dimly expressed though it be in human existence1 is no prophetic or visionary undertaking4 ,every genuine ideal has a natural basis2 anyone may understand and safely interpret it who is attentive to the life from which it springs4 ,to decipher the ,life of ,reason nothing is needed but an analytic spirit and a judicious love of man1 a love quick to distinguish success from failure in his great and confused experiment of living4 ,the historian of reason should not be a romantic poet1 vibrating impotently to every impulse he finds afoot1 without a criterion of excellence or a vision of perfection4 ,ideals are free1 but they are neither more numerous nor more variable than the living natures that generate them4 ,ideals are legitimate1 and each initially envisages a genuine and innocent good2 but they are not realisable together1 nor even singly when they have no deep roots in the world4 ,neither is the philosopher compelled by his somewhat judicial office to be a satirist or censor1 without sympathy for those tentative and ingenuous passions out of which1 after all1 his own standards must arise4 ,he is the chronicler of human progress1 and to measure that progress he should be equally attentive to the impulses that give it direction and to the circumstances amid which it stumbles toward its natural goal4 ,sidenote3 ,modern philosophy not helpful4 ,there is unfortunately no school of modern philosophy to which a critique of human progress can well be attached4 ,almost every school1 indeed1 can furnish something useful to the critic1 sometimes a physical theory1 sometimes a piece of logical analysis4 ,we shall need to borrow from current science and speculation the picture they draw of man's conditions and environment1 his history and mental habits4 ,these may furnish a theatre and properties for our drama2 but they offer no hint of its plot and meaning4 ,a great imaginative apathy has fallen on the mind4 ,one-half the learned world is amused in tinkering obsolete armour1 as ,don ,quixote did his helmet2 deputing it1 after a series of catastrophes1 to be at last sound and invulnerable4 ,the other half1 the naturalists who have studied psychology and evolution1 look at life from the outside1 and the processes of ,nature make them forget her uses4 ,bacon indeed had prized science for adding to the comforts of life1 a function still commemorated by positivists in their eloquent moments4 ,habitually1 however1 when they utter the word progress it is1 in their mouths1 a synonym for inevitable change1 or at best for change in that direction which they conceive to be on the whole predominant4 ,if they combine with physical speculation some elements of morals1 these are usually purely formal1 to the effect that happiness is to be pursued 7probably1 alas6 because to do so is a psychological law72 but what happiness consists in we gather only from casual observations or by putting together their national prejudices and party saws4 ,sidenote3 ,positivism no positive ideal4 ,the truth is that even this radical school1 emancipated as it thinks itself1 is suffering from the after-effects of supernaturalism4 ,like children escaped from school1 they find their whole happiness in freedom4 ,they are proud of what they have rejected1 as if a great wit were required to do so2 but they do not know what they want4 ,if you astonish them by demanding what is their positive ideal1 further than that there should be a great many people and that they should be all alike1 they will say at first that what ought to be is obvious1 and later they will submit the matter to a majority vote4 ,they have discarded the machinery in which their ancestors embodied the ideal2 they have not perceived that those symbols stood for the ,life of ,reason and gave fantastic and embarrassed expression to what1 in itself1 is pure humanity2 and they have thus remained entangled in the colossal error that ideals are something adventitious and unmeaning1 not having a soil in mortal life nor a possible fulfilment there4 ,sidenote3 ,christian philosophy mythical3 it misrepresents facts and conditions4 ,the profound and pathetic ideas which inspired ,christianity were attached in the beginning to ancient myths and soon crystallised into many new ones4 ,the mythical manner pervades ,christian philosophy2 but myth succeeds in expressing ideal life only by misrepresenting its history and conditions4 ,this method was indeed not original with the ,fathers2 they borrowed it from ,plato1 who appealed to parables himself in an open and harmless fashion1 yet with disastrous consequences to his school4 ,nor was he the first2 for the instinct to regard poetic fictions as revelations of supernatural facts is as old as the soul's primitive incapacity to distinguish dreams from waking perceptions1 sign from thing signified1 and inner emotions from external powers4 ,such confusions1 though in a way they obey moral forces1 make a rational estimate of things impossible4 ,to misrepresent the conditions and consequences of action is no merely speculative error2 it involves a false emphasis in character and an artificial balance and co-ordination among human pursuits4 ,when ideals are hypostasised into powers alleged to provide for their own expression1 the ,life of ,reason cannot be conceived2 in theory its field of operation is pre-empted and its function gone1 while in practice its inner impulses are turned awry by artificial stimulation and repression4 ,the ,patristic systems1 though weak in their foundations1 were extraordinarily wise and comprehensive in their working out2 and while they inverted life they preserved it4 ,dogma added to the universe fabulous perspectives2 it interpolated also innumerable incidents and powers which gave a new dimension to experience4 ,yet the old world remained standing in its strange setting1 like the ,pantheon in modern ,rome2 and1 what is more important1 the natural springs of human action were still acknowledged1 and if a supernatural discipline was imposed1 it was only because experience and faith had disclosed a situation in which the pursuit of earthly happiness seemed hopeless4 ,nature was not destroyed by its novel appendages1 nor did reason die in the cloister3 it hibernated there1 and could come back to its own in due season1 only a little dazed and weakened by its long confinement4 ,such1 at least1 is the situation in ,catholic regions1 where the ,patristic philosophy has not appreciably varied4 ,among ,protestants ,christian dogma has taken a new and ambiguous direction1 which has at once minimised its disturbing effect in practice and isolated its primary illusion4 ,the symptoms have been cured and the disease driven in4 ,sidenote3 ,liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world4 ,the tenets of ,protestant bodies are notoriously varied and on principle subject to change4 ,there is hardly a combination of tradition and spontaneity which has not been tried in some quarter4 ,if we think1 however1 of broad tendencies and ultimate issues1 it appears that in ,protestantism myth1 without disappearing1 has changed its relation to reality3 instead of being an extension to the natural world myth has become its substratum4 ,religion no longer reveals divine personalities1 future rewards1 and tenderer ,elysian consolations2 nor does it seriously propose a heaven to be reached by a ladder nor a purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions4 ,it merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches men to accept a natural life on supernatural grounds4 ,the consequence is that the most pious can give an unvarnished description of things4 ,even immortality and the idea of ,god are submitted1 in liberal circles1 to scientific treatment4 ,on the other hand1 it would be hard to conceive a more inveterate obsession than that which keeps the attitude of these same minds inappropriate to the objects they envisage4 ,they have accepted natural conditions2 they will not accept natural ideals4 ,the ,life of ,reason has no existence for them1 because1 although its field is clear1 they will not tolerate any human or finite standard of value1 and will not suffer extant interests1 which can alone guide them in action or judgment1 to define the worth of life4 ,the after-effects of ,hebraism are here contrary to its foundations2 for the ,jews loved the world so much that they brought themselves1 in order to win and enjoy it1 to an intense concentration of purpose2 but this effort and discipline1 which had of course been mythically sanctioned1 not only failed of its object1 but grew far too absolute and sublime to think its object could ever have been earthly2 and the supernatural machinery which was to have secured prosperity1 while that still enticed1 now had to furnish some worthier object for the passion it had artificially fostered4 ,fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim4 ,an earnestness which is out of proportion to any knowledge or love of real things1 which is therefore dark and inward and thinks itself deeper than the earth's foundations--such an earnestness1 until culture turns it into intelligent interests1 will naturally breed a new mythology4 ,it will try to place some world of ,afrites and shadowy giants behind the constellations1 which it finds too distinct and constant to be its companions or supporters2 and it will assign to itself vague and infinite tasks1 for which it is doubtless better equipped than for those which the earth now sets before it4 ,even these1 however1 since they are parts of an infinite whole1 the mystic may 7histrionically1 perhaps1 yet zealously7 undertake2 but as his eye will be perpetually fixed on something invisible beyond1 and nothing will be done for its own sake or enjoyed in its own fugitive presence1 there will be little art and little joy in existence4 ,all will be a tossing servitude and illiberal mist1 where the parts will have no final values and the whole no pertinent direction4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,greeks thought straight in both physics and morals4 ,in ,greek philosophy the situation is far more auspicious4 ,the ancients led a rational life and envisaged the various spheres of speculation as men might whose central interests were rational4 ,in physics they leaped at once to the conception of a dynamic unity and general evolution1 thus giving that background to human life which shrewd observation would always have descried1 and which modern science has laboriously rediscovered4 ,two great systems offered1 in two legitimate directions1 what are doubtless the final and radical accounts of physical being4 ,heraclitus1 describing the immediate1 found it to be in constant and pervasive change3 no substances1 no forms1 no identities could be arrested there1 but as in the human soul1 so in nature1 all was instability1 contradiction1 reconstruction1 and oblivion4 ,this remains the empirical fact2 and we need but to rescind the artificial division which ,descartes has taught us to make between nature and life1 to feel again the absolute aptness of ,heraclitus's expressions4 ,these were thought obscure only because they were so disconcertingly penetrating and direct4 ,the immediate is what nobody sees1 because convention and reflection turn existence1 as soon as they can1 into ideas2 a man who discloses the immediate seems profound1 yet his depth is nothing but innocence recovered and a sort of intellectual abstention4 ,mysticism1 scepticism1 and transcendentalism have all in their various ways tried to fall back on the immediate2 but none of them has been ingenuous enough4 ,each has added some myth1 or sophistry1 or delusive artifice to its direct observation4 ,heraclitus remains the honest prophet of immediacy3 a mystic without raptures or bad rhetoric1 a sceptic who does not rely for his results on conventions unwittingly adopted1 a transcendentalist without false pretensions or incongruous dogmas4 ,sidenote3 ,heraclitus and the immediate4 ,the immediate is not1 however1 a good subject for discourse1 and the expounders of ,heraclitus were not unnaturally blamed for monotony4 ,all they could do was to iterate their master's maxim1 and declare everything to be in flux4 ,in suggesting laws of recurrence and a reason in which what is common to many might be expressed1 ,heraclitus had opened the door into another region3 had he passed through1 his philosophy would have been greatly modified1 for permanent forms would have forced themselves on his attention no less than shifting materials4 ,such a ,heraclitus would have anticipated ,plato2 but the time for such a synthesis had not yet arrived4 ,sidenote3 ,democritus and the naturally intelligible4 ,at the opposite pole from immediacy lies intelligibility4 ,to reduce phenomena to constant elements1 as similar and simple as possible1 and to conceive their union and separation to obey constant laws1 is what a natural philosopher will inevitably do so soon as his interest is not merely to utter experience but to understand it4 ,democritus brought this scientific ideal to its ultimate expression4 ,by including psychic existence in his atomic system1 he indicated a problem which natural science has since practically abandoned but which it may some day be compelled to take up4 ,the atoms of ,democritus seem to us gross1 even for chemistry1 and their quality would have to undergo great transformation if they were to support intelligibly psychic being as well2 but that very grossness and false simplicity had its merits1 and science must be for ever grateful to the man who at its inception could so clearly formulate its mechanical ideal4 ,that the world is not so intelligible as we could wish is not to be wondered at4 ,in other respects also it fails to respond to our ideals2 yet our hope must be to find it more propitious to the intellect as well as to all the arts in proportion as we learn better how to live in it4 ,the atoms of what we call hydrogen or oxygen may well turn out to be worlds1 as the stars are which make atoms for astronomy4 ,their inner organisation might be negligible on our rude plane of being2 did it disclose itself1 however1 it would be intelligible in its turn only if constant parts and constant laws were discernible within each system4 ,so that while atomism at a given level may not be a final or metaphysical truth1 it will describe1 on every level1 the practical and efficacious structure of the world4 ,we owe to ,democritus this ideal of practical intelligibility2 and he is accordingly an eternal spokesman of reason4 ,his system1 long buried with other glories of the world1 has been partly revived2 and although it cannot be verified in haste1 for it represents an ultimate ideal1 every advance in science reconstitutes it in some particular4 ,mechanism is not one principle of explanation among others4 ,in natural philosophy1 where to explain means to discover origins1 transmutations1 and laws1 mechanism is explanation itself4 ,heraclitus had the good fortune of having his physics absorbed by ,plato4 ,it is a pity that ,democritus' physics was not absorbed by ,aristotle4 ,for with the flux observed1 and mechanism conceived to explain it1 the theory of existence is complete2 and had a complete physical theory been incorporated into the ,socratic philosophy1 wisdom would have lacked none of its parts4 ,democritus1 however1 appeared too late1 when ideal science had overrun the whole field and initiated a verbal and dialectical physics2 so that ,aristotle1 for all his scientific temper and studies1 built his natural philosophy on a lamentable misunderstanding1 and condemned thought to confusion for two thousand years4 ,sidenote3 ,socrates and the autonomy of mind4 ,if the happy freedom of the ,greeks from religious dogma made them the first natural philosophers1 their happy political freedom made them the first moralists4 ,it was no accident that ,socrates walked the ,athenian agora2 it was no petty patriotism that made him shrink from any other scene4 ,his science had its roots there1 in the personal independence1 intellectual vivacity1 and clever dialectic of his countrymen4 ,ideal science lives in discourse2 it consists in the active exercise of reason1 in signification1 appreciation1 intent1 and self-expression4 ,its sum total is to know oneself1 not as psychology or anthropology might describe a man1 but to know1 as the saying is1 one's own mind4 ,nor is he who knows his own mind forbidden to change it2 the dialectician has nothing to do with future possibilities or with the opinion of anyone but the man addressed4 ,this kind of truth is but adequate veracity2 its only object is its own intent4 ,having developed in the spirit the consciousness of its meanings and purposes1 ,socrates rescued logic and ethics for ever from authority4 ,with his friends the ,sophists1 he made man the measure of all things1 after bidding him measure himself1 as they neglected to do1 by his own ideal4 ,that brave humanity which had first raised its head in ,hellas and had endowed so many things in heaven and earth1 where everything was hitherto monstrous1 with proportion and use1 so that man's works might justify themselves to his mind1 now found in ,socrates its precise definition2 and it was naturally where the ,life of ,reason had been long cultivated that it came finally to be conceived4 ,sidenote3 ,plato gave the ideal its full expression4 ,socrates had1 however1 a plebeian strain in his humanity1 and his utilitarianism1 at least in its expression1 hardly did justice to what gives utility to life4 ,his condemnation for atheism--if we choose to take it symbolically--was not altogether unjust3 the gods of ,greece were not honoured explicitly enough in his philosophy4 ,human good appeared there in its principle2 you would not set a pilot to mend shoes1 because you knew your own purpose2 but what purposes a civilised soul might harbour1 and in what highest shapes the good might appear1 was a problem that seems not to have attracted his genius4 ,it was reserved to ,plato to bring the ,socratic ethics to its sublimest expression and to elicit from the depths of the ,greek conscience those ancestral ideals which had inspired its legislators and been embodied in its sacred civic traditions4 ,the owl of ,minerva flew1 as ,hegel says1 in the dusk of evening2 and it was horror at the abandonment of all creative virtues that brought ,plato to conceive them so sharply and to preach them in so sad a tone4 ,it was after all but the love of beauty that made him censure the poets2 for like a true ,greek and a true lover he wished to see beauty flourish in the real world4 ,it was love of freedom that made him harsh to his ideal citizens1 that they might be strong enough to preserve the liberal life4 ,and when he broke away from political preoccupations and turned to the inner life1 his interpretations proved the absolute sufficiency of the ,socratic method2 and he left nothing pertinent unsaid on ideal love and ideal immortality4 ,sidenote3 ,aristotle supplied its natural basis4 ,beyond this point no rendering of the ,life of ,reason has ever been carried1 ,aristotle improved the detail1 and gave breadth and precision to many a part4 ,if ,plato possessed greater imaginative splendour and more enthusiasm in austerity1 ,aristotle had perfect sobriety and adequacy1 with greater fidelity to the common sentiments of his race4 ,plato1 by virtue of his scope and plasticity1 together with a certain prophetic zeal1 outran at times the limits of the ,hellenic and the rational2 he saw human virtue so surrounded and oppressed by physical dangers that he wished to give it mythical sanctions1 and his fondness for transmigration and nether punishments was somewhat more than playful4 ,if as a work of imagination his philosophy holds the first place1 ,aristotle's has the decisive advantage of being the unalloyed expression of reason4 ,in ,aristotle the conception of human nature is perfectly sound2 everything ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development4 ,his ethics1 when thoroughly digested and weighed1 especially when the meagre outlines are filled in with ,plato's more discursive expositions1 will seem therefore entirely final4 ,the ,life of ,reason finds there its classic explication4 ,sidenote3 ,philosophy thus complete1 yet in need of restatement4 ,as it is improbable that there will soon be another people so free from preoccupations1 so gifted1 and so fortunate as the ,greeks1 or capable in consequence of so well exemplifying humanity1 so also it is improbable that a philosopher will soon arise with ,aristotle's scope1 judgment1 or authority1 one knowing so well how to be both reasonable and exalted4 ,it might seem vain1 therefore1 to try to do afresh what has been done before with unapproachable success2 and instead of writing inferior things at great length about the ,life of ,reason1 it might be simpler to read and to propagate what ,aristotle wrote with such immortal justness and masterly brevity4 ,but times change2 and though the principles of reason remain the same the facts of human life and of human conscience alter4 ,a new background1 a new basis of application1 appears for logic1 and it may be useful to restate old truths in new words1 the better to prove their eternal validity4 ,aristotle is1 in his morals1 ,greek1 concise1 and elementary4 ,as a ,greek1 he mixes with the ideal argument illustrations1 appreciations1 and conceptions which are not inseparable from its essence4 ,in themselves1 no doubt1 these accessories are better than what in modern times would be substituted for them1 being less sophisticated and of a nobler stamp2 but to our eyes they disguise what is profound and universal in natural morality by embodying it in images which do not belong to our life4 ,our direst struggles and the last sanctions of our morality do not appear in them4 ,the pagan world1 because its maturity was simpler than our crudeness1 seems childish to us4 ,we do not find there our sins and holiness1 our love1 charity1 and honour4 ,the ,greek too would not find in our world the things he valued most1 things to which he surrendered himself1 perhaps1 with a more constant self-sacrifice--piety1 country1 friendship1 and beauty2 and he might add that his ideals were rational and he could attain them1 while ours are extravagant and have been missed4 ,yet even if we acknowledged his greater good fortune1 it would be impossible for us to go back and become like him4 ,to make the attempt would show no sense of reality and little sense of humour4 ,we must dress in our own clothes1 if we do not wish to substitute a masquerade for practical existence4 ,what we can adopt from ,greek morals is only the abstract principle of their development2 their foundation in all the extant forces of human nature and their effort toward establishing a perfect harmony among them4 ,these forces themselves have perceptibly changed1 at least in their relative power4 ,thus we are more conscious of wounds to stanch and wrongs to fight against1 and less of goods to attain4 ,the movement of conscience has veered2 the centre of gravity lies in another part of the character4 ,another circumstance that invites a restatement of rational ethics is the impressive illustration of their principle which subsequent history has afforded4 ,mankind has been making extraordinary experiments of which ,aristotle could not dream2 and their result is calculated to clarify even his philosophy4 ,for in some respects it needed experiments and clarification4 ,he had been led into a systematic fusion of dialectic with physics1 and of this fusion all pretentious modern philosophy is the aggravated extension4 ,socrates' pupils could not abandon his ideal principles1 yet they could not bear to abstain from physics altogether2 they therefore made a mock physics in moral terms1 out of which theology was afterward developed4 ,plato1 standing nearer to ,socrates and being no naturalist by disposition1 never carried the fatal experiment beyond the mythical stage4 ,he accordingly remained the purer moralist1 much as ,aristotle's judgment may be preferred in many particulars4 ,their relative position may be roughly indicated by saying that ,plato had no physics and that ,aristotle's physics was false2 so that ideal science in the one suffered from want of environment and control1 while in the other it suffered from misuse in a sphere where it had no application4 ,sidenote3 ,plato's myths in lieu of physics4 ,what had happened was briefly this3 ,plato1 having studied many sorts of philosophy and being a bold and universal genius1 was not satisfied to leave all physical questions pending1 as his master had done4 ,he adopted1 accordingly1 ,heraclitus's doctrine of the immediate1 which he now called the realm of phenomena2 for what exists at any instant1 if you arrest and name it1 turns out to have been an embodiment of some logical essence1 such as discourse might define2 in every fact some idea makes its appearance1 and such an apparition of the ideal is a phenomenon4 ,moreover1 another philosophy had made a deep impression on ,plato's mind and had helped to develop ,socratic definitions3 ,parmenides had called the concept of pure ,being the only reality2 and to satisfy the strong dialectic by which this doctrine was supported and at the same time to bridge the infinite chasm between one formless substance and many appearances irrelevant to it1 ,plato substituted the many ,socratic ideas1 all of which were relevant to appearance1 for the one concept of ,parmenides4 ,the ideas thus acquired what is called metaphysical subsistence2 for they stood in the place of the ,eleatic ,absolute1 and at the same time were the realities that phenomena manifested4 ,the technique of this combination is much to be admired2 but the feat is technical and adds nothing to the significance of what ,plato has to say on any concrete subject4 ,this barren triumph was1 however1 fruitful in misunderstandings4 ,the characters and values a thing possessed were now conceived to subsist apart from it1 and might even have preceded it and caused its existence2 a mechanism composed of values and definitions could thus be placed behind phenomena to constitute a substantial physical world4 ,such a dream could not be taken seriously1 until good sense was wholly lost and a bevy of magic spirits could be imagined peopling the infinite and yet carrying on the business of earth4 ,aristotle rejected the metaphysical subsistence of ideas1 but thought they might still be essences operative in nature1 if only they were identified with the life or form of particular things4 ,the dream thus lost its frank wildness1 but none of its inherent incongruity3 for the sense in which characters and values make a thing what it is1 is purely dialectical4 ,they give it its status in the ideal world2 but the appearance of these characters and values here and now is what needs explanation in physics1 an explanation which can be furnished1 of course1 only by the physical concatenation and distribution of causes4 ,sidenote3 ,aristotle's final causes4 ,modern science can avoid such expedients4 ,aristotle himself did not fail to ,aristotle's make this necessary distinction between efficient cause and formal essence2 but as his science was only natural history1 and mechanism had no plausibility in his eyes1 the efficiency of the cause was always due1 in his view1 to its ideal quality2 as in heredity the father's human character1 not his physical structure1 might seem to warrant the son's humanity4 ,every ideal1 before it could be embodied1 had to pre-exist in some other embodiment2 but as when the ultimate purpose of the cosmos is considered it seems to lie beyond any given embodiment1 the highest ideal must somehow exist disembodied4 ,it must pre-exist1 thought ,aristotle1 in order to supply1 by way of magic attraction1 a physical cause for perpetual movement in the world4 ,it must be confessed1 in justice to this consummate philosopher1 who is not less masterly in the use of knowledge than unhappy in divination1 that the transformation of the highest good into a physical power is merely incidental with him1 and due to a want of faith 7at that time excusable7 in mechanism and evolution4 ,aristotle's deity is always a moral ideal and every detail in its definition is based on discrimination between the better and the worse4 ,no accommodation to the ways of nature is here allowed to cloud the kingdom of heaven2 this deity is not condemned to do whatever happens nor to absorb whatever exists4 ,it is mythical only in its physical application2 in moral philosophy it remains a legitimate conception4 ,truth certainly exists1 if existence be not too mean an attribute for that eternal realm which is tenanted by ideals2 but truth is repugnant to physical or psychical being4 ,moreover1 truth may very well be identified with an impassible intellect1 which should do nothing but possess all truth1 with no point of view1 no animal warmth1 and no transitive process4 ,such an intellect and truth are expressions having a different metaphorical background and connotation1 but1 when thought out1 an identical import4 ,they both attempt to evoke that ideal standard which human thought proposes to itself4 ,this function is their effective essence4 ,it insures their eternal fixity1 and this property surely endows them with a very genuine and sublime reality4 ,what is fantastic is only the dynamic function attributed to them by ,aristotle1 which obliges them to inhabit some fabulous extension to the physical world4 ,even this physical efficacy1 however1 is spiritualised as much as possible1 since deity is said to move the cosmos only as an object of love or an object of knowledge may move the mind4 ,such efficacy is imputed to a hypostasised end1 but evidently resides in fact in the functioning and impulsive spirit that conceives and pursues an ideal1 endowing it with whatever attraction it may seem to have4 ,the absolute intellect described by ,aristotle remains1 therefore1 as pertinent to the ,life of ,reason as ,plato's idea of the good4 ,though less comprehensive 7for it abstracts from all animal interests1 from all passion and mortality71 it is more adequate and distinct in the region it dominates4 ,it expresses sublimely the goal of speculative thinking2 which is none other than to live as much as may be in the eternal and to absorb and be absorbed in the truth4 ,the rest of ancient philosophy belongs to the decadence and rests in physics on eclecticism and in morals on despair4 ,that creative breath which had stirred the founders and legislators of ,greece no longer inspired their descendants4 ,helpless to control the course of events1 they took refuge in abstention or in conformity1 and their ethics became a matter of private economy and sentiment1 no longer aspiring to mould the state or give any positive aim to existence4 ,the time was approaching when both speculation and morals were to regard the other world2 reason had abdicated the throne1 and religion1 after that brief interregnum1 resumed it for long ages4 ,sidenote3 ,transcendentalism true but inconsequential4 ,such are the threads which tradition puts into the hands of an observer who at the present time might attempt to knit the ,life of ,reason ideally together4 ,the problem is to unite a trustworthy conception of the conditions under which man lives with an adequate conception of his interests4 ,both conceptions1 fortunately1 lie before us4 ,heraclitus and ,democritus1 in systems easily seen to be complementary1 gave long ago a picture of nature such as all later observation1 down to our own day1 has done nothing but fill out and confirm4 ,psychology and physics still repeat their ideas1 often with richer detail1 but never with a more radical or prophetic glance4 ,nor does the transcendental philosophy1 in spite of its self-esteem1 add anything essential4 ,it was a thing taken for granted in ancient and scholastic philosophy that a being dwelling1 like man1 in the immediate1 whose moments are in flux1 needed constructive reason to interpret his experience and paint in his unstable consciousness some symbolic picture of the world4 ,to have reverted to this constructive process and studied its stages is an interesting achievement2 but the construction is already made by common-sense and science1 and it was visionary insolence in the ,germans to propose to make that construction otherwise4 ,retrospective self-consciousness is dearly bought if it inhibits the intellect and embarrasses the inferences which1 in its spontaneous operation1 it has known perfectly how to make4 ,in the heat of scientific theorising or dialectical argument it is sometimes salutary to be reminded that we are men thinking2 but1 after all1 it is no news4 ,we know that life is a dream1 and how should thinking be more8 ,yet the thinking must go on1 and the only vital question is to what practical or poetic conceptions it is able to lead us4 ,sidenote3 ,verbal ethics4 ,similarly the ,socratic philosophy affords a noble and genuine account of what goods may be realised by living4 ,modern theory has not done so much to help us here1 however1 as it has in physics4 ,it seldom occurs to modern moralists that theirs is the science of all good and the art of its attainment2 they think only of some set of categorical precepts or some theory of moral sentiments1 abstracting altogether from the ideals reigning in society1 in science1 and in art4 ,they deal with the secondary question ,what ought ,i to do8 without having answered the primary question1 ,what ought to be8 ,they attach morals to religion rather than to politics1 and this religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning4 ,they divide man into compartments and the less they leave in the one labelled 8morality0 the more sublime they think their morality is2 and sometimes pedantry and scholasticism are carried so far that nothing but an abstract sense of duty remains in the broad region which should contain all human goods4 ,sidenote3 ,spinoza and the ,life of ,reason4 ,such trivial sanctimony in morals is doubtless due to artificial views about the conditions of welfare2 the basis is laid in authority rather than in human nature1 and the goal in salvation rather than in happiness4 ,one great modern philosopher1 however1 was free from these preconceptions1 and might have reconstituted the ,life of ,reason had he had a sufficient interest in culture4 ,spinoza brought man back into nature1 and made him the nucleus of all moral values1 showing how he may recognise his environment and how he may master it4 ,but ,spinoza's sympathy with mankind fell short of imagination2 any noble political or poetical ideal eluded him4 ,everything impassioned seemed to him insane1 everything human necessarily petty4 ,man was to be a pious tame animal1 with the stars shining above his head4 ,instead of imagination ,spinoza cultivated mysticism1 which is indeed an alternative4 ,a prophet in speculation1 he remained a levite in sentiment4 ,little or nothing would need to be changed in his system if the ,life of ,reason1 in its higher ranges1 were to be grafted upon it2 but such affiliation is not necessary1 and it is rendered unnatural by the lack of sweep and generosity in ,spinoza's practical ideals4 ,sidenote3 ,modern and classic sources of inspiration4 ,for moral philosophy we are driven back1 then1 upon the ancients2 but not1 of course1 for moral inspiration4 ,industrialism and democracy1 the ,french ,revolution1 the ,renaissance1 and even the ,catholic system1 which in the midst of ancient illusions enshrines so much tenderness and wisdom1 still live in the world1 though forgotten by philosophers1 and point unmistakably toward their several goals4 ,our task is not to construct but only to interpret ideals1 confronting them with one another and with the conditions which1 for the most part1 they alike ignore4 ,there is no need of refuting anything1 for the will which is behind all ideals and behind most dogmas cannot itself be refuted2 but it may be enlightened and led to reconsider its intent1 when its satisfaction is seen to be either naturally impossible or inconsistent with better things4 ,the age of controversy is past2 that of interpretation has succeeded4 ,here1 then1 is the programme of the following work3 ,starting with the immediate flux1 in which all objects and impulses are given1 to describe the ,life of ,reason2 that is1 to note what facts and purposes seem to be primary1 to show how the conception of nature and life gathers around them1 and to point to the ideals of thought and action which are approached by this gradual mastering of experience by reason4 ,a great task1 which it would be beyond the powers of a writer in this age either to execute or to conceive1 had not the ,greeks drawn for us the outlines of an ideal culture at a time when life was simpler than at present and individual intelligence more resolute and free4 ,,reason ,,in ,,common ,,sense ,,chapter ,i--,,the ,,birth ,,of ,,reason ,sidenote3 ,existence always has an ,order1 called ,chaos when incompatible with a chosen good4 ,whether ,chaos or ,order lay at the beginning of things is a question once much debated in the schools but afterward long in abeyance1 not so much because it had been solved as because one party had been silenced by social pressure4 ,the question is bound to recur in an age when observation and dialectic again freely confront each other4 ,naturalists look back to chaos since they observe everything growing from seeds and shifting its character in regeneration4 ,the order now established in the world may be traced back to a situation in which it did not appear4 ,dialecticians1 on the other hand1 refute this presumption by urging that every collocation of things must have been preceded by another collocation in itself no less definite and precise2 and further that some principle of transition or continuity must always have obtained1 else successive states would stand in no relation to one another1 notably not in the relation of cause and effect1 expressed in a natural law1 which is presupposed in this instance4 ,potentialities are dispositions1 and a disposition involves an order1 as does also the passage from any specific potentiality into act4 ,thus the world1 we are told1 must always have possessed a structure4 ,the two views may perhaps be reconciled if we take each with a qualification4 ,chaos doubtless has existed and will return--nay1 it reigns now1 very likely1 in the remoter and inmost parts of the universe--if by chaos we understand a nature containing none of the objects we are wont to distinguish1 a nature such that human life and human thought would be impossible in its bosom2 but this nature must be presumed to have an order1 an order directly importing1 if the tendency of its movement be taken into account1 all the complexities and beauties1 all the sense and reason which exist now4 ,order is accordingly continual2 but only when order means not a specific arrangement1 favourable to a given form of life1 but any arrangement whatsoever4 ,the process by which an arrangement which is essentially unstable gradually shifts cannot be said to aim at every stage which at any moment it involves4 ,for the process passes beyond4 ,it presently abolishes all the forms which may have arrested attention and generated love2 its initial energy defeats every purpose which we may fondly attribute to it4 ,nor is it here necessary to remind ourselves that to call results their own causes is always preposterous2 for in this case even the mythical sense which might be attached to such language is inapplicable4 ,here the process1 taken in the gross1 does not1 even by mechanical necessity1 support the value which is supposed to guide it4 ,that value is realised for a moment only2 so that if we impute to ,cronos any intent to beget his children we must also impute to him an intent to devour them4 ,sidenote3 ,absolute order1 or truth1 is static1 impotent1 indifferent4 ,of course the various states of the world1 when we survey them retrospectively1 constitute another and now static order called historic truth4 ,to this absolute and impotent order every detail is essential4 ,if we wished to abuse language so much as to speak of will in an 8,absolute0 where change is excluded1 so that nothing can be or be conceived beyond it1 we might say that the ,absolute willed everything that ever exists1 and that the eternal order terminated in every fact indiscriminately2 but such language involves an after-image of motion and life1 of preparation1 risk1 and subsequent accomplishment1 adventures all pre-supposing refractory materials and excluded from eternal truth by its very essence4 ,the only function those traditional metaphors have is to shield confusion and sentimentality4 ,because ,jehovah once fought for the ,jews1 we need not continue to say that the truth is solicitous about us1 when it is only we that are fighting to attain it4 ,the universe can wish particular things only in so far as particular beings wish them2 only in its relative capacity can it find things good1 and only in its relative capacity can it be good for anything4 ,the efficacious or physical order which exists at any moment in the world and out of which the next moment's order is developed1 may accordingly be termed a relative chaos3 a chaos1 because the values suggested and supported by the second moment could not have belonged to the first2 but merely a relative chaos1 first because it probably carried values of its own which rendered it an order in a moral and eulogistic sense1 and secondly because it was potentially1 by virtue of its momentum1 a basis for the second moment's values as well4 ,sidenote3 ,in experience order is relative to interests1 which determine the moral status of all powers4 ,human life1 when it begins to possess intrinsic value1 is an incipient order in the midst of what seems a vast though1 to some extent1 a vanishing chaos4 ,this reputed chaos can be deciphered and appreciated by man only in proportion as the order in himself is confirmed and extended4 ,for man's consciousness is evidently practical2 it clings to his fate1 registers1 so to speak1 the higher and lower temperature of his fortunes1 and1 so far as it can1 represents the agencies on which those fortunes depend4 ,when this dramatic vocation of consciousness has not been fulfilled at all1 consciousness is wholly confused2 the world it envisages seems consequently a chaos4 ,later1 if experience has fallen into shape1 and there are settled categories and constant objects in human discourse1 the inference is drawn that the original disposition of things was also orderly and indeed mechanically conducive to just those feats of instinct and intelligence which have been since accomplished4 ,a theory of origins1 of substance1 and of natural laws may thus be framed and accepted1 and may receive confirmation in the further march of events4 ,it will be observed1 however1 that what is credibly asserted about the past is not a report which the past was itself able to make when it existed nor one it is now able1 in some oracular fashion1 to formulate and to impose upon us4 ,the report is a rational construction based and seated in present experience2 it has no cogency for the inattentive and no existence for the ignorant4 ,although the universe1 then1 may not have come from chaos1 human experience certainly has begun in a private and dreamful chaos of its own1 out of which it still only partially and momentarily emerges4 ,the history of this awakening is of course not the same as that of the environing world ultimately discovered2 it is the history1 however1 of that discovery itself1 of the knowledge through which alone the world can be revealed4 ,we may accordingly dispense ourselves from preliminary courtesies to the real universal order1 nature1 the absolute1 and the gods4 ,we shall make their acquaintance in due season and better appreciate their moral status1 if we strive merely to recall our own experience1 and to retrace the visions and reflections out of which those apparitions have grown4 ,sidenote3 ,the discovered conditions of reason not its beginning4 ,to revert to primordial feeling is an exercise in mental disintegration1 not a feat of science4 ,we might1 indeed1 as in animal psychology1 retrace the situations in which instinct and sense seem first to appear and write1 as it were1 a genealogy of reason based on circumstantial evidence4 ,reason was born1 as it has since discovered1 into a world already wonderfully organised1 in which it found its precursor in what is called life1 its seat in an animal body of unusual plasticity1 and its function in rendering that body's volatile instincts and sensations harmonious with one another and with the outer world on which they depend4 ,it did not arise until the will or conscious stress1 by which any modification of living bodies' inertia seems to be accompanied1 began to respond to represented objects1 and to maintain that inertia not absolutely by resistance but only relatively and indirectly through labour4 ,reason has thus supervened at the last stage of an adaptation which had long been carried on by irrational and even unconscious processes4 ,nature preceded1 with all that fixation of impulses and conditions which gives reason its tasks and its point-d'appui4 ,nevertheless1 such a matrix or cradle for reason belongs only externally to its life4 ,the description of conditions involves their previous discovery and a historian equipped with many data and many analogies of thought4 ,such scientific resources are absent in those first moments of rational living which we here wish to recall2 the first chapter in reason's memoirs would no more entail the description of its real environment than the first chapter in human history would include true accounts of astronomy1 psychology1 and animal evolution4 ,sidenote3 ,the flux first4 ,in order to begin at the beginning we must try to fall back on uninterpreted feeling1 as the mystics aspire to do4 ,we need not expect1 however1 to find peace there1 for the immediate is in flux4 ,pure feeling rejoices in a logical nonentity very deceptive to dialectical minds4 ,they often think1 when they fall back on elements necessarily indescribable1 that they have come upon true nothingness4 ,if they are mystics1 distrusting thought and craving the largeness of indistinction1 they may embrace this alleged nothingness with joy1 even if it seem positively painful1 hoping to find rest there through self-abnegation4 ,if on the contrary they are rationalists they may reject the immediate with scorn and deny that it exists at all1 since in their books they cannot define it satisfactorily4 ,both mystics and rationalists1 however1 are deceived by their mental agility2 the immediate exists1 even if dialectic cannot explain it4 ,what the rationalist calls nonentity is the substrate and locus of all ideas1 having the obstinate reality of matter1 the crushing irrationality of existence itself2 and one who attempts to override it becomes to that extent an irrelevant rhapsodist1 dealing with thin after-images of being4 ,nor has the mystic who sinks into the immediate much better appreciated the situation4 ,this immediate is not ,god but chaos2 its nothingness is pregnant1 restless1 and brutish2 it is that from which all things emerge in so far as they have any permanence or value1 so that to lapse into it again is a dull suicide and no salvation4 ,peace1 which is after all what the mystic seeks1 lies not in indistinction but in perfection4 ,if he reaches it in a measure himself1 it is by the traditional discipline he still practises1 not by his heats or his languors4 ,the seed-bed of reason lies1 then1 in the immediate1 but what reason draws thence is momentum and power to rise above its source4 ,it is the perturbed immediate itself that finds or at least seeks its peace in reason1 through which it comes in sight of some sort of ideal permanence4 ,when the flux manages to form an eddy and to maintain by breathing and nutrition what we call a life1 it affords some slight foothold and object for thought and becomes in a measure like the ark in the desert1 a moving habitation for the eternal4 ,sidenote3 ,life the fixation of interests4 ,life begins to have some value and continuity so soon as there is something definite that lives and something definite to live for4 ,the primacy of will1 as ,fichte and ,schopenhauer conceived it1 is a mythical way of designating this situation4 ,of course a will can have no being in the absence of realities or ideas marking its direction and contrasting the eventualities it seeks with those it flies from2 and tendency1 no less than movement1 needs an organised medium to make it possible1 while aspiration and fear involve an ideal world4 ,yet a principle of choice is not deducible from mere ideas1 and no interest is involved in the formal relations of things4 ,all survey needs an arbitrary starting-point2 all valuation rests on an irrational bias4 ,the absolute flux cannot be physically arrested2 but what arrests it ideally is the fixing of some point in it from which it can be measured and illumined4 ,otherwise it could show no form and maintain no preference2 it would be impossible to approach or recede from a represented state1 and to suffer or to exert will in view of events4 ,the irrational fate that lodges the transcendental self in this or that body1 inspires it with definite passions1 and subjects it to particular buffets from the outer world--this is the prime condition of all observation and inference1 of all failure or success4 ,sidenote3 ,primary dualities4 ,those sensations in which a transition is contained need only analysis to yield two ideal and related terms--two points in space or two characters in feeling4 ,hot and cold1 here and there1 good and bad1 now and then1 are dyads that spring into being when the flux accentuates some term and so makes possible a discrimination of parts and directions in its own movement4 ,an initial attitude sustains incipient interests4 ,what we first discover in ourselves1 before the influence we obey has given rise to any definite idea1 is the working of instincts already in motion4 ,impulses to appropriate and to reject first teach us the points of the compass1 and space itself1 like charity1 begins at home4 ,sidenote3 ,first gropings4 ,instinct the nucleus of reason4 ,the guide in early sensuous education is the same that conducts the whole ,life of ,reason1 namely1 impulse checked by experiment1 and experiment judged again by impulse4 ,what teaches the child to distinguish the nurse's breast from sundry blank or disquieting presences8 ,what induces him to arrest that image1 to mark its associates1 and to recognise them with alacrity8 ,the discomfort of its absence and the comfort of its possession4 ,to that image is attached the chief satisfaction he knows1 and the force of that satisfaction disentangles it before all other images from the feeble and fluid continuum of his life4 ,what first awakens in him a sense of reality is what first is able to appease his unrest4 ,had the group of feelings1 now welded together in fruition1 found no instinct in him to awaken and become a signal for1 the group would never have persisted2 its loose elements would have been allowed to pass by unnoticed and would not have been recognised when they recurred4 ,experience would have remained absolute inexperience1 as foolishly perpetual as the gurglings of rivers or the flickerings of sunlight in a grove4 ,but an instinct was actually present1 so formed as to be aroused by a determinate stimulus2 and the image produced by that stimulus1 when it came1 could have in consequence a meaning and an individuality4 ,it seemed by divine right to signify something interesting1 something real1 because by natural contiguity it flowed from something pertinent and important to life4 ,every accompanying sensation which shared that privilege1 or in time was engrossed in that function1 would ultimately become a part of that conceived reality1 a quality of that thing4 ,the same primacy of impulses1 irrational in themselves but expressive of bodily functions1 is observable in the behaviour of animals1 and in those dreams1 obsessions1 and primary passions which in the midst of sophisticated life sometimes lay bare the obscure groundwork of human nature4 ,reason's work is there undone4 ,we can observe sporadic growths1 disjointed fragments of rationality1 springing up in a moral wilderness4 ,in the passion of love1 for instance1 a cause unknown to the sufferer1 but which is doubtless the spring-flood of hereditary instincts accidentally let loose1 suddenly checks the young man's gayety1 dispels his random curiosity1 arrests perhaps his very breath2 and when he looks for a cause to explain his suspended faculties1 he can find it only in the presence or image of another being1 of whose character1 possibly1 he knows nothing and whose beauty may not be remarkable2 yet that image pursues him everywhere1 and he is dominated by an unaccustomed tragic earnestness and a new capacity for suffering and joy4 ,if the passion be strong there is no previous interest or duty that will be remembered before it2 if it be lasting the whole life may be reorganised by it2 it may impose new habits1 other manners1 and another religion4 ,yet what is the root of all this idealism8 ,an irrational instinct1 normally intermittent1 such as all dumb creatures share1 which has here managed to dominate a human soul and to enlist all the mental powers in its more or less permanent service1 upsetting their usual equilibrium4 ,this madness1 however1 inspires method2 and for the first time1 perhaps1 in his life1 the man has something to live for4 ,the blind affinity that like a magnet draws all the faculties around it1 in so uniting them1 suffuses them with an unwonted spiritual light4 ,sidenote3 ,better and worse the fundamental categories4 ,here1 on a small scale and on a precarious foundation1 we may see clearly illustrated and foreshadowed that ,life of ,reason which is simply the unity given to all existence by a mind in love with the good4 ,in the higher reaches of human nature1 as much as in the lower1 rationality depends on distinguishing the excellent2 and that distinction can be made1 in the last analysis1 only by an irrational impulse4 ,as life is a better form given to force1 by which the universal flux is subdued to create and serve a somewhat permanent interest1 so reason is a better form given to interest itself1 by which it is fortified and propagated1 and ultimately1 perhaps1 assured of satisfaction4 ,the substance to which this form is given remains irrational2 so that rationality1 like all excellence1 is something secondary and relative1 requiring a natural being to possess or to impute it4 ,when definite interests are recognised and the values of things are estimated by that standard1 action at the same time veering in harmony with that estimation1 then reason has been born and a moral world has arisen4 ,,chapter ,,ii--,,first ,,steps ,,and ,,first ,,fluctuations ,sidenote3 ,dreams before thoughts4 ,consciousness is a born hermit4 ,though subject1 by divine dispensation1 to spells of fervour and apathy1 like a singing bird1 it is at first quite unconcerned about its own conditions or maintenance4 ,to acquire a notion of such matters1 or an interest in them1 it would have to lose its hearty simplicity and begin to reflect2 it would have to forget the present with its instant joys in order laboriously to conceive the absent and the hypothetical4 ,the body may be said to make for self-preservation1 since it has an organic equilibrium which1 when not too rudely disturbed1 restores itself by growth and co-operative action2 but no such principle appears in the soul4 ,foolish in the beginning and generous in the end1 consciousness thinks of nothing so little as of its own interests4 ,it is lost in its objects2 nor would it ever acquire even an indirect concern in its future1 did not love of things external attach it to their fortunes4 ,attachment to ideal terms is indeed what gives consciousness its continuity2 its parts have no relevance or relation to one another save what they acquire by depending on the same body or representing the same objects4 ,even when consciousness grows sophisticated and thinks it cares for itself1 it really cares only for its ideals2 the world it pictures seems to it beautiful1 and it may incidentally prize itself also1 when it has come to regard itself as a part of that world4 ,initially1 however1 it is free even from that honest selfishness2 it looks straight out2 it is interested in the movements it observes2 it swells with the represented world1 suffers with its commotion1 and subsides1 no less willingly1 in its interludes of calm4 ,natural history and psychology arrive at consciousness from the outside1 and consequently give it an artificial articulation and rationality which are wholly alien to its essence4 ,these sciences infer feeling from habit or expression2 so that only the expressible and practical aspects of feeling figure in their calculation4 ,but these aspects are really peripheral2 the core is an irresponsible1 ungoverned1 irrevocable dream4 ,psychologists have discussed perception ad nauseam and become horribly entangled in a combined idealism and physiology2 for they must perforce approach the subject from the side of matter1 since all science and all evidence is external2 nor could they ever reach consciousness at all if they did not observe its occasions and then interpret those occasions dramatically4 ,at the same time1 the inferred mind they subject to examination will yield nothing but ideas1 and it is a marvel how such a dream can regard those natural objects from which the psychologist has inferred it4 ,perception is in fact no primary phase of consciousness2 it is an ulterior practical function acquired by a dream which has become symbolic of its conditions1 and therefore relevant to its own destiny4 ,such relevance and symbolism are indirect and slowly acquired2 their status cannot be understood unless we regard them as forms of imagination happily grown significant4 ,in imagination1 not in perception1 lies the substance of experience1 while knowledge and reason are but its chastened and ultimate form4 ,sidenote3 ,the mind vegetates uncontrolled save by physical forces4 ,every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad4 ,he will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act1 while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose4 ,these imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether4 ,not to retain any dulness would mean to possess untiring attention and universal interests1 thus realising the boast about deeming nothing human alien to us2 while to be absolutely without folly would involve perfect self-knowledge and self-control4 ,the intelligent man known to history nourishes within a dullard and holds a lunatic in leash4 ,he is encased in a protective shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from being exhausted and confused by this too complicated world2 but that integument blinds him at the same time to many of his nearest and highest interests4 ,he is amused by the antics of the brute dreaming within his breast2 he gloats on his passionate reveries1 an amusement which sometimes costs him very dear4 ,thus the best human intelligence is still decidedly barbarous2 it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court4 ,sidenote3 ,internal order supervenes4 ,if consciousness could ever have the function of guiding conduct better than instinct can1 in the beginning it would be most incompetent for that office4 ,only the routine and equilibrium which healthy instinct involves keep thought and will at all within the limits of sanity4 ,the predetermined interests we have as animals fortunately focus our attention on practical things1 pulling it back1 like a ball with an elastic cord1 within the radius of pertinent matters4 ,instinct alone compels us to neglect and seldom to recall the irrelevant infinity of ideas4 ,philosophers have sometimes said that all ideas come from experience2 they never could have been poets and must have forgotten that they were ever children4 ,the great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas4 ,shame1 conscience1 and reason continually disallow and ignore what consciousness presents2 and what are they but habit and latent instinct asserting themselves and forcing us to disregard our midsummer madness8 ,idiocy and lunacy are merely reversions to a condition in which present consciousness is in the ascendant and has escaped the control of unconscious forces4 ,we speak of people being 8out of their senses10 when they have in fact fallen back into them2 or of those who have 8lost their mind10 when they have lost merely that habitual control over consciousness which prevented it from flaring into all sorts of obsessions and agonies4 ,their bodies having become deranged1 their minds1 far from correcting that derangement1 instantly share and betray it4 ,a dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection4 ,even in the highest reaches and serenest meditations of science it sometimes breaks through4 ,even there we are seldom constant enough to conceive a truly natural world2 somewhere passionate1 fanciful1 or magic elements will slip into the scheme and baffle rational ambition4 ,a body seriously out of equilibrium1 either with itself or with its environment1 perishes outright4 ,not so a mind4 ,madness and suffering can set themselves no limit2 they lapse only when the corporeal frame that sustains them yields to circumstances and changes its habit4 ,if they are unstable at all1 it is because they ordinarily correspond to strains and conjunctions which a vigorous body overcomes1 or which dissolve the body altogether4 ,a pain not incidental to the play of practical instincts may easily be recurrent1 and it might be perpetual if even the worst habits were not intermittent and the most useless agitations exhausting4 ,some respite will therefore ensue upon pain1 but no magic cure4 ,madness1 in like manner1 if pronounced1 is precarious1 but when speculative enough to be harmless or not strong enough to be debilitating1 it too may last for ever4 ,an imaginative life may therefore exist parasitically in a man1 hardly touching his action or environment4 ,there is no possibility of exorcising these apparitions by their own power4 ,a nightmare does not dispel itself2 it endures until the organic strain which caused it is relaxed either by natural exhaustion or by some external influence4 ,therefore human ideas are still for the most part sensuous and trivial1 shifting with the chance currents of the brain1 and representing nothing1 so to speak1 but personal temperature4 ,personal temperature1 moreover1 is sometimes tropical4 ,there are brains like a ,south ,american jungle1 as there are others like an ,arabian desert1 strewn with nothing but bones4 ,while a passionate sultriness prevails in the mind there is no end to its luxuriance4 ,languages intricately articulate1 flaming mythologies1 metaphysical perspectives lost in infinity1 arise in remarkable profusion4 ,in time1 however1 there comes a change of climate and the whole forest disappears4 ,it is easy1 from the stand-point of acquired practical competence1 to deride a merely imaginative life4 ,derision1 however1 is not interpretation1 and the better method of overcoming erratic ideas is to trace them out dialectically and see if they will not recognise their own fatuity4 ,the most irresponsible vision has certain principles of order and valuation by which it estimates itself2 and in these principles the ,life of ,reason is already broached1 however halting may be its development4 ,we should lead ourselves out of our dream1 as the ,israelites were led out of ,egypt1 by the promise and eloquence of that dream itself4 ,otherwise we might kill the goose that lays the golden egg1 and by proscribing imagination abolish science4 ,sidenote3 ,intrinsic pleasure in existence4 ,sidenote3 ,pleasure a good1 ,visionary experience has a first value in its possible pleasantness4 ,why any form of feeling should be delightful is not to be explained transcendentally3 a physiological law may1 after the fact1 render every instance predictable2 but no logical affinity between the formal quality of an experience and the impulse to welcome it will thereby be disclosed4 ,we find1 however1 that pleasure suffuses certain states of mind and pain others2 which is another way of saying that1 for no reason1 we love the first and detest the second4 ,the polemic which certain moralists have waged against pleasure and in favour of pain is intelligible when we remember that their chief interest is edification1 and that ability to resist pleasure and pain alike is a valuable virtue in a world where action and renunciation are the twin keys to happiness4 ,but to deny that pleasure is a good and pain an evil is a grotesque affectation3 it amounts to giving 8good0 and 8evil0 artificial definitions and thereby reducing ethics to arbitrary verbiage4 ,not only is good that adherence of the will to experience of which pleasure is the basal example1 and evil the corresponding rejection which is the very essence of pain1 but when we pass from good and evil in sense to their highest embodiments1 pleasure remains eligible and pain something which it is a duty to prevent4 ,a man who without necessity deprived any person of a pleasure or imposed on him a pain1 would be a contemptible knave1 and the person so injured would be the first to declare it1 nor could the highest celestial tribunal1 if it was just1 reverse that sentence4 ,for it suffices that one being1 however weak1 loves or abhors anything1 no matter how slightly1 for that thing to acquire a proportionate value which no chorus of contradiction ringing through all the spheres can ever wholly abolish4 ,an experience good or bad in itself remains so for ever1 and its inclusion in a more general order of things can only change that totality proportionately to the ingredient absorbed1 which will infect the mass1 so far as it goes1 with its own colour4 ,the more pleasure a universe can yield1 other things being equal1 the more beneficent and generous is its general nature2 the more pains its constitution involves1 the darker and more malign is its total temper4 ,to deny this would seem impossible1 yet it is done daily2 for there is nothing people will not maintain when they are slaves to superstition2 and candour and a sense of justice are1 in such a case1 the first things lost4 ,sidenote3 but not pursued or remembered unless it suffuses an object4 ,pleasures differ sensibly in intensity2 but the intensest pleasures are often the blindest1 and it is hard to recall or estimate a feeling with which no definite and complex object is conjoined4 ,the first step in making pleasure intelligible and capable of being pursued is to make it pleasure in something4 ,the object it suffuses acquires a value1 and gives the pleasure itself a place in rational life4 ,the pleasure can now be named1 its variations studied in reference to changes in its object1 and its comings and goings foreseen in the order of events4 ,the more articulate the world that produces emotion the more controllable and recoverable is the emotion itself4 ,therefore diversity and order in ideas makes the life of pleasure richer and easier to lead4 ,a voluminous dumb pleasure might indeed outweigh the pleasure spread thin over a multitude of tame perceptions1 if we could only weigh the two in one scale2 but to do so is impossible1 and in memory and prospect1 if not in experience1 diversified pleasure must needs carry the day4 ,sidenote3 ,subhuman delights4 ,here we come upon a crisis in human development which shows clearly how much the ,life of ,reason is a natural thing1 a growth that a different course of events might well have excluded4 ,laplace is reported to have said on his death-bed that science was mere trifling and that nothing was real but love4 ,love1 for such a man1 doubtless involved objects and ideas3 it was love of persons4 ,the same revulsion of feeling may1 however1 be carried further4 ,lucretius says that passion is a torment because its pleasures are not pure1 that is1 because they are mingled with longing and entangled in vexatious things4 ,pure pleasure would be without ideas4 ,many a man has found in some moment of his life an unutterable joy which made all the rest of it seem a farce1 as if a corpse should play it was living4 ,mystics habitually look beneath the ,life of ,reason for the substance and infinity of happiness4 ,in all these revulsions1 and many others1 there is a certain justification1 inasmuch as systematic living is after all an experiment1 as is the formation of animal bodies1 and the inorganic pulp out of which these growths have come may very likely have had its own incommunicable values1 its absolute thrills1 which we vainly try to remember and to which1 in moments of dissolution1 we may half revert4 ,protoplasmic pleasures and strains may be the substance of consciousness2 and as matter seeks its own level1 and as the sea and the flat waste to which all dust returns have a certain primordial life and a certain sublimity1 so all passions and ideas1 when spent1 may rejoin the basal note of feeling1 and enlarge their volume as they lose their form4 ,this loss of form may not be unwelcome1 if it is the formless that1 by anticipation1 speaks through what is surrendering its being4 ,though to acquire or impart form is delightful in art1 in thought1 in generation1 in government1 yet a euthanasia of finitude is also known4 ,all is not affectation in the poet who says1 8,now more than ever seems it rich to die02 and1 without any poetry or affectation1 men may love sleep1 and opiates1 and every luxurious escape from humanity4 ,the step by which pleasure and pain are attached to ideas1 so as to be predictable and to become factors in action1 is therefore by no means irrevocable4 ,it is a step1 however1 in the direction of reason2 and though reason's path is only one of innumerable courses perhaps open to existence1 it is the only one that we are tracing here2 the only one1 obviously1 which human discourse is competent to trace4 ,sidenote3 ,animal living4 ,when consciousness begins to add diversity to its intensity1 its value is no longer absolute and inexpressible4 ,the felt variations in its tone are attached to the observed movement of its objects2 in these objects its values are imbedded4 ,a world loaded with dramatic values may thus arise in imagination2 terrible and delightful presences may chase one another across the void2 life will be a kind of music made by all the senses together4 ,many animals probably have this form of experience2 they are not wholly submerged in a vegetative stupor2 they can discern what they love or fear4 ,yet all this is still a disordered apparition that reels itself off amid sporadic movements1 efforts1 and agonies4 ,now gorgeous1 now exciting1 now indifferent1 the landscape brightens and fades with the day4 ,if a dog1 while sniffing about contentedly1 sees afar off his master arriving after long absence1 the change in the animal's feeling is not merely in the quantity of pure pleasure2 a new circle of sensations appears1 with a new principle governing interest and desire2 instead of waywardness subjection1 instead of freedom love4 ,but the poor brute asks for no reason why his master went1 why he has come again1 why he should be loved1 or why presently while lying at his feet you forget him and begin to grunt and dream of the chase--all that is an utter mystery1 utterly unconsidered4 ,such experience has variety1 scenery1 and a certain vital rhythm2 its story might be told in dithyrambic verse4 ,it moves wholly by inspiration2 every event is providential1 every act unpremeditated4 ,absolute freedom and absolute helplessness have met together3 you depend wholly on divine favour1 yet that unfathomable agency is not distinguishable from your own life4 ,this is the condition to which some forms of piety invite men to return2 and it lies in truth not far beneath the level of ordinary human consciousness4 ,sidenote3 ,causes at last discerned4 ,the story which such animal experience contains1 however1 needs only to be better articulated in order to disclose its underlying machinery4 ,the figures even of that disordered drama have their exits and their entrances2 and their cues can be gradually discovered by a being capable of fixing his attention and retaining the order of events4 ,thereupon a third step is made in imaginative experience4 ,as pleasures and pains were formerly distributed among objects1 so objects are now marshalled into a world4 ,felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas1 said a poet who stood near enough to fundamental human needs and to the great answer which art and civilisation can make to them1 to value the ,life of ,reason and think it sublime4 ,to discern causes is to turn vision into knowledge and motion into action4 ,it is to fix the associates of things1 so that their respective transformations are collated1 and they become significant of one another4 ,in proportion as such understanding advances each moment of experience becomes consequential and prophetic of the rest4 ,the calm places in life are filled with power and its spasms with resource4 ,no emotion can overwhelm the mind1 for of none is the basis or issue wholly hidden2 no event can disconcert it altogether1 because it sees beyond4 ,means can be looked for to escape from the worst predicament2 and whereas each moment had been formerly filled with nothing but its own adventure and surprised emotion1 each now makes room for the lesson of what went before and surmises what may be the plot of the whole4 ,at the threshold of reason there is a kind of choice4 ,not all impressions contribute equally to the new growth2 many1 in fact1 which were formerly equal in rank to the best1 now grow obscure4 ,attention ignores them1 in its haste to arrive at what is significant of something more4 ,nor are the principles of synthesis1 by which the aristocratic few establish their oligarchy1 themselves unequivocal4 ,the first principles of logic are like the senses1 few but arbitrary4 ,they might have been quite different and yet produced1 by a now unthinkable method1 a language no less significant than the one we speak4 ,twenty-six letters may suffice for a language1 but they are a wretched minority among all possible sounds4 ,so the forms of perception and the categories of thought1 which a grammarian's philosophy might think primordial necessities1 are no less casual than words or their syntactical order4 ,why1 we may ask1 did these forms assert themselves here8 ,what principles of selection guide mental growth8 ,sidenote3 ,attention guided by bodily impulse4 ,to give a logical ground for such a selection is evidently impossible1 since it is logic itself that is to be accounted for4 ,a natural ground is1 in strictness1 also irrelevant1 since natural connections1 where thought has not reduced them to a sort of equivalence and necessity1 are mere data and juxtapositions4 ,yet it is not necessary to leave the question altogether unanswered4 ,by using our senses we may discover1 not indeed why each sense has its specific quality or exists at all1 but what are its organs and occasions4 ,in like manner we may1 by developing the ,life of ,reason1 come to understand its conditions4 ,when consciousness awakes the body has1 as we long afterward discover1 a definite organisation4 ,without guidance from reflection bodily processes have been going on1 and most precise affinities and reactions have been set up between its organs and the surrounding objects4 ,on these affinities and reactions sense and intellect are grafted4 ,the plants are of different nature1 yet growing together they bear excellent fruit4 ,it is as the organs receive appropriate stimulations that attention is riveted on definite sensations4 ,it is as the system exercises its natural activities that passion1 will1 and meditation possess the mind4 ,no syllogism is needed to persuade us to eat1 no prophecy of happiness to teach us to love4 ,on the contrary1 the living organism1 caught in the act1 informs us how to reason and what to enjoy4 ,the soul adopts the body's aims2 from the body and from its instincts she draws a first hint of the right means to those accepted purposes4 ,thus reason enters into partnership with the world and begins to be respected there2 which it would never be if it were not expressive of the same mechanical forces that are to preside over events and render them fortunate or unfortunate for human interests4 ,reason is significant in action only because it has begun by taking1 so to speak1 the body's side2 that sympathetic bias enables her to distinguish events pertinent to the chosen interests1 to compare impulse with satisfaction1 and1 by representing a new and circular current in the system1 to preside over the formation of better habits1 habits expressing more instincts at once and responding to more opportunities4 ,,chapter ,,iii--,,the ,,discovery ,,of ,,natural ,,objects ,sidenote3 ,nature man's home4 ,at first sight it might seem an idle observation that the first task of intelligence is to represent the environing reality1 a reality actually represented in the notion1 universally prevalent among men1 of a cosmos in space and time1 an animated material engine called nature4 ,in trying to conceive nature the mind lisps its first lesson2 natural phenomena are the mother tongue of imagination no less than of science and practical life4 ,men and gods are not conceivable otherwise than as inhabitants of nature4 ,early experience knows no mystery which is not somehow rooted in transformations of the natural world1 and fancy can build no hope which would not be expressible there4 ,but we are grown so accustomed to this ancient apparition that we may be no longer aware how difficult was the task of conjuring it up4 ,we may even have forgotten the possibility that such a vision should never have arisen at all4 ,a brief excursion into that much abused subject1 the psychology of perception1 may here serve to remind us of the great work which the budding intellect must long ago have accomplished unawares4 ,sidenote3 ,difficulties in conceiving nature4 ,consider how the shocks out of which the notion of material things is to be built first strike home into the soul4 ,eye and hand1 if we may neglect the other senses1 transmit their successive impressions1 all varying with the position of outer objects and with the other material conditions4 ,a chaos of multitudinous impressions rains in from all sides at all hours4 ,nor have the external or cognitive senses an original primacy4 ,the taste1 the smell1 the alarming sounds of things are continually distracting attention4 ,there are infinite reverberations in memory of all former impressions1 together with fresh fancies created in the brain1 things at first in no wise subordinated to external objects4 ,all these incongruous elements are mingled like a witches' brew4 ,and more3 there are indications that inner sensations1 such as those of digestion1 have an overpowering influence on the primitive mind1 which has not learned to articulate or distinguish permanent needs4 ,so that to the whirl of outer sensations we must add1 to reach some notion of what consciousness may contain before the advent of reason1 interruptions and lethargies caused by wholly blind internal feelings2 trances such as fall even on comparatively articulate minds in rage1 lust1 or madness4 ,against all these bewildering forces the new-born reason has to struggle2 and we need not wonder that the costly experiments and disillusions of the past have not yet produced a complete enlightenment4 ,sidenote3 ,transcendental qualms4 ,the onslaught made in the last century by the transcendental philosophy upon empirical traditions is familiar to everybody3 it seemed a pertinent attack1 yet in the end proved quite trifling and unavailing4 ,thought1 we are told rightly enough1 cannot be accounted for by enumerating its conditions4 ,a number of detached sensations1 being each its own little world1 cannot add themselves together nor conjoin themselves in the void4 ,again1 experiences having an alleged common cause would not have1 merely for that reason1 a common object4 ,nor would a series of successive perceptions1 no matter how quick1 logically involve a sense of time nor a notion of succession4 ,yet1 in point of fact1 when such a succession occurs and a living brain is there to acquire some structural modification by virtue of its own passing states1 a memory of that succession and its terms may often supervene4 ,it is quite true also that the simultaneous presence or association of images belonging to different senses does not carry with it by intrinsic necessity any fusion of such images nor any notion of an object having them for its qualities4 ,yet1 in point of fact1 such a group of sensations does often merge into a complex image2 instead of the elements originally perceptible in isolation1 there arises a familiar term1 a sort of personal presence4 ,to this felt presence1 certain instinctive reactions are attached1 and the sensations that may be involved in that apparition1 when each for any reason becomes emphatic1 are referred to it as its qualities or its effects4 ,such complications of course involve the gift of memory1 with capacity to survey at once vestiges of many perceptions1 to feel their implication and absorption in the present object1 and to be carried1 by this sense of relation1 to the thought that those perceptions have a representative function4 ,and this is a great step4 ,it manifests the mind's powers4 ,it illustrates those transformations of consciousness the principle of which1 when abstracted1 we call intelligence4 ,we must accordingly proceed with caution1 for we are digging at the very roots of reason4 ,sidenote3 ,thought an aspect of life and transitive ,the chief perplexity1 however1 which besets this subject and makes discussions of it so often end in a cloud1 is quite artificial4 ,thought is not a mechanical calculus1 where the elements and the method exhaust the fact4 ,thought is a form of life1 and should be conceived on the analogy of nutrition1 generation1 and art4 ,reason1 as ,hume said with profound truth1 is an unintelligible instinct4 ,it could not be otherwise if reason is to remain something transitive and existential2 for transition is unintelligible1 and yet is the deepest characteristic of existence4 ,philosophers1 however1 having perceived that the function of thought is to fix static terms and reveal eternal relations1 have inadvertently transferred to the living act what is true only of its ideal object2 and they have expected to find in the process1 treated psychologically1 that luminous deductive clearness which belongs to the ideal world it tends to reveal4 ,the intelligible1 however1 lies at the periphery of experience1 the surd at its core2 and intelligence is but one centrifugal ray darting from the slime to the stars4 ,thought must execute a metamorphosis2 and while this is of course mysterious1 it is one of those familiar mysteries1 like motion and will1 which are more natural than dialectical lucidity itself2 for dialectic grows cogent by fulfilling intent1 but intent or meaning is itself vital and inexplicable4 ,sidenote3 ,perception cumulative and synthetic ,the process of counting is perhaps as simple an instance as can be found of a mental operation on sensible data4 ,the clock1 let us say1 strikes two3 if the sensorium were perfectly elastic and after receiving the first blow reverted exactly to its previous state1 retaining absolutely no trace of that momentary oscillation and no altered habit1 then it is certain that a sense for number or a faculty of counting could never arise4 ,the second stroke would be responded to with the same reaction which had met the first4 ,there would be no summation of effects1 no complication4 ,however numerous the successive impressions might come to be1 each would remain fresh and pure1 the last being identical in character with the first4 ,one1 one1 one1 would be the monotonous response for ever4 ,just so generations of ephemeral insects that succeeded one another without transmitting experience might repeat the same round of impressions--an everlasting progression without a shadow of progress4 ,such1 too1 is the idiot's life3 his liquid brain transmits every impulse without resistance and retains the record of no impression4 ,intelligence is accordingly conditioned by a modification of both structure and consciousness by dint of past events4 ,to be aware that a second stroke is not itself the first1 ,i must retain something of the old sensation4 ,the first must reverberate still in my ears when the second arrives1 so that this second1 coming into a consciousness still filled by the first1 is a different experience from the first1 which fell into a mind perfectly empty and unprepared4 ,now the newcomer finds in the subsisting ,one a sponsor to christen it by the name of ,two4 ,the first stroke was a simple #a4 ,the second is not simply another #a1 a mere iteration of the first4 ,it is #aa1 where the coefficient represents the reverberating first stroke1 still persisting in the mind1 and forming a background and perspective against which the new stroke may be distinguished4 ,the meaning of 8two10 then1 is 8this after that0 or 8this again10 where we have a simultaneous sense of two things which have been separately perceived but are identified as similar in their nature4 ,repetition must cease to be pure repetition and become cumulative before it can give rise to the consciousness of repetition4 ,the first condition of counting1 then1 is that the sensorium should retain something of the first impression while it receives the second1 or 7to state the corresponding mental fact7 that the second sensation should be felt together with a survival of the first from which it is distinguished in point of existence and with which it is identified in point of character4 ,sidenote3 ,no identical agent needed4 ,now1 to secure this1 it is not enough that the sensorium should be materially continuous1 or that a 8spiritual substance0 or a 8transcendental ego0 should persist in time to receive the second sensation after having received and registered the first4 ,a perfectly elastic sensorium1 a wholly unchanging soul1 or a quite absolute ego might remain perfectly identical with itself through various experiences without collating them4 ,it would then remain1 in fact1 more truly and literally identical than if it were modified somewhat by those successive shocks4 ,yet a sensorium or a spirit thus unchanged would be incapable of memory1 unfit to connect a past perception with one present or to become aware of their relation4 ,it is not identity in the substance impressed1 but growing complication in the phenomenon presented1 that makes possible a sense of diversity and relation between things4 ,the identity of substance or spirit1 if it were absolute1 would indeed prevent comparison1 because it would exclude modifications1 and it is the survival of past modifications within the present that makes comparisons possible4 ,we may impress any number of forms successively on the same water1 and the identity of the substance will not help those forms to survive and accumulate their effects4 ,but if we have a surface that retains our successive stampings we may change the substance from wax to plaster and from plaster to bronze1 and the effects of our labour will survive and be superimposed upon one another4 ,it is the actual plastic form in both mind and body1 not any unchanging substance or agent1 that is efficacious in perpetuating thought and gathering experience4 ,sidenote3 ,example of the sun4 ,were not ,nature and all her parts such models of patience and pertinacity1 they never would have succeeded in impressing their existence on something so volatile and irresponsible as thought is4 ,a sensation needs to be violent1 like the sun's blinding light1 to arrest attention1 and keep it taut1 as it were1 long enough for the system to acquire a respectful attitude1 and grow predisposed to resume it4 ,a repetition of that sensation will thereafter meet with a prepared response which we call recognition2 the concomitants of the old experience will form themselves afresh about the new one and by their convergence give it a sort of welcome and interpretation4 ,the movement1 for instance1 by which the face was raised toward the heavens was perhaps one element which added to the first sensation1 brightness1 a concomitant sensation1 height2 the brightness was not bright merely1 but high4 ,now when the brightness reappears the face will more quickly be lifted up2 the place where the brightness shone will be looked for2 the brightness will have acquired a claim to be placed somewhere4 ,the heat which at the same moment may have burned the forehead will also be expected and1 when felt1 projected into the brightness1 which will now be hot as well as high4 ,so with whatever other sensations time may associate with this group4 ,they will all adhere to the original impression1 enriching it with an individuality which will render it before long a familiar complex in experience1 and one easy to recognise and to complete in idea4 ,sidenote3 ,his primitive divinity4 ,in the case of so vivid a thing as the sun's brightness many other sensations beside those out of which science draws the qualities attributed to that heavenly body adhere in the primitive mind to the phenomenon4 ,before he is a substance the sun is a god4 ,he is beneficent and necessary no less than bright and high2 he rises upon all happy opportunities and sets upon all terrors4 ,he is divine1 since all life and fruitfulness hang upon his miraculous revolutions4 ,his coming and going are life and death to the world4 ,as the sensations of light and heat are projected upward together to become attributes of his body1 so the feelings of pleasure1 safety1 and hope which he brings into the soul are projected into his spirit2 and to this spirit1 more than to anything else1 energy1 independence1 and substantiality are originally attributed4 ,the emotions felt in his presence being the ultimate issue and term of his effect in us1 the counterpart or shadow of those emotions is regarded as the first and deepest factor in his causality4 ,it is his divine life1 more than aught else1 that underlies his apparitions and explains the influences which he propagates4 ,the substance or independent existence attributed to objects is therefore by no means only or primarily a physical notion4 ,what is conceived to support the physical qualities is a pseudo-psychic or vital force4 ,it is a moral and living object that we construct1 building it up out of all the materials1 emotional1 intellectual1 and sensuous1 which lie at hand in our consciousness to be synthesised into the hybrid reality which we are to fancy confronting us4 ,to discriminate and redistribute those miscellaneous physical and psychical elements1 and to divorce the god from the material sun1 is a much later problem1 arising at a different and more reflective stage in the ,life of ,reason4 ,sidenote3 ,causes and essences contrasted4 ,when reflection1 turning to the comprehension of a chaotic experience1 busies itself about recurrences1 when it seeks to normalise in some way things coming and going1 and to straighten out the causes of events1 that reflection is inevitably turned toward something dynamic and independent1 and can have no successful issue except in mechanical science4 ,when on the other hand reflection stops to challenge and question the fleeting object1 not so much to prepare for its possible return as to conceive its present nature1 this reflection is turned no less unmistakably in the direction of ideas1 and will terminate in logic or the morphology of being4 ,we attribute independence to things in order to normalise their recurrence4 ,we attribute essences to them in order to normalise their manifestations or constitution4 ,independence will ultimately turn out to be an assumed constancy in material processes1 essence an assumed constancy in ideal meanings or points of reference in discourse4 ,the one marks the systematic distribution of objects1 the other their settled character4 ,sidenote3 ,voracity of intellect4 ,we talk of recurrent perceptions1 but materially considered no perception recurs4 ,each recurrence is one of a finite series and holds for ever its place and number in that series4 ,yet human attention1 while it can survey several simultaneous impressions and find them similar1 cannot keep them distinct if they grow too numerous4 ,the mind has a native bias and inveterate preference for form and identification4 ,water does not run down hill more persistently than attention turns experience into constant terms4 ,the several repetitions of one essence given in consciousness will tend at once to be neglected1 and only the essence itself--the character shared by those sundry perceptions--will stand and become a term in mental discourse4 ,after a few strokes of the clock1 the reiterated impressions merge and cover one another2 we lose count and perceive the quality and rhythm but not the number of the sounds4 ,if this is true of so abstract and mathematical a perception as is counting1 how emphatically true must it be of continuous and infinitely varied perceptions flowing in from the whole spatial world4 ,glimpses of the environment follow one another in quick succession1 like a regiment of soldiers in uniform2 only now and then does the stream take a new turn1 catch a new ray of sunlight1 or arrest our attention at some break4 ,the senses in their natural play revert constantly to familiar objects1 gaining impressions which differ but slightly from one another4 ,these slight differences are submerged in apperception1 so that sensation comes to be not so much an addition of new items to consciousness as a reburnishing there of some imbedded device4 ,its character and relations are only slightly modified at each fresh rejuvenation4 ,to catch the passing phenomenon in all its novelty and idiosyncrasy is a work of artifice and curiosity4 ,such an exercise does violence to intellectual instinct and involves an sthetic power of diving bodily into the stream of sensation1 having thrown overboard all rational ballast and escaped at once the inertia and the momentum of practical life4 ,normally every datum of sense is at once devoured by a hungry intellect and digested for the sake of its vital juices4 ,the result is that what ordinarily remains in memory is no representative of particular moments or shocks--though sensation1 as in dreams1 may be incidentally recreated from within--but rather a logical possession1 a sense of acquaintance with a certain field of reality1 in a word1 a consciousness of knowledge4 ,sidenote3 ,can the transcendent be known8 ,but what1 we may ask1 is this reality1 which we boast to know8 ,may not the sceptic justly contend that nothing is so unknown and indeed unknowable as this pretended object of knowledge8 ,the sensations which reason treats so cavalierly were at least something actual while they lasted and made good their momentary claim to our interest2 but what is this new ideal figment1 unseizable yet ever present1 invisible but indispensable1 unknowable yet alone interesting or important8 ,strange that the only possible object or theme of our knowledge should be something we cannot know4 ,sidenote3 ,can the immediate be meant8 ,an answer these doubts will perhaps appear if we ask ourselves what sort of contact with reality would satisfy us1 and in what terms we expect or desire to possess the subject-matter of our thoughts4 ,is it simply corroboration that we look for8 ,is it a verification of truth in sense8 ,it would be unreasonable1 in that case1 after all the evidence we demand has been gathered1 to complain that the ideal term thus concurrently suggested1 the super-sensible substance1 reality1 or independent object1 does not itself descend into the arena of immediate sensuous presentation4 ,knowledge is not eating1 and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean4 ,knowledge is recognition of something absent2 it is a salutation1 not an embrace4 ,it is an advance on sensation precisely because it is representative4 ,the terms or goals of thought have for their function to subtend long tracts of sensuous experience1 to be ideal links between fact and fact1 invisible wires behind the scenes1 threads along which inference may run in making phenomena intelligible and controllable4 ,an idea that should become an image would cease to be ideal2 a principle that is to remain a principle can never become a fact4 ,a ,god that you could see with the eyes of the body1 a heaven you might climb into by a ladder planted at ,bethel1 would be parts of this created and interpretable world1 not terms in its interpretation nor objects in a spiritual sphere4 ,now external objects are thought to be principles and sources of experience2 they are accordingly conceived realities on an ideal plane4 ,we may look for all the evidence we choose before we declare our inference to be warranted2 but we must not ask for something more than evidence1 nor expect to know realities without inferring them anew4 ,they are revealed only to understanding4 ,we cannot cease to think and still continue to know4 ,sidenote3 ,is thought a bridge from sensation to sensation8 ,it may be said1 however1 that principles and external objects are interesting only because they symbolise further sensations1 that thought is an expedient of finite minds1 and that representation is a ghostly process which we crave to materialise into bodily possession4 ,we may grow sick of inferring truth and long rather to become reality4 ,intelligence is after all no compulsory possession2 and while some of us would gladly have more of it1 others find that they already have too much4 ,the tension of thought distresses them and to represent what they cannot and would not be is not a natural function of their spirit4 ,to such minds experience that should merely corroborate ideas would prolong dissatisfaction4 ,the ideas must be realised2 they must pass into immediacy4 ,if reality 7a word employed generally in a eulogistic sense7 is to mean this desired immediacy1 no ideal of thought can be real4 ,all intelligible objects and the whole universe of mental discourse would then be an unreal and conventional structure1 impinging ultimately on sense from which it would derive its sole validity4 ,there would be no need of quarrelling with such a philosophy1 were not its use of words rather misleading4 ,call experience in its existential and immediate aspect1 if you will1 the sole reality2 that will not prevent reality from having an ideal dimension4 ,the intellectual world will continue to give beauty1 meaning1 and scope to those bubbles of consciousness on which it is painted4 ,reality would not be1 in that case1 what thought aspires to reach4 ,consciousness is the least ideal of things when reason is taken out of it4 ,reality would then need thought to give it all those human values of which1 in its substance1 it would have been wholly deprived2 and the ideal would still be what lent music to throbs and significance to being4 ,sidenote3 ,mens naturaliter platonica4 ,the equivocation favoured by such language at once begins to appear4 ,is not thought with all its products a part of experience8 ,must not sense1 if it be the only reality1 be sentient sometimes of the ideal8 ,what the site is to a city that is immediate experience to the universe of discourse4 ,the latter is all held materially within the limits defined by the former2 but if immediate experience be the seat of the moral world1 the moral world is the only interesting possession of immediate experience4 ,when a waste is built on1 however1 it is a violent paradox to call it still a waste2 and an immediate experience that represents the rest of sentience1 with all manner of ideal harmonies read into the whole in the act of representing it1 is an immediate experience raised to its highest power3 it is the ,life of ,reason4 ,in vain1 then1 will a philosophy of intellectual abstention limit so ,platonic a term as reality to the immediate aspect of existence1 when it is the ideal aspect that endows existence with character and value1 together with representative scope and a certain lien upon eternity4 ,more legitimate1 therefore1 would be the assertion that knowledge reaches reality when it touches its ideal goal4 ,reality is known when1 as in mathematics1 a stable and unequivocal object is developed by thinking4 ,the locus or material embodiment of such a reality is no longer in view2 these questions seem to the logician irrelevant4 ,if necessary ideas find no illustration in sense1 he deems the fact an argument against the importance and validity of sensation1 not in the least a disproof of his ideal knowledge4 ,if no site be found on earth for the ,platonic city1 its constitution is none the less recorded and enshrined in heaven2 nor is that the only true ideal that has not where to lay its head4 ,what in the sensualistic or mystical system was called reality will now be termed appearance1 and what there figured as an imaginary construction borne by the conscious moment will now appear to be a prototype for all existence and an eternal standard for its estimation4 ,it is this rationalistic or ,platonic system 7little as most men may suspect the fact7 that finds a first expression in ordinary perception4 ,when you distinguish your sensations from their cause and laugh at the idealist 7as this kind of sceptic is called7 who says that chairs and tables exist only in your mind1 you are treating a figment of reason as a deeper and truer thing than the moments of life whose blind experience that reason has come to illumine4 ,what you call the evidence of sense is pure confidence in reason4 ,you will not be so idiotic as to make no inferences from your sensations2 you will not pin your faith so unimaginatively on momentary appearance as to deny that the world exists when you stop thinking about it4 ,you feel that your intellect has wider scope and has discovered many a thing that goes on behind the scenes1 many a secret that would escape a stupid and gaping observation4 ,it is the fool that looks to look and stops at the barely visible3 you not only look but see2 for you understand4 ,sidenote3 ,identity and independence predicated of things4 ,now the practical burden of such understanding1 if you take the trouble to analyse it1 will turn out to be what the sceptic says it is3 assurance of eventual sensations4 ,but as these sensations1 in memory and expectation1 are numerous and indefinitely variable1 you are not able to hold them clearly before the mind2 indeed1 the realisation of all the potentialities which you vaguely feel to lie in the future is a task absolutely beyond imagination4 ,yet your present impressions1 dependent as they are on your chance attitude and disposition and on a thousand trivial accidents1 are far from representing adequately all that might be discovered or that is actually known about the object before you4 ,this object1 then1 to your apprehension1 is not identical with any of the sensations that reveal it1 nor is it exhausted by all these sensations when they are added together2 yet it contains nothing assignable but what they might conceivably reveal4 ,as it lies in your fancy1 then1 this object1 the reality1 is a complex and elusive entity1 the sum at once and the residuum of all particular impressions which1 underlying the present one1 have bequeathed to it their surviving linkage in discourse and consequently endowed it with a large part of its present character4 ,with this hybrid object1 sensuous in its materials and ideal in its locus1 each particular glimpse is compared1 and is recognised to be but a glimpse1 an aspect which the object presents to a particular observer4 ,here are two identifications4 ,in the first place various sensations and felt relations1 which cannot be kept distinct in the mind1 fall together into one term of discourse1 represented by a sign1 a word1 or a more or less complete sensuous image4 ,in the second place the new perception is referred to that ideal entity of which it is now called a manifestation and effect4 ,such are the primary relations of reality and appearance4 ,a reality is a term of discourse based on a psychic complex of memories1 associations1 and expectations1 but constituted in its ideal independence by the assertive energy of thought4 ,an appearance is a passing sensation1 recognised as belonging to that group of which the object itself is the ideal representative1 and accordingly regarded as a manifestation of that object4 ,thus the notion of an independent and permanent world is an ideal term used to mark and as it were to justify the cohesion in space and the recurrence in time of recognisable groups of sensations4 ,this coherence and recurrence force the intellect1 if it would master experience at all or understand anything1 to frame the idea of such a reality4 ,if we wish to defend the use of such an idea and prove to ourselves its necessity1 all we need do is to point to that coherence and recurrence in external phenomena4 ,that brave effort and flight of intelligence which in the beginning raised man to the conception of reality1 enabling him to discount and interpret appearance1 will1 if we retain our trust in reason1 raise us continually anew to that same idea1 by a no less spontaneous and victorious movement of thought4 ,,chapter ,,iv--,,on ,,some ,,critics ,,of ,,this ,,discovery ,sidenote3 ,psychology as a solvent4 ,the ,english psychologists who first disintegrated the idea of substance1 and whose traces we have in general followed in the above account1 did not study the question wholly for its own sake or in the spirit of a science that aims at nothing but a historical analysis of mind4 ,they had a more or less malicious purpose behind their psychology4 ,they thought that if they could once show how metaphysical ideas are made they would discredit those ideas and banish them for ever from the world4 ,if they retained confidence in any notion--as ,hobbes in body1 ,locke in matter and in ,god1 ,berkeley in spirits1 and ,kant1 the inheritor of this malicious psychology1 in the thing-in-itself and in heaven--it was merely by inadvertence or want of courage4 ,the principle of their reasoning1 where they chose to apply it1 was always this1 that ideas whose materials could all be accounted for in consciousness and referred to sense or to the operations of mind were thereby exhausted and deprived of further validity4 ,only the unaccountable1 or rather the uncriticised1 could be true4 ,consequently the advance of psychology meant1 in this school1 the retreat of reason2 for as one notion after another was clarified and reduced to its elements it was ipso facto deprived of its function4 ,so far were these philosophers from conceiving that validity and truth are ideal relations1 accruing to ideas by virtue of dialectic and use1 that while on the one hand they pointed out vital affinities and pragmatic sanctions in the mind's economy they confessed on the other that the outcome of their philosophy was sceptical2 for no idea could be found in the mind which was not a phenomenon there1 and no inference could be drawn from these phenomena not based on some inherent 8tendency to feign40 ,the analysis which was in truth legitimising and purifying knowledge seemed to them absolutely to blast it1 and the closer they came to the bed-rock of experience the more incapable they felt of building up anything upon it4 ,self-knowledge meant1 they fancied1 self-detection2 the representative value of thought decreased as thought grew in scope and elaboration4 ,it became impossible to be at once quite serious and quite intelligent2 for to use reason was to indulge in subjective fiction1 while conscientiously to abstain from using it was to sink back upon inarticulate and brutish instinct4 ,in ,hume this sophistication was frankly avowed4 ,philosophy discredited itself2 but a man of parts1 who loved intellectual games even better than backgammon1 might take a hand with the wits and historians of his day1 until the clock struck twelve and the party was over4 ,even in ,kant1 though the mood was more cramped and earnest1 the mystical sophistication was quite the same4 ,kant1 too1 imagined that the bottom had been knocked out of the world2 that in comparison with some unutterable sort of truth empirical truth was falsehood1 and that validity for all possible experience was weak validity1 in comparison with validity of some other and unmentionable sort4 ,since space and time could not repel the accusation of being the necessary forms of perception1 space and time were not to be much thought of2 and when the sad truth was disclosed that causality and the categories were instruments by which the idea of nature had to be constructed1 if such an idea was to exist at all1 then nature and causality shrivelled up and were dishonoured together2 so that1 the soul's occupation being gone1 she must needs appeal to some mysterious oracle1 some abstract and irrelevant omen within the breast1 and muster up all the stern courage of an accepted despair to carry her through this world of mathematical illusion into some green and infantile paradise beyond4 ,sidenote3 ,misconceived rle of intelligence4 ,what idea1 we may well ask ourselves1 did these modern philosophers entertain regarding the pretensions of ancient and medival metaphysics8 ,what understanding had they of the spirit in which the natural organs of reason had been exercised and developed in those schools8 ,frankly1 very little2 for they accepted from ancient philosophy and from common-sense the distinction between reality and appearance1 but they forgot the function of that distinction and dislocated its meaning1 which was nothing but to translate the chaos of perception into the regular play of stable natures and objects congenial to discursive thought and valid in the art of living4 ,philosophy had been the natural science of perception raised to the reflective plane1 the objects maintaining themselves on this higher plane being styled realities1 and those still floundering below it being called appearances or mere ideas4 ,the function of envisaging reality1 ever since ,parmenides and ,heraclitus1 had been universally attributed to the intellect4 ,when the moderns1 therefore1 proved anew that it was the mind that framed that idea1 and that what we call reality1 substance1 nature1 or ,god1 can be reached only by an operation of reason1 they made no very novel or damaging discovery4 ,of course1 it is possible to disregard the suggestions of reason in any particular case and it is quite possible to believe1 for instance1 that the hypothesis of an external material world is an erroneous one4 ,but that this hypothesis is erroneous does not follow from the fact that it is a hypothesis4 ,to discard it on that ground would be to discard all reasoned knowledge and to deny altogether the validity of thought4 ,if intelligence is assumed to be an organ of cognition and a vehicle for truth1 a given hypothesis about the causes of perception can only be discarded when a better hypothesis on the same subject has been supplied4 ,to be better such a hypothesis would have to meet the multiplicity of phenomena and their mutations with a more intelligible scheme of comprehension and a more useful instrument of control4 ,sidenote3 ,all criticism dogmatic4 ,scepticism is always possible while it is partial4 ,it will remain the privilege and resource of a free mind that has elasticity enough to disintegrate its own formations and to approach its experience from a variety of sides and with more than a single method4 ,but the method chosen must be coherent in itself and the point of view assumed must be adhered to during that survey2 so that whatever reconstruction the novel view may produce in science will be science still1 and will involve assumptions and dogmas which must challenge comparison with the dogmas and assumptions they would supplant4 ,people speak of dogmatism as if it were a method to be altogether outgrown and something for which some non-assertive philosophy could furnish a substitute4 ,but dogmatism is merely a matter of degree4 ,some thinkers and some systems retreat further than others into the stratum beneath current conventions and make us more conscious of the complex machinery which1 working silently in the soul1 makes possible all the rapid and facile operations of reason4 ,the deeper this retrospective glance the less dogmatic the philosophy4 ,a primordial constitution or tendency1 however1 must always remain1 having structure and involving a definite life2 for if we thought to reach some wholly vacant and indeterminate point of origin1 we should have reached something wholly impotent and indifferent1 a blank pregnant with nothing that we wished to explain or that actual experience presented4 ,when1 starting with the inevitable preformation and constitutional bias1 we sought to build up a simpler and nobler edifice of thought1 to be a palace and fortress rather than a prison for experience1 our critical philosophy would still be dogmatic1 since it would be built upon inexplicable but actual data by a process of inference underived but inevitable4 ,sidenote3 ,a choice of hypotheses4 ,no doubt ,aristotle and the scholastics were often uncritical4 ,they were too intent on building up and buttressing their system on the broad human or religious foundations which they had chosen for it4 ,they nursed the comfortable conviction that whatever their thought contained was eternal and objective truth1 a copy of the divine intellect or of the world's intelligible structure4 ,a sceptic may easily deride that confidence of theirs2 their system may have been their system and nothing more4 ,but the way to proceed if we wish to turn our shrewd suspicions and our sense of insecurity into an articulate conviction and to prove that they erred1 is to build another system1 a more modest one1 perhaps1 which will grow more spontaneously and inevitably in the mind out of the data of experience4 ,obviously the rival and critical theory will make the same tacit claim as the other to absolute validity4 ,if all our ideas and perceptions conspire to reinforce the new hypothesis1 this will become inevitable and necessary to us4 ,we shall then condemn the other hypothesis1 not indeed for having been a hypothesis1 which is the common fate of all rational and interpretative thought1 but for having been a hypothesis artificial1 misleading1 and false2 one not following necessarily nor intelligibly out of the facts1 nor leading to a satisfactory reaction upon them1 either in contemplation or in practice4 ,sidenote3 ,critics disguised enthusiasts4 ,now this is in truth exactly the conviction which those malicious psychologists secretly harboured4 ,their critical scruples and transcendental qualms covered a robust rebellion against being fooled by authority4 ,they rose to abate abuses among which1 as ,hobbes said1 8the frequency of insignificant speech is one40 ,their psychology was not merely a cathartic1 but a gospel4 ,their young criticism was sent into the world to make straight the path of a new positivism1 as now1 in its old age1 it is invoked to keep open the door to superstition4 ,some of those reformers1 like ,hobbes and ,locke1 had at heart the interests of a physical and political mechanism1 which they wished to substitute for the cumbrous and irritating constraints of tradition4 ,their criticism stopped at the frontiers of their practical discontent2 they did not care to ask how the belief in matter1 space1 motion1 ,god1 or whatever else still retained their allegiance1 could withstand the kind of psychology which1 as they conceived1 had done away with individual essences and nominal powers4 ,berkeley1 whose interests lay in a different quarter1 used the same critical method in support of a different dogmatism2 armed with the traditional pietistic theory of ,providence he undertook with a light heart to demolish the whole edifice which reason and science had built upon spatial perception4 ,he wished the lay intellect to revert to a pious idiocy in the presence of ,nature1 lest consideration of her history and laws should breed 8mathematical atheists02 and the outer world being thus reduced to a sensuous dream and to the blur of immediate feeling1 intelligence and practical faith would be more unremittingly employed upon ,christian mythology4 ,men would be bound to it by a necessary allegiance1 there being no longer any rival object left for serious or intelligent consideration4 ,the psychological analysis on which these partial or total negations were founded was in a general way admirable2 the necessary artifices to which it had recourse in distinguishing simple and complex ideas1 principles of association and inference1 were nothing but premonitions of what a physiological psychology would do in referring the mental process to its organic and external supports2 for experience has no other divisions than those it creates in itself by distinguishing its objects and its organs4 ,reference to external conditions1 though seldom explicit in these writers1 who imagined they could appeal to an introspection not revealing the external world1 was pervasive in them2 as1 for instance1 where ,hume made his fundamental distinction between impressions and ideas1 where the discrimination was based nominally on relative vividness and priority in time1 but really on causation respectively by outer objects or by spontaneous processes in the brain4 ,sidenote3 ,hume's gratuitous scepticism4 ,hume it was who carried this psychological analysis to its goal1 giving it greater simplicity and universal scope2 and he had also the further advantage of not nursing any metaphysical changeling of his own to substitute for the legitimate offspring of human understanding4 ,his curiosity was purer and his scepticism more impartial1 so that he laid bare the natural habits and necessary fictions of thought with singular lucidity1 and sufficient accuracy for general purposes4 ,but the malice of a psychology intended as a weapon against superstition here recoils on science itself4 ,hume1 like ,berkeley1 was extremely young1 scarce five-and-twenty1 when he wrote his most incisive work2 he was not ready to propose in theory that test of ideas by their utility which in practice he and the whole ,english school have instinctively adopted4 ,an ulterior test of validity would not have seemed to him satisfactory1 for though inclined to rebellion and positivism he was still the pupil of that mythical philosophy which attributed the value of things to their origin rather than to their uses1 because it had first1 in its parabolic way1 erected the highest good into a ,first ,cause4 ,still breathing1 in spite of himself1 this atmosphere of materialised ,platonism1 ,hume could not discover the true origin of anything without imagining that he had destroyed its value4 ,a natural child meant for him an illegitimate one2 his philosophy had not yet reached the wisdom of that ,french lady who asked if all children were not natural4 ,the outcome of his psychology and criticism seemed accordingly to be an inhibition of reason2 he was left free to choose between the distractions of backgammon and 8sitting down in a forlorn scepticism40 ,in his first youth1 while disintegrating reflection still overpowered the active interests of his mind1 ,hume seems to have had some moments of genuine suspense and doubt3 but with years and prosperity the normal habits of inference which he had so acutely analysed asserted themselves in his own person and he yielded to the 8tendency to feign0 so far at least as to believe languidly in the histories he wrote1 the compliments he received1 and the succulent dinners he devoured4 ,there is a kind of courtesy in scepticism4 ,it would be an offence against polite conventions to press our doubts too far and question the permanence of our estates1 our neighbours' independent existence1 or even the justification of a good bishop's faith and income4 ,against metaphysicians1 and even against bishops1 sarcasm was not without its savour2 but the line must be drawn somewhere by a gentleman and a man of the world4 ,hume found no obstacle in his speculations to the adoption of all necessary and useful conceptions in the sphere to which he limited his mature interests4 ,that he never extended this liberty to believe into more speculative and comprehensive regions was due simply to a voluntary superficiality in his thought4 ,had he been interested in the rationality of things he would have laboured to discover it1 as he laboured to discover that historical truth or that political utility to which his interests happened to attach4 ,sidenote3 ,kant's substitute for knowledge4 ,kant1 like ,berkeley1 had a private mysticism in reserve to raise upon the ruins of science and common-sense4 ,knowledge was to be removed to make way for faith4 ,this task is ambiguous1 and the equivocation involved in it is perhaps the deepest of those confusions with which ,german metaphysics has since struggled1 and which have made it waver between the deepest introspection and the dreariest mythology4 ,to substitute faith for knowledge might mean to teach the intellect humility1 to make it aware of its theoretic and transitive function as a faculty for hypothesis and rational fiction1 building a bridge of methodical inferences and ideal unities between fact and fact1 between endeavour and satisfaction4 ,it might be to remind us1 sprinkling over us1 as it were1 the ,lenten ashes of an intellectual contrition1 that our thoughts are air even as our bodies are dust1 momentary vehicles and products of an immortal vitality in ,god and in nature1 which fosters and illumines us for a moment before it lapses into other forms4 ,had ,kant proposed to humble and concentrate into a practical faith the same natural ideas which had previously been taken for absolute knowledge1 his intention would have been innocent1 his conclusions wise1 and his analysis free from venom and arrire-pense4 ,man1 because of his finite and propulsive nature and because he is a pilgrim and a traveller throughout his life1 is obliged to have faith3 the absent1 the hidden1 the eventual1 is the necessary object of his concern4 ,but what else shall his faith rest in except in what the necessary forms of his perception present to him and what the indispensable categories of his understanding help him to conceive8 ,what possible objects are there for faith except objects of a possible experience8 ,what else should a practical and moral philosophy concern itself with1 except the governance and betterment of the real world8 ,it is surely by using his only possible forms of perception and his inevitable categories of understanding that man may yet learn1 as he has partly learned already1 to live and prosper in the universe4 ,had ,kant's criticism amounted simply to such a confession of the tentative1 practical1 and hypothetical nature of human reason1 it would have been wholly acceptable to the wise2 and its appeal to faith would have been nothing but an expression of natural vitality and courage1 just as its criticism of knowledge would have been nothing but a better acquaintance with self4 ,this faith would have called the forces of impulse and passion to reason's support1 not to its betrayal4 ,faith would have meant faith in the intellect1 a faith naturally expressing man's practical and ideal nature1 and the only faith yet sanctioned by its fruits4 ,sidenote3 ,false subjectivity attributed to reason4 ,side by side with this reinstatement of reason1 however1 which was not absent from ,kant's system in its critical phase and in its application to science1 there lurked in his substitution of faith for knowledge another and sinister intention4 ,he wished to blast as insignificant1 because 8subjective10 the whole structure of human intelligence1 with all the lessons of experience and all the triumphs of human skill1 and to attach absolute validity instead to certain echoes of his rigoristic religious education4 ,these notions were surely just as subjective1 and far more local and transitory1 than the common machinery of thought2 and it was actually proclaimed to be an evidence of their sublimity that they remained entirely without practical sanction in the form of success or of happiness4 ,the 8categorical imperative0 was a shadow of the ten commandments2 the postulates of practical reason were the minimal tenets of the most abstract ,protestantism4 ,these fossils1 found unaccountably imbedded in the old man's mind1 he regarded as the evidences of an inward but supernatural revelation4 ,sidenote3 ,chimerical reconstruction4 ,only the quaint severity of ,kant's education and character can make intelligible to us the restraint he exercised in making supernatural postulates4 ,all he asserted was his inscrutable moral imperative and a ,god to reward with the pleasures of the next world those who had been ,puritans in this4 ,but the same principle could obviously be applied to other cherished imaginations3 there is no superstition which it might not justify in the eyes of men accustomed to see in that superstition the sanction of their morality4 ,for the 8practical0 proofs of freedom1 immortality1 and ,providence--of which all evidence in reason or experience had previously been denied--exceed in perfunctory sophistry anything that can be imagined4 ,yet this lamentable epilogue was in truth the guiding thought of the whole investigation4 ,nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that1 once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws1 we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of our nature4 ,strange prepossession1 that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things1 the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so6 ,conceptions rooted in the very elements of our being1 in our senses1 intellect1 and imagination1 which had shaped themselves through many generations under a constant fire of observation and disillusion1 these were to be called subjective1 not only in the sense in which all knowledge must obviously be so1 since it is knowledge that someone possesses and has gained1 but subjective in a disparaging sense1 and in contrast to some better form of knowledge4 ,but what better form of knowledge is this8 ,if it be a knowledge of things as they really are and not as they appear1 we must remember that reality means what the intellect infers from the data of sense2 and yet the principles of such inference1 by which the distinction between appearance and reality is first instituted1 are precisely the principles now to be discarded as subjective and of merely empirical validity4 8,merely empirical0 is a vicious phrase3 what is other than empirical is less than empirical1 and what is not relative to eventual experience is something given only in present fancy4 ,the gods of genuine religion1 for instance1 are terms in a continual experience3 the pure in heart may see ,god4 ,if the better and less subjective principle be said to be the moral law1 we must remember that the moral law which has practical importance and true dignity deals with facts and forces of the natural world1 that it expresses interests and aspirations in which man's fate in time and space1 with his pains1 pleasures1 and all other empirical feelings1 is concerned4 ,this was not the moral law to which ,kant appealed1 for this is a part of the warp and woof of nature4 ,his moral law was a personal superstition1 irrelevant to the impulse and need of the world4 ,his notions of the supernatural were those of his sect and generation1 and did not pass to his more influential disciples3 what was transmitted was simply the contempt for sense and understanding and the practice1 authorised by his modest example1 of building air-castles in the great clearing which the ,critique was supposed to have made4 ,it is noticeable in the series of philosophers from ,hobbes to ,kant that as the metaphysical residuum diminished the critical and psychological machinery increased in volume and value4 ,in ,hobbes and ,locke1 with the beginnings of empirical psychology1 there is mixed an abstract materialism2 in ,berkeley1 with an extension of analytic criticism1 a popular and childlike theology1 entirely without rational development2 in ,hume1 with a completed survey of human habits of ideation1 a withdrawal into practical conventions2 and in ,kant1 with the conception of the creative understanding firmly grasped and elaborately worked out1 a flight from the natural world altogether4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,critique a word on mental architecture4 ,the ,critique1 in spite of some artificialities and pedantries in arrangement1 presented a conception never before attained of the rich architecture of reason4 ,it revealed the intricate organisation1 comparable to that of the body1 possessed by that fine web of intentions and counter-intentions whose pulsations are our thoughts4 ,the dynamic logic of intelligence was laid bare1 and the hierarchy of ideas1 if not always correctly traced1 was at least manifested in its principle4 ,it was as great an enlargement of ,hume's work as ,hume's had been of ,locke's or ,locke's of ,hobbes's4 ,and the very fact that the metaphysical residuum practically disappeared--for the weak reconstruction in the second ,critique may be dismissed as irrelevant--renders the work essentially valid1 essentially a description of something real4 ,it is therefore a great source of instruction and a good compendium or store-house for the problems of mind4 ,but the work has been much overestimated4 ,it is the product of a confused though laborious mind4 ,it contains contradictions not merely incidental1 such as any great novel work must retain 7since no man can at once remodel his whole vocabulary and opinions7 but contradictions absolutely fundamental and inexcusable1 like that between the transcendental function of intellect and its limited authority1 or that between the efficacy of things-in-themselves and their unknowability4 ,kant's assumptions and his conclusions1 his superstitions and his wisdom1 alternate without neutralising each other4 ,sidenote3 ,incoherences4 ,that experience is a product of two factors is an assumption made by ,kant4 ,it rests on a psychological analogy1 namely on the fact that organ and stimulus are both necessary to sensation4 ,that experience is the substance or matter of nature1 which is a construction in thought1 is ,kant's conclusion1 based on intrinsic logical analysis4 ,here experience is evidently viewed as something uncaused and without conditions1 being itself the source and condition of all thinkable objects4 ,the relation between the transcendental function of experience and its empirical causes ,kant never understood4 ,the transcendentalism which--if we have it at all--must be fundamental1 he made derivative2 and the realism1 which must then be derivative1 he made absolute4 ,therefore his metaphysics remained fabulous and his idealism sceptical or malicious4 ,ask what can be meant by 8conditions of experience0 and ,kant's bewildering puzzle solves itself at the word4 ,condition1 like cause1 is a term that covers a confusion between dialectical and natural connections4 ,the conditions of experience1 in the dialectical sense1 are the characteristics a thing must have to deserve the name of experience2 in other words1 its conditions are its nominal essence4 ,if experience be used in a loose sense to mean any given fact or consciousness in general1 the condition of experience is merely immediacy4 ,if it be used1 as it often is in empirical writers1 for the shock of sense1 its conditions are two3 a sensitive organ and an object capable of stimulating it4 ,if finally experience be given its highest and most pregnant import and mean a fund of knowledge gathered by living1 the condition of experience is intelligence4 ,taking the word in this last sense1 ,kant showed in a confused but essentially conclusive fashion that only by the application of categories to immediate data could knowledge of an ordered universe arise2 or1 in other language1 that knowledge is a vista1 that it has a perspective1 since it is the presence to a given thought of a diffused and articulated landscape4 ,the categories are the principles of interpretation by which the flat datum acquires this perspective in thought and becomes representative of a whole system of successive or collateral existences4 ,the circumstance that experience1 in the second sense1 is a term reserved for what has certain natural conditions1 namely1 for the spark flying from the contact of stimulus and organ1 led ,kant to shift his point of view1 and to talk half the time about conditions in the sense of natural causes or needful antecedents4 ,intelligence is not an antecedent of thought and knowledge but their character and logical energy4 ,synthesis is not a natural but only a dialectical condition of pregnant experience2 it does not introduce such experience but constitutes it4 ,nevertheless1 the whole skeleton and dialectical mould of experience came to figure1 in ,kant's mythology1 as machinery behind the scenes1 as a system of non-natural efficient forces1 as a partner in a marriage the issue of which was human thought4 ,the idea could thus suggest itself--favoured also by remembering inopportunely the actual psychological situation--that all experience1 in every sense of the word1 had supernatural antecedents1 and that the dialectical conditions of experience1 in the highest sense1 were efficient conditions of experience in the lowest4 ,sidenote3 ,nature the true system of conditions4 ,it is hardly necessary to observe that absolute experience can have no natural conditions4 ,existence in the abstract can have no cause2 for every real condition would have to be a factor in absolute experience1 and every cause would be something existent4 ,of course there is a modest and non-exhaustive experience--that is1 any particular sensation1 thought1 or life--which it would be preposterous to deny was subject to natural conditions4 ,saint ,lawrence's experience of being roasted1 for instance1 had conditions2 some of them were the fire1 the decree of the court1 and his own stalwart ,christianity4 ,but these conditions are other parts or objects of conceivable experience which1 as we have learned1 fall into a system with the part we say they condition4 ,in our groping and inferential thought one part may become a ground for expecting or supposing the other4 ,nature is then the sum total of its own conditions2 the whole object1 the parts observed plus the parts interpolated1 is the self-existent fact4 ,the mind1 in its empirical flux1 is a part of this complex2 to say it is its own condition or that of the other objects is a grotesque falsehood4 ,a babe's casual sensation of light is a condition neither of his own existence nor of his mother's4 ,the true conditions are those other parts of the world without which1 as we find by experience1 sensations of light do not appear4 ,had ,kant been trained in a better school of philosophy he might have felt that the phrase 8subjective conditions0 is a contradiction in terms4 ,when we find ourselves compelled to go behind the actual and imagine something antecedent or latent to pave the way for it1 we are ipso facto conceiving the potential1 that is1 the 8objective0 world4 ,all antecedents1 by transcendental necessity1 are therefore objective and all conditions natural4 ,an imagined potentiality that holds together the episodes which are actual in consciousness is the very definition of an object or thing4 ,nature is the sum total of things potentially observable1 some observed actually1 others interpolated hypothetically2 and common-sense is right as against ,kant's subjectivism in regarding nature as the condition of mind and not mind as the condition of nature4 ,this is not to say that experience and feeling are not the only given existence1 from which the material part of nature1 something essentially dynamic and potential1 must be intelligently inferred4 ,but are not 8conditions0 inferred8 ,are they not1 in their deepest essence1 potentialities and powers8 ,kant's fabled conditions also are inferred2 but they are inferred illegitimately since the 8subjective0 ones are dialectical characters turned into antecedents1 while the thing-in-itself is a natural object without a natural function4 ,experience alone being given1 it is the ground from which its conditions are inferred3 its conditions1 therefore1 are empirical4 ,the secondary position of nature goes with the secondary position of all causes1 objects1 conditions1 and ideals4 ,to have made the conditions of experience metaphysical1 and prior in the order of knowledge to experience itself1 was simply a piece of surviving ,platonism4 ,the form was hypostasised into an agent1 and mythical machinery was imagined to impress that form on whatever happened to have it4 ,all this was opposed to ,kant's own discovery and to his critical doctrine which showed that the world 7which is the complex of those conditions which experience assigns to itself as it develops and progresses in knowledge7 is not before experience in the order of knowledge1 but after it4 ,his fundamental oversight and contradiction lay in not seeing that the concept of a set of conditions was the precise and exact concept of nature1 which he consequently reduplicated1 having one nature before experience and another after4 ,the first thus became mythical and the second illusory3 for the first1 said to condition experience1 was a set of verbal ghosts1 while the second1 which alone could be observed or discovered scientifically1 was declared fictitious4 ,the truth is that the single nature or set of conditions for experience which the intellect constructs is the object of our thoughts and perceptions ideally completed4 ,this is neither mythical nor illusory4 ,it is1 strictly speaking1 in its system and in many of its parts1 hypothetical2 but the hypothesis is absolutely safe4 ,at whatever point we test it1 we find the experience we expect1 and the inferences thence made by the intellect are verified in sense at every moment of existence4 ,sidenote3 ,artificial pathos in subjectivism4 ,the ambiguity in ,kant's doctrine makes him a confusing representative of that criticism of perception which malicious psychology has to offer4 ,when the mind has made its great discovery2 when it has recognised independent objects1 and thus taken a first step in its rational life1 we need to know unequivocally whether this step is a false or a true one4 ,if it be false1 reason is itself misleading1 since a hypothesis indispensable in the intellectual mastery of experience is a false hypothesis and the detail of experience has no substructure4 ,now ,kant's answer was that the discovery of objects was a true and valid discovery in the field of experience2 there were1 scientifically speaking1 causes for perception which could be inferred from perception by thought4 ,but this inference was not true absolutely or metaphysically because there was a real world beyond possible experience1 and there were oracles1 not intellectual1 by which knowledge of that unrealisable world might be obtained4 ,this mysticism undid the intellectualism which characterised ,kant's system in its scientific and empirical application2 so that the justification for the use of such categories as that of cause and substance 7categories by which the idea of reality is constituted7 was invalidated by the counter-assertion that empirical reality was not true reality but1 being an object reached by inferential thought1 was merely an idea4 ,nor was the true reality appearance itself in its crude immediacy1 as sceptics would think2 it was a realm of objects present to a supposed intuitive thought1 that is1 to a non-inferential inference or non-discursive discourse4 ,so that while ,kant insisted on the point1 which hardly needed pressing1 that it is mind that discovers empirical reality by making inferences from the data of sense1 he admitted at the same time that such use of understanding is legitimate and even necessary1 and that the idea of nature so framed his empirical truth4 ,there remained1 however1 a sense that this empirical truth was somehow insufficient and illusory4 ,understanding was a superficial faculty1 and we might by other and oracular methods arrive at a reality that was not empirical4 ,why any reality--such as ,god1 for instance--should not be just as empirical as the other side of the moon1 if experience suggested it and reason discovered it1 or why1 if not suggested by experience and discovered by reason1 anything should be called a reality at all or should hold for a moment a man's waking attention--that is what ,kant never tells us and never himself knew4 ,clearer upon this question of perception is the position of ,berkeley2 we may therefore take him as a fair representative of those critics who seek to invalidate the discovery of material objects4 ,sidenote3 ,berkeley's algebra of perception4 ,our ideas1 said ,berkeley1 were in our minds2 the material world was patched together out of our ideas2 it therefore existed only in our minds4 ,to the suggestion that the idea of the external world is of course in our minds1 but that our minds have constructed it by treating sensations as effects of a permanent substance distributed in a permanent space1 he would reply that this means nothing1 because 8substance10 8permanence10 and 8space0 are non-existent ideas1 i4e41 they are not images in sense4 ,they might1 however1 be 8notions0 like that of 8spirit10 which ,berkeley ingenuously admitted into his system1 to be1 mysteriously enough1 that which has ideas4 ,or they might be 7what would do just as well for our purpose7 that which he elsewhere called them1 algebraic signs used to facilitate the operations of thought4 ,this is1 indeed1 what they are1 if we take the word algebraic in a loose enough sense4 ,they are like algebraic signs in being1 in respect of their object or signification1 not concrete images but terms in a mental process1 elements in a method of inference4 ,why1 then1 denounce them8 ,they could be used with all confidence to lead us back to the concrete values for which they stood and to the relations which they enabled us to state and discover4 ,experience would thus be furnished with an intelligible structure and articulation1 and a psychological analysis would be made of knowledge into its sensuous material and its ideal objects4 ,what1 then1 was ,berkeley's objection to these algebraic methods of inference and to the notions of space1 matter1 independent existence1 and efficient causality which these methods involve8 ,sidenote3 ,horror of physics4 ,what he abhorred was the belief that such methods of interpreting experience were ultimate and truly valid1 and that by thinking after the fashion of 8mathematical atheists0 we could understand experience as well as it can be understood4 ,if the flux of ideas had no other key to it than that system of associations and algebraic substitutions which is called the natural world we should indeed know just as well what to expect in practice and should receive the same education in perception and reflection2 but what difference would there be between such an idealist and the most pestilential materialist1 save his even greater wariness and scepticism8 ,berkeley at this time--long before days of 8,siris0 and tar-water--was too ignorant and hasty to understand how inane all spiritual or poetic ideals would be did they not express man's tragic dependence on nature and his congruous development in her bosom4 ,he lived in an age when the study and dominion of external things no longer served directly spiritual uses4 ,the middle-men had appeared1 those spirits in whom the pursuit of the true and the practical never leads to possession of the good1 but loses itself1 like a river in sand1 amid irrational habits and passions4 ,he was accordingly repelled by whatever philosophy was in him1 no less than by his religious prejudices1 from submergence in external interests1 and he could see no better way of vindicating the supremacy of moral goods than to deny the reality of matter1 the finality of science1 and the constructive powers of reason altogether4 ,with honest ,english empiricism he saw that science had nothing absolute or sacrosanct about it1 and rightly placed the value of theory in its humane uses2 but the complementary truth escaped him altogether that only the free and contemplative expression of reason1 of which science is a chief part1 can render anything else humane1 useful1 or practical4 ,he was accordingly a party man in philosophy1 where partisanship is treason1 and opposed the work of reason in the theoretical field1 hoping thus to advance it in the moral4 ,sidenote3 ,puerility in morals4 ,of the moral field he had1 it need hardly be added1 a quite childish and perfunctory conception4 ,there the prayer-book and the catechism could solve every problem4 ,he lacked the feeling1 possessed by all large and mature minds1 that there would be no intelligibility or value in things divine were they not interpretations and sublimations of things natural4 ,to master the real world was an ancient and not too promising ambition3 it suited his youthful radicalism better to exorcise or to cajole it4 ,he sought to refresh the world with a water-spout of idealism1 as if to change the names of things could change their values4 ,away with all arid investigation1 away with the cold algebra of sense and reason1 and let us have instead a direct conversation with heaven1 an unclouded vision of the purposes and goodness of ,god2 as if there were any other way of understanding the sources of human happiness than to study the ways of nature and man4 ,converse with ,god has been the life of many a wiser and sadder philosopher than ,berkeley2 but they1 like ,plato1 for instance1 or ,spinoza1 have made experience the subject as well as the language of that intercourse1 and have thus given the divine revelation some degree of pertinence and articulation4 ,berkeley in his positive doctrine was satisfied with the vaguest generalities2 he made no effort to find out how the consciousness that ,god is the direct author of our incidental perceptions is to help us to deal with them2 what other insights and principles are to be substituted for those that disclose the economy of nature2 how the moral difficulties incident to an absolute providentialism are to be met1 or how the existence and influence of fellow-minds is to be defended4 ,so that to a piety inspired by conventional theology and a psychology that refused to pass1 except grudgingly and unintelligently1 beyond the sensuous stratum1 ,berkeley had nothing to add by way of philosophy4 ,an insignificant repetition of the truism that ideas are all 8in the mind0 constituted his total wisdom4 ,to be was to be perceived4 ,that was the great maxim by virtue of which we were asked1 if not to refrain from conceiving nature at all1 which was perhaps impossible at so late a stage in human development1 at least to refrain from regarding our necessary thoughts on nature as true or rational4 ,intelligence was but a false method of imagination by which ,god trained us in action and thought2 for it was apparently impossible to endow us with a true method that would serve that end4 ,and what shall we think of the critical acumen or practical wisdom of a philosopher who dreamed of some other criterion of truth than necessary implication in thought and action8 ,sidenote3 ,truism and sophism4 ,in the melodramatic fashion so common in what is called philosophy we may delight ourselves with such flashes of lightning as this3 esse est percipi4 ,the truth of this paradox lies in the fact that through perception alone can we get at being--a modest and familiar notion which makes1 as ,plato's 8,thetetus0 shows1 not a bad point of departure for a serious theory of knowledge4 ,the sophistical intent of it1 however1 is to deny our right to make a distinction which in fact we do make and which the speaker himself is making as he utters the phrase2 for he would not be so proud of himself if he thought he was thundering a tautology4 ,if a thing were never perceived1 or inferred from perception1 we should indeed never know that it existed2 but once perceived or inferred it may be more conducive to comprehension and practical competence to regard it as existing independently of our perception2 and our ability to make this supposition is registered in the difference between the two words to be and to be perceived--words which are by no means synonymous but designate two very different relations of things in thought4 ,such idealism at one fell swoop1 through a collapse of assertive intellect and a withdrawal of reason into self-consciousness1 has the puzzling character of any clever pun1 that suspends the fancy between two incompatible but irresistible meanings4 ,the art of such sophistry is to choose for an axiom some ambiguous phrase which taken in one sense is a truism and taken in another is an absurdity2 and then1 by showing the truth of that truism1 to give out that the absurdity has also been proved4 ,it is a truism to say that ,i am the only seat or locus of my ideas1 and that whatever ,i know is known by me2 it is an absurdity to say that ,i am the only object of my thought and perception4 ,sidenote3 ,reality is the practical made intelligible4 ,to confuse the instrument with its function and the operation with its meaning has been a persistent foible in modern philosophy4 ,it could thus come about that the function of intelligence should be altogether misconceived and in consequence denied1 when it was discovered that figments of reason could never become elements of sense but must always remain1 as of course they should1 ideal and regulative objects1 and therefore objects to which a practical and energetic intellect will tend to give the name of realities4 ,matter is a reality to the practical intellect because it is a necessary and ideal term in the mastery of experience2 while negligible sensations1 like dreams1 are called illusions by the same authority because1 though actual enough while they last1 they have no sustained function and no right to practical dominion4 ,let us imagine ,berkeley addressing himself to that infant or animal consciousness which first used the category of substance and passed from its perceptions to the notion of an independent thing4 8,beware1 my child10 he would have said1 8you are taking a dangerous step1 one which may hereafter produce a multitude of mathematical atheists1 not to speak of cloisterfuls of scholastic triflers4 ,your ideas can exist only in your mind2 if you suffer yourself to imagine them materialised in mid-air and subsisting when you do not perceive them1 you will commit a great impiety4 ,if you unthinkingly believe that when you shut your eyes the world continues to exist until you open them again1 you will inevitably be hurried into an infinity of metaphysical quibbles about the discrete and the continuous1 and you will be so bewildered and deafened by perpetual controversies that the clear light of the gospel will be extinguished in your soul40 8,but10 that tender ,peripatetic might answer1 8,i cannot forget the things about me when ,i shut my eyes3 ,i know and almost feel their persistent presence1 and ,i always find them again1 upon trial1 just as they were before1 or just in that condition to which the operation of natural causes would have brought them in my absence4 ,if ,i believe they remain and suffer steady and imperceptible transformation1 ,i know what to expect1 and the event does not deceive me2 but if ,i had to resolve upon action before knowing whether the conditions for action were to exist or no1 ,i should never understand what sort of a world ,i lived in40 8,ah1 my child10 the good ,bishop would reply1 8you misunderstand me4 ,you may indeed1 nay1 you must1 live and think as if everything remained independently real4 ,that is part of your education for heaven1 which ,god in his goodness provides for you in this life4 ,he will send into your soul at every moment the impressions needed to verify your necessary hypotheses and support your humble and prudent expectations4 ,only you must not attribute that constancy to the things themselves which is due to steadfastness in the designs of ,providence4 ,think and act as if a material world existed1 but do not for a moment believe it to exist40 ,sidenote3 ,vain 8realities0 and trustworthy 8fictions40 ,with this advice1 coming reassuringly from the combined forces of scepticism and religion1 we may leave the embryonic mind to its own devices1 satisfied that even according to the most malicious psychologists its first step toward the comprehension of experience is one it may congratulate itself on having taken and which1 for the present at least1 it is not called upon to retrace4 ,the ,life of ,reason is not concerned with speculation about unthinkable and gratuitous 8realities02 it seeks merely to attain those conceptions which are necessary and appropriate to man in his acting and thinking4 ,the first among these1 underlying all arts and philosophies alike1 is the indispensable conception of permanent external objects1 forming in their congeries1 shifts1 and secret animation the system and life of nature4 ,,note--,there is a larger question raised by ,berkeley's arguments which ,i have not attempted to discuss here1 namely1 whether knowledge is possible at all1 and whether any mental representation can be supposed to inform us about anything4 ,berkeley of course assumed this power in that he continued to believe in ,god1 in other spirits1 in the continuity of experience1 and in its discoverable laws4 ,his objection to material objects1 therefore1 could not consistently be that they are objects of knowledge rather than absolute feelings1 exhausted by their momentary possession in consciousness4 ,it could only be that they are unthinkable and invalid objects1 in which the materials of sense are given a mode of existence inconsistent with their nature4 ,but if the only criticism to which material objects were obnoxious were a dialectical criticism1 such as that contained in ,kant's antinomies1 the royal road to idealism coveted by ,berkeley would be blocked2 to be an idea in the mind would not involve lack of cognitive and representative value in that idea4 ,the fact that material objects were represented or conceived would not of itself prove that they could not have a real existence4 ,it would be necessary1 to prove their unreality1 to study their nature and function and to compare them with such conceptions as those of ,providence and a spirit-world in order to determine their relative validity4 ,such a critical comparison would have augured ill for ,berkeley's prejudices2 what its result might have been we can see in ,kant's ,critique of ,pure ,reason4 ,in order to escape such evil omens and prevent the collapse of his mystical paradoxes1 ,berkeley keeps in reserve a much more insidious weapon1 the sceptical doubt as to the representative character of anything mental1 the possible illusiveness of all knowledge4 ,this doubt he invokes in all those turns of thought and phrase in which he suggests that if an idea is in the mind it cannot have its counterpart elsewhere1 and that a given cognition exhausts and contains its object4 ,there are1 then1 two separate maxims in his philosophy1 one held consistently1 viz41 that nothing can be known which is different in character or nature from the object present to the thinking mind2 the other1 held incidentally and inconsistently1 since it is destructive of all predication and knowledge1 viz41 that nothing can exist beyond the mind which is similar in nature or character to the 8ideas0 within it2 or1 to put the same thing in other words1 that nothing can be revealed by an idea which is different from that idea in point of existence4 ,the first maxim does not contradict the existence of external objects in space2 the second contradicts every conception that the human mind can ever form1 the most airy no less than the grossest4 ,no idealist can go so far as to deny that his memory represents his past experience by inward similarity and conscious intention1 or1 if he prefers this language1 that the moments or aspects of the divine mind represent one another and their general system4 ,else the idealist's philosophy itself would be an insignificant and momentary illusion4 ,,chapter ,v--,,nature ,,unified ,,and ,,mind ,,discerned ,sidenote3 ,man's feeble grasp of nature4 ,when the mind has learned to distinguish external objects and to attribute to them a constant size1 shape1 and potency1 in spite of the variety and intermittence ruling in direct experience1 there yet remains a great work to do before attaining a clear1 even if superficial1 view of the world4 ,an animal's customary habitat may have constant features and their relations in space may be learned by continuous exploration2 but probably many other landscapes are also within the range of memory and fancy that stand in no visible relation to the place in which we find ourselves at a given moment4 ,it is true that1 at this day1 we take it for granted that all real places1 as we call them1 lie in one space1 in which they hold definite geometric relations to one another2 and if we have glimpses of any region for which no room can be found in the single map of the universe which astronomy has drawn1 we unhesitatingly relegate that region to the land of dreams4 ,since the ,elysian ,fields and the ,coast of ,bohemia have no assignable latitude and longitude1 we call these places imaginary1 even if in some dream we remember to have visited them and dwelt there with no less sense of reality than in this single and geometrical world of commerce4 ,it belongs to sanity and common-sense1 as men now possess them1 to admit no countries unknown to geography and filling no part of the conventional space in three dimensions4 ,all our waking experience is understood to go on in some part of this space1 and no court of law would admit evidence relating to events in some other sphere4 ,this principle1 axiomatic as it has become1 is in no way primitive1 since primitive experience is sporadic and introduces us to detached scenes separated by lapses in our senses and attention4 ,these scenes do not hang together in any local contiguity4 ,to construct a chart of the world is a difficult feat of synthetic imagination1 not to be performed without speculative boldness and a heroic insensibility to the claims of fancy4 ,even now most people live without topographical ideas and have no clear conception of the spatial relations that keep together the world in which they move4 ,they feel their daily way about like animals1 following a habitual scent1 without dominating the range of their instinctive wanderings4 ,reality is rather a story to them than a system of objects and forces1 nor would they think themselves mad if at any time their experience should wander into a fourth dimension4 ,vague dramatic and moral laws1 when they find any casual application1 seem to such dreaming minds more notable truths1 deeper revelations of efficacious reality1 than the mechanical necessities of the case1 which they scarcely conceive of2 and in this primordial prejudice they are confirmed by superstitious affinities often surviving in their religion and philosophy4 ,in the midst of cities and affairs they are like landsmen at sea1 incapable of an intellectual conception of their position3 nor have they any complete confidence in their principles of navigation4 ,they know the logarithms by rote merely1 and if they reflect are reduced to a stupid wonder and only half believe they are in a known universe or will ever reach an earthly port4 ,it would not require superhuman eloquence in some prophetic passenger to persuade them to throw compass and quadrant overboard and steer enthusiastically for ,el ,dorado4 ,the theory of navigation is essentially as speculative as that of salvation1 only it has survived more experiences of the judgment and repeatedly brought those who trust in it to their promised land4 ,sidenote3 ,its unity ideal and discoverable only by steady thought4 ,the theory that all real objects and places lie together in one even and homogeneous space1 conceived as similar in its constitution to the parts of extension of which we have immediate intuition1 is a theory of the greatest practical importance and validity4 ,by its light we carry on all our affairs1 and the success of our action while we rely upon it is the best proof of its truth4 ,the imaginative parsimony and discipline which such a theory involves are balanced by the immense extension and certitude it gives to knowledge4 ,it is at once an act of allegiance to nature and a ,magna ,charta which mind imposes on the tyrannous world1 which in turn pledges itself before the assembled faculties of man not to exceed its constitutional privilege and to harbour no magic monsters in unattainable lairs from which they might issue to disturb human labours4 ,yet that spontaneous intelligence which first enabled men to make this genial discovery and take so fundamental a step toward taming experience should not be laid by after this first victory2 it is a weapon needed in many subsequent conflicts4 ,to conceive that all nature makes one system is only a beginning3 the articulation of natural life has still to be discovered in detail and1 what is more1 a similar articulation has to be given to the psychic world which now1 by the very act that constitutes ,nature and makes her consistent1 appears at her side or rather in her bosom4 ,that the unification of nature is eventual and theoretical is a point useful to remember3 else the relation of the natural world to poetry1 metaphysics1 and religion will never become intelligible4 ,lalande1 or whoever it was1 who searched the heavens with his telescope and could find no ,god1 would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope4 ,yet ,god existed in man's apprehension long before mathematics or even1 perhaps1 before the vault of heaven2 for the objectification of the whole mind1 with its passions and motives1 naturally precedes that abstraction by which the idea of a material world is drawn from the chaos of experience1 an abstraction which culminates in such atomic and astronomical theories as science is now familiar with4 ,the sense for life in things1 be they small or great1 is not derived from the abstract idea of their bodies but is an ancient concomitant to that idea1 inseparable from it until it became abstract4 ,truth and materiality1 mechanism and ideal interests1 are collateral projections from one rolling experience1 which shows up one aspect or the other as it develops various functions and dominates itself to various ends4 ,when one ore is abstracted and purified1 the residuum subsists in that primeval quarry in which it originally lay4 ,the failure to find ,god among the stars1 or even the attempt to find him there1 does not indicate that human experience affords no avenue to the idea of ,god--for history proves the contrary--but indicates rather the atrophy in this particular man of the imaginative faculty by which his race had attained to that idea4 ,such an atrophy might indeed become general1 and ,god would in that case disappear from human experience as music would disappear if universal deafness attacked the race4 ,such an event is made conceivable by the loss of allied imaginative habits1 which is observable in historic times4 ,yet possible variations in human faculty do not involve the illegitimacy of such faculties as actually subsist2 and the abstract world known to science1 unless it dries up the ancient fountains of ideation by its habitual presence in thought1 does not remove those parallel dramatisations or abstractions which experience may have suggested to men4 ,what enables men to perceive the unity of nature is the unification of their own wills4 ,a man half-asleep1 without fixed purposes1 without intellectual keenness or joy in recognition1 might graze about like an animal1 forgetting each satisfaction in the next and banishing from his frivolous mind the memory of every sorrow2 what had just failed to kill him would leave him as thoughtless and unconcerned as if it had never crossed his path4 ,such irrational elasticity and innocent improvidence would never put two and two together4 ,every morning there would be a new world with the same fool to live in it4 ,but let some sobering passion1 some serious interest1 lend perspective to the mind1 and a point of reference will immediately be given for protracted observation2 then the laws of nature will begin to dawn upon thought4 ,every experiment will become a lesson1 every event will be remembered as favourable or unfavourable to the master-passion4 ,at first1 indeed1 this keen observation will probably be animistic and the laws discovered will be chiefly habits1 human or divine1 special favours or envious punishments and warnings4 ,but the same constancy of aim which discovers the dramatic conflicts composing society1 and tries to read nature in terms of passion1 will1 if it be long sustained1 discover behind this glorious chaos a deeper mechanical order4 ,men's thoughts1 like the weather1 are not so arbitrary as they seem and the true master in observation1 the man guided by a steadfast and superior purpose1 will see them revolving about their centres in obedience to quite calculable instincts1 and the principle of all their flutterings will not be hidden from his eyes4 ,belief in indeterminism is a sign of indetermination4 ,no commanding or steady intellect flirts with so miserable a possibility1 which in so far as it actually prevailed would make virtue impotent and experience1 in its pregnant sense1 impossible4 ,sidenote3 ,mind the erratic residue of existence4 ,we have said that those objects which cannot be incorporated into the one space which the understanding envisages are relegated to another sphere called imagination4 ,we reach here a most important corollary4 ,as material objects1 making a single system which fills space and evolves in time1 are conceived by abstraction from the flux of sensuous experience1 so1 pari passu1 the rest of experience1 with all its other outgrowths and concretions1 falls out with the physical world and forms the sphere of mind1 the sphere of memory1 fancy1 and the passions4 ,we have in this discrimination the genesis of mind1 not of course in the transcendental sense in which the word mind is extended to mean the sum total and mere fact of existence--for mind1 so taken1 can have no origin and indeed no specific meaning--but the genesis of mind as a determinate form of being1 a distinguishable part of the universe known to experience and discourse1 the mind that unravels itself in meditation1 inhabits animal bodies1 and is studied in psychology4 ,mind1 in this proper sense of the word1 is the residue of existence1 the leavings1 so to speak1 and parings of experience when the material world has been cut out of the whole cloth4 ,reflection underlines in the chaotic continuum of sense and longing those aspects that have practical significance2 it selects the efficacious ingredients in the world4 ,the trustworthy object which is thus retained in thought1 the complex of connected events1 is nature1 and though so intelligible an object is not soon nor vulgarly recognised1 because human reflection is perturbed and halting1 yet every forward step in scientific and practical knowledge is a step toward its clearer definition4 ,at first much parasitic matter clings to that dynamic skeleton4 ,nature is drawn like a sponge heavy and dripping from the waters of sentience4 ,it is soaked with inefficacious passions and overlaid with idle accretions4 ,nature1 in a word1 is at first conceived mythically1 dramatically1 and retains much of the unintelligible1 sporadic habit of animal experience itself4 ,but as attention awakes and discrimination1 practically inspired1 grows firm and stable1 irrelevant qualities are stripped off1 and the mechanical process1 the efficacious infallible order1 is clearly disclosed beneath4 ,meantime the incidental effects1 the 8secondary qualities10 are relegated to a personal inconsequential region2 they constitute the realm of appearance1 the realm of mind4 ,sidenote3 ,ghostly character of mind4 ,mind is therefore sometimes identified with the unreal4 ,we oppose1 in an antithesis natural to thought and language1 the imaginary to the true1 fancy to fact1 idea to thing4 ,but this thing1 fact1 or external reality is1 as we have seen1 a completion and hypostasis of certain portions of experience1 packed into such shapes as prove cogent in thought and practice4 ,the stuff of external reality1 the matter out of which its idea is made1 is therefore continuous with the stuff and matter of our own minds4 ,their common substance is the immediate flux4 ,this living worm has propagated by fission1 and the two halves into which it has divided its life are mind and nature4 ,mind has kept and clarified the crude appearance1 the dream1 the purpose that seethed in the mass2 nature has appropriated the order1 the constant conditions1 the causal substructure1 disclosed in reflection1 by which the immediate flux is explained and controlled4 ,the chemistry of thought has precipitated these contrasted terms1 each maintaining a recognisable identity and having the function of a point of reference for memory and will4 ,some of these terms or objects of thought we call things and marshal in all their ideal stability--for there is constancy in their motions and transformations--to make the intelligible external world of practice and science4 ,whatever stuff has not been absorbed in this construction1 whatever facts of sensation1 ideation1 or will1 do not coalesce with the newest conception of reality1 we then call the mind4 ,raw experience1 then1 lies at the basis of the idea of nature and approves its reality2 while an equal reality belongs to the residue of experience1 not taken up1 as yet1 into that idea4 ,but this residual sensuous reality often seems comparatively unreal because what it presents is entirely without practical force apart from its mechanical associates4 ,this inconsequential character of what remains over follows of itself from the concretion of whatever is constant and efficacious into the external world4 ,if this fact is ever called in question1 it is only because the external world is vaguely conceived1 and loose wills and ideas are thought to govern it by magic4 ,yet in many ways falling short of absolute precision people recognise that thought is not dynamic or1 as they call it1 not real4 ,the idea of the physical world is the first flower or thick cream of practical thinking4 ,being skimmed off first and proving so nutritious1 it leaves the liquid below somewhat thin and unsavoury4 ,especially does this result appear when science is still unpruned and mythical1 so that what passes into the idea of material nature is much more than the truly causal network of forces1 and includes many spiritual and moral functions4 ,the material world1 as conceived in the first instance1 had not that clear abstractness1 nor the spiritual world that wealth and interest1 which they have acquired for modern minds4 ,the complex reactions of man's soul had been objectified together with those visual and tactile sensations which1 reduced to a mathematical baldness1 now furnish terms to natural science4 ,mind then dwelt in the world1 not only in the warmth and beauty with which it literally clothed material objects1 as it still does in poetic perception1 but in a literal animistic way2 for human passion and reflection were attributed to every object and made a fairy-land of the world4 ,poetry and religion discerned life in those very places in which sense and understanding perceived body2 and when so much of the burden of experience took wing into space1 and the soul herself floated almost visibly among the forms of nature1 it is no marvel that the poor remnant1 a mass of merely personal troubles1 an uninteresting distortion of things in individual minds1 should have seemed a sad and unsubstantial accident4 ,the inner world was all the more ghostly because the outer world was so much alive4 ,sidenote3 ,hypostasis and criticism both need control4 ,this movement of thought1 which clothed external objects in all the wealth of undeciphered dreams1 has long lost its momentum and yielded to a contrary tendency4 ,just as the hypostasis of some terms in experience is sanctioned by reason1 when the objects so fixed and externalised can serve as causes and explanations for the order of events1 so the criticism which tends to retract that hypostasis is sanctioned by reason when the hypostasis has exceeded its function and the external object conceived is loaded with useless ornament4 ,the transcendental and functional secret of such hypostases1 however1 is seldom appreciated by the headlong mind2 so that the ebb no less than the flow of objectification goes on blindly and impulsively1 and is carried to absurd extremes4 ,an age of mythology yields to an age of subjectivity2 reason being equally neglected and exceeded in both4 ,the reaction against imagination has left the external world1 as represented in many minds1 stark and bare4 ,all the interesting and vital qualities which matter had once been endowed with have been attributed instead to an irresponsible sensibility in man4 ,and as habits of ideation change slowly and yield only piecemeal to criticism or to fresh intuitions1 such a revolution has not been carried out consistently1 but instead of a thorough renaming of things and a new organisation of thought it has produced chiefly distress and confusion4 ,some phases of this confusion may perhaps repay a moment's attention2 they may enable us1 when seen in their logical sequence1 to understand somewhat better the hypostasising intellect that is trying to assert itself and come to the light through all these gropings4 ,sidenote3 ,comparative constancy in objects and in ideas ,what helps in the first place to disclose a permanent object is a permanent sensation4 ,there is a vast and clear difference between a floating and a fixed feeling2 the latter1 in normal circumstances1 is present only when continuous stimulation renews it at every moment4 ,attention may wander1 but the objects in the environment do not cease to radiate their influences on the body1 which is thereby not allowed to lose the modification which those influences provoke4 ,the consequent perception is therefore always at hand and in its repetitions substantially identical4 ,perceptions not renewed in this way by continuous stimulation come and go with cerebral currents2 they are rare visitors1 instead of being1 like external objects1 members of the household4 ,intelligence is most at home in the ultimate1 which is the object of intent4 ,those realities which it can trust and continually recover are its familiar and beloved companions4 ,the mists that may originally have divided it from them1 and which psychologists call the mind1 are gladly forgotten so soon as intelligence avails to pierce them1 and as friendly communication can be established with the real world4 ,moreover1 perceptions not sustained by a constant external stimulus are apt to be greatly changed when they reappear1 and to be changed unaccountably1 whereas external things show some method and proportion in their variations4 ,even when not much changed in themselves1 mere ideas fall into a new setting1 whereas things1 unless something else has intervened to move them1 reappear in their old places4 ,finally things are acted upon by other men1 but thoughts are hidden from them by divine miracle4 ,existence reveals reality when the flux discloses something permanent that dominates it4 ,what is thus dominated1 though it is the primary existence itself1 is thereby degraded to appearance4 ,perceptions caused by external objects are1 as we have just seen1 long sustained in comparison with thoughts and fancies2 but the objects are themselves in flux and a man's relation to them may be even more variable2 so that very often a memory or a sentiment will recur1 almost unchanged in character1 long after the perception that first aroused it has become impossible4 ,the brain1 though mobile1 is subject to habit2 its formations1 while they lapse instantly1 return again and again4 ,these ideal objects may accordingly be in a way more real and enduring than things external4 ,hence no primitive mind puts all reality1 or what is most real in reality1 in an abstract material universe4 ,it finds1 rather1 ideal points of reference by which material mutation itself seems to be controlled4 ,an ideal world is recognised from the beginning and placed1 not in the immediate foreground1 nearer than material things1 but much farther off4 ,it has greater substantiality and independence than material objects are credited with4 ,it is divine4 ,when agriculture1 commerce1 or manual crafts have given men some knowledge of nature1 the world thus recognised and dominated is far from seeming ultimate4 ,it is thought to lie between two others1 both now often called mental1 but in their original quality altogether disparate3 the world of spiritual forces and that of sensuous appearance4 ,the notions of permanence and independence by which material objects are conceived apply also1 of course1 to everything spiritual2 and while the dominion exercised by spirits may be somewhat precarious1 they are as remote as possible from immediacy and sensation4 ,they come and go2 they govern nature or1 if they neglect to do so1 it is from aversion or high indifference2 they visit man with obsessions and diseases2 they hasten to extricate him from difficulties2 and they dwell in him1 constituting his powers of conscience and invention4 ,sense1 on the other hand1 is a mere effect1 either of body or spirit or of both in conjunction4 ,it gives a vitiated personal view of these realities4 ,its pleasures are dangerous and unintelligent1 and it perishes as it goes4 ,sidenote3 ,spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature4 ,such are1 for primitive apperception1 the three great realms of being3 nature1 sense1 and spirit4 ,their frontiers1 however1 always remain uncertain4 ,sense1 because it is insignificant when made an object1 is long neglected by reflection4 ,no attempt is made to describe its processes or ally them systematically to natural changes4 ,its illusions1 when noticed1 are regarded as scandals calculated to foster scepticism4 ,the spiritual world is1 on the other hand1 a constant theme for poetry and speculation4 ,in the absence of ideal science1 it can be conceived only in myths1 which are naturally as shifting and self-contradictory as they are persistent4 ,they acquire no fixed character until1 in dogmatic religion1 they are defined with reference to natural events1 foretold or reported4 ,nature is what first acquires a form and then imparts form to the other spheres4 ,sense admits definition and distribution only as an effect of nature and spirit only as its principle4 ,sidenote3 ,vague notions of nature involve vague notions of spirit4 ,the form nature acquires is1 however1 itself vague and uncertain and can ill serve1 for long ages1 to define the other realms which depend on it for definition4 ,hence it has been common1 for instance1 to treat the spiritual as a remote or finer form of the natural4 ,beyond the moon everything seemed permanent2 it was therefore called divine and declared to preside over the rest4 ,the breath that escaped from the lips at death1 since it took away with it the spiritual control and miraculous life that had quickened the flesh1 was itself the spirit4 ,on the other hand1 natural processes have been persistently attributed to spiritual causes1 for it was not matter that moved itself but intent that moved it4 ,thus spirit was barbarously taken for a natural substance and a natural force4 ,it was identified with everything in which it was manifested1 so long as no natural causes could be assigned for that operation4 ,sidenote3 ,sense and spirit the life of nature1 which science redistributes but does not deny4 ,if the unification of nature were complete sense would evidently fall within it2 it is to subtend and sustain the sensible flux that intelligence acknowledges first stray material objects and then their general system4 ,the elements of experience not taken up into the constitution of objects remain attached to them as their life4 ,in the end the dynamic skeleton1 without losing its articulation1 would be clothed again with its flesh4 ,suppose my notions of astronomy allowed me to believe that the sun1 sinking into the sea1 was extinguished every evening1 and that what appeared the next morning was his younger brother1 hatched in a sun-producing nest to be found in the ,eastern regions4 ,my theory would have robbed yesterday's sun of its life and brightness2 it would have asserted that during the night no sun existed anywhere2 but it would have added the sun's qualities afresh to a matter that did not previously possess them1 namely1 to the imagined egg that would produce a sun for to-morrow4 ,suppose we substitute for that astronomy the one that now prevails3 we have deprived the single sun--which now exists and spreads its influences without interruption--of its humanity and even of its metaphysical unity4 ,it has become a congeries of chemical substances4 ,the facts revealed to perception have partly changed their locus and been differently deployed throughout nature4 ,some have become attached to operations in the human brain4 ,nature has not thereby lost any quality she had ever manifested2 these have merely been redistributed so as to secure a more systematic connection between them all4 ,they are the materials of the system1 which has been conceived by making existences continuous1 whenever this extension of their being was needful to render their recurrences intelligible4 ,sense1 which was formerly regarded as a sad distortion of its objects1 now becomes an original and congruent part of nature1 from which1 as from any other part1 the rest of nature might be scientifically inferred4 ,spirit is not less closely attached to nature1 although in a different manner4 ,taken existentially it is a part of sense2 taken ideally it is the form or value which nature acquires when viewed from the vantage-ground of any interest4 ,individual objects are recognisable for a time not because the flux is materially arrested but because it somewhere circulates in a fashion which awakens an interest and brings different parts of the surrounding process into definable and prolonged relations with that interest4 ,particular objects may perish yet others may continue1 like the series of suns imagined by ,heraclitus1 to perform the same office4 ,the function will outlast the particular organ4 ,that interest in reference to which the function is defined will essentially determine a perfect world of responsive extensions and conditions4 ,these ideals will be a spiritual reality2 and they will be expressed in nature in so far as nature supports that regulative interest4 ,many a perfect and eternal realm1 merely potential in existence but definite in constitution1 will thus subtend nature and be what a rational philosophy might call the ideal4 ,what is called spirit would be the ideal in so far as it obtained expression in nature2 and the power attributed to spirit would be the part of nature's fertility by which such expression was secured4 ,,chapter ,,vi--,,discovery ,,of ,,fellow-,,minds ,sidenote3 ,another background for current experience may be found in alien minds4 ,when a ghostly sphere1 containing memory and all ideas1 has been distinguished from the material world1 it tends to grow at the expense of the latter1 until nature is finally reduced to a mathematical skeleton4 ,this skeleton itself1 but for the need of a bridge to connect calculably episode with episode in experience1 might be transferred to mind and identified with the scientific thought in which it is represented4 ,but a scientific theory inhabiting a few scattered moments of life cannot connect those episodes among which it is itself the last and the least substantial2 nor would such a notion have occurred even to the most reckless sceptic1 had the world not possessed another sort of reputed reality--the minds of others--which could serve1 even after the supposed extinction of the physical world1 to constitute an independent order and to absorb the potentialities of being when immediate consciousness nodded4 ,but other men's minds1 being themselves precarious and ineffectual1 would never have seemed a possible substitute for nature1 to be in her stead the background and intelligible object of experience4 ,something constant1 omnipresent1 infinitely fertile is needed to support and connect the given chaos4 ,just these properties1 however1 are actually attributed to one of the minds supposed to confront the thinker1 namely1 the mind of ,god4 ,the divine mind has therefore always constituted in philosophy either the alternative to nature or her other name3 it is par excellence the seat of all potentiality and1 as ,spinoza said1 the refuge of all ignorance4 ,speculative problems would be greatly clarified1 and what is genuine in them would be more easily distinguished from what is artificial1 if we could gather together again the original sources for the belief in separate minds and compare these sources with those we have already assigned to the conception of nature4 ,but speculative problems are not alone concerned1 for in all social life we envisage fellow-creatures conceived to share the same thoughts and passions and to be similarly affected by events4 ,what is the basis of this conviction8 ,what are the forms it takes1 and in what sense is it a part or an expression of reason8 ,this question is difficult1 and in broaching it we cannot expect much aid from what philosophers have hitherto said on the subject4 ,for the most part1 indeed1 they have said nothing1 as by nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all4 ,the suggestions which have actually been made in the matter may be reduced to two3 first1 that we conceive other men's minds by projecting into their bodies those feelings which we immediately perceive to accompany similar operations in ourselves1 that is1 we infer alien minds by analogy2 and second1 that we are immediately aware of them and feel them to be friendly or hostile counterparts of our own thinking and effort1 that is1 we evoke them by dramatic imagination4 ,sidenote3 ,two usual accounts of this conception criticised3 ,sidenote3 analogy between bodies1 ,the first suggestion has the advantage that it escapes solipsism by a reasonable argument1 provided the existence of the material world has already been granted4 ,but if the material world is called back into the private mind1 it is evident that every soul supposed to inhabit it or to be expressed in it must follow it thither1 as inevitably as the characters and forces in an imagined story must remain with it in the inventor's imagination4 ,when1 on the contrary1 nature is left standing1 it is reasonable to suppose that animals having a similar origin and similar physical powers should have similar minds1 if any of them was to have a mind at all4 ,the theory1 however1 is not satisfactory on other grounds4 ,we do not in reality associate our own grimaces with the feelings that accompany them and subsequently1 on recognising similar grimaces in another1 proceed to attribute emotions to him like those we formerly experienced4 ,our own grimaces are not easily perceived1 and other men's actions often reveal passions which we have never had1 at least with anything like their suggested colouring and intensity4 ,this first view is strangely artificial and mistakes for the natural origin of the belief in question what may be perhaps its ultimate test4 ,sidenote3 and dramatic dialogue in the soul4 ,the second suggestion1 on the other in hand1 takes us into a mystic region4 ,that we evoke the felt souls of our fellows by dramatic imagination is doubtless true2 but this does not explain how we come to do so1 under what stimulus and in what circumstances4 ,nor does it avoid solipsism2 for the felt counterparts of my own will are echoes within me1 while if other minds actually exist they cannot have for their essence to play a game with me in my own fancy4 ,such society would be mythical1 and while the sense for society may well be mythical in its origin1 it must acquire some other character if it is to have practical and moral validity4 ,but practical and moral validity is above all what society seems to have4 ,this second theory1 therefore1 while its feeling for psychological reality is keener1 does not make the recognition of other minds intelligible and leaves our faith in them without justification4 ,sidenote3 ,subject and object empirical1 not transcendental1 terms4 ,in approaching the subject afresh we should do well to remember that crude experience knows nothing of the distinction between subject and object4 ,this distinction is a division in things1 a contrast established between masses of images which show different characteristics in their modes of existence and relation4 ,if this truth is overlooked1 if subject and object are made conditions of experience instead of being1 like body and mind1 its contrasted parts1 the revenge of fate is quick and ironical2 either subject or object must immediately collapse and evaporate altogether4 ,all objects must become modifications of the subject or all subjects aspects or fragments of the object4 ,sidenote3 ,objects originally soaked in secondary and tertiary qualities4 ,now the fact that crude experience is innocent of modern philosophy has this important consequence3 that for crude experience all data whatever lie originally side by side in the same field2 extension is passionate1 desire moves bodies1 thought broods in space and is constituted by a visible metamorphosis of its subject matter4 ,animism or mythology is therefore no artifice4 ,passions naturally reside in the object they agitate--our own body1 if that be the felt seat of some pang1 the stars1 if the pang can find no nearer resting-place4 ,only a long and still unfinished education has taught men to separate emotions from things and ideas from their objects4 ,this education was needed because crude experience is a chaos1 and the qualities it jumbles together do not march together in time4 ,reflection must accordingly separate them1 if knowledge 7that is1 ideas with eventual application and practical transcendence7 is to exist at all4 ,in other words1 action must be adjusted to certain elements of experience and not to others1 and those chiefly regarded must have a certain interpretation put upon them by trained apperception4 ,the rest must be treated as moonshine and taken no account of except perhaps in idle and poetic revery4 ,in this way crude experience grows reasonable and appearance becomes knowledge of reality4 ,the fundamental reason1 then1 why we attribute consciousness to natural bodies is that those bodies1 before they are conceived to be merely material1 are conceived to possess all the qualities which our own consciousness possesses when we behold them4 ,such a supposition is far from being a paradox1 since only this principle justifies us to this day in believing in whatever we may decide to believe in4 ,the qualities attributed to reality must be qualities found in experience1 and if we deny their presence in ourselves 7e4g41 in the case of omniscience71 that is only because the idea of self1 like that of matter1 has already become special and the region of ideals 7in which omniscience lies7 has been formed into a third sphere4 ,but before the idea of self is well constituted and before the category of ideals has been conceived at all1 every ingredient ultimately assigned to those two regions is attracted into the perceptual vortex for which such qualities as pressure and motion supply a nucleus4 ,the moving image is therefore impregnated not only with secondary qualities--colour1 heat1 etc4--but with qualities which we may call tertiary1 such as pain1 fear1 joy1 malice1 feebleness1 expectancy4 ,sometimes these tertiary qualities are attributed to the object in their fulness and just as they are felt4 ,thus the sun is not only bright and warm in the same way as he is round1 but by the same right he is also happy1 arrogant1 ever-young1 and all-seeing2 for a suggestion of these tertiary qualities runs through us when we look at him1 just as immediately as do his warmth and light4 ,the fact that these imaginative suggestions are not constant does not impede the instant perception that they are actual1 and for crude experience whatever a thing possesses in appearance it possesses indeed1 no matter how soon that quality may be lost again4 ,the moment when things have most numerous and best defined tertiary qualities is accordingly1 for crude experience1 the moment when they are most adequately manifested and when their inner essence is best revealed2 for it is then that they appear in experience most splendidly arrayed and best equipped for their eventual functions4 ,the sun is a better expression of all his ulterior effects when he is conceived to be an arrogant and all-seeing spirit than when he is stupidly felt to be merely hot2 so that the attentive and devout observer1 to whom those tertiary qualities are revealed1 stands in the same relation to an ordinary sensualist1 who can feel only the sun's material attributes1 as the sensualist in turn stands in to one born blind1 who cannot add the sun's brightness to its warmth except by faith in some happier man's reported intuition4 ,the mythologist or poet1 before science exists1 is accordingly the man of truest and most adequate vision4 ,his persuasion that he knows the heart and soul of things is no fancy reached by artificial inference or analogy but is a direct report of his own experience and honest contemplation4 ,sidenote3 ,tertiary qualities transposed4 ,more often1 however1 tertiary qualities are somewhat transposed in projection1 as sound in being lodged in the bell is soon translated into sonority1 made1 that is1 into its own potentiality4 ,in the same way painfulness is translated into malice or wickedness1 terror into hate1 and every felt tertiary quality into whatever tertiary quality is in experience its more quiescent or potential form4 ,so religion1 which remains for the most part on the level of crude experience1 attributes to the gods not only happiness--the object's direct tertiary quality--but goodness--its tertiary quality transposed and made potential2 for goodness is that disposition which is fruitful in happiness throughout imagined experience4 ,the devil1 in like manner1 is cruel and wicked as well as tormented4 ,uncritical science still attributes these transposed tertiary qualities to nature2 the mythical notion of force1 for instance1 being a transposed sensation of effort4 ,in this case we may distinguish two stages or degrees in the transposition3 first1 before we think of our own pulling1 we say the object itself pulls2 in the first transposition we say it pulls against us1 its pull is the counterpart or rival of ours but it is still conceived in the same direct terms of effort2 and in the second transposition this intermittent effort is made potential or slumbering in what we call strength or force4 ,sidenote3 ,imputed mind consists of the tertiary qualities of perceived body4 ,it is obvious that the feelings attributed to other men are nothing but the tertiary qualities of their bodies4 ,in beings of the same species1 however1 these qualities are naturally exceedingly numerous1 variable1 and precise4 ,nature has made man man's constant study4 ,his thought1 from infancy to the drawing up of his last will and testament1 is busy about his neighbour4 ,a smile makes a child happy2 a caress1 a moment's sympathetic attention1 wins a heart and gives the friend's presence a voluminous and poignant value4 ,in youth all seems lost in losing a friend4 ,for the tertiary values1 the emotions attached to a given image1 the moral effluence emanating from it1 pervade the whole present world4 ,the sense of union1 though momentary1 is the same that later returns to the lover or the mystic1 when he feels he has plucked the heart of life's mystery and penetrated to the peaceful centre of things4 ,what the mystic beholds in his ecstasy and loses in his moments of dryness1 what the lover pursues and adores1 what the child cries for when left alone1 is much more a spirit1 a person1 a haunting mind1 than a set of visual sensations2 yet the visual sensations are connected inextricably with that spirit1 else the spirit would not withdraw when the sensations failed4 ,we are not dealing with an articulate mind whose possessions are discriminated and distributed into a mastered world where everything has its department1 its special relations1 its limited importance2 we are dealing with a mind all pulp1 all confusion1 keenly sensitive to passing influences and reacting on them massively and without reserve4 ,this mind is feeble1 passionate1 and ignorant4 ,its sense for present spirit is no miracle of intelligence or of analogical reasoning2 on the contrary1 it betrays a vagueness natural to rudimentary consciousness4 ,those visual sensations suddenly cut off cannot there be recognised for what they are4 ,the consequences which their present disappearance may have for subsequent experience are in no wise foreseen or estimated1 much less are any inexperienced feelings invented and attached to that retreating figure1 otherwise a mere puppet4 ,what happens is that by the loss of an absorbing stimulus the whole chaotic mind is thrown out of gear2 the child cries1 the lover faints1 the mystic feels hell opening before him4 ,all this is a present sensuous commotion1 a derangement in an actual dream4 ,yet just at this lowest plunge of experience1 in this drunkenness of the soul1 does the overwhelming reality and externality of the other mind dawn upon us4 ,then we feel that we are surrounded not by a blue sky or an earth known to geographers but by unutterable and most personal hatreds and loves4 ,for then we allow the half-deciphered images of sense to drag behind them every emotion they have awakened4 ,we endow each overmastering stimulus with all its diffuse effects2 and any dramatic potentiality that our dream acts out under that high pressure--and crude experience is rich in dreams--becomes our notion of the life going on before us4 ,we cannot regard it as our own life1 because it is not felt to be a passion in our own body1 but attaches itself rather to images we see moving about in the world2 it is consequently1 without hesitation1 called the life of those images1 or those creatures' souls4 ,sidenote3 8,pathetic fallacy0 normal yet ordinarily fallacious4 ,the pathetic fallacy is accordingly what originally peoples the imagined world4 ,all the feelings aroused by perceived things are merged in those things and made to figure as the spiritual and invisible part of their essence1 a part1 moreover1 quite as well known and as directly perceived as their motions4 ,to ask why such feelings are objectified would be to betray a wholly sophisticated view of experience and its articulation4 ,they do not need to be objectified1 seeing they were objective from the beginning1 inasmuch as they pertain to objects and have never1 any more than those objects1 been 8subjectified0 or localised in the thinker's body1 nor included in that train of images which as a whole is known to have in that body its seat and thermometer4 ,the thermometer for these passions is1 on the contrary1 the body of another2 and the little dream in us1 the quick dramatic suggestion which goes with our perception of his motions1 is our perception of his thoughts4 ,a sense for alien thought is accordingly at its inception a complete illusion4 ,the thought is one's own1 it is associated with an image moving in space1 and is uncritically supposed to be a hidden part of that image1 a metaphysical signification attached to its motion and actually existing behind the scenes in the form of an unheard soliloquy4 ,a complete illusion this sense remains in mythology1 in animism1 in the poetic forms of love and religion4 ,a better mastery of experience will in such cases dispel those hasty conceits by showing the fundamental divergence which at once manifests itself between the course of phenomena and the feelings associated with them4 ,it will appear beyond question that those feelings were private fancies merged with observation in an undigested experience4 ,they indicated nothing in the object but its power of arousing emotional and playful reverberations in the mind4 ,criticism will tend to clear the world of such poetic distortion2 and what vestiges of it may linger will be avowed fables1 metaphors employed merely in conventional expression4 ,in the end even poetic power will forsake a discredited falsehood3 the poet himself will soon prefer to describe nature in natural terms and to represent human emotions in their pathetic humility1 not extended beyond their actual sphere nor fantastically uprooted from their necessary soil and occasions4 ,he will sing the power of nature over the soul1 the joys of the soul in the bosom of nature1 the beauty visible in things1 and the steady march of natural processes1 so rich in momentous incidents and collocations4 ,the precision of such a picture will accentuate its majesty1 as precision does in the poems of ,lucretius and ,dante1 while its pathos and dramatic interest will be redoubled by its truth4 ,sidenote3 ,case where it is not a fallacy4 ,a primary habit producing widespread illusions may in certain cases become the source of rational knowledge4 ,this possibility will surprise no one who has studied nature and life to any purpose4 ,nature and life are tentative in all their processes1 so that there is nothing exceptional in the fact that1 since in crude experience image and emotion are inevitably regarded as constituting a single event1 this habit should usually lead to childish absurdities1 but also1 under special circumstances1 to rational insight and morality4 ,there is evidently one case in which the pathetic fallacy is not fallacious1 the case in which the object observed happens to be an animal similar to the observer and similarly affected1 as for instance when a flock or herd are swayed by panic fear4 ,the emotion which each1 as he runs1 attributes to the others is1 as usual1 the emotion he feels himself2 but this emotion1 fear1 is the same which in fact the others are then feeling4 ,their aspect thus becomes the recognised expression for the feeling which really accompanies it4 ,so in hand-to-hand fighting3 the intention and passion which each imputes to the other is what he himself feels2 but the imputation is probably just1 since pugnacity is a remarkably contagious and monotonous passion4 ,it is awakened by the slightest hostile suggestion and is greatly intensified by example and emulation2 those we fight against and those we fight with arouse it concurrently and the universal battle-cry that fills the air1 and that each man instinctively emits1 is an adequate and exact symbol for what is passing in all their souls4 ,whenever1 then1 feeling is attributed to an animal similar to the percipient and similarly employed the attribution is mutual and correct4 ,contagion and imitation are great causes of feeling1 but in so far as they are its causes and set the pathetic fallacy to work they forestall and correct what is fallacious in that fallacy and turn it into a vehicle of true and1 as it were1 miraculous insight4 ,sidenote3 ,knowledge succeeds only by accident4 ,let the reader meditate for a moment upon the following point3 to know reality is1 in a way1 an impossible pretension1 because knowledge means significant representation1 discourse about an existence not contained in the knowing thought1 and different in duration or locus from the ideas which represent it4 ,but if knowledge does not possess its object how can it intend it8 ,and if knowledge possesses its object1 how can it be knowledge or have any practical1 prophetic1 or retrospective value8 ,consciousness is not knowledge unless it indicates or signifies what actually it is not4 ,this transcendence is what gives knowledge its cognitive and useful essence1 its transitive function and validity4 ,in knowledge1 therefore1 there must be some such thing as a justified illusion1 an irrational pretension by chance fulfilled1 a chance shot hitting the mark4 ,for dead logic would stick at solipsism2 yet irrational life1 as it stumbles along from moment to moment1 and multiplies itself in a thousand centres1 is somehow amenable to logic and finds uses for the reason it breeds4 ,now1 in the relation of a natural being to similar beings in the same habitat there is just the occasion we require for introducing a miraculous transcendence in knowledge1 a leap out of solipsism which1 though not prompted by reason1 will find in reason a continual justification4 ,for tertiary qualities are imputed to objects by psychological or pathological necessity4 ,something not visible in the object1 something not possibly revealed by any future examination of that object1 is thus united with it1 felt to be its core1 its metaphysical truth4 ,tertiary qualities are emotions or thoughts present in the observer and in his rudimentary consciousness not yet connected with their proper concomitants and antecedents1 not yet relegated to his private mind1 nor explained by his personal endowment and situation4 ,to take these private feelings for the substance of other beings is evidently a gross blunder2 yet this blunder1 without ceasing to be one in point of method1 ceases to be one in point of fact when the other being happens to be similar in nature and situation to the mythologist himself and therefore actually possesses the very emotions and thoughts which lie in the mythologist's bosom and are attributed by him to his fellow4 ,thus an imaginary self-transcendence1 a rash pretension to grasp an independent reality and to know the unknowable1 may find itself accidentally rewarded4 ,imagination will have drawn a prize in its lottery and the pathological accidents of thought will have begotten knowledge and right reason4 ,the inner and unattainable core of other beings will have been revealed to private intuition4 ,sidenote3 ,limits of insight ,this miracle of insight1 as it must seem to those who have not understood its natural and accidental origin1 extends only so far as does the analogy between the object and the instrument of perception4 ,the gift of intuition fails in proportion as the observer's bodily habit differs from the habit and body observed4 ,misunderstanding begins with constitutional divergence and deteriorates rapidly into false imputations and absurd myths4 ,the limits of mutual understanding coincide with the limits of similar structure and common occupation1 so that the distortion of insight begins very near home4 ,it is hard to understand the minds of children unless we retain unusual plasticity and capacity to play2 men and women do not really understand each other1 what rules between them being not so much sympathy as habitual trust1 idealisation1 or satire2 foreigners' minds are pure enigmas1 and those attributed to animals are a grotesque compound of sop and physiology4 ,when we come to religion the ineptitude of all the feelings attributed to nature or the gods is so egregious that a sober critic can look to such fables only for a pathetic expression of human sentiment and need2 while1 even apart from the gods1 each religion itself is quite unintelligible to infidels who have never followed its worship sympathetically or learned by contagion the human meaning of its sanctions and formulas4 ,hence the stupidity and want of insight commonly shown in what calls itself the history of religions4 ,we hear1 for instance1 that ,greek religion was frivolous1 because its mystic awe and momentous practical and poetic truths escape the ,christian historian accustomed to a catechism and a religious morality2 and similarly ,catholic piety seems to the ,protestant an sthetic indulgence1 a religion appealing to sense1 because such is the only emotion its externals can awaken in him1 unused as he is to a supernatural economy reaching down into the incidents and affections of daily life4 ,language is an artificial means of establishing unanimity and transferring thought from one mind to another4 ,every symbol or phrase1 like every gesture1 throws the observer into an attitude to which a certain idea corresponded in the speaker2 to fall exactly into the speaker's attitude is exactly to understand4 ,every impediment to contagion and imitation in expression is an impediment to comprehension4 ,for this reason language1 like all art1 becomes pale with years2 words and figures of speech lose their contagious and suggestive power2 the feeling they once expressed can no longer be restored by their repetition4 ,even the most inspired verse1 which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal1 becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic2 the language it was written in dies1 a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force4 ,nothing is so irrevocable as mind4 ,unsure the ebb and flood of thought1 ,the moon comes back1 the spirit not4 ,sidenote3 ,perception of character ,there is1 however1 a wholly different and far more positive method of reading the mind1 or what in a metaphorical sense is called by that name4 ,this method is to read character4 ,any object with which we are familiar teaches us to divine its habits2 slight indications1 which we should be at a loss to enumerate separately1 betray what changes are going on and what promptings are simmering in the organism4 ,hence the expression of a face or figure2 hence the traces of habit and passion visible in a man and that indescribable something about him which inspires confidence or mistrust4 ,the gift of reading character is partly instinctive1 partly a result of experience2 it may amount to foresight and is directed not upon consciousness but upon past or eventual action4 ,habits and passions1 however1 have metaphorical psychic names1 names indicating dispositions rather than particular acts 7a disposition being mythically represented as a sort of wakeful and haunting genius waiting to whisper suggestions in a man's ear74 ,we may accordingly delude ourselves into imagining that a pose or a manner which really indicates habit indicates feeling instead4 ,in truth the feeling involved1 if conceived at all1 is conceived most vaguely1 and is only a sort of reverberation or penumbra surrounding the pictured activities4 ,sidenote3 ,conduct divined1 consciousness ignored4 ,it is a mark of the connoisseur to be able to read character and habit and to divine at a glance all a creature's potentialities4 ,this sort of penetration characterises the man with an eye for horse-flesh1 the dog-fancier1 and men and women of the world4 ,it guides the born leader in the judgments he instinctively passes on his subordinates and enemies2 it distinguishes every good judge of human affairs or of natural phenomena1 who is quick to detect small but telling indications of events past or brewing4 ,as the weather-prophet reads the heavens so the man of experience reads other men4 ,nothing concerns him less than their consciousness2 he can allow that to run itself off when he is sure of their temper and habits4 ,a great master of affairs is usually unsympathetic4 ,his observation is not in the least dramatic or dreamful1 he does not yield himself to animal contagion or re-enact other people's inward experience4 ,he is too busy for that1 and too intent on his own purposes4 ,his observation1 on the contrary1 is straight calculation and inference1 and it sometimes reaches truths about people's character and destiny which they themselves are very far from divining4 ,such apprehension is masterful and odious to weaklings1 who think they know themselves because they indulge in copious soliloquy 7which is the discourse of brutes and madmen71 but who really know nothing of their own capacity1 situation1 or fate4 ,if ,rousseau1 for instance1 after writing those ,confessions in which candour and ignorance of self are equally conspicuous1 had heard some intelligent friend1 like ,hume1 draw up in a few words an account of their author's true and contemptible character1 he would have been loud in protestations that no such ignoble characteristics existed in his eloquent consciousness2 and they might not have existed there1 because his consciousness was a histrionic thing1 and as imperfect an expression of his own nature as of man's4 ,when the mind is irrational no practical purpose is served by stopping to understand it1 because such a mind is irrelevant to practice1 and the principles that guide the man's practice can be as well understood by eliminating his mind altogether4 ,so a wise governor ignores his subjects' religion or concerns himself only with its economic and temperamental aspects2 if the real forces that control life are understood1 the symbols that represent those forces in the mind may be disregarded4 ,but such a government1 like that of the ,british in ,india1 is more practical than sympathetic4 ,while wise men may endure it for the sake of their material interests1 they will never love it for itself4 ,there is nothing sweeter than to be sympathised with1 while nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out4 ,sidenote3 ,consciousness untrustworthy4 ,nevertheless this same algebraic sense for character plays a large part in human friendship4 ,a chief element in friendship is trust1 and trust is not to be acquired by reproducing consciousness but only by penetrating to the constitutional instincts which1 in determining action and habit1 determine consciousness as well4 ,fidelity is not a property of ideas4 ,it is a virtue possessed pre-eminently by nature1 from the animals to the seasons and the stars4 ,but fidelity gives friendship its deepest sanctity1 and the respect we have for a man1 for his force1 ability1 constancy1 and dignity1 is no sentiment evoked by his floating thoughts but an assurance founded on our own observation that his conduct and character are to be counted upon4 ,smartness and vivacity1 much emotion and many conceits1 are obstacles both to fidelity and to merit4 ,there is a high worth in rightly constituted natures independent of incidental consciousness4 ,it consists in that ingrained virtue which under given circumstances would insure the noblest action and with that action1 of course1 the noblest sentiments and ideas2 ideas which would arise spontaneously and would make more account of their objects than of themselves4 ,sidenote3 ,metaphorical mind4 ,the expression of habit in psychic metaphors is a procedure known also to theology4 ,whenever natural or moral law is declared to reveal the divine mind1 this mind is a set of formal or ethical principles rather than an imagined consciousness1 re-enacted dramatically4 ,what is conceived is the god's operation1 not his emotions4 ,in this way ,god's goodness becomes a symbol for the advantages of life1 his wrath a symbol for its dangers1 his commandments a symbol for its laws4 ,the deity spoken of by the ,stoics had exclusively this symbolic character2 it could be called a city--dear ,city of ,zeus--as readily as an intelligence4 ,and that intelligence which ancient and ingenuous philosophers said they saw in the world was always intelligence in this algebraic sense1 it was intelligible order4 ,nor did the ,hebrew prophets1 in their emphatic political philosophy1 seem to mean much more by ,jehovah than a moral order1 a principle giving vice and virtue their appropriate fruits4 ,sidenote3 ,summary4 ,true society1 then1 is limited to similar beings living similar lives and enabled by the contagion of their common habits and arts to attribute to one another1 each out of his own experience1 what the other actually endures4 ,a fresh thought may be communicated to one who has never had it before1 but only when the speaker so dominates the auditor's mind by the instrumentalities he brings to bear upon it that he compels that mind to reproduce his experience4 ,analogy between actions and bodies is accordingly the only test of valid inference regarding the existence or character of conceived minds2 but this eventual test is far from being the source of such a conception4 ,its source is not inference at all but direct emotion and the pathetic fallacy4 ,in the beginning1 as in the end1 what is attributed to others is something directly felt1 a dream dreamed through and dramatically enacted1 but uncritically attributed to the object by whose motions it is suggested and controlled4 ,in a single case1 however1 tertiary qualities happen to correspond to an experience actually animating the object to which they are assigned4 ,this is the case in which the object is a body similar in structure and action to the percipient himself1 who assigns to that body a passion he has caught by contagion from it and by imitation of its actual attitude4 ,such are the conditions of intelligible expression and true communion2 beyond these limits nothing is possible save myth and metaphor1 or the algebraic designation of observed habits under the name of moral dispositions4 ,,chapter ,,vii--,,concretions ,,in ,,discourse ,,and ,,in ,,existence ,sidenote3 ,so-called abstract qualities primary4 ,ideas of material objects ordinarily absorb the human mind1 and their prevalence has led to the rash supposition that ideas of all other kinds are posterior to physical ideas and drawn from the latter by a process of abstraction4 ,the table1 people said1 was a particular and single reality2 its colour1 form1 and material were parts of its integral nature1 qualities which might be attended to separately1 perhaps1 but which actually existed only in the table itself4 ,colour1 form1 and material were therefore abstract elements4 ,they might come before the mind separately and be contrasted objects of attention1 but they were incapable of existing in nature except together1 in the concrete reality called a particular thing4 ,moreover1 as the same colour1 shape1 or substance might be found in various tables1 these abstract qualities were thought to be general qualities as well2 they were universal terms which might be predicated of many individual things4 ,a contrast could then be drawn between these qualities or ideas1 which the mind may envisage1 and the concrete reality existing beyond4 ,thus philosophy could reach the familiar maxim of ,aristotle that the particular alone exists in nature and the general alone in the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,general qualities prior to particular things4 ,such language expresses correctly enough a secondary conventional stage of conception1 but it ignores the primary fictions on which convention itself must rest4 ,individual physical objects must be discovered before abstractions can be made from their conceived nature2 the bird must be caught before it is plucked4 ,to discover a physical object is to pack in the same part of space1 and fuse in one complex body1 primary data like coloured form and tangible surface4 ,intelligence1 observing these sensible qualities to evolve together1 and to be controlled at once by external forces1 or by one's own voluntary motions1 identifies them in their operation although they remain for ever distinct in their sensible character4 ,a physical object is accordingly conceived by fusing or interlacing spatial qualities1 in a manner helpful to practical intelligence4 ,it is a far higher and remoter thing than the elements it is compacted of and that suggest it2 what habits of appearance and disappearance the latter may have1 the object reduces to permanent and calculable principles4 ,it is altogether erroneous1 therefore1 to view an object's sensible qualities as abstractions from it1 seeing they are its original and component elements2 nor can the sensible qualities be viewed as generic notions arising by comparison of several concrete objects1 seeing that these concretions would never have been made or thought to be permanent1 did they not express observed variations and recurrences in the sensible qualities immediately perceived and already recognised in their recurrence4 ,these are themselves the true particulars4 ,they are the first objects discriminated in attention and projected against the background of consciousness4 ,the immediate continuum may be traversed and mapped by two different methods4 ,the prior one1 because it is so very primitive and rudimentary1 and so much a condition of all mental discourse1 is usually ignored in psychology4 ,the secondary method1 by which external things are discovered1 has received more attention4 ,the latter consists in the fact that when several disparate sensations1 having become recognisable in their repetitions1 are observed to come and go together1 or in fixed relation to some voluntary operation on the observer's part1 they may be associated by contiguity and merged in one portion of perceived space4 ,those having1 like sensations of touch and sight1 an essentially spatial character1 may easily be superposed2 the surface ,i see and that ,i touch may be identified by being presented together and being found to undergo simultaneous variations and to maintain common relations to other perceptions4 ,thus ,i may come to attribute to a single object1 the term of an intellectual synthesis and ideal intention1 my experiences through all the senses within a certain field of association1 defined by its practical relations4 ,that ideal object is thereby endowed with as many qualities and powers as ,i had associable sensations of which to make it up4 ,this object is a concretion of my perceptions in space1 so that the redness1 hardness1 sweetness1 and roundness of the apple are all fused together in my practical regard and given one local habitation and one name4 ,sidenote3 ,universals are concretions in discourse4 ,this kind of synthesis1 this superposition and mixture of images into notions of physical objects1 is not1 however1 the only kind to which perceptions are subject4 ,they fall together by virtue of their qualitative identity even before their spatial superposition2 for in order to be known as repeatedly simultaneous1 and associable by contiguity1 they must be associated by similarity and known as individually repeated4 ,the various recurrences of a sensation must be recognised as recurrences1 and this implies the collection of sensations into classes of similars and the apperception of a common nature in several data4 ,now the more frequent a perception is the harder it will be to discriminate in memory its past occurrences from one another1 and yet the more readily will its present recurrence be recognised as familiar4 ,the perception in sense will consequently be received as a repetition not of any single earlier sensation but of a familiar and generic experience4 ,this experience1 a spontaneous reconstruction based on all previous sensations of that kind1 will be the one habitual idea with which recurring sensations will be henceforth identified4 ,such a living concretion of similars succeeding one another in time1 is the idea of a nature or quality1 the universal falsely supposed to be an abstraction from physical objects1 which in truth are conceived by putting together these very ideas into a spatial and permanent system4 ,here we have1 if ,i am not mistaken1 the origin of the two terms most prominent in human knowledge1 ideas and things4 ,two methods of conception divide our attention in common life2 science and philosophy develop both1 although often with an unjustifiable bias in favour of one or the other4 ,they are nothing but the old principles of ,aristotelian psychology1 association by similarity and association by contiguity4 ,only now1 after logicians have exhausted their ingenuity in criticising them and psychologists in applying them1 we may go back of the traditional position and apply the ancient principles at a deeper stage of mental life4 ,sidenote3 ,similar reactions1 merged in one habit of reproduction1 yield an idea4 ,association by similarity is a fusion of impressions merging what is common in them1 interchanging what is peculiar1 and cancelling in the end what is incompatible2 so that any excitement reaching that centre revives one generic reaction which yields the idea4 ,these concrete generalities are actual feelings1 the first terms in mental discourse1 the first distinguishable particulars in knowledge1 and the first bearers of names4 ,intellectual dominion of the conscious stream begins with the act of recognising these pervasive entities1 which having character and ideal permanence can furnish common points of reference for different moments of discourse4 ,save for ideas no perception could have significance1 or acquire that indicative force which we call knowledge4 ,for it would refer to nothing to which another perception might also have referred2 and so long as perceptions have no common reference1 so long as successive moments do not enrich by their contributions the same object of thought1 evidently experience1 in the pregnant sense of the word1 is impossible4 ,no fund of valid ideas1 no wisdom1 could in that case be acquired by living4 ,sidenote3 ,ideas are ideal4 ,ideas1 although their material is of course sensuous1 are not sensations nor perceptions nor objects of any possible immediate experience3 they are creatures of intelligence1 goals of thought1 ideal terms which cogitation and action circle about4 ,as the centre of mass is a body1 while it may by chance coincide with one or another of its atoms1 is no atom itself and no material constituent of the bulk that obeys its motion1 so an idea1 the centre of mass of a certain mental system1 is no material fragment of that system1 but an ideal term of reference and signification by allegiance to which the details of consciousness first become parts of a system and of a thought4 ,an idea is an ideal4 ,it represents a functional relation in the diffuse existences to which it gives a name and a rational value4 ,an idea is an expression of life1 and shares with life that transitive and elusive nature which defies definition by mere enumeration of its materials4 ,the peculiarity of life is that it lives2 and thought also1 when living1 passes out of itself and directs itself on the ideal1 on the eventual4 ,it is an activity4 ,activity does not consist in velocity of change but in constancy of purpose2 in the conspiracy of many moments and many processes toward one ideal harmony and one concomitant ideal result4 ,the most rudimentary apperception1 recognition1 or expectation1 is already a case of representative cognition1 of transitive thought resting in a permanent essence4 ,memory is an obvious case of the same thing2 for the past1 in its truth1 is a system of experiences in relation1 a system now non-existent and never1 as a system1 itself experienced1 yet confronted in retrospect and made the ideal object and standard for all historical thinking4 ,sidenote3 ,so-called abstractions complete facts4 ,these arrested and recognisable ideas1 concretions of similars succeeding one another in time1 are not abstractions2 but they may come to be regarded as such after the other kind of concretions in experience1 concretions of superposed perceptions in space1 have become the leading objects of attention4 ,the sensuous material for both concretions is the same2 the perception which1 recurring in different objects otherwise not retained in memory gives the idea of roundness1 is the same perception which helps to constitute the spatial concretion called the sun4 ,roundness may therefore be carelessly called an abstraction from the real object 8sun02 whereas the peculiar optical and muscular feelings by which the sense of roundness is constituted--probably feelings of gyration and perpetual unbroken movement--are much earlier than any solar observations2 they are a self-sufficing element in experience which1 by repetition in various accidental contests1 has come to be recognised and named1 and to be a characteristic by virtue of which more complex objects can be distinguished and defined4 ,the idea of the sun is a much later product1 and the real sun is so far from being an original datum from which roundness is abstracted1 that it is an ulterior and quite ideal construction1 a spatial concretion into which the logical concretion roundness enters as a prior and independent factor4 ,roundness may be felt in the dark1 by a mere suggestion of motion1 and is a complete experience in itself4 ,when this recognisable experience happens to be associated by contiguity with other recognisable experiences of heat1 light1 height1 and yellowness1 and these various independent objects are projected into the same portion of a real space2 then a concretion occurs1 and these ideas being recognised in that region and finding a momentary embodiment there1 become the qualities of a thing4 ,a conceived thing is doubly a product of mind1 more a product of mind1 if you will1 than an idea1 since ideas arise1 so to speak1 by the mind's inertia and conceptions of things by its activity4 ,sidenote3 ,things concretions of concretions4 ,ideas are mental sediment2 conceived things are mental growths4 ,a concretion in discourse occurs by repetition and mere emphasis on a datum1 but a concretion in existence requires a synthesis of disparate elements and relations4 ,an idea is nothing but a sensation apperceived and rendered cognitive1 so that it envisages its own recognised character as its object and ideal3 yellowness is only some sensation of yellow raised to the cognitive power and employed as the symbol for its own specific essence4 ,it is consequently capable of entering as a term into rational discourse and of becoming the subject or predicate of propositions eternally valid4 ,a thing1 on the contrary1 is discovered only when the order and grouping of such recurring essences can be observed1 and when various themes and strains of experience are woven together into elaborate progressive harmonies4 ,when consciousness first becomes cognitive it frames ideas2 but when it becomes cognitive of causes1 that is1 when it becomes practical1 it perceives things4 ,sidenote3 ,ideas prior in the order of knowledge1 things in the order of nature4 ,concretions of qualities recurrent in time and concretions of qualities associated in existence are alike involved in daily life and inextricably ingrown into the structure of reason4 ,in consciousness and for logic1 association by similarity1 with its aggregations and identifications of recurrences in time1 is fundamental rather than association by contiguity and its existential syntheses2 for recognition identifies similars perceived in succession1 and without recognition of similars there could be no known persistence of phenomena4 ,but physiologically and for the observer association by contiguity comes first4 ,all instinct--without which there would be no fixity or recurrence in ideation--makes movement follow impression in an immediate way which for consciousness becomes a mere juxtaposition of sensations1 a juxtaposition which it can neither explain nor avoid4 ,yet this juxtaposition1 in which pleasure1 pain1 and striving are prominent factors1 is the chief stimulus to attention and spreads before the mind that moving and variegated field in which it learns to make its first observations4 ,facts--the burdens of successive moments--are all associated by contiguity1 from the first facts of perception and passion to the last facts of fate and conscience4 ,we undergo events1 we grow into character1 by the subterraneous working of irrational forces that make their incalculable irruptions into life none the less wonderfully in the revelations of a man's heart to himself than in the cataclysms of the world around him4 ,nature's placid procedure1 to which we yield so willingly in times of prosperity1 is a concatenation of states which can only be understood when it is made its own standard and law4 ,a sort of philosophy without wisdom may seek to subjugate this natural life1 this blind budding of existence1 to some logical or moral necessity2 but this very attempt remains1 perhaps1 the most striking monument to that irrational fatality that rules affairs1 a monument which reason itself is compelled to raise with unsuspected irony4 ,sidenote3 ,aristotle's compromise4 ,reliance on external perception1 constant appeals to concrete fact and physical sanctions1 have always led the mass of reasonable men to magnify concretions in existence and belittle concretions in discourse4 ,they are too clever1 as they feel1 to mistake words for things4 ,the most authoritative thinker on this subject1 because the most mature1 ,aristotle himself1 taught that things had reality1 individuality1 independence1 and were the outer cause of perception1 while general ideas1 products of association by similarity1 existed only in the mind4 ,the public1 pleased at its ability to understand this doctrine and overlooking the more incisive part of the philosopher's teaching1 could go home comforted and believing that material things were primary and perfect entities1 while ideas were only abstractions1 effects those realities produced on our incapable minds4 ,aristotle1 however1 had a juster view of general concepts and made in the end the whole material universe gravitate around them and feel their influence1 though in a metaphysical and magic fashion to which a more advanced natural science need no longer appeal4 ,while in the shock of life man was always coming upon the accidental1 in the quiet of reflection he could not but recast everything in ideal moulds and retain nothing but eternal natures and intelligible relations4 ,aristotle conceived that while the origin of knowledge lay in the impact of matter upon sense its goal was the comprehension of essences1 and that while man was involved by his animal nature in the accidents of experience he was also by virtue of his rationality a participator in eternal truth4 ,a substantial justice was thus done both to the conditions and to the functions of human life1 although1 for want of a natural history inspired by mechanical ideas1 this dualism remained somewhat baffling and incomprehensible in its basis4 ,aristotle1 being a true philosopher and pupil of experience1 preferred incoherence to partiality4 ,sidenote3 ,empirical bias in favour of contiguity4 ,active life and the philosophy that borrows its concepts from practice has thus laid a great emphasis on association by contiguity4 ,hobbes and ,locke made knowledge of this kind the only knowledge of reality1 while recognising it to be quite empirical1 tentative1 and problematical4 ,it was a kind of acquaintance with fact that increased with years and brought the mind into harmony with something initially alien to it4 ,besides this practical knowledge or prudence there was a sort of verbal and merely ideal knowledge1 a knowledge of the meaning and relation of abstract terms4 ,in mathematics and logic we might carry out long trains of abstracted thought and analyse and develop our imaginations ad infinitum4 ,these speculations1 however1 were in the air or--what for these philosophers is much the same thing--in the mind2 their applicability and their relevance to practical life and to objects given in perception remained quite problematical4 ,a self-developing science1 a synthetic science a priori1 had a value entirely hypothetical and provisional2 its practical truth depended on the verification of its results in some eventual sensible experience4 ,association was invoked to explain the adjustment of ideation to the order of external perception4 ,association1 by which association by contiguity was generally understood1 thus became the battle-cry of empiricism2 if association by similarity had been equally in mind1 the philosophy of pregnant reason could also have adopted the principle for its own4 ,but logicians and mathematicians naturally neglect the psychology of their own processes and1 accustomed as they are to an irresponsible and constructive use of the intellect1 regard as a confused and uninspired intruder the critic who1 by a retrospective and naturalistic method1 tries to give them a little knowledge of themselves4 ,sidenote3 ,artificial divorce of logic from practice4 ,rational ideas must arise somehow in the mind1 and since they are not meant to be without application to the world of experience1 it is interesting to discover the point of contact between the two and the nature of their interdependence4 ,this would have been found in the mind's initial capacity to frame objects of two sorts1 those compacted of sensations that are persistently similar1 and those compacted of sensations that are momentarily fused4 ,in empirical philosophy the applicability of logic and mathematics remains a miracle or becomes a misinterpretation3 a miracle if the process of nature independently follows the inward elaboration of human ideas2 a misinterpretation if the bias of intelligence imposes a priori upon reality a character and order not inherent in it4 ,the mistake of empiricists--among which ,kant is in this respect to be numbered--which enabled them to disregard this difficulty1 was that they admitted1 beside rational thinking1 another instinctive kind of wisdom by which men could live1 a wisdom the ,englishmen called experience and the ,germans practical reason1 spirit1 or will4 ,the intellectual sciences could be allowed to spin themselves out in abstracted liberty while man practised his illogical and inspired art of life4 ,here we observe a certain elementary crudity or barbarism which the human spirit often betrays when it is deeply stirred4 ,not only are chance and divination welcomed into the world but they are reverenced all the more1 like the wind and fire of idolaters1 precisely for not being amenable to the petty rules of human reason4 ,in truth1 however1 the ,english duality between prudence and science is no more fundamental than the ,german duality between reason and understanding4,a ,the true contrast is between impulse and reflection1 instinct and intelligence4 ,when men feel the primordial authority of the animal in them and have little respect for a glimmering reason which they suspect to be secondary but cannot discern to be ultimate1 they readily imagine they are appealing to something higher than intelligence when in reality they are falling back on something deeper and lower4 ,the rudimentary seems to them at such moments divine2 and if they conceive a ,life of ,reason at all they despise it as a mass of artifices and conventions4 ,reason is indeed not indispensable to life1 nor needful if living anyhow be the sole and indeterminate aim2 as the existence of animals and of most men sufficiently proves4 ,in so far as man is not a rational being and does not live in and by the mind1 in so far as his chance volitions and dreamful ideas roll by without mutual representation or adjustment1 in so far as his body takes the lead and even his galvanised action is a form of passivity1 we may truly say that his life is not intellectual and not dependent on the application of general concepts to experience2 for he lives by instinct4 ,sidenote3 ,their mutual involution4 ,the ,life of ,reason1 the comprehension of causes and pursuit of aims1 begins precisely where instinctive operation ceases to be merely such by becoming conscious of its purposes and representative of its conditions4 ,logical forms of thought impregnate and constitute practical intellect4 ,the shock of experience can indeed correct1 disappoint1 or inhibit rational expectation1 but it cannot take its place4 ,the very first lesson that experience should again teach us after our disappointment would be a rebirth of reason in the soul4 ,reason has the indomitable persistence of all natural tendencies2 it returns to the attack as waves beat on the shore4 ,to observe its defeat is already to give it a new embodiment4 ,prudence itself is a vague science1 and science1 when it contains real knowledge1 is but a clarified prudence1 a description of experience and a guide to life4 ,speculative reason1 if it is not also practical1 is not reason at all4 ,propositions irrelevant to experience may be correct in form1 the method they are reached by may parody scientific method1 but they cannot be true in substance1 because they refer to nothing4 ,like music1 they have no object4 ,they merely flow1 and please those whose unattached sensibility they somehow flatter4 ,hume1 in this respect more radical and satisfactory than ,kant himself1 saw with perfect clearness that reason was an ideal expression of instinct1 and that consequently no rational spheres could exist other than the mathematical and the empirical1 and that what is not a datum must certainly be a construction4 ,in establishing his 8tendencies to feign0 at the basis of intelligence1 and in confessing that he yielded to them himself no less in his criticism of human nature than in his practical life1 he admitted the involution of reason--that unintelligible instinct--in all the observations and maxims vouchsafed to an empiricist or to a man4 ,he veiled his doctrine1 however1 in a somewhat unfair and satirical nomenclature1 and he has paid the price of that indulgence in personal humour by incurring the immortal hatred of sentimentalists who are too much scandalised by his tone ever to understand his principles4 ,sidenote3 ,rationalistic suicide4 ,if the common mistake in empiricism is not to see the omnipresence of reason in thought1 the mistake of rationalism is not to admit its variability and dependence1 not to understand its natural life4 ,parmenides was the ,adam of that race1 and first tasted the deceptive kind of knowledge which1 promising to make man ,god1 banishes him from the paradise of experience4 ,his sin has been transmitted to his descendants1 though hardly in its magnificent and simple enormity4 8,the whole is one10 ,xenophanes had cried1 gazing into heaven2 and that same sense of a permeating identity1 translated into rigid and logical terms1 brought his sublime disciple to the conviction that an indistinguishable immutable substance was omnipresent in the world4 ,parmenides carried association by similarity to such lengths that he arrived at the idea of what alone is similar in everything1 viz41 the fact that it is4 ,being exists1 and nothing else does2 whereby every relation and variation in experience is reduced to a negligible illusion1 and reason loses its function at the moment of asserting its absolute authority4 ,notable lesson1 taught us like so many others by the first experiments of the ,greek mind1 in its freedom and insight1 a mind led quickly by noble self-confidence to the ultimate goals of thought4 ,such a pitch of heroism and abstraction has not been reached by any rationalist since4 ,no one else has been willing to ignore entirely all the data and constructions of experience1 save the highest concept reached by assimilations in that experience2 no one else has been willing to demolish all the scaffolding and all the stones of his edifice1 hoping still to retain the sublime symbol which he had planted on the summit4 ,yet all rationalists have longed to demolish or to degrade some part of the substructure1 like those ,gothic architects who wished to hang the vaults of their churches upon the slenderest possible supports1 abolishing and turning into painted crystal all the dead walls of the building4 ,so experience and its crowning conceptions were to rest wholly on a skeleton of general natures1 physical forces being assimilated to logical terms1 and concepts gained by identification of similars taking the place of those gained by grouping disparate things in their historical conjunctions4 ,these contiguous sensations1 which occasionally exemplify the logical contrasts in ideas and give them incidental existence1 were either ignored altogether and dismissed as unmeaning1 or admitted merely as illusions4 ,the eye was to be trained to pass from that parti-coloured chaos to the firm lines and permanent divisions that were supposed to sustain it and frame it in4 ,rationalism is a kind of builder's bias which the impartial public cannot share2 for the dead walls and glass screens which may have no function in supporting the roof are yet as needful as the roof itself to shelter and beauty4 ,so the incidental filling of experience which remains unclassified under logical categories retains all its primary reality and importance4 ,the outlines of it emphasised by logic1 though they may be the essential vehicle of our most soaring thoughts1 are only a method and a style of architecture4 ,they neither absorb the whole material of life nor monopolise its values4 ,and as each material imposes upon the builder's ingenuity a different type of construction1 and stone1 wood1 and iron must be treated on different structural principles1 so logical methods of comprehension1 spontaneous though they be in their mental origin1 must prove themselves fitted to the natural order and affinity of the facts4,b ,nor is there in this necessity any violence to the spontaneity of reason3 for reason also has manifold forms1 and the accidents of experience are more than matched in variety by the multiplicity of categories4 ,here one principle of order and there another shoots into the mind1 which breeds more genera and species than the most fertile terrestrial slime can breed individuals4 ,sidenote3 ,complementary character of essence and existence4 ,language1 then1 with the logic imbedded in it1 is a repository of terms formed by identifying successive perceptions1 as the external world is a repository of objects conceived by superposing perceptions that exist together4 ,being formed on different principles these two orders of conception--the logical and the physical--do not coincide1 and the attempt to fuse them into one system of demonstrable reality or moral physics is doomed to failure by the very nature of the terms compared4 ,when the ,eleatics proved the impossibility--i4e41 the inexpressibility--of motion1 or when ,kant and his followers proved the unreal character of all objects of experience and of all natural knowledge1 their task was made easy by the native diversity between the concretions in existence which were the object of their thought and the concretions in discourse which were its measure4 ,the two do not fit2 and intrenched as these philosophers were in the forms of logic they compelled themselves to reject as unthinkable everything not fully expressible in those particular forms4 ,thus they took their revenge upon the vulgar who1 being busy chiefly with material things and dwelling in an atmosphere of sensuous images1 call unreal and abstract every product of logical construction or reflective analysis4 ,these logical products1 however1 are not really abstract1 but1 as we have seen1 concretions arrived at by a different method than that which results in material conceptions4 ,whereas the conception of a thing is a local conglomerate of several simultaneous sensations1 logical entity is a homogeneous revival in memory of similar sensations temporally distinct4 ,thus the many armed with prejudice and the few armed with logic fight an eternal battle1 the logician charging the physical world with unintelligibility and the man of common-sense charging the logical world with abstractness and unreality4 ,the former view is the more profound1 since association by similarity is the more elementary and gives constancy to meanings2 while the latter view is the more practical1 since association by contiguity alone informs the mind about the mechanical sequence of its own experience4 ,neither principle can be dispensed with1 and each errs only in denouncing the other and wishing to be omnivorous1 as if on the one hand logic could make anybody understand the history of events and the conjunction of objects1 or on the other hand as if cognitive and moral processes could have any other terms than constant and ideal natures4 ,the namable essence of things or the standard of values must always be an ideal figment2 existence must always be an empirical fact4 ,the former remains always remote from natural existence and the latter irreducible to a logical principle4,c ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,a3 ,this distinction1 in one sense1 is ,platonic3 but ,plato's ,reason was distinguished from understanding 7which dealt with phenomenal experience7 because it was a moral faculty defining those values and meanings which in ,platonic nomenclature took the title of reality4 ,the ,german ,reason was only imagination1 substituting a dialectical or poetic history of the world for its natural development4 ,german idealism1 accordingly1 was not1 like ,plato's1 a moral philosophy hypostasised but a false physics adored4 ,footnote ,b3 ,this natural order and affinity is something imputed to the ultimate object of thought--the reality--by the last act of judgment assuming its own truth4 ,it is1 of course1 not observable by consciousness before the first experiment in comprehension has been made2 the act of comprehension which first imposes on the sensuous material some subjective category is the first to arrive at the notion of an objective order4 ,the historian1 however1 has a well-tried and mature conception of the natural order arrived at after many such experiments in comprehension4 ,from the vantage-ground of this latest hypothesis1 he surveys the attempts others have made to understand events and compares them with the objective order which he believes himself to have discovered4 ,this observation is made here lest the reader should confuse the natural order1 imagined to exist before any application of human categories1 with the last conception of that order attained by the philosopher4 ,the latter is but faith1 the former is faith's ideal object4 ,footnote ,c3 ,for the sake of simplicity only such ideas as precede conceptions of things have been mentioned here4 ,after things are discovered1 however1 they may be used as terms in a second ideal synthesis and a concretion in discourse on a higher plane may be composed out of sustained concretions in existence4 ,proper names are such secondary concretions in discourse4 8,venice0 is a term covering many successive aspects and conditions1 not distinguished in fancy1 belonging to an object existing continuously in space and time4 ,each of these states of ,venice constitutes a natural object1 a concretion in existence1 and is again analysable into a mass of fused but recognisable qualities--light1 motion1 beauty--each of which was an original concretion in discourse1 a primordial term in experience4 ,a quality is recognised by its own idea or permanent nature1 a thing by its constituent qualities1 and an embodied spirit by fusion into an ideal essence of the constant characters possessed by a thing4 ,to raise natural objects into historic entities it is necessary to repeat upon a higher plane that concretion in discourse by which sensations were raised to ideas4 ,when familiar objects attain this ideal character they have become poetical and achieved a sort of personality4 ,they then possess a spiritual status4 ,thus sensuous experience is solidified into logical terms1 these into ideas of things1 and these1 recast and smelted again in imagination1 into forms of spirit4 ,,chapter ,,viii--,,on ,,the ,,relative ,,value ,,of ,,things ,,and ,,ideas ,sidenote3 ,moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle4 ,those who look back upon the history of opinion for many centuries commonly feel1 by a vague but profound instinct1 that certain consecrated doctrines have an inherent dignity and spirituality1 while other speculative tendencies and other vocabularies seem wedded to all that is ignoble and shallow4 ,so fundamental is this moral tone in philosophy that people are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true4 ,they may avow1 in reflective moments1 that they may be in error1 seeing that thinkers of no less repute have maintained opposite opinions1 but they are commonly absolutely sure that if their own views could be generally accepted1 it would be a boon to mankind1 that in fact the moral interests of the race are bound up1 not with discovering what may chance to be true1 but with discovering the truth to have a particular complexion4 ,this predominant trust in moral judgments is in some cases conscious and avowed1 so that philosophers invite the world to embrace tenets for which no evidence is offered but that they chime in with current aspirations or traditional bias4 ,thus the substance of things hoped for becomes1 even in philosophy1 the evidence of things not seen4 ,such faith is indeed profoundly human and has accompanied the mind in all its gropings and discoveries2 preference being the primary principle of discrimination and attention4 ,reason in her earliest manifestations already discovered her affinities and incapacities1 and loaded the ideas she framed with friendliness or hostility4 ,it is not strange that her latest constructions should inherit this relation to the will2 and we shall see that the moral tone and affinity of metaphysical systems corresponds exactly with the primary function belonging to that type of idea on which they are based4 ,idealistic systems1 still cultivating concretions in discourse1 study the first conditions of knowledge and the last interests of life2 materialistic systems1 still emphasising concretions in existence1 describe causal relations1 and the habits of nature4 ,thus the spiritual value of various philosophies rests in the last instance on the kind of good which originally attached the mind to that habit and plane of ideation4 ,sidenote3 ,concretions in discourse express instinctive reactions4 ,we have said that perceptions must be recognised before they can be associated by contiguity1 and that consequently the fusion of temporally diffused experiences must precede their local fusion into material objects4 ,it might be urged in opposition to this statement that concrete objects can be recognised in practice before their general qualities have been distinguished in discourse4 ,recognition may be instinctive1 that is1 based on the repetition of a felt reaction or emotion1 rather than on any memory of a former occasion on which the same perception occurred4 ,such an objection seems to be well grounded1 for it is instinctive adjustments and suggested action that give cognitive value to sensation and endow it with that transitive force which makes it consciously representative of what is past1 future1 or absent4 ,if practical instinct did not stretch what is given into what is meant1 reason could never recognise the datum for a copy of an ideal object4 ,sidenote3 ,idealism rudimentary4 ,this description of the case involves an application or extension of our theory rather than an argument against it4 ,for where recognition is instinctive and a familiar action is performed with absent-minded confidence and without attending to the indications that justify that action1 there is in an eminent degree a qualitative concretion in experience4 ,present impressions are merged so completely in structural survivals of the past that instead of arousing any ideas distinct enough to be objectified they merely stimulate the inner sense1 remain imbedded in the general feeling of motion or life1 and constitute in fact a heightened sentiment of pure vitality and freedom4 ,for the lowest and vaguest of concretions in discourse are the ideas of self and of an embosoming external being1 with the felt continuity of both2 what ,fichte would call the ,ego1 the ,non-,ego1 and ,life4 ,where no particular events are recognised there is still a feeling of continuous existence4 ,we trail after us from our whole past some sense of the continuous energy and movement both of our passionate fancies and of the phantasmagoria capriciously at work beyond4 ,an ignorant mind believes itself omniscient and omnipotent2 those impulses in itself which really represent the inertia and unspent momentum of its last dream it regards as the creative forces of nature4 ,the first lines of cleavage and the first recognisable bulks at which attention is arrested are in truth those shadowy ,fichtean divisions3 such are the rude beginnings of logical architecture4 ,in its inability to descry anything definite and fixed1 for want of an acquired empirical background and a distinct memory1 the mind flounders forward in a dream full of prophecies and wayward identifications4 ,the world possesses as yet in its regard only the superficial forms that appear in revery1 it has no hidden machinery1 no third dimension in which unobserved and perpetual operations are going on4 ,its only terms1 in a word1 are concretions in discourse1 ideas combined in their sthetic and logical harmonies1 not in their habitual and efficacious conjunctions4 ,the disorder of such experience is still a spontaneous disorder2 it has not discovered how calculable are its unpremeditated shocks4 ,the cataclysms that occur seem to have only ideal grounds and only dramatic meaning4 ,though the dream may have its terrors and degenerate at moments into a nightmare1 it has still infinite plasticity and buoyancy4 ,what perceptions are retained merge in those haunting and friendly presences1 they have an intelligible and congenial character because they appear as parts and effluences of an inner fiction1 evolving according to the barbaric prosody of an almost infant mind4 ,this is the fairy-land of idealism where only the miraculous seems a matter of course and every hint of what is purely natural is disregarded1 for the truly natural still seems artificial1 dead1 and remote4 ,new and disconcerting facts1 which intrude themselves inopportunely into the story1 chill the currents of spontaneous imagination and are rejected as long as possible for being alien and perverse4 ,perceptions1 on the contrary1 which can be attached to the old presences as confirmations or corollaries1 become at once parts of the warp and woof of what we call ourselves4 ,they seem of the very substance of spirit1 obeying a vital momentum and flowing from the inmost principle of being2 and they are so much akin to human presumptions that they pass for manifestations of necessary truth4 ,thus the demonstrations of geometry being but the intent explication of a long-consolidated ideal concretion which we call space1 are welcomed by the mind as in a sense familiar and as revelations of a truth implicit in the soul1 so that ,plato could plausibly take them for recollections of prenatal wisdom4 ,but a rocket that bursts into sparks of a dozen colours1 even if expected1 is expected with anxiety and observed with surprise2 it assaults the senses at an incalculable moment with a sensation individual and new4 ,the exciting tension and lively stimulus may please in their way1 yet the badge of the accidental and unmeaning adheres to the thing4 ,it is a trivial experience and one quickly forgotten4 ,the shock is superficial and were it repeated would soon fatigue4 ,we should retire with relief into darkness and silence1 to our permanent and rational thoughts4 ,sidenote3 ,naturalism sad4 ,it is a remarkable fact1 which may easily be misinterpreted1 that while all the benefits and pleasures of life seem to be associated with external things1 and all certain knowledge seems to describe material laws1 yet a deified nature has generally inspired a religion of melancholy4 ,why should the only intelligible philosophy seem to defeat reason and the chief means of benefiting mankind seem to blast our best hopes8 ,whence this profound aversion to so beautiful and fruitful a universe8 ,whence this persistent search for invisible regions and powers and for metaphysical explanations that can explain nothing1 while nature's voice without and within man cries aloud to him to look1 act1 and enjoy8 ,and when someone1 in protest against such senseless oracular prejudices1 has actually embraced the life and faith of nature and taught others to look to the natural world for all motives and sanctions1 expecting thus to refresh and marvellously to invigorate human life1 why have those innocent hopes failed so miserably8 ,why is that sensuous optimism we may call ,greek1 or that industrial optimism we may call ,american1 such a thin disguise for despair8 ,why does each melt away and become a mockery at the first approach of reflection8 ,why has man's conscience in the end invariably rebelled against naturalism and reverted in some form or other to a cultus of the unseen8 ,sidenote3 ,the soul akin to the eternal and ideal4 ,we may answer in the words of ,saint ,paul3 because things seen are temporal and things not seen are eternal4 ,and we may add1 remembering our analysis of the objects inhabiting the mind1 that the eternal is the truly human1 that which is akin to the first indispensable products of intelligence1 which arise by the fusion of successive images in discourse1 and transcend the particular in time1 peopling the mind with permanent and recognisable objects1 and strengthening it with a synthetic1 dramatic apprehension of itself and its own experience4 ,concretion in existence1 on the contrary1 yields essentially detached and empirical unities1 foreign to mind in spite of their order1 and unintelligible in spite of their clearness4 ,reason fails to assimilate in them precisely that which makes them real1 namely1 their presence here and now1 in this order and number4 ,the form and quality of them we can retain1 domesticate1 and weave into the texture of reflection1 but their existence and individuality remain a datum of sense needing to be verified anew at every moment and actually receiving continual verification or disproof while we live in this world4 8,this world0 we call it1 not without justifiable pathos1 for many other worlds are conceivable and if discovered might prove more rational and intelligible and more akin to the soul than this strange universe which man has hitherto always looked upon with increasing astonishment4 ,the materials of experience are no sooner in hand than they are transformed by intelligence1 reduced to those permanent presences1 those natures and relations1 which alone can live in discourse4 ,those materials1 rearranged into the abstract summaries we call history or science1 or pieced out into the reconstructions and extensions we call poetry or religion1 furnish us with ideas of as many dream-worlds as we please1 all nearer to reason's ideal than is the actual chaos of perceptual experience1 and some nearer to the heart's desire4 ,when an empirical philosophy1 therefore1 calls us back from the irresponsible flights of imagination to the shock of sense and tries to remind us that in this alone we touch existence and come upon fact1 we feel dispossessed of our nature and cramped in our life4 ,the actuality possessed by external experience cannot make up for its instability1 nor the applicability of scientific principles for their hypothetical character4 ,the dependence upon sense1 which we are reduced to when we consider the world of existences1 becomes a too plain hint of our essential impotence and mortality1 while the play of logical fancy1 though it remain inevitable1 is saddened by a consciousness of its own insignificance4 ,sidenote3 ,her inexperience4 ,that dignity1 then1 which inheres in logical ideas and their affinity to moral enthusiasm1 springs from their congruity with the primary habits of intelligence and idealisation4 ,the soul or self or personality1 which in sophisticated social life is so much the centre of passion and concern1 is itself an idea1 a concretion in discourse2 and the level on which it swims comes to be1 by association and affinity1 the region of all the more vivid and massive human interests4 ,the pleasures which lie beneath it are ignored1 and the ideals which lie above it are not perceived4 ,aversion to an empirical or naturalistic philosophy accordingly expresses a sort of logical patriotism and attachment to homespun ideas4 ,the actual is too remote and unfriendly to the dreamer2 to understand it he has to learn a foreign tongue1 which his native prejudice imagines to be unmeaning and unpoetical4 ,the truth is1 however1 that nature's language is too rich for man2 and the discomfort he feels when he is compelled to use it merely marks his lack of education4 ,there is nothing cheaper than idealism4 ,it can be had by merely not observing the ineptitude of our chance prejudices1 and by declaring that the first rhymes that have struck our ear are the eternal and necessary harmonies of the world4 ,sidenote3 ,platonism spontaneous4 ,the thinker's bias is naturally favourable to logical ideas4 ,the man of reflection will attribute1 as far as possible1 validity and reality to these alone4 ,platonism remains the classic instance of this way of thinking4 ,living in an age of rhetoric1 with an education that dealt with nothing but ideal entities1 verbal1 moral1 or mathematical1 ,plato saw in concretions in discourse the true elements of being4 ,definable meanings1 being the terms of thought1 must also1 he fancied1 be the constituents of reality4 ,and with that directness and audacity which was possible to the ancients1 and of which ,pythagoreans and ,eleatics had already given brilliant examples1 he set up these terms of discourse1 like the ,pythagorean numbers1 for absolute and eternal entities1 existing before all things1 revealed in all things1 giving the cosmic artificer his models and the creature his goal4 ,by some inexplicable necessity the creation had taken place4 ,the ideas had multiplied themselves in a flux of innumerable images which could be recognised by their resemblance to their originals1 but were at once cancelled and expunged by virtue of their essential inadequacy4 ,what sounds are to words and words to thoughts1 that was a thing to its idea4 ,sidenote3 ,its essential fidelity to the ideal4 ,plato1 however1 retained the moral and significant essence of his ideas1 and while he made them ideal absolutes1 fixed meanings antecedent to their changing expressions1 never dreamed that they could be natural existences1 or psychological beings4 ,in an original thinker1 in one who really thinks and does not merely argue1 to call a thing supernatural1 or spiritual1 or intelligible is to declare that it is no thing at all1 no existence actual or possible1 but a value1 a term of thought1 a merely ideal principle2 and the more its reality in such a sense is insisted on the more its incommensurability with brute existence is asserted4 ,to express this ideal reality myth is the natural vehicle2 a vehicle ,plato could avail himself of all the more freely that he inherited a religion still plastic and conscious of its poetic essence1 and did not have to struggle1 like his modern disciples1 with the arrested childishness of minds that for a hundred generations have learned their metaphysics in the cradle4 ,his ideas1 although their natural basis was ignored1 were accordingly always ideal2 they always represented meanings and functions and were never degraded from the moral to the physical sphere4 ,the counterpart of this genuine ideality was that the theory retained its moral force and did not degenerate into a bewildered and idolatrous pantheism4 ,plato conceived the soul's destiny to be her emancipation from those material things which in this illogical apparition were so alien to her essence4 ,she should return1 after her baffling and stupefying intercourse with the world of sense and accident1 into the native heaven of her ideas4 ,for animal desires were no less illusory1 and yet no less significant1 than sensuous perceptions4 ,they engaged man in the pursuit of the good and taught him1 through disappointment1 to look for it only in those satisfactions which can be permanent and perfect4 ,love1 like intelligence1 must rise from appearance to reality1 and rest in that divine world which is the fulfilment of the human4 ,sidenote3 ,equal rights of empiricism4 ,a geometrician does a good service when he declares and explicates the nature of the triangle1 an object suggested by many casual and recurring sensations4 ,his service is not less real1 even if less obvious1 when he arrests some fundamental concretion in discourse1 and formulates the first principles of logic4 ,mastering such definitions1 sinking into the dry life of such forms1 he may spin out and develop indefinitely1 in the freedom of his irresponsible logic1 their implications and congruous extensions1 opening by his demonstration a depth of knowledge which we should otherwise never have discovered in ourselves4 ,but if the geometer had a fanatical zeal and forbade us to consider space and the triangles it contains otherwise than as his own ideal science considers them3 forbade us1 for instance1 to inquire how we came to perceive those triangles or that space2 what organs and senses conspired in furnishing the idea of them2 what material objects show that character1 and how they came to offer themselves to our observation--then surely the geometer would qualify his service with a distinct injury and while he opened our eyes to one fascinating vista would tend to blind them to others no less tempting and beautiful4 ,for the naturalist and psychologist have also their rights and can tell us things well worth knowing2 nor will any theory they may possibly propose concerning the origin of spatial ideas and their material embodiments ever invalidate the demonstrations of geometry4 ,these1 in their hypothetical sphere1 are perfectly autonomous and self-generating1 and their applicability to experience will hold so long as the initial images they are applied to continue to abound in perception4 ,if we awoke to-morrow in a world containing nothing but music1 geometry would indeed lose its relevance to our future experience2 but it would keep its ideal cogency1 and become again a living language if any spatial objects should ever reappear in sense4 ,the history of such reappearances--natural history--is meantime a good subject for observation and experiment4 ,chronicler and critic can always approach experience with a method complementary to the deductive methods pursued in mathematics and logic3 instead of developing the import of a definition1 he can investigate its origin and describe its relation to other disparate phenomena4 ,the mathematician develops the import of given ideas2 the psychologist investigates their origin and describes their relation to the rest of human experience4 ,so the prophet develops the import of his trance1 and the theologian the import of the prophecy3 which prevents not the historian from coming later and showing the origin1 the growth1 and the possible function of that maniacal sort of wisdom4 ,true1 the theologian commonly dreads a critic more than does the geometer1 but this happens only because the theologian has probably not developed the import of his facts with any austerity or clearness1 but has distorted that ideal interpretation with all sorts of concessions and side-glances at other tenets to which he is already pledged1 so that he justly fears1 when his methods are exposed1 that the religious heart will be alienated from him and his conclusions be left with no foothold in human nature4 ,if he had not been guilty of such misrepresentation1 no history or criticism that reviewed his construction would do anything but recommend it to all those who found in themselves the primary religious facts and religious faculties which that construction had faithfully interpreted in its ideal deductions and extensions4 ,all who perceived the facts would thus learn their import2 and theology would reveal to the soul her natural religion1 just as ,euclid reveals to architects and navigators the structure of natural space1 so that they value his demonstrations not only for their hypothetical cogency but for their practical relevance and truth4 ,sidenote3 ,logic dependent on fact for its importance1 ,now1 like the geometer and ingenuous theologian that he was1 ,plato developed the import of moral and logical experience4 ,even his followers1 though they might give rein to narrower and more fantastic enthusiasms1 often unveiled secrets1 hidden in the oracular intent of the heart1 which might never have been disclosed but for their lessons4 ,but with a zeal unbecoming so well grounded a philosophy they turned their backs upon the rest of wisdom1 they disparaged the evidence of sense1 they grew hot against the ultimate practical sanctions furnished by impulse and pleasure1 they proscribed beauty in art 7where ,plato had proscribed chiefly what to a fine sensibility is meretricious ugliness71 and in a word they sought to abolish all human activities other than the one pre-eminent in themselves4 ,in revenge for their hostility the great world has never given them more than a distrustful admiration and1 confronted daily by the evident truths they denied1 has encouraged itself to forget the truths they asserted4 ,for they had the bias of reflection and man is born to do more than reflect2 they attributed reality and validity only to logical ideas1 and man finds other objects continually thrusting themselves before his eyes1 claiming his affection and controlling his fortunes4 ,the most legitimate constructions of reason soon become merely speculative1 soon pass1 ,i mean1 beyond the sphere of practical application2 and the man of affairs1 adjusting himself at every turn to the opaque brutality of fact1 loses his respect for the higher reaches of logic and forgets that his recognition of facts themselves is an application of logical principles4 ,in his youth1 perhaps1 he pursued metaphysics1 which are the love-affairs of the understanding2 now he is wedded to convention and seeks in the passion he calls business or in the habit he calls duty some substitute for natural happiness4 ,he fears to question the value of his life1 having found that such questioning adds nothing to his powers2 and he thinks the mariner would die of old age in port who should wait for reason to justify his voyage4 ,reason is indeed like the sad ,iphigenia whom her royal father1 the ,will1 must sacrifice before any wind can fill his sails4 ,the emanation of all things from the ,one involves not only the incarnation but the crucifixion of the ,logos4 ,reason must be eclipsed by its supposed expressions1 and can only shine in a darkness which does not comprehend it4 ,for reason is essentially hypothetical and subsidiary1 and can never constitute what it expresses in man1 nor what it recognises in nature4 ,sidenote3 and for its subsistence4 ,if logic should refuse to make this initial self-sacrifice and to subordinate itself to impulse and fact1 it would immediately become irrational and forfeit its own justification4 ,for it exists by virtue of a human impulse and in answer to a human need4 ,to ask a man1 in the satisfaction of a metaphysical passion1 to forego every other good is to render him fanatical and to shut his eyes daily to the sun in order that he may see better by the star-light4 ,the radical fault of rationalism is not any incidental error committed in its deductions1 although such necessarily abound in every human system4 ,its great original sin is its denial of its own basis and its refusal to occupy its due place in the world1 an ignorant fear of being invalidated by its history and dishonoured1 as it were1 if its ancestry is hinted at4 ,only bastards should fear that fate1 and criticism would indeed be fatal to a bastard philosophy1 to one that does not spring from practical reason and has no roots in life4 ,but those products of reason which arise by reflection on fact1 and those spontaneous and demonstrable systems of ideas which can be verified in experience1 and thus serve to render the facts calculable and articulate1 will lose nothing of their lustre by discovering their lineage4 ,so the idea of nature remains true after psychology has analysed its origin1 and not only true1 but beautiful and beneficent4 ,for unlike many negligible products of speculative fancy it is woven out of recurrent perceptions into a hypothetical cause from which further perceptions can be deduced as they are actually experienced4 ,such a mechanism once discovered confirms itself at every breath we draw1 and surrounds every object in history and nature with infinite and true suggestions1 making it doubly interesting1 fruitful1 and potent over the mind4 ,the naturalist accordingly welcomes criticism because his constructions1 though no less hypothetical and speculative than the idealist's dreams1 are such legitimate and fruitful fictions that they are obvious truths4 ,for truth1 at the intelligible level where it arises1 means not sensible fact1 but valid ideation1 verified hypothesis1 and inevitable1 stable inference4 ,if the idealist fears and deprecates any theory of his own origin and function1 he is only obeying the instinct of self-preservation2 for he knows very well that his past will not bear examination4 ,he is heir to every superstition and by profession an apologist2 his deepest vocation is to rescue1 by some logical tour de force1 what spontaneously he himself would have taken for a consecrated error4 ,now history and criticism would involve1 as he instinctively perceives1 the reduction of his doctrines to their pragmatic value1 to their ideal significance for real life4 ,but he detests any admission of relativity in his doctrines1 all the more because he cannot avow his reasons for detesting it2 and zeal1 here as in so many cases1 becomes the cover and evidence of a bad conscience4 ,bigotry and craft1 with a rhetorical vilification of enemies1 then come to reinforce in the prophet that natural limitation of his interests which turns his face away from history and criticism2 until his system1 in its monstrous unreality and disingenuousness1 becomes intolerable1 and provokes a general revolt in which too often the truth of it is buried with the error in a common oblivion4 ,sidenote3 ,reason and docility4 ,if idealism is intrenched in the very structure of human reason1 empiricism represents all those energies of the external universe which1 as ,spinoza says1 must infinitely exceed the energies of man4 ,if meditation breeds science1 wisdom comes by disillusion1 even on the subject of science itself4 ,docility to the facts makes the sanity of science4 ,reason is only half grown and not really distinguishable from imagination so long as she cannot check and recast her own processes wherever they render the moulds of thought unfit for their subject-matter4 ,docility is1 as we have seen1 the deepest condition of reason's existence2 for if a form of mental synthesis were by chance developed which was incapable of appropriating the data of sense1 these data could not be remembered or introduced at all into a growing and cumulative experience4 ,sensations would leave no memorial2 while logical thoughts would play idly1 like so many parasites in the mind1 and ultimately languish and die of inanition4 ,to be nourished and employed1 intelligence must have developed such structure and habits as will enable it to assimilate what food comes in its way2 so that the persistence of any intellectual habit is a proof that it has some applicability1 however partial1 to the facts of sentience4 ,sidenote3 ,applicable thought and clarified experience4 ,this applicability1 the prerequisite of significant thought1 is also its eventual test2 and the gathering of new experiences1 the consciousness of more and more facts crowding into the memory and demanding co-ordination1 is at once the presentation to reason of her legitimate problem and a proof that she is already at work4 ,it is a presentation of her problem1 because reason is not a faculty of dreams but a method in living2 and by facing the flux of sensations and impulses that constitute mortal life with the gift of ideal construction and the aspiration toward eternal goods1 she is only doing her duty and manifesting what she is4 ,to accumulate facts1 moreover1 is in itself to prove that rational activity is already awakened1 because a consciousness of multitudinous accidents diversifying experience involves a wide scope in memory1 good methods of classification1 and keen senses1 so that all working together they may collect many observations4 ,memory and all its instruments are embodiments1 on a modest scale1 of rational activities which in theory and speculation reappear upon a higher level4 ,the expansion of the mind in point of retentiveness and wealth of images is as much an advance in knowledge as is its development in point of organisation4 ,the structure may be widened at the base as well as raised toward its ideal summit1 and while a mass of information imperfectly digested leaves something still for intelligence to do1 it shows at the same time how much intelligence has done already4 ,the function of reason is to dominate experience2 and obviously openness to new impressions is no less necessary to that end than is the possession of principles by which new impressions may be interpreted4 ,,chapter ,,ix--,,how ,,thought ,,is ,,practical ,sidenote3 ,functional relations of mind and body4 ,nothing is more natural or more congruous with all the analogies of experience than that animals should feel and think4 ,the relation of mind to body1 of reason to nature1 seems to be actually this3 when bodies have reached a certain complexity and vital equilibrium1 a sense begins to inhabit them which is focussed upon the preservation of that body and on its reproduction4 ,this sense1 as it becomes reflective and expressive of physical welfare1 points more and more to its own persistence and harmony1 and generates the ,life of ,reason4 ,nature is reason's basis and theme2 reason is nature's consciousness2 and1 from the point of view of that consciousness when it has arisen1 reason is also nature's justification and goal4 ,to separate things so closely bound together as are mind and body1 reason and nature1 is consequently a violent and artificial divorce1 and a man of judgment will instinctively discredit any philosophy in which it is decreed4 ,but to avoid divorce it is well first to avoid unnatural unions1 and not to attribute to our two elements1 which must be partners for life1 relations repugnant to their respective natures and offices4 ,now the body is an instrument1 the mind its function1 the witness and reward of its operation4 ,mind is the body's entelechy1 a value which accrues to the body when it has reached a certain perfection1 of which it would be a pity1 so to speak1 that it should remain unconscious2 so that while the body feeds the mind the mind perfects the body1 lifting it and all its natural relations and impulses into the moral world1 into the sphere of interests and ideas4 ,no connection could be closer than this reciprocal involution1 as nature and life reveal it2 but the connection is natural1 not dialectical4 ,the union will be denaturalised and1 so far as philosophy goes1 actually destroyed1 if we seek to carry it on into logical equivalence4 ,if we isolate the terms mind and body and study the inward implications of each apart1 we shall never discover the other4 ,that matter cannot1 by transposition of its particles1 become what we call consciousness1 is an admitted truth2 that mind cannot become its own occasions or determine its own march1 though it be a truth not recognised by all philosophers1 is in itself no less obvious4 ,matter1 dialectically studied1 makes consciousness seem a superfluous and unaccountable addendum2 mind1 studied in the same way1 makes nature an embarrassing idea1 a figment which ought to be subservient to conscious aims and perfectly transparent1 but which remains opaque and overwhelming4 ,in order to escape these sophistications1 it suffices to revert to immediate observation and state the question in its proper terms3 nature lives1 and perception is a private echo and response to ambient motions4 ,the soul is the voice of the body's interests2 in watching them a man defines the world that sustains him and that conditions all his satisfactions4 ,in discerning his origin he christens ,nature by the eloquent name of mother1 under which title she enters the universe of discourse4 ,simultaneously he discerns his own existence and marks off the inner region of his dreams4 ,and it behooves him not to obliterate these discoveries4 ,by trying to give his mind false points of attachment in nature he would disfigure not only nature but also that reason which is so much the essence of his life4 ,sidenote3 ,they form one natural life4 ,consciousness1 then1 is the expression of bodily life and the seat of all its values4 ,its place in the natural world is like that of its own ideal products1 art1 religion1 or science2 it translates natural relations into synthetic and ideal symbols by which things are interpreted with reference to the interests of consciousness itself4 ,this representation is also an existence and has its place along with all other existences in the bosom of nature4 ,in this sense its connection with its organs1 and with all that affects the body or that the body affects1 is a natural connection4 ,if the word cause did not suggest dialectical bonds we might innocently say that thought was a link in the chain of natural causes4 ,it is at least a link in the chain of natural events2 for it has determinate antecedents in the brain and senses and determinate consequents in actions and words4 ,but this dependence and this efficacy have nothing logical about them2 they are habitual collocations in the world1 like lightning and thunder4 ,a more minute inspection of psycho-physical processes1 were it practicable1 would doubtless disclose undreamed of complexities and harmonies in them2 the mathematical and dynamic relations of stimulus and sensation might perhaps be formulated with precision4 ,but the terms used in the equation1 their quality and inward habit1 would always remain data which the naturalist would have to assume after having learned them by inspection4 ,movement could never be deduced dialectically or graphically from thought nor thought from movement4 ,indeed no natural relation is in a different case4 ,neither gravity1 nor chemical reaction1 nor life and reproduction1 nor time1 space1 and motion themselves are logically deducible1 nor intelligible in terms of their limits4 ,the phenomena have to be accepted at their face value and allowed to retain a certain empirical complexity2 otherwise the seed of all science is sterilised and calculation cannot proceed for want of discernible and pregnant elements4 ,how fine nature's habits may be1 where repetition begins1 and down to what depth a mathematical treatment can penetrate1 is a question for the natural sciences to solve4 ,whether consciousness1 for instance1 accompanies vegetative life1 or even all motion1 is a point to be decided solely by empirical analogy4 ,when the exact physical conditions of thought are discovered in man1 we may infer how far thought is diffused through the universe1 for it will be coextensive with the conditions it will have been shown to have4 ,now1 in a very rough way1 we know already what these conditions are4 ,they are first the existence of an organic body and then its possession of adaptable instincts1 of instincts that can be modified by experience4 ,this capacity is what an observer calls intelligence2 docility is the observable half of reason4 ,when an animal winces at a blow and readjusts his pose1 we say he feels2 and we say he thinks when we see him brooding over his impressions1 and find him launching into a new course of action after a silent decoction of his potential impulses4 ,conversely1 when observation covers both the mental and the physical process1 that is1 in our own experience1 we find that felt impulses1 the conceived objects for which they make1 and the values they determine are all correlated with animal instincts and external impressions4 ,a desire is the inward sign of a physical proclivity to act1 an image in sense is the sign in most cases of some material object in the environment and always1 we may presume1 of some cerebral change4 ,the brain seems to simmer like a caldron in which all sorts of matters are perpetually transforming themselves into all sorts of shapes4 ,when this cerebral reorganisation is pertinent to the external situation and renders the man1 when he resumes action1 more a master of his world1 the accompanying thought is said to be practical2 for it brings a consciousness of power and an earnest of success4 ,cerebral processes are of course largely hypothetical4 ,theory suggests their existence1 and experience can verify that theory only in an indirect and imperfect manner4 ,the addition of a physical substratum to all thinking is only a scientific expedient1 a hypothesis expressing the faith that nature is mechanically intelligible even beyond the reaches of minute verification4 ,the accompanying consciousness1 on the other hand1 is something intimately felt by each man in his own person2 it is a portion of crude and immediate experience4 ,that it accompanies changes in his body and in the world is not an inference for him but a datum4 ,but when crude experience is somewhat refined and the soul1 at first mingled with every image1 finds that it inhabits only her private body1 to whose fortunes hers are altogether wedded1 we begin to imagine that we know the cosmos at large better than the spirit2 for beyond the narrow limits of our own person only the material phase of things is open to our observation4 ,to add a mental phase to every part and motion of the cosmos is then seen to be an audacious fancy4 ,it violates all empirical analogy1 for the phenomenon which feeling accompanies in crude experience is not mere material existence1 but reactive organisation and docility4 ,sidenote3 ,artifices involved in separating them4 ,the limits set to observation1 however1 render the mental and material spheres far from coincident1 and even in a rough way mutually supplementary1 so that human reflection has fallen into a habit of interlarding them4 ,the world1 instead of being a living body1 a natural system with moral functions1 has seemed to be a bisectible hybrid1 half material and half mental1 the clumsy conjunction of an automaton with a ghost4 ,these phases1 taken in their abstraction1 as they first forced themselves on human attention1 have been taken for independent and separable facts4 ,experience1 remaining in both provinces quite sensuous and superficial1 has accordingly been allowed to link this purely mental event with that purely mechanical one4 ,the linkage is practically not deceptive1 because mental transformations are indeed signs of changes in bodies2 and so long as a cause is defined merely as a sign1 mental and physical changes may truly be said to cause one another4 ,but so soon as this form of augury tries to overcome its crude empiricism and to establish phenomenal laws1 the mental factor has to fall out of the efficient process and be represented there by what1 upon accurate examination1 it is seen to be really the sign of--,i mean by some physiological event4 ,if philosophers of the ,cartesian school had taken to heart1 as the ,german transcendentalists did1 the cogito ergo sum of their master1 and had considered that a physical world is1 for knowledge1 nothing but an instrument to explain sensations and their order1 they might have expected this collapse of half their metaphysics at the approach of their positive science3 for if mental existence was to be kept standing only by its supposed causal efficacy nothing could prevent the whole world from becoming presently a bte-machine4 ,psychic events have no links save through their organs and their objects2 the function of the material world is1 indeed1 precisely to supply their linkage4 ,the internal relations of ideas1 on the other hand1 are dialectical2 their realm is eternal and absolutely irrelevant to the march of events4 ,if we must speak1 therefore1 of causal relations between mind and body1 we should say that matter is the pervasive cause of mind's distribution1 and mind the pervasive cause of matter's discovery and value4 ,to ask for an efficient cause1 to trace back a force or investigate origins1 is to have already turned one's face in the direction of matter and mechanical laws3 no success in that undertaking can fail to be a triumph for materialism4 ,to ask for a justification1 on the other hand1 is to turn no less resolutely in the direction of ideal results and actualities from which instrumentality and further use have been eliminated4 ,spirit is useless1 being the end of things3 but it is not vain1 since it alone rescues all else from vanity4 ,it is called practical when it is prophetic of its own better fulfilments1 which is the case whenever forces are being turned to good uses1 whenever an organism is exploring its relations and putting forth new tentacles with which to grasp the world4 ,sidenote3 ,consciousness expresses vital equilibrium and docility4 ,we saw in the beginning that the exigences of bodily life gave consciousness its first articulation4 ,a bodily feat1 like nutrition or reproduction1 is celebrated by a festival in the mind1 and consciousness is a sort of ritual solemnising by prayer1 jubilation1 or mourning1 the chief episodes in the body's fortunes4 ,the organs1 by their structure1 select the impressions possible to them from the divers influences abroad in the world1 all of which1 if animal organisms had learned to feed upon them1 might plausibly have offered a basis for sensation4 ,every instinct or habitual impulse further selects from the passing bodily affections those that are pertinent to its own operation and which consequently adhere to it and modify its reactive machinery4 ,prevalent and notable sensations are therefore signs1 presumably marking the presence of objects important for the body's welfare or for the execution of its predestined offices4 ,so that not only are the soul's aims transcripts of the body's tendencies1 but all ideas are grafted upon the interplay of these tendencies with environing forces4 ,early images hover about primary wants as highest conceptions do about ultimate achievements4 ,sidenote3 ,its worthlessness as a cause and value as an expression ,thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action1 no change a progress2 but thought is in no way instrumental or servile2 it is an experience realised1 not a force to be used4 ,that same spontaneity in nature which has suggested a good must be trusted to fulfil it4 ,if we look fairly at the actual resources of our minds we perceive that we are as little informed concerning the means and processes of action as concerning the reason why our motives move us4 ,to execute the simplest intention we must rely on fate3 our own acts are mysteries to us4 ,do ,i know how ,i open my eyes or how ,i walk down stairs8 ,is it the supervising wisdom of consciousness that guides me in these acts8 ,is it the mind that controls the bewildered body and points out the way to physical habits uncertain of their affinities8 ,or is it not much rather automatic inward machinery that executes the marvellous work1 while the mind catches here and there some glimpse of the operation1 now with delight and adhesion1 now with impotent rebellion8 ,when impulses work themselves out unimpeded we say we act2 when they are thwarted we say we are acted upon2 but in neither case do we in the least understand the natural history of what is occurring4 ,the mind at best vaguely forecasts the result of action3 a schematic verbal sense of the end to be accomplished possibly hovers in consciousness while the act is being performed2 but this premonition is itself the sense of a process already present and betrays the tendency at work2 it can obviously give no aid or direction to the unknown mechanical process that produced it and that must realise its own prophecy1 if that prophecy is to be realised at all4 ,that such an unknown mechanism exists1 and is adequate to explain every so-called decision1 is indeed a hypothesis far outrunning detailed verification1 although conceived by legitimate analogy with whatever is known about natural processes2 but that the mind is not the source of itself or its own transformations is a matter of present experience2 for the world is an unaccountable datum1 in its existence1 in its laws1 and in its incidents4 ,the highest hopes of science and morality look only to discovering those laws and bringing one set of incidents--facts of perception--into harmony with another set--facts of preference4 ,this hoped-for issue1 if it comes1 must come about in the mind2 but the mind cannot be its cause since1 by hypothesis1 it does not possess the ideas it seeks nor has power to realise the harmonies it desiderates4 ,these have to be waited for and begged of destiny2 human will1 not controlling its basis1 cannot possibly control its effects4 ,its existence and its efforts have at best the value of a good omen4 ,they show in what direction natural forces are moving in so far as they are embodied in given men4 ,sidenote3 ,thought's march automatic and thereby implicated in events4 ,men1 like all things else in the world1 are products and vehicles of natural energy1 and their operation counts4 ,but their conscious will1 in its moral assertiveness1 is merely a sign of that energy and of that will's eventual fortunes4 ,dramatic terror and dramatic humour both depend on contrasting the natural pregnancy of a passion with its conscious intent4 ,everything in human life is ominous1 even the voluntary acts4 ,we cannot1 by taking thought1 add a cubit to our stature1 but we may build up a world without meaning it4 ,man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence4 ,a will that represents many active forces1 and is skilful in divination and augury1 may long boast to be almighty without being contradicted by the event4 ,sidenote3 ,contemplative essence of action4 ,that thought is not self-directive appears best in the most immaterial processes4 ,in strife against external forces men1 being ignorant of their deeper selves1 attribute the obvious effects of their action to their chance ideas2 but when the process is wholly internal the real factors are more evenly represented in consciousness and the magical1 involuntary nature of life is better perceived4 ,my hand1 guided by ,i know not what machinery1 is at this moment adding syllable to syllable upon this paper1 to the general fulfilment1 perhaps1 of my felt intent1 yet giving that intent an articulation wholly unforeseen1 and often disappointing4 ,the thoughts to be expressed simmer half-consciously in my brain4 ,i feel their burden and tendency without seeing their form1 until the mechanical train of impulsive association1 started by the perusal of what precedes or by the accidental emergence of some new idea1 lights the fuse and precipitates the phrases4 ,if this happens in the most reflective and deliberate of activities1 like this of composition1 how much more does it happen in positive action1 8,the die is cast10 said ,caesar1 feeling a decision in himself of which he could neither count nor weigh the multitudinous causes2 and so says every strong and clear intellect1 every well-formed character1 seizing at the same moment with comprehensive instinct both its purposes and the means by which they shall be attained4 ,only the fool1 whose will signifies nothing1 boasts to have created it himself4 ,we must not seek the function of thought1 then1 in any supposed power to discover either ends not suggested by natural impulse or means to the accomplishment of those irrational ends4 ,attention is utterly powerless to change or create its objects in either respect2 it rather registers without surprise--for it expects nothing in particular--and watches eagerly the images bubbling up in the living mind and the processes evolving there4 ,these processes are themselves full of potency and promise2 will and reflection are no more inconsequential than any other processes bound by natural links to the rest of the world4 ,even if an atomic mechanism suffices to mark the concatenation of everything in nature1 including the mind1 it cannot rob what it abstracts from of its natural weight and reality3 a thread that may suffice to hold the pearls together is not the whole cause of the necklace4 ,but this pregnancy and implication of thought in relation to its natural environment is purely empirical4 ,since natural connection is merely a principle of arrangement by which the contiguities of things may be described and inferred1 there is no difficulty in admitting consciousness and all its works into the web and woof of nature4 ,each psychic episode would be heralded by its material antecedents2 its transformations would be subject to mechanical laws1 which would also preside over the further transition from thought into its material expression4 ,sidenote3 ,mechanical efficacy alien to thought's essence4 ,this inclusion of mind in nature1 however1 is as far as possible from constituting the mind's function and value1 or its efficacy in a moral and rational sense4 ,to have prepared changes in matter would give no rationality to mind unless those changes in turn paved the way to some better mental existence4 ,the worth of natural efficacy is therefore always derivative2 the utility of mind would be no more precious than the utility of matter2 both borrow all their worth from the part they may play empirically in introducing those moral values which are intrinsic and self-sufficing4 ,in so far as thought is instrumental it is not worth having1 any more than matter1 except for its promise2 it must terminate in something truly profitable and ultimate which1 being good in itself1 may lend value to all that led up to it4 ,but this ultimate good is itself consciousness1 thought1 rational activity2 so that what instrumental mentality may have preceded might be abolished without loss1 if matter suffices to sustain reason in being2 or if that instrumental mentality is worth retaining1 it is so only because it already contains some premonition and image of its own fulfilment4 ,in a word1 the value of thought is ideal4 ,the material efficacy which may be attributed to it is the proper efficacy of matter--an efficacy which matter would doubtless claim if we knew enough of its secret mechanism4 ,and when that imputed and incongruous utility was subtracted from ideas they would appear in their proper form of expressions1 realisations1 ultimate fruits4 ,sidenote3 ,consciousness transcendental4 ,the incongruity of making thought1 in its moral and logical essence1 an instrument in the natural world will appear from a different point of view if we shift the discussion for a moment to a transcendental level4 ,since the material world is an object for thought1 and potential in relation to immediate experience1 it can hardly lie in the same plane of reality with the thought to which it appears4 ,the spectator on this side of the foot-lights1 while surely regarded by the play as a whole1 cannot expect to figure in its mechanism or to see himself strutting among the actors on the boards4 ,he listens and is served1 being at once impotent and supreme4 ,it has been well said that ,only the free divine the laws1 ,the causeless only know the cause4 ,conversely1 what in such a transcendental sense is causeless and free will evidently not be causal or determinant1 being something altogether universal and notional1 without inherent determinations or specific affinities4 ,the objects figuring in consciousness will have implications and will require causes2 not so the consciousness itself4 ,the ,ego to which all things appear equally1 whatever their form or history1 is the ground of nothing incidental3 no specific characters or order found in the world can be attributed to its efficacy4 ,the march of experience is not determined by the mere fact that experience exists4 ,another experience1 differently logical1 might be equally real4 ,consciousness is not itself dynamic1 for it has no body1 no idiosyncrasy or particular locus1 to be the point of origin for definite relationships4 ,it is merely an abstract name for the actuality of its random objects4 ,all force1 implication1 or direction inhere in the constitution of specific objects and live in their interplay4 ,logic is revealed to thought no less than nature is1 and even what we call invention or fancy is generated not by thought itself but by the chance fertility of nebulous objects1 floating and breeding in the primeval chaos4 ,where the natural order lapses1 if it ever does1 not mind or will or reason can possibly intervene to fill the chasm--for these are parcels and expressions of the natural order--but only nothingness and pure chance4 ,sidenote3 and transcendent4 ,thought is thus an expression of natural relations1 as will is of natural affinities2 yet consciousness of an object's value1 while it declares the blind disposition to pursue that object1 constitutes its entire worth4 ,apart from the pains and satisfactions involved1 an impulse and its execution would be alike destitute of importance4 ,it would matter nothing how chaotic or how orderly the world became1 or what animal bodies arose or perished there2 any tendencies afoot in nature1 whatever they might construct or dissolve1 would involve no progress or disaster1 since no preferences would exist to pronounce one eventual state of things better than another4 ,these preferences are in themselves1 if the dynamic order alone be considered1 works of supererogation1 expressing force but not producing it1 like a statue of ,hercules2 but the principle of such preferences1 the force they express and depend upon1 is some mechanical impulse itself involved in the causal process4 ,expression gives value to power1 and the strength of ,hercules would have no virtue in it had it contributed nothing to art and civilisation4 ,that conceived basis of all life which we call matter would be a mere potentiality1 an inferred instrument deprived of its function1 if it did not actually issue in life and consciousness4 ,what gives the material world a legitimate status and perpetual pertinence in human discourse is the conscious life it supports and carries in its own direction1 as a ship carries its passengers or rather as a passion carries its hopes4 ,conscious interests first justify and moralise the mechanisms they express4 ,eventual satisfactions1 while their form and possibility must be determined by animal tendencies1 alone render these tendencies vehicles of the good4 ,the direction in which benefit shall lie must be determined by irrational impulse1 but the attainment of benefit consists in crowning that impulse with its ideal achievement4 ,nature dictates what men shall seek and prompts them to seek it2 a possibility of happiness is thus generated and only its fulfilment would justify nature and man in their common venture4 ,sidenote3 ,it is the seat of value4 ,satisfaction is the touchstone of value2 without reference to it all talk about good and evil1 progress or decay1 is merely confused verbiage1 pure sophistry in which the juggler adroitly withdraws attention from what works the wonder--namely1 that human and moral colouring to which the terms he plays with owe whatever efficacy they have4 ,metaphysicians sometimes so define the good as to make it a matter of no importance2 not seldom they give that name to the sum of all evils4 ,a good1 absolute in the sense of being divorced from all natural demand and all possible satisfaction1 would be as remote as possible from goodness3 to call it good is mere disloyalty to morals1 brought about by some fantastic or dialectical passion4 ,in excellence there is an essential bias1 an opposition to the possible opposite2 this bias expresses a mechanical impulse1 a situation that has stirred the senses and the will4 ,impulse makes value possible2 and the value becomes actual when the impulse issues in processes that give it satisfaction and have a conscious worth4 ,character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character4,d ,that thought is nature's concomitant expression or entelechy1 never one of her instruments1 is a truth long ago divined by the more judicious thinkers1 like ,aristotle and ,spinoza2 but it has not met with general acceptance or even consideration4 ,it is obstructed by superficial empiricism1 which associates the better-known aspects of events directly together1 without considering what mechanical bonds may secretly unite them2 it is obstructed also by the traditional mythical idealism1 intent as this philosophy is on proving nature to be the expression of something ulterior and non-natural and on hugging the fatal misconception that ideals and eventual goods are creative and miraculous forces1 without perceiving that it thereby renders goods and ideals perfectly senseless2 for how can anything be a good at all to which some existing nature is not already directed8 ,it may therefore be worth while1 before leaving this phase of the subject1 to consider one or two prejudices which might make it sound paradoxical to say1 as we propose1 that ideals are ideal and nature natural4 ,sidenote3 ,apparent utility of pain ,sidenote3 ,its real impotence4 ,of all forms of consciousness the one apparently most useful is pain1 which is also the one most immersed in matter and most opposite to ideality and excellence4 ,its utility lies in the warning it gives3 in trying to escape pain we escape destruction4 ,that we desire to escape pain is certain2 its very definition can hardly go beyond the statement that pain is that element of feeling which we seek to abolish on account of its intrinsic quality4 ,that this desire1 however1 should know how to initiate remedial action is a notion contrary to experience and in itself unthinkable4 ,if pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved4 ,the bitterest quintessence of pain is its helplessness1 and our incapacity to abolish it4 ,the most intolerable torments are those we feel gaining upon us1 intensifying and prolonging themselves indefinitely4 ,this baffling quality1 so conspicuous in extreme agony1 is present in all pain and is perhaps its essence4 ,if we sought to describe by a circumlocution what is of course a primary sensation1 we might scarcely do better than to say that pain is consciousness at once intense and empty1 fixing attention on what contains no character1 and arrests all satisfactions without offering anything in exchange4 ,the horror of pain lies in its intolerable intensity and its intolerable tedium4 ,it can accordingly be cured either by sleep or by entertainment4 ,in itself it has no resource2 its violence is quite helpless and its vacancy offers no expedients by which it might be unknotted and relieved4 ,pain is not only impotent in itself but is a sign of impotence in the sufferer4 ,its appearance1 far from constituting its own remedy1 is like all other organic phenomena subject to the law of inertia and tends only to its own continuance4 ,a man's hatred of his own condition no more helps to improve it than hatred of other people tends to improve them4 ,if we allowed ourselves to speak in such a case of efficacy at all1 we should say that pain perpetuates and propagates itself in various ways1 now by weakening the system1 now by prompting convulsive efforts1 now by spreading to other beings through the contagion of sympathy or vengeance4 ,in fact1 however1 it merely betrays a maladjustment which has more or less natural stability4 ,it may be instantaneous only2 by its lack of equilibrium it may involve the immediate destruction of one of its factors4 ,in that case we fabulously say that the pain has instinctively removed its own cause4 ,pain is here apparently useful because it expresses an incipient tension which the self-preserving forces in the organism are sufficient to remove4 ,pain's appearance is then the sign for its instant disappearance2 not indeed by virtue of its inner nature or of any art it can initiate1 but merely by virtue of mechanical associations between its cause and its remedy4 ,the burned child dreads the fire and1 reading only the surface of his life1 fancies that the pain once felt and still remembered is the ground of his new prudence4 ,punishments1 however1 are not always efficacious1 as everyone knows who has tried to govern children or cities by the rod2 suffering does not bring wisdom nor even memory1 unless intelligence and docility are already there2 that is1 unless the friction which the pain betrayed sufficed to obliterate permanently one of the impulses in conflict4 ,this readjustment1 on which real improvement hangs and which alone makes 8experience0 useful1 does not correspond to the intensity or repetition of the pains endured2 it corresponds rather to such a plasticity in the organism that the painful conflict is no longer produced4 ,sidenote3 ,preformations involved4 ,threatened destruction would not involve pain unless that threatened destruction were being resisted2 so that the reaction which pain is supposed to cause must already be taking place before pain can be felt4 ,a will without direction cannot be thwarted2 so that inhibition cannot be the primary source of any effort or of any ideal4 ,determinate impulses must exist already for their inhibition to have taken place or for the pain to arise which is the sign of that inhibition4 ,the child's dread of the fire marks the acceleration of that impulse which1 when he was burned1 originally enabled him to withdraw his hand2 and if he did not now shrink in anticipation he would not remember the pain nor know to what to attach his terror4 ,sight now suffices to awaken the reaction which touch at first was needed to produce2 the will has extended its line of battle and thrown out its scouts farther afield2 and pain has been driven back to the frontiers of the spirit4 ,the conflicting reactions are now peripheral and feeble2 the pain involved in aversion is nothing to that once involved in the burn4 ,had this aversion to fire been innate1 as many aversions are1 no pain would have been caused1 because no profound maladjustment would have occurred4 ,the surviving attraction1 checked by fear1 is a remnant of the old disorganisation in the brain which was the seat of conflicting reactions4 ,sidenote3 ,its untoward significance4 ,to say that this conflict is the guide to its own issue is to talk without thinking4 ,the conflict is the sign of inadequate organisation1 or of non-adaptation in the given organism to the various stimuli which irritate it4 ,the reconstruction which follows this conflict1 when it indeed follows1 is of course a new and better adaptation2 so that what involves the pain may often be a process of training which directs reaction into new and smoother channels4 ,but the pain is present whether a permanent adaptation is being attained or not4 ,it is present in progressive dissolution and in hopeless and exhausting struggles far more than in education or in profitable correction4 ,toothache and sea-sickness1 birth-pangs and melancholia are not useful ills4 ,the intenser the pain the more probable its uselessness4 ,only in vanishing is it a sign of progress2 in occurring it is an omen of defeat1 just as disease is an omen of death1 although1 for those diseased already1 medicine and convalescence may be approaches to health again4 ,where a man's nature is out of gear and his instincts are inordinate1 suffering may be a sign that a dangerous peace1 in which impulse was carrying him ignorantly into paths without issue1 is giving place to a peace with security in which his reconstructed character may respond without friction to the world1 and enable him to gather a clearer experience and enjoy a purer vitality4 ,the utility of pain is thus apparent only1 and due to empirical haste in collating events that have no regular nor inward relation2 and even this imputed utility pain has only in proportion to the worthlessness of those who need it4 ,sidenote3 ,perfect function no unconscious4 ,a second current prejudice which may deserve notice suggests that an organ1 when its function is perfect1 becomes unconscious1 so that if adaptation were complete life would disappear4 ,the well-learned routine of any mechanical art passes into habit1 and habit into unconscious operation4 ,the virtuoso is not aware how he manipulates his instrument2 what was conscious labour in the beginning has become instinct and miracle in the end4 ,thus it might appear that to eliminate friction and difficulty would be to eliminate consciousness1 and therefore value1 from the world4 ,life would thus be involved in a contradiction and moral effort in an absurdity2 for while the constant aim of practice is perfection and that of labour ease1 and both are without meaning or standard unless directed to the attainment of these ends1 yet such attainment1 if it were actual1 would be worthless1 so that what alone justifies effort would lack justification and would in fact be incapable of existence4 ,the good musician must strive to play perfectly1 but1 alas1 we are told1 if he succeeded he would have become an automaton4 ,the good man must aspire to holiness1 but1 alas1 if he reached holiness his moral life would have evaporated4 ,these melodramatic prophecies1 however1 need not alarm us4 ,they are founded on nothing but rhetoric and small allegiance to any genuine good4 ,when we attain perfection of function we lose consciousness of the medium1 to become more clearly conscious of the result4 ,the eye that does its duty gives no report of itself and has no sense of muscular tension or weariness2 but it gives all the brighter and steadier image of the object seen4 ,consciousness is not lost when focussed1 and the labour of vision is abolished in its fruition4 ,so the musician1 could he play so divinely as to be unconscious of his body1 his instrument1 and the very lapse of time1 would be only the more absorbed in the harmony1 more completely master of its unities and beauty4 ,at such moments the body's long labour at last brings forth the soul4 ,life from its inception is simply some partial natural harmony raising its voice and bearing witness to its own existence2 to perfect that harmony is to round out and intensify that life4 ,this is the very secret of power1 of joy1 of intelligence4 ,not to have understood it is to have passed through life without understanding anything4 ,the analogy extends to morals1 where also the means may be advantageously forgotten when the end has been secured4 ,that leisure to which work is directed and that perfection in which virtue would be fulfilled are so far from being apathetic that they are states of pure activity1 by containing which other acts are rescued from utter passivity and unconsciousness4 ,impure feeling ranges between two extremes3 absolute want and complete satisfaction4 ,the former limit is reached in anguish1 madness1 or the agony of death1 when the accidental flux of things in contradiction has reached its maximum or vanishing point1 so that the contradiction and the flux themselves disappear by diremption4 ,such feeling denotes inward disorganisation and a hopeless conflict of reflex actions tending toward dissolution4 ,the second limit is reached in contemplation1 when anything is loved1 understood1 or enjoyed4 ,synthetic power is then at its height2 the mind can survey its experience and correlate all the motions it suggests4 ,power in the mind is exactly proportionate to representative scope1 and representative scope to rational activity4 ,a steady vision of all things in their true order and worth results from perfection of function and is its index2 it secures the greatest distinctness in thought together with the greatest decision1 wisdom1 and ease in action1 as the lightning is brilliant and quick4 ,it also secures1 so far as human energies avail1 its own perpetuity1 since what is perfectly adjusted within and without lasts long and goes far4 ,sidenote3 ,inchoate ethics4 ,to confuse means with ends and mistake disorder for vitality is not unnatural to minds that hear the hum of mighty workings but can imagine neither the cause nor the fruits of that portentous commotion4 ,all functions1 in such chaotic lives1 seem instrumental functions4 ,it is then supposed that what serves no further purpose can have no value1 and that he who suffers no offuscation can have no feeling and no life4 ,to attain an ideal seems to destroy its worth4 ,moral life1 at that low level1 is a fantastic game only1 not having come in sight of humane and liberal interests4 ,the barbarian's intensity is without seriousness and his passion without joy4 ,his philosophy1 which means to glorify all experience and to digest all vice1 is in truth an expression of pathetic innocence4 ,it betrays a rudimentary impulse to follow every beckoning hand1 to assume that no adventure and no bewitchment can be anything but glorious4 ,such an attitude is intelligible in one who has never seen anything worth seeing nor loved anything worth loving4 ,immaturity could go no farther than to acknowledge no limits defining will and happiness4 ,when such limits1 however1 are gradually discovered and an authoritative ideal is born of the marriage of human nature with experience1 happiness becomes at once definite and attainable2 for adjustment is possible to a world that has a fruitful and intelligible structure4 ,such incoherences1 which might well arise in ages without traditions1 may be preserved and fostered by superstition4 ,perpetual servile employments and subjection to an irrational society may render people incapable even of conceiving a liberal life4 ,they may come to think their happiness no longer separable from their misery and to fear the large emptiness1 as they deem it1 of a happy world4 ,like the prisoner of ,chillon1 after so long a captivity1 they would regain their freedom with a sigh4 ,the wholesome influences of nature1 however1 would soon revive their wills1 contorted by unnatural oppression1 and a vision of perfection would arise within them upon breathing a purer air4 ,freedom and perfection are synonymous with life4 ,the peace they bring is one whose names are also rapture1 power1 ,clear sight1 and love2 for these are parts of peace4 ,sidenote3 ,thought the entelechy of being4 ,thought belongs to the sphere of ultimate results4 ,what1 indeed1 could be more fitting than that consciousness1 which is self-revealing and transcendentally primary1 should be its own excuse for being and should contain its own total value1 together with the total value of everything else8 ,what could be more proper than that the whole worth of ideas should be ideal8 ,to make an idea instrumental would be to prostitute what1 being self-existent1 should be self-justifying4 ,that continual absoluteness which consciousness possesses1 since in it alone all heaven and earth are at any moment revealed1 ought to convince any radical and heart-searching philosopher that all values should be continually integrated and realised there1 where all energies are being momently focussed4 ,thought is a fulfilment2 its function is to lend utility to its causes and to make actual those conceived and subterranean processes which find in it their ultimate expression4 ,thought is nature represented2 it is potential energy producing life and becoming an actual appearance4 ,sidenote3 ,its exuberance4 ,the conditions of consciousness1 however1 are far from being its only theme4 ,as consciousness bears a transcendent relation to the dynamic world 7for it is actual and spiritual1 while the dynamic is potential and material7 so it may be exuberant and irresponsibly rich4 ,although its elements1 in point of distribution and derivation1 are grounded in matter1 as music is in vibrations1 yet in point of character the result may be infinitely redundant4 ,the complete musician would devote but a small part of his attention to the basis of music1 its mechanism1 psychology1 or history4 ,long before he had represented to his mind the causes of his art1 he would have proceeded to practise and enjoy it4 ,so sense and imagination1 passion and reason1 may enrich the soil that breeds them and cover it with a maze of flowers4 ,the theme of consciousness is accordingly far more than the material world which constitutes its basis1 though this also is one of its themes2 thought is no less at home in various expressions and embroideries with which the material world can be overlaid in imagination4 ,the material world is conceived by digging beneath experience to find its cause2 it is the efficacious structure and skeleton of things4 ,this is the subject of scientific retrospect and calculation4 ,the forces disclosed by physical studies are of course not directed to producing a mind that might merely describe them4 ,a force is expressed in many other ways than by being defined2 it may be felt1 resisted1 embodied1 transformed1 or symbolised4 ,forces work2 they are not1 like mathematical concepts1 exhausted in description4 ,from that matter which might be describable in mechanical formul there issue notwithstanding all manner of forms and harmonies1 visible1 audible1 imaginable1 and passionately prized4 ,every phase of the ideal world emanates from the natural and loudly proclaims its origin by the interest it takes in natural existences1 of which it gives a rational interpretation4 ,sense1 art1 religion1 society1 express nature exuberantly and in symbols long before science is added to represent1 by a different abstraction1 the mechanism which nature contains4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,d3 ,aristippus asked ,socrates 8whether he knew anything good1 so that if he answered by naming food or drink or money or health or strength or valour or anything of that sort1 he might at once show that it was sometimes an evil4 ,socrates1 however1 knew very well that if anything troubles us what we demand is its cure1 and he replied in the most pertinent fashion4 #8,are you asking me1' he said1 #8if ,i know anything good for a fever8' #8,oh1 no1' said the other4 #8,or for sore eyes8' #8,not that1 either4' #8,or for hunger8' #8,no1 not for hunger4' #8,well1 then1' said he1 #8if you ask me whether ,i know a good that is good for nothing1 ,i neither know it nor want to know it'0--,xenophon1 ,memorabilia1 iii41 #h4 ,,chapter ,x--,,the ,,measure ,,of ,,values ,,in ,,reflection ,sidenote3 ,honesty in hedonism4 ,to put value in pleasure and pain1 regarding a given quantity of pain as balancing a given quantity of pleasure1 is to bring to practical ethics a worthy intention to be clear and1 what is more precious1 an undoubted honesty not always found in those moralists who maintain the opposite opinion and care more for edification than for truth4 ,for in spite of all logical and psychological scruples1 conduct that should not justify itself somehow by the satisfactions secured and the pains avoided would not justify itself at all4 ,the most instinctive and unavoidable desire is forthwith chilled if you discover that its ultimate end is to be a preponderance of suffering2 and what arrests this desire is not fear or weakness but conscience in its most categorical and sacred guise4 ,who would not be ashamed to acknowledge or to propose so inhuman an action8 ,by sad experience rooted impulses may be transformed or even obliterated4 ,and quite intelligibly3 for the idea of pain is already the sign and the beginning of a certain stoppage4 ,to imagine failure is to interpret ideally a felt inhibition4 ,to prophesy a check would be impossible but for an incipient movement already meeting an incipient arrest4 ,intensified1 this prophecy becomes its own fulfilment and totally inhibits the opposed tendency4 ,therefore a mind that foresees pain to be the ultimate result of action cannot continue unreservedly to act1 seeing that its foresight is the conscious transcript of a recoil already occurring4 ,conversely1 the mind that surrenders itself wholly to any impulse must think that its execution would be delightful4 ,a perfectly wise and representative will1 therefore1 would aim only at what1 in its attainment1 could continue to be aimed at and approved2 and this is another way of saying that its aim would secure the maximum of satisfaction eventually possible4 ,sidenote3 ,necessary qualifications4 ,in spite1 however1 of this involution of pain and pleasure in all deliberate forecast and volition1 pain and pleasure are not the ultimate sources of value4 ,a correct psychology and logic cannot allow that an eventual and1 in strictness1 unpresentable feeling1 can determine any act or volition1 but must insist that1 on the contrary1 all beliefs about future experience1 with all premonition of its emotional quality1 is based on actual impulse and feeling2 so that the source of value is nothing but the inner fountain of life and imagination1 and the object of pursuit nothing but the ideal object1 counterpart of the present demand4 ,abstract satisfaction is not pursued1 but1 if the will and the environment are constant1 satisfaction will necessarily be felt in achieving the object desired4 ,a rejection of hedonistic psychology1 therefore1 by no means involves any opposition to eudmonism in ethics4 ,eudmonism is another name for wisdom3 there is no other moral morality4 ,any system that1 for some sinister reason1 should absolve itself from good-will toward all creatures1 and make it somehow a duty to secure their misery1 would be clearly disloyal to reason1 humanity1 and justice4 ,nor would it be hard1 in that case1 to point out what superstition1 what fantastic obsession1 or what private fury1 had made those persons blind to prudence and kindness in so plain a matter4 ,happiness is the only sanction of life2 where happiness fails1 existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment4 ,the question1 however1 what happiness shall consist in1 its complexion if it should once arise1 can only be determined by reference to natural demands and capacities2 so that while satisfaction by the attainment of ends can alone justify their pursuit1 this pursuit itself must exist first and be spontaneous1 thereby fixing the goals of endeavour and distinguishing the states in which satisfaction might be found4 ,natural disposition1 therefore1 is the principle of preference and makes morality and happiness possible4 ,sidenote3 ,the will must judge4 ,the standard of value1 like every standard1 must be one4 ,pleasures and pains are not only infinitely diverse but1 even if reduced to their total bulk and abstract opposition1 they remain two4 ,their values must be compared1 and obviously neither one can be the standard by which to judge the other4 ,this standard is an ideal involved in the judgment passed1 whatever that judgment may be4 ,thus when ,petrarch says that a thousand pleasures are not worth one pain1 he establishes an ideal of value deeper than either pleasure or pain1 an ideal which makes a life of satisfaction marred by a single pang an offence and a horror to his soul4 ,if our demand for rationality is less acute and the miscellaneous affirmations of the will carry us along with a well-fed indifference to some single tragedy within us1 we may aver that a single pang is only the thousandth part of a thousand pleasures and that a life so balanced is nine hundred and ninety-nine times better than nothing4 ,this judgment1 for all its air of mathematical calculation1 in truth expresses a choice as irrational as ,petrarch's4 ,it merely means that1 as a matter of fact1 the mixed prospect presented to us attracts our wills and attracts them vehemently4 ,so that the only possible criterion for the relative values of pains and pleasures is the will that chooses among them or among combinations of them2 nor can the intensity of pleasures and pains1 apart from the physical violence of their expression1 be judged by any other standard than by the power they have1 when represented1 to control the will's movement4 ,sidenote3 ,injustice inherent in representation ,here we come upon one of those initial irrationalities in the world theories of all sorts1 since they are attempts to find rationality in things1 are in serious danger of overlooking4 ,in estimating the value of any experience1 our endeavour1 our pretension1 is to weigh the value which that experience possesses when it is actual4 ,but to weigh is to compare1 and to compare is to represent1 since the transcendental isolation and self-sufficiency of actual experience precludes its lying side by side with another datum1 like two objects given in a single consciousness4 ,successive values1 to be compared1 must be represented2 but the conditions of representation are such that they rob objects of the values they had at their first appearance to substitute the values they possess at their recurrence4 ,for representation mirrors consciousness only by mirroring its objects1 and the emotional reaction upon those objects cannot be represented directly1 but is approached by indirect methods1 through an imitation or assimilation of will to will and emotion to emotion4 ,only by the instrumentality of signs1 like gesture or language1 can we bring ourselves to reproduce in some measure an absent experience and to feel some premonition of its absolute value4 ,apart from very elaborate and cumulative suggestions to the contrary1 we should always attribute to an event in every other experience the value which its image now had in our own4 ,but in that case the pathetic fallacy would be present2 for a volitional reaction upon an idea in one vital context is no index to what the volitional reaction would be in another vital context upon the situation which that idea represents4 ,sidenote3 sthetic and speculative cruelty4 ,this divergence falsifies all representation of life and renders it initially cruel1 sentimental1 and mythical4 ,we dislike to trample on a flower1 because its form makes a kind of blossoming in our own fancy which we call beauty2 but we laugh at pangs we endured in childhood and feel no tremor at the incalculable sufferings of all mankind beyond our horizon1 because no imitable image is involved to start a contrite thrill in our own bosom4 ,the same cruelty appears in sthetic pleasures1 in lust1 war1 and ambition2 in the illusions of desire and memory2 in the unsympathetic quality of theory everywhere1 which regards the uniformities of cause and effect and the beauties of law as a justification for the inherent evils in the experience described2 in the unjust judgments1 finally1 of mystical optimism1 that sinks so completely into its subjective commotion as to mistake the suspension of all discriminating and representative faculties for a true union in things1 and the blur of its own ecstasy for a universal glory4 ,these pleasures are all on the sensuous plane1 the plane of levity and unintentional wickedness2 but in their own sphere they have their own value4 sthetic and speculative emotions make an important contribution to the total worth of existence1 but they do not abolish the evils of that experience on which they reflect with such ruthless satisfaction4 ,the satisfaction is due to a private flood of emotion submerging the images present in fancy1 or to the exercise of a new intellectual function1 like that of abstraction1 synthesis1 or comparison4 ,such a faculty1 when fully developed1 is capable of yielding pleasures as intense and voluminous as those proper to rudimentary animal functions1 wrongly supposed to be more vital4 ,the acme of vitality lies in truth in the most comprehensive and penetrating thought4 ,the rhythms1 the sweep1 the impetuosity of impassioned contemplation not only contain in themselves a great vitality and potency1 but they often succeed in engaging the lower functions in a sympathetic vibration1 and we see the whole body and soul rapt1 as we say1 and borne along by the harmonies of imagination and thought4 ,in these fugitive moments of intoxication the detail of truth is submerged and forgotten4 ,the emotions which would be suggested by the parts are replaced by the rapid emotion of transition between them2 and this exhilaration in survey1 this mountain-top experience1 is supposed to be also the truest vision of reality4 ,absorption in a supervening function is mistaken for comprehension of all fact1 and this inevitably1 since all consciousness of particular facts and of their values is then submerged in the torrent of cerebral excitement4 ,sidenote3 ,imputed values3 their inconstancy4 ,that luminous blindness which in these cases takes an extreme form is present in principle throughout all reflection4 ,we tend to regard our own past as good only when we still find some value in the memory of it4 ,last year1 last week1 even the feelings of the last five minutes1 are not otherwise prized than by the pleasure we may still have in recalling them2 the pulsations of pleasure or pain which they contained we do not even seek to remember or to discriminate4 ,the period is called happy or unhappy merely as its ideal representation exercises fascination or repulsion over the present will4 ,hence the revulsion after physical indulgence1 often most violent when the pleasure--judged by its concomitant expression and by the desire that heralded it--was most intense4 ,for the strongest passions are intermittent1 so that the unspeakable charm which their objects possess for a moment is lost immediately and becomes unintelligible to a chilled and cheated reflection4 ,the situation1 when yet unrealised1 irresistibly solicited the will and seemed to promise incomparable ecstasy2 and perhaps it yields an indescribable moment of excitement and triumph--a moment only half-appropriated into waking experience1 so fleeting is it1 and so unfit the mind to possess or retain its tenser attitudes4 ,the same situation1 if revived in memory when the system is in an opposite and relaxed state1 forfeits all power to attract and fills the mind rather with aversion and disgust4 ,for all violent pleasures1 as ,shakespeare says1 are cruel and not to be trusted4 ,a bliss in proof and1 proved1 a very woe3 ,before1 a joy proposed2 behind1 a dream 444 ,enjoyed no sooner but despised straight2 ,past reason hunted and1 no sooner had1 ,past reason hated4 ,sidenote3 ,methods of control4 ,past reason1 indeed4 ,for although an impulsive injustice is inherent in the very nature of representation and cannot be overcome altogether1 yet reason1 by attending to all the evidences that can be gathered and by confronting the first pronouncement by others fetched from every quarter of experience1 has power to minimise the error and reach a practically just estimate of absent values4 ,this achieved rightness can be tested by comparing two experiences1 each when it is present1 with the same conventional permanent object chosen to be their expression4 ,a love-song1 for instance1 can be pronounced adequate or false by various lovers2 and it can thus remain a sort of index to the fleeting sentiments once confronted with it4 ,reason has1 to be sure1 no independent method of discovering values4 ,they must be rated as the sensitive balance of present inclination1 when completely laden1 shows them to stand4 ,in estimating values reason is reduced to data furnished by the mechanical processes of ideation and instinct1 as in framing all knowledge2 an absent joy can only be represented by a tinge of emotion dyeing an image that pictures the situation in which the joy was felt2 but the suggested value being once projected into the potential world1 that land of inferred being1 this projection may be controlled and corroborated by other suggestions and associations relevant to it1 which it is the function of reason to collect and compare4 ,a right estimate of absent values must be conventional and mediated by signs4 ,direct sympathies1 which suffice for instinctive present co-operation1 fail to transmit alien or opposite pleasures4 ,they over-emphasise momentary relations1 while they necessarily ignore permanent bonds4 ,therefore the same intellect that puts a mechanical reality behind perception must put a moral reality behind sympathy4 ,sidenote3 ,example of fame4 ,fame1 for example1 is a good2 its value arises from a certain movement of will and emotion which is elicited by the thought that one's name might be associated with great deeds and with the memory of them4 ,the glow of this thought bathes the object it describes1 so that fame is felt to have a value quite distinct from that which the expectation of fame may have in the present moment4 ,should this expectation be foolish and destined to prove false1 it would have no value1 and be indeed the more ludicrous and repulsive the more pleasure its dupe took in it1 and the longer his illusion lasted4 ,the heart is resolutely set on its object and despises its own phenomena1 not reflecting that its emotions have first revealed that object's worth and alone can maintain it4 ,for if a man cares nothing for fame1 what value has it8 ,this projection of interest into excellence takes place mechanically and is in the first instance irrational4 ,did all glow die out from memory and expectation1 the events represented remaining unchanged1 we should be incapable of assigning any value to those events1 just as1 if eyes were lacking1 we should be incapable of assigning colour to the world1 which would1 notwithstanding1 remain as it is at present4 ,so fame could never be regarded as a good if the idea of fame gave no pleasure2 yet now1 because the idea pleases1 the reality is regarded as a good1 absolute and intrinsic4 ,this moral hypostasis involved in the love of fame could never be rationalised1 but would subsist unmitigated or die out unobserved1 were it not associated with other conceptions and other habits of estimating values4 ,for the passions are humanised only by being juxtaposed and forced to live together4 ,as fame is not man's only goal and the realisation of it comes into manifold relations with other interests no less vivid1 we are able to criticise the impulse to pursue it4 ,fame may be the consequence of benefits conferred upon mankind4 ,in that case the abstract desire for fame would be reinforced and1 as it were1 justified by its congruity with the more voluminous and stable desire to benefit our fellow-men4 ,or1 again1 the achievements which insure fame and the genius that wins it probably involve a high degree of vitality and many profound inward satisfactions to the man of genius himself2 so that again the abstract love of fame would be reinforced by the independent and more rational desire for a noble and comprehensive experience4 ,on the other hand1 the minds of posterity1 whose homage is craved by the ambitious man1 will probably have very false conceptions of his thoughts and purposes4 ,what they will call by his name will be1 in a great measure1 a fiction of their own fancy and not his portrait at all4 ,would ,caesar recognise himself in the current notions of him1 drawn from some school-history1 or perhaps from ,shakespeare's satirical portrait8 ,would ,christ recognise himself upon our altars1 or in the romances about him constructed by imaginative critics8 ,and not only is remote experience thus hopelessly lost and misrepresented1 but even this nominal memorial ultimately disappears4 ,the love of fame1 if tempered by these and similar considerations1 would tend to take a place in man's ideal such as its roots in human nature and its functions in human progress might seem to justify4 ,it would be rationalised in the only sense in which any primary desire can be rationalised1 namely1 by being combined with all others in a consistent whole4 ,how much of it would survive a thorough sifting and criticism1 may well remain in doubt4 ,the result would naturally differ for different temperaments and in different states of society4 ,the wisest men1 perhaps1 while they would continue to feel some love of honour and some interest in their image in other minds1 would yet wish that posterity might praise them as ,sallust praises ,cato by saying3 ,esse quam videri bonus maluit2 he preferred worth to reputation4 ,sidenote3 ,disproportionate interest in the sthetic4 ,the fact that value is attributed to absent experience according to the value experience has in representation appears again in one of the most curious anomalies in human life--the exorbitant interest which thought and reflection take in the form of experience and the slight account they make of its intensity or volume4 ,sea-sickness and child-birth when they are over1 the pangs of despised love when that love is finally forgotten or requited1 the travail of sin when once salvation is assured1 all melt away and dissolve like a morning mist leaving a clear sky without a vestige of sorrow4 ,so also with merely remembered and not reproducible pleasures2 the buoyancy of youth1 when absurdity is not yet tedious1 the rapture of sport or passion1 the immense peace found in a mystical surrender to the universal1 all these generous ardours count for nothing when they are once gone4 ,the memory of them cannot cure a fit of the blues nor raise an irritable mortal above some petty act of malice or vengeance1 or reconcile him to foul weather4 ,an ode of ,horace1 on the other hand1 a scientific monograph1 or a well-written page of music is a better antidote to melancholy than thinking on all the happiness which one's own life or that of the universe may ever have contained4 ,why should overwhelming masses of suffering and joy affect imagination so little while it responds sympathetically to sthetic and intellectual irritants of very slight intensity1 objects that1 it must be confessed1 are of almost no importance to the welfare of mankind8 ,why should we be so easily awed by artistic genius and exalt men whose works we know only by name1 perhaps1 and whose influence upon society has been infinitesimal1 like a ,pindar or a ,leonardo1 while we regard great merchants and inventors as ignoble creatures in comparison8 ,why should we smile at the inscription in ,westminster ,abbey which calls the inventor of the spinning-jenny one of the true benefactors of mankind8 ,is it not probable1 on the whole1 that he has had a greater and less equivocal influence on human happiness than ,shakespeare with all his plays and sonnets8 ,but the cheapness of cotton cloth produces no particularly delightful image in the fancy to be compared with ,hamlet or ,imogen4 ,there is a prodigious selfishness in dreams3 they live perfectly deaf and invulnerable amid the cries of the real world4 ,sidenote3 ,irrational religious allegiance4 ,the same sthetic bias appears in the moral sphere4 ,utilitarians have attempted to show that the human conscience commends precisely those actions which tend to secure general happiness and that the notions of justice and virtue prevailing in any age vary with its social economy and the prizes it is able to attain4 ,and1 if due allowance is made for the complexity of the subject1 we may reasonably admit that the precepts of obligatory morality bear this relation to the general welfare2 thus virtue means courage in a soldier1 probity in a merchant1 and chastity in a woman4 ,but if we turn from the morality required of all to the type regarded as perfect and ideal1 we find no such correspondence to the benefits involved4 ,the selfish imagination intervenes here and attributes an absolute and irrational value to those figures that entertain it with the most absorbing and dreamful emotions4 ,the character of ,christ1 for instance1 which even the least orthodox among us are in the habit of holding up as a perfect model1 is not the character of a benefactor but of a martyr1 a spirit from a higher world lacerated in its passage through this uncomprehending and perverse existence1 healing and forgiving out of sheer compassion1 sustained by his inner affinities to the supernatural1 and absolutely disenchanted with all earthly or political goods4 ,christ did not suffer1 like ,prometheus1 for having bestowed or wished to bestow any earthly blessing3 the only blessing he bequeathed was the image of himself upon the cross1 whereby men might be comforted in their own sorrows1 rebuked in their worldliness1 driven to put their trust in the supernatural1 and united1 by their common indifference to the world1 in one mystic brotherhood4 ,as men learned these lessons1 or were inwardly ready to learn them1 they recognised more and more clearly in ,jesus their heaven-sent redeemer1 and in following their own conscience and desperate idealism into the desert or the cloister1 in ignoring all civic virtues and allowing the wealth1 art1 and knowledge of the pagan world to decay1 they began what they felt to be an imitation of ,christ4 ,all natural impulses1 all natural ideals1 subsisted of course beneath this theoretic asceticism1 writhed under its unearthly control1 and broke out in frequent violent irruptions against it in the life of each man as well as in the course of history4 ,yet the image of ,christ remained in men's hearts and retained its marvellous authority1 so that even now1 when so many who call themselves ,christians1 being pure children of nature1 are without the least understanding of what ,christianity came to do in the world1 they still offer his person and words a sincere if inarticulate worship1 trying to transform that sacrificial and crucified spirit1 as much as their bungling fancy can1 into a patron of ,philistia ,felix4 ,why this persistent adoration of a character that is the extreme negation of all that these good souls inwardly value and outwardly pursue8 ,because the image of ,christ and the associations of his religion1 apart from their original import1 remain rooted in the mind3 they remain the focus for such wayward emotions and mystic intuitions as their magnetism can still attract1 and the value which this hallowed compound possesses in representation is transferred to its nominal object1 and ,christ is the conventional name for all the impulses of religion1 no matter how opposite to the ,christian4 ,sidenote3 ,pathetic idealizations4 ,symbols1 when their significance has been great1 outlive their first significance4 ,the image of ,christ was a last refuge to the world2 it was a consolation and a new ground for hope1 from which no misfortune could drive the worshipper4 ,its value as an idea was therefore immense1 as to the lover the idea of his untasted joys1 or to the dying man the idea of health and invigorating sunshine4 ,the votary can no more ask himself whether his deity1 in its total operation1 has really blessed him and deserved his praise than the lover can ask if his lady is worth pursuing or the expiring cripple whether it would be1 in very truth1 a benefit to be once more young and whole4 ,that life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and1 were it not assumed1 the most impossible of conclusions4 ,experience1 by its passive weight of joy and sorrow1 can neither inspire nor prevent enthusiasm2 only a present ideal will avail to move the will and1 if realised1 to justify it4 ,a saint's halo is an optical illusion2 it glorifies his actions whatever their eventual influence in the world1 because they seem to have1 when rehearsed dramatically1 some tenderness or rapture or miracle about them4 ,thus it appears that the great figures of art or religion1 together with all historic and imaginative ideals1 advance insensibly on the values they represent4 ,the image has more lustre than the original1 and is often the more important and influential fact4 ,things are esteemed as they weigh in representation4 ,a memorable thing1 people say in their eulogies1 little thinking to touch the ground of their praise4 ,for things are called great because they are memorable1 they are not remembered because they were great4 ,the deepest pangs1 the highest joys1 the widest influences are lost to apperception in its haste1 and if in some rational moment reconstructed and acknowledged1 are soon forgotten again and cut off from living consideration4 ,but the emptiest experience1 even the most pernicious tendency1 if embodied in a picturesque image1 if reverberating in the mind with a pleasant echo1 is idolised and enshrined4 ,fortunate indeed was ,achilles that ,homer sang of him1 and fortunate the poets that make a public titillation out of their sorrows and ignorance4 ,this imputed and posthumous fortune is the only happiness they have4 ,the favours of memory are extended to those feeble realities and denied to the massive substance of daily experience4 ,when life dies1 when what was present becomes a memory1 its ghost flits still among the living1 feared or worshipped not for the experience it once possessed but for the aspect it now wears4 ,yet this injustice in representation1 speculatively so offensive1 is practically excusable2 for it is in one sense right and useful that all things1 whatever their original or inherent dignity1 should be valued at each moment only by their present function and utility4 ,sidenote3 ,inevitable impulsiveness in prophecy4 ,sidenote3 ,the test a controlled present ideal4 ,the error involved in attributing value to the past is naturally aggravated when values are to be assigned to the future4 ,in the latter case imagination cannot be controlled by circumstantial evidence1 and is consequently the only basis for judgment4 ,but as the conception of a thing naturally evokes an emotion different from that involved in its presence1 ideals of what is desirable for the future contain no warrant that the experience desired would1 when actual1 prove to be acceptable and good4 ,an ideal carries no extrinsic assurance that its realisation would be a benefit4 ,to convince ourselves that an ideal has rational authority and represents a better experience than the actual condition it is contrasted with1 we must control the prophetic image by as many circumlocutions as possible4 ,as in the case of fame1 we must buttress or modify our spontaneous judgment with all the other judgments that the object envisaged can prompt3 we must make our ideal harmonise with all experience rather than with a part only4 ,the possible error remains even then2 but a practical mind will always accept the risk of error when it has made every possible correction4 ,a rational will is not a will that has reason for its basis or that possesses any other proof that its realisation would be possible or good than the oracle which a living will inspires and pronounces4 ,the rationality possible to the will lies not in its source but in its method4 ,an ideal cannot wait for its realisation to prove its validity4 ,to deserve adhesion it needs only to be adequate as an ideal1 that is1 to express completely what the soul at present demands1 and to do justice to all extant interests4 ,,chapter ,,xi--,,some ,,abstract ,,conditions ,,of ,,the ,,ideal ,sidenote3 ,the ultimate end a resultant4 ,reason's function is to embody the good1 but the test of excellence is itself ideal2 therefore before we can assure ourselves that reason has been manifested in any given case we must make out the reasonableness of the ideal that inspires us4 ,and in general1 before we can convince ourselves that a ,life of ,reason1 or practice guided by science and directed toward spiritual goods1 is at all worth having1 we must make out the possibility and character of its ultimate end4 ,yet each ideal is its own justification2 so that the only sense in which an ultimate end can be established and become a test of general progress is this3 that a harmony and co-operation of impulses should be conceived1 leading to the maximum satisfaction possible in the whole community of spirits affected by our action4 ,now1 without considering for the present any concrete ,utopia1 such1 for instance1 as ,plato's ,republic or the heavenly beatitude described by theologians1 we may inquire what formal qualities are imposed on the ideal by its nature and function and by the relation it bears to experience and to desire4 ,sidenote3 ,demands the substance of ideals4 ,the ideal has the same relation to given demands that the reality has to given perceptions4 ,in the face of the ideal1 particular demands forfeit their authority and the goods to which a particular being may aspire cease to be absolute2 nay1 the satisfaction of desire comes to appear an indifferent or unholy thing when compared or opposed to the ideal to be realised4 ,so1 precisely1 in perception1 flying impressions come to be regarded as illusory when contrasted with a stable conception of reality4 ,yet of course flying impressions are the only material out of which that conception can be formed4 ,life itself is a flying impression1 and had we no personal and instant experience1 importuning us at each successive moment1 we should have no occasion to ask for a reality at all1 and no materials out of which to construct so gratuitous an idea4 ,in the same way present demands are the only materials and occasions for any ideal3 without demands the ideal would have no locus standi or foothold in the world1 no power1 no charm1 and no prerogative4 ,if the ideal can confront particular desires and put them to shame1 that happens only because the ideal is the object of a more profound and voluminous desire and embodies the good which they blindly and perhaps deviously pursue4 ,demands could not be misdirected1 goods sought could not be false1 if the standard by which they are to be corrected were not constructed out of them4 ,otherwise each demand would render its object a detached1 absolute1 and unimpeachable good4 ,but when each desire in turn has singed its wings and retired before some disillusion1 reflection may set in to suggest residual satisfactions that may still be possible1 or some shifting of the ground by which much of what was hoped for may yet be attained4 ,sidenote3 ,discipline of the will4 ,sidenote3 ,demands made practical and consistent4 ,the force for this new trial is but the old impulse renewed2 this new hope is a justified remnant of the old optimism4 ,each passion1 in this second campaign1 takes the field conscious that it has indomitable enemies and ready to sign a reasonable peace1 and even to capitulate before superior forces4 ,such tameness may be at first merely a consequence of exhaustion and prudence2 but a mortal will1 though absolute in its deliverances1 is very far from constant1 and its sacrifices soon constitute a habit1 its exile a new home4 ,the old ambition1 now proved to be unrealisable1 begins to seem capricious and extravagant2 the circle of possible satisfactions becomes the field of conventional happiness4 ,experience1 which brings about this humbler and more prosaic state of mind1 has its own imaginative fruits4 ,among those forces which compelled each particular impulse to abate its pretensions1 the most conspicuous were other impulses1 other interests active in oneself and in one's neighbours4 ,when the power of these alien demands is recognised they begin1 in a physical way1 to be respected2 when an adjustment to them is sought they begin to be understood1 for it is only by studying their expression and tendency that the degree of their hostility can be measured4 ,but to understand is more than to forgive1 it is to adopt2 and the passion that thought merely to withdraw into a sullen and maimed self-indulgence can feel itself expanded by sympathies which in its primal vehemence it would have excluded altogether4 ,experience1 in bringing humility1 brings intelligence also4 ,personal interests begin to seem relative1 factors only in a general voluminous welfare expressed in many common institutions and arts1 moulds for whatever is communicable or rational in every passion4 ,each original impulse1 when trimmed down more or less according to its degree of savageness1 can then inhabit the state1 and every good1 when sufficiently transfigured1 can be found again in the general ideal4 ,the factors may indeed often be unrecognisable in the result1 so much does the process of domestication transform them2 but the interests that animated them survive this discipline and the new purpose is really esteemed2 else the ideal would have no moral force4 ,an ideal representing no living interest would be irrelevant to practice1 just as a conception of reality would be irrelevant to perception which should not be composed of the materials that sense supplies1 or should not re-embody actual sensations in an intelligible system4 ,sidenote3 ,the ideal natural4 ,here we have1 then1 one condition which the ideal must fulfil3 it must be a resultant or synthesis of impulses already afoot4 ,an ideal out of relation to the actual demands of living beings is so far from being an ideal that it is not even a good4 ,the pursuit of it would be not the acme but the atrophy of moral endeavour4 ,mysticism and asceticism run into this danger1 when the intent to be faithful to a supreme good too symbolically presented breeds a superstitious repugnance toward everything naturally prized4 ,so also an artificial scepticism can regard all experience as deceptive1 by contrasting it with the chimera of an absolute reality4 ,as an absolute reality would be indescribable and without a function in the elucidation of phenomena1 so a supreme good which was good for nobody would be without conceivable value4 ,respect for such an idol is a dialectical superstition2 and if zeal for that shibboleth should actually begin to inhibit the exercise of intelligent choice or the development of appreciation for natural pleasures1 it would constitute a reversal of the ,life of ,reason which1 if persistently indulged in1 could only issue in madness or revert to imbecility4 ,sidenote3 ,need of unity and finality4 ,sidenote3 ,ideals of nothing4 ,no less important1 however1 than this basis which the ideal must have in extant demands1 is the harmony with which reason must endow it4 ,if without the one the ideal loses its value1 without the other it loses its finality4 ,human nature is fluid and imperfect2 its demands are expressed in incidental desires1 elicited by a variety of objects which perhaps cannot coexist in the world4 ,if we merely transcribe these miscellaneous demands or allow these floating desires to dictate to us the elements of the ideal1 we shall never come to a ,whole or to an ,end4 ,one new fancy after another will seem an embodiment of perfection1 and we shall contradict each expression of our ideal by every other4 ,a certain school of philosophy--if we may give that name to the systematic neglect of reason--has so immersed itself in the contemplation of this sort of inconstancy1 which is indeed prevalent enough in the world1 that it has mistaken it for a normal and necessary process4 ,the greatness of the ideal has been put in its vagueness and in an elasticity which makes it wholly indeterminate and inconsistent4 ,the goal of progress1 beside being thus made to lie at every point of the compass in succession1 is removed to an infinite distance1 whereby the possibility of attaining it is denied and progress itself is made illusory4 ,for a progress must be directed to attaining some definite type of life1 the counterpart of a given natural endowment1 and nothing can be called an improvement which does not contain an appreciable benefit4 ,a victory would be a mockery that left us1 for some new reason1 as much impeded as before and as far removed from peace4 ,the picture of life as an eternal war for illusory ends was drawn at first by satirists1 unhappily with too much justification in the facts4 ,some grosser minds1 too undisciplined to have ever pursued a good either truly attainable or truly satisfactory1 then proceeded to mistake that satire on human folly for a sober account of the whole universe2 and finally others were not ashamed to represent it as the ideal itself--so soon is the dyer's hand subdued to what it works in4 ,a barbarous mind cannot conceive life1 like health1 as a harmony continually preserved or restored1 and containing those natural and ideal activities which disease merely interrupts4 ,such a mind1 never having tasted order1 cannot conceive it1 and identifies progress with new conflicts and life with continual death4 ,its deification of unreason1 instability1 and strife comes partly from piety and partly from inexperience4 ,there is piety in saluting nature in her perpetual flux and in thinking that since no equilibrium is maintained for ever none1 perhaps1 deserves to be4 ,there is inexperience in not considering that wherever interests and judgments exist1 the natural flux has fallen1 so to speak1 into a vortex1 and created a natural good1 a cumulative life1 and an ideal purpose4 ,art1 science1 government1 human nature itself1 are self-defining and self-preserving3 by partly fixing a structure they fix an ideal4 ,but the barbarian can hardly regard such things1 for to have distinguished and fostered them would be to have founded a civilisation4 ,sidenote3 ,darwin on moral sense4 ,reason's function in defining the ideal is in principle extremely simple1 although all time and all existence would have to be gathered in before the applications of that principle could be exhausted4 ,a better example of its essential working could hardly be found than one which ,darwin gives to illustrate the natural origin of moral sense4 ,a swallow1 impelled by migratory instincts to leave a nest full of unfledged young1 would endure a moral conflict4 ,the more lasting impulse1 memory being assumed1 would prompt a moral judgment when it emerged again after being momentarily obscured by an intermittent passion4 8,while the mother bird is feeding or brooding over her nestlings1 the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory2 but the instinct which is more persistent gains the victory1 and at last1 at a moment when her young ones are not in sight1 she takes flight and deserts them4 ,when arrived at the end of her long journey1 and the migratory instinct ceases to act1 what an agony of remorse each bird would feel if1 from being endowed with great mental activity1 she could not prevent the image continually passing before her mind of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger40,e ,she would doubtless upbraid herself1 like any sinner1 for a senseless perfidy to her own dearest good4 ,the perfidy1 however1 was not wholly senseless1 because the forgotten instinct was not less natural and necessary than the remembered one1 and its satisfaction no less true4 ,temptation has the same basis as duty4 ,the difference is one of volume and permanence in the rival satisfactions1 and the attitude conscience will assume toward these depends more on the representability of the demands compared than on their original vehemence or ultimate results4 ,sidenote3 ,conscience and reason compared4 ,a passionate conscience may thus arise in the play of impulses differing in permanence1 without involving a judicial exercise of reason4 ,nor does such a conscience involve a synthetic ideal1 but only the ideal presence of particular demands4 ,conflicts in the conscience are thus quite natural and would continually occur but for the narrowness that commonly characterises a mind inspired by passion4 ,a life of sin and repentance is as remote as possible from a ,life of ,reason4 ,yet the same situation which produces conscience and the sense of duty is an occasion for applying reason to action and for forming an ideal1 so soon as the demands and satisfactions concerned are synthesised and balanced imaginatively4 ,the stork might do more than feel the conflict of his two impulses1 he might do more than embody in alternation the eloquence of two hostile thoughts4 ,he might pass judgment upon them impartially and1 in the felt presence of both1 conceive what might be a union or compromise between them4 ,this resultant object of pursuit1 conceived in reflection and in itself the initial goal of neither impulse1 is the ideal of a mind occupied by the two3 it is the aim prescribed by reason under the circumstances4 ,it differs from the prescription of conscience1 in that conscience is often the spokesman of one interest or of a group of interests in opposition to other primary impulses which it would annul altogether2 while reason and the ideal are not active forces nor embodiments of passion at all1 but merely a method by which objects of desire are compared in reflection4 ,the goodness of an end is felt inwardly by conscience2 by reason it can be only taken upon trust and registered as a fact4 ,for conscience the object of an opposed will is an evil1 for reason it is a good on the same ground as any other good1 because it is pursued by a natural impulse and can bring a real satisfaction4 ,conscience1 in fine1 is a party to moral strife1 reason an observer of it who1 however1 plays the most important and beneficent part in the outcome by suggesting the terms of peace4 ,this suggested peace1 inspired by sympathy and by knowledge of the world1 is the ideal1 which borrows its value and practical force from the irrational impulses which it embodies1 and borrows its final authority from the truth with which it recognises them all and the necessity by which it imposes on each such sacrifices as are requisite to a general harmony4 ,sidenote3 ,reason imposes no new sacrifice4 ,could each impulse1 apart from reason1 gain perfect satisfaction1 it would doubtless laugh at justice4 ,the divine1 to exercise suasion1 must use an argumentum ad hominem2 reason must justify itself to the heart4 ,but perfect satisfaction is what an irresponsible impulse can never hope for3 all other impulses1 though absent perhaps from the mind1 are none the less present in nature and have possession of the field through their physical basis4 ,they offer effectual resistance to a reckless intruder4 ,to disregard them is therefore to gain nothing3 reason1 far from creating the partial renunciation and proportionate sacrifices which it imposes1 really minimises them by making them voluntary and fruitful4 ,the ideal1 which may seem to wear so severe a frown1 really fosters all possible pleasures2 what it retrenches is nothing to what blind forces and natural catastrophes would otherwise cut off2 while it sweetens what it sanctions1 adding to spontaneous enjoyments a sense of moral security and an intellectual light4 ,sidenote3 ,natural goods attainable and compatible in principle4 ,those who are guided only by an irrational conscience can hardly understand what a good life would be4 ,their ,utopias have to be supernatural in order that the irresponsible rules which they call morality may lead by miracle to happy results4 ,but such a magical and undeserved happiness1 if it were possible1 would be unsavoury3 only one phase of human nature would be satisfied by it1 and so impoverished an ideal cannot really attract the will4 ,for human nature has been moulded by the same natural forces among which its ideal has to be fulfilled1 and1 apart from a certain margin of wild hopes and extravagances1 the things man's heart desires are attainable under his natural conditions and would not be attainable elsewhere4 ,the conflict of desires and interests in the world is not radical any more than man's dissatisfaction with his own nature can be2 for every particular ideal1 being an expression of human nature in operation1 must in the end involve the primary human faculties and cannot be essentially incompatible with any other ideal which involves them too4 ,to adjust all demands to one ideal and adjust that ideal to its natural conditions--in other words1 to live the ,life of ,reason--is something perfectly possible2 for those demands1 being akin to one another in spite of themselves1 can be better furthered by co-operation than by blind conflict1 while the ideal1 far from demanding any profound revolution in nature1 merely expresses her actual tendency and forecasts what her perfect functioning would be4 ,sidenote3 ,harmony the formal and intrinsic demand of reason4 ,reason as such represents or rather constitutes a single formal interest1 the interest in harmony4 ,when two interests are simultaneous and fall within one act of apprehension the desirability of harmonising them is involved in the very effort to realise them together4 ,if attention and imagination are steady enough to face this implication and not to allow impulse to oscillate between irreconcilable tendencies1 reason comes into being4 ,henceforth things actual and things desired are confronted by an ideal which has both pertinence and authority4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,e3 ,descent of ,man1 chapter iii4 ,,chapter ,,xii--,,flux ,,and ,,constancy ,,in ,,human ,,nature ,sidenote3 ,respectable tradition that human nature is fixed4 ,a conception of something called human nature arises not unnaturally on observing the passions of men1 passions which under various disguises seem to reappear in all ages and countries4 ,the tendency of ,greek philosophy1 with its insistence on general concepts1 was to define this idea of human nature still further and to encourage the belief that a single and identical essence1 present in all men1 determined their powers and ideal destiny4 ,christianity1 while it transposed the human ideal and dwelt on the superhuman affinities of man1 did not abandon the notion of a specific humanity4 ,on the contrary1 such a notion was implied in the ,fall and ,redemption1 in the ,sacraments1 and in the universal validity of ,christian doctrine and precept4 ,for if human nature were not one1 there would be no propriety in requiring all men to preserve unanimity in faith or conformity in conduct4 ,human nature was likewise the entity which the ,english psychologists set themselves to describe2 and ,kant was so entirely dominated by the notion of a fixed and universal human nature that its constancy1 in his opinion1 was the source of all natural as well as moral laws4 ,had he doubted for a moment the stability of human nature1 the foundations of his system would have fallen out2 the forms of perception and thought would at once have lost their boasted necessity1 since to-morrow might dawn upon new categories and a modified a priori intuition of space or time2 and the avenue would also have been closed by which man was led1 through his unalterable moral sentiments1 to assumptions about metaphysical truths4 ,sidenote3 ,contrary currents of opinion4 ,sidenote3 ,evolution ,the force of this long tradition has been broken1 however1 by two influences of great weight in recent times1 the theory of evolution and the revival of pantheism4 ,the first has reintroduced flux into the conception of existence and the second into the conception of values4 ,if natural species are fluid and pass into one another1 human nature is merely a name for a group of qualities found by chance in certain tribes of animals1 a group to which new qualities are constantly tending to attach themselves while other faculties become extinct1 now in whole races1 now in sporadic individuals4 ,human nature is therefore a variable1 and its ideal cannot have a greater constancy than the demands to which it gives expression4 ,nor can the ideal of one man or one age have any authority over another1 since the harmony existing in their nature and interests is accidental and each is a transitional phase in an indefinite evolution4 ,the crystallisation of moral forces at any moment is consequently to be explained by universal1 not by human1 laws2 the philosopher's interest cannot be to trace the implications of present and unstable desires1 but rather to discover the mechanical law by which these desires have been generated and will be transformed1 so that they will change irrevocably both their basis and their objects4 ,sidenote3 ,pantheism4 ,to this picture of physical instability furnished by popular science are to be added the mystical self-denials involved in pantheism4 ,these come to reinforce the doctrine that human nature is a shifting thing with the sentiment that it is a finite and unworthy one3 for every determination of being1 it is said1 has its significance as well as its origin in the infinite continuum of which it is a part4 ,forms are limitations1 and limitations1 according to this philosophy1 would be defects1 so that man's only goal would be to escape humanity and lose himself in the divine nebula that has produced and must invalidate each of his thoughts and ideals4 ,as there would be but one spirit in the world1 and that infinite1 so there would be but one ideal and that indiscriminate4 ,the despair which the naturalist's view of human instability might tend to produce is turned by this mystical initiation into a sort of ecstasy2 and the deluge of conformity suddenly submerges that ,life of ,reason which science seemed to condemn to gradual extinction4 ,sidenote3 ,instability in existences does not dethrone their ideals4 ,reason is a human function4 ,though the name of reason has been applied to various alleged principles of cosmic life1 vital or dialectical1 these principles all lack the essence of rationality1 in that they are not conscious movements toward satisfaction1 not1 in other words1 moral and beneficent principles at all4 ,be the instability of human nature what it may1 therefore1 the instability of reason is not less1 since reason is but a function of human nature4 ,however relative and subordinate1 in a physical sense1 human ideals may be1 these ideals remain the only possible moral standards for man1 the only tests which he can apply for value or authority1 in any other quarter4 ,and among unstable and relative ideals none is more relative and unstable than that which transports all value to a universal law1 itself indifferent to good and evil1 and worships it as a deity4 ,such an idolatry would indeed be impossible if it were not partial and veiled1 arrived at in following out some human interest and clung to by force of moral inertia and the ambiguity of words4 ,in truth mystics do not practise so entire a renunciation of reason as they preach3 eternal validity and the capacity to deal with absolute reality are still assumed by them to belong to thought or at least to feeling4 ,only they overlook in their description of human nature just that faculty which they exercise in their speculation2 their map leaves out the ground on which they stand4 ,the rest1 which they are not identified with for the moment1 they proceed to regard de haut en bas and to discredit as a momentary manifestation of universal laws1 physical or divine4 ,they forget that this faith in law1 this absorption in the blank reality1 this enthusiasm for the ultimate thought1 are mere human passions like the rest2 that they endure them as they might a fever and that the animal instincts are patent on which those spiritual yearnings repose4 ,sidenote3 ,absolutist philosophy human and halting4 ,this last fact would be nothing against the feelings in question1 if they were not made vehicles for absolute revelations4 ,on the contrary1 such a relativity in instincts is the source of their importance4 ,in virtue of this relativity they have some basis and function in the world2 for did they not repose on human nature they could never express or transform it4 ,religion and philosophy are not always beneficent or important1 but when they are it is precisely because they help to develop human faculty and to enrich human life4 ,to imagine that by means of them we can escape from human nature and survey it from without is an ostrich-like illusion obvious to all but to the victim of it4 ,such a pretension may cause admiration in the schools1 where self-hypnotisation is easy1 but in the world it makes its professors ridiculous4 ,for in their eagerness to empty their mind of human prejudices they reduce its rational burden to a minimum1 and if they still continue to dogmatise1 it is sport for the satirist to observe what forgotten accident of language or training has survived the crash of the universe and made the one demonstrable path to ,absolute ,truth4 ,sidenote3 ,all science a deliverance of momentary thought4 ,neither the path of abstraction followed by the mystics1 nor that of direct and1 as it avers1 unbiassed observation followed by the naturalists1 can lead beyond that region of common experience1 traditional feeling1 and conventional thought which all minds enter at birth and can elude only at the risk of inward collapse and extinction4 ,the fact that observation involves the senses1 and the senses their organs1 is one which a naturalist can hardly overlook2 and when we add that logical habits1 sanctioned by utility1 are needed to interpret the data of sense1 the humanity of science and all its constructions becomes clearer than day4 ,superstition itself could not be more human4 ,the path of unbiassed observation is not a path away from conventional life2 it is a progress in conventions4 ,it improves human belief by increasing the proportion of two of its ingredients1 attentive perception and practical calculus4 ,the whole resulting vision1 as it is sustained from moment to moment by present experience and instinct1 has no value apart from actual ideals4 ,and if it proves human nature to be unstable1 it can build that proof on nothing more stable than human faculty as at the moment it happens to be4 ,sidenote3 ,all criticism likewise4 ,nor is abstraction a less human process1 as if by becoming very abstruse indeed we could hope to become divine4 ,is it not a commonplace of the schools that to form abstract ideas is the prerogative of man's reason8 ,is not abstraction a method by which mortal intelligence makes haste8 ,is it not the makeshift of a mind overloaded with its experience1 the trick of an eye that cannot master a profuse and ever-changing world8 ,shall these diagrams drawn in fancy1 this system of signals in thought1 be the ,absolute ,truth dwelling within us8 ,do we attain reality by making a silhouette of our dreams8 ,if the scientific world be a product of human faculties1 the metaphysical world must be doubly so2 for the material there given to human understanding is here worked over again by human art4 ,this constitutes the dignity and value of dialectic1 that in spite of appearances it is so human2 it bears to experience a relation similar to that which the arts bear to the same1 where sensible images1 selected by the artist's genius and already coloured by his sthetic bias1 are redyed in the process of reproduction whenever he has a great style1 and saturated anew with his mind4 ,there can be no question1 then1 of eluding human nature or of conceiving it and its environment in such a way as to stop its operation4 ,we may take up our position in one region of experience or in another1 we may1 in unconsciousness of the interests and assumptions that support us1 criticise the truth or value of results obtained elsewhere4 ,our criticism will be solid in proportion to the solidity of the unnamed convictions that inspire it1 that is1 in proportion to the deep roots and fruitful ramifications which those convictions may have in human life4 ,ultimate truth and ultimate value will be reasonably attributed to those ideas and possessions which can give human nature1 as it is1 the highest satisfaction4 ,we may admit that human nature is variable2 but that admission1 if justified1 will be justified by the satisfaction which it gives human nature to make it4 ,we might even admit that human ideals are vain but only if they were nothing worth for the attainment of the veritable human ideal4 ,sidenote3 ,origins inessential4 ,the given constitution of reason1 with whatever a dialectical philosophy might elicit from it1 obviously determines nothing about the causes that may have brought reason to its present pass or the phases that may have preceded its appearance4 ,certain notions about physics might no doubt suggest themselves to the moralist1 who never can be the whole man2 he might suspect1 for instance1 that the transitive intent of intellect and will pointed to their vital basis4 ,transcendence in operation might seem appropriate only to a being with a history and with an organism subject to external influences1 whose mind should thus come to represent not merely its momentary state but also its constitutive past and its eventual fortunes4 ,such suggestions1 however1 would be extraneous to dialectical self-knowledge4 ,they would be tentative only1 and human nature would be freely admitted to be as variable1 as relative1 and as transitory as the natural history of the universe might make it4 ,sidenote3 ,ideals functional4 ,the error1 however1 would be profound and the contradiction hopeless if we should deny the ideal authority of human nature because we had discovered its origin and conditions4 ,nature and evolution1 let us say1 have brought life to the present form2 but this life lives1 these organs have determinate functions1 and human nature1 here and now1 in relation to the ideal energies it unfolds1 is a fundamental essence1 a collection of activities with determinate limits1 relations1 and ideals4 ,the integration and determinateness of these faculties is the condition for any synthetic operation of reason4 ,as the structure of the steam-engine has varied greatly since its first invention1 and its attributions have increased1 so the structure of human nature has undoubtedly varied since man first appeared upon the earth2 but as in each steam-engine at each moment there must be a limit of mobility1 a unity of function and a clear determination of parts and tensions1 so in human nature1 as found at any time in any man1 there is a definite scope by virtue of which alone he can have a reliable memory1 a recognisable character1 a faculty of connected thought and speech1 a social utility1 and a moral ideal4 ,on man's given structure1 on his activity hovering about fixed objects1 depends the possibility of conceiving or testing any truth or making any progress in happiness4 ,sidenote3 ,they are transferable to similar beings4 ,thinkers of different experience and organisation have pro tanto different logics and different moral laws4 ,there are limits to communication even among beings of the same race1 and the faculties and ideals of one intelligence are not transferable without change to any other4 ,if this historic diversity in minds were complete1 so that each lived in its own moral world1 a science of each of these moral worlds would still be possible provided some inner fixity or constancy existed in its meanings4 ,in every human thought together with an immortal intent there is a mortal and irrecoverable perception3 something in it perishes instantly1 the part that can be materially preserved being proportionate to the stability or fertility of the organ that produced it4 ,if the function is imitable1 the object it terminates in will reappear1 and two or more moments1 having the same ideal1 will utter comparable messages and may perhaps be unanimous4 ,unanimity in thought involves identity of functions and similarity in organs4 ,these conditions mark off the sphere of rational communication and society2 where they fail altogether there is no mutual intelligence1 no conversation1 no moral solidarity4 ,sidenote3 ,authority internal4 ,the inner authority of reason1 however1 is no more destroyed because it has limits in physical expression or because irrational things exist1 than the grammar of a given language is invalidated because other languages do not share it1 or because some people break its rules and others are dumb altogether4 ,innumerable madmen make no difference to the laws of thought1 which borrow their authority from the inward intent and cogency of each rational mind4 ,reason1 like beauty1 is its own excuse for being4 ,it is useful1 indeed1 for living well1 when to give reason satisfaction is made the measure of good4 ,the true philosopher1 who is not one chiefly by profession1 must be prepared to tread the winepress alone4 ,he may indeed flourish like the bay-tree in a grateful environment1 but more often he will rather resemble a reed shaken by the wind4 ,whether starved or fed by the accidents of fortune he must find his essential life in his own ideal4 ,in spiritual life1 heteronomy is suicide4 ,that universal soul sometimes spoken of1 which is to harmonise and correct individual demands1 if it were a will and an intelligence in act1 would itself be an individual like the others2 while if it possessed no will and no intelligence1 such as individuals may have1 it would be a physical force or law1 a dynamic system without moral authority and with a merely potential or represented existence4 ,for to be actual and self-existent is to be individual4 ,the living mind cannot surrender its rights to any physical power or subordinate itself to any figment of its own art without falling into manifest idolatry4 ,sidenote3 ,reason autonomous4 ,human nature1 in the sense in which it is the transcendental foundation of all science and morals1 is a functional unity in each man2 it is no general or abstract essence1 the average of all men's characters1 nor even the complex of the qualities common to all men4 ,it is the entelechy of the living individual1 be he typical or singular4 ,that his type should be odd or common is merely a physical accident4 ,if he can know himself by expressing the entelechy of his own nature in the form of a consistent ideal1 he is a rational creature after his own kind1 even if1 like the angels of ,saint ,thomas1 he be the only individual of his species4 ,what the majority of human animals may tend to1 or what the past or future variations of a race may be1 has nothing to do with determining the ideal of human nature in a living man1 or in an ideal society of men bound together by spiritual kinship4 ,otherwise ,plato could not have reasoned well about the republic without adjusting himself to the politics of ,buddha or ,rousseau1 and we should not be able to determine our own morality without making concessions to the cannibals or giving a vote to the ants4 ,within the field of an anthropology that tests humanity by the skull's shape1 there might be room for any number of independent moralities1 and although1 as we shall see1 there is actually a similar foundation in all human and even in all animal natures1 which supports a rudimentary morality common to all1 yet a perfect morality is not really common to any two men nor to any two phases of the same man's life4 ,sidenote3 ,its distribution4 ,the distribution of reason1 though a subject irrelevant to pure logic or morals1 is one naturally interesting to a rational man1 for he is concerned to know how far beings exist with a congenial structure and an ideal akin to his own4 ,that circumstance will largely influence his happiness if1 being a man1 he is a gregarious and sympathetic animal4 ,his moral idealism itself will crave support from others1 if not to give it direction1 at least to give it warmth and courage4 ,the best part of wealth is to have worthy heirs1 and mind can be transmitted only to a kindred mind4 ,hostile natures cannot be brought together by mutual invective nor harmonised by the brute destruction and disappearance of either party4 ,but when one or both parties have actually disappeared1 and the combat has ceased for lack of combatants1 natures not hostile to one another can fill the vacant place4 ,in proportion to their inbred unanimity these will cultivate a similar ideal and rejoice together in its embodiment4 ,sidenote3 ,natural selection of minds4 ,this has happened to some extent in the whole world1 on account of natural conditions which limit the forms of life possible in one region2 for nature is intolerant in her laxity and punishes too great originality and heresy with death4 ,such moral integration has occurred very markedly in every good race and society whose members1 by adapting themselves to the same external forces1 have created and discovered their common soul4 ,spiritual unity is a natural product4 ,there are those who see a great mystery in the presence of eternal values and impersonal ideals in a moving and animal world1 and think to solve that dualism1 as they call it1 by denying that nature can have spiritual functions or spirit a natural cause2 but nothing can be simpler if we make1 as we should1 existence the test of possibility4 ,ab esse ad posse valet illatio4 ,nature is a perfect garden of ideals1 and passion is the perpetual and fertile soil for poetry1 myth1 and speculation4 ,nor is this origin merely imputed to ideals by a late and cynical observer3 it is manifest in the ideals themselves1 by their subject matter and intent4 ,for what are ideals about1 what do they idealise1 except natural existence and natural passions8 ,that would be a miserable and superfluous ideal indeed that was nobody's ideal of nothing4 ,the pertinence of ideals binds them to nature1 and it is only the worst and flimsiest ideals1 the ideals of a sick soul1 that elude nature's limits and belie her potentialities4 ,ideals are forerunners or heralds of nature's successes1 not always followed1 indeed1 by their fulfilment1 for nature is but nature and has to feel her way2 but they are an earnest1 at least1 of an achieved organisation1 an incipient accomplishment1 that tends to maintain and root itself in the world4 ,to speak of nature's successes is1 of course1 to impute success retroactively2 but the expression may be allowed when we consider that the same functional equilibrium which is looked back upon as a good by the soul it serves1 first creates individual being and with it creates the possibility of preference and the whole moral world2 and it is more than a metaphor to call that achievement a success which has made a sense of success possible and actual4 ,that nature cannot intend or previously esteem those formations which are the condition of value or intention existing at all1 is a truth too obvious to demand repetition2 but when those formations arise they determine estimation1 and fix the direction of preference1 so that the evolution which produced them1 when looked back upon from the vantage-ground thus gained1 cannot help seeming to have been directed toward the good now distinguished and partly attained4 ,for this reason creation is regarded as a work of love1 and the power that brought order out of chaos is called intelligence4 ,sidenote3 ,living stability4 ,these natural formations1 tending to generate and realise each its ideal1 are1 as it were1 eddies in the universal flux1 produced no less mechanically1 doubtless1 than the onward current1 yet seeming to arrest or to reverse it4 ,inheritance arrests the flux by repeating a series of phases with a recognisable rhythm2 memory reverses it by modifying this rhythm itself by the integration of earlier phases into those that supervene4 ,inheritance and memory make human stability4 ,this stability is relative1 being still a mode of flux1 and consists fundamentally in repetition4 ,repetition marks some progress on mere continuity1 since it preserves form and disregards time and matter4 ,inheritance is repetition on a larger scale1 not excluding spontaneous variations2 while habit and memory are a sort of heredity within the individual1 since here an old perception reappears1 by way of atavism1 in the midst of a forward march4 ,life is thus enriched and reaction adapted to a wider field2 much as a note is enriched by its overtones1 and by the tensions1 inherited from the preceding notes1 which give it a new setting4 ,sidenote3 ,continuity necessary to progress4 ,progress1 far from consisting in change1 depends on retentiveness4 ,when change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement3 and when experience is not retained1 as among savages1 infancy is perpetual4 ,those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it4 ,in the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted2 it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence4 ,this is the condition of children and barbarians1 in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience4 ,in a second stage men are docile to events1 plastic to new habits and suggestions1 yet able to graft them on original instincts1 which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction4 ,this is the plane of manhood and true progress4 ,last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that happens is at once forgotten2 a vain1 because unpractical1 repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile readaptation4 ,in a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity4 ,the hard shell1 far from protecting the vital principle1 condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled2 immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier1 by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons4 ,thus old age is as forgetful as youth1 and more incorrigible2 it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions2 its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction1 like a bird's chirp4 ,sidenote3 ,limits of variation4 ,spirit a heritage4 ,not all readaptation1 however1 is progress1 for ideal identity must not be lost4 ,the ,latin language did not progress when it passed into ,italian4 ,it died4 ,its amiable heirs may console us for its departure1 but do not remove the fact that their parent is extinct4 ,so every individual1 nation1 and religion has its limit of adaptation2 so long as the increment it receives is digestible1 so long as the organisation already attained is extended and elaborated without being surrendered1 growth goes on2 but when the foundation itself shifts1 when what is gained at the periphery is lost at the centre1 the flux appears again and progress is not real4 ,thus a succession of generations or languages or religions constitutes no progress unless some ideal present at the beginning is transmitted to the end and reaches a better expression there2 without this stability at the core no common standard exists and all comparison of value with value must be external and arbitrary4 ,retentiveness1 we must repeat1 is the condition of progress4 ,the variation human nature is open to is not1 then1 variation in any direction4 ,there are transformations that would destroy it4 ,so long as it endures it must retain all that constitutes it now1 all that it has so far gathered and worked into its substance4 ,the genealogy of progress is like that of man1 who can never repudiate a single ancestor4 ,it starts1 so to speak1 from a single point1 free as yet to take any direction4 ,when once1 however1 evolution has taken a single step1 say in the direction of vertebrates1 that step cannot be retraced without extinction of the species4 ,such extinction may take place while progress in other lines is continued4 ,all that preceded the forking of the dead and the living branch will be as well represented and as legitimately continued by the surviving radiates as it could have been by the vertebrates that are no more2 but the vertebrate ideal is lost for ever1 and no more progress is possible along that line4 ,sidenote3 ,perfectibility4 ,the future of moral evolution is accordingly infinite1 but its character is more and more determinate at every step4 ,mankind can never1 without perishing1 surrender its animal nature1 its need to eat and drink1 its sexual method of reproduction1 its vision of nature1 its faculty of speech1 its arts of music1 poetry1 and building4 ,particular races cannot subsist if they renounce their savage instincts1 but die1 like wild animals1 in captivity2 and particular individuals die when not suffered any longer to retain their memories1 their bodies1 or even their master passions4 ,thus human nature survives amid a continual fluctuation of its embodiments4 ,at every step twigs and leaves are thrown out that last but one season2 but the underlying stem may have meantime grown stronger and more luxuriant4 ,whole branches sometimes wither1 but others may continue to bloom4 ,spiritual unity runs1 like sap1 from the common root to every uttermost flower2 but at each forking in the growth the branches part company1 and what happens in one is no direct concern of the others4 ,the products of one age and nation may well be unintelligible to another2 the elements of humanity common to both may lie lower down4 ,so that the highest things are communicable to the fewest persons1 and yet1 among these few1 are the most perfectly communicable4 ,the more elaborate and determinate a man's heritage and genius are1 the more he has in common with his next of kin1 and the more he can transmit and implant in his posterity for ever4 ,civilisation is cumulative4 ,the farther it goes the intenser it is1 substituting articulate interests for animal fumes and for enigmatic passions4 ,such articulate interests can be shared2 and the infinite vistas they open up can be pursued for ever with the knowledge that a work long ago begun is being perfected and that an ideal is being embodied which need never be outworn4 ,sidenote3 ,nature and human nature4 ,so long as external conditions remain constant it is obvious that the greater organisation a being possesses the greater strength he will have4 ,if indeed primary conditions varied1 the finer creatures would die first2 for their adaptation is more exquisite and the irreversible core of their being much larger relatively2 but in a constant environment their equipment makes them irresistible and secures their permanence and multiplication4 ,now man is a part of nature and her organisation may be regarded as the foundation of his own3 the word nature is therefore less equivocal than it seems1 for every nature is ,nature herself in one of her more specific and better articulated forms4 ,man therefore represents the universe that sustains him2 his existence is a proof that the cosmic equilibrium that fostered his life is a natural equilibrium1 capable of being long maintained4 ,some of the ancients thought it eternal2 physics now suggests a different opinion4 ,but even if this equilibrium1 by which the stars are kept in their courses and human progress is allowed to proceed1 is fundamentally unstable1 it shows what relative stability nature may attain4 ,could this balance be preserved indefinitely1 no one knows what wonderful adaptations might occur within it1 and to what excellence human nature in particular might arrive4 ,nor is it unlikely that before the cataclysm comes time will be afforded for more improvement than moral philosophy has ever dreamed of4 ,for it is remarkable how inane and unimaginative ,utopias have generally been4 ,this possibility is not uninspiring and may help to console those who think the natural conditions of life are not conditions that a good life can be lived in4 ,the possibility of essential progress is bound up with the tragic possibility that progress and human life should some day end together4 ,if the present equilibrium of forces were eternal all adaptations to it would have already taken place and1 while no essential catastrophe would need to be dreaded1 no essential improvement could be hoped for in all eternity4 ,i am not sure that a humanity such as we know1 were it destined to exist for ever1 would offer a more exhilarating prospect than a humanity having indefinite elasticity together with a precarious tenure of life4 ,mortality has its compensations3 one is that all evils are transitory1 another that better times may come4 ,sidenote3 ,human nature formulated4 ,human nature1 then1 has for its core the substance of nature at large1 and is one of its more complex formations4 ,its determination is progressive4 ,it varies indefinitely in its historic manifestations and fades into what1 as a matter of natural history1 might no longer be termed human4 ,at each moment it has its fixed and determinate entelechy1 the ideal of that being's life1 based on his instincts1 summed up in his character1 brought to a focus in his reflection1 and shared by all who have attained or may inherit his organisation4 ,his perceptive and reasoning faculties are parts of human nature1 as embodied in him2 all objects of belief or desire1 with all standards of justice and duty which he can possibly acknowledge1 are transcripts of it1 conditioned by it1 and justifiable only as expressions of its inherent tendencies4 ,sidenote3 ,its concrete description reserved for the sequel4 ,this definition of human nature1 clear as it may be in itself and true to the facts1 will perhaps hardly make sufficiently plain how the ,life of ,reason1 having a natural basis1 has in the ideal world a creative and absolute authority4 ,a more concrete description of human nature may accordingly not come amiss1 especially as the important practical question touching the extension of a given moral authority over times and places depends on the degree of kinship found among the creatures inhabiting those regions4 ,to give a general picture of human nature and its rational functions will be the task of the following books4 ,the truth of a description which must be largely historical may not be indifferent to the reader1 and ,i shall study to avoid bias in the presentation1 in so far as is compatible with frankness and brevity2 yet even if some bias should manifest itself and if the picture were historically false1 the rational principles we shall be trying to illustrate will not thereby be invalidated4 ,illustrations might have been sought in some fictitious world1 if imagination had not seemed so much less interesting than reality1 which besides enforces with unapproachable eloquence the main principle in view1 namely1 that nature carries its ideal with it and that the progressive organisation of irrational impulses makes a rational life4 999999 ,end of ,volume ,i 999999 ,,reason ,,in ,,society ,volume ,two of 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,,contents ,,book ,,ii4--,,reason ,,in ,,society ,,chapter ,i ,,love ,fluid existences have none but ideal goals4--,nutrition and reproduction4--,priority of the latter4--,love celebrates the initial triumph of form and is deeply ideal4--,difficulty in describing love4--,one-sided or inverted theories about it4--,sexual functions its basis4--,structure the ground of faculty and faculty of duty4--,glory of animal love4--,its degradation when instincts become numerous and competitive4--,moral censure provoked4--,the heart alienated from the world4--,childish ideals4--,their light all focussed on the object of love4--,three environments for love4--,subjectivity of the passion4--,machinery regulating choice4--,the choice unstable4--,instinctive essence of love4--,its ideality4--,its universal scope4--,its euthanasia4 ,pages #c-cd ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,family ,the family arises spontaneously4--,it harmonises natural interests4--,capacity to be educated goes with immaturity at birth4--,the naturally dull achieve intelligence4--,it is more blessed to save than to create4--,parental instinct regards childhood only4--,handing on the torch of life4--,adventitious functions assumed by the family4--,inertia in human nature4--,family tyrannies4--,difficulty in abstracting from the family4--,possibility of substitutes4--,plato's heroic communism4--,opposite modern tendencies4--,individualism in a sense rational4--,the family tamed4--,possible readjustments and reversions4--,the ideal includes generation4--,inner values already lodged in this function4--,outward beneficence might be secured by experiment4 ,pages #ce-ei ,,chapter ,,iii ,,industry1 ,,government1 ,,and ,,war ,patriarchal economy4--,origin of the state4--,three uses of civilisation4--,its rationality contingent4--,sources of wealth4--,excess of it possible4--,irrational industry4--,its jovial and ingenious side4--,its tyranny4--,an impossible remedy4--,basis of government4--,how rationality accrues4--,ferocious but useful despotisms4--,occasional advantage of being conquered4--,origin of free governments4--,their democratic tendencies4--,imperial peace4--,nominal and real status of armies4--,their action irresponsible4--,pugnacity human4--,barrack-room philosophy4--,military virtues4--,they are splendid vices4--,absolute value in strife4--,sport a civilised way of preserving it4--,who shall found the universal commonwealth8 ,pages #fj-hg ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,aristocratic ,,ideal ,eminence1 once existing1 grows by its own operation4--,its causes natural and its privileges just4--,advantage of inequality4--,fable of the belly and the members4--,fallacy in it4--,theism expresses better the aristocratic ideal4--,a heaven with many mansions4--,if ,god is defined as the human ideal1 apotheosis the only paradise4--,when natures differ perfections differ too4--,theory that stations actually correspond to faculty4--,its falsity4--,feeble individuality the rule4--,sophistical envy4--,inequality is not a grievance2 suffering is4--,mutilation by crowding4--,a hint to optimists4--,how aristocracies might do good4--,man adds wrong to nature's injury4--,conditions of a just inequality4 ,pages #hh-aac ,,chapter ,v ,,democracy ,democracy as an end and as a means4--,natural democracy leads to monarchy4--,artificial democracy is an extension of privilege4--,ideals and expedients4--,well-founded distrust of rulers4 ,yet experts1 if rational1 would serve common interests4--,people jealous of eminence4--,it is representative1 but subject to decay4--,ancient citizenship a privilege4--,modern democracy industrial4--,dangers to current civilisation4--,is current civilisation a good8--,horrors of materialistic democracy4--,timocracy or socialistic aristocracy4--,the difficulty the same as in all ,socialism4--,the masses would have to be plebeian in position and patrician in feeling4--,organisation for ideal ends breeds fanaticism4--,public spirit the life of democracy4 ,pages #aad-acf ,,chapter ,,vi ,,free ,,society ,primacy of nature over spirit4--,all experience at bottom liberal4--,social experience has its ideality too4--,the self an ideal4--,romantic egotism4--,vanity4--,ambiguities of fame4--,its possible ideality4--,comradeship4--,external conditions of friendship4--,identity in sex required1 and in age4--,constituents of friendship4--,personal liking4--,the refracting human medium for ideas4--,affection based on the refraction4--,the medium must also be transparent4--,common interests indispensable4--,friendship between man and wife4--,between master and disciple4--,conflict between ideal and natural allegiance4--,automatic idealisation of heroes4 ,pages #acg-aei ,,chapter ,,vii ,,patriotism ,the creative social environment1 since it eludes sense1 must be represented symbolically4--,ambiguous limits of a native country1 geographical and moral4--,sentimental and political patriotism4--,the earth and the race the first objects of rational loyalty4--,race1 when distinct1 the greatest of distinctions4--8,pure0 races may be morally sterile4--,true nationality direction on a definite ideal4--,country well represented by domestic and civic religion4--,misleading identification of country with government4--,sporting or belligerent patriotism4--,exclusive patriotism rational only when the government supported is universally beneficent4--,accidents of birth and training affect the ideal4--,they are conditions and may contribute something4--,they are not ends4--,the symbol for country may be a man and may become an idol4--,feudal representation sensitive but partial4--,monarchical representation comprehensive but treacherous4--,impersonal symbols no advantage4--,patriotism not self-interest1 save to the social man whose aims are ideal4 ,pages #afj-ahc ,,chapter ,,viii ,,ideal ,,society ,the gregarious instinct all social instincts in suspense4--,it gives rise to conscience or sympathy with the public voice4--,guises of public opinion4--,oracles and revelations4--,the ideal a measure for all existences and no existence itself4--,contrast between natural and intellectual bonds4--,appeal from man to ,god1 from real to ideal society4--,significant symbols revert to the concrete4--,nature a symbol for destiny4--,representative notions have also inherent values4--,religion and science indirectly cognitive and directly ideal4--,their opposite outlook4--,in translating existence into human terms they give human nature its highest exercise4--,science should be mathematical and religion anthropomorphic4--,summary of this book4 ,pages #ahd-bje ,,reason ,,in ,,society ,,chapter ,i ,,love ,sidenote3 ,fluid existences have none but ideal goals4 ,if man were a static or intelligible being1 such as angels are thought to be1 his life would have a single guiding interest1 under which all other interests would be subsumed4 ,his acts would explain themselves without looking beyond his given essence1 and his soul would be like a musical composition1 which once written out cannot grow different and once rendered can ask for nothing but1 at most1 to be rendered over again4 ,in truth1 however1 man is an animal1 a portion of the natural flux2 and the consequence is that his nature has a moving centre1 his functions an external reference1 and his ideal a true ideality4 ,what he strives to preserve1 in preserving himself1 is something which he never has been at any particular moment4 ,he maintains his equilibrium by motion4 ,his goal is in a sense beyond him1 since it is not his experience1 but a form which all experience ought to receive4 ,the inmost texture of his being is propulsive1 and there is nothing more intimately bound up with his success than mobility and devotion to transcendent aims4 ,if there is a transitive function in knowledge and an unselfish purpose in love1 that is only because1 at bottom1 there is a self-reproductive1 flying essence in all existence4 ,if the equilibrium of man's being were stable he would need neither nutrition1 reproduction1 nor sense4 ,as it is1 sense must renew his ideas and guide his instincts otherwise than as their inner evolution would demand2 and regenerative processes must strive to repair beneath the constant irreparable lapse of his substance4 ,his business is to create and remodel those organisms in which ideals are bred4 ,in order to have a soul to save he must perpetually form it anew2 he must1 so to speak1 earn his own living4 ,in this vital labour1 we may ask1 is nutrition or reproduction the deeper function8 ,or1 to put the corresponding moral question1 is the body or the state the primary good8 ,sidenote3 ,nutrition and reproduction ,if we view the situation from the individual's side1 as self-consciousness might view it1 we may reply that nutrition is fundamental1 for if the body were not nourished every faculty would decay4 ,could nutrition only succeed and keep the body young1 reproduction would be unnecessary1 with its poor pretence at maintaining the mobile human form in a series of examples4 ,on the other hand1 if we view the matter from above1 as science and philosophy should1 we may say that nutrition is but germination of a pervasive sort1 that the body is a tabernacle in which the transmissible human spirit is carried for a while1 a shell for the immortal seed that dwells in it and has created it4 ,this seed1 however1 for rational estimation1 is merely a means to the existence and happiness of individuals4 ,transpersonal and continuous in its own fluid being1 the potential grows personal in its ideal fulfilments4 ,in other words1 this potentiality is material 7though called sometimes an idea7 and has its only value in the particular creatures it may produce4 ,sidenote3 ,priority of the latter ,reproduction is accordingly primary and more completely instrumental than nutrition is1 since it serves a soul as yet non-existent1 while nutrition is useful to a soul that already has some actuality4 ,reproduction initiates life and remains at life's core1 a function without which no other1 in the end1 would be possible4 ,it is more central1 crucial1 and representative than nutrition1 which is in a way peripheral only2 it is a more typical and rudimentary act1 marking the ideal's first victory over the universal flux1 before any higher function than reproduction itself has accrued to the animal4 ,to nourish an existing being is to presuppose a pause in generation2 the nucleus1 before it dissolves into other individuals1 gathers about itself1 for its own glory1 certain temporal and personal faculties4 ,it lives for itself2 while in procreation it signs its own death-warrant1 makes its will1 and institutes its heir4 ,sidenote3 ,love celebrates the initial triumph of form and is deeply ideal4 ,this situation has its counterpart in feeling4 ,replenishment is a sort of delayed breathing1 as if the animal had to hunt for air3 it necessitates more activity than it contains2 it engages external senses in its service and promotes intelligence4 ,after securing a dumb satisfaction1 or even in preparing it1 it leaves the habits it employed free for observation and ideal exercise4 ,reproduction1 on the contrary1 depletes2 it is an expense of spirit1 a drag on physical and mental life2 it entangles rather than liberates2 it fuses the soul again into the impersonal1 blind flux4 ,yet1 since it constitutes the primary and central triumph of life1 it is in itself more ideal and generous than nutrition2 it fascinates the will in an absolute fashion1 and the pleasures it brings are largely spiritual4 ,for though the instrumentalities of reproduction may seem gross and trivial from a conventional point of view1 its essence is really ideal1 the perfect type1 indeed1 of ideality1 since form and an identical life are therein sustained successfully by a more rhythmical flux of matter4 ,it may seem fanciful1 even if not unmeaning1 to say that a man's soul more truly survives in his son's youth than in his own decrepitude2 but this principle grows more obvious as we descend to simpler beings1 in which individual life is less elaborated and has not intrenched itself in so many adventitious and somewhat permanent organs4 ,in vegetables soul and seed go forth together and leave nothing but a husk behind4 ,in the human individual love may seem a mere incident of youth and a sentimental madness2 but that episode1 if we consider the race1 is indispensable to the whole drama2 and if we look to the order in which ideal interests have grown up and to their superposition in moral experience1 love will seem the truly primitive and initiatory passion4 ,consciousness1 amused ordinarily by the most superficial processes1 itself bears witness to the underlying claims of reproduction and is drawn by it for a moment into life's central vortex2 and love1 while it betrays its deep roots by the imperative force it exerts and the silence it imposes on all current passions1 betrays also its ideal mission by casting an altogether novel and poetic spell over the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,difficulty in describing love4 ,the conscious quality of this passion differs so much in various races and individuals1 and at various points in the same life1 that no account of it will ever satisfy everybody4,a ,poets and novelists never tire of depicting it anew2 but although the experience they tell of is fresh and unparalleled in every individual1 their rendering suffers1 on the whole1 from a great monotony4 ,love's gesture and symptoms are noted and unvarying2 its vocabulary is poor and worn4 ,even a poet1 therefore1 can give of love but a meagre expression1 while the philosopher1 who renounces dramatic representation1 is condemned to be avowedly inadequate4 ,love1 to the lover1 is a noble and immense inspiration2 to the naturalist it is a thin veil and prelude to the self-assertion of lust4 ,this opposition has prevented philosophers from doing justice to the subject4 ,two things need to be admitted by anyone who would not go wholly astray in such speculation3 one1 that love has an animal basis2 the other1 that it has an ideal object4 ,since these two propositions have usually been thought contradictory1 no writer has ventured to present more than half the truth1 and that half out of its true relations4 ,sidenote3 ,one-sided or inverted theories about it4 ,plato1 who gave eloquent expression to the ideal burden of the passion1 and divined its political and cosmic message1 passed over its natural history with a few mythical fancies2 and ,schopenhauer1 into whose system a naturalistic treatment would have fitted so easily1 allowed his metaphysics to carry him at this point into verbal inanities2 while1 of course1 like all profane writers on the subject1 he failed to appreciate the oracles which ,plato had delivered4 ,in popular feeling1 where sentiment and observation must both make themselves felt somehow or other1 the tendency is to imagine that love is an absolute1 non-natural energy which1 for some unknown reason1 or for none at all1 lights upon particular persons1 and rests there eternally1 as on its ultimate goal4 ,in other words1 it makes the origin of love divine and its object natural3 which is the exact opposite of the truth4 ,if it were once seen1 however1 that every ideal expresses some natural function1 and that no natural function is incapable1 in its free exercise1 of evolving some ideal and finding justification1 not in some collateral animal1 but in an inherent operation like life or thought1 which being transmissible in its form is also eternal1 then the philosophy of love should not prove permanently barren4 ,for love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable3 namely1 that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods4 ,there can be no philosophic interest in disguising the animal basis of love1 or in denying its spiritual sublimations1 since all life is animal in its origin and all spiritual in its possible fruits4 ,sidenote3 ,sexual functions its basis4 ,plastic matter1 in transmitting its organisation1 takes various courses which it is the part of natural history to describe4 ,even after reproduction has become sexual1 it will offer no basis for love if it does not require a union of the two parent bodies4 ,did germinal substances1 unconsciously diffused1 meet by chance in the external medium and unite there1 it is obvious that whatever obsessions or pleasures maturity might bring they would not have the quality which men call love4 ,but when an individual of the opposite sex must be met with1 recognised1 and pursued1 and must prove responsive1 then each is haunted by the possible other4 ,each feels in a generic way the presence and attraction of his fellows2 he vibrates to their touch1 he dreams of their image1 he is restless and wistful if alone4 ,when the vague need that solicits him is met by the presence of a possible mate it is extraordinarily kindled4 ,then1 if it reaches fruition1 it subsides immediately1 and after an interval1 perhaps1 of stupor and vital recuperation1 the animal regains his independence1 his peace1 and his impartial curiosity4 ,you might think him on the way to becoming intelligent2 but the renewed nutrition and cravings of the sexual machinery soon engross his attention again2 all his sprightly indifference vanishes before nature's categorical imperative4 ,that fierce and turbid pleasure1 by which his obedience is rewarded1 hastens his dissolution2 every day the ensuing lassitude and emptiness give him a clearer premonition of death4 ,it is not figuratively only that his soul has passed into his offspring4 ,the vocation to produce them was a chief part of his being1 and when that function is sufficiently fulfilled he is superfluous in the world and becomes partly superfluous even to himself4 ,the confines of his dream are narrowed4 ,he moves apathetically and dies forlorn4 ,some echo of the vital rhythm which pervades not merely the generations of animals1 but the seasons and the stars1 emerges sometimes in consciousness2 on reaching the tropics in the mortal ecliptic1 which the human individual may touch many times without much change in his outer fortunes1 the soul may occasionally divine that it is passing through a supreme crisis4 ,passion1 when vehement1 may bring atavistic sentiments4 ,when love is absolute it feels a profound impulse to welcome death1 and even1 by a transcendental confusion1 to invoke the end of the universe4,b ,the human soul reverts at such a moment to what an ephemeral insect might feel1 buzzing till it finds its mate in the noon4 ,its whole destiny was wooing1 and1 that mission accomplished1 it sings its ,nunc dimittis1 renouncing heartily all irrelevant things1 now that the one fated and all-satisfying good has been achieved4 ,where parental instincts exist also1 nature soon shifts her loom3 a milder impulse succeeds1 and a satisfaction of a gentler sort follows in the birth of children4 ,the transcendental illusion is here corrected1 and it is seen that the extinction the lovers had accepted needed not to be complete4 ,the death they welcomed was not without its little resurrection4 ,the feeble worm they had generated bore their immortality within it4 ,the varieties of sexual economy are many and to each may correspond1 for all we know1 a special sentiment4 ,sometimes the union established is intermittent2 sometimes it crowns the end of life and dissolves it altogether2 sometimes it remains1 while it lasts1 monogamous2 sometimes the sexual and social alertness is constant in the male1 only periodic in the female4 ,sometimes the group established for procreation endures throughout the seasons1 and from year to year2 sometimes the males herd together1 as if normally they preferred their own society1 until the time of rut comes1 when war arises between them for the possession of what they have just discovered to be the fair4 ,sidenote3 ,structure the ground of faculty and faculty of duty4 ,a naturalist not ashamed to indulge his poetic imagination might easily paint for us the drama of these diverse loves4 ,it suffices for our purpose to observe that the varying passions and duties which life can contain depend upon the organic functions of the animal4 ,a fish incapable of coition1 absolved from all care for its young1 which it never sees or never distinguishes from the casual swimmers darting across its path1 such a fish1 being without social faculties or calls to co-operation1 cannot have the instincts1 perceptions1 or emotions which belong to social beings4 ,a male of some higher species that feels only once a year the sudden solicitations of love cannot be sentimental in all the four seasons3 his head-long passion1 exhausted upon its present object and dismissed at once without remainder1 leaves his senses perfectly free and colourless to scrutinise his residual world4 ,whatever further fears or desires may haunt him will have nothing mystical or sentimental about them4 ,he will be a man of business all the year round1 and a lover only on ,may-day4 ,a female that does not suffice for the rearing of her young will expect and normally receive her mate's aid long after the pleasures of love are forgotten by him4 ,disinterested fidelity on his part will then be her right and his duty4 ,but a female that1 once pregnant1 needs1 like the hen1 no further co-operation on the male's part will turn from him at once with absolute indifference to brood perpetually on her eggs1 undisturbed by the least sense of solitude or jealousy4 ,and the chicks that at first follow her and find shelter under her wings will soon be forgotten also and relegated to the mechanical landscape4 ,there is no pain in the timely snapping of the dearest bonds where society has not become a permanent organism1 and perpetual friendship is not one of its possible modes4 ,transcendent and ideal passions may well judge themselves to have an incomparable dignity4 ,yet that dignity is hardly more than what every passion1 were it articulate1 would assign to itself and to its objects4 ,the dumbness of a passion may accordingly1 from one point of view1 be called the index of its baseness2 for if it cannot ally itself with ideas its affinities can hardly lie in the rational mind nor its advocates be among the poets4 ,but if we listen to the master-passion itself rather than to the loquacious arts it may have enlisted in its service1 we shall understand that it is not self-condemned because it is silent1 nor an anomaly in nature because inharmonious with human life4 ,the fish's heartlessness is his virtue2 the male bee's lasciviousness is his vocation2 and if these functions were retrenched or encumbered in order to assimilate them to human excellence they would be merely dislocated4 ,we should not produce virtue where there was vice1 but defeat a possible arrangement which would have had its own vitality and order4 ,sidenote3 ,glory of animal love4 ,animal love is a marvellous force2 and while it issues in acts that may be followed by a revulsion of feeling1 it yet deserves a more sympathetic treatment than art and morals have known how to accord it4 ,erotic poets1 to hide their want of ability to make the dumb passion speak1 have played feebly with veiled insinuations and comic effects2 while more serious sonneteers have harped exclusively on secondary and somewhat literary emotions1 abstractly conjugating the verb to love4 ,lucretius1 in spite of his didactic turns1 has been on this subject1 too1 the most ingenuous and magnificent of poets1 although he chose to confine his description to the external history of sexual desire4 ,it is a pity that he did not turn1 with his sublime sincerity1 to the inner side of it also1 and write the drama of the awakened senses1 the poignant suasion of beauty1 when it clouds the brain1 and makes the conventional earth1 seen through that bright haze1 seem a sorry fable4 ,western poets should not have despised what the ,orientals1 in their fugitive stanzas1 seem often to have sung most exquisitely3 the joy of gazing on the beloved1 of following or being followed1 of tacit understandings and avowals1 of flight together into some solitude to people it with those ineffable confidences which so naturally follow the outward proofs of love4 ,all this makes the brightest page of many a life1 the only bright page in the thin biography of many a human animal2 while if the beasts could speak they would give us1 no doubt1 endless versions of the only joy in which1 as we may fancy1 the blood of the universe flows consciously through their hearts4 ,the darkness which conventionally covers this passion is one of the saddest consequences of ,adam's fall4 ,it was a terrible misfortune in man's development that he should not have been able to acquire the higher functions without deranging the lower4 ,why should the depths of his being be thus polluted and the most delightful of nature's mysteries be an occasion not for communion with her1 as it should have remained1 but for depravity and sorrow8 ,sidenote3 ,its degradation when instincts become numerous and competitive4 ,this question1 asked in moral perplexity1 admits of a scientific answer4 ,man1 in becoming more complex1 becomes less stably organised4 ,his sexual instinct1 instead of being intermittent1 but violent and boldly declared1 becomes practically constant1 but is entangled in many cross-currents of desire1 in many other equally imperfect adaptations of structure to various ends4 ,indulgence in any impulse can then easily become excessive and thwart the rest2 for it may be aroused artificially and maintained from without1 so that in turn it disturbs its neighbours4 ,sometimes the sexual instinct may be stimulated out of season by example1 by a too wakeful fancy1 by language1 by pride--for all these forces are now working in the same field and intermingling their suggestions4 ,at the same time the same instinct may derange others1 and make them fail at their proper and pressing occasions4 ,sidenote3 ,moral censure provoked4 ,in consequence of such derangements1 reflection and public opinion will come to condemn what in itself was perfectly innocent4 ,the corruption of a given instinct by others and of others by it1 becomes the ground for long attempts to suppress or enslave it4 ,with the haste and formalism natural to language and to law1 external and arbitrary limits are set to its operation4 ,as no inward adjustment can possibly correspond to these conventional barriers and compartments of life1 a war between nature and morality breaks out both in society and in each particular bosom--a war in which every victory is a sorrow and every defeat a dishonour4 ,as one instinct after another becomes furious or disorganised1 cowardly or criminal1 under these artificial restrictions1 the public and private conscience turns against it all its forces1 necessarily without much nice discrimination2 the frank passions of youth are met with a grimace of horror on all sides1 with rumores senum severiorum1 with an insistence on reticence and hypocrisy4 ,such suppression is favourable to corruption3 the fancy with a sort of idiotic ingenuity comes to supply the place of experience2 and nature is rendered vicious and overlaid with pruriency1 artifice1 and the love of novelty4 ,hereupon the authorities that rule in such matters naturally redouble their vigilance and exaggerate their reasonable censure3 chastity begins to seem essentially holy and perpetual virginity ends by becoming an absolute ideal4 ,thus the disorder in man's life and disposition1 when grown intolerable1 leads him to condemn the very elements out of which order might have been constituted1 and to mistake his total confusion for his total depravity4 ,sidenote3 ,the heart alienated from the world4 ,banished from the open day1 covered with mockery1 and publicly ignored1 this necessary pleasure flourishes none the less in dark places and in the secret soul4 ,its familiar presence there1 its intimate habitation in what is most oneself1 helps to cut the world in two and to separate the inner from the outer life4 ,in that mysticism which cannot disguise its erotic affinities this disruption reaches an absolute and theoretic form2 but in many a youth little suspected of mysticism it produces estrangement from the conventional moralising world1 which he instinctively regards as artificial and alien4 ,it prepares him for excursions into a private fairy-land in which unthought-of joys will blossom amid friendlier magic forces4 ,the truly good then seems to be the fantastic1 the sensuous1 the prodigally unreal4 ,he gladly forgets the dreary world he lives in to listen for a thousand and one nights to his dreams4 ,sidenote3 ,childish ideals4 ,this is the region where those who have no conception of the ,life of ,reason place the ideal2 and an ideal is indeed there but the ideal of a single and inordinate impulse4 ,a rational mind1 on the contrary1 moves by preference in the real world1 cultivating all human interests in due proportion4 ,the love-sick and luxurious dream-land dear to irrational poets is a distorted image of the ideal world2 but this distortion has still an ideal motive1 since it is made to satisfy the cravings of a forgotten part of the soul and to make a home for those elements in human nature which have been denied overt existence4 ,if the ideal is meantime so sadly caricatured1 the fault lies with the circumstances of life that have not allowed the sane will adequate exercise4 ,lack of strength and of opportunity makes it impossible for man to preserve all his interests in a just harmony2 and his conscious ideal1 springing up as it too often does in protest against suffering and tyranny1 has not scope and range enough to include the actual opportunities for action4 ,nature herself1 by making a slave of the body1 has thus made a tyrant of the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,their light all focussed on the object of love4 ,fairy-land and a mystical heaven contain many other factors besides that furnished by unsatisfied and objectless love4 ,all sensuous and verbal images may breed after their own kind in an empty brain2 but these fantasies are often supported and directed by sexual longings and vaguely luxurious thoughts4 ,an ,oriental ,paradise1 with its delicate but mindless stheticism1 is above everything a garden for love4 ,to brood on such an ,elysium is a likely prelude and fertile preparation for romantic passion4 ,when the passion takes form it calls fancy back from its loose reveries and fixes it upon a single object4 ,then the ideal seems at last to have been brought down to earth4 ,its embodiment has been discovered amongst the children of men4 ,imagination narrows her range4 ,instead of all sorts of flatteries to sense and improbable delicious adventures1 the lover imagines but a single joy3 to be master of his love in body and soul4 ,jealousy pursues him4 ,even if he dreads no physical betrayal1 he suffers from terror and morbid sensitiveness at every hint of mental estrangement4 ,sidenote3 ,three environments for love4 ,this attachment is often the more absorbing the more unaccountable it seems2 and as in hypnotism the subject is dead to all influences but that of the operator1 so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it4 ,that being is not selected2 it is recognised and obeyed4 ,pre-arranged reactions in the system respond to whatever stimulus1 at a propitious moment1 happens to break through and arouse them pervasively4 ,nature has opened various avenues to that passion in whose successful operation she has so much at stake4 ,sometimes the magic influence asserts itself suddenly1 sometimes gently and unawares4 ,one approach1 which in poetry has usurped more than its share of attention1 is through beauty2 another1 less glorious1 but often more efficacious1 through surprised sense and premonitions of pleasure2 a third through social sympathy and moral affinities4 ,contemplation1 sense1 and association are none of them the essence nor even the seed of love2 but any of them may be its soil and supply it with a propitious background4 ,it would be mere sophistry to pretend1 for instance1 that love is or should be nothing but a moral bond1 the sympathy of two kindred spirits or the union of two lives4 ,for such an effect no passion would be needed1 as none is needed to perceive beauty or to feel pleasure4 ,what ,aristotle calls friendships of utility1 pleasure1 or virtue1 all resting on common interests of some impersonal sort1 are far from possessing the quality of love1 its thrill1 flutter1 and absolute sway over happiness and misery4 ,but it may well fall to such influences to awaken or feed the passion where it actually arises4 ,whatever circumstances pave the way1 love does not itself appear until a sexual affinity is declared4 ,when a woman1 for instance1 contemplating marriage1 asks herself whether she really loves her suitor or merely accepts him1 the test is the possibility of awakening a sexual affinity4 ,for this reason women of the world often love their husbands more truly than they did their lovers1 because marriage has evoked an elementary feeling which before lay smothered under a heap of coquetries1 vanities1 and conventions4 ,sidenote3 ,subjectivity of the passion4 ,man1 on the contrary1 is polygamous by instinct1 although often kept faithful by habit no less than by duty4 ,if his fancy is left free1 it is apt to wander4 ,we observe this in romantic passion no less than in a life of mere gallantry and pleasure4 ,sentimental illusions may become a habit1 and the shorter the dream is the more often it is repeated1 so that any susceptible poet may find that he1 like ,alfred de ,musset1 8must love incessantly1 who once has loved40 ,love is indeed much less exacting than it thinks itself4 ,nine-tenths of its cause are in the lover1 for one-tenth that may be in the object4 ,were the latter not accidentally at hand1 an almost identical passion would probably have been felt for someone else2 for although with acquaintance the quality of an attachment naturally adapts itself to the person loved1 and makes that person its standard and ideal1 the first assault and mysterious glow of the passion is much the same for every object4 ,what really affects the character of love is the lover's temperament1 age1 and experience4 ,the objects that appeal to each man reveal his nature2 but those unparalleled virtues and that unique divinity which the lover discovers there are reflections of his own adoration1 things that ecstasy is very cunning in4 ,he loves what he imagines and worships what he creates4 ,sidenote3 ,machinery regulating choice4 ,those who do not consider these matters so curiously may feel that to refer love in this way chiefly to inner processes is at once ignominious and fantastic4 ,but nothing could be more natural2 the soul accurately renders1 in this experience1 what is going on in the body and in the race4 ,nature had a problem to solve in sexual reproduction which would have daunted a less ruthless experimenter4 ,she had to bring together automatically1 and at the dictation1 as they felt1 of their irresponsible wills1 just the creatures that by uniting might reproduce the species4 ,the complete sexual reaction had to be woven together out of many incomplete reactions to various stimuli1 reactions not specifically sexual4 ,the outer senses had to be engaged1 and many secondary characters found in bodies had to be used to attract attention1 until the deeper instinctive response should have time to gather itself together and assert itself openly4 ,many mechanical preformations and reflexes must conspire to constitute a determinate instinct4 ,we name this instinct after its ultimate function1 looking forward to the uses we observe it to have2 and it seems to us in consequence an inexplicable anomaly that many a time the instinct is set in motion when its alleged purpose cannot be fulfilled2 as when love appears prematurely or too late1 or fixes upon a creature of the wrong age or sex4 ,these anomalies show us how nature is built up and1 far from being inexplicable1 are hints that tend to make everything clear1 when once a verbal and mythical philosophy has been abandoned4 ,responses which we may call sexual in view of results to which they may ultimately lead are thus often quite independent1 and exist before they are drawn into the vortex of a complete and actually generative act4 ,external stimulus and present idea will consequently be altogether inadequate to explain the profound upheaval which may ensue1 if1 as we say1 we actually fall in love4 ,that the senses should be played upon is nothing1 if no deeper reaction is aroused4 ,all depends on the juncture at which1 so to speak1 the sexual circuit is completed and the emotional currents begin to circulate4 ,whatever object1 at such a critical moment1 fills the field of consciousness becomes a signal and associate for the whole sexual mood4 ,it is breathlessly devoured in that pause and concentration of attention1 that rearrangement of the soul1 which love is conceived in2 and the whole new life which that image is engulfed in is foolishly supposed to be its effect4 ,for the image is in consciousness1 but not the profound predispositions which gave it place and power4 ,sidenote3 ,the choice unstable4 ,this association between passion and its signals may be merely momentary1 or it may be perpetual3 a ,don ,juan and a ,dante are both genuine lovers4 ,in a gay society the gallant addresses every woman as if she charmed him1 and perhaps actually finds any kind of beauty1 or mere femininity anywhere1 a sufficient spur to his desire4 ,these momentary fascinations are not necessarily false3 they may for an instant be quite absorbing and irresistible2 they may genuinely suffuse the whole mind4 ,such mercurial fire will indeed require a certain imaginative temperament2 and there are many persons who1 short of a life-long domestic attachment1 can conceive of nothing but sordid vice4 ,but even an inconstant flame may burn brightly1 if the soul is naturally combustible4 ,indeed these sparks and glints of passion1 just because they come and vary so quickly1 offer admirable illustrations of it1 in which it may be viewed1 so to speak1 under the microscope and in its formative stage4 ,thus ,plato did not hesitate to make the love of all wines1 under whatever guise1 excuse1 or occasion1 the test of a true taste for wine and an unfeigned adoration of ,bacchus2 and1 like ,lucretius after him1 he wittily compiled a list of names1 by which the lover will flatter the most opposite qualities1 if they only succeed in arousing his inclination4 ,to be omnivorous is one pole of true love3 to be exclusive is the other4 ,a man whose heart1 if ,i may say so1 lies deeper1 hidden under a thicker coat of mail1 will have less play of fancy1 and will be far from finding every charm charming1 or every sort of beauty a stimulus to love4 ,yet he may not be less prone to the tender passion1 and when once smitten may be so penetrated by an unimagined tenderness and joy1 that he will declare himself incapable of ever loving again1 and may actually be so4 ,having no rivals and a deeper soil1 love can ripen better in such a constant spirit2 it will not waste itself in a continual patter of little pleasures and illusions4 ,but unless the passion of it is to die down1 it must somehow assert its universality3 what it loses in diversity it must gain in applicability4 ,it must become a principle of action and an influence colouring everything that is dreamt of2 otherwise it would have lost its dignity and sunk into a dead memory or a domestic bond4 ,sidenote3 ,instinctive essence of love4 ,true love1 it used to be said1 is love at first sight4 ,manners have much to do with such incidents1 and the race which happens to set1 at a given time1 the fashion in literature makes its temperament public and exercises a sort of contagion over all men's fancies4 ,if women are rarely seen and ordinarily not to be spoken to2 if all imagination has to build upon is a furtive glance or casual motion1 people fall in love at first sight4 ,for they must fall in love somehow1 and any stimulus is enough if none more powerful is forthcoming4 ,when society1 on the contrary1 allows constant and easy intercourse between the sexes1 a first impression1 if not reinforced1 will soon be hidden and obliterated by others4 ,acquaintance becomes necessary for love when it is necessary for memory4 ,but what makes true love is not the information conveyed by acquaintance1 not any circumstantial charms that may be therein discovered2 it is still a deep and dumb instinctive affinity1 an inexplicable emotion seizing the heart1 an influence organising the world1 like a luminous crystal1 about one magic point4 ,so that although love seldom springs up suddenly in these days into anything like a full-blown passion1 it is sight1 it is presence1 that makes in time a conquest over the heart2 for all virtues1 sympathies1 confidences will fail to move a man to tenderness and to worship1 unless a poignant effluence from the object envelop him1 so that he begins to walk1 as it were1 in a dream4 ,not to believe in love is a great sign of dulness4 ,there are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest on circumstantial evidence4 ,but a finely constituted being is sensitive to its deepest affinities4 ,this is precisely what refinement consists in1 that we may feel in things immediate and infinitesimal a sure premonition of things ultimate and important4 ,fine senses vibrate at once to harmonies which it may take long to verify2 so sight is finer than touch1 and thought than sensation4 ,well-bred instinct meets reason half-way1 and is prepared for the consonances that may follow4 ,beautiful things1 when taste is formed1 are obviously and unaccountably beautiful4 ,the grounds we may bring ourselves to assign for our preferences are discovered by analysing those preferences1 and articulate judgments follow upon emotions which they ought to express1 but which they sometimes sophisticate4 ,so1 too1 the reasons we give for love either express what it feels or else are insincere1 attempting to justify at the bar of reason and convention something which is far more primitive than they and underlies them both4 ,true instinct can dispense with such excuses4 ,it appeals to the event and is justified by the response which nature makes to it4 ,it is1 of course1 far from infallible2 it cannot dominate circumstances1 and has no discursive knowledge2 but it is presumably true1 and what it foreknows is always essentially possible4 ,unrealisable it may indeed be in the jumbled context of this world1 where the ,fates1 like an absent-minded printer1 seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred4 ,the profoundest affinities are those most readily felt1 and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them1 they remain a background and standard for all happiness4 ,if we trace them out we succeed4 ,if we put them by1 although in other respects we may call ourselves happy1 we inwardly know that we have dismissed the ideal1 and all that was essentially possible has not been realised4 ,love in that case still owns a hidden and potential object1 and we sanctify1 perhaps1 whatever kindnesses or partialities we indulge in by a secret loyalty to something impersonal and unseen4 ,such reserve1 such religion1 would not have been necessary had things responded to our first expectations4 ,we might then have identified the ideal with the object that happened to call it forth4 ,the ,life of ,reason might have been led instinctively1 and we might have been guided by nature herself into the ways of peace4 ,sidenote3 ,its ideality4 ,as it is1 circumstances1 false steps1 or the mere lapse of time1 force us to shuffle our affections and take them as they come1 or as we are suffered to indulge them4 ,a mother is followed by a boyish friend1 a friend by a girl1 a girl by a wife1 a wife by a child1 a child by an idea4 ,a divinity passes through these various temples2 they may all remain standing1 and we may continue our cult in them without outward change1 long after the god has fled from the last into his native heaven4 ,we may try to convince ourselves that we have lost nothing when we have lost all4 ,we may take comfort in praising the mixed and perfunctory attachments which cling to us by force of habit and duty1 repeating the empty names of creatures that have long ceased to be what we once could love1 and assuring ourselves that we have remained constant1 without admitting that the world1 which is in irreparable flux1 has from the first been betraying us4 ,ashamed of being so deeply deceived1 we may try to smile cynically at the glory that once shone upon us1 and call it a dream4 ,but cynicism is wasted on the ideal4 ,there is indeed no idol ever identified with the ideal which honest experience1 even without cynicism1 will not some day unmask and discredit4 ,every real object must cease to be what it seemed1 and none could ever be what the whole soul desired4 ,yet what the soul desires is nothing arbitrary4 ,life is no objectless dream1 but continually embodies1 with varying success1 the potentialities it contains and that prompt desire4 ,everything that satisfies at all1 even if partially and for an instant1 justifies aspiration and rewards it4 ,existence1 however1 cannot be arrested2 and only the transmissible forms of things can endure1 to match the transmissible faculties which living beings hand down to one another4 ,the ideal is accordingly significant1 perpetual1 and as constant as the nature it expresses2 but it can never itself exist1 nor can its particular embodiments endure4 ,sidenote3 ,its universal scope4 ,love is accordingly only half an illusion2 the lover1 but not his love1 is deceived4 ,his madness1 as ,plato taught1 is divine2 for though it be folly to identify the idol with the god1 faith in the god is inwardly justified4 ,that egregious idolatry may therefore be interpreted ideally and given a symbolic scope worthy of its natural causes and of the mystery it comes to celebrate4 ,the lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian1 unless the latter1 too1 be lovers in disguise4 ,logical universals are terms in discourse1 without vital ideality1 while traditional gods are at best natural existences1 more or less indifferent facts4 ,what the lover comes upon1 on the contrary1 is truly persuasive1 and witnesses to itself1 so that he worships from the heart and beholds what he worships4 ,that the true object is no natural being1 but an ideal form essentially eternal and capable of endless embodiments1 is far from abolishing its worth2 on the contrary1 this fact makes love ideally relevant to generation1 by which the human soul and body may be for ever renewed1 and at the same time makes it a thing for large thoughts to be focussed upon1 a thing representing all rational aims4 ,whenever this ideality is absent and a lover sees nothing in his mistress but what everyone else may find in her1 loving her honestly in her unvarnished and accidental person1 there is a friendly and humorous affection1 admirable in itself1 but no passion or bewitchment of love2 she is a member of his group1 not a spirit in his pantheon4 ,such an affection may be altogether what it should be2 it may bring a happiness all the more stable because the heart is quite whole1 and no divine shaft has pierced it4 ,it is hard to stanch wounds inflicted by a god4 ,the glance of an ideal love is terrible and glorious1 foreboding death and immortality together4 ,love could not be called divine without platitude if it regarded nothing but its nominal object2 to be divine it must not envisage an accidental good but the principle of goodness1 that which gives other goods their ultimate meaning1 and makes all functions useful4 ,love is a true natural religion2 it has a visible cult1 it is kindled by natural beauties and bows to the best symbol it may find for its hope2 it sanctifies a natural mystery2 and1 finally1 when understood1 it recognises that what it worshipped under a figure was truly the principle of all good4 ,the loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations4 ,love would never take so high a flight unless it sprung from something profound and elementary4 ,it is accordingly most truly love when it is irresistible and fatal4 ,the substance of all passion1 if we could gather it together1 would be the basis of all ideals1 to which all goods would have to refer4 ,love actually accomplishes something of the sort2 being primordial it underlies other demands1 and can be wholly satisfied only by a happiness which is ultimate and comprehensive4 ,lovers are vividly aware of this fact3 their ideal1 apparently so inarticulate1 seems to them to include everything4 ,it shares the mystical quality of all primitive life4 ,sophisticated people can hardly understand how vague experience is at bottom1 and how truly that vagueness supports whatever clearness is afterward attained4 ,they cling to the notion that nothing can have a spiritual scope that does not spring from reflection4 ,but in that case life itself1 which brings reflection about1 would never support spiritual interests1 and all that is moral would be unnatural and consequently self-destructive4 ,in truth1 all spiritual interests are supported by animal life2 in this the generative function is fundamental2 and it is therefore no paradox1 but something altogether fitting1 that if that function realised all it comprises1 nothing human would remain outside4 ,such an ultimate fulfilment would differ1 of course1 from a first satisfaction1 just as all that reproduction reproduces differs from the reproductive function itself1 and vastly exceeds it4 ,all organs and activities which are inherited1 in a sense1 grow out of the reproductive process and serve to clothe it2 so that when the generative energy is awakened all that can ever be is virtually called up and1 so to speak1 made consciously potential2 and love yearns for the universe of values4 ,sidenote3 ,its euthanasia4 ,this secret is gradually revealed to those who are inwardly attentive and allow love to teach them something4 ,a man who has truly loved1 though he may come to recognise the thousand incidental illusions into which love may have led him1 will not recant its essential faith4 ,he will keep his sense for the ideal and his power to worship4 ,the further objects by which these gifts will be entertained will vary with the situation4 ,a philosopher1 a soldier1 and a courtesan will express the same religion in different ways4 ,in fortunate cases love may glide imperceptibly into settled domestic affections1 giving them henceforth a touch of ideality2 for when love dies in the odour of sanctity people venerate his relics4 ,in other cases allegiance to the ideal may appear more sullenly1 breaking out in whims1 or in little sentimental practices which might seem half-conventional4 ,again it may inspire a religious conversion1 charitable works1 or even artistic labours4 ,in all these ways people attempt more or less seriously to lead the ,life of ,reason1 expressing outwardly allegiance to whatever in their minds has come to stand for the ideal4 ,if to create was love's impulse originally1 to create is its effort still1 after it has been chastened and has received some rational extension4 ,the machinery which serves reproduction thus finds kindred but higher uses1 as every organ does in a liberal life2 and what ,plato called a desire for birth in beauty may be sublimated even more1 until it yearns for an ideal immortality in a transfigured world1 a world made worthy of that love which its children have so often lavished on it in their dreams4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,a3 ,the wide uses of the ,english word love add to the difficulty4 ,i shall take the liberty of limiting the term here to imaginative passion1 to being in love1 excluding all other ways of loving4 ,it follows that love--like its shadow1 jealousy--will often be merely an ingredient in an actual state of feeling2 friendship and confidence1 with satisfaction at being liked in return1 will often be mingled with it4 ,we shall have to separate physiologically things which in consciousness exist undivided1 since a philosophic description is bound to be analytic and cannot render everything at once4 ,where a poet might conceive a new composite1 making it live1 a moralist must dissect the experience and rest in its eternal elements4 ,footnote ,b3 ,one example1 among a thousand1 is the cry of ,siegfried and ,brnhilde in ,wagner3 ,lachend lass' uns verderben ,lachend zu ,grunde geh'n4 ,fahr hin1 ,walhall's ,leuchtende ,welt6444 ,leb' wohl1 pragende ,gtter ,pracht6 ,ende in ,wonne1 ,du ewig ,geschlecht6 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,family ,sidenote3 ,the family arises spontaneously4 ,love is but a prelude to life1 an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at1 but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise4 ,what is to follow1 if all goes well1 begins presently to appear4 ,passion settles down into possession1 courtship into partnership1 pleasure into habit4 ,a child1 half mystery and half plaything1 comes to show us what we have done and to make its consequences perpetual4 ,we see that by indulging our inclinations we have woven about us a net from which we cannot escape3 our choices1 bearing fruit1 begin to manifest our destiny4 ,that life which once seemed to spread out infinitely before us is narrowed to one mortal career4 ,we learn that in morals the infinite is a chimera1 and that in accomplishing anything definite a man renounces everything else4 ,he sails henceforth for one point of the compass4 ,sidenote3 ,it harmonises natural interests4 ,the family is one of nature's masterpieces4 ,it would be hard to conceive a system of instincts more nicely adjusted1 where the constituents should represent or support one another better4 ,the husband has an interest in protecting the wife1 she in serving the husband4 ,the weaker gains in authority and safety1 the wilder and more unconcerned finds a help-mate at home to take thought for his daily necessities4 ,parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory2 children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality4 ,sidenote3 ,capacity to be educated goes with immaturity at birth4 ,the long childhood in the human race has made it possible and needful to transmit acquired experience3 possible1 because the child's brain1 being immature1 allows instincts and habits to be formed after birth1 under the influence of that very environment in which they are to operate2 and also needful1 since children are long incapable of providing for themselves and compel their parents1 if the race is not to die out1 to continue their care1 and to diversify it4 ,to be born half-made is an immense advantage4 ,structure performed is formed blindly2 the a priori is as dangerous in life as in philosophy4 ,only the cruel workings of compulsion and extermination keep what is spontaneous in any creature harmonious with the world it is called upon to live in4 ,nothing but casual variations could permanently improve such a creature2 and casual variations will seldom improve it4 ,but if experience can co-operate in forming instincts1 and if human nature can be partly a work of art1 mastery can be carried quickly to much greater lengths4 ,this is the secret of man's pre-eminence4 ,his liquid brain is unfit for years to control action advantageously4 ,he has an age of play which is his apprenticeship2 and he is formed unawares by a series of selective experiments1 of curious gropings1 while he is still under tutelage and suffers little by his mistakes4 ,sidenote3 ,the naturally dull achieve intelligence4 ,had all intelligence been developed in the womb1 as it might have been1 nothing essential could have been learned afterward4 ,mankind would have contained nothing but doctrinaires1 and the arts would have stood still for ever4 ,capacity to learn comes with dependence on education2 and as that animal which at birth is most incapable and immature is the most teachable1 so too those human races which are most precocious are most incorrigible1 and while they seem the cleverest at first prove ultimately the least intelligent4 ,they depend less on circumstances1 but do not respond to them so well4 ,in some nations everybody is by nature so astute1 versatile1 and sympathetic that education hardly makes any difference in manners or mind2 and it is there precisely that generation1 follows generation without essential progress1 and no one ever remakes himself on a better plan4 ,it is perhaps the duller races1 with a long childhood and a brooding mind1 that bear the hopes of the world within them1 if only nature avails to execute what she has planned on so great a scale4 ,sidenote3 ,it is more blessed to save than to create4 ,generation answers no actual demand except that existing in the parents1 and it establishes a new demand without guaranteeing its satisfaction4 ,birth is a benefit only problematically and by anticipation1 on the presumption that the faculties newly embodied are to be exercised successfully4 ,the second function of the family1 to rear1 is therefore higher than the first4 ,to foster and perfect a life after it has been awakened1 to co-operate with a will already launched into the world1 is a positive good work4 ,it has a moral quality and is not mere vegetation2 for in expressing the agent and giving him ideal employment1 it helps the creature affected to employ itself better1 too1 and to find expression4 ,in propagating and sowing broadcast precarious beings there is fertility only1 such as plants and animals may have2 but there is charity in furthering what is already rooted in existence and is striving to live4 ,this principle is strikingly illustrated in religion4 ,when the ,jews had become spiritual they gave the name of ,father to ,jehovah1 who had before been only the ,lord of ,armies or the architect of the cosmos4 ,a mere source of being would not deserve to be called father1 unless it shared its creatures' nature and therefore their interests4 ,a deity not so much responsible for men's existence or situation as solicitous for their welfare1 who pitied a weakness he could not have intended and was pleased by a love he could not command1 might appropriately be called a father4 ,it then becomes possible to conceive moral intercourse and mutual loyalty between ,god and man1 such as ,hebrew religion so earnestly insisted on2 for both then have the same interests in the world and look toward the same consummations4 ,so the natural relations subsisting between parents and children become moral when it is not merely derivation that unites them1 but community of purpose4 ,the father then represents his children while they are under his tutelage1 and afterward they represent him1 carrying on his arts and inheriting his mind4 ,sidenote3 ,parental instinct regards childhood only4 ,these arts in some cases are little more than retarded instincts1 faculties that ripen late and that manifest themselves without special instruction when the system is mature4 ,so a bird feeds her young until they are fledged and can provide for themselves4 ,parental functions in such cases are limited to nursing the extremely young4 ,this phase of the instinct1 being the most primitive and fundamental1 is most to be relied upon even in man4 ,especially in the mother1 care for the children's physical well-being is unfailing to the end4 ,she understands the vegetative soul1 and the first lispings of sense and sentiment in the child have an absorbing interest for her4 ,in that region her skill and delights are miracles of nature2 but her insight and keenness gradually fade as the children grow older4 ,seldom is the private and ideal life of a young son or daughter a matter in which the mother shows particular tact or for which she has instinctive respect4 ,even rarer is any genuine community in life and feeling between parents and their adult children4 ,often the parent's influence comes to be felt as a dead constraint1 the more cruel that it cannot be thrown off without unkindness2 and what makes the parents' claim at once unjust and pathetic is that it is founded on passionate love for a remembered being1 the child once wholly theirs1 that no longer exists in the man4 ,to train character and mind would seem to be a father's natural office1 but as a matter of fact he commonly delegates that task to society4 ,the fledgling venturing for the first time into the air may learn of his father and imitate his style of flight2 but once launched into the open it will find the whole sky full of possible masters4 ,the one ultimately chosen will not necessarily be the nearest2 in reason it should be the most congenial1 from whom most can be learned4 ,to choose an imitable hero is the boy's first act of freedom2 his heart grows by finding its elective affinities1 and it grows most away from home4 ,it will grow also by returning there1 when home has become a part of the world or a refuge from it2 but even then the profoundest messages will come from religion and from solitary dreams4 ,a consequence is that parental influence1 to be permanent1 requires that the family should be hedged about with high barriers and that the father he endowed with political and religious authority4 ,he can then exercise the immense influence due to all tradition1 which he represents1 and all law1 which he administers2 but it is not his bare instincts as a father that give him this ascendency4 ,it is a social system that has delegated to him most of its functions1 so that all authority flows through him1 and he retails justice and knowledge1 besides holding all wealth in his hand4 ,when the father1 apart from these official prerogatives1 is eager and able to mould his children's minds1 a new relation half natural and half ideal1 which is friendship1 springs up between father and son4 ,in this ties of blood merely furnish the opportunity1 and what chiefly counts is a moral impulse1 on the one side1 to beget children in the spirit1 and on the other a youthful hunger for experience and ideas4 ,sidenote3 ,handing on the torch of life4 ,if ,nunc dimittis is a psalm for love to sing1 it is even more appropriate for parental piety4 ,on seeing heirs and representatives of ours already in the world1 we are inclined to give them place and trust them to realise our foiled ambitions4 ,they1 we fancy1 will be more fortunate than we2 we shall have screened them from whatever has most maimed our own lives4 ,their purer souls1 as we imagine1 will reach better things than are now possible to ours1 distracted and abused so long4 ,we commit the blotted manuscript of our lives more willingly to the flames1 when we find the immortal text already half engrossed in a fairer copy4 ,in all this there is undoubtedly a measure of illusion1 since little clear improvement is ordinarily possible in the world1 and while our children may improve upon us in some respects1 the devil will catch them unprepared in another quarter4 ,yet the hope in question is a transcript of primary impersonal functions to which nature1 at certain levels1 limits the animal will4 ,to keep life going was1 in the beginning1 the sole triumph of life4 ,even when nothing but reproduction was aimed at or attained1 existence was made possible and ideally stable by securing so much2 and when the ideal was enlarged so as to include training and rearing the new generation1 life was even better intrenched and protected4 ,though further material progress may not be made easier by this development1 since more dangers become fatal as beings grow complex and mutually dependent1 a great step in moral progress has at any rate been taken4 ,in itself1 a desire to see a child grow and prosper is just as irrational as any other absolute desire2 but since the child also desires his own happiness1 the child's will sanctions and supports the father's4 ,thus two irrationalities1 when they conspire1 make one rational life4 ,the father's instinct and sense of duty are now vindicated experimentally in the child's progress1 while the son1 besides the joy of living1 has the pious function of satisfying his parent's hopes4 ,even if life could achieve nothing more than this1 it would have reached something profoundly natural and perfectly ideal4 ,in patriarchal ages men feel it is enough to have inherited their human patrimony1 to have enjoyed it1 and to hand it down unimpaired4 ,he who is not childless goes down to his grave in peace4 ,reason may afterward come to larger vistas and more spiritual aims1 but the principle of love and responsibility will not be altered4 ,it will demand that wills be made harmonious and satisfactions compatible4 ,sidenote3 ,adventitious functions assumed by the family4 ,life is experimental1 and whatever performs some necessary function1 and cannot be discarded1 is a safe nucleus for many a parasite1 a starting-point for many new experiments4 ,so the family1 in serving to keep the race alive1 becomes a point of departure for many institutions4 ,it assumes offices which might have been allotted to some other agency1 had not the family pre-empted them1 profiting by its established authority and annexing them to its domain4 ,in no civilised community1 for instance1 has the union of man and wife been limited to its barely necessary period4 ,it has continued after the family was reared and has remained life-long2 it has commonly involved a common dwelling and religion and often common friends and property4 ,again1 the children's emancipation has been put off indefinitely4 ,the ,roman father had a perpetual jurisdiction and such absolute authority that1 in the palmy days of the ,roman family1 no other subsisted over it4 ,he alone was a citizen and responsible to the state1 while his household were subject to him in law1 as well as in property and religion4 ,in simple rural communities the family has often been also the chief industrial unit1 almost all necessaries being produced under domestic economy4 ,sidenote3 ,inertia in human nature4 ,now the instincts and delights which nature associates with reproduction cannot stretch so far4 ,their magic fails1 and the political and industrial family1 which still thinks itself natural1 is in truth casual and conventional4 ,there is no real instinct to protect those who can already protect themselves2 nor have they any profit in obeying nor1 in the end1 any duty to do so4 ,a patria potestas much prolonged or extended is therefore an abuse and prolific in abuses4 ,the chieftain's mind1 not being ruled by paternal instincts1 will pursue arbitrary personal ends1 and it is hardly to be expected that his own wealth or power or ideal interests will correspond with those of his subjects4 ,the government and supervision required by adults is what we call political2 it should stretch over all families alike4 ,to annex this political control to fatherhood is to confess that social instinct is singularly barren1 and that the common mind is not plastic enough to devise new organs appropriate to the functions which a large society involves4 ,after all1 the family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational4 ,if the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses1 pedagogues1 and slaves1 like the workers among ants and bees1 and if lovers had never been tied together by a bond less ethereal than ideal passion1 then the family would have been unnecessary4 ,such a division of labour would doubtless have involved evils of its own1 but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family4 ,for we pay a high price for our conquests in this quarter1 and the sweets of home are balanced not only by its tenderer sorrows1 but by a thousand artificial prejudices1 enmities1 and restrictions4 ,it takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss2 volatile spirits prefer unhappiness4 ,young men escape as soon as they can1 at least in fancy1 into the wide world2 all prophets are homeless and all inspired artists2 philosophers think out some communism or other1 and monks put it in practice4 ,there is indeed no more irrational ground for living together than that we have sprung from the same loins4 ,they say blood is thicker than water2 yet similar forces easily compete while dissimilar forces may perhaps co-operate4 ,it is the end that is sacred1 not the beginning4 ,a common origin unites reasonable creatures only if it involves common thoughts and purposes2 and these may bind together individuals of the most remote races and ages1 when once they have discovered one another4 ,it is difficulties of access1 ignorance1 and material confinement that shut in the heart to its narrow loyalties2 and perhaps greater mobility1 science1 and the mingling of nations will one day reorganise the moral world4 ,it was a pure spokesman of the spirit who said that whosoever should do the will of his ,father who was in heaven1 the same was his brother and sister and mother4 ,sidenote3 ,family tyrannies4 ,the family also perpetuates accidental social differences1 exaggerating and making them hereditary2 it thus defeats that just moiety of the democratic ideal which demands that all men should have equal opportunities4 ,in human society chance only decides what education a man shall receive1 what wealth and influence he shall enjoy1 even what religion and profession he shall adopt4 ,people shudder at the system of castes which prevails in ,india2 but is not every family a little caste8 ,was a man assigned to his family because he belonged to it in spirit1 or can he choose another8 ,half the potentialities in the human race are thus stifled1 half its incapacities fostered and made inveterate4 ,the family1 too1 is largely responsible for the fierce prejudices that prevail about women1 about religion1 about seemly occupations1 about war1 death1 and honour4 ,in all these matters men judge in a blind way1 inspired by a feminine passion that has no mercy for anything that eludes the traditional household1 not even for its members' souls4 ,sidenote3 ,difficulty in abstracting from the family4 ,at the same time there are insuperable difficulties in proposing any substitute for the family4 ,in the first place1 all society at present rests on this institution1 so that we cannot easily discern which of our habits and sentiments are parcels of it1 and which are attached to it adventitiously and have an independent basis4 ,a reformer hewing so near to the tree's root never knows how much he may be felling4 ,possibly his own ideal would lose its secret support if what it condemns had wholly disappeared4 ,for instance1 it is conceivable that a communist1 abolishing the family in order to make opportunities equal and remove the more cruel injustices of fortune1 might be drying up that milk of human kindness which had fed his own enthusiasm2 for the foundlings which he decreed were to people the earth might at once disown all socialism and prove a brood of inhuman egoists4 ,or1 as not wholly contemptible theories have maintained1 it might happen that if fathers were relieved of care for their children and children of all paternal suasion1 human virtue would lose its two chief stays4 ,sidenote3 ,possibility of substitutes4 ,on the other hand1 an opposite danger is present in this sort of speculation4 ,things now associated with the family may not depend upon it1 but might flourish equally well in a different soil4 ,the family being the earliest and closest society into which men enter1 it assumes the primary functions which all society can exercise4 ,possibly if any other institution had been first in the field it might have had a comparable moral influence4 ,one of the great lessons1 for example1 which society has to teach its members is that society exists4 ,the child1 like the animal1 is a colossal egoist1 not from a want of sensibility1 but through his deep transcendental isolation4 ,the mind is naturally its own world and its solipsism needs to be broken down by social influence4 ,the child must learn to sympathise intelligently1 to be considerate1 rather than instinctively to love and hate3 his imagination must become cognitive and dramatically just1 instead of remaining1 as it naturally is1 sensitively1 selfishly fanciful4 ,to break down transcendental conceit is a function usually confided to the family1 and yet the family is not well fitted to perform it4 ,to mothers and nurses their darlings are always exceptional2 even fathers and brothers teach a child that he is very different from other creatures and of infinitely greater consequence1 since he lies closer to their hearts and may expect from them all sorts of favouring services4 ,the whole household1 in proportion as it spreads about the child a brooding and indulgent atmosphere1 nurses wilfulness and illusion4 ,for this reason the noblest and happiest children are those brought up1 as in ,greece or ,england1 under simple general conventions by persons trained and hired for the purpose4 ,the best training in character is found in very large families or in schools1 where boys educate one another4 ,priceless in this regard is athletic exercise2 for here the test of ability is visible1 the comparison not odious1 the need of co-operation clear1 and the consciousness of power genuine and therefore ennobling4 ,socratic dialectic is not a better means of learning to know oneself4 ,such self-knowledge is objective and free from self-consciousness2 it sees the self in a general medium and measures it by a general law4 ,even the tenderer associations of home might1 under other circumstances1 attach to other objects4 ,consensus of opinion has a distorting effect1 sometimes1 on ideal values4 ,a thing which almost everyone agrees in prizing1 because it has played some part in every life1 tends to be valued above more important elements in personal happiness that may not have been shared4 ,so wealth1 religion1 military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth4 ,the family might well be1 to some extent1 a similar idol of the tribe4 ,everyone has had a father and a mother2 but how many have had a friend8 ,everyone likes to remember many a joy and even sorrow of his youth which was linked with family occasions2 but to name a man's more private memories1 attached to special surroundings1 would awaken no response in other minds4 ,yet these other surroundings may have been no less stimulating to emotion1 and if familiar to all might be spoken of with as much conventional effect4 ,this appears so soon as any experience is diffused enough to enable a tradition to arise1 so that the sentiment involved can find a social echo4 ,thus there is a loyalty1 very powerful in certain quarters1 toward school1 college1 club1 regiment1 church1 and country4 ,who shall say that such associations1 had they sprung up earlier and been more zealously cultivated1 or were they now reinforced by more general sympathy1 would not breed all the tenderness and infuse all the moral force which most men now derive from the family8 ,sidenote3 ,plato's heroic communism4 ,nevertheless1 no suggested substitute for the family is in the least satisfactory4 ,plato's is the best grounded in reason2 but to succeed it would have to count on a degree of virtue absolutely unprecedented in man4 ,to be sure1 the ,platonic regimen1 if it demands heroism for its inception1 provides in its scientific breeding and education a means of making heroism perpetual4 ,but to submit to such reforming regulations men would first have to be reformed2 it would not suffice1 as ,plato suggested1 merely to enslave them and to introduce scientific institutions by despotic decrees4 ,for in such a case there would be all manner of evasions1 rebellions1 and corruptions4 ,if marriage founded on inclination and mutual consent is so often broken surreptitiously or by open divorce1 what should we expect amongst persons united and separated by governmental policy8 ,the love of home is a human instinct4 ,princes who marry for political reasons often find a second household necessary to their happiness1 although every motive of honour1 policy1 religion1 and patriotism makes with overwhelming force against such irregularities2 and the celibate priesthood1 presumably taking its vows freely and under the influence of religious zeal1 often revert in practice to a sort of natural marriage4 ,it is true that ,plato's citizens were not to be celibates1 and the senses would have had no just cause for rebellion2 but would the heart have been satisfied8 ,could passion or habit submit to such regulation8 ,even when every concession is made to the god-like simplicity and ardour which that ,platonic race was to show1 a greater difficulty appears4 ,apparently the guardians and auxiliaries1 a small minority in the state1 were alone to submit to this regimen3 the rest of the people1 slaves1 tradesmen1 and foreigners1 were to live after their own devices and were1 we may suppose1 to retain the family4 ,so that1 after all1 ,plato in this matter proposes little more than what military and monastic orders have actually done among ,christians3 to institute a privileged unmarried class in the midst of an ordinary community4 ,such a proposal1 therefore1 does not abolish the family4 ,sidenote3 ,opposite modern tendencies4 ,those forms of free love or facile divorce to which radical opinion and practice incline in these days tend to transform the family without abolishing it4 ,many unions might continue to be lasting1 and the children in any case would remain with one or the other parent4 ,the family has already suffered greater transformations than that suggested by this sect4 ,polygamy persists1 involving its own type of morals and sentiment1 and savage tribes show even more startling conventions4 ,nor is it reasonable to dismiss all ideals but the ,christian and then invoke ,christian patience to help us endure the consequent evils1 which are thus declared to be normal4 ,no evil is normal4 ,of course virtue is the cure for every abuse2 but the question is the true complexion of virtue and the regimen needful to produce it4 ,christianity1 with its non-political and remedial prescriptions1 in the form of prayer1 penance1 and patience1 has left the causes of every evil untouched4 ,it has so truly come to call the sinner to repentance that its occupation would be gone if once the sin could be abolished4 ,sidenote3 ,individualism in a sense rational4 ,while a desirable form of society entirely without the family is hard to conceive1 yet the general tendency in historic times1 and the marked tendency in periods of ripe development1 has been toward individualism4 ,individualism is in one sense the only possible ideal2 for whatever social order may be most valuable can be valuable only for its effect on conscious individuals4 ,man is of course a social animal and needs society first that he may come safely into being1 and then that he may have something interesting to do4 ,but society itself is no animal and has neither instincts1 interests1 nor ideals4 ,to talk of such things is either to speak metaphorically or to think mythically2 and myths1 the more currency they acquire1 pass the more easily into superstitions4 ,it would be a gross and pedantic superstition to venerate any form of society in itself1 apart from the safety1 breadth1 or sweetness which it lent to individual happiness4 ,if the individual may be justly subordinated to the state1 not merely for the sake of a future freer generation1 but permanently and in the ideal society1 the reason is simply that such subordination is a part of man's natural devotion to things rational and impersonal1 in the presence of which alone he can be personally happy4 ,society1 in its future and its past1 is a natural object of interest like art or science2 it exists1 like them1 because only when lost in such rational objects can a free soul be active and immortal4 ,but all these ideals are terms in some actual life1 not alien ends1 important to nobody1 to which1 notwithstanding1 everybody is to be sacrificed4 ,individualism is therefore the only ideal possible4 ,the excellence of societies is measured by what they provide for their members4 ,a cumbrous and sanctified social order manifests dulness1 and cannot subsist without it4 ,it immerses man in instrumentalities1 weighs him down with atrophied organs1 and by subjecting him eternally to fruitless sacrifices renders him stupid and superstitious and ready to be himself tyrannical when the opportunity occurs4 ,a sure sign of having escaped barbarism is therefore to feel keenly the pragmatic values belonging to all institutions1 to look deep into the human sanctions of things4 ,greece was on this ground more civilised than ,rome1 and ,athens more than ,sparta4 ,ill-governed communities may be more intelligent than well-governed ones1 when people feel the motive and partial advantage underlying the abuses they tolerate 7as happens where slavery or nepotism is prevalent71 but when on the other hand no reason is perceived for the good laws which are established 7as when law is based on revelation74 ,the effort to adjust old institutions suddenly to felt needs may not always be prudent1 because the needs most felt may not be the deepest1 yet so far as it goes the effort is intelligent4 ,sidenote3 ,the family tamed4 ,the family in a barbarous age remains sacrosanct and traditional2 nothing in its law1 manners1 or ritual is open to amendment4 ,the unhappiness which may consequently overtake individuals is hushed up or positively blamed1 with no thought of tinkering with the holy institutions which are its cause4 ,civilised men think more and cannot endure objectless tyrannies4 ,it is inevitable1 therefore1 that as barbarism recedes the family should become more sensitive to its members' personal interests4 ,husband and wife1 when they are happily matched1 are in liberal communities more truly united than before1 because such closer friendship expresses their personal inclination4 ,children are still cared for1 because love of them is natural1 but they are ruled less and sooner suffered to choose their own associations4 ,they are more largely given in charge to persons not belonging to the family1 especially fitted to supply their education4 ,the whole1 in a word1 exists more and more for the sake of the parts1 and the closeness1 duration1 and scope of family ties comes to vary greatly in different households4 ,barbaric custom1 imposed in all cases alike without respect of persons1 yields to a regimen that dares to be elastic and will take pains to be just4 ,sidenote3 ,possible readjustments and reversions4 ,how far these liberties should extend and where they would pass into license and undermine rational life1 is another question4 ,the pressure of circumstances is what ordinarily forces governments to be absolute4 ,political liberty is a sign of moral and economic independence4 ,the family may safely weaken its legal and customary authority so long as the individual can support and satisfy himself4 ,children evidently never can2 consequently they must remain in a family or in some artificial substitute for it which would be no less coercive4 ,but to what extent men and women1 in a future age1 may need to rely on ties of consanguinity or marriage in order not to grow solitary1 purposeless1 and depraved1 is for prophets only to predict4 ,if changes continue in the present direction much that is now in bad odour may come to be accepted as normal4 ,it might happen1 for instance1 as a consequence of woman's independence1 that mothers alone should be their children's guardians and sole mistresses in their houses2 the husband1 if he were acknowledged at all1 having at most a pecuniary responsibility for his offspring4 ,such an arrangement would make a stable home for the children1 while leaving marriage dissoluble at the will of either party4 ,it may well be doubted1 however1 whether women1 if given every encouragement to establish and protect themselves1 would not in the end fly again into man's arms and prefer to be drudges and mistresses at home to living disciplined and submerged in some larger community4 ,indeed1 the effect of women's emancipation might well prove to be the opposite of what was intended4 ,really free and equal competition between men and women might reduce the weaker sex to such graceless inferiority that1 deprived of the deference and favour they now enjoy1 they should find themselves entirely without influence4 ,in that case they would have to begin again at the bottom and appeal to arts of seduction and to men's fondness in order to regain their lost social position4 ,sidenote3 ,the ideal includes generation4 ,there is a certain order in progress which it is impossible to retract4 ,an advance must not subvert its own basis nor revoke the interest which it furthers4 ,while hunger subsists the art of ploughing is rational2 had agriculture abolished appetite it would have destroyed its own rationality4 ,similarly no state of society is to be regarded as ideal in which those bodily functions are supposed to be suspended which created the ideal by suggesting their own perfect exercise4 ,if old age and death were abolished1 reproduction1 indeed1 would become unnecessary3 its pleasures would cease to charm the mind1 and its results--pregnancy1 child-birth1 infancy--would seem positively horrible4 ,but so long as reproduction is necessary the ideal of life must include it4 ,otherwise we should be constructing not an ideal of life but some dream of non-human happiness1 a dream whose only remnant of ideality would be borrowed from such actual human functions as it still expressed indirectly4 ,the true ideal must speak for all necessary and compatible functions4 ,man being an inevitably reproductive animal his reproductive function must be included in his perfect life4 ,sidenote3 ,inner values already lodged in this function4 ,now1 any function to reach perfection it must fulfil two conditions3 it must be delightful in itself1 endowing its occasions and results with ideal interest1 and it must also co-operate harmoniously with all other functions so that life may be profitable and happy4 ,in the matter of reproduction nature has already fulfilled the first of these conditions in its essentials4 ,it has indeed super-abundantly fulfilled them1 and not only has love appeared in man's soul1 the type and symbol of all vital perfection1 but a tenderness and charm1 a pathos passing into the frankest joy1 has been spread over pregnancy1 birth1 and childhood4 ,if many pangs and tears still prove how tentative and violent1 even here1 are nature's most brilliant feats1 science and kindness may strive not unsuccessfully to diminish or abolish those profound traces of evil4 ,but reproduction will not be perfectly organised until the second condition is fulfilled as well1 and here nature has as yet been more remiss4 ,family life1 as ,western nations possess it1 is still regulated in a very bungling1 painful1 and unstable manner4 ,hence1 in the first rank of evils1 prostitution1 adultery1 divorce1 improvident and unhappy marriages2 and in the second rank1 a morality compacted of three inharmonious parts1 with incompatible ideals1 each in its way legitimate3 ,i mean the ideals of passion1 of convention1 and of reason2 add1 besides1 genius and religion thwarted by family ties1 single lives empty1 wedded lives constrained1 a shallow gallantry1 and a dull virtue4 ,sidenote3 ,outward beneficence might be secured by experiment4 ,how to surround the natural sanctities of wedlock with wise custom and law1 how to combine the maximum of spiritual freedom with the maximum of moral cohesion1 is a problem for experiment to solve4 ,it cannot be solved1 even ideally1 in a ,utopia4 ,for each interest in play has its rights and the prophet neither knows what interests may at a given future time subsist in the world1 nor what relative force they may have1 nor what mechanical conditions may control their expression4 ,the statesman in his sphere and the individual in his must find1 as they go1 the best practical solutions4 ,all that can be indicated beforehand is the principle which improvements in this institution would comply with if they were really improvements4 ,they would reform and perfect the function of reproduction without discarding it2 they would maintain the family unless they could devise some institution that combined intrinsic and representative values better than does that natural artifice1 and they would recast either the instincts or the laws concerned1 or both simultaneously1 until the family ceased to clash seriously with any of these three things3 natural affection1 rational nurture1 and moral freedom4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,industry1 ,,government1 ,,and ,,war ,sidenote3 ,patriarchal economy4 ,we have seen that the family1 an association useful in rearing the young1 may become a means of further maintenance and defence4 ,it is the first economic and the first military group4 ,children become servants1 and servants1 being adopted and brought up in the family1 become like other children and supply the family's growing wants4 ,it was no small part of the extraordinary longing for progeny shown by patriarchal man that children were wealth1 and that by continuing in life-long subjection to their father they lent prestige and power to his old age4 ,the daughters drew water1 the wives and concubines spun1 wove1 and prepared food4 ,a great family was a great estate4 ,it was augmented further by sheep1 goats1 asses1 and cattle4 ,this numerous household1 bound together by personal authority and by common fortunes1 was sufficient to carry on many rude industries4 ,it wandered from pasture to pasture1 practised hospitality1 watched the stars1 and seems 7at least in poetic retrospect7 to have been not unhappy4 ,a ,roman adage has declared that to know the world one household suffices2 and one patriarchal family1 in its simplicity and grandeur1 seems to have given scope enough for almost all human virtues4 ,and those early men1 as ,vico says1 were sublime poets4 ,sidenote3 ,origin of the state4 ,nevertheless1 such a condition can only subsist in deserts where those who try to till the soil cannot grow strong enough to maintain themselves against marauding herdsmen4 ,whenever agriculture yields better returns and makes the husbandman rich enough to support a protector1 patriarchal life disappears4 ,the fixed occupation of land turns a tribe into a state4 ,plato has given the classic account of such a passage from idyllic to political conditions4 ,growth in population and in requirements forces an ,arcadian community to encroach upon its neighbours2 this encroachment means war2 and war1 when there are fields and granaries to protect1 and slaves and artisans to keep at their domestic labours1 means fortifications1 an army1 and a general4 ,and to match the army in the field another must be maintained at home1 composed of judges1 priests1 builders1 cooks1 barbers1 and doctors4 ,such is the inception of what1 in the literal sense of the word1 may be called civilisation4 ,sidenote3 ,three uses of civilisation4 ,civilisation secures three chief advantages3 greater wealth1 greater safety1 and greater variety of experience4 ,whether1 in spite of this1 there is a real--that is1 a moral--advance is a question impossible to answer off-hand1 because wealth1 safety1 and variety are not absolute goods1 and their value is great or small according to the further values they may help to secure4 ,this is obvious in the case of riches4 ,but safety also is only good when there is something to preserve better than courage1 and when the prolongation of life can serve to intensify its excellence4 ,an animal's existence is not improved when made safe by imprisonment and domestication2 it is only degraded and rendered passive and melancholy4 ,the human savage likewise craves a freedom and many a danger inconsistent with civilisation1 because independent of reason4 ,he does not yet identify his interests with any persistent and ideal harmonies created by reflection4 ,and when reflection is absent1 length of life is no benefit3 a quick succession of generations1 with a small chance of reaching old age1 is a beautiful thing in purely animal economy1 where vigour is the greatest joy1 propagation the highest function1 and decrepitude the sorriest woe4 ,the value of safety1 accordingly1 hangs on the question whether life has become reflective and rational4 ,but the fact that a state arises does not in itself imply rationality4 ,it makes rationality possible1 but leaves it potential4 ,sidenote3 ,its rationality contingent4 ,similar considerations apply to variety4 ,to increase the number of instincts and functions is probably to produce confusion and to augment that secondary and reverberating kind of evil which consists in expecting pain and regretting misfortune4 ,on the other hand1 a perfect life could never be accused of monotony4 ,all desirable variety lies within the circle of perfection4 ,thus we do not tire of possessing two legs nor wish1 for the sake of variety1 to be occasionally lunatics4 ,accordingly1 an increase in variety of function is a good only if a unity can still be secured embracing that variety2 otherwise it would have been better that the irrelevant function should have been developed by independent individuals or should not have arisen at all4 ,the function of seeing double adds more to the variety than to the spice of life4 ,whether civilisation is a blessing depends1 then1 on its ulterior uses4 ,judged by those interests which already exist when it arises1 it is very likely a burden and oppression4 ,the birds' instinctive economy would not be benefited by a tax-gatherer1 a recruiting-sergeant1 a sect or two of theologians1 and the other usual organs of human polity4 ,for the ,life of ,reason1 however1 civilisation is a necessary condition4 ,although animal life1 within man and beyond him1 has its wild beauty and mystic justifications1 yet that specific form of life which we call rational1 and which is no less natural than the rest1 would never have arisen without an expansion of human faculty1 an increase in mental scope1 for which civilisation is necessary4 ,wealth1 safety1 variety of pursuits1 are all requisite if memory and purpose are to be trained increasingly1 and if a steadfast art of living is to supervene upon instinct and dream4 ,sidenote3 ,sources of wealth4 ,wealth is itself expressive of reason for it arises whenever men1 instead of doing nothing or beating about casually in the world1 take to gathering fruits of nature which they may have uses for in future1 or fostering their growth1 or actually contriving their appearance4 ,such is man's first industrial habit1 seen in grazing1 agriculture1 and mining4 ,among nature's products are also those of man's own purposeless and imitative activity1 results of his idle ingenuity and restlessness4 ,some of these1 like nature's other random creations1 may chance to have some utility4 ,they may then become conspicuous to reflection1 be strengthened by the relations which they establish in life1 and be henceforth called works of human art4 ,they then constitute a second industrial habit and that other sort of riches which is supplied by manufacture4 ,sidenote3 ,excess of it possible4 ,the amount of wealth man can produce is apparently limited only by time1 invention1 and the material at hand4 ,it can very easily exceed his capacity for enjoyment4 ,as the habits which produce wealth were originally spontaneous and only crystallised into reasonable processes by mutual checks and the gradual settling down of the organism into harmonious action1 so also the same habits may outrun their uses4 ,the machinery to produce wealth1 of which man's own energies have become a part1 may well work on irrespective of happiness4 ,indeed1 the industrial ideal would be an international community with universal free trade1 extreme division of labour1 and no unproductive consumption4 ,such an arrangement would undoubtedly produce a maximum of riches1 and any objections made to it1 if intelligent1 must be made on other than universal economic grounds4 ,free trade may be opposed1 for instance 7while patriotism takes the invidious form of jealousy and while peace is not secure71 on the ground that it interferes with vested interests and settled populations or with national completeness and self-sufficiency1 or that absorption in a single industry is unfavourable to intellectual life4 ,the latter is also an obvious objection to any great division of labour1 even in liberal fields2 while any man with a tender heart and traditional prejudices might hesitate to condemn the irresponsible rich to extinction1 together with all paupers1 mystics1 and old maids living on annuities4 ,such attacks on industrialism1 however1 are mere skirmishes and express prejudices of one sort or another4 ,the formidable judgment industrialism has to face is that of reason1 which demands that the increase and specification of labour be justified by benefits somewhere actually realised and integrated in individuals4 ,wealth must justify itself in happiness4 ,someone must live better for having produced or enjoyed these possessions4 ,and he would not live better1 even granting that the possessions were in themselves advantages1 if these advantages were bought at too high a price and removed other greater opportunities or benefits4 ,the belle must not sit so long prinking before the glass as to miss the party1 and man must not work so hard and burden himself with so many cares as to have no breath or interest left for things free and intellectual4 ,work and life too often are contrasted and complementary things2 but they would not be contrasted nor even separable if work were not servile1 for of course man can have no life save in occupation1 and in the exercise of his faculties2 contemplation itself can deal only with what practice contains or discloses4 ,but the pursuit of wealth is a pursuit of instruments4 ,the division of labour when extreme does violence to natural genius and obliterates natural distinctions in capacity4 ,what is properly called industry is not art or self-justifying activity1 but on the contrary a distinctly compulsory and merely instrumental labour1 which if justified at all must be justified by some ulterior advantage which it secures4 ,in regard to such instrumental activities the question is always pertinent whether they do not produce more than is useful1 or prevent the existence of something that is intrinsically good4 ,sidenote3 ,irrational industry4 ,occidental society has evidently run in this direction into great abuses1 complicating life prodigiously without ennobling the mind4 ,it has put into rich men's hands facilities and luxuries which they trifle with without achieving any dignity or true magnificence in living1 while the poor1 if physically more comfortable than formerly1 are not meantime notably wiser or merrier4 ,ideal distinction has been sacrificed in the best men1 to add material comforts to the worst4 ,things1 as ,emerson said1 are in the saddle and ride mankind4 ,the means crowd out the ends and civilisation reverts1 when it least thinks it1 to barbarism4 ,sidenote3 ,its jovial and ingenious side4 ,the acceptable side of industrialism1 which is supposed to be inspired exclusively by utility1 is not utility at all but pure achievement4 ,if we wish to do such an age justice we must judge it as we should a child and praise its feats without inquiring after its purposes4 ,that is its own spirit3 a spirit dominant at the present time1 particularly in ,america1 where industrialism appears most free from alloy4 ,there is a curious delight in turning things over1 changing their shape1 discovering their possibilities1 making of them some new contrivance4 ,use1 in these experimental minds1 as in nature1 is only incidental4 ,there is an irrational creative impulse1 a zest in novelty1 in progression1 in beating the other man1 or1 as they say1 in breaking the record4 ,there is also a fascination in seeing the world unbosom itself of ancient secrets1 obey man's coaxing1 and take on unheard-of shapes4 ,the highest building1 the largest steamer1 the fastest train1 the book reaching the widest circulation have1 in ,america1 a clear title to respect4 ,when the just functions of things are as yet not discriminated1 the superlative in any direction seems naturally admirable4 ,again1 many possessions1 if they do not make a man better1 are at least expected to make his children happier2 and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions4 ,an experimental materialism1 spontaneous and divorced from reason and from everything useful1 is also confused in some minds with traditional duties2 and a school of popular hierophants is not lacking that turns it into a sort of religion and perhaps calls it idealism4 ,impulse is more visible in all this than purpose1 imagination more than judgment2 but it is pleasant for the moment to abound in invention and effort and to let the future cash the account4 ,sidenote3 ,its tyranny4 ,wealth is excessive when it reduces a man to a middleman and a jobber1 when it prevents him1 in his preoccupation with material things1 from making his spirit the measure of them4 ,there are ,nibelungen who toil underground over a gold they will never use1 and in their obsession with production begrudge themselves all holidays1 all concessions to inclination1 to merriment1 to fancy2 nay1 they would even curtail as much as possible the free years of their youth1 when they might see the blue1 before rendering up their souls to the ,leviathan4 ,visible signs of such unreason soon appear in the relentless and hideous aspect which life puts on2 for those instruments which somehow emancipate themselves from their uses soon become hateful4 ,in nature irresponsible wildness can be turned to beauty1 because every product can be recomposed into some abstract manifestation of force or form2 but the monstrous in man himself and in his works immediately offends1 for here everything is expected to symbolise its moral relations4 ,the irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible1 as we see in the maniac1 the miser1 the drunkard1 or the ape4 ,a barbaric civilisation1 built on blind impulse and ambition1 should fear to awaken a deeper detestation than could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies1 chivalrous or religious1 against which past revolutions have been directed4 ,sidenote3 ,an impossible remedy4 ,both the sordidness and the luxury which industrialism may involve1 could be remedied1 however1 by a better distribution of the product4 ,the riches now created by labour would probably not seriously debauch mankind if each man had only his share2 and such a proportionate return would enable him to perceive directly how far his interests required him to employ himself in material production and how far he could allow himself leisure for spontaneous things--religion1 play1 art1 study1 conversation4 ,in a world composed entirely of philosophers an hour or two a day of manual labour--a very welcome quantity--would provide for material wants2 the rest could then be all the more competently dedicated to a liberal life2 for a healthy soul needs matter quite as much for an object of interest as for a means of sustenance4 ,but philosophers do not yet people nor even govern the world1 and so simple a ,utopia which reason1 if it had direct efficacy1 would long ago have reduced to act1 is made impossible by the cross-currents of instinct1 tradition1 and fancy which variously deflect affairs4 ,sidenote3 ,basis of government4 ,what are called the laws of nature are so many observations made by man on a way things have of repeating themselves by replying always to their old causes and never1 as reason's prejudice would expect1 to their new opportunities4 ,this inertia1 which physics registers in the first law of motion1 natural history and psychology call habit4 ,habit is a physical law4 ,it is the basis and force of all morality1 but is not morality itself4 ,in society it takes the form of custom which1 when codified1 is called law and when enforced is called government4 ,government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium1 of custom1 of inertia2 it is by no means a representative of reason4 ,but1 like any mechanical complication1 it may become rational1 and many of its forms and operations may be defended on rational grounds4 ,all natural organisms1 from protoplasm to poetry1 can exercise certain ideal functions and symbolise in their structure certain ideal relations4 ,protoplasm tends to propagate itself1 and in so doing may turn into a conscious ideal the end it already tends to realise2 but there could be no desire for self-preservation were there not already a self preserved4 ,so government can by its existence define the commonwealth it tends to preserve1 and its acts may be approved from the point of view of those eventual interests which they satisfy4 ,but government neither subsists nor arises because it is good or useful1 but solely because it is inevitable4 ,it becomes good in so far as the inevitable adjustment of political forces which it embodies is also a just provision for all the human interests which it creates or affects4 ,sidenote3 ,how rationality accrues4 ,suppose a cold and hungry savage1 failing to find berries and game enough in the woods1 should descend into some meadow where a flock of sheep were grazing and pounce upon a lame lamb which could not run away with the others1 tear its flesh1 suck up its blood1 and dress himself in its skin4 ,all this could not be called an affair undertaken in the sheep's interest4 ,and yet it might well conduce to their interest in the end4 ,for the savage1 finding himself soon hungry again1 and insufficiently warm in that scanty garment1 might attack the flock a second time1 and thereby begin to accustom himself1 and also his delighted family1 to a new and more substantial sort of raiment and diet4 ,suppose1 now1 a pack of wolves1 or a second savage1 or a disease should attack those unhappy sheep4 ,would not their primeval enemy defend them8 ,would he not have identified himself with their interests to this extent1 that their total extinction or discomfiture would alarm him also8 ,and in so far as he provided for their well-being1 would he not have become a good shepherd8 ,if1 now1 some philosophic wether1 a lover of his kind1 reasoned with his fellows upon the change in their condition1 he might shudder indeed at those early episodes and at the contribution of lambs and fleeces which would not cease to be levied by the new government2 but he might also consider that such a contribution was nothing in comparison with what was formerly exacted by wolves1 diseases1 frosts1 and casual robbers1 when the flock was much smaller than it had now grown to be1 and much less able to withstand decimation4 ,and he might even have conceived an admiration for the remarkable wisdom and beauty of that great shepherd1 dressed in such a wealth of wool2 and he might remember pleasantly some occasional caress received from him and the daily trough filled with water by his providential hand4 ,and he might not be far from maintaining not only the rational origin1 but the divine right of shepherds4 ,such a savage enemy1 incidentally turned into a useful master1 is called a conqueror or king4 ,only in human experience the case is not so simple and harmony is seldom established so quickly4 ,the history of ,asia is replete with examples of conquest and extortion in which a rural population living in comparative plenty is attacked by some more ferocious neighbour who1 after a round of pillage1 establishes a quite unnecessary government1 raising taxes and soldiers for purposes absolutely remote from the conquered people's interests4 ,such a government is nothing but a chronic raid1 mitigated by the desire to leave the inhabitants prosperous enough to be continually despoiled afresh4 ,even this modicum of protection1 however1 can establish a certain moral bond between ruler and subject2 an intelligent government and an intelligent fealty become conceivable4 ,sidenote3 ,ferocious but useful despotisms4 ,not only may the established rgime be superior to any other that could be substituted for it at the time1 but some security against total destruction1 and a certain opportunity for the arts and for personal advancement may follow subjugation4 ,a moderate decrease in personal independence may be compensated by a novel public grandeur2 palace and temple may make amends for hovels somewhat more squalid than before4 ,hence1 those who cannot conceive a rational polity1 or a co-operative greatness in the state1 especially if they have a luxurious fancy1 can take pleasure in despotism2 for it does not1 after all1 make so much difference to an ordinary fool whether what he suffers from is another's oppression or his own lazy improvidence2 and he can console himself by saying with ,goldsmith3 ,how small1 of all that human hearts endure1 ,the part which laws or kings can cause or cure4 ,at the same time a court and a hierarchy1 with their interesting pomp and historic continuity1 with their combined appeal to greed and imagination1 redeem human existence from pervasive vulgarity and allow somebody at least to strut proudly over the earth4 ,serfs are not in a worse material condition than savages1 and their spiritual opportunities are infinitely greater2 for their eye and fancy are fed with visions of human greatness1 and even if they cannot improve their outward estate they can possess a poetry and a religion4 ,it suffices to watch an ,oriental rabble at prayer1 or listening in profound immobility to some wandering story-teller or musician1 to feel how much such a people may have to ruminate upon1 and how truly ,arabian days and ,arabian ,nights go together4 ,the ideas evolved may be wild and futile and the emotions savagely sensuous1 yet they constitute a fund of inner experience1 a rich soil for better imaginative growths4 ,to such ,oriental cogitations1 for instance1 carried on under the shadow of uncontrollable despotisms1 mankind owes all its greater religions4 ,a government's origin has nothing to do with its legitimacy2 that is1 with its representative operation4 ,an absolutism based on conquest or on religious fraud may wholly lose its hostile function4 ,it may become the nucleus of a national organisation expressing justly enough the people's requirements4 ,such a representative character is harder to attain when the government is foreign1 for diversity in race language and local ties makes the ruler less apt involuntarily to represent his subjects2 his measures must subserve their interests intentionally1 out of sympathy1 policy1 and a sense of duty1 virtues which are seldom efficacious for any continuous period4 ,a native government1 even if based on initial outrage1 can more easily drift into excellence2 for when a great man mounts the throne he has only to read his own soul and follow his instinctive ambitions in order to make himself the leader and spokesman of his nation4 ,an ,alexander1 an ,alfred1 a ,peter the ,great1 are examples of persons who with varying degrees of virtue were representative rulers3 their policy1 however irrationally inspired1 happened to serve their subjects and the world4 ,besides1 a native government is less easily absolute4 ,many influences control the ruler in his aims and habits1 such as religion1 custom1 and the very language he speaks1 by which praise and blame are assigned automatically to the objects loved or hated by the people4 ,he cannot1 unless he be an intentional monster1 oppose himself wholly to the common soul4 ,sidenote3 ,occasional advantage of being conquered4 ,for this very reason1 however1 native governments are little fitted to redeem or transform a people1 and all great upheavals and regenerations have been brought about by conquest1 by the substitution of one race and spirit for another in the counsels of the world4 ,what the ,orient owes to ,greece1 the ,occident to ,rome1 ,india to ,england1 native ,america to ,spain1 is a civilisation incomparably better than that which the conquered people could ever have provided for themselves4 ,conquest is a good means of recasting those ideals1 perhaps impracticable and ignorant1 which a native government at its best would try to preserve4 ,such inapt ideals1 it is true1 would doubtless remodel themselves if they could be partly realised4 ,progress from within is possible1 otherwise no progress would be possible for humanity at large4 ,but conquest gives at once a freer field to those types of polity which1 since they go with strength1 presumably represent the better adjustment to natural conditions1 and therefore the better ideal4 ,though the substance of ideals is the will1 their mould must be experience and a true discernment of opportunity2 so that while all ideals1 regarded in vacuo1 are equal in ideality1 they are1 under given circumstances1 very diverse in worth4 ,sidenote3 ,origin of free governments4 ,when not founded on conquest1 which is the usual source of despotism1 government is ordinarily based on traditional authority vested in elders or patriarchal kings4 ,this is the origin of the classic state1 and of all aristocracy and freedom4 ,the economic and political unit is a great household with its lord1 his wife and children1 clients and slaves4 ,in the interstices of these households there may be a certain floating residuum--freedmen1 artisans1 merchants1 strangers4 ,these people1 while free1 are without such rights as even slaves possess2 they have no share in the religion1 education1 and resources of any established family4 ,for purposes of defence and religion the heads of houses gather together in assemblies1 elect or recognise some chief1 and agree upon laws1 usually little more than extant customs regulated and formally sanctioned4 ,sidenote3 ,their democratic tendencies4 ,such a state tends to expand in two directions4 ,in the first place1 it becomes more democratic2 that is1 it tends to recognise other influences than that which heads of families--patres conscripti--possess4 ,the people without such fathers1 those who are not patricians1 also have children and come to imitate on a smaller scale the patriarchal economy4 ,these plebeians are admitted to citizenship4 ,but they have no such religious dignity and power in their little families as the patricians have in theirs2 they are scarcely better than loose individuals1 representing nothing but their own sweet wills4 ,this individualism and levity is not1 however1 confined to the plebeians2 it extends to the patrician houses4 ,individualism is the second direction in which a patriarchal society yields to innovation4 ,as the state grows the family weakens2 and while in early ,rome1 for instance1 only the pater familias was responsible to the city1 and his children and slaves only to him1 in ,greece we find from early times individuals called to account before public judges4 ,a federation of households thus became a republic4 ,the king1 that chief who enjoyed a certain hereditary precedence in sacrifices or in war1 yields to elected generals and magistrates whose power1 while it lasts1 is much greater2 for no other comparable power now subsists in the levelled state4 ,modern ,europe has seen an almost parallel development of democracy and individualism1 together with the establishment of great artificial governments4 ,though the feudal hierarchy was originally based on conquest or domestic subjection1 it came to have a fanciful or chivalrous or political force4 ,but gradually the plebeian classes--the burghers--grew in importance1 and military allegiance was weakened by being divided between a number of superposed lords1 up to the king1 emperor1 or pope4 ,the stronger rulers grew into absolute monarchs1 representatives of great states1 and the people became1 in a political sense1 a comparatively level multitude4 ,where parliamentary government was established it became possible to subordinate or exclude the monarch and his court2 but the government remains an involuntary institution1 and the individual must adapt himself to its exigencies4 ,the church which once overshadowed the state has now lost its coercive authority and the single man stands alone before an impersonal written law1 a constitutional government1 and a widely diffused and contagious public opinion1 characterised by enormous inertia1 incoherence1 and blindness4 ,contemporary national units are strongly marked and stimulate on occasion a perfervid artificial patriotism2 but they are strangely unrepresentative of either personal or universal interests and may yield in turn to new combinations1 if the industrial and intellectual solidarity of mankind1 every day more obvious1 ever finds a fit organ to express and to defend it4 ,sidenote3 ,imperial peace4 ,a despotic military government founded on alien force and aiming at its own magnificence is often more efficient in defending its subjects than is a government expressing only the people's energies1 as the predatory shepherd and his dog prove better guardians for a flock than its own wethers4 ,the robbers that at their first incursion brought terror to merchant and peasant may become almost immediately representative organs of society--an army and a judiciary4 ,disputes between subjects are naturally submitted to the invader1 under whose laws and good-will alone a practical settlement can now be effected2 and this alien tribunal1 being exempt from local prejudices and interested in peace that taxes may be undiminished1 may administer a comparatively impartial justice1 until corrupted by bribes4 ,the constant compensation tyranny brings1 which keeps it from at once exhausting its victims1 is the silence it imposes on their private squabbles4 ,one distant universal enemy is less oppressive than a thousand unchecked pilferers and plotters at home4 ,for this reason the reader of ancient history so often has occasion to remark what immense prosperity ,asiatic provinces enjoyed between the periods when their successive conquerors devastated them4 ,they flourished exceedingly the moment peace and a certain order were established in them4 ,sidenote3 ,nominal and real status of armies4 ,tyranny not only protects the subject against his kinsmen1 thus taking on the functions of law and police1 but it also protects him against military invasion1 and thus takes on the function of an army4 ,an army1 considered ideally1 is an organ for the state's protection2 but it is far from being such in its origin1 since at first an army is nothing but a ravenous and lusty horde quartered in a conquered country2 yet the cost of such an incubus may come to be regarded as an insurance against further attack1 and so what is in its real basis an inevitable burden resulting from a chance balance of forces may be justified in after-thought as a rational device for defensive purposes4 ,such an ulterior justification has nothing to do1 however1 with the causes that maintain armies or military policies3 and accordingly those virginal minds that think things originated in the uses they may have acquired1 have frequent cause to be pained and perplexed at the abuses and over-development of militarism4 ,an insurance capitalised may exceed the value of the property insured1 and the drain caused by armies and navies may be much greater than the havoc they prevent4 ,the evils against which they are supposed to be directed are often evils only in a cant and conventional sense1 since the events deprecated 7like absorption by a neighbouring state7 might be in themselves no misfortune to the people1 but perhaps a singular blessing4 ,and those dreaded possibilities1 even if really evil1 may well be less so than is the hateful actuality of military taxes1 military service1 and military arrogance4 ,sidenote3 ,their action irresponsible4 ,nor is this all3 the military classes1 since they inherit the blood and habits of conquerors1 naturally love war and their irrational combativeness is reinforced by interest2 for in war officers can shine and rise1 while the danger of death1 to a brave man1 is rather a spur and a pleasing excitement than a terror4 ,a military class is therefore always recalling1 foretelling1 and meditating war2 it fosters artificial and senseless jealousies toward other governments that possess armies2 and finally1 as often as not1 it precipitates disaster by bringing about the objectless struggle on which it has set its heart4 ,sidenote3 ,pugnacity human4 ,these natural phenomena1 unintelligently regarded as anomalies and abuses1 are the appanage of war in its pristine and proper form4 ,to fight is a radical instinct2 if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words1 fancies1 or women1 or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks1 or because they have met walking in opposite directions4 ,to knock a thing down1 especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle1 is a deep delight to the blood4 ,to fight for a reason and in a calculating spirit is something your true warrior despises2 even a coward might screw his courage up to such a reasonable conflict4 ,the joy and glory of fighting lie in its pure spontaneity and consequent generosity2 you are not fighting for gain1 but for sport and for victory4 ,victory1 no doubt1 has its fruits for the victor4 ,if fighting were not a possible means of livelihood the bellicose instinct could never have established itself in any long-lived race4 ,a few men can live on plunder1 just as there is room in the world for some beasts of prey2 other men are reduced to living on industry1 just as there are diligent bees1 ants1 and herbivorous kine4 ,but victory need have no good fruits for the people whose army is victorious4 ,that it sometimes does so is an ulterior and blessed circumstance hardly to be reckoned upon4 ,sidenote3 ,barrack-room philosophy4 ,since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists4 ,there are panegyrists of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood4 ,experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion4 ,it is war that wastes a nation's wealth1 chokes its industries1 kills its flower1 narrows its sympathies1 condemns it to be governed by adventurers1 and leaves the puny1 deformed1 and unmanly to breed the next generation4 ,internecine war1 foreign and civil1 brought about the greatest set-back which the ,life of ,reason has ever suffered2 it exterminated the ,greek and ,italian aristocracies4 ,instead of being descended from heroes1 modern nations are descended from slaves2 and it is not their bodies only that show it4 ,after a long peace1 if the conditions of life are propitious1 we observe a people's energies bursting their barriers2 they become aggressive on the strength they have stored up in their remote and unchecked development4 ,it is the unmutilated race1 fresh from the struggle with nature 7in which the best survive1 while in war it is often the best that perish7 that descends victoriously into the arena of nations and conquers disciplined armies at the first blow1 becomes the military aristocracy of the next epoch and is itself ultimately sapped and decimated by luxury and battle1 and merged at last into the ignoble conglomerate beneath4 ,then1 perhaps1 in some other virgin country a genuine humanity is again found1 capable of victory because unbled by war4 ,to call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love4 ,sidenote3 ,military virtues4 ,military institutions1 adventitious and ill-adapted excrescences as they usually are1 can acquire rational values in various ways4 ,besides occasional defence1 they furnish a profession congenial to many1 and a spectacle and emotion interesting to all4 ,blind courage is an animal virtue indispensable in a world full of dangers and evils where a certain insensibility and dash are requisite to skirt the precipice without vertigo4 ,such animal courage seems therefore beautiful rather than desperate or cruel1 and being the lowest and most instinctive of virtues it is the one most widely and sincerely admired4 ,in the form of steadiness under risks rationally taken1 and perseverance so long as there is a chance of success1 courage is a true virtue2 but it ceases to be one when the love of danger1 a useful passion when danger is unavoidable1 begins to lead men into evils which it was unnecessary to face4 ,bravado1 provocativeness1 and a gambler's instinct1 with a love of hitting hard for the sake of exercise1 is a temper which ought already to be counted among the vices rather than the virtues of man4 ,to delight in war is a merit in the soldier1 a dangerous quality in the captain1 and a positive crime in the statesman4 ,discipline1 or the habit of obedience1 is a better sort of courage which military life also requires4 ,discipline is the acquired faculty of surrendering an immediate personal good for the sake of a remote and impersonal one of greater value4 ,this difficult wisdom is made easier by training in an army1 because the great forces of habit1 example and social suasion1 are there enlisted in its service4 ,but these natural aids make it lose its conscious rationality1 so that it ceases to be a virtue except potentially2 for to resist an impulse by force of habit or external command may or may not be to follow the better course4 ,besides fostering these rudimentary virtues the army gives the nation's soul its most festive and flaunting embodiment4 ,popular heroes1 stirring episodes1 obvious turning-points in history1 commonly belong to military life4 ,sidenote3 ,they are splendid vices4 ,nevertheless the panegyrist of war places himself on the lowest level on which a moralist or patriot can stand and shows as great a want of refined feeling as of right reason4 ,for the glories of war are all blood-stained1 delirious1 and infected with crime2 the combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man's good is found in another's evil4 ,the existence of such a contradiction in the moral world is the original sin of nature1 whence flows every other wrong4 ,he is a willing accomplice of that perversity in things who delights in another's discomfiture or in his own1 and craves the blind tension of plunging into danger without reason1 or the idiot's pleasure in facing a pure chance4 ,to find joy in another's trouble is1 as man is constituted1 not unnatural1 though it is wicked2 and to find joy in one's own trouble1 though it be madness1 is not yet impossible for man4 ,these are the chaotic depths of that dreaming nature out of which humanity has to grow4 ,sidenote3 ,absolute value in strife4 ,if war could be abolished and the defence of all interests intrusted to courts of law1 there would remain unsatisfied a primary and therefore ineradicable instinct--a love of conflict1 of rivalry1 and of victory4 ,if we desire to abolish war because it tries to do good by doing harm1 we must not ourselves do an injury to human nature while trying to smooth it out4 ,now the test and limit of all necessary reform is vital harmony4 ,no impulse can be condemned arbitrarily or because some other impulse or group of interests is1 in a ,platonic way1 out of sympathy with it4 ,an instinct can be condemned only if it prevents the realisation of other instincts1 and only in so far as it does so4 ,war1 which has instinctive warrant1 must therefore be transformed only in so far as it does harm to other interests4 ,the evils of war are obvious enough2 could not the virtues of war1 animal courage1 discipline1 and self-knowledge1 together with gaiety and enthusiasm1 find some harmless occasion for their development8 ,sidenote3 ,sport a civilised way of preserving it4 ,such a harmless simulacrum of war is seen in sport4 ,the arduous and competitive element in sport is not harmful1 if the discipline involved brings no loss of faculty or of right sensitiveness1 and the rivalry no rancour4 ,in war states wish to be efficient in order to conquer1 but in sport men wish to prove their excellence because they wish to have it4 ,if this excellence does not exist1 the aim is missed1 and to discover that failure is no new misfortune4 ,to have failed unwittingly would have been worse2 and to recognise superiority in another is consistent with a relatively good and honourable performance1 so that even nominal failure may be a substantial success4 ,and merit in a rival should bring a friendly delight even to the vanquished if they are true lovers of sport and of excellence4 ,sport is a liberal form of war stripped of its compulsions and malignity2 a rational art and the expression of a civilised instinct4 ,sidenote3 ,who shall found the universal commonwealth8 ,the abolition of war1 like its inception1 can only be brought about by a new collocation of material forces4 ,as the suppression of some nest of piratical tribes by a great emperor substitutes judicial for military sanctions among them1 so the conquest of all warring nations by some imperial people could alone establish general peace4 ,the ,romans approached this ideal because their vast military power stood behind their governors and prtors4 ,science and commerce might conceivably resume that lost imperial function4 ,if at the present day two or three powerful governments could so far forget their irrational origin as to renounce the right to occasional piracy and could unite in enforcing the decisions of some international tribunal1 they would thereby constitute that tribunal the organ of a universal government and render war impossible between responsible states4 ,but on account of their irrational basis all governments largely misrepresent the true interests of those who live under them4 ,they pursue conventional and captious ends to which alone public energies can as yet be efficiently directed4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,aristocratic ,,ideal ,sidenote3 ,eminence1 once existing1 grows by its own4 8,to him that hath shall be given10 says the ,gospel1 representing as a principle of divine justice one that undoubtedly holds in earthly economy4 ,a not dissimilar observation is made in the proverb3 8,possession is nine-tenths of the law40 ,indeed1 some trifling acquisition often gives an animal an initial advantage which may easily roll up and increase prodigiously1 becoming the basis of prolonged good fortune4 ,sometimes this initial advantage is a matter of natural structure1 like talent1 strength1 or goodness2 sometimes an accidental accretion1 like breeding1 instruction1 or wealth4 ,such advantages grow by the opportunities they make2 and it is possible for a man launched into the world at the right moment with the right equipment to mount easily from eminence to eminence and accomplish very great things without doing more than genially follow his instincts and respond with ardour1 like an ,alexander or a ,shakespeare1 to his opportunities4 ,a great endowment1 doubled by great good fortune1 raises men like these into supreme representatives of mankind4 ,sidenote3 ,its causes natural and its privileges just4 ,it is no loss of liberty to subordinate ourselves to a natural leader4 ,on the contrary1 we thereby seize an opportunity to exercise our freedom1 availing ourselves of the best instrument obtainable to accomplish our ends4 ,a man may be a natural either by his character or by his position4 ,the advantages a man draws from that peculiar structure of his brain which renders him1 for instance1 a ready speaker or an ingenious mathematician1 are by common consent regarded as legitimate advantages4 ,the public will use and reward such ability without jealousy and with positive delight4 ,in an unsophisticated age the same feeling prevails in regard to those advantages which a man may draw from more external circumstances4 ,if a traveller1 having been shipwrecked in some expedition1 should learn the secrets of an unknown land1 its arts and resources1 his fellow-citizens1 on his return1 would not hesitate to follow his direction in respect to those novel matters4 ,it would be senseless folly on their part to begrudge him his adventitious eminence and refuse to esteem him of more consequence than their uninitiated selves4 ,yet when people1 ignoring the natural causes of all that is called artificial1 think that but for an unlucky chance they1 too1 might have enjoyed the advantages which raise other men above them1 they sometimes affect not to recognise actual distinctions and abilities1 or study enviously the means of annulling them4 ,so long1 however1 as by the operation of any causes whatever some real competence accrues to anyone1 it is for the general interest that this competence should bear its natural fruits1 diversifying the face of society and giving its possessor a corresponding distinction4 ,sidenote3 ,advantage of inequality4 ,variety in the world is an unmixed blessing so long as each distinct function can be exercised without hindrance to any other4 ,there is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal1 as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man1 being what he is1 to know that many are1 have been1 and will be better than he4 ,grant that no one is positively degraded by the great man's greatness and it follows that everyone is exalted by it4 ,beauty1 genius1 holiness1 even power and extraordinary wealth1 radiate their virtue and make the world in which they exist a better and a more joyful place to live in4 ,hence the insatiable vulgar curiosity about great people1 and the strange way in which the desire for fame 7by which the distinguished man sinks to the common level7 is met and satisfied by the universal interest in whatever is extraordinary4 ,this avidity not to miss knowledge of things notable1 and to enact vicariously all singular rles1 shows the need men have of distinction and the advantage they find even in conceiving it4 ,for it is the presence of variety and a nearer approach somewhere to just and ideal achievement that gives men perspective in their judgments and opens vistas from the dull foreground of their lives to sea1 mountain1 and stars4 ,no merely idle curiosity shows itself in this instinct2 rather a mark of human potentiality that recognises in what is yet attained a sad caricature of what is essentially attainable4 ,for man's spirit is intellectual and naturally demands dominion and science2 it craves in all things friendliness and beauty4 ,the least hint of attainment in these directions fills it with satisfaction and the sense of realised expectation4 ,so much so that when no inkling of a supreme fulfilment is found in the world or in the heart1 men still cling to the notion of it in ,god or the hope of it in heaven1 and religion1 when it entertains them with that ideal1 seems to have reached its highest height4 ,love of uniformity would quench the thirst for new outlets1 for perfect1 even if alien1 achievements1 and this1 so long as perfection had not been actually attained1 would indicate a mind dead to the ideal4 ,sidenote3 ,fable of the belly and the members4 ,sidenote3 ,fallacy in it4 ,menenius ,agrippa expressed very well the aristocratic theory of society when he compared the state to a human body in which the common people were the hands and feet1 and the nobles the belly4 ,the people1 when they forgot the conditions of their own well-being1 might accuse themselves of folly and the nobles of insolent idleness1 for the poor spent their lives in hopeless labour that others who did nothing might enjoy all4 ,but there was a secret circulation of substance in the body politic1 and the focussing of all benefits in the few was the cause of nutrition and prosperity to the many4 ,perhaps the truth might be even better expressed in a physiological figure somewhat more modern1 by saying that the brain1 which consumes much blood1 well repays its obligations to the stomach and members1 for it co-ordinates their motions and prepares their satisfactions4 ,yet there is this important difference between the human body and the state1 a difference which renders ,agrippa's fable wholly misleading3 the hands and feet have no separate consciousness1 and if they are ill used it is the common self that feels the weariness and the bruises4 ,but in the state the various members have a separate sensibility1 and1 although their ultimate interests lie1 no doubt1 in co-operation and justice1 their immediate instinct and passion may lead them to oppress one another perpetually4 ,at one time the brain1 forgetting the members1 may feast on opiates and unceasing music2 and again1 the members1 thinking they could more economically shift for themselves1 may starve the brain and reduce the body politic to a colony of vegetating microbes4 ,in a word1 the consciousness inhabiting the brain embodies the functions of all the body's organs1 and responds in a general way to all their changes of fortune1 but in the state every cell has a separate brain1 and the greatest citizen1 by his existence1 realises only his own happiness4 ,sidenote3 ,theism expresses better the aristocratic ideal4 ,for an ideal aristocracy we should not look to ,plato's ,republic1 for that ,utopia is avowedly the ideal only for fallen and corrupt states1 since luxury and injustice1 we are told1 first necessitated war1 and the guiding idea of all the ,platonic regimen is military efficiency4 ,aristocracy finds a more ideal expression in theism2 for theism imagines the values of existence to be divided into two unequal parts3 on the one hand the infinite value of ,god's life1 on the other the finite values of all the created hierarchy4 ,according to theistic cosmology1 there was a metaphysical necessity1 if creatures were to exist at all1 that they should be in some measure inferior to godhead2 otherwise they would have been indistinguishable from the godhead itself according to the principle called the identity of indiscernibles1 which declares that two beings exactly alike cannot exist without collapsing into an undivided unit4 ,the propagation of life involved1 then1 declension from pure vitality1 and to diffuse being meant to dilute it with nothingness4 ,this declension might take place in infinite degrees1 each retaining some vestige of perfection mixed1 as it were1 with a greater and greater proportion of impotence and nonentity4 ,below ,god stood the angels1 below them man1 and below man the brute and inanimate creation4 ,each sphere1 as it receded1 contained a paler adumbration of the central perfection2 yet even at the last confines of existence some feeble echo of divinity would still resound4 ,this inequality in dignity would be not only a beauty in the whole1 to whose existence and order such inequalities would be essential1 but also no evil to the creature and no injustice2 for a modicum of good is not made evil simply because a greater good is elsewhere possible4 ,on the contrary1 by accepting that appointed place and that specific happiness1 each servant of the universal harmony could feel its infinite value and could thrill the more profoundly to a music which he helped to intone4 ,sidenote3 ,a heaven with many mansions4 ,dante has expressed this thought with great simplicity and beauty4 ,he asks a friend's spirit1 which he finds lodged in the lowest circle of paradise1 if a desire to mount higher does not sometimes visit him2 and the spirit replies3 8,brother1 the force of charity quiets our will1 making us wish only for what we have and thirst for nothing more4 ,if we desired to be in a sublimer sphere1 our desires would be discordant with the will of him who here allots us our divers stations--something which you will see there is no room for in these circles1 if to dwell in charity be needful here1 and if you consider duly the nature of charity4 ,for it belongs to the essence of that blessed state to keep within the divine purposes1 that our own purposes may become one also4 ,thus1 the manner in which we are ranged from step to step in this kingdom pleases the whole kingdom1 as it does the king who gives us will to will with him4 ,and his will is our peace2 it is that sea toward which all things move that his will creates and that nature fashions40,c ,sidenote3 ,if ,god is defined as the human ideal1 apotheosis the only paradise4 ,such pious resignation has in it something pathetic and constrained1 which ,dante could not or would not disguise4 ,for a theism which1 like ,aristotle's and ,dante's1 has a ,platonic essence1 ,god is really nothing but the goal of human aspiration embodied imaginatively4 ,this fact makes these philosophers feel that whatever falls short of divinity has something imperfect about it4 ,god is what man ought to be2 and man1 while he is still himself1 must yearn for ever1 like ,aristotle's cosmos1 making in his perpetual round a vain imitation of deity1 and an eternal prayer4 ,hence1 a latent minor strain in ,aristotle's philosophy1 the hopeless note of paganism1 and in ,dante an undertone of sorrow and sacrifice1 inseparable from ,christian feeling4 ,in both1 virtue implies a certain sense of defeat1 a fatal unnatural limitation1 as if a pristine ideal had been surrendered and what remained were at best a compromise4 ,accordingly we need not be surprised if aspiration1 in all these men1 finally takes a mystical turn2 and ,dante's ghostly friends1 after propounding their aristocratic philosophy1 to justify ,god in other men's eyes1 are themselves on the point of quitting the lower sphere to which ,god had assigned them and plunging into the 8sea0 of his absolute ecstasy4 ,for1 if the word ,god stands for man's spiritual ideal1 heaven can consist only in apotheosis4 ,this the ,greeks knew very well4 ,they instinctively ignored or feared any immortality which fell short of deification2 and the ,christian mystics reached the same goal by less overt courses4 ,they merged the popular idea of a personal ,god in their foretaste of peace and perfection2 and their whole religion was an effort to escape humanity4 ,sidenote3 ,when natures differ perfections differ too4 ,it is true that the theistic cosmology might hear a different interpretation4 ,if by deity we mean not man's ideal--intellectual or sensuous--but the total cosmic order1 then the universal hierarchy may be understood naturalistically so that each sphere gives scope for one sort of good4 ,god1 or the highest being1 would then be simply the life of nature as a whole1 if nature has a conscious life1 or that of its noblest portion4 ,the supposed 8metaphysical evil0 involved in finitude would then be no evil at all1 but the condition of every good4 ,in realising his own will in his own way1 each creature would be perfectly happy1 without yearning or pathetic regrets for other forms of being4 ,such forms of being would all be unpalatable to him1 even if conventionally called higher1 because their body was larger1 and their soul more complex4 ,nor would divine perfection itself be in any sense perfection unless it gave expression to some definite nature1 the entelechy either of the celestial spheres1 or of scientific thought1 or of some other actual existence4 ,under these circumstances1 inhabitants even of the lowest heaven would be unreservedly happy1 as happy in their way as those of the seventh heaven could be in theirs4 ,no pathetic note would any longer disquiet their finitude4 ,they would not have to renounce1 in sad conformity to an alien will1 what even for them would have been a deeper joy4 ,they would be asked to renounce nothing but what1 for them1 would be an evil4 ,the overruling providence would then in truth be fatherly1 by providing for each being that which it inwardly craved4 ,persons of one rank would not be improved by passing into the so-called higher sphere1 any more than the ox would be improved by being transformed into a lark1 or a king into a poet4 ,man in such a system could no more pine to be ,god than he could pine to be the law of gravity1 or ,spinoza's substance1 or ,hegel's dialectical idea4 ,such naturalistic abstractions1 while they perhaps express some element of reality or its total form1 are not objects corresponding to man's purposes and are morally inferior to his humanity4 ,every man's ideal lies within the potentialities of his nature1 for only by expressing his nature can ideals possess authority or attraction over him4 ,heaven accordingly has really many mansions1 each truly heavenly to him who would inhabit it1 and there is really no room for discord in those rounds4 ,one ideal can no more conflict with another than truth can jostle truth2 but men1 or the disorganised functions within a given individual1 may be in physical conflict1 as opinion may wrestle with opinion in the world's arena or in an ignorant brain4 ,among ideals themselves infinite variety is consistent with perfect harmony1 but matter that has not yet developed or discovered its organic affinities may well show groping and contradictory tendencies4 ,when1 however1 these embryonic disorders are once righted1 each possible life knows its natural paradise1 and what some unintelligent outsider might say in dispraise of that ideal will never wound or ruffle the self-justified creature whose ideal it is1 any more than a cat's aversion to water will disturb a fish's plan of life4 ,sidenote3 ,theory that stations actually correspond to faculty4 ,an aristocratic society might accordingly be a perfect heaven if the variety and superposition of functions in it expressed a corresponding diversity in its members' faculties and ideals4 ,and1 indeed1 what aristocratic philosophers have always maintained is that men really differ so much in capacity that one is happier for being a slave1 another for being a shopkeeper1 and a third for being a king4 ,all professions1 they say1 even the lowest1 are or may be vocations4 ,some men1 ,aristotle tells us1 are slaves by nature2 only physical functions are spontaneous in them4 ,so long as they are humanely treated1 it is1 we may infer1 a benefit for them to be commanded2 and the contribution their labour makes toward rational life in their betters is the highest dignity they can attain1 and should be prized by them as a sufficient privilege4 ,such assertions1 coming from lordly lips1 have a suspicious optimism about them2 yet the faithful slave1 such as the nurse we find in the tragedies1 may sometimes have corresponded to that description4 ,in other regions it is surely true that to advance in conventional station would often entail a loss in true dignity and happiness4 ,it would seldom benefit a musician to be appointed admiral or a housemaid to become a prima donna4 ,scientific breeding might conceivably develop much more sharply the various temperaments and faculties needed in the state2 and then each caste or order of citizens would not be more commonly dissatisfied with its lot than men or women now are with their sex4 ,one tribe would run errands as persistently as the ants2 another would sing like the lark2 a third would show a devil's innate fondness for stoking a fiery furnace4 ,sidenote3 ,its falsity4 ,aristocracy logically involves castes4 ,but such castes as exist in ,india1 and the social classes we find in the western world1 are not now based on any profound difference in race1 capacity1 or inclination4 ,they are based probably on the chances of some early war1 reinforced by custom and perpetuated by inheritance4 ,a certain circulation1 corresponding in part to proved ability or disability1 takes place in the body politic1 and1 since the ,french ,revolution1 has taken place increasingly4 ,some1 by energy and perseverance1 rise from the bottom2 some1 by ill fortune or vice1 fall from the top4 ,but these readjustments are insignificant in comparison with the social inertia that perpetuates all the classes1 and even such shifts as occur at once re-establish artificial conditions for the next generation4 ,as a rule1 men's station determines their occupation without their gifts determining their station4 ,thus stifled ability in the lower orders1 and apathy or pampered incapacity in the higher1 unite to deprive society of its natural leaders4 ,sidenote3 ,feeble individuality the rule4 ,it would be easy1 however1 to exaggerate the havoc wrought by such artificial conditions4 ,the monotony we observe in mankind must not be charged to the oppressive influence of circumstances crushing the individual soul4 ,it is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation4 ,most men have no vocation2 and society1 in imposing on them some chance language1 some chance religion1 and some chance career1 first plants an ideal in their bosoms and insinuates into them a sort of racial or professional soul4 ,their only character is composed of the habits they have been led to acquire4 ,some little propensities betrayed in childhood may very probably survive2 one man may prove by his dying words that he was congenitally witty1 another tender1 another brave4 ,but these native qualities will simply have added an ineffectual tint to some typical existence or other2 and the vast majority will remain1 as ,schopenhauer said1 ,fabrikwaaren der ,natur4 ,variety in human dreams1 like personality among savages1 may indeed be inwardly very great1 but it is not efficacious4 ,to be socially important and expressible in some common medium1 initial differences in temper must be organised into custom and become cumulative by being imitated and enforced4 ,the only artists who can show great originality are those trained in distinct and established schools2 for originality and genius must be largely fed and raised on the shoulders of some old tradition4 ,a rich organisation and heritage1 while they predetermine the core of all possible variations1 increase their number1 since every advance opens up new vistas2 and growth1 in extending the periphery of the substance organised1 multiplies the number of points at which new growths may begin4 ,thus it is only in recent times that discoveries in science have been frequent1 because natural science until lately possessed no settled method and no considerable fund of acquired truths4 ,so1 too1 in political society1 statesmanship is made possible by traditional policies1 generalship by military institutions1 great financiers by established commerce4 ,if we ventured to generalise these observations we might say that such an unequal distribution of capacity as might justify aristocracy should be looked for only in civilised states4 ,savages are born free and equal1 but wherever a complex and highly specialised environment limits the loose freedom of those born into it1 it also stimulates their capacity4 ,under forced culture remarkable growths will appear1 bringing to light possibilities in men which might1 perhaps1 not even have been possibilities had they been left to themselves2 for mulberry leaves do not of themselves develop into brocade4 ,a certain personal idiosyncrasy must be assumed at bottom1 else cotton damask would be as good as silk and all men having like opportunities would be equally great4 ,this idiosyncrasy is brought out by social pressure1 while in a state of nature it might have betrayed itself only in trivial and futile ways1 as it does among barbarians4 ,sidenote3 ,sophistical envy4 ,distinction is thus in one sense artificial1 since it cannot become important or practical unless a certain environment gives play to individual talent and preserves its originality2 but distinction nevertheless is perfectly real1 and not merely imputed4 ,in vain does the man in the street declare that he1 too1 could have been a king if he had been born in the purple2 for that potentiality does not belong to him as he is1 but only as he might have been1 if per impossibile he had not been himself4 ,there is a strange metaphysical illusion in imagining that a man might change his parents1 his body1 his early environment1 and yet retain his personality4 ,in its higher faculties his personality is produced by his special relations4 ,if ,shakespeare had been born in ,italy he might1 if you will1 have been a great poet1 but ,shakespeare he could never have been4 ,nor can it be called an injustice to all of us who are not ,englishmen of ,queen ,elizabeth's time that ,shakespeare had that advantage and was thereby enabled to exist4 ,the sense of injustice at unequal opportunities arises only when the two environments compared are really somewhat analogous1 so that the illusion of a change of rles without a change of characters may retain some colour4 ,it was a just insight1 for instance1 in the ,christian fable to make the first rebel against ,god the chief among the angels1 the spirit occupying the position nearest to that which he tried to usurp4 ,lucifer's fallacy consisted in thinking natural inequality artificial4 ,his perversity lay in rebelling against himself and rejecting the happiness proper to his nature4 ,this was the maddest possible way of rebelling against his true creator2 for it is our particular finitude that creates us and makes us be4 ,no one1 except in wilful fancy1 would envy the peculiar advantages of a whale or an ant1 of an ,inca or a ,grand ,lama4 ,an exchange of places with such remote beings would too evidently leave each creature the very same that it was before2 for after a nominal exchange of places each office would remain filled and no trace of a change would be perceptible4 ,but the penny that one man finds and another misses would not1 had fortune been reversed1 have transmuted each man into the other4 ,so adventitious a circumstance seems easily transferable without undermining that personal distinction which it had come to embitter4 ,yet the incipient fallacy lurking even in such suppositions becomes obvious when we inquire whether so blind an accident1 for instance1 as sex is also adventitious and ideally transferable and whether ,jack and ,jill1 remaining themselves1 could have exchanged genders4 ,what extends these invidious comparisons beyond all tolerable bounds is the generic and vague nature proper to language and its terms4 ,the first personal pronoun 8,i0 is a concept so thoroughly universal that it can accompany any experience whatever1 yet it is used to designate an individual who is really definable not by the formal selfhood which he shares with every other thinker1 but by the special events that make up his life4 ,each man's memory embraces a certain field1 and if the landscape open to his vision is sad and hateful he naturally wishes it to shift and become like that paradise in which1 as he fancies1 other men dwell4 ,a legitimate rebellion against evil in his own experience becomes an unthinkable supposition about what his experience might have been had he enjoyed those other men's opportunities or even 7so far can unreason wander7 had he possessed their character4 ,the wholly different creature1 a replica of that envied ideal1 which would have existed in that case would still have called itself 8,i02 and so1 the dreamer imagines1 that creature would have been himself in a different situation4 ,if a new birth could still be called by a man's own name1 the reason would be that the concrete faculties now present in him are the basis for the ideal he throws out1 and if these particular faculties came to fruition in a new being1 he would call that being himself1 inasmuch as it realised his ideal4 ,the poorer the reality1 therefore1 the meaner and vaguer the ideal it is able to project4 ,man is so tied to his personal endowment 7essential to him though an accident in the world7 that even his uttermost ideal1 into which he would fly out of himself and his finitude1 can be nothing but the fulfilment of his own initial idiosyncrasies4 ,whatever other wills and other glories may exist in heaven lie not within his universe of aspiration4 ,even his most perversely metaphysical envy can begrudge to others only what he instinctively craves for himself4 ,sidenote3 ,inequality is not a grievance2 suffering is4 ,it is not mere inequality1 therefore1 that can be a reproach to the aristocratic or theistic ideal4 ,could each person fulfil his own nature the most striking differences in endowment and fortune would trouble nobody's dreams4 ,the true reproach to which aristocracy and theism are open is the thwarting of those unequal natures and the consequent suffering imposed on them all4 ,injustice in this world is not something comparative2 the wrong is deep1 clear1 and absolute in each private fate4 ,a bruised child wailing in the street1 his small world for the moment utterly black and cruel before him1 does not fetch his unhappiness from sophisticated comparisons or irrational envy2 nor can any compensations and celestial harmonies supervening later ever expunge or justify that moment's bitterness4 ,the pain may be whistled away and forgotten2 the mind may be rendered by it only a little harder1 a little coarser1 a little more secretive and sullen and familiar with unrightable wrong4 ,but ignoring that pain will not prevent its having existed2 it must remain for ever to trouble ,god's omniscience and be a part of that hell which the creation too truly involves4 ,sidenote3 ,mutilation by crowding4 ,the same curse of suffering vitiates ,agrippa's ingenious parable and the joyful humility of ,dante's celestial friends1 and renders both equally irrelevant to human conditions4 ,nature may arrange her hierarchies as she chooses and make her creatures instrumental to one another's life4 ,that interrelation is no injury to any part and an added beauty in the whole4 ,it would have been a truly admirable arrangement to have enabled every living being1 in attaining its own end1 to make the attainments of the others' ends possible to them also4 ,an approach to such an equilibrium has actually been reached in some respects by the rough sifting of miscellaneous organisms until those that were compatible alone remained4 ,but nature1 in her haste to be fertile1 wants to produce everything at once1 and her distracted industry has brought about terrible confusion and waste and terrible injustice4 ,she has been led to punish her ministers for the services they render and her favourites for the honours they receive4 ,she has imposed suffering on her creatures together with life2 she has defeated her own objects and vitiated her bounty by letting every good do harm and bring evil in its train to some unsuspecting creature4 ,this oppression is the moral stain that attaches to aristocracy and makes it truly unjust4 ,every privilege that imposes suffering involves a wrong4 ,not only does aristocracy lay on the world a tax in labour and privation that its own splendours1 intellectual and worldly1 may arise1 but by so doing it infects intelligence and grandeur with inhumanity and renders corrupt and odious that pre-eminence which should have been divine4 ,the lower classes1 in submitting to the hardship and meanness of their lives--which1 to be sure1 might have been harder and meaner had no aristocracy existed--must upbraid their fellow-men for profiting by their ill fortune and therefore having an interest in perpetuating it4 ,instead of the brutal but innocent injustice of nature1 what they suffer from is the sly injustice of men2 and though the suffering be less--for the worst of men is human--the injury is more sensible4 ,the inclemencies and dangers men must endure in a savage state1 in scourging them1 would not have profited by that cruelty4 ,but suffering has an added sting when it enables others to be exempt from care and to live like the gods in irresponsible ease2 the inequality which would have been innocent and even beautiful in a happy world becomes1 in a painful world1 a bitter wrong1 or at best a criminal beauty4 ,sidenote3 ,a hint to optimists4 ,it would be a happy relief to the aristocrat's conscience1 when he possesses one1 could he learn from some yet bolder ,descartes that common people were nothing but btes-machines1 and that only a groundless prejudice had hitherto led us to suppose that life could exist where evidently nothing good could be attained by living4 ,if all unfortunate people could be proved to be unconscious automata1 what a brilliant justification that would be for the ways of both ,god and man6 ,philosophy would not lack arguments to support such an agreeable conclusion4 ,beginning with the axiom that whatever is is right1 a metaphysician might adduce the truth that consciousness is something self-existent and indubitably real2 therefore1 he would contend1 it must be self-justifying and indubitably good4 ,and he might continue by saying that a slave's life was not its own excuse for being1 nor were the labours of a million drudges otherwise justified than by the conveniences which they supplied their masters with4 ,ergo1 those servile operations could come to consciousness only where they attained their end1 and the world could contain nothing but perfect and universal happiness4 ,a divine omniscience and joy1 shared by finite minds in so far as they might attain perfection1 would be the only life in existence1 and the notion that such a thing as pain1 sorrow1 or hatred could exist at all would forthwith vanish like the hideous and ridiculous illusion that it was4 ,this argument may be recommended to apologetic writers as no weaker than those they commonly rely on1 and infinitely more consoling4 ,sidenote3 ,how aristocracies might do good4 ,but so long as people remain on what such an invaluable optimist might call the low level of sensuous thought1 and so long as we imagine that we exist and suffer1 an aristocratic regimen can only be justified by radiating benefit and by proving that were less given to those above less would be attained by those beneath them4 ,such reversion of benefit might take a material form1 as when1 by commercial guidance and military protection1 a greater net product is secured to labour1 even after all needful taxes have been levied upon it to support greatness4 ,an industrial and political oligarchy might defend itself on that ground4 ,or the return might take the less positive form of opportunity1 as it does when an aristocratic society has a democratic government4 ,here the people neither accept guidance nor require protection2 but the existence of a rich and irresponsible class offers them an ideal1 such as it is1 in their ambitious struggles4 ,for they too may grow rich1 exercise financial ascendancy1 educate their sons like gentlemen1 and launch their daughters into fashionable society4 ,finally1 if the only aristocracy recognised were an aristocracy of achievement1 and if public rewards followed personal merit1 the reversion to the people might take the form of participation by them in the ideal interests of eminent men4 ,holiness1 genius1 and knowledge can reverberate through all society4 ,the fruits of art and science are in themselves cheap and not to be monopolised or consumed in enjoyment4 ,on the contrary1 their wider diffusion stimulates their growth and makes their cultivation more intense and successful4 ,when an ideal interest is general the share which falls to the private person is the more apt to be efficacious4 ,the saints have usually had companions1 and artists and philosophers have flourished in schools4 ,at the same time ideal goods cannot be assimilated without some training and leisure4 ,like education and religion they are degraded by popularity1 and reduced from what the master intended to what the people are able and willing to receive4 ,so pleasing an idea1 then1 as this of diffused ideal possessions has little application in a society aristocratically framed2 for the greater eminence the few attain the less able are the many to follow them4 ,great thoughts require a great mind and pure beauties a profound sensibility4 ,to attempt to give such things a wide currency is to be willing to denaturalise them in order to boast that they have been propagated4 ,culture is on the horns of this dilemma3 if profound and noble it must remain rare1 if common it must become mean4 ,these alternatives can never be eluded until some purified and high-bred race succeeds the promiscuous bipeds that now blacken the planet4 ,sidenote3 ,man adds wrong to nature's injury4 ,aristocracy1 like everything else1 has no practical force save that which mechanical causes endow it with4 ,its privileges are fruits of inevitable advantages4 ,its oppressions are simply new forms and vehicles for nature's primeval cruelty1 while the benefits it may also confer are only further examples of her nice equilibrium and necessary harmony4 ,for it lies in the essence of a mechanical world1 where the interests of its products are concerned1 to be fundamentally kind1 since it has formed and on the whole maintains those products1 and yet continually cruel1 since it forms and maintains them blindly1 without considering difficulties or probable failures4 ,now the most tyrannical government1 like the best1 is a natural product maintained by an equilibrium of natural forces4 ,it is simply a new mode of mechanical energy to which the philosopher living under it must adjust himself as he would to the weather4 ,but when the vehicle of nature's inclemency is a heartless man1 even if the harm done be less1 it puts on a new and a moral aspect4 ,the source of injury is then not only natural but criminal as well1 and the result is a sense of wrong added to misfortune4 ,it must needs be that offence come1 but woe to him by whom the offence cometh4 ,he justly arouses indignation and endures remorse4 ,sidenote3 ,conditions of a just inequality4 ,now civilisation cannot afford to entangle its ideals with the causes of remorse and of just indignation4 ,in the first place nature in her slow and ponderous way levels her processes and rubs off her sharp edges by perpetual friction4 ,where there is maladjustment there is no permanent physical stability4 ,therefore the ideal of society can never involve the infliction of injury on anybody for any purpose4 ,such an ideal would propose for a goal something out of equilibrium1 a society which even if established could not maintain itself2 but an ideal life must not tend to destroy its ideal by abolishing its own existence4 ,in the second place1 it is impossible on moral grounds that injustice should subsist in the ideal4 ,the ideal means the perfect1 and a supposed ideal in which wrong still subsisted would be the denial of perfection4 ,the ideal state and the ideal universe should be a family where all are not equal1 but where all are happy4 ,so that an aristocratic or theistic system in order to deserve respect must discard its sinister apologies for evil and clearly propose such an order of existences1 one superposed upon the other1 as should involve no suffering on any of its levels4 ,the services required of each must involve no injury to any2 to perform them should be made the servant's spontaneous and specific ideal4 ,the privileges the system bestows on some must involve no outrage on the rest1 and must not be paid for by mutilating other lives or thwarting their natural potentialities4 ,for the humble to give their labour would then be blessed in reality1 and not merely by imputation1 while for the great to receive those benefits would be blessed also1 not in fact only but in justice4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,c3 ,paradiso4 ,canto ,,iii41 #gj-hg4 ,,chapter ,v ,,democracy ,sidenote3 ,democracy as an end and as a means4 ,sidenote3 ,natural democracy leads to monarchy4 ,the word democracy may stand for a natural social equality in the body politic or for a constitutional form of government in which power lies more or less directly in the people's hands4 ,the former may be called social democracy and the latter democratic government4 ,the two differ widely1 both in origin and in moral principle4 ,genetically considered1 social democracy is something primitive1 unintended1 proper to communities where there is general competence and no marked personal eminence4 ,it is the democracy of ,arcadia1 ,switzerland1 and the ,american pioneers4 ,such a community might be said to have also a democratic government1 for everything in it is naturally democratic4 ,there will be no aristocracy1 no prestige2 but instead an intelligent readiness to lend a hand and to do in unison whatever is done1 not so much under leaders as by a kind of conspiring instinct and contagious sympathy4 ,in other words1 there will be that most democratic of governments--no government at all4 ,but when pressure of circumstances1 danger1 or inward strife makes recognised and prolonged guidance necessary to a social democracy1 the form its government takes is that of a rudimentary monarchy1 established by election or general consent4 ,a natural leader presents himself and he is instinctively obeyed4 ,he may indeed be freely criticised and will not be screened by any pomp or traditional mystery2 he will be easy to replace and every citizen will feel himself radically his equal4 ,yet such a state is at the beginnings of monarchy and aristocracy1 close to the stage depicted in ,homer1 where pre-eminences are still obviously natural1 although already over-emphasised by the force of custom and wealth1 and by the fission of society into divergent classes4 ,sidenote3 ,artificial democracy is an extension of privilege4 ,political democracy1 on the other hand1 is a late and artificial product4 ,it arises by a gradual extension of aristocratic privileges1 through rebellion against abuses1 and in answer to restlessness on the people's part4 ,its principle is not the absence of eminence1 but the discovery that existing eminence is no longer genuine and representative4 ,it is compatible with a very complex government1 great empire1 and an aristocratic society2 it may retain1 as notably in ,england and in all ancient republics1 many vestiges of older and less democratic institutions4 ,for under democratic governments the people have not created the state2 they merely control it4 ,their suspicions and jealousies are quieted by assigning to them a voice1 perhaps only a veto1 in the administration2 but the state administered is a prodigious self-created historical engine4 ,popular votes never established the family1 private property1 religious practices1 or international frontiers4 ,institutions1 ideals1 and administrators may all be such as the popular classes could never have produced2 but these products of natural aristocracy are suffered to subsist so long as no very urgent protest is raised against them4 ,the people's liberty consists not in their original responsibility for what exists--for they are guiltless of it--but merely in the faculty they have acquired of abolishing any detail that may distress or wound them1 and of imposing any new measure1 which1 seen against the background of existing laws1 may commend itself from time to time to their instinct and mind4 ,sidenote3 ,ideals and expedients4 ,if we turn from origins to ideals1 the contrast between social and political democracy is no less marked4 ,social democracy is a general ethical ideal1 looking to human equality and brotherhood1 and inconsistent1 in its radical form1 with such institutions as the family and hereditary property4 ,democratic government1 on the contrary1 is merely a means to an end1 an expedient for the better and smoother government of certain states at certain junctures4 ,it involves no special ideals of life2 it is a question of policy1 namely1 whether the general interest will be better served by granting all men 7and perhaps all women7 an equal voice in elections4 ,for political democracy1 arising in great and complex states1 must necessarily be a government by deputy1 and the questions actually submitted to the people can be only very large rough matters of general policy or of confidence in party leaders4 ,we may now add a few reflections about each kind of democracy1 regarding democratic government chiefly in its origin and phases 7for its function is that of all government7 and social democracy chiefly as an ideal1 since its origin is simply that of society itself4 ,sidenote3 ,well-founded distrust of rulers4 ,yet experts1 if rational1 would serve common interests4 ,the possibility of intelligent selfishness and the prevalence of a selfishness far from intelligent unite to make men wary in intrusting their interests to one another's keeping4 ,if passion never overcame prudence1 and if private prudence always counselled what was profitable also to others1 no objection could arise to an aristocratic policy4 ,for if we assume a certain variety in endowments and functions among men1 it would evidently conduce to the general convenience that each man should exercise his powers uncontrolled by the public voice4 ,the government1 having facilities for information and ready resources1 might be left to determine all matters of policy2 for its members' private interests would coincide with those of the public1 and even if prejudices and irrational habits prevented them from pursuing their own advantage1 they would surely not err more frequently or more egregiously in that respect than would the private individual1 to whose ignorant fancy every decision would otherwise have to be referred4 ,thus in monarchy every expedient is seized upon to render the king's and the country's interests coincident2 public prosperity fills his treasury1 the arts adorn his court1 justice rendered confirms his authority4 ,if reason were efficacious kings might well be left to govern alone4 ,theologians1 under the same hypothesis1 might be trusted to draw up creeds and codes of morals2 and1 in fact1 everyone with a gift for management or creation might be authorised to execute his plans4 ,it is in this way1 perhaps1 that some social animals manage their affairs1 for they seem to co-operate without external control4 ,that their instinctive system is far from perfect we may safely take for granted2 but government1 too1 is not always adequate or wise4 ,what spoils such a spontaneous harmony is that people neither understand their own interests nor have the constancy to pursue them systematically2 and further1 that their personal or animal interests may actually clash1 in so far as they have not been harmonised by reason4 ,to rationalise an interest is simply to correlate it with every other interest which it at all affects4 ,in proportion as rational interests predominate in a man and he esteems rational satisfactions above all others1 it becomes impossible that he should injure another by his action1 and unnecessary that he should sacrifice himself4 ,but the worse and more brutal his nature is1 and the less satisfaction he finds in justice1 the more need he has to do violence to himself1 lest he should be doing it to others4 ,this is the reason why preaching1 conscious effort1 and even education are such feeble agencies for moral reform3 only selection and right breeding could produce that genuine virtue which would not need to find goodness unpalatable nor to say1 in expressing its own perversities1 that a distaste for excellence is a condition of being good4 ,but when a man is ill-begotten and foolish1 and hates the means to his own happiness1 he naturally is not well fitted to secure that of other people4 ,those who suffer by his folly are apt to think him malicious1 whereas he is the first to suffer himself and knows that it was the force of circumstances and a certain pathetic helplessness in his own soul that led him into his errors4 ,sidenote3 ,people jealous of eminence4 ,these errors1 when they are committed by a weak and passionate ruler1 are not easily forgiven4 ,his subjects attribute to him an intelligence he probably lacks2 they call him treacherous or cruel when he is very likely yielding to lazy habits and to insidious traditions4 ,they see in every calamity that befalls them a proof that his interests are radically hostile to theirs1 whereas it is only his conduct that is so4 ,accordingly1 in proportion to their alertness and self-sufficiency1 they clamour for the right to govern themselves1 and usually secure it4 ,democratic government is founded on the decay of representative eminence4 ,it indicates that natural leaders are no longer trusted merely because they are rich1 enterprising1 learned1 or old4 ,their spontaneous action would go awry4 ,they must not be allowed to act without control4 ,men of talent may be needed and used in a democratic state2 they may be occasionally hired2 but they will be closely watched and directed by the people1 who fear otherwise to suffer the penalty of foolishly intrusting their affairs to other men's hands4 ,a fool1 says a ,spanish proverb1 knows more at home than a wise man at his neighbour's4 ,so democratic instinct assumes that1 unless all those concerned keep a vigilant eye on the course of public business and frequently pronounce on its conduct1 they will before long awake to the fact that they have been ignored and enslaved4 ,the implication is that each man is the best judge of his own interests and of the means to advance them2 or at least that by making himself his own guide he can in the end gain the requisite insight and thus not only attain his practical aims1 but also some political and intellectual dignity4 ,sidenote3 ,it is representative4 ,all just government pursues the general good2 the choice between aristocratic and democratic forms touches only the means to that end4 ,one arrangement may well be better fitted to one place and time1 and another to another4 ,everything depends on the existence or non-existence of available practical eminence4 ,the democratic theory is clearly wrong if it imagines that eminence is not naturally representative4 ,eminence is synthetic and represents what it synthesises4 ,an eminence not representative would not constitute excellence1 but merely extravagance or notoriety4 ,excellence in anything1 whether thought1 action1 or feeling1 consists in nothing but representation1 in standing for many diffuse constituents reduced to harmony1 so that the wise moment is filled with an activity in which the upshot of the experience concerned is mirrored and regarded1 an activity just to all extant interests and speaking in their total behalf4 ,but anything approaching such true excellence is as rare as it is great1 and a democratic society1 naturally jealous of greatness1 may be excused for not expecting true greatness and for not even understanding what it is4 ,a government is not made representative or just by the mechanical expedient of electing its members by universal suffrage4 ,it becomes representative only by embodying in its policy1 whether by instinct or high intelligence1 the people's conscious and unconscious interests4 ,sidenote3 ,but subject to decay4 ,democratic theory seems to be right1 however1 about the actual failure of theocracies1 monarchies1 and oligarchies to remain representative and to secure the general good4 ,the true eminence which natural leaders may have possessed in the beginning usually declines into a conventional and baseless authority4 ,the guiding powers which came to save and express humanity fatten in office and end by reversing their function4 ,the government reverts to the primeval robber2 the church stands in the way of all wisdom4 ,under such circumstances it is a happy thing if the people possess enough initiative to assert themselves and1 after clearing the ground in a more or less summary fashion1 allow some new organisation1 more representative of actual interests1 to replace the old encumbrances and tyrannies4 ,sidenote3 ,ancient citizenship a privilege4 ,in the heroic ages of ,greece and ,rome patriotism was stimulated in manifold ways4 ,the city was a fatherland1 a church1 an army1 and almost a family4 ,it had its own school of art1 its own dialect1 its own feasts1 its own fables4 ,every possible social interest was either embodied in the love of country or1 like friendship and fame1 closely associated with it4 ,patriotism could then be expected to sway every mind at all capable of moral enthusiasm4 ,furthermore1 only the flower of the population were citizens4 ,in rural districts the farmer might be a freeman2 but he probably had slaves whose work he merely superintended4 ,the meaner and more debasing offices1 mining1 sea-faring1 domestic service1 and the more laborious part of all industries1 were relegated to slaves4 ,the citizens were a privileged class4 ,military discipline and the street life natural in ,mediterranean countries1 kept public events and public men always under everybody's eyes3 the state was a bodily presence4 ,democracy1 when it arose in such communities1 was still aristocratic2 it imposed few new duties upon the common citizens1 while it diffused many privileges and exemptions among them4 ,sidenote3 ,modern democracy industrial4 ,the social democracy which is the ideal of many in modern times1 on the other hand1 excludes slavery1 unites whole nations and even all mankind into a society of equals1 and admits no local or racial privileges by which the sense of fellowship may be stimulated4 ,public spirit could not be sustained in such a community by exemptions1 rivalries1 or ambitions4 ,no one1 indeed1 would be a slave1 everyone would have an elementary education and a chance to demonstrate his capacity2 but he would be probably condemned to those occupations which in ancient republics were assigned to slaves4 ,at least at the opening of his career he would find himself on the lowest subsisting plane of humanity1 and he would probably remain on it throughout his life4 ,in other words1 the citizens of a social democracy would be all labourers2 for even those who rose to be leaders would1 in a genuine democracy1 rise from the ranks and belong in education and habits to the same class as all the others4 ,sidenote3 ,dangers to current civilisation4 ,under such circumstances the first virtue which a democratic society would have to possess would be enthusiastic diligence4 ,the motives for work which have hitherto prevailed in the world have been want1 ambition1 and love of occupation3 in a social democracy1 after the first was eliminated1 the last alone would remain efficacious4 ,love of occupation1 although it occasionally accompanies and cheers every sort of labour1 could never induce men originally to undertake arduous and uninteresting tasks1 nor to persevere in them if by chance or waywardness such tasks had been once undertaken4 ,inclination can never be the general motive for the work now imposed on the masses4 ,before labour can be its own reward it must become less continuous1 more varied1 more responsive to individual temperament and capacity4 ,otherwise it would not cease to repress and warp human faculties4 ,a state composed exclusively of such workmen and peasants as make up the bulk of modern nations would be an utterly barbarous state4 ,every liberal tradition would perish in it2 and the rational and historic essence of patriotism itself would be lost4 ,the emotion of it1 no doubt1 would endure1 for it is not generosity that the people lack4 ,they possess every impulse2 it is experience that they cannot gather1 for in gathering it they would be constituting those higher organs that make up an aristocratic society4 ,civilisation has hitherto consisted in diffusion and dilution of habits arising in privileged centres4 ,it has not sprung from the people2 it has arisen in their midst by a variation from them1 and it has afterward imposed itself on them from above4 ,all its founders in antiquity passed for demi-gods or were at least inspired by an oracle or a nymph4 ,the vital genius thus bursting forth and speaking with authority gained a certain ascendency in the world2 it mitigated barbarism without removing it4 ,this is one fault1 among others1 which current civilisation has2 it is artificial4 ,if social democracy could breed a new civilisation out of the people1 this new civilisation would be profounder than ours and more pervasive4 ,but it doubtless cannot4 ,what we have rests on conquest and conversion1 on leadership and imitation1 on mastership and service4 ,to abolish aristocracy1 in the sense of social privilege and sanctified authority would be to cut off the source from which all culture has hitherto flowed4 ,sidenote3 ,is current civilisation a good8 ,civilisation1 however1 although we are wont to speak the word with a certain unction1 is a thing whose value may be questioned4 ,one way of defending the democratic ideal is to deny that civilisation is a good4 ,in one sense1 indeed1 social democracy is essentially a reversion to a more simple life1 more ,arcadian and idyllic than that which aristocracy has fostered4 ,equality is more easily attained in a patriarchal age than in an age of concentrated and intense activities4 ,possessions1 ideal and material1 may be fewer in a simple community1 but they are more easily shared and bind men together in moral and imaginative bonds instead of dividing them1 as do all highly elaborate ways of living or thinking4 ,the necessaries of life can be enjoyed by a rural people1 living in a sparsely settled country1 and among these necessaries might be counted not only bread and rags1 which everyone comes by in some fashion even in our society1 but that communal religion1 poetry1 and fellowship which the civilised poor are so often without4 ,if social democracy should triumph and take this direction it would begin by greatly diminishing the amount of labour performed in the world4 ,all instruments of luxury1 many instruments of vain knowledge and art1 would no longer be produced4 ,we might see the means of communication1 lately so marvellously developed1 again disused2 the hulks of great steamers rusting in harbours1 the railway bridges collapsing and the tunnels choked2 while a rural population1 with a few necessary and perfected manufactures1 would spread over the land and abandon the great cities to ruin1 calling them seats of ,babylonian servitude and folly4 ,such anticipations may seem fantastic1 and of course there is no probability that a reaction against material progress should set in in the near future1 since as yet the tide of commercialism and population continues everywhere to rise2 but does any thoughtful man suppose that these tendencies will be eternal and that the present experiment in civilisation is the last the world will see8 ,sidenote3 ,horrors of materialistic democracy4 ,if social democracy1 however1 refused to diminish labour and wealth and proposed rather to accelerate material progress and keep every furnace at full blast1 it would come face to face with a serious problem4 ,by whom would the product be enjoyed8 ,by those who created it8 ,what sort of pleasures1 arts1 and sciences would those grimy workmen have time and energy for after a day of hot and unremitting exertion8 ,what sort of religion would fill their ,sabbaths and their dreams8 ,we see how they spend their leisure to-day1 when a strong aristocratic tradition and the presence of a rich class still profoundly influence popular ideals4 ,imagine those aristocratic influences removed1 and would any head be lifted above a dead level of infinite dulness and vulgarity8 ,would mankind be anything but a trivial1 sensuous1 superstitious1 custom-ridden herd8 ,there is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny4 ,it is all-permeating1 all-thwarting2 it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity4 ,such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon4 ,anyone would be a hero who should quell the monster4 ,a foreign invader or domestic despot would at least have steps to his throne1 possible standing-places for art and intelligence2 his supercilious indifference would discountenance the popular gods1 and allow some courageous hand at last to shatter them4 ,social democracy at high pressure would leave no room for liberty4 ,the only freeman in it would be one whose whole ideal was to be an average man4 ,sidenote3 ,timocracy or socialistic democracy4 ,perhaps1 however1 social democracy might take a more liberal form4 ,it might allow the benefits of civilisation to be integrated in eminent men1 whose influence in turn should direct and temper the general life4 ,this would be timocracy--a government by men of merit4 ,the same abilities which raised these men to eminence would enable them to apprehend ideal things and to employ material resources for the common advantage4 ,they would formulate religion1 cultivate the arts and sciences1 provide for government and all public conveniences1 and inspire patriotism by their discourse and example4 ,at the same time a new motive would be added to common labour1 ,i mean ambition4 ,for there would be not only a possibility of greater reward but a possibility of greater service4 ,the competitive motive which socialism is supposed to destroy would be restored in timocracy1 and an incentive offered to excellence and industry4 ,the country's resources would increase for the very reason that somebody might conceivably profit by them2 and everyone would have at least an ideal interest in ministering to that complete life which he or his children1 or whoever was most capable of appreciation1 was actually to enjoy4 ,such a timocracy 7of which the ,roman ,church is a good example7 would differ from the social aristocracy that now exists only by the removal of hereditary advantages4 ,people would be born equal1 but they would grow unequal1 and the only equality subsisting would be equality of opportunity4 ,if power remained in the people's hands1 the government would be democratic2 but a full development of timocracy would allow the proved leader to gain great ascendancy4 ,the better security the law offered that the men at the top should be excellent1 the less restraint would it need to put upon them when once in their places4 ,their eminence would indeed have been factitious and their station undeserved if they were not able to see and do what was requisite better than the community at large4 ,an assembly has only the lights common to the majority of its members1 far less1 therefore1 than its members have when added together and less even than the wiser part of them4 ,a timocracy would therefore seem to unite the advantages of all forms of government and to avoid their respective abuses4 ,it would promote freedom scientifically4 ,it might be a monarchy1 if men existed fit to be kings2 but they would have to give signs of their fitness and their honours would probably not be hereditary4 ,like aristocracy1 it would display a great diversity of institutions and superposed classes1 a stimulating variety in ways of living2 it would be favourable to art and science and to noble idiosyncrasies4 ,among its activities the culminating and most conspicuous ones would be liberal4 ,yet there would be no isolation of the aristocratic body2 its blood would be drawn from the people1 and only its traditions from itself4 ,like social democracy1 finally1 it would be just and open to every man1 but it would not depress humanity nor wish to cast everybody in a common mould4 ,sidenote3 ,the difficulty the same as in all ,socialism4 ,there are immense difficulties1 however1 in the way of such a ,utopia1 some physical and others moral4 ,timocracy would have to begin by uprooting the individual from his present natural soil and transplanting him to that in which his spirit might flourish best4 ,this proposed transfer is what makes the system ideally excellent1 since nature is a means only2 but it makes it also almost impossible to establish1 since nature is the only efficacious power4 ,timocracy can arise only in the few fortunate cases where material and social forces have driven men to that situation in which their souls can profit most1 and where they find no influences more persuasive than those which are most liberating4 ,it is clear1 for instance1 that timocracy would exclude the family or greatly weaken it4 ,soul and body would be wholly transferred to that medium where lay the creature's spiritual affinities2 his origins would be disregarded on principle1 except where they might help to forecast his disposition4 ,life would become heartily civic1 corporate1 conventual2 otherwise opportunities would not be equal in the beginning1 nor culture and happiness perfect in the end1 and identical4 ,we have seen1 however1 what difficulties and dangers surround any revolution in that ideal direction4 ,even less perfect polities1 that leave more to chance1 would require a moral transformation in mankind if they were to be truly successful4 ,a motive which now generates political democracy1 impatience of sacrifice1 must1 in a good social democracy1 be turned into its opposite4 ,men must be glad to labour unselfishly in the spirit of art or of religious service3 for if they labour selfishly1 the higher organs of the state would perish1 since only a few can profit by them materially2 while if they neglect their work1 civilisation loses that intensive development which it was proposed to maintain4 ,each man would need to forget himself and not to chafe under his natural limitations4 ,he must find his happiness in seeing his daily task grow under his hands2 and when1 in speculative moments1 he lifts his eyes from his labour1 he must find an ideal satisfaction in patriotism1 in love for that complex society to which he is contributing an infinitesimal service4 ,he must learn to be happy without wealth1 fame1 or power1 and with no reward save his modest livelihood and an ideal participation in his country's greatness4 ,it is a spirit hardly to be maintained without a close organisation and much training2 and as military and religious timocracies have depended on discipline and a minute rule of life1 so an industrial timocracy would have to depend on guilds and unions1 which would make large inroads upon personal freedom4 ,sidenote3 ,the masses would have to be plebeian in position and patrician in feeling4 ,the question here suggests itself whether such a citizen1 once having accepted his humble lot1 would be in a different position from the plebeians in an aristocracy4 ,the same subordination would be imposed upon him1 only the ground assigned for his submission would be no longer self-interest and necessity1 but patriotic duty4 ,this patriotism would have to be of an exalted type4 ,its end would not be1 as in industrial society1 to secure the private interests of each citizen2 its end would be the glory and perfection of the state as imagination or philosophy might conceive them4 ,this glory and perfection would not be a benefit to anyone who was not in some degree a philosopher and a poet4 ,they would seem1 then1 to be the special interests of an aristocracy1 not indeed an aristocracy of wealth or power1 but an aristocracy of noble minds4 ,those whose hearts could prize the state's ideal perfection would be those in whom its benefits would be integrated4 ,and the common citizen would find in their existence1 and in his own participation in their virtue1 the sole justification for his loyalty4 ,ideal patriotism is not secured when each man1 although without natural eminence1 pursues his private interests4 ,what renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude3 the aims of friendship1 religion1 science1 and art4 ,all these aims1 in a well-knit state1 are covered by the single passion of patriotism2 and then a conception of one's country1 its history and mission becomes the touchstone of every ideal impulse4 ,timocracy requires this kind of patriotism in everybody2 so that if public duty is not to become a sacrifice imposed on the many for the sake of the few1 as in aristocracy1 the reason can only be that the many covet1 appreciate1 and appropriate their country's ideal glories1 quite as much as the favoured class ever could in any aristocracy4 ,sidenote3 ,organisation for ideal ends breeds fanaticism4 ,is this possible8 ,what might happen if the human race were immensely improved and exalted there is as yet no saying2 but experience has given no example of efficacious devotion to communal ideals except in small cities1 held together by close military and religious bonds and having no important relations to anything external4 ,even this antique virtue was short-lived and sadly thwarted by private and party passion4 ,where public spirit has held best1 as at ,sparta or 7to take a very different type of communal passion7 among the ,jesuits1 it has been paid for by a notable lack of spontaneity and wisdom2 such inhuman devotion to an arbitrary end has made these societies odious4 ,we may say1 therefore1 that a zeal sufficient to destroy selfishness is1 as men are now constituted1 worse than selfishness itself4 ,in pursuing prizes for themselves people benefit their fellows more than in pursuing such narrow and irrational ideals as alone seem to be powerful in the world4 ,to ambition1 to the love of wealth and honour1 to love of a liberty which meant opportunity for experiment and adventure1 we owe whatever benefits we have derived from ,greece and ,rome1 from ,italy and ,england4 ,it is doubtful whether a society which offered no personal prizes would inspire effort2 and it is still more doubtful whether that effort1 if actually stimulated by education1 would be beneficent4 ,for an indoctrinated and collective virtue turns easily to fanaticism2 it imposes irrational sacrifices prompted by some abstract principle or habit once1 perhaps1 useful2 but that convention soon becomes superstitious and ceases to represent general human excellence4 ,sidenote3 ,public spirit the life of democracy4 ,now it is in the spirit of social democracy to offer no prizes4 ,office in it1 being the reward of no great distinction1 brings no great honour1 and being meanly paid it brings no great profit1 at least while honestly administered4 ,all wealth in a true democracy would be the fruit of personal exertion and would come too late to be nobly enjoyed or to teach the art of liberal living4 ,it would be either accumulated irrationally or given away outright4 ,and if fortunes could not be transmitted or used to found a great family they would lose their chief imaginative charm4 ,the pleasures a democratic society affords are vulgar and not even by an amiable illusion can they become an aim in life4 ,a life of pleasure requires an aristocratic setting to make it interesting or really conceivable4 ,intellectual and artistic greatness does not need prizes1 but it sorely needs sympathy and a propitious environment4 ,genius1 like goodness 7which can stand alone71 would arise in a democratic society as frequently as elsewhere2 but it might not be so well fed or so well assimilated4 ,there would at least be no artificial and simulated merit2 everybody would take his ease in his inn and sprawl unbuttoned without respect for any finer judgment or performance than that which he himself was inclined to4 ,the only excellence subsisting would be spontaneous excellence1 inwardly prompted1 sure of itself1 and inwardly rewarded4 ,for such excellence to grow general mankind must be notably transformed4 ,if a noble and civilised democracy is to subsist1 the common citizen must be something of a saint and something of a hero4 ,we see therefore how justly flattering and profound1 and at the same time how ominous1 was ,montesquieu's saying that the principle of democracy is virtue4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,free ,,society ,sidenote3 ,primacy of nature over spirit4 ,natural society unites beings in time and space2 it fixes affection on those creatures on which we depend and to which our action must be adapted4 ,natural society begins at home and radiates over the world1 as more and more things become tributary to our personal being4 ,in marriage and the family1 in industry1 government1 and war1 attention is riveted on temporal existences1 on the fortunes of particular bodies1 natural or corporate4 ,there is then a primacy of nature over spirit in social life2 and this primacy1 in a certain sense1 endures to the end1 since all spirit must be the spirit of something1 and reason could not exist or be conceived at all unless a material organism1 personal or social1 lay beneath to give thought an occasion and a point of view1 and to give preference a direction4 ,things could not be near or far1 worse or better1 unless a definite life were taken as a standard1 a life lodged somewhere in space and time4 ,reason is a principle of order appearing in a subject-matter which in its subsistence and quantity must be an irrational datum4 ,reason expresses purpose1 purpose expresses impulse1 and impulse expresses a natural body with self-equilibrating powers4 ,at the same time1 natural growths may be called achievements only because1 when formed1 they support a joyful and liberal experience4 ,nature's works first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke2 mechanical processes have interesting climaxes only from the point of view of the life that expresses them1 in which their ebb and flow grows impassioned and vehement4 ,nature's values are imputed to her retroactively by spirit1 which in its material dependence has a logical and moral primacy of its own4 ,in themselves events are perfectly mechanical1 steady1 and fluid1 not stopping where we see a goal nor avoiding what we call failures4 ,and so they would always have remained in crude experience1 if no cumulative reflection1 no art1 and no science had come to dominate and foreshorten that equable flow of substance1 arresting it ideally in behalf of some rational interest4 ,thus it comes to pass that rational interests have a certain ascendancy in the world1 as well as an absolute authority over it2 for they arise where an organic equilibrium has naturally established itself4 ,such an equilibrium maintains itself by virtue of the same necessity that produced it2 without arresting the flux or introducing any miracle1 it sustains in being an ideal form4 ,this form is what consciousness corresponds to and raises to actual existence2 so that significant thoughts are something which nature necessarily lingers upon and seems to serve4 ,the being to whom they come is the most widely based and synthetic of her creatures4 ,the mind spreads and soars in proportion as the body feeds on the surrounding world4 ,noble ideas1 although rare and difficult to attain1 are not naturally fugitive4 ,sidenote3 ,all experience at bottom liberal4 ,consciousness is not ideal merely in its highest phases2 it is ideal through and through4 ,on one level as much as on another1 it celebrates an attained balance in nature1 or grieves at its collapse2 it prophesies and remembers1 it loves and dreams4 ,it sees even nature from the point of view of ideal interests1 and measures the flux of things by ideal standards4 ,it registers its own movement1 like that of its objects1 entirely in ideal terms1 looking to fixed goals of its own imagining1 and using nothing in the operation but concretions in discourse4 ,primary mathematical notions1 for instance1 are evidences of a successful reactive method attained in the organism and translated in consciousness into a stable grammar which has wide applicability and great persistence1 so that it has come to be elaborated ideally into prodigious abstract systems of thought4 ,every experience of victory1 eloquence1 or beauty is a momentary success of the same kind1 and if repeated and sustained becomes a spiritual possession4 ,sidenote3 ,social experience has its ideality too4 ,society also breeds its ideal harmonies4 ,at first it establishes affections between beings naturally conjoined in the world2 later it grows sensitive to free and spiritual affinities1 to oneness of mind and sympathetic purposes4 ,these ideal affinities1 although grounded like the others on material relations 7for sympathy presupposes communication71 do not have those relations for their theme but rest on them merely as on a pedestal from which they look away to their own realm1 as music1 while sustained by vibrating instruments1 looks away from them to its own universe of sound4 ,sidenote3 ,the self an ideal4 ,ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination4 ,its personages are all mythical1 beginning with that brave protagonist who calls himself ,i and speaks all the soliloquies4 ,when most nearly material these personages are human souls--the ideal life of particular bodies--or floating mortal reputations--echoes of those ideal lives in one another4 ,from this relative substantiality they fade into notions of country1 posterity1 humanity1 and the gods4 ,these figures all represent some circle of events or forces in the real world2 but such representation1 besides being mythical1 is usually most inadequate4 ,the boundaries of that province which each spirit presides over are vaguely drawn1 the spirit itself being correspondingly indefinite4 ,this ambiguity is most conspicuous1 perhaps1 in the most absorbing of the personages which a man constructs in this imaginative fashion--his idea of himself4 8,there is society where none intrudes20 and for most men sympathy with their imaginary selves is a powerful and dominant emotion4 ,true memory offers but a meagre and interrupted vista of past experience1 yet even that picture is far too rich a term for mental discourse to bandy about2 a name with a few physical and social connotations is what must represent the man to his own thinkings4 ,or rather it is no memory1 however eviscerated1 that fulfils that office4 ,a man's notion of himself is a concretion in discourse for which his more constant somatic feelings1 his ruling interests1 and his social relations furnish most of the substance4 ,sidenote3 ,romantic egotism4 ,the more reflective and self-conscious a man is the more completely will his experience be subsumed and absorbed in his perennial 8,i40 ,if philosophy has come to reinforce this reflective egotism1 he may even regard all nature as nothing but his half-voluntary dream and encourage himself thereby to give even to the physical world a dramatic and sentimental colour4 ,but the more successful he is in stuffing everything into his self-consciousness1 the more desolate will the void become which surrounds him4 ,for self is1 after all1 but one term in a primitive dichotomy and would lose its specific and intimate character were it no longer contrasted with anything else4 ,the egotist must therefore people the desert he has spread about him1 and he naturally peoples it with mythical counterparts of himself4 ,sometimes1 if his imagination is sensuous1 his alter-egos are incarnate in the landscape1 and he creates a poetic mythology2 sometimes1 when the inner life predominates1 they are projected into his own forgotten past or infinite future4 ,he will then say that all experience is really his own and that some inexplicable illusion has momentarily raised opaque partitions in his omniscient mind4 ,sidenote3 ,vanity4 ,philosophers less pretentious and more worldly than these have sometimes felt1 in their way1 the absorbing force of self-consciousness4 ,la ,rochefoucauld could describe amour propre as the spring of all human sentiments4 ,amour propre involves preoccupation not merely with the idea of self1 but with that idea reproduced in other men's minds2 the soliloquy has become a dialogue1 or rather a solo with an echoing chorus4 ,interest in one's own social figure is to some extent a material interest1 for other men's love or aversion is a principle read into their acts2 and a social animal like man is dependent on other men's acts for his happiness4 ,an individual's concern for the attitude society takes toward him is therefore in the first instance concern for his own practical welfare4 ,but imagination here refines upon worldly interest4 ,what others think of us would be of little moment did it not1 when known1 so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves4 ,nothing could better prove the mythical character of self-consciousness than this extreme sensitiveness to alien opinions2 for if a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation4 ,indeed1 those opinions would hardly seem to him directed upon the reality at all1 and he would laugh at them as he might at the stock fortune-telling of some itinerant gypsy4 ,as it is1 however1 the least breath of irresponsible and anonymous censure lashes our self-esteem and sometimes quite transforms our plans and affections4 ,the passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate2 they are green and vigorous in old age4 ,we crave support in vanity1 as we do in religion1 and never forgive contradictions in that sphere2 for however persistent and passionate such prejudices may be1 we know too well that they are woven of thin air4 ,a hostile word1 by starting a contrary imaginative current1 buffets them rudely and threatens to dissolve their being4 ,sidenote3 ,ambiguities of fame4 ,the highest form of vanity is love of fame4 ,it is a passion easy to deride but hard to understand1 and in men who live at all by imagination almost impossible to eradicate4 ,the good opinion of posterity can have no possible effect on our fortunes1 and the practical value which reputation may temporarily have is quite absent in posthumous fame4 ,the direct object of this passion--that a name should survive in men's mouths to which no adequate idea of its original can be attached--seems a thin and fantastic satisfaction1 especially when we consider how little we should probably sympathise with the creatures that are to remember us4 ,what comfort would it be to ,virgil that boys still read him at school1 or to ,pindar that he is sometimes mentioned in a world from which everything he loved has departed8 ,yet1 beneath this desire for nominal longevity1 apparently so inane1 there may lurk an ideal ambition of which the ancients cannot have been unconscious when they set so high a value on fame4 ,they often identified fame with immortality1 a subject on which they had far more rational sentiments than have since prevailed4 ,sidenote3 ,its possible ideality4 ,fame1 as a noble mind conceives and desires it1 is not embodied in a monument1 a biography1 or the repetition of a strange name by strangers2 it consists in the immortality of a man's work1 his spirit1 his efficacy1 in the perpetual rejuvenation of his soul in the world4 ,when ,horace--no model of magnanimity--wrote his exegi monumentum1 he was not thinking that the pleasure he would continue to give would remind people of his trivial personality1 which indeed he never particularly celebrated and which had much better lie buried with his bones4 ,he was thinking1 of course1 of that pleasure itself2 thinking that the delight1 half lyric1 half sarcastic1 which those delicate cameos had given him to carve would be perennially renewed in all who retraced them4 ,nay1 perhaps we may not go too far in saying that even that impersonal satisfaction was not the deepest he felt2 the deepest1 very likely1 flowed from the immortality1 not of his monument1 but of the subject and passion it commemorated2 that tenderness1 ,i mean1 and that disillusion with mortal life which rendered his verse immortal4 ,he had expressed1 and in expressing appropriated1 some recurring human moods1 some mocking renunciations2 and he knew that his spirit was immortal1 being linked and identified with that portion of the truth4 ,he had become a little spokesman of humanity1 uttering what all experience repeats more or less articulately2 and even if he should cease to be honoured in men's memories1 he would continue to be unwittingly honoured and justified in their lives4 ,what we may conceive to have come in this way even within a ,horace's apprehension is undoubtedly what has attached many nobler souls to fame4 ,with an inversion of moral derivations which all mythical expression involves we speak of fame as the reward of genius1 whereas in truth genius1 the imaginative dominion of experience1 is its own reward and fame is but a foolish image by which its worth is symbolised4 ,when the ,virgin in the ,magnificat says1 8,behold1 from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed10 the psalmist surely means to express a spiritual exaltation exempt from vanity2 he merely translates into a rhetorical figure the fact that what had been first revealed to ,mary would also bless all generations4 ,that the ,church should in consequence deem and pronounce her blessed is an incident describing1 but not creating1 the unanimity in their religious joys4 ,fame is thus the outward sign or recognition of an inward representative authority residing in genius or good fortune1 an authority in which lies the whole worth of fame4 ,those will substantially remember and honour us who keep our ideals1 and we shall live on in those ages whose experience we have anticipated4 ,free society differs from that which is natural and legal precisely in this1 that it does not cultivate relations which in the last analysis are experienced and material1 but turns exclusively to unanimities in meanings1 to collaborations in an ideal world4 ,the basis of free society is of course natural1 as we said1 but free society has ideal goals4 ,spirits cannot touch save by becoming unanimous4 ,at the same time public opinion1 reputation1 and impersonal sympathy reinforce only very general feelings1 and reinforce them vaguely2 and as the inner play of sentiment becomes precise1 it craves more specific points of support or comparison4 ,it is in creatures of our own species that we chiefly scent the aroma of inward sympathy1 because it is they that are visibly moved on the same occasions as ourselves2 and it is to those among our fellow-men who share our special haunts and habits that we feel more precise affinities4 ,though the ground for such feeling is animal contact and contagion1 its deliverance does not revert to those natural accidents1 but concerns a represented sympathy in represented souls4 ,friendship1 springing from accidental association1 terminates in a consciousness of ideal and essential agreement4 ,sidenote3 ,comradeship4 ,comradeship is a form of friendship still akin to general sociability and gregariousness4 ,when men are 8in the same boat together10 when a common anxiety1 occupation1 or sport unites them1 they feel their human kinship in an intensified form without any greater personal affinity subsisting between them4 ,the same effect is produced by a common estrangement from the rest of society4 ,for this reason comradeship lasts no longer than the circumstances that bring it about4 ,its constancy is proportionate to the monotony of people's lives and minds4 ,there is a lasting bond among schoolfellows because no one can become a boy again and have a new set of playmates4 ,there is a persistent comradeship with one's countrymen1 especially abroad1 because seldom is a man pliable and polyglot enough to be at home among foreigners1 or really to understand them4 ,there is an inevitable comradeship with men of the same breeding or profession1 however bad these may be1 because habits soon monopolise the man4 ,nevertheless a greater buoyancy1 a longer youth1 a richer experience1 would break down all these limits of fellowship4 ,such clingings to the familiar are three parts dread of the unfamiliar and want of resource in its presence1 for one part in them of genuine loyalty4 ,plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them1 but for a man of sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly no place like home4 ,sidenote3 ,external conditions of friendship4 ,though comradeship is an accidental bond1 it is the condition of ideal friendship1 for the ideal1 in all spheres1 is nothing but the accidental confirming itself and generating its own standard4 ,men must meet to love1 and many other accidents besides conjunction must conspire to make a true friendship possible4 ,in order that friendship may fulfil the conditions even of comradeship1 it is requisite that the friends have the same social status1 so that they may live at ease together and have congenial tastes4 ,they must further have enough community of occupation and gifts to give each an appreciation of the other's faculty2 for qualities are not complementary unless they are qualities of the same substance4 ,nothing must be actual in either friend that is not potential in the other4 ,sidenote3 ,identity in sex required4 ,for this reason1 among others1 friends are generally of the same sex1 for when men and women agree1 it is only in their conclusions2 their reasons are always different4 ,so that while intellectual harmony between men and women is easily possible1 its delightful and magic quality lies precisely in the fact that it does not arise from mutual understanding1 but is a conspiracy of alien essences and a kissing1 as it were1 in the dark4 ,as man's body differs from woman's in sex and strength1 so his mind differs from hers in quality and function3 they can co-operate but can never fuse4 ,the human race1 in its intellectual life1 is organised like the bees3 the masculine soul is a worker1 sexually atrophied1 and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts2 the feminine is a queen1 infinitely fertile1 omnipresent in its brooding industry1 but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice4 ,friendship with a woman is therefore apt to be more or less than friendship3 less1 because there is no intellectual parity2 more1 because 7even when the relation remains wholly dispassionate1 as in respect to old ladies7 there is something mysterious and oracular about a woman's mind which inspires a certain instinctive deference and puts it out of the question to judge what she says by masculine standards4 ,she has a kind of sibylline intuition and the right to be irrationally propos4 ,there is a gallantry of the mind which pervades all conversation with a lady1 as there is a natural courtesy toward children and mystics2 but such a habit of respectful concession1 marking as it does an intellectual alienation as profound as that which separates us from the dumb animals1 is radically incompatible with friendship4 ,sidenote3 and in age4 ,friends1 moreover1 should have been young together4 ,much difference in age defeats equality and forbids frankness on many a fundamental subject2 it confronts two minds of unlike focus3 one near-sighted and without perspective1 the other seeing only the background of present things4 ,while comparisons in these respects may be interesting and borrowings sometimes possible1 lending the older mind life and the younger mind wisdom1 such intercourse has hardly the value of spontaneous sympathy1 in which the spark of mutual intelligence flies1 as it should1 almost without words4 ,contagion is the only source of valid mind-reading3 you must imitate to understand1 and where the plasticity of two minds is not similar their mutual interpretations are necessarily false4 ,they idealise in their friends whatever they do not invent or ignore1 and the friendship which should have lived on energies conspiring spontaneously together dies into conscious appreciation4 ,sidenote3 ,constituents of friendship4 ,all these are merely permissive conditions for friendship2 its positive essence is yet to find4 ,how1 we may ask1 does the vision of the general socius1 humanity1 become specific in the vision of a particular friend without losing its ideality or reverting to practical values8 ,of course1 individuals might be singled out for the special benefits they may have conferred2 but a friend's only gift is himself1 and friendship is not friendship1 it is not a form of free or liberal society1 if it does not terminate in an ideal possession1 in an object loved for its own sake4 ,such objects can be ideas only1 not forces1 for forces are subterranean and instrumental things1 having only such value as they borrow from their ulterior effects and manifestations4 ,to praise the utility of friendship1 as the ancients so often did1 and to regard it as a political institution justified1 like victory or government1 by its material results1 is to lose one's moral bearings4 ,the value of victory or good government is rather to be found in the fact that1 among other things1 it might render friendship possible4 ,we are not to look now for what makes friendship useful1 but for whatever may be found in friendship that may lend utility to life4 ,sidenote3 ,personal liking4 ,the first note that gives sociability a personal quality and raises the comrade into an incipient friend is doubtless sensuous affinity4 ,whatever reaction we may eventually make on an impression1 after it has had time to soak in and to merge in some practical or intellectual habit1 its first assault is always on the senses1 and no sense is an indifferent organ4 ,each has1 so to speak1 its congenial rate of vibration and gives its stimuli a varying welcome4 ,little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of sense1 they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes felt for casual persons and things1 in the je ne sais quoi that makes instinctive sympathy4 ,voice1 manner1 aspect1 hints of congenial tastes and judgments1 a jest in the right key1 a gesture marking the right aversions1 all these trifles leave behind a pervasive impression4 ,we reject a vision we find indigestible and without congruity to our inner dream2 we accept and incorporate another into our private pantheon1 where it becomes a legitimate figure1 however dumb and subsidiary it may remain4 ,in a refined nature these sensuous premonitions of sympathy are seldom misleading4 ,liking cannot1 of course1 grow into friendship over night as it might into love2 the pleasing impression1 even if retained1 will lie perfectly passive and harmless in the mind1 until new and different impressions follow to deepen the interest at first evoked and to remove its centre of gravity altogether from the senses4 ,in love1 if the field is clear1 a single glimpse may1 like ,tristan's potion1 produce a violent and irresistible passion2 but in friendship the result remains more proportionate to the incidental causes1 discrimination is preserved1 jealousy and exclusiveness are avoided4 ,that vigilant1 besetting1 insatiable affection1 so full of doubts and torments1 with which the lover follows his object1 is out of place here2 for the friend has no property in his friend's body or leisure or residual ties2 he accepts what is offered and what is acceptable1 and the rest he leaves in peace4 ,he is distinctly not his brother's keeper1 for the society of friends is free4 ,sidenote3 ,the refracting human medium for ideas4 ,friendship may indeed come to exist without sensuous liking or comradeship to pave the way2 but unless intellectual sympathy and moral appreciation are powerful enough to react on natural instinct and to produce in the end the personal affection which at first was wanting1 friendship does not arise4 ,recognition given to a man's talent or virtue is not properly friendship4 ,friends must desire to live as much as possible together and to share their work1 thoughts1 and pleasures4 ,good-fellowship and sensuous affinity are indispensable to give spiritual communion a personal accent2 otherwise men would be indifferent vehicles for such thoughts and powers as emanated from them1 and attention would not be in any way arrested or refracted by the human medium through which it beheld the good4 ,sidenote3 ,affection based on the refraction4 ,no natural vehicle1 however1 is indifferent2 no natural organ is or should be transparent4 ,transparency is a virtue only in artificial instruments1 organs in which no blood flows and whose intrinsic operation is not itself a portion of human life4 ,in looking through a field-glass ,i do not wish to perceive the lenses nor to see rainbows about their rim2 yet ,i should not wish the eye itself to lose its pigments and add no dyes to the bulks it discerns4 ,the sense for colour is a vital endowment and an ingredient in human happiness2 but no vitality is added by the intervention of further media which are not themselves living organs4 ,a man is sometimes a coloured and sometimes a clear medium for the energies he exerts4 ,when a thought conveyed or a work done enters alone into the observer's experience1 no friendship is possible4 ,this is always the case when the master is dead2 for if his reconstructed personality retains any charm1 it is only as an explanation or conceived nexus for the work he performed4 ,in a philosopher or artist1 too1 personality is merely instrumental1 for1 although in a sense pervasive1 a creative personality evaporates into its expression1 and whatever part of it may not have been translated into ideas is completely negligible from the public point of view4 ,that portion of a man's soul which he has not alienated and objectified is open only to those who know him otherwise than by his works and do not estimate him by his public attributions4 ,such persons are his friends4 ,into their lives he has entered not merely through an idea with which his name may be associated1 nor through the fame of some feat he may have performed1 but by awakening an inexpressible animal sympathy1 by the contagion of emotions felt before the same objects4 ,estimation has been partly arrested at its medium and personal relations have added their homely accent to universal discourse4 ,friendship might thus be called ideal sympathy refracted by a human medium1 or comradeship and sensuous affinity colouring a spiritual light4 ,sidenote3 ,the medium must also be transparent4 ,if we approach friendship from above and compare it with more ideal loyalties1 its characteristic is its animal warmth and its basis in chance conjunctions2 if we approach it from below and contrast it with mere comradeship or liking1 its essence seems to be the presence of common ideal interests4 ,that is a silly and effeminate friendship in which the parties are always thinking of the friendship itself and of how each stands in the other's eyes2 a sentimental fancy of that sort1 in which nothing tangible or ulterior brings people together1 is rather a feeble form of love than properly a friendship4 ,in extreme youth such a weakness may perhaps indicate capacity for friendship of a nobler type1 because when taste and knowledge have not yet taken shape1 the only way1 often1 in which ideal interests can herald themselves is in the guise of some imagined union from which it is vaguely felt they might be developed1 just as in love sexual and social instincts mask themselves in an unreasoning obsession1 or as for mystic devotion every ideal masks itself in ,god4 ,all these sentimental feelings are at any rate mere preludes1 but preludes in fortunate cases to more discriminating and solid interests1 which such a tremulous overture may possibly pitch on a higher key4 ,sidenote3 ,common interests indispensable4 ,the necessity of backing personal attachment with ideal interests is what makes true friendship so rare4 ,it is found chiefly in youth1 for youth best unites the two requisite conditions--affectionate comradeship and ardour in pursuing such liberal aims as may be pursued in common4 ,life in camp or college is favourable to friendship1 for there generous activities are carried on in unison and yet leave leisure for playful expansion and opportunity for a choice in friends4 ,the ancients1 so long as they were free1 spent their whole life in forum and palstra1 camp1 theatre1 and temple1 and in consequence could live by friendship even in their maturer years2 but modern life is unfavourable to its continuance4 ,what with business cares1 with political bonds remote and invisible1 with the prior claims of family1 and with individualities both of mind and habit growing daily more erratic1 early friends find themselves very soon parted by unbridgeable chasms4 ,for friendship to flourish personal life would have to become more public and social life more simple and humane4 ,sidenote3 ,friendship between man and wife4 ,the tie that in contemporary society most nearly resembles the ancient ideal of friendship is a well-assorted marriage4 ,in spite of intellectual disparity and of divergence in occupation1 man and wife are bound together by a common dwelling1 common friends1 common affection for children1 and1 what is of great importance1 common financial interests4 ,these bonds often suffice for substantial and lasting unanimity1 even when no ideal passion preceded2 so that what is called a marriage of reason1 if it is truly reasonable1 may give a fair promise of happiness1 since a normal married life can produce the sympathies it requires4 ,sidenote3 ,between master and disciple4 ,when the common ideal interests needed to give friendship a noble strain become altogether predominant1 so that comradeship and personal liking may be dispensed with1 friendship passes into more and more political fellowships4 ,discipleship is a union of this kind4 ,without claiming any share in the master's private life1 perhaps without having ever seen him1 we may enjoy communion with his mind and feel his support and guidance in following the ideal which links us together4 ,hero-worship is an imaginative passion in which latent ideals assume picturesque shapes and take actual persons for their symbols4 ,such companionship1 perhaps wholly imaginary1 is a very clear and simple example of ideal society4 ,the unconscious hero1 to be sure1 happens to exist1 but his existence is irrelevant to his function1 provided only he be present to the idealising mind4 ,there is or need be no comradeship1 no actual force or influence transmitted from him4 ,certain capacities and tendencies in the worshipper are brought to a focus by the hero's image1 who is thereby first discovered and deputed to be a hero4 ,he is an unmoved mover1 like ,aristotle's ,god and like every ideal to which thought or action is directed4 ,the symbol1 however1 is ambiguous in hero-worship1 being in one sense ideal1 the representation of an inner demand1 and in another sense a sensible experience1 the representative of an external reality4 ,accordingly the symbol1 when highly prized and long contemplated1 may easily become an idol2 that in it which is not ideal nor representative of the worshipper's demand may be imported confusedly into the total adored1 and may thus receive a senseless worship4 ,the devotion which was1 in its origin1 an ideal tendency grown conscious and expressed in fancy may thus become a mechanical force vitiating that ideal4 ,for this reason it is very important that the first objects to fix the soul's admiration should be really admirable1 for otherwise their accidental blemishes will corrupt the mind to which they appear sub specie boni4 ,sidenote3 ,conflict between ideal and natural allegiance4 ,discipleship and hero-worship are not stable relations4 ,since the meaning they embody is ideal and radiates from within outward1 and since the image to which that meaning is attributed is controlled by a real external object1 meaning and image1 as time goes on1 will necessarily fall apart4 ,the idol will be discredited4 ,an ideal1 ideally conceived and known to be an ideal1 a spirit worshipped in spirit and in truth1 will take the place of the pleasing phenomenon2 and in regard to every actual being1 however noble1 discipleship will yield to emulation1 and worship to an admiration more or less selective and critical4 ,sidenote3 ,automatic idealisation of heroes4 ,a disembodied ideal1 however1 is unmanageable and vague2 it cannot exercise the natural and material suasion proper to a model we are expected to imitate4 ,the more fruitful procedure is accordingly to idealise some historical figure or natural force1 to ignore or minimise in it what does not seem acceptable1 and to retain at the same time all the unobjectionable personal colour and all the graphic traits that can help to give that model a persuasive vitality4 ,this poetic process is all the more successful for being automatic4 ,it is in this way that heroes and gods have been created4 ,a legend or fable lying in the mind and continually repeated gained insensibly at each recurrence some new eloquence1 some fresh congruity with the emotion it had already awakened1 and was destined to awake again4 ,to measure the importance of this truth the reader need only conceive the distance traversed from the ,achilles that may have existed to the hero in ,homer1 or from ,jesus as he might have been in real life1 or even as he is in the gospels1 to ,christ in the ,church4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,patriotism ,sidenote3 ,the creative social environment1 since it eludes sense1 must be represented symbolically4 ,the mythical social idea most potent over practical minds is perhaps the idea of country4 ,when a tribe1 enlarged and domiciled1 has become a state1 much social feeling that was before evoked by things visible loses its sensuous object4 ,yet each man remains no less dependent than formerly on his nation1 although less swayed by its visible presence and example2 he is no less concerned1 materially and ideally1 in the fortunes of the community4 ,if a sense for social relations is to endure1 some symbol must take the place of the moving crowd1 the visible stronghold1 and the outspread fields and orchards that once made up his country2 some intellectual figment must arise to focus political interests1 no longer confined to the crops and the priest's medicinal auguries4 ,it is altogether impossible that the individual should have a discursive and adequate knowledge of statecraft and economy4 ,whatever idea1 then1 he frames to represent his undistinguished political relations becomes the centre of his patriotism4 ,when intelligence is not keen this idea may remain sensuous4 ,the visible instruments of social life--chieftains1 armies1 monuments1 the dialect and dress of the district1 with all customs and pleasures traditional there--these are what a sensuous man may understand by his country4 ,bereft of these sensations he would feel lost and incapable2 the habits formed in that environment would be galled by any other4 ,this fondness for home1 this dread of change and exile1 is all the love of country he knows4 ,if by chance1 without too much added thought1 he could rise to a certain poetic sentiment1 he might feel attachment also to the landscape1 to the memorable spots and aspects of his native land4 ,these objects1 which rhetoric calls sacred1 might really have a certain sanctity for him2 a wave of pious emotion might run over him at the sight of them1 a pang when in absence they were recalled4 ,these very things1 however1 like the man who prizes them1 are dependent on a much larger system2 and if patriotism is to embrace ideally what really produces human well-being it should extend over a wider field and to less picturable objects4 ,sidenote3 ,ambiguous limits of a native country1 geographical and moral4 ,to define one's country is not so simple a matter as it may seem4 ,the habitat of a man's youth1 to which actual associations may bind him1 is hardly his country until he has conceived the political and historical forces that include that habitat in their sphere of influence and have determined its familiar institutions4 ,such forces are numerous and their spheres include one another like concentric rings4 ,france1 for instance1 is an uncommonly distinct and self-conscious nation1 with a long historic identity and a compact territory4 ,yet what is the ,france a ,frenchman is to think of and love8 ,paris itself has various quarters and moral climates1 one of which may well be loved while another is detested4 ,the provinces have customs1 temperaments1 political ideals1 and even languages of their own4 ,is ,alsace-,lorraine beyond the pale of ,french patriotism8 ,and if not1 why utterly exclude ,french-speaking ,switzerland1 the ,channel ,islands1 ,belgium1 or ,quebec8 ,or is a ,frenchman rather to love the colonies by way of compensation8 ,is an ,algerian ,moor or a native of ,tonquin his true fellow-citizen8 ,is ,tahiti a part of his 8country08 ,the truth is1 if we look at the heart of the matter1 a ,protestant born in ,paris is less a ,frenchman than is a ,catholic born in ,geneva4 ,if we pass from geography to institutions the same vagueness exists4 ,france to one man represents the ,revolution1 to another the ,empire1 to a third the ,church1 and the vestiges of the ancien rgime4 ,furthermore1 how far into the past is patriotism to look8 ,is ,charlemagne one of the glories of ,french history8 ,is it ,julius ,csar or ,vicingetorix that is to warm the patriotic heart8 ,want of reflection and a blind subservience to the colours of the map has led some historians to call ,roman victories defeats suffered by their country1 even when that country is essentially so ,roman1 for instance1 as ,spain4 ,with as good reason might a ,sicilian or a ,florentine chafe under the ,latin conquest1 or an ,american blush at the invasion of his country by the ,pilgrim ,fathers4 ,indeed1 even geographically1 the limits and the very heart of a man's country are often ambiguous4 ,was ,alexander's country ,macedon or ,greece8 ,was ,general ,lee's the ,united ,states or ,virginia8 ,the ancients defined their country from within outward2 its heart was the city and its limits those of that city's dominion or affinities4 ,moderns generally define their country rather stupidly by its administrative frontiers2 and yet an ,austrian would have some difficulty in applying even this conventional criterion4 ,sidenote3 ,sentimental and political patriotism4 ,the object of patriotism is in truth something ideal1 a moral entity definable only by the ties which a man's imagination and reason can at any moment recognise4 ,if he has insight and depth of feeling he will perceive that what deserves his loyalty is the entire civilisation to which he owes his spiritual life and into which that life will presently flow back1 with whatever new elements he may have added4 ,patriotism accordingly has two aspects3 it is partly sentiment by which it looks back upon the sources of culture1 and partly policy1 or allegiance to those ideals which1 being suggested by what has already been attained1 animate the better organs of society and demand further embodiment4 ,to love one's country1 unless that love is quite blind and lazy1 must involve a distinction between the country's actual condition and its inherent ideal2 and this distinction in turn involves a demand for changes and for effort4 ,party allegiance is a true form of patriotism4 ,for a party1 at least in its intent1 is an association of persons advocating the same policy4 ,every thoughtful man must advocate some policy1 and unless he has the misfortune to stand quite alone in his conception of public welfare he will seek to carry out that policy by the aid of such other persons as advocate it also4 ,sidenote3 ,the earth and the race the first objects of rational loyalty4 ,the springs of culture1 which retrospective patriotism regards1 go back in the last instance to cosmic forces4 ,the necessity that marshals the stars makes possible the world men live in1 and is the first general and law-giver to every nation4 ,the earth's geography1 its inexorable climates with their flora and fauna1 make a play-ground for the human will which should be well surveyed by any statesman who wishes to judge and act1 not fantastically1 but with reference to the real situation4 ,geography is a most enlightening science4 ,in describing the habitat of man it largely explains his history4 ,animal battles give the right and only key to human conflicts1 for the superadded rational element in man is not partisan1 but on the contrary insinuates into his economy the novel principle of justice and peace4 ,as this leaven1 however1 can mingle only with elements predisposed to receive it1 the basis of reason itself1 in so far as it attains expression1 must be sought in the natural world4 ,the fortunes of the human family among the animals thus come to concern reason and to be the background of progress4 ,within humanity the next sphere of interest for a patriot is the race from which he is descended1 with its traditional languages and religions4 ,blood is the ground of character and intelligence4 ,the fruits of civilisation may1 indeed1 be transmitted from one race to another and consequently a certain artificial homogeneity may be secured amongst different nations2 yet unless continual intermarriage takes place each race will soon recast and vitiate the common inheritance4 ,the fall of the ,roman ,empire offered such a spectacle1 when various types of barbarism1 with a more or less classic veneer1 re-established themselves everywhere4 ,perhaps modern cosmopolitanism1 if not maintained by commerce or by permanent conquest1 may break apart in the same way and yield to local civilisations no less diverse than ,christendom and ,islam4 ,sidenote3 ,race1 when distinct1 the greatest of distinctions4 ,community of race is a far deeper bond than community of language1 education1 or government4 ,where one political system dominates various races it forces their common culture to be external merely4 ,this is perhaps the secret of that strange recrudescence of national feeling1 apart often from political divisions1 which has closely followed the ,french ,revolution and the industrial era4 ,the more two different peoples grow alike in externals the more conscious and jealous they become of diversity in their souls2 and where individuals are too insignificant to preserve any personality or distinction of their own1 they flock together into little intentional societies and factious groups1 in the hope of giving their imagination1 in its extremity1 some little food and comfort4 ,private nationalities and private religions are luxuries at such a time in considerable demand4 ,the future may possibly see in the ,occident that divorce between administrative and ideal groups which is familiar in the ,orient2 so that under no matter what government and with utter cosmopolitanism in industry and science1 each race may guard its own poetry1 religion1 and manners4 ,such traditions1 however1 would always be survivals or revivals rather than genuine expressions of life1 because mind must either represent nature and the conditions of action or else be content to persist precariously and without a function1 like a sort of ghost4 ,sidenote3 8,pure0 races may be morally sterile4 ,some races are obviously superior to others4 ,a more thorough adjustment to the conditions of existence has given their spirit victory1 scope1 and a relative stability4 ,it is therefore of the greatest importance not to obscure this superiority by intermarriage with inferior stock1 and thus nullify the progress made by a painful evolution and a prolonged sifting of souls4 ,reason protests as much as instinct against any fusion1 for instance1 of white and black peoples4 ,mixture is in itself no evil if the two nations1 being approximately equal1 but having complementary gifts1 can modify them without ultimate loss1 and possibly to advantage4 ,indeed the so-called pure races1 since their purity has gone with isolation and inexperience1 have borne comparatively little spiritual fruit4 ,large contact and concentrated living bring out native genius1 but mixture with an inferior stock can only tend to obliterate it4 ,the ,jews1 the ,greeks1 the ,romans1 the ,english were never so great as when they confronted other nations1 reacting against them and at the same time1 perhaps1 adopting their culture2 but this greatness fails inwardly whenever contact leads to amalgamation4 ,there is something unmistakably illiberal1 almost superstitious1 in standing on race for its own sake1 as if origins and not results were of moral value4 ,it matters nothing what blood a man has1 if he has the right spirit2 and if there is some ground for identifying the two 7since monkeys1 however educated1 are monkeys still7 it is only when blood means character and capacity1 and is tested by them1 that it becomes important4 ,nor is it unjust to level the individual1 in his political and moral status1 with the race to which he belongs1 if this race holds an approved position4 ,individual gifts and good intentions have little efficacy in the body politic if they neither express a great tradition nor can avail to found one2 and this tradition1 as religion shows1 will falsify individual insights so soon as they are launched into the public medium4 ,the common soul will destroy a noble genius in absorbing it1 and therefore1 to maintain progress1 a general genius has to be invoked2 and a general genius means an exceptional and distinct race4 ,sidenote3 ,true nationality direction on a definite ideal4 ,environment1 education1 fashion1 may be all powerful while they last and may make it seem a prejudice to insist on race1 turning its assumed efficacy into a sheer dogma1 with fanatical impulses behind it2 yet in practice the question will soon recur3 ,what shall sustain that omnipotent fashion1 education1 or environment8 ,nothing is more treacherous than tradition1 when insight and force are lacking to keep it warm4 ,under ,roman dominion1 the inhabitants of ,sparta still submitted to the laws of ,lycurgus and their life continued to be a sort of ritualistic shadow of the past4 ,those enfranchised helots thought they were maintaining a heroic state when1 in fact1 they were only turning its forms into a retrospective religion4 ,the old race was practically extinct2 ephors1 gymnasia1 and common meals could do nothing to revive it4 ,the ways of the ,roman world--a kindred promiscuous population--prevailed over that local ritual and rendered it perfunctory1 because there were no longer any living souls to understand that a man might place his happiness in his country's life and care nothing for ,oriental luxury or ,oriental superstition1 things coming to flatter his personal lusts and make him useless and unhappy4 ,institutions without men are as futile as men without institutions4 ,before race can be a rational object for patriotism there must exist a traditional genius1 handed down by inheritance or else by adoption1 when the persons adopted can really appreciate the mysteries they are initiated into4 ,blood could be disregarded1 if only the political ideal remained constant and progress was sustained1 the laws being modified only to preserve their spirit4 ,a state lives in any case by exchanging persons1 and all spiritual life is maintained by exchanging expressions4 ,life is a circulation2 it can digest whatever materials will assume a form already determined ideally and enable that form to come forth more clearly and be determined in more particulars4 ,stagnant matter necessarily decays and in effect is false to the spirit no less than a spirit that changes is false to itself4 ,sidenote3 ,country well represented by domestic and civic religion4 ,the spirit of a race is a mythical entity expressing the individual soul in its most constant and profound instincts and expanding it in the direction in which correct representation is most easily possible1 in the direction of ancestors1 kinsmen1 and descendants4 ,in ancient cities1 where patriotism was intense1 it was expressed in a tribal and civic religion4 ,the lares1 the local gods1 the deified heroes associated with them1 were either ancestors idealised or ideals of manhood taking the form of patrons and supernatural protectors4 ,jupiter ,capitolinus and the ,spirit of ,rome were a single object4 ,to worship ,jupiter in that ,capitol was to dedicate oneself to the service of ,rome4 ,a foreigner could no more share that devotion than a neighbour could share the religion of the hearth without sharing by adoption the life of the family4 ,paganism was the least artificial of religions and the most poetical2 its myths were comparatively transparent and what they expressed was comparatively real4 ,in that religion patriotism and family duties could take imaginable forms1 and those forms1 apart from the inevitable tinge of superstition which surrounded them1 did not materially vitiate the allegiance due to the actual forces on which human happiness depends4 ,sidenote3 ,misleading identification of country with government4 ,sidenote3 ,sporting or belligerent patriotism4 ,what has driven patriotism1 as commonly felt and conceived1 so far from rational courses and has attached it to vapid objects has been the initial illegitimacy of all governments4 ,under such circumstances1 patriotism is merely a passion for ascendency4 ,properly it animates the army1 the government1 the aristocracy2 from those circles it can percolate1 not perhaps without the help of some sophistry and intimidation1 into the mass of the people1 who are told that their government's fortunes are their own4 ,now the rabble has a great propensity to take sides1 promptly and passionately1 in any spectacular contest2 the least feeling of affinity1 the slightest emotional consonance1 will turn the balance and divert in one direction sympathetic forces which1 for every practical purpose1 might just as well have rushed the other way4 ,most governments are in truth private societies pitted against one another in the international arena and giving meantime at home exhibitions of eloquence and more rarely of enterprise2 but the people's passions are easily enlisted in such a game1 of course on the side of their own government1 just as each college or region backs its own athletes1 even to the extent of paying their bills4 ,nations give the same kind of support to their fighting governments1 and the sporting passions and illusions concerned are what1 in the national game1 is called patriotism4 ,where parties and governments are bad1 as they are in most ages and countries1 it makes practically no difference to a community1 apart from local ravages1 whether its own army or the enemy's is victorious in war1 nor does it really affect any man's welfare whether the party he happens to belong to is in office or not4 ,these issues concern1 in such cases1 only the army itself1 whose lives and fortunes are at stake1 or the official classes1 who lose their places when their leaders fall from power4 ,the private citizen in any event continues in such countries to pay a maximum of taxes and to suffer1 in all his private interests1 a maximum of vexation and neglect4 ,nevertheless1 because he has some son at the front1 some cousin in the government1 or some historical sentiment for the flag and the nominal essence of his country1 the oppressed subject will glow like the rest with patriotic ardour1 and will decry as dead to duty and honour anyone who points out how perverse is this helpless allegiance to a government representing no public interest4 ,sidenote3 ,exclusive patriotism rational only when the government supported is universally beneficent4 ,in proportion as governments become good and begin to operate for the general welfare1 patriotism itself becomes representative and an expression of reason2 but just in the same measure does hostility to that government on the part of foreigners become groundless and perverse4 ,a competitive patriotism involves ill-will toward all other states and a secret and constant desire to see them thrashed and subordinated4 ,it follows that a good government1 while it justifies this governmental patriotism in its subjects1 disallows it in all other men4 ,for a good government is an international benefit1 and the prosperity and true greatness of any country is a boon sooner or later to the whole world2 it may eclipse alien governments and draw away local populations or industries1 but it necessarily benefits alien individuals in so far as it is allowed to affect them at all4 ,animosity against a well-governed country is therefore madness4 ,a rational patriotism would rather take the form of imitating and supporting that so-called foreign country1 and even1 if practicable1 of fusing with it4 ,the invidious and aggressive form of patriotism1 though inspired generally only by local conceit1 would nevertheless be really justified if such conceit happened to be well grounded4 ,a dream of universal predominance visiting a truly virtuous and intelligent people would be an aspiration toward universal beneficence4 ,for every man who is governed at all must be governed by others2 the point is1 that the others1 in ruling him1 shall help him to be himself and give scope to his congenial activities4 ,when coerced in that direction he obeys a force which1 in the best sense of the word1 represents him1 and consequently he is truly free2 nor could he be ruled by a more native and rightful authority than by one that divines and satisfies his true necessities4 ,sidenote3 ,accidents of birth and training affect the ideal4 ,a man's nature is not1 however1 a quantity or quality fixed unalterably and a priori4 ,as breeding and selection improve a race1 so every experience modifies the individual and offers a changed basis for future experience4 ,the language1 religion1 education1 and prejudices acquired in youth bias character and predetermine the directions in which development may go on4 ,a child might possibly change his country2 a man can only wish that he might change it4 ,therefore1 among the true interests which a government should represent1 nationality itself must be included4 ,sidenote3 ,they are conditions and may contribute something4 ,mechanical forces1 we must not weary of repeating1 do not come merely to vitiate the ideal2 they come to create it4 ,the historical background of life is a part of its substance and the ideal can never grow independently of its spreading roots4 ,a sanctity hangs about the sources of our being1 whether physical1 social1 or imaginative4 ,the ancients who kissed the earth on returning to their native country expressed nobly and passionately what every man feels for those regions and those traditions whence the sap of his own life has been sucked in4 ,there is a profound friendliness in whatever revives primordial habits1 however they may have been overlaid with later sophistications4 ,for this reason the homelier words of a mother tongue1 the more familiar assurances of an ancestral religion1 and the very savour of childhood's dishes1 remain always a potent means to awaken emotion4 ,such ingrained influences1 in their vague totality1 make a man's true nationality4 ,a government1 in order to represent the general interests of its subjects1 must move in sympathy with their habits and memories2 it must respect their idiosyncrasy for the same reason that it protects their lives4 ,if parting from a single object of love be1 as it is1 true dying1 how much more would a shifting of all the affections be death to the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,they are not ends4 ,tenderness to such creative influences is a mark of profundity2 it has the same relation to political life that transcendentalism has to science and morals2 it shrinks back into radical facts1 into centres of vital radiation1 and quickens the sense for inner origins4 ,nationality is a natural force and a constituent in character which should be reckoned with and by no means be allowed to miss those fruits which it alone might bear2 but1 like the things it venerates1 it is only a starting-point for liberal life4 ,just as to be always talking about transcendental points of reference1 primordial reality1 and the self to which everything appears1 though at first it might pass for spiritual insight1 is in the end nothing but pedantry and impotence1 so to be always harping on nationality is to convert what should be a recognition of natural conditions into a ridiculous pride in one's own oddities4 ,nature has hidden the roots of things1 and though botany must now and then dig them up for the sake of comprehension1 their place is still under ground1 if flowers and fruits are to be expected4 ,the private loyalties which a man must have toward his own people1 grounding as they alone can his morality and genius1 need nevertheless to be seldom paraded4 ,attention1 when well directed1 turns rather to making immanent racial forces blossom out in the common medium and express themselves in ways consonant with practical reason and universal progress4 ,a man's feet must be planted in his country1 but his eyes should survey the world4 ,what a statesman might well aim at would be to give the special sentiments and gifts of his countrymen such a turn that1 while continuing all vital traditions1 they might find less and less of what is human alien to their genius4 ,differences in nationality1 founded on race and habitat1 must always subsist2 but what has been superadded artificially by ignorance and bigotry may be gradually abolished in view of universal relations better understood4 ,there is a certain plane on which all races1 if they reach it at all1 must live in common1 the plane of morals and science2 which is not to say that even in those activities the mind betrays no racial accent4 ,what is excluded from science and morals is not variety1 but contradiction4 ,any community which had begun to cultivate the ,life of ,reason in those highest fields would tend to live rationally on all subordinate levels also2 for with science and morality rationally applied the best possible use would be made of every local and historical accident4 ,where traditions had some virtue or necessity about them they would be preserved2 where they were remediable prejudices they would be superseded4 ,sidenote3 ,the symbol for country may be a man and may become an idol4 ,at the birth of society instincts existed1 needful to the animal and having a certain glorious impetuosity about them1 which prompted common action and speech1 and a public morality1 and men were led to construct myths that might seem to justify this co-operation4 ,paternal authority could easily suggest one symbol for social loyalty3 the chief1 probably a venerable and imperious personage1 could be called a father and obeyed as a natural master4 ,his command might by convention be regarded as an expression of the common voice1 just as the father's will is by nature the representative of his children's interests4 ,again1 the members of each community were distinguished from their enemies by many a sign and custom2 these signs and customs might also become a graphic symbol for the common life4 ,both these cases suggest how easily a symbol takes the place of its object and becomes an idol4 ,if the symbol happens to be a man there are natural human sentiments awakened by him2 and whatever respect his character or gifts may inspire1 whatever charm there may be in his person1 whatever graciousness he may add to his official favours or commands1 increase immensely his personal ascendency4 ,a king has a great opportunity to make himself loved4 ,this scope given to private inclination is what1 to ordinary fancy1 makes royalty enviable2 few envy its impersonal power and historic weight4 ,yet if a king were nothing but a man surrounded by flatterers1 who was cheered when he drove abroad1 there would be little stability in monarchy4 ,a king is really the state's hinge and centre of gravity1 the point where all private and party ambitions meet and1 in a sense1 are neutralised4 ,it is not easy for factions to overturn him1 for every other force in the state will instinctively support him against faction4 ,his elevation above everyone1 the identity of his sober interests with those of the state at large1 is calculated to make him the people's natural representative2 his word has therefore a genuine authority1 and his ascendency1 not being invidious1 is able to secure internal peace1 even when not enlightened enough to insure prosperity or to avoid foreign wars4 ,accordingly1 whenever a monarchy is at all representative time has an irresistible tendency to increase its prestige2 the king is felt to be the guardian as well as the symbol of all public greatness4 ,meantime a double dislocation is possible here3 patriotism may be wholly identified with personal loyalty to the sovereign1 while the sovereign himself1 instead of making public interests his own1 may direct his policy so as to satisfy his private passions4 ,the first confusion leads to a conflict between tradition and reason2 the second to the ruin of either the state or the monarchy4 ,in a word1 a symbol needs to remain transparent and to become adequate2 failing in either respect1 it misses its function4 ,sidenote3 ,feudal representation sensitive but partial4 ,the feudal system offers perhaps the best illustration of a patriotism wholly submerged in loyalty4 ,the sense of mutual obligation and service was very clear in this case2 the vassal in swearing fealty knew perfectly well what sort of a bargain he was striking4 ,a feudal government1 while it lasted1 was accordingly highly responsive and responsible4 ,if false to its calling1 it could be readily disowned1 for it is easy to break an oath and to make new military associations1 especially where territorial units are small and their links accidental4 ,but this personal1 conscious1 and jealous subordination of man to man constituted a government of insignificant scope4 ,military functions were alone considered and the rest was allowed to shift for itself4 ,feudalism could have been possible only in a barbarous age when the arts existed on sufferance and lived on by little tentative resurrections4 ,the feudal lord was a genuine representative of a very small part of his vassal's interests4 ,this slight bond sufficed1 however1 to give him a great prestige and to stimulate in him all the habits and virtues of a responsible master2 so that in ,england1 where vestiges of feudalism abound to this day1 there is an aristocracy not merely titular4 ,sidenote3 ,monarchical representation comprehensive but treacherous4 ,a highly concentrated monarchy presents the exactly opposite phenomenon4 ,here subordination is involuntary and mutual responsibility largely unconscious4 ,on the other hand1 the scope of representation is very wide and the monarch may well embody the whole life of the nation4 ,a great court1 with officers of state and a standing army1 is sensitive to nothing so much as to general appearances and general results4 ,the invisible forces of industry1 morality1 and personal ambition that really sustain the state are not studied or fomented by such a government2 so that when these resources begin to fail1 the ensuing catastrophes are a mystery to everybody4 ,the king and his ministers never cease wondering how they can be so constantly unfortunate4 ,so long1 however1 as the nation's vital force is unspent and taxes and soldiers are available in plenty1 a great monarchy tends to turn those resources to notable results4 ,the arts and sciences are encouraged by the patronage of men of breeding and affairs2 they are disciplined into a certain firmness and amplitude which artists and scholars1 if left to themselves1 are commonly incapable of4 ,life is refined2 religion itself1 unless fanaticism be too hopelessly in the ascendant1 is co-ordinated with other public interests and compelled to serve mankind2 a liberal life is made possible2 the imagination is stimulated and set free by that same brilliant concentration of all human energies which defeats practical liberty4 ,at the same time luxury and all manner of conceits are part and parcel of such a courtly civilisation1 and its best products are the first to be lost2 so that very likely the dumb forces of society--hunger1 conscience1 and malice--will not do any great harm when they destroy those treacherous institutions which1 after giving the spirit a momentary expression1 had become an offence to both spirit and flesh4 ,observers at the time may lament the collapse of so much elegance and greatness2 but nature has no memory and brushes away without a qualm her card-castle of yesterday1 if a new constructive impulse possesses her to-day4 ,sidenote3 ,impersonal symbols no advantage4 ,where no suitable persons are found to embody the state's unity1 other symbols have to be chosen4 ,besides the gods and their temples1 there are the laws which may1 as among the ,jews and ,mohammedans1 become as much a fetich as any monarch1 and one more long-lived2 or else some traditional policy of revenge or conquest1 or even the country's name or flag1 may serve this symbolic purpose4 ,a trivial emblem1 which no thinking man can substitute for the thing signified1 is not so great an advantage as at first sight it might seem2 for in the first place men are often thoughtless and adore words and symbols with a terrible earnestness2 while1 on the other hand1 an abstract token1 because of its natural insipidity1 can be made to stand for anything2 so that patriotism1 when it uses pompous words alone for its stimulus1 is very apt to be a cloak for private interests1 which the speaker may sincerely conceive to be the only interests in question4 ,sidenote3 ,patriotism not self-interest1 save to the social man whose aims are ideal4 ,the essence of patriotism is thus annulled1 for patriotism does not consist in considering the private and sordid interests of others as well as one's own1 by a kind of sympathy which is merely vicarious or epidemic selfishness2 patriotism consists rather in being sensitive to a set of interests which no one could have had if he had lived in isolation1 but which accrue to men conscious of living in society1 and in a society having the scope and history of a nation4 ,it was the vice of liberalism to believe that common interests covered nothing but the sum of those objects which each individual might pursue alone2 whereby science1 religion1 art1 language1 and nationality itself would cease to be matters of public concern and would appeal to the individual merely as instruments4 ,the welfare of a flock of sheep is secured if each is well fed and watered1 but the welfare of a human society involves the partial withdrawal of every member from such pursuits to attend instead to memory and to ideal possessions2 these involve a certain conscious continuity and organisation in the state not necessary for animal existence4 ,it is not for man's interest to live unless he can live in the spirit1 because his spiritual capacity1 when unused1 will lacerate and derange even his physical life4 ,the brutal individualist falls into the same error into which despots fall when they declare war out of personal pique or tax the people to build themselves a pyramid1 not discerning their country's interests1 which they might have appropriated1 from interests of their own which no one else can share4 ,democracies1 too1 are full of patriots of this lordly stripe1 men whose patriotism consists in joy at their personal possessions and in desire to increase them4 ,the resultant of general selfishness might conceivably be a general order2 but though intelligent selfishness1 if universal1 might suffice for good government1 it could not suffice for nationality4 ,patriotism is an imaginative passion1 and imagination is ingenuous4 ,the value of patriotism is not utilitarian1 but ideal4 ,it belongs to the free forms of society and ennobles a man not so much because it nerves him to work or to die1 which the basest passions may also do1 but because it associates him1 in working or dying1 with an immortal and friendly companion1 the spirit of his race4 ,this he received from his ancestors tempered by their achievements1 and may transmit to posterity qualified by his own4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,ideal ,,society ,sidenote3 ,the gregarious instinct all social instincts in suspense4 ,to many beings--to almost all that people the earth and sky--each soul is not attached by any practical interest4 ,some are too distant to be perceived2 the proximity of others passes unnoticed4 ,it is far from requisite1 in pursuing safety1 that every strange animal be regarded as either a friend or an enemy4 ,wanton hostilities would waste ammunition and idle attachments would waste time4 ,yet it often happens that some of these beings1 having something in common with creatures we are wont to notice1 since we stand to them in sexual1 parental1 or hostile relations1 cannot well go unobserved4 ,their presence fills us with a vague general emotion1 the arrested possibility at once of sexual1 of parental1 and of hostile actions4 ,this emotion is gregarious or impersonally social4 ,the flock it commonly regards may be described as an aggregate in which parents and children have been submerged1 in which mates are not yet selected1 and enemies not yet descried4 ,gregarious sentiment is passive1 watchful1 expectant1 at once powerful and indistinct1 troubled and fascinated by things merely possible4 ,it renders solitude terrible without making society particularly delightful4 ,a dull feeling of familiarity and comfort is all we can reasonably attribute to uninterrupted trooping together4 ,yet banishment from an accustomed society is often unbearable4 ,a creature separated from his group finds all his social instincts bereft of objects and of possible exercise2 the sexual1 if by chance the sexual be at the time active2 the parental1 with all its extensions2 and the combative1 with all its supports4 ,he is helpless and idle1 deprived of all resource and employment4 ,yet when restored to his tribe1 he merely resumes a normal existence4 ,all particular feats and opportunities are still to seek4 ,company is not occupation4 ,society is like the air1 necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on4 ,similar beings herding together in the same places are naturally subject to simultaneous reactions1 and the sense of this common reaction makes possible the conception of many minds having a common experience4 ,the elements of this experience they express to one another by signs4 ,for when spontaneous reactions occur together in many animals1 each1 knowing well his own emotion1 will inevitably take the perceived attitude and gesture of his fellows for its expression--for his own attitude and gesture he knows nothing of2 and he will thus possess1 without further instruction1 the outward sign for his inner experience4 ,sidenote3 ,it gives rise to conscience or sympathy with the public voice4 ,it is see how a moral world can grow out of these primary intuitions4 ,knowing1 for instance1 the expression of anger1 a man may come to find anger directed against himself2 together with physical fear in the presence of attack1 he will feel the contagion of his enemy's passion1 especially if his enemy be the whole group whose reactions he is wont to share1 and something in him will strive to be angry together with the rest of the world4 ,he will perfectly understand that indignation against himself which in fact he instinctively shares4 ,this self-condemning emotion will be his sense of shame and his conscience4 ,words soon come to give definition to such a feeling1 which without expression in language would have but little stability4 ,for when a man is attracted to an act1 even if it be condemned by others1 he views it as delightful and eligible in itself2 but when he is forced1 by the conventional use of words1 to attach to that act an opprobrious epithet1 an epithet which he himself has always applied with scorn1 he finds himself unable to suppress the emotion connoted by the word2 he cannot defend his rebellious intuition against the tyranny of language2 he is inwardly confused and divided against himself1 and out of his own mouth convicted of wickedness4 ,a proof of the notable influence that language has on these emotions may be found in their transformations4 ,the connivance of a very few persons is sufficient to establish among them a new application of eulogistic terms2 it will suffice to suppress all qualms in the pursuance of their common impulse and to consecrate a new ideal of character4 ,it is accordingly no paradox that there should be honour among thieves1 kindness among harlots1 and probity among fanatics4 ,they have not lost their conscience2 they have merely introduced a flattering heresy into the conventional code1 to make room for the particular passion indulged in their little world4 ,sidenote3 ,guises of public opinion4 ,sympathy with the general mind may also take other forms4 ,public opinion1 in a vivacious and clear-headed community1 may be felt to be the casual and irresponsible thing which in truth it is4 ,homer1 for instance1 has no more solemn vehicle for it than the indefinite and unaccountable ,greek3 tis4 8,so10 he tells us1 8somebody or anybody said40 ,in the ,greek tragedians this unauthoritative entity was replaced by the chorus1 an assemblage of conventional persons1 incapable of any original perception1 but possessing a fund of traditional lore1 a just if somewhat encumbered conscience1 and the gift of song4 ,this chorus was therefore much like the ,christian ,church and like that celestial choir of which the church wishes to be the earthly echo4 ,like the church1 the tragic chorus had authority1 because it represented a wide1 if ill-digested1 experience2 and it had solemnity1 because it spoke in archaic tropes1 emotional and obscure symbols of prehistoric conflicts4 ,these sacramental forms retained their power to move in spite of their little pertinence to living issues1 partly on account of the mystery which enshrouded their forgotten passion and partly on account of the fantastic interpretations which that pregnant obscurity allowed4 ,sidenote3 ,oracles and revelations4 ,far more powerful1 however1 are those embodiments of the general conscience which religion furnishes in its first and spontaneous phase1 as when the ,hebrew prophets dared to cry1 8,so saith the ,lord40 ,such faith in one's own inspiration is a more pliable oracle than tradition or a tragic chorus1 and more responsive to the needs and changes of the hour4 ,occidental philosophers1 in their less simple and less eloquent manner1 have often repeated that arrogant ,hebraic cry3 they have told us in their systems what ,god thinks about the world4 ,such pretensions would be surprising did we not remind ourselves of the obvious truth that what men attribute to ,god is nothing but the ideal they value and grope for in themselves1 and that the commandments1 mythically said to come from the ,most ,high1 flow in fact from common reason and local experience4 ,if history did not enable us to trace this derivation1 the ever-present practical standard for faith would sufficiently indicate it2 for no one would accept as divine a revelation which he felt to be immoral or found to be pernicious4 ,and yet such a deviation into the maleficent is always possible when a code is uprooted from its rational soil and transplanted into a realm of imagination1 where it is subject to all sorts of arbitrary distortions4 ,if the sexual instinct should attach us 7as in its extensions and dislocations it sometimes does7 to beings incapable of satisfying it or of uniting with us in propagating the race1 we should1 of course1 study to correct that aberration so that our joys and desires might march in step with the possible progress of the world4 ,in the same way1 if the gregarious instinct should bring us into the imagined presence of companions that really did not exist1 or on whose attitude and co-operation our successes in no way depended1 we should try to lead back our sense of fellowship to its natural foundations and possible sanctions4 ,society exists so far as does analogous existence and community of ends4 ,we may1 in refining the social instinct1 find some fellowship in the clouds and in the stars1 for these1 though remote1 are companions of our career4 ,by poetic analogy we may include in the social world whatever helps or thwarts our development1 and is auxiliary to the energies of the soul1 even if that object be inanimate4 ,whatever spirit in the past or future1 or in the remotest regions of the sky1 shares our love and pursuit1 say of mathematics or of music1 or of any ideal object1 becomes1 if we can somehow divine his existence1 a partner in our joys and sorrows1 and a welcome friend4 ,sidenote3 ,the ideal a measure for all existences and no existence itself4 ,those ideal objects1 however1 for whose sake all revolutions in space and time may be followed with interest1 are not themselves members of our society4 ,the ideal to which all forces should minister is itself no force or factor in its own realisation4 ,such a possible disposition of things is a mere idea1 eternal and inert1 a form life might possibly take on and the one our endeavours1 if they were consistent1 would wish to impose on it4 ,this ideal itself1 however1 has often been expressed in some mythical figure or ,utopia4 ,so to express it is simply to indulge an innocent instinct for prophecy and metaphor2 but unfortunately the very innocence of fancy may engage it all the more hopelessly in a tangle of bad dreams4 ,if we once identify our ,utopia or other ideal with the real forces that surround us1 or with any one of them1 we have fallen into an illusion from which we shall emerge only after bitter disappointments2 and even when we have come out again into the open1 we shall long carry with us the desolating sense of wasted opportunities and vitiated characters4 ,for to have taken our purposes for our helpers is to have defeated the first and ignored the second2 it is to have neglected rational labour and at the same time debauched social sense4 ,the religious extensions of society should therefore be carefully watched2 for while sometimes1 as with the ,hebrew prophets1 religion gives dramatic expression to actual social forces and helps to intensify moral feeling1 it often1 as in mystics of all creeds and ages1 deadens the consciousness of real ties by feigning ties which are purely imaginary4 ,this self-deception is the more frequent because there float before men who live in the spirit ideals which they look to with the respect naturally rendered to whatever is true1 beautiful1 or good2 and the symbolic rendering of these ideals1 which is the rational function of religion1 may be confused with its superstitious or utilitarian part--with exploiting occult forces to aid us in the work of life4 ,occult forces may indeed exist1 and they may even be so disposed that the ideal is served by their agency2 but the most notable embodiment of a principle is not itself a principle1 being only an instance1 and the most exact fulfilment of a law is not a law1 being simply an event4 ,to discover a law may meantime be the most interesting of events1 and the image or formula that expresses a principle may be the most welcome of intellectual presences4 ,these symbols1 weighted with their wide significance1 may hold the mind and attract its energies into their vortex2 and human genius is certainly not at its worst when employed in framing a good myth or a good argument4 ,the lover of representation1 be he thinker or dramatist1 moves by preference in an ideal society4 ,his communion with the world is half a soliloquy1 for the personages in his dialogue are private symbols1 and being symbols they stand for what is not themselves2 the language he imputes to them is his own1 though it is their ways that prompt him to impute that language to them4 ,plastic images of his own making and shifting are his sole means of envisaging eternal principles and ultimate substances1 things ideal and potential1 which can never become phenomenal in their own persons4 ,sidenote3 ,contrast between natural and intellectual bonds4 ,it is an inspiring thought1 and a true one1 that in proportion as a man's interests become humane and his efforts rational1 he appropriates and expands a common life1 which reappears in all individuals who reach the same impersonal level of ideas--a level which his own influence may help them to maintain4 ,patriotism envisages this ideal life in so far as it is locally coloured and grounded in certain racial aptitudes and traditions2 but the community recognised in patriotism is imbedded in a larger one embracing all living creatures4 ,while in some respects we find sympathy more complete the nearer home we remain1 in another sense there is no true companionship except with the universe4 ,instinctive society1 with its compulsory affections1 is of course deeper and more elementary than any free or intellectual union4 ,love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine2 and the same thing may be said of family affection when compared with patriotism4 ,what lies nearer the roots of our being must needs enjoy a wider prevalence and engage the soul more completely1 being able to touch its depths and hush its primordial murmurs4 ,on the other hand1 the free spirit1 the political and speculative genius in man1 chafes under those blind involutions and material bonds4 ,natural1 beneficent1 sacred1 as in a sense they may be1 they somehow oppress the intellect and1 like a brooding mother1 half stifle what they feed4 ,something drives the youth afield1 into solitude1 into alien friendships2 only in the face of nature and an indifferent world can he become himself4 ,such a flight from home and all its pieties grows more urgent when there is some real conflict of temper or conscience between the young man and what is established in his family2 and this happens often because1 after all1 the most beneficent conventions are but mechanisms which must ignore the nicer sensibilities and divergences of living souls4 ,sidenote3 ,appeal from man to ,god1 from real to ideal society4 ,common men accept these spiritual tyrannies1 weak men repine at them1 and great men break them down4 ,but to defy the world is a serious business1 and requires the greatest courage1 even if the defiance touch in the first place only the world's ideals4 ,most men's conscience1 habits1 and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them4 ,to reverse this process1 to consult one's own experience and elicit one's own judgment1 challenging those in vogue1 seems too often audacious and futile2 but there are impetuous minds born to disregard the chances against them1 even to the extent of denying that they are taking chances at all4 ,for in the first instance it never occurs to the inventor that he is the source of his new insight2 he thinks he has merely opened his eyes and seen what1 by an inconceivable folly1 the whole world had grown blind to4 ,wise men in antiquity1 he imagines1 saw the facts as he sees them1 as the gods see them now1 and as all sane men shall see them henceforward4 ,thus1 if the innovator be a religious soul1 grown conscious of some new spiritual principle1 he will try to find support for his inspiration in some lost book of the law or in some early divine revelation corrupted1 as he will assert1 by wicked men1 or even in some direct voice from heaven2 no delusion will be too obvious1 no re-interpretation too forced1 if it can help him to find external support somewhere for his spontaneous conviction4 ,to denounce one authority he needs to invoke another1 and if no other be found1 he will invent or1 as they say1 he will postulate one4 ,his courage in facing the actual world is thus supported by his ability to expand the world in imagination4 ,in separating himself from his fellow-men he has made a new companion out of his ideal4 ,an impetuous spirit when betrayed by the world will cry1 8,i know that my redeemer liveth02 and the antiphonal response will come more wistfully after reflection3 8,it fortifies my soul to know ,that though ,i wander1 ,truth is so40 ,sidenote3 ,significant symbols revert to the concrete4 ,the deceptions which nature practises on men are not always cruel4 ,these are also kindly deceptions which prompt him to pursue or expect his own good when1 though not destined to come in the form he looks for1 this good is really destined to come in some shape or other4 ,such1 for instance1 are the illusions of romantic love1 which may really terminate in a family life practically better than the absolute and chimerical unions which that love had dreamed of4 ,such1 again1 are those illusions of conscience which attach unspeakable vague penalties and repugnances to acts which commonly have bad results1 though these are impossible to forecast with precision4 ,when disillusion comes1 while it may bring a momentary shock1 it ends by producing a settled satisfaction unknown before1 a satisfaction which the coveted prize1 could it have been attained1 would hardly have secured4 ,when on the day of judgment1 or earlier1 a man perceives that what he thought he was doing for the ,lord's sake he was really doing for the benefit of the least1 perhaps1 of the ,lord's creatures1 his satisfaction1 after a moment's surprise1 will certainly be very genuine4 ,sidenote3 ,nature a symbol for destiny4 ,such kindly illusions are involved in the symbolic method by which general relations and the inconceivably diffuse reality of things have to be apprehended4 ,the stars are in human thought a symbol for the silent forces of destiny1 really embodied in forms beyond our apprehension2 for who shall say what actual being may or may not correspond to that potentiality of life or sensation which is all that the external world can be to our science8 ,when astrology invented the horoscope it made an absurdly premature translation of celestial hieroglyphics into that language of universal destiny which in the end they may be made to speak4 ,the perfect astronomer1 when he understood at last exactly what pragmatic value the universe has1 and what fortunes the stars actually forebode1 would be pleasantly surprised to discover that he was nothing but an astrologer grown competent and honest4 ,sidenote3 ,representative notions have also inherent values4 ,ideal society belongs entirely to this realm of kindly illusion1 for it is the society of symbols4 ,whenever religion1 art1 or science presents us with an image or a formula1 involving no matter how momentous a truth1 there is something delusive in the representation4 ,it needs translation into the detailed experience which it sums up in our own past or prophecies elsewhere4 ,this eventual change in form1 far from nullifying our knowledge1 can alone legitimise it4 ,a conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption2 it is not a symbol1 but a fraud4 ,and yet there is another aspect to the matter4 ,symbols are presences1 and they are those particularly congenial presences which we have inwardly evoked and cast in a form intelligible and familiar to human thinking4 ,their function is to give flat experience a rational perspective1 translating the general flux into stable objects and making it representable in human discourse4 ,they are therefore precious1 not only for their representative or practical value1 implying useful adjustments to the environing world1 but even more1 sometimes1 for their immediate or sthetic power1 for their kinship to the spirit they enlighten and exercise4 ,this is prevailingly true in the fine arts which seem to express man even more than they express nature2 although in art also the symbol would lose all its significance and much of its inward articulation if natural objects and eventual experience could be disregarded in constructing it4 ,in music1 indeed1 this ulterior significance is reduced to a minimum2 yet it persists1 since music brings an ideal object before the mind which needs1 to some extent1 translation into terms no longer musical--terms1 for instance1 of skill1 dramatic passion1 or moral sentiment4 ,but in music pre-eminently1 and very largely in all the arts1 external propriety is adventitious2 so much can the mere presence and weight of a symbol fill the mind and constitute an absolute possession4 ,sidenote3 ,religion and science indirectly cognitive and directly ideal4 ,in religion and science the overt purpose of symbols is to represent external truths4 ,the inventors of these symbols think they are merely uncovering a self-existent reality1 having in itself the very form seen in their idea4 ,they do not perceive that the society of ,god or ,nature is an ideal society1 nor that these phantoms1 looming in their imagination1 are but significant figments whose existent basis is a minute and indefinite series of ordinary perceptions4 ,they consequently attribute whatever value their genial syntheses may have to the object as they picture it4 ,the gods have1 they fancy1 the aspect and passions1 the history and influence which their myth unfolds2 nature in its turn contains hypostatically just those laws and forces which are described by theory4 ,consequently the presence of ,god or ,nature seems to the mythologist not an ideal1 but a real and mutual society1 as if collateral beings1 endowed with the conceived characters1 actually existed as men exist4 ,but this opinion is untenable4 ,as ,hobbes said1 in a phrase which ought to be inscribed in golden letters over the head of every talking philosopher3 ,no discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact4 ,absolute knowledge of fact is immediate1 it is experiential4 ,we should have to become ,god or ,nature in order to know for a fact that they existed4 ,intellectual knowledge1 on the other hand1 where it relates to existence1 is faith only1 a faith which in these matters means trust4 ,for the forces of ,nature or the gods1 if they had crude existence1 so that we might conceivably become what they are1 would lose that causal and that religious function which are their essence respectively4 ,they would be merely collateral existences1 loaded with all sorts of irrelevant properties1 parts of the universal flux1 members of a natural society2 and while as such they would have their relative importance1 they would be embraced in turn within an intelligible system of relations1 while their rights and dignities would need to be determined by some supervening ideal4 ,a nature existing in act would require metaphysics--the account of a deeper nature--to express its relation to the mind that knew and judged it4 ,any actual god would need to possess a religion of his own1 in order to fix his ideal of conduct and his rights in respect to his creatures or rather1 as we should then be1 to his neighbours4 ,this situation may have no terrors for the thoughtless2 but it evidently introduces something deeper than ,nature and something higher than ,god1 depriving these words of the best sense in which a philosopher might care to use them4 ,sidenote3 ,their opposite outlook4 ,the divine and the material are contrasted points of reference required by the actual4 ,reason1 working on the immediate flux of appearances1 reaches these ideal realms and1 resting in them1 perforce calls them realities4 ,one--the realm of causes--supplies appearances with a basis and calculable order2 the other--the realm of truth and felicity--supplies them with a standard and justification4 ,natural society may accordingly be contrasted with ideal society1 not because ,nature is not1 logically speaking1 ideal too1 but because in natural society we ally ourselves consciously with our origins and surroundings1 in ideal society with our purposes4 ,there is an immense difference in spirituality1 in ideality of the moral sort1 between gathering or conciliating forces for action and fixing the ends which action should pursue4 ,both fields are ideal in the sense that intelligence alone could discover or exploit them2 yet to call nature ideal is undoubtedly equivocal1 since its ideal function is precisely to be the substance and cause of the given flux1 a ground-work for experience which1 while merely inferred and potential1 is none the less mechanical and material4 ,the ideality of nature is indeed of such a sort as to be forfeited if the trusty instrument and true antecedent of human life were not found there4 ,we should be frivolous and inconstant1 taking our philosophy for a game and not for method in living1 if having set out to look for the causes and practical order of things1 and having found them1 we should declare that they were not really casual or efficient1 on the strange ground that our discovery of them had been a feat of intelligence and had proved a priceless boon4 ,the absurdity could not be greater if in moral science1 after the goal of all effort had been determined and happiness defined1 we declared that this was not really the good4 ,those who are shocked at the assertion that ,god and ,nature are ideal1 and that their contrasted prerogatives depend on that fact1 may1 of course1 use the same words in a different way1 making them synonymous1 and may readily 8prove0 that ,god or ,nature exists materially and has absolute being4 ,we need but agree to designate by those terms the sum of existences1 whatever they 7or it7 may be to their own feeling4 ,then the ontological proof asserts its rights unmistakably4 ,science and religion1 however1 are superfluous if what we wish to learn is that there is ,something1 and that ,all-there-is must assuredly be ,all-there-is4 ,ecstasies may doubtless ensue upon considering that ,being is and ,non-,being is not1 as they are said to ensue upon long enough considering one's navel2 but the ,life of ,reason is made of more variegated stuff4 ,science1 when it is not dialectical1 describes an ideal order of existences in space and time1 such that all incidental facts1 as they come1 may fill it in and lend it body4 ,religion1 when pure1 contemplates some pertinent ideal of intelligence and goodness4 ,both religion and science live in imaginative discourse1 one being an aspiration and the other a hypothesis4 ,both introduce into the mind an ideal society4 ,the ,life of ,reason is no fair reproduction of the universe1 but the expression of man alone4 ,a theory of nature is nothing but a mass of observations1 made with a hunter's and an artist's eye4 ,a mortal has no time for sympathy with his victim or his model2 and1 beyond a certain range1 he has no capacity for such sympathy4 ,as in order to live he must devour one-half the world and disregard the other1 so in order to think and practically to know he must deal summarily and selfishly with his materials2 otherwise his intellect would melt again into endless and irrevocable dreams4 ,the law of gravity1 because it so notably unifies the motions of matter1 is something which these motions themselves know nothing of2 it is a description of them in terms of human discourse4 ,such discourse can never assure us absolutely that the motions it forecasts will occur2 the sensible proof must ensue spontaneously in its own good time4 ,in the interval our theory remains pure presumption and hypothesis4 ,reliable as it may be in that capacity1 it is no replica of anything on its own level existing beyond4 ,it creates1 like all intelligence1 a secondary and merely symbolic world4 ,sidenote3 ,in translating existence into human terms they give human nature its highest exercise4 ,when this diversity between the truest theory and the simplest fact1 between potential generalities and actual particulars1 has been thoroughly appreciated1 it becomes clear that much of what is valued in science and religion is not lodged in the miscellany underlying these creations of reason1 but is lodged rather in the rational activity itself1 and in the intrinsic beauty of all symbols bred in a genial mind4 ,of course1 if these symbols had no real points of reference1 if they were symbols of nothing1 they could have no great claim to consideration and no rational character2 at most they would be agreeable sensations4 ,they are1 however1 at their best good symbols for a diffused experience having a certain order and tendency2 they render that reality with a difference1 reducing it to a formula or a myth1 in which its tortuous length and trivial detail can be surveyed to advantage without undue waste or fatigue4 ,symbols may thus become eloquent1 vivid1 important1 being endowed with both poetic grandeur and practical truth4 ,the facts from which this truth is borrowed1 if they were rehearsed unimaginatively1 in their own flat infinity1 would be far from arousing the same emotions4 ,the human eye sees in perspective2 its glory would vanish were it reduced to a crawling1 exploring antenna4 ,not that it loves to falsify anything4 ,that to the worm the landscape might possess no light and shade1 that the mountain's atomic structure should be unpicturable1 cannot distress the landscape gardener nor the poet2 what concerns them is the effect such things may produce in the human fancy1 so that the soul may live in a congenial world4 ,naturalist and prophet are landscape painters on canvases of their own2 each is interested in his own perception and perspective1 which1 if he takes the trouble to reflect1 need not deceive him about what the world would be if not foreshortened in that particular manner4 ,this special interpretation is nevertheless precious and shows up the world in that light in which it interests naturalists or prophets to see it4 ,their figments make their chosen world1 as the painter's apperceptions are the breath of his nostrils4 ,sidenote3 ,science should be mathematical and religion anthropomorphic4 ,while the symbol's applicability is essential to its worth--since otherwise science would be useless and religion demoralising--its power and fascination lie in its acquiring a more and more profound affinity to the human mind1 so long as it can do so without surrendering its relevance to practice4 ,thus natural science is at its best when it is most thoroughly mathematical1 since what can be expressed mathematically can speak a human language4 ,in such science only the ultimate material elements remain surds2 all their further movement and complication can be represented in that kind of thought which is most intimately satisfactory and perspicuous4 ,and in like manner1 religion is at its best when it is most anthropomorphic2 indeed1 the two most spiritual religions1 ,buddhism and ,christianity1 have actually raised a man1 overflowing with utterly human tenderness and pathos1 to the place usually occupied only by cosmic and thundering deities4 ,the human heart is lifted above misfortune and encouraged to pursue unswervingly its inmost ideal when no compromise is any longer attempted with what is not moral or human1 and ,prometheus is honestly proclaimed to be holier than ,zeus4 ,at that moment religion ceases to be superstitious and becomes a rational discipline1 an effort to perfect the spirit rather than to intimidate it4 ,sidenote3 ,summary of this book4 ,we have seen that society has three stages--the natural1 the free1 and the ideal4 ,in the natural stage its function is to produce the individual and equip him with the prerequisites of moral freedom4 ,when this end is attained society can rise to friendship1 to unanimity and disinterested sympathy1 where the ground of association is some ideal interest1 while this association constitutes at the same time a personal and emotional bond4 ,ideal society1 on the contrary1 transcends accidental conjunctions altogether4 ,here the ideal interests themselves take possession of the mind2 its companions are the symbols it breeds and possesses for excellence1 beauty1 and truth4 ,religion1 art1 and science are the chief spheres in which ideal companionship is found4 ,it remains for us to traverse these provinces in turn and see to what extent the ,life of ,reason may flourish there4 999999 ,end of ,volume ,two 999999 ,,reason ,,in ,,religion ,volume ,three of 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,,contents ,,reason ,,in ,,religion ,,chapter ,i ,,how ,,religion ,,may ,,be ,,an ,,embodiment ,,of ,,reason ,religion is certainly significant1 but not literally true4--,all religion is positive and particular4--,it aims at the ,life of ,reason1 but largely fails to attain it4--,its approach imaginative4--,when its poetic method is denied its value is jeopardised4--,it precedes science rather than hinders it4--,it is merely symbolic and thoroughly human4 ,pages #c-ad ,,chapter ,,ii ,,rational ,,elements ,,in ,,superstition ,felt causes not necessary causes4--,mechanism and dialectic ulterior principles4--,early selection of categories4--,tentative rational worlds4--,superstition a rudimentary philosophy4--,a miracle1 though unexpected1 more intelligible than a regular process4--,superstitions come of haste to understand4--,inattention suffers them to spread4--,genius may use them to convey an inarticulate wisdom4 ,pages #ae-bg ,,chapter ,,iii ,,magic1 ,,sacrifice1 ,,and ,,prayer ,fear created the gods4--,need also contributed4--,the real evidences of ,god's existence4--,practice precedes theory in religion4--,pathetic1 tentative nature of religious practices4--,meanness and envy in the gods1 suggesting sacrifice4--,ritualistic arts4--,thank-offerings4--,the sacrifice of a contrite heart4--,prayer is not utilitarian in essence4--,its supposed efficacy magical4--,theological puzzles4--,a real efficacy would be mechanical4--,true uses of prayer4--,it clarifies the ideal4--,it reconciles to the inevitable4--,it fosters spiritual life by conceiving it in its perfection4--,discipline and contemplation are their own reward4 ,pages #bh-dh ,,chapter ,,iv ,,mythology ,status of fable in the mind4--,it requires genius4--,it only half deceives4--,its interpretative essence4--,contrast with science4--,importance of the moral factor4--,its submergence4--,myth justifies magic4--,myths might be metaphysical4--,they appear ready made1 like parts of the social fabric4--,they perplex the conscience4--,incipient myth in the ,vedas4--,natural suggestions soon exhausted4--,they will be carried out in abstract fancy4--,they may become moral ideals4--,the ,sun-god moralised4--,the leaven of religion is moral idealism4 ,pages #di-fh ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,hebraic ,,tradition ,phases of ,hebraism4--,israel's tribal monotheism4--,problems involved4--,the prophets put new wine in old bottles4--,inspiration and authority4--,beginnings of the ,church4--,bigotry turned into a principle4--,penance accepted4--,christianity combines optimism and asceticism4--,reason smothered between the two4--,religion made an institution4 ,pages #fi-hb ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,christian ,,epic ,the essence of the good not adventitious but expressive4--,a universal religion must interpret the whole world4--,double appeal of ,christianity4--,hebrew metaphors become ,greek myths4--,hebrew philosophy of history identified with ,platonic cosmology4--,the resulting orthodox system4--,the brief drama of things4--,mythology is a language and must be understood to convey something by symbols4 ,pages #hc-ih ,,chapter ,,vii ,,pagan ,,custom ,,and ,,barbarian ,,genius ,,infused ,,into ,,christianity ,need of paganising ,christianity4--,catholic piety more human than the liturgy4--,natural pieties4--,refuge taken in the supernatural4--,the episodes of life consecrated mystically4--,paganism chastened1 ,hebraism liberalised4--,the system post-rational and founded on despair4--,external conversion of the barbarians4--,expression of the northern genius within ,catholicism1--,internal discrepancies between the two4--,tradition and instinct at odds in ,protestantism4--,the ,protestant spirit remote from that of the gospel4--,obstacles to humanism4--,the ,reformation and counter-reformation4--,protestantism an expression of character4--,it has the spirit of life and of courage1 but the voice of inexperience4--,its emancipation from ,christianity4 ,pages #ii-abf ,,chapter ,,viii ,,conflict ,,of ,,mythology ,,with ,,moral ,,truth ,myth should dissolve with the advance of science4--,but myth is confused with the moral values it expresses4--,neo-,platonic revision4--,it made mythical entities of abstractions4--,hypostasis ruins ideals4--,the ,stoic revision4--,the ideal surrendered before the physical4--,parallel movements in ,christianity4--,hebraism1 if philosophical1 must be pantheistic4--,pantheism1 even when psychic1 ignores ideals4--,truly divine action limited to what makes for the good4--,need of an opposing principle4--,the standard of value is human4--,hope for happiness makes belief in ,god4 ,pages #abg-adg ,,chapter ,,ix ,,the ,,christian ,,compromise ,suspense between hope and disillusion4--,superficial solution4--,but from what shall we be redeemed8--,typical attitude of ,st4 ,augustine4--,he achieves ,platonism4--,he identifies it with ,christianity4--,god the good4--,primary and secondary religion4--,ambiguous efficacy of the good in ,plato4--,ambiguous goodness of the creator in ,job4--,the ,manicheans4--,all things good by nature4--,the doctrine of creation demands that of the fall4--,original sin4--,forced abandonment of the ideal4--,the problem among the ,protestants4--,pantheism accepted4--,plainer scorn for the ideal4--,the price of mythology is superstition4 ,pages #adh-agg ,,chapter ,x ,,piety ,the core of religion not theoretical4--,loyalty to the sources of our being4--,the pious neas4--,an ideal background required4--,piety accepts natural conditions and present tasks4--,the leadership of instinct is normal4--,embodiment essential to spirit4--,piety to the gods takes form from current ideals4--,the religion of humanity4--,cosmic piety4 ,pages #agh-aib ,,chapter ,,xi ,,spirituality ,,and ,,its ,,corruptions ,to be spiritual is to live in view of the ideal4--,spirituality natural4--,primitive consciousness may be spiritual4--,spirit crossed by instrumentalities4--,one foe of the spirit is worldliness4--,the case for and against pleasure4--,upshot of worldly wisdom4--,two supposed escapes from vanity3 fanaticism and mysticism4--,both are irrational4--,is there a third course8--,yes1 for experience has intrinsic1 inalienable values4--,for these the religious imagination must supply an ideal standard4 ,pages #aic-bac ,,chapter ,,xii ,,charity ,possible tyranny of reason4--,everything has its rights4--,primary and secondary morality4--,uncharitable pagan justice is not just4--,the doom of ancient republics4--,rational charity4--,its limits4--,its mythical supports4--,there is intelligence in charity4--,buddhist and ,christian forms of it4--,apparent division of the spiritual and the natural4 ,pages #bad-bbh ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,the ,,belief ,,in ,a ,,future ,,life ,the length of life a subject for natural science4--8,psychical0 phenomena4--,hypertrophies of sense4--,these possibilities affect physical existence only4--,moral grounds for the doctrine4--,the necessary assumption of a future4--,an assumption no evidence4--,a solipsistic argument4--,absoluteness and immortality transferred to the gods4--,or to a divine principle in all beings4--,in neither case is the individual immortal4--,possible forms of survival4--,arguments from retribution and need of opportunity4--,ignoble temper of both4--,false optimistic postulate involved4--,transition to ideality4 ,pages #bbi-bej ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,ideal ,,immortality ,olympian immortality the first ideal4--,its indirect attainment by reproduction4--,moral acceptance of this compromise4--,even vicarious immortality intrinsically impossible4--,intellectual victory over change4--,the glory of it4--,reason makes man's divinity and his immortality4--,it is the locus of all truths4--,epicurean immortality1 through the truth of existence4--,logical immortality1 through objects of thought4--,ethical immortality1 through types of excellence4 ,pages #bea-bgc ,,chapter ,,xv ,,conclusion ,the failure of magic and of mythology4--,their imaginative value4--,piety and spirituality justified4--,mysticism a primordial state of feeling4--,it may recur at any stage of culture4--,form gives substance its life and value4 ,pages #bgd-bgi ,,reason ,,in ,,religion ,,chapter ,i ,,how ,,religion ,,may ,,be ,,an ,,embodiment ,,of ,,reason ,sidenote3 ,religion certainly significant4 ,experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of ,bacon's1 that 8a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism1 but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion40 ,in every age the most comprehensive thinkers have found in the religion of their time and country something they could accept1 interpreting and illustrating that religion so as to give it depth and universal application4 ,even the heretics and atheists1 if they have had profundity1 turn out after a while to be forerunners of some new orthodoxy4 ,what they rebel against is a religion alien to their nature2 they are atheists only by accident1 and relatively to a convention which inwardly offends them1 but they yearn mightily in their own souls after the religious acceptance of a world interpreted in their own fashion4 ,so it appears in the end that their atheism and loud protestation were in fact the hastier part of their thought1 since what emboldened them to deny the poor world's faith was that they were too impatient to understand it4 ,indeed1 the enlightenment common to young wits and worm-eaten old satirists1 who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion--something which the blindest half see--is not nearly enlightened enough3 it points to notorious facts incompatible with religious tenets literally taken1 but it leaves unexplored the habits of thought from which those tenets sprang1 their original meaning1 and their true function4 ,such studies would bring the sceptic face to face with the mystery and pathos of mortal existence4 ,they would make him understand why religion is so profoundly moving and in a sense so profoundly just4 ,there must needs be something humane and necessary in an influence that has become the most general sanction of virtue1 the chief occasion for2 art and philosophy1 and the source1 perhaps1 of the best human happiness4 ,if nothing1 as ,hooker said1 is 8so malapert as a splenetic religion10 a sour irreligion is almost as perverse4 ,sidenote3 ,but not literally true4 ,at the same time1 when ,bacon penned the sage epigram we have quoted he forgot to add that the ,god to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them4 ,it would be pitiful indeed if mature reflection bred no better conceptions than those which have drifted down the muddy stream of time1 where tradition and passion have jumbled everything together4 ,traditional conceptions1 when they are felicitous1 may be adopted by the poet1 but they must be purified by the moralist and disintegrated by the philosopher4 ,each religion1 so dear to those whose life it sanctifies1 and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it1 necessarily contradicts every other religion1 and probably contradicts itself4 ,what religion a man shall have is a historical accident1 quite as much as what language he shall speak4 ,in the rare circumstances where a choice is possible1 he may1 with some difficulty1 make an exchange2 but even then he is only adopting a new convention which may be more agreeable to his personal temper but which is essentially as arbitrary as the old4 ,sidenote3 ,all religion is positive and particular4 ,the attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular4 ,a courier's or a dragoman's speech may indeed be often unusual and drawn from disparate sources1 not without some mixture of personal originality2 but that private jargon will have a meaning only because of its analogy to one or more conventional languages and its obvious derivation from them4 ,so travellers from one religion to another1 people who have lost their spiritual nationality1 may often retain a neutral and confused residuum of belief1 which they may egregiously regard as the essence of all religion1 so little may they remember the graciousness and naturalness of that ancestral accent which a perfect religion should have4 ,yet a moment's probing of the conceptions surviving in such minds will show them to be nothing but vestiges of old beliefs1 creases which thought1 even if emptied of all dogmatic tenets1 has not been able to smooth away at its first unfolding4 ,later generations1 if they have any religion at all1 will be found either to revert to ancient authority1 or to attach themselves spontaneously to something wholly novel and immensely positive1 to some faith promulgated by a fresh genius and passionately embraced by a converted people4 ,thus every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy4 ,its power consists in its special and surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to life4 ,the vistas it opens and the mysteries propounds are another world to live in2 and another world to live in--whether we expect ever to pass wholly into it or no--is what we mean by having a religion4 ,sidenote3 ,it aims at the ,life of ,reason4 ,what relation1 then1 does this great business of the soul1 which we call religion1 bear to the ,life of ,reason8 ,that the relation between the two is close seems clear from several circumstances4 ,the ,life of ,reason is the seat of all ultimate values4 ,now the history of mankind will show us that whenever spirits at once lofty and intense have seemed to attain the highest joys1 they have envisaged and attained them in religion4 ,religion would therefore seem to be a vehicle or a factor in rational life1 since the ends of rational life are attained by it4 ,moreover1 the ,life of ,reason is an ideal to which everything in the world should be subordinated2 it establishes lines of moral cleavage everywhere and makes right eternally different from wrong4 ,religion does the same thing4 ,it makes absolute moral decisions4 ,it sanctions1 unifies1 and transforms ethics4 ,religion thus exercises a function of the ,life of ,reason4 ,and a further function which is common to both is that of emancipating man from his personal limitations4 ,in different ways religions promise to transfer the soul to better conditions4 ,a supernaturally favoured kingdom is to be established for posterity upon earth1 or for all the faithful in heaven1 or the soul is to be freed by repeated purgations from all taint and sorrow1 or it is to be lost in the absolute1 or it is to become an influence and an object of adoration in the places it once haunted or wherever the activities it once loved may be carried on by future generations of its kindred4 ,now reason in its way lays before us all these possibilities3 it points to common objects1 political and intellectual1 in which an individual may lose what is mortal and accidental in himself and immortalise what is rational and human2 it teaches us how sweet and fortunate death may be to those whose spirit can still live in their country and in their ideas2 it reveals the radiating effects of action and the eternal objects of thought4 ,yet the difference in tone and language must strike us1 so soon as it is philosophy that speaks4 ,that change should remind us that even if the function of religion and that of reason coincide1 this function is performed in the two cases by very different organs4 ,religions are many1 reason one4 ,religion consists of conscious ideas1 hopes1 enthusiasms1 and objects of worship2 it operates by grace and flourished by prayer4 ,reason1 on the other hand1 is a mere principle or potential order1 on which1 indeed1 we may come to reflect1 but which exists in us ideally only1 without variation or stress of any kind4 ,we conform or do not conform to it2 it does not urge or chide us1 nor call for any emotions on our part other than those naturally aroused by the various objects which it unfolds in their true nature and proportion4 ,religion brings some order into life by weighting it with new materials4 ,reason adds to the natural materials only the perfect order which it introduces into them4 ,rationality is nothing but a form1 an ideal constitution which experience may more or less embody4 ,religion is a part of experience itself1 a mass of sentiments and ideas4 ,the one is an inviolate principle1 the other a changing and struggling force4 ,and yet this struggling and changing force of religion1 seems to direct man toward something eternal4 ,it seems to make for an ultimate harmony within the soul and for an ultimate harmony between the soul and all the soul depends upon4 ,so that religion1 in its intent1 is a more conscious and direct pursuit of the ,life of ,reason than is society1 science1 or art4 ,for these approach and fill out the ideal life tentatively and piecemeal1 hardly regarding the goal or caring for the ultimate justification of their instinctive aims4 ,religion also has an instinctive and blind side1 and bubbles up in all manner of chance practices and intuitions2 soon1 however1 it feels its way toward the heart of things1 and1 from whatever quarter it may come1 veers in the direction of the ultimate4 ,sidenote3 ,but largely fails to attain it4 ,nevertheless1 we must confess that this religious pursuit of the ,life of ,reason has been singularly abortive4 ,those within the pale of each religion may prevail upon themselves to express satisfaction with its results1 thanks to a fond partiality in reading the past and generous draughts of hope for the future2 but any one regarding the various religions at once and comparing their achievements with what reason requires1 must feel how terrible is the disappointment which they have one and all prepared for mankind4 ,their chief anxiety has been to offer imaginary remedies for mortal ills1 some of which are incurable essentially1 while others might have been really cured by well-directed effort4 ,the ,greek oracles1 for instance1 pretended to heal our natural ignorance1 which has its appropriate though difficult cure1 while the ,christian vision of heaven pretended to be an antidote to our natural death1 the inevitable correlate of birth and of a changing and conditioned existence4 ,by methods of this sort little can be done for the real betterment of life4 ,to confuse intelligence and dislocate sentiment by gratuitous fictions is a short-sighted way of pursuing happiness4 ,nature is soon avenged4 ,an unhealthy exaltation and a one-sided morality have to be followed by regrettable reactions4 ,when these come1 the real rewards of life may seem vain to a relaxed vitality1 and the very name of virtue may irritate young spirits untrained in any natural excellence4 ,thus religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction1 and impedes the science it ought to fulfil4 ,sidenote3 ,its approach imaginative4 ,what is the secret of this ineptitude8 ,why does religion1 so near to rationality in its purpose1 fall so far short of it in its texture and in its results8 ,the answer is easy3 ,religion pursues1 rationality through the imagination4 ,when it explains events or assigns causes1 it gives imaginative substitute for science4 ,when it gives2 precepts1 insinuates ideals1 or remoulds aspiration1 it is an imaginative substitute for wisdom--,i mean for the deliberate and impartial pursuit of all good4 ,the conditions and the aims of life are both represented in religion poetically1 but this poetry tends to arrogate to itself literal truth and moral authority1 neither of which it possesses4 ,hence the depth and importance of religion become intelligible no less than its contradictions and practical disasters4 ,its object is the same as that of reason1 but its method is to proceed by intuition and by unchecked poetical conceits4 ,these are repeated and vulgarised in proportion to their original fineness and significance1 till they pass for reports of objective truth and come to constitute a world of faith1 superposed upon the world of experience and regarded as materially enveloping it1 if not in space at least in time and in existence4 ,the only truth of religion comes from its interpretation of life1 from its symbolic rendering of that moral1 experience which it springs out of and which it seeks to elucidate4 ,its falsehood comes from the insidious misunderstanding which clings to it1 to the effect that these poetic conceptions are not merely representations of experience as it is or should be1 but are rather information about experience or reality elsewhere--an experience and reality which1 strangely enough1 supply just the defects betrayed by reality and experience here4 ,sidenote3 ,when its poetic method is denied its value is jeopardised4 ,thus religion has the same original relation to life that poetry has2 only poetry1 which never pretends to literal validity1 adds a pure value to existence1 the value of a liberal imaginative exercise4 ,the poetic value of religion would initially be greater than that of poetry itself1 because religion deals with higher and more practical themes1 with sides of life which are in greater need of some imaginative touch and ideal interpretation than are those pleasant or pompous things which ordinary poetry dwells upon4 ,but this initial advantage is neutralised in part by the abuse to which religion is subject1 whenever its symbolic rightness is taken for scientific truth4 ,like poetry1 it improves the world only by imagining it improved1 but not content with making this addition to the mind's furniture--an addition which might be useful and ennobling--it thinks to confer a more radical benefit by persuading mankind that1 in spite of appearances1 the world is really such as that rather arbitrary idealisation has painted it4 ,this spurious satisfaction is naturally the prelude to many a disappointment1 and the soul has infinite trouble to emerge again from the artificial problems and sentiments into which it is thus plunged4 ,the value of religion becomes equivocal4 ,religion remains an imaginative achievement1 a symbolic representation of moral reality which may have a most important function in vitalising the mind and in transmitting1 by way of parables1 the lessons of experience4 ,but it becomes at the same time a continuous incidental deception2 and this deception1 in proportion as it is strenuously denied to be such1 can work indefinite harm in the world and in the conscience4 ,sidenote3 ,it precedes science rather than hinders it4 ,on the whole1 however1 religion should not be conceived as having taken the place of anything better1 but rather as having come to relieve situations which1 but for its presence1 would have been infinitely worse4 ,in the thick of active life1 or in the monotony of practical slavery1 there is more need to stimulate fancy than to control it4 ,natural instinct is not much disturbed in the human brain by what may happen in that thin superstratum of ideas which commonly overlays it4 ,we must not blame religion for preventing the development of a moral and natural science which at any rate would seldom have appeared2 we must rather thank it for the sensibility1 the reverence1 the speculative insight which it has introduced into the world4 ,sidenote3 ,it is merely symbolic and thoroughly human4 ,we may therefore proceed to analyse the significance and the function which religion has had at its different stages1 and1 without disguising or in the least condoning its confusion with literal truth1 we may allow ourselves to enter as sympathetically as possible into its various conceptions and emotions4 ,they have made up the inner life of many sages1 and of all those who without great genius or learning have lived steadfastly in the spirit4 ,the feeling of reverence should itself be treated with reverence1 although not at a sacrifice of truth1 with which alone1 in the end1 reverence is compatible4 ,nor have we any reason to be intolerant of the partialities and contradictions which religions display4 ,were we dealing with a science1 such contradictions would have to be instantly solved and removed2 but when we are concerned with the poetic interpretation of experience1 contradiction means only variety1 and variety means spontaneity1 wealth of resource1 and a nearer approach to total adequacy4 ,if we hope to gain any understanding of these matters we must begin by taking them out of that heated and fanatical atmosphere in which the ,hebrew tradition has enveloped them4 ,the ,jews had no philosophy1 and when their national traditions came to be theoretically explicated and justified1 they were made to issue in a puerile scholasticism and a rabid intolerance4 ,the question of monotheism1 for instance1 was a terrible question to the ,jews4 ,idolatry did not consist in worshipping a god who1 not being ideal1 might be unworthy of worship1 but rather in recognising other gods than the one worshipped in ,jerusalem4 ,to the ,greeks1 on the contrary1 whose philosophy was enlightened and ingenuous1 monotheism and polytheism seemed perfectly innocent and compatible4 ,to say ,god or the gods was only to use different expressions for the same influence1 now viewed in its abstract unity and correlation with all existence1 now viewed in its various manifestations in moral life1 in nature1 or in history4 ,so that what in ,plato1 ,aristotle1 and the ,stoics meets us at every step--the combination of monotheism with polytheism--is no contradiction1 but merely an intelligent variation of phrase to indicate various aspects or functions in physical and moral things4 ,when religion appears to us in this light its contradictions and controversies lose all their bitterness4 ,each doctrine will simply represent the moral plane on which they live who have devised or adopted it4 ,religions will thus be better or worse1 never true or false4 ,we shall be able to lend ourselves to each in turn1 and seek to draw from it the secret of its inspiration4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,rational ,,elements ,,in ,,superstition ,we need not impose upon ourselves the endless and repulsive task of describing all the superstitions that have existed in the world4 ,in his impotence and laziness the natural man unites any notion with any other in a loose causal relation4 ,a single instance of juxtaposition1 nay1 the mere notion and dream of such a combination1 will suffice to arouse fear or to prompt experimental action4 ,sidenote3 ,felt causes not necessary causes4 ,when philosophers have objected to ,hume's account of causation that he gave no sufficient basis for the necessary influence of cause on effect1 they have indulged in a highly artificial supposition4 ,they have assumed that people actually regard causes as necessary4 ,they suppose that before we can feel the interdependence of two things in experience we must have an unshakable conviction that their connection is necessary and universal4 ,but causation in such an absolute sense is no category of practical thinking4 ,it appears1 if at all1 only in dialectic1 in ideal applications of given laws to cases artificially simplified1 where the terms are so defined that their operation upon one another is involved in the notion of them4 ,so if we say that an unsupported weight must fall to the ground1 we have included in the word 8weight0 the notion of a downward strain4 ,the proposition is really trifling and identical4 ,it merely announces that things which tend to fall to the ground tend to fall to the ground1 and that heavy things are heavy4 ,so1 when we have called a thing a cause1 we have defined it as that which involves an effect1 and if the effect did not follow1 the title of cause would no longer belong to the antecedent4 ,but the necessity of this sequence is merely verbal4 ,we have never1 in the presence of the antecedent1 the assurance that the title of cause will accrue to it4 ,our expectation is empirical1 and we feel and assert nothing in respect to the necessity of the expected sequence4 ,sidenote3 ,mechanism and dialectic ulterior principles4 ,a cause1 in real life1 means a justifying circumstance4 ,we are absolutely without insight into the machinery of causation1 notably in the commonest cases1 like that of generation1 nutrition1 or the operation of mind on matter4 ,but we are familiar with the more notable superficial conditions in each case1 and the appearance in part of any usual phenomenon makes us look for the rest of it4 ,we do not ordinarily expect virgins to bear children nor prophets to be fed by ravens nor prayers to remove mountains2 but we may believe any of these things at the merest suggestion of fancy or report1 without any warrant from experience1 so loose is the bond and so external the relation between the terms most constantly associated4 ,a quite unprecedented occurrence will seem natural and intelligible enough if it falls in happily with the current of our thoughts4 ,interesting and significant events1 however1 are so rare and so dependent on mechanical conditions irrelevant to their value1 that we come at last to wonder at their self-justified appearance apart from that cumbrous natural machinery1 and to call them marvels1 miracles1 and things to gape at4 ,we come to adopt scientific hypotheses1 at least in certain provinces of our thought1 and we lose our primitive openness and simplicity of mind4 ,then1 with an unjustified haste1 we assert that miracles are impossible1 i4e41 that nothing interesting and fundamentally natural can happen unless all the usual1 though adventitious1 mise-en-scne has been prepared behind the curtain4 ,the philosopher may eventually discover that such machinery is really needed and that even the actors themselves have a mechanism within them1 so that not only their smiles and magnificent gestures1 but their heated fancy itself and their conception of their rles are but outer effects and dramatic illusions produced by the natural stage-carpentry in their brains4 ,yet such eventual scientific conclusions have nothing to do with the tentative first notions of men when they begin to experiment in the art of living4 ,as the seeds of lower animals have to be innumerable1 so that in a chance environment a few may grow to maturity1 so the seeds of rational thinking1 the first categories of reflection1 have to be multitudinous1 in order that some lucky principle of synthesis may somewhere come to light and find successful application4 ,science1 which thinks to make belief in miracles impossible1 is itself belief in miracles--in the miracles best authenticated by history and by daily life4 ,sidenote3 ,early selection of categories4 ,when men begin to understand things1 when they begin to reflect and to plan1 they divide the world into the hateful and the delightful1 the avoidable and the attainable4 ,and in feeling their way toward what attracts them1 or in escaping what they fear1 they at first follow passively the lead of instinct3 they watch themselves live1 or rather sink without reserve into their living2 their reactions are as little foreseen and as naturally accepted as their surroundings4 ,their ideas are incidents in their perpetual oscillation between apathy and passion4 ,the stream of animal life leaves behind a little sediment of knowledge1 the sand of that auriferous river2 a few grains of experience remain to mark the path traversed by the flood4 ,these residual ideas and premonitions1 these first categories of thought1 are of any and every sort4 ,all the contents of the mind and all the threads of relation that weave its elements together are alike fitted1 for all we can then see1 to give the clue to the labyrinth in which we find ourselves wandering4 ,there is prima facie no ground for not trying to apply to experience such categories1 for instance1 as that of personal omnipotence1 as if everything were necessarily arranged as we may command or require4 ,on this principle children often seem to conceive a world in which they are astonished not to find themselves living4 ,or we may try aesthetic categories and allow our reproductive imagination--by which memory is fed--to bring under the unity of apperception only what can fall within it harmoniously1 completely1 and delightfully4 ,such an understanding1 impervious to anything but the beautiful1 might be a fine thing in itself1 but would not chronicle the fortunes of that organism to which it was attached4 ,it would yield an experience--doubtless a highly interesting and elaborate experience--but one which could never serve as an index to successful action4 ,it would totally fail to represent its conditions1 and consequently would imply nothing about its continued existence4 ,it would be an experience irrelevant to conduct1 no part1 therefore1 of a ,life of ,reason1 but a kind of lovely vapid music or parasitic dream4 ,now such dreams are in fact among the first and most absorbing formations in the human mind4 ,if we could penetrate into animal consciousness we should not improbably find that what there accompanies instinctive motions is a wholly irrelevant fancy1 whose flaring up and subsidence no doubt coincide with the presence of objects interesting to the organism and causing marked reactions within it2 yet this fancy may in no way represent the nature of surrounding objects nor the eventual results1 for the animal's consciousness1 of its own present experience4 ,sidenote3 ,tentative rational worlds4 ,the unlimited number of possible categories1 their arbitrariness and spontaneity1 may1 however1 have this inconvenience1 that the categories may be irrelevant to one another no less than to the natural life they ought to express4 ,the experience they respectively synthesise may therefore be no single experience4 ,one pictured world may succeed another in the sphere of sensibility1 while the body whose sensibility they compose moves in a single and constant physical cosmos4 ,each little mental universe may be intermittent1 or1 if any part of it endures while a new group of ideas comes upon the stage1 there may arise contradictions1 discords1 and a sense of lurking absurdity which will tend to disrupt thought logically at the same time that the processes of nutrition and the oncoming of new dreams tend to supplant it mechanically4 ,such drifting categories have no mutual authority4 ,they replace but do not dominate one another1 and the general conditions of life--by conceiving which life itself might be surveyed--remain entirely unrepresented4 ,what we mean1 indeed1 by the natural world in which the conditions of consciousness are found and in reference to which mind and its purposes can attain practical efficacy1 is simply the world constructed by categories found to yield a constant1 sufficient1 and consistent object4 ,having attained this conception1 we justly call it the truth and measure the intellectual value of all other constructions by their affinity to that rational vision4 ,such a rational vision has not yet been attained by mankind1 but it would be absurd to say that because we have not fully nor even proximately attained it1 we have not gained any conception whatever of a reliable and intelligible world4 ,the modicum of rationality achieved in the sciences gives us a hint of a perfect rationality which1 if unattainable in practice1 is not inconceivable in idea4 ,so1 in still more inchoate moments of reflection1 our ancestors nursed even more isolated1 less compatible1 less adequate conceptions than those which leave our philosophers still unsatisfied4 ,the categories they employed dominated smaller regions of experience than do the categories of history and natural science2 they had far less applicability to the conduct of affairs and to the happy direction of life as a whole4 ,yet they did yield vision and flashes of insight4 ,they lighted men a step ahead in the dark places of their careers1 and gave them at certain junctures a sense of creative power and moral freedom4 ,so that the necessity of abandoning one category in order to use a better need not induce us to deny that the worse category could draw the outlines of a sort of world and furnish men with an approach to wisdom4 ,if our ancestors1 by such means1 could not dominate life as a whole1 neither can we1 in spite of all progress4 ,if literal truth or final applicability cannot be claimed for their thought1 who knows how many and how profound the revolutions might be which our own thought would have to suffer if new fields of perception or new powers of synthesis were added to our endowment8 ,sidenote3 ,superstition a rudimentary philosophy4 ,sidenote3 ,a miracle1 though unexpected1 more intelligible than a regular process4 ,we sometimes speak as if superstition or belief in the miraculous was disbelief in law and was inspired by a desire to disorganise experience and defeat intelligence4 ,no supposition could be more erroneous4 ,every superstition is a little science1 inspired by the desire to understand1 to foresee1 or to control the real world4 ,no doubt its hypothesis is chimerical1 arbitrary1 and founded on a confusion of efficient causes with ideal results4 ,but the same is true of many a renowned philosophy4 ,to appeal to what we call the supernatural is really to rest in the imaginatively obvious1 in what we ought to call the natural1 if natural meant easy to conceive and originally plausible4 ,moral and individual forces are more easily intelligible than mechanical universal laws4 ,the former domesticate events in the mind more readily and more completely than the latter4 ,a miracle is so far from being a contradiction to the causal principle which the mind actually applies in its spontaneous observations that it is primarily a better illustration of that principle than an event happening in the ordinary course of nature4 ,for the ground of the miracle is immediately intelligible2 we see the mercy or the desire to vindicate authority1 or the intention of some other sort that inspired it4 ,a mechanical law1 on the contrary1 is only a record of the customary but reasonless order of things4 ,a merely inexplicable event1 manifesting no significant purpose1 would be no miracle4 ,what surprises us in the miracle is that1 contrary to what is usually the case1 we can see a real and just ground for it4 ,thus1 if the water of ,lourdes1 bottled and sold by chemists1 cured all diseases1 there would be no miracle1 but only a new scientific discovery4 ,in such a case1 we should no more know why we were cured than we now know why we were created4 ,but if each believer in taking the water thinks the effect morally conditioned1 if he interprets the result1 should it be favourable1 as an answer to his faith and prayers1 then the cure becomes miraculous because it becomes intelligible and manifests the obedience of nature to the exigencies of spirit4 ,were there no known ground for such a scientific anomaly1 were it a meaningless irregularity in events1 we should not call it a miracle1 but an accident1 and it would have no relation to religion4 ,sidenote3 ,superstitions come of haste to understand4 ,what establishes superstitions is haste to understand1 rash confidence in the moral intelligibility of things4 ,it turns out in the end1 as we have laboriously discovered1 that understanding has to be circuitous and cannot fulfil its function until it applies mechanical categories to existence4 ,a thorough philosophy will become aware that moral intelligibility can only be an incidental ornament and partial harmony in the world4 ,for moral significance is relative to particular interests and to natures having a constitutional and definite bias1 and having consequently special preferences which it is chimerical to expect the rest of the world to be determined by4 ,the attempt to subsume the natural order under the moral is like attempts to establish a government of the parent by the child--something children are not averse to4 ,but such follies are the follies of an intelligent and eager creature1 restless in a world it cannot at once master and comprehend4 ,they are the errors of reason1 wanderings in the by-paths of philosophy1 not due to lack of intelligence or of faith in law1 but rather to a premature vivacity in catching at laws1 a vivacity misled by inadequate information4 ,the hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy4 ,the mind's reactions anticipate in such cases its sufficient nourishment2 it has not yet matured under the rays of experience1 so that both materials and guidance are lacking for its precocious organising force4 ,superstitious minds are penetrating and narrow1 deep and ignorant4 ,they apply the higher categories before the lower--an inversion which in all spheres produces the worst and most pathetic disorganisation1 because the lower functions are then deranged and the higher contaminated4 ,poetry anticipates science1 on which it ought to follow1 and imagination rushes in to intercept memory1 on which it ought to feed4 ,hence superstition and the magical function of religion2 hence the deceptions men fall into by cogitating on things they are ignorant of and arrogating to themselves powers which they have never learned to exercise4 ,sidenote3 ,inattention suffers them to spread4 ,it is now generally acknowledged that workers of miracles1 prophets1 soothsayers1 and inspired or divinely appointed men may1 like metaphysicians1 be quite sincere and fully believe they possess the powers which they pretend to display4 ,in the case of the more intelligent1 however1 this sincerity was seldom complete1 but mixed with a certain pitying or scornful accommodation to the vulgar mind4 ,something unusual might actually have happened1 in which case the reference of it to the will that welcomed it 7without1 of course1 being able to command it unconditionally7 might well seem reasonable4 ,or something normal might have been interpreted fancifully1 but to the greater glory of ,god and edification of the faithful2 in which case the incidental error might be allowed to pass unchallenged out of respect for the essential truths thus fortified in pious minds4 ,the power of habit and convention1 by which the most crying inconsistencies and hypocrisies are soon put to sleep1 would facilitate these accommodations and render them soon instinctive2 while the world at large1 entirely hypnotised by the ceremonious event and its imaginative echoes1 could never come to close quarters with the facts at all1 but could view them only through accepted preconceptions4 ,thus elaborate machinery can arise and long endure for the magical service of man's interests4 ,how deeply rooted such conventions are1 how natural it is that they should have dominated even civilised society1 may best be understood if we consider the remnants of such habits in our midst--not among gypsies or professional wonder-workers but among reflecting men4 ,sidenote3 ,genius may use them to convey an inarticulate wisdom4 ,some men of action1 like ,csar and ,napoleon1 are said to have been superstitious about their own destiny4 ,the phenomenon1 if true1 would be intelligible4 ,they were masterful men1 men who in a remarkable degree possessed in their consciousness the sign and sanction of what was happening in the world4 ,this endowment1 which made them dominate their contemporaries1 could also reveal the sources and conditions of their own will4 ,they might easily come to feel that it was destiny--the total movement of things--that inspired1 crowned1 and ruined them4 ,but as they could feel this only instinctively1 not by a systematic view of all the forces in play1 they would attach their voluminous sense of fatality to some chance external indication or to some ephemeral impulse within themselves2 so that what was essentially a profound but inarticulate science might express itself in the guise of a superstition4 ,in like manner ,socrates' ,demon 7if not actually a playful fable by which the sage expressed the negative stress of conscience1 the 8thou shalt not0 of all awe-inspiring precepts7 might be a symbol for latent wisdom4 ,socrates turned a trick1 played upon him by his senses1 into a message from heaven4 ,he taught a feeble voice--senseless like all ghostly voices--to sanction precepts dictated by the truly divine element within himself4 ,it was characteristic of his modest piety to look for some external sign to support reason2 his philosophy was so human1 and man is obviously so small a part of the world1 that he could reasonably subordinate reason at certain junctures4 ,its abdication1 however1 was half playful1 for he could always find excellent grounds for what the demon commanded4 ,in much the same manner the priests at ,delphi1 when they were prudent1 made of the ,pythia's ravings oracles not without elevation of tone and with an obvious political tendency4 ,occasions for superstition which baser minds would have turned to sheer lunacy or silly fears or necromantic clap-trap were seized by these nobler natures for a good purpose4 ,a benevolent man1 not inclined to scepticism1 can always argue that the gods must have commanded what he himself knows to be right2 and he thinks it religion on his part to interpret the oracle accordingly1 or even to prompt it4 ,in such ways the most arbitrary superstitions take a moral colour in a moral mind2 something which can come about all the more easily since the roots of reason and superstition are intertwined in the mind1 and society has always expressed and cultivated them together4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,magic1 ,,sacrifice1 ,,and ,,prayer ,sidenote3 ,fear created the gods4 ,that fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject4 ,to recognise an external power it is requisite that we should find the inner stream and tendency of life somehow checked or disturbed2 if all went well and acceptably1 we should attribute divinity only to ourselves4 ,the external is therefore evil rather than good to early apprehension--a sentiment which still survives in respect to matter2 for it takes reflection to conceive that external forces form a necessary environment1 creating as well as limiting us1 and offering us as many opportunities as rebuffs4 ,the first things which a man learns to distinguish and respect are things with a will of their own1 things which resist his casual demands2 and so the first sentiment with which he confronts reality is a certain animosity1 which becomes cruelty toward the weak and fear and fawning before the powerful4 ,toward men and animals and the docile parts of nature these sentiments soon become defined accurately1 representing the exact degree of friendliness or use which we discover in these beings2 and it is in practical terms1 expressing this relation to our interests1 that we define their characters4 ,much remains over1 however1 which we cannot easily define1 indomitable1 ambiguous regions of nature and consciousness which we know not how to face2 yet we cannot ignore them1 since it is thence that comes what is most momentous in our fortunes--luck1 disease1 tempest1 death1 victory4 ,thence come also certain mysterious visitations to the inner mind--dreams1 apparitions1 warnings4 ,to perceive these things is not always easy1 nor is it easy to interpret them1 while the great changes in nature which1 perhaps1 they forebode may indeed be watched but cannot be met intelligently1 much less prevented4 ,the feeling with which primitive man walks the earth must accordingly be1 for the most part1 apprehension2 and what he meets1 beyond the well-conned ways of his tribe and habitat1 can be nothing but formidable spirits4 ,sidenote3 ,need also contributed4 ,impotence1 however1 has a more positive side4 ,if the lightning and thunder1 startling us in our peace1 suddenly reveal unwelcome powers before which we must tremble1 hunger1 on the contrary1 will torment us with floating ideas1 intermittent impulses to act1 suggesting things which would be wholly delightful if only we could find them1 but which it becomes intolerable to remain without4 ,in this case our fear1 if we still choose to call it so1 would be lest our cravings should remain unsatisfied1 or rather fear has given place to need2 we recognise our dependence on external powers not because they threaten but because they forsake us4 ,sidenote3 ,the real evidences of ,god's existence4 ,obvious considerations like these furnish the proof of ,god's existence1 not as philosophers have tried to express it after the fact and in relation to mythical conceptions of ,god already current1 but as mankind originally perceived it1 and 7where religion is spontaneous7 perceives it still4 ,there is such an order in experience that we find our desires doubly dependent on something which1 because it disregards our will1 we call an external power4 ,sometimes it overwhelms us with scourges and wonders1 so that we must marvel at it and fear2 sometimes it removes1 or after removing restores1 a support necessary to our existence and happiness1 so that we must cling to it1 hope for it1 and love it4 ,whatever is serious in religion1 whatever is bound up with morality and fate1 is contained in those plain experiences of dependence and of affinity to that on which we depend4 ,the rest is poetry1 or mythical philosophy1 in which definitions not warranted in the end by experience are given to that power which experience reveals4 ,to reject such arbitrary definitions is called atheism by those who frame them2 but a man who studies for himself the ominous and the friendly aspects of reality and gives them the truest and most adequate expression he can is repeating what the founders of religion did in the beginning4 ,he is their companion and follower more truly than are the apologists for second-hand conceptions which these apologists themselves have never compared with the facts1 and which they prize chiefly for misrepresenting actual experience and giving it imaginary extensions4 ,religion is not essentially an imposture1 though it might seem so if we consider it as its defenders present it to us rather than as its discoverers and original spokesmen uttered it in the presence of nature and face to face with unsophisticated men4 ,religion is an interpretation of experience1 honestly made1 and made in view of man's happiness and its empirical conditions4 ,that this interpretation is poetical goes without saying1 since natural and moral science1 even to-day1 are inadequate for the task4 ,but the mythical form into which men cast their wisdom was not chosen by them because they preferred to be imaginative2 it was not embraced1 as its survivals are now defended1 out of sentimental attachment to grandiloquent but inaccurate thoughts4 ,mythical forms were adopted because none other were available1 nor could the primitive mind discriminate at all between the mythical and the scientific4 ,whether it is the myth or the wisdom it expresses that we call religion is a matter of words4 ,certain it is that the wisdom is alone what gives the myth its dignity1 and what originally suggested it4 ,god's majesty lies in his operation1 not in his definition or his image4 ,sidenote3 ,practice precedes theory in religion4 ,fear and need1 then1 bring us into the presence of external powers1 conceived mythically1 whose essential character is to be now terrible1 now auspicious4 ,the influence is real and directly felt2 the gods' function is unmistakable and momentous1 while their name and form1 the fabulous beings to which that felt influence is imputed1 vary with the resources of the worshipper's mind and his poetic habits4 ,the work of expression1 the creation of a fabulous environment to derive experience from1 is not1 however1 the first or most pressing operation employing the religious mind4 ,its first business is rather the work of propitiation2 before we stop to contemplate the deity we hasten to appease it1 to welcome it1 or to get out of its way4 ,cult precedes fable and helps to frame it1 because the feeling of need or fear is a practical feeling1 and the ideas it may awaken are only incidental to the reactions it prompts4 ,worship is therefore earlier and nearer to the roots of religion than dogma is4 ,sidenote3 ,pathetic1 tentative nature of religious practices4 ,at the same time1 since those reactions which are directly efficacious go to form arts and industrial habits1 and eventually put before us the world of science and common-sense1 religious practice and thought are confined to the sphere in which direct manipulation of things is impossible4 ,cultus is always distinguishable from industry1 even when the worshipper's motives are most sordid and his notions most material2 for in religious operations the changes worked or expected can never be traced consecutively4 ,there is a break1 often a complete diversity and disproportion1 between effort and result4 ,religion is a form of rational living more empirical1 looser1 more primitive than art4 ,man's consciousness in it is more immersed in nature1 nearer to a vegetative union with the general life2 it bemoans division and celebrates harmony with a more passive and lyrical wonder4 ,the element of action proper to religion is extremely arbitrary1 and we are often at a loss to see in what way the acts recommended conduce at all to the result foretold4 ,as theoretical superstition stops at any cause1 so practical superstition seizes on any means4 ,religion arises under high pressure3 in the last extremity1 every one appeals to ,god4 ,but in the last extremity all known methods of action have proved futile2 when resources are exhausted and ideas fail1 if there is still vitality in the will it sends a supreme appeal to the supernatural4 ,this appeal is necessarily made in the dark3 it is the appeal of a conscious impotence1 of an avowed perplexity4 ,what a man in such a case may come to do to propitiate the deity1 or to produce by magic a result he cannot produce by art1 will obviously be some random action4 ,he will be driven back to the place where instinct and reason begin4 ,his movement will be absolutely experimental1 altogether spontaneous4 ,he will have no reason for what he does1 save that he must do something4 ,sidenote3 ,meanness and envy in the gods1 suggesting sacrifice4 ,what he will do1 however1 will not be very original2 a die must fall on some one of its six faces1 shake it as much as you please4 ,when ,don ,quixote1 seeking to do good absolutely at a venture1 let the reins drop on ,rocinante's neck1 the poor beast very naturally followed the highway2 and a man wondering what will please heaven can ultimately light on nothing but what might please himself4 ,it is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion1 even the highest1 attributes to the deity1 and from what a hard-pressed and bitter existence they have been drawn4 ,to be given the best morsel1 to be remembered1 to be praised1 to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously--these have been thought points of honour with the gods1 for which they would dispense favours and punishments on the most exorbitant scale4 ,indeed1 the widespread practice of sacrifice1 like all mutilations and penances1 suggests an even meaner jealousy and malice in the gods2 for the disciplinary functions which these things may have were not aimed at in the beginning1 and would not have associated them particularly with religion4 ,in setting aside the fat for the gods' pleasure1 in sacrificing the first-born1 in a thousand other cruel ceremonies1 the idea apparently was that an envious onlooker1 lurking unseen1 might poison the whole1 or revenge himself for not having enjoyed it1 unless a part--possibly sufficient for his hunger--were surrendered to him voluntarily4 ,this onlooker was a veritable demon1 treated as a man treats a robber to whom he yields his purse that his life may be spared4 ,to call the gods envious has a certain symbolic truth1 in that earthly fortunes are actually precarious2 and such an observation might inspire detachment from material things and a kind of philosophy4 ,but what at first inspires sacrifice is a literal envy imputed to the gods1 a spirit of vengeance and petty ill-will2 so that they grudge a man even the good things which they cannot enjoy themselves4 ,if the god is a tyrant1 the votary will be a tax-payer surrendering his tithes to secure immunity from further levies or from attack by other potentates4 ,god and man will be natural enemies1 living in a sort of politic peace4 ,sidenote3 ,ritualistic arts4 ,sacrifices are far from having merely this sinister meaning4 ,once inaugurated they suggest further ideas1 and from the beginning they had happier associations4 ,the sacrifice was incidental to a feast1 and the plenty it was to render safe existed already4 ,what was a bribe1 offered in the spirit of barter1 to see if the envious power could not be mollified by something less than the total ruin of his victims1 could easily become a genial distribution of what custom assigned to each3 so much to the chief1 so much to the god1 so much to the husbandman4 ,there is a certain openness1 and as it were the form of justice1 in giving each what is conventionally his due1 however little he may really deserve it4 ,in religious observances this sentiment plays an important part1 and men find satisfaction in fulfilling in a seemly manner what is prescribed2 and since they know little about the ground or meaning of what they do1 they feel content and safe if at least they have done it properly4 ,sacrifices are often performed in this spirit2 and when a beautiful order and religious calm have come to dignify the performance1 the mind1 having meantime very little to occupy it1 may embroider on the given theme4 ,it is then that fable1 and new religious sentiments suggested by fable1 appear prominently on the scene4 ,sidenote3 ,thank-offerings4 ,in agricultural rites1 for instance1 sacrifice will naturally be offered to the deity presiding over germination2 that is the deity that might1 perhaps1 withdraw his favour with disastrous results4 ,he commonly proves1 however1 a kindly and responsive being1 and in offering to him a few sheaves of corn1 some barley-cakes1 or a libation from the vintage1 the public is grateful rather than calculating2 the sacrifice has become an act of thanksgiving4 ,so in ,christian devotion 7which often follows primitive impulses and repeats the dialectic of paganism in a more speculative region7 the redemption did not remain merely expiatory4 ,it was not merely a debt to be paid off and a certain quantum of suffering to be endured which had induced the ,son of ,god to become man and to take up his cross4 ,it was1 so the subtler theologians declared1 an act of affection as much as of pity2 and the spell of the doctrine over the human heart lay in feeling that ,god wished to assimilate himself to man1 rather than simply from above to declare him forgiven2 so that the incarnation was in effect a rehabilitation of man1 a redemption in itself1 and a forgiveness4 ,men like to think that ,god has sat at their table and walked among them in disguise4 ,the idea is flattering2 it suggests that the courtesy may some day be returned1 and for those who can look so deep it expresses pointedly the philosophic truth of the matter4 ,for are not the gods1 too1 in eternal travail after their ideal1 and is not man a part of the world1 and his art a portion of the divine wisdom8 ,if the incarnation was a virtual redemption1 the truest incarnation was the laborious creation itself4 ,sidenote3 ,the sacrifice of a contrite heart4 ,if sacrifice1 in its more amiable aspect1 can become thanksgiving and an expression of profitable dependence1 it can suffer an even nobler transformation while retaining all its austerity4 ,renunciation is the corner-stone of wisdom1 the condition of all genuine achievement4 ,the gods1 in asking for a sacrifice1 may invite us to give up not a part of our food or of our liberty but the foolish and inordinate part of our wills4 ,the sacrifice may be dictated to us not by a jealous enemy needing to be pacified but by a far-seeing friend1 wishing we may not be deceived4 ,if what we are commanded to surrender is only what is doing us harm1 the god demanding the sacrifice is our own ideal4 ,he has no interests in the case other than our own2 he is no part of the environment2 he is the goal that determines for us how we should proceed in order to realise as far as possible our inmost aspirations4 ,when religion reaches this phase it has become thoroughly moral4 ,it has ceased to represent or misrepresent material conditions1 and has learned to embody spiritual goods4 ,sacrifice is a rite1 and rites can seldom be made to embody ideas exclusively moral4 ,something dramatic or mystical will cling to the performance1 and1 even when the effect of it is to purify1 it will bring about an emotional catharsis rather than a moral improvement4 ,the mass is a ritual sacrifice1 and the communion is a part of it1 having the closest resemblance to what sacrifices have always been4 ,among the devout these ceremonies1 and the lyric emotions they awaken1 have a quite visible influence2 but the spell is mystic1 the god soon recedes1 and it would be purely fanciful to maintain that any permanent moral effect comes from such an exercise4 ,the ,church has felt as much and introduced the confession1 where a man may really be asked to consider what sacrifices he should make for his part1 and in what practical direction he should imagine himself to be drawn by the vague ,dionysiac influences to which the ritual subjects him4 ,sidenote3 ,prayer is not utilitarian in essence4 ,as sacrifice expresses fear1 prayer expresses need4 ,common-sense thinks of language as something meant to be understood by another and to produce changes in his disposition and behaviour1 but language has pre-rational uses1 of which poetry and prayer are perhaps the chief4 ,a man overcome by passion assumes dramatic attitudes surely not intended to be watched and interpreted2 like tears1 gestures may touch an observer's heart1 but they do not come for that purpose4 ,so the fund of words and phrases latent in the mind flow out under stress of emotion2 they flow because they belong to the situation1 because they fill out and complete a perception absorbing the mind2 they do not flow primarily to be listened to4 ,the instinct to pray is one of the chief avenues to the deity1 and the form prayer takes helps immensely to define the power it is addressed to2 indeed1 it is in the act of praying that men formulate to themselves what ,god must be1 and tell him at great length what they believe and what they expect of him4 ,the initial forms of prayer are not so absurd as the somewhat rationalised forms of it4 ,unlike sacrifice1 prayer seems to be justified by its essence and to be degraded by the transformations it suffers in reflection1 when men try to find a place for it in their cosmic economy2 for its essence is poetical1 expressive1 contemplative1 and it grows more and more nonsensical the more people insist on making it a prosaic1 commercial exchange of views between two interlocutors4 ,prayer is a soliloquy2 but being a soliloquy expressing need1 and being furthermore1 like sacrifice1 a desperate expedient which men fly to in their impotence1 it looks for an effect3 to cry aloud1 to make vows1 to contrast eloquently the given with the ideal situation1 is certainly as likely a way of bringing about a change for the better as it would be to chastise one's self severely1 or to destroy what one loves best1 or to perform acts altogether trivial and arbitrary4 ,prayer also is magic1 and as such it is expected to do work4 ,the answer looked for1 or one which may be accepted instead1 very often ensues2 and it is then that mythology begins to enter in and seeks to explain by what machinery of divine passions and purposes that answering effect was produced4 ,sidenote3 ,its supposed efficacy magical4 ,magic is in a certain sense the mother of art1 art being the magic that succeeds and can establish itself4 ,for this very reason mere magic is never appealed to when art has been found1 and no unsophisticated man prays to have that done for him which he knows how to do for himself4 ,when his art fails1 if his necessity still presses1 he appeals to magic1 and he prays when he no longer can control the event1 provided this event is momentous to him4 ,prayer is not a substitute for work2 it is a desperate effort to work further and to be efficient beyond the range of one's powers4 ,it is not the lazy who are most inclined to prayer2 those pray most who care most1 and who1 having worked hard1 find it intolerable to be defeated4 ,sidenote3 ,theological puzzles4 ,no chapter in theology is more unhappy than that in which a material efficacy is assigned to prayer4 ,in the first place the facts contradict the notion that curses can bring evil or blessings can cure2 and it is not observed that the most orthodox and hard-praying army wins the most battles4 ,the facts1 however1 are often against theology1 which has to rely on dialectical refinements to explain them away2 but unfortunately in this instance dialectic is no less hostile than experience4 ,god must know our necessities before we ask and1 if he is good1 must already have decided what he would do for us4 ,prayer1 like every other act1 becomes in a providential world altogether perfunctory and histrionic2 we are compelled to go through it1 it is set down for us in the play1 but it lacks altogether that moral value which we assign to it4 ,when our prayers fail1 it must be better than if they had succeeded1 so that prayer1 with all free preference whatsoever1 becomes an absurdity4 ,the trouble is much deeper than that which so many people find in determinism4 ,a physical predetermination1 in making all things necessary1 leaves all values entire1 and my preferences1 though they cannot be efficacious unless they express preformed natural forces1 are not invalidated ideally4 ,it is still true that the world would have been better to all eternity if my will also could have been fulfilled4 ,a providential optimism1 on the contrary1 not merely predetermines events but discounts values2 and it reduces every mortal aspiration1 every pang of conscience2 every wish that things should be better than they are1 to a blind impertinence1 nay1 to a sacrilege4 ,thus1 you may not pray that ,god's kingdom may come1 but only--what is not a prayer but a dogma--that it has come already4 ,the mythology that pretends to justify prayer by giving it a material efficacy misunderstands prayer completely and makes it ridiculous1 for it turns away from the heart1 which prayer expresses pathetically1 to a fabulous cosmos where aspirations have been turned into things and have thereby stifled their own voices4 ,sidenote3 ,a real efficacy would be mechanical4 ,the situation would not be improved if we surrendered that mystical optimism1 and maintained that prayer might really attract super-human forces to our aid by giving them a signal without which they would not have been able to reach us4 ,if experience lent itself to such a theory there would be nothing in it more impossible than in ordinary telepathy2 prayer would then be an art like conversation1 and the exact personages and interests would be discoverable to which we might appeal4 ,a celestial diplomacy might then be established not very unlike primitive religions4 ,religion would have reverted to industry and science1 to which the grosser spirits that take refuge under it have always wished to assimilate it4 ,but is it really the office of religion to work upon external powers and extract from them certain calculable effects8 ,is it an art1 like empiric medicine1 and merely a dubious and mystic industry8 ,if so1 it exists only by imperfection2 were it better developed it would coincide with those material and social arts with which it is identical in essence4 ,successful religion1 like successful magic1 would have passed into the art of exploiting the world4 ,sidenote3 ,true uses of prayer4 ,what successful religion really should pass into is contemplation1 ideality1 poetry1 in the sense in which poetry includes all imaginative moral life4 ,that this is what religion looks to is very clear in prayer and in the efficacy which prayer consistently can have4 ,in rational prayer the soul may be said to accomplish three things important to its welfare3 it withdraws within itself and defines its good1 it accommodates itself to destiny1 and it grows like the ideal which it conceives4 ,sidenote3 ,it clarifies the ideal4 ,if prayer springs from need it will naturally dwell on what would satisfy that necessity2 sometimes1 indeed1 it does nothing else but articulate and eulogise what is most wanted and prized4 ,this object will often be particular1 and so it should be1 since ,socrates' prayer 8for the best0 would be perfunctory and vapid indeed in a man whose life had not been spent1 like ,socrates'1 in defining what the best was4 ,yet any particular good lies in a field of relations2 it has associates and implications1 so that the mind dwelling on it and invoking its presence will naturally be enticed also into its background1 and will wander there1 perhaps to come upon greater goods1 or upon evils which the coveted good would make inevitable4 ,an earnest consideration1 therefore1 of anything desired is apt to enlarge and generalise aspiration till it embraces an ideal life2 for from almost any starting-point the limits and contours of mortal happiness are soon descried4 ,prayer1 inspired by a pressing need1 already relieves its importunity by merging it in the general need of the spirit and of mankind4 ,it therefore calms the passions in expressing them1 like all idealisation1 and tends to make the will conformable with reason and justice4 ,sidenote3 ,it reconciles to the inevitable4 ,a comprehensive ideal1 however1 is harder to realise than a particular one3 the rain wished for may fall1 the death feared may be averted1 but the kingdom of heaven does not come4 ,it is in the very essence of prayer to regard a denial as possible4 ,there would be no sense in defining and begging for the better thing if that better thing had at any rate to be4 ,the possibility of defeat is one of the circumstances with which meditation must square the ideal2 seeing that my prayer may not be granted1 what in that case should ,i pray for next8 ,now the order of nature is in many respects well known1 and it is clear that all realisable ideals must not transgress certain bounds4 ,the practical ideal1 that which under the circumstances it is best to aim at and pray for1 will not rebel against destiny4 ,conformity is an element in all religion and submission in all prayer2 not because what must be is best1 but because the best that may be pursued rationally lies within the possible1 and can be hatched only in the general womb of being4 ,the prayer1 8,thy will be done10 if it is to remain a prayer1 must not be degraded from its original meaning1 which was that an unfulfilled ideal should be fulfilled2 it expressed aspiration after the best1 not willingness to be satisfied with1 anything4 ,yet the inevitable must be accepted1 and it is easier to change the human will than the laws of nature4 ,to wean the mind from extravagant desires and teach it to find excellence in what life affords1 when life is made as worthy as possible1 is a part of wisdom and religion4 ,prayer1 by confronting the ideal with experience and fate1 tends to render that ideal humble1 practical1 and efficacious4 ,sidenote3 ,it fosters spiritual life by conceiving it in its perfection4 ,a sense for human limitations1 however1 has its foil in the ideal of deity1 which is nothing but the ideal of man freed from those limitations which a humble and wise man accepts for himself1 but which a spiritual man never ceases to feel as limitations4 ,man1 for instance1 is mortal1 and his whole animal and social economy is built on that fact1 so that his practical ideal must start on that basis1 and make the best of it2 but immortality is essentially better1 and the eternal is in many ways constantly present to a noble mind2 the gods therefore are immortal1 and to speak their language in prayer is to learn to see all things as they do and as reason must1 under the form of eternity4 ,the gods are furthermore no respecters of persons2 they are just1 for it is man's ideal to be so4 ,prayer1 since it addresses deity1 will in the end blush to be selfish and partial2 the majesty of the divine mind envisaged and consulted will tend to pass into the human mind4 ,this use of prayer has not been conspicuous in ,christian times1 because1 instead of assimilating the temporal to the eternal1 men have assimilated the eternal to the temporal1 being perturbed fanatics in religion rather than poets and idealists4 ,pagan devotion1 on the other hand1 was full of this calmer spirit4 ,the gods1 being frankly natural1 could be truly ideal4 ,they embodied what was fairest in life and loved men who resembled them1 so that it was delightful and ennobling to see their images everywhere1 and to keep their names and story perpetually in mind4 ,they did not by their influence alienate man from his appropriate happiness1 but they perfected it by their presence4 ,peopling all places1 changing their forms as all living things must according to place and circumstance1 they showed how all kinds of being1 if perfect in their kind1 might be perfectly good4 ,they asked for a reverence consistent with reason1 and exercised prerogatives that let man free4 ,their worship was a perpetual lesson in humanity1 moderation1 and beauty4 ,something pre-rational and monstrous often peeped out behind their serenity1 as it does beneath the human soul1 and there was certainly no lack of wildness and mystic horror in their apparitions4 ,the ideal must needs betray those elemental forces on which1 after all1 it rests2 but reason exists to exorcise their madness and win them over to a steady expression of themselves and of the good4 ,sidenote3 ,discipline and contemplation are their own reward4 ,prayer1 in fine1 though it accomplishes nothing material1 constitutes something spiritual4 ,it will not bring rain1 but until rain comes it may cultivate hope and resignation and may prepare the heart for any issue1 opening up a vista in which human prosperity will appear in its conditioned existence and conditional value4 ,a candle wasting itself before an image will prevent no misfortune1 but it may bear witness to some silent hope or relieve some sorrow by expressing it2 it may soften a little the bitter sense of impotence which would consume a mind aware of physical dependence but not of spiritual dominion4 ,worship1 supplication1 reliance on the gods1 express both these things in an appropriate parable4 ,physical impotence is expressed by man's appeal for help2 moral dominion by belief in ,god's omnipotence4 ,this belief may afterwards seem to be contradicted by events4 ,it would be so in truth if ,god's omnipotence stood for a material magical control of events by the values they were to generate4 ,but the believer knows in his heart1 in spite of the confused explanations he may give of his feelings1 that a material efficacy is not the test of his faith4 ,his faith will survive any outward disappointment4 ,in fact1 it will grow by that discipline and not become truly religious until it ceases to be a foolish expectation of improbable things and rises on stepping-stones of its material disappointments into a spiritual peace4 ,what would sacrifice be but a risky investment if it did not redeem us from the love of those things which it asks us to surrender8 ,what would be the miserable fruit of an appeal to ,god which1 after bringing us face to face with him1 left us still immersed in what we could have enjoyed without him8 ,the real use and excuse for magic is this1 that by enticing us1 in the service of natural lusts1 into a region above natural instrumentalities1 it accustoms us to that rarer atmosphere1 so that we may learn to breathe it for its own sake4 ,by the time we discover the mechanical futility of religion we may have begun to blush at the thought of using religion mechanically2 for what should be the end of life if friendship with the gods is a means only8 ,when thaumaturgy is discredited1 the childish desire to work miracles may itself have passed away4 ,before we weary of the attempt to hide and piece out our mortality1 our concomitant immortality may have dawned upon us4 ,while we are waiting for the command to take up our bed and walk we may hear a voice saying3 ,thy sins are forgiven thee4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,mythology ,sidenote3 ,status of fable in the mind4 ,primitive thought has the form of poetry and the function of prose4 ,being thought1 it distinguishes objects from the experience that reveals them and it aspires to know things as they are2 but being poetical1 it attributes to those objects all the qualities which the experience of them contains1 and builds them out imaginatively in all directions1 without distinguishing what is constant and efficacious in them4 ,this primitive habit of thought survives in mythology1 which is an observation of things encumbered with all they can suggest to a dramatic fancy4 ,it is neither conscious poetry nor valid science1 but the common root and raw material of both4 ,free poetry is a thing which early man is too poor to indulge in2 his wide-open eyes are too intently watching this ominous and treacherous world4 ,for pure science he has not enough experience1 no adequate power to analyse1 remember1 and abstract2 his soul is too hurried and confused1 too thick with phantoms1 to follow abstemiously the practical threads through the labyrinth4 ,his view of things is immensely overloaded2 what he gives out for description is more than half soliloquy2 but his expression of experience is for that very reason adequate and quite sincere4 ,belief1 which we have come to associate with religion1 belongs really to science2 myths are not believed in1 they are conceived and understood4 ,to demand belief for an idea is already to contrast interpretation with knowledge2 it is to assert that that idea has scientific truth4 ,mythology cannot flourish in that dialectical air2 it belongs to a deeper and more ingenuous level of thought1 when men pored on the world with intense indiscriminate interest1 accepting and recording the mind's vegetation no less than that observable in things1 and mixing the two developments together in one wayward drama4 ,sidenote3 ,it requires genius4 ,a good mythology cannot be produced without much culture and intelligence4 ,stupidity is not poetical4 ,nor is mythology essentially a half-way house between animal vagueness in the soul and scientific knowledge4 ,it is conceivable that some race1 not so dreamful as ours1 should never have been tempted to use psychic and passionate categories in reading nature1 but from the first should have kept its observations sensuous and pure1 elaborating them only on their own plane1 mathematically and dialectically4 ,such a race1 however1 could hardly have had lyric or dramatic genius1 and even in natural science1 which requires imagination1 they might never have accomplished anything4 ,the ,hebrews1 denying themselves a rich mythology1 remained without science and plastic art2 the ,chinese1 who seem to have attained legality and domestic arts and a tutored sentiment without passing through such imaginative tempests as have harassed us1 remain at the same time without a serious science or philosophy4 ,the ,greeks1 on the contrary1 precisely the people with the richest and most irresponsible myths1 first conceived the cosmos scientifically1 and first wrote rational history and philosophy4 ,so true it is that vitality in any mental function is favourable to vitality in the whole mind4 ,illusions incident to mythology are not dangerous in the end1 because illusion finds in experience a natural though painful cure4 ,extravagant error is unstable1 unless it be harmless and confined to a limbo remote from all applications2 if it touches experience it is stimulating and brief1 while the equipoise of dulness may easily render dulness eternal4 ,a developed mythology shows that man has taken a deep and active interest both in the world and in himself1 and has tried to link the two1 and interpret the one by the other4 ,myth is therefore a natural prologue to philosophy1 since the love of ideas is the root of both4 ,both are made up of things admirable to consider4 ,sidenote3 ,it only half deceives4 ,nor is the illusion involved in fabulous thinking always so complete and opaque as convention would represent it4 ,in taking fable for fact1 good sense and practice seldom keep pace with dogma4 ,there is always a race of pedants whose function it is to materialise everything ideal1 but the great world1 half shrewdly1 half doggedly1 manages to escape their contagion4 ,language may be entirely permeated with myth1 since the affinities of language have much to do with men gliding into such thoughts2 yet the difference between language itself and what it expresses is not so easily obliterated4 ,in spite of verbal traditions1 people seldom take a myth in the same sense in which they would take an empirical truth4 ,all the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected men's natural sentiment in the face of death1 a sentiment which those doctrines1 if taken seriously1 ought wholly to reverse4 ,men almost universally have acknowledged a ,providence1 but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events2 and yet1 if ,providence had ever been really trusted1 those preferences would all have lapsed1 being seen to be blind1 rebellious1 and blasphemous4 ,prayer1 among sane people1 has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end2 a proof that the sphere of expression was never really confused with that of reality4 ,indeed1 such a confusion1 if it had passed from theory to practice1 would have changed mythology into madness4 ,with rare exceptions this declension has not occurred and myths have been taken with a grain of salt which not only made them digestible1 but heightened their savour4 ,it is always by its applicability to things known1 not by its revelation of things unknown and irrelevant1 that a myth at its birth appeals to mankind4 ,when it has lost its symbolic value and sunk to the level of merely false information1 only an inert and stupid tradition can keep it above water4 ,parables justify themselves but dogmas call for an apologist4 ,the genial offspring of prophets and poets then has to be kept alive artificially by professional doctors4 ,a thing born of fancy1 moulded to express universal experience and its veritable issues1 has to be hedged about by misrepresentation1 sophistry1 and party spirit4 ,the very apologies and unintelligent proofs offered in its defence in a way confess its unreality1 since they all strain to paint in more plausible colours what is felt to be in itself extravagant and incredible4 ,sidenote3 ,its interpretative essence4 ,yet if the myth was originally accepted it could not be for this falsity plainly written on its face2 it was accepted because it was understood1 because it was seen to express reality in an eloquent metaphor4 ,its function was to show up some phase of experience in its totality and moral issue1 as in a map we reduce everything geographically in order to overlook it better in its true relations4 ,had those symbols for a moment descended to the plane of reality they would have lost their meaning and dignity2 they would tell us merely that they themselves existed bodily1 which would be false1 while about the real configuration of life they would no longer tell us anything4 ,such an error1 if carried through to the end1 would nullify all experience and arrest all life4 ,men would be reacting on expressions and meeting with nothing to express4 ,they would all be like word-eating philosophers or children learning the catechism4 ,the true function of mythical ideas is to present and interpret events in terms relative to spirit4 ,things have uses in respect to the will which are direct and obvious1 while the inner machinery of these same things is intricate and obscure4 ,we therefore conceive things roughly and superficially by their eventual practical functions and assign to them1 in our game1 some counterpart of the interest they affect in us4 ,this counterpart1 to our thinking1 constitutes their inward character and soul4 ,so conceived1 soul and character are purely mythical1 being arrived at by dramatising events according to our own fancy and interest4 ,such ideas may be adequate in their way if they cover all the uses we may eventually find in the objects they transcribe for us dramatically4 ,but the most adequate mythology is mythology still2 it does not1 like science1 set things before us in the very terms they will wear when they are gradually revealed to experience4 ,myth is expression1 it is not prophecy4 ,for this reason myth is something on which the mind rests2 it is an ideal interpretation in which the phenomena are digested and transmuted into human energy1 into imaginative tissue4 ,sidenote3 ,contrast with science4 ,scientific formulas1 on the contrary1 cry aloud for retranslation into perceptual terms2 they are like tight-ropes1 on which a man may walk but on which he cannot stand still4 ,these unstable symbols lead1 however1 to real facts and define their experimental relations2 while the mind reposing contentedly in a myth needs to have all observation and experience behind it1 for it will not be driven to gather more4 ,the perfect and stable myth would rest on a complete survey and steady focussing of all interests really affecting the one from whose point of view the myth was framed4 ,then each physical or political unit would be endowed with a character really corresponding to all its influence on the thinker4 ,this symbol would render the diffuse natural existences which it represented in an eloquent figure2 and since this figure would not mislead practically it might be called true4 ,but truth1 in a myth1 means a sterling quality and standard excellence1 not a literal or logical truth4 ,it will not1 save by a singular accident1 represent their proper internal being1 as a forthright unselfish intellect would wish to know it4 ,it will translate into the language of a private passion the smiles and frowns which that passion meets with in the world4 ,sidenote3 ,importance of the moral factor4 ,there are accordingly two factors in mythology1 a moral consciousness and a corresponding poetic conception of things4 ,both factors are variable1 and variations in the first1 if more hidden1 are no less important than variations in the second4 ,had fable started with a clear perception of human values1 it would have gained immensely in significance1 because its pictures1 however wrong the external notions they built upon1 would have shown what1 in the world so conceived1 would have been the ideals and prizes of life4 ,thus ,dante's bad cosmography and worse history do not detract from the spiritual penetration of his thought1 though they detract from its direct applicability4 ,had nature and destiny been what ,dante imagined1 his conception of the values involved would have been perfect1 for the moral philosophy he brought into play was ,aristotelian and rational4 ,so his poem contains a false instance or imaginary rehearsal of true wisdom4 ,it describes the ,life of ,reason in a fantastic world4 ,we need only change man's situation to that in which he actually finds himself1 and let the soul1 fathomed and chastened as ,dante left it1 ask questions and draw answers from this steadier dream4 ,sidenote3 ,its submergence4 ,myth travels among the people1 and in their hands its poetic factor tends to predominate4 ,it is easier to carry on the dialectic or drama proper to a fable than to confront it again with the facts and give them a fresh and more genial interpretation4 ,the poet makes the fable2 the sophist carries it on4 ,therefore historians and theologians discuss chiefly the various forms which mythical beings have received1 and the internal logical or moral implications of those hypostases4 ,they would do better to attend instead to the moral factor4 ,however interesting a fable may be in itself1 its religious value lies wholly in its revealing some function which nature has in human life4 ,not the beauty of the god makes him adorable1 but his dispensing benefits and graces4 ,side by side with ,apollo 7a god having moral functions and consequently inspiring a fervent cult and tending himself to assume a moral character7 there may be a ,helios or a ,phathon1 poetic figures expressing just as well the sun's physical operation1 and no less capable1 if the theologian took hold of them1 of suggesting psychological problems4 ,the moral factor1 however1 was not found in these minor deities4 ,only a verbal and sensuous poetry had been employed in defining them2 the needs and hopes of mankind had been ignored4 ,apollo1 on the contrary1 in personifying the sun1 had embodied also the sun's relations to human welfare4 ,the vitality1 the healing1 the enlightenment1 the lyric joy flowing into man's heart from that highest source of his physical being are all beautifully represented in the god's figure and fable4 ,the religion of ,apollo is therefore a true religion1 as religions may be true3 the mythology which created the god rested on a deep1 observant sense for moral values1 and drew a vivid1 if partial1 picture of the ideal1 attaching it significantly to its natural ground4 ,sidenote3 ,myth justifies magic4 ,the first function of mythology is to justify magic4 ,the weak hope on which superstition hangs1 the gambler's instinct which divines in phenomena a magic solicitude for human fortunes1 can scarcely be articulated without seeking to cover and justify itself by some fable4 ,a magic function is most readily conceived and defined by attributing to the object intentions hostile or favourable to men1 together with human habits of passion and discourse4 ,for lack of resources and observations1 reason is seldom able to discredit magic altogether4 ,reasonable men are forced1 therefore1 in order to find some satisfaction1 to make magic as intelligible as possible by assimilating it to such laws of human action as may be already mastered and familiar4 ,magic is thus reduced to a sort of system1 regulated by principles of its own and naturalised1 as it were1 in the commonwealth of science4 ,sidenote3 ,myths might be metaphysical4 ,such an avowed and defended magic usually takes one of two forms4 ,when the miracle is interpreted dramatically1 by analogy to human life1 we have mythology2 when it is interpreted rationalistically1 by analogy to current logic or natural science1 we have metaphysics or theosophy4 ,the metaphysical sort of superstition has never taken deep root in the western world4 ,pythagorean mysteries and hypnotisations1 although periodically fashionable1 have soon shrivelled in our too salubrious and biting air4 ,even such charming exotics as ,plato's myths have not been able to flourish without changing their nature and passing into ordinary dramatic mythology--into a magic system in which all the forces1 once terms in moral experience1 became personal angels and demons4 ,similarly with the ,christian sacraments3 these magic rites1 had they been established in ,india among a people theosophically minded1 might have furnished cues to high transcendental mysteries4 ,baptism might have been interpreted as a symbol for the purged and abolished will1 and ,communion as a symbol for the escape from personality4 ,but ,european races1 though credulous enough1 are naturally positivistic1 so that1 when they were called upon to elucidate their ceremonial mysteries1 what they lit upon was no metaphysical symbolism but a material and historical drama4 ,communion became a sentimental interview between the devout soul and the person of ,christ2 baptism became the legal execution of a mythical contract once entered into between the first and second persons of the ,trinity4 ,thus1 instead of a metaphysical interpretation1 the extant magic received its needful justification through myths4 ,sidenote3 ,they appear ready made1 like parts of the social fabric4 ,when mythology first appears in western literature it already possesses a highly articulate form4 ,the gods are distinct personalities1 with attributes and histories which it is hard to divine the source of and which suggest no obvious rational interpretation4 ,the historian is therefore in the same position as a child who inherits a great religion4 ,the gods and their doings are prima facie facts in his world like any other facts1 objective beings that convention puts him in the presence of and with which he begins by having social relations4 ,he envisages them with respect and obedience1 or with careless defiance1 long before he thinks of questioning or proving their existence4 ,the attitude he assumes towards them makes them in the first instance factors in his moral world4 ,much subsequent scepticism and rationalising philosophy will not avail to efface the vestiges of that early communion with familiar gods4 ,it is hard to reduce to objects of science what are essentially factors in moral intercourse4 ,all thoughts on religion remain accordingly coloured with passion1 and are felt to be1 above all1 a test of loyalty and an index to virtue4 ,the more derivative1 unfathomable1 and opaque is the prevalent idea of the gods1 the harder it is for a rational feeling to establish itself in their regard4 ,sometimes the most complete historical enlightenment will not suffice to dispel the shadow which their moral externality casts over the mind4 ,in vain do we discard their fable and the thin proofs of their existence when1 in spite of ourselves1 we still live in their presence4 ,sidenote3 ,they perplex the conscience4 ,this pathetic phenomenon is characteristic of religious minds that have outgrown their traditional faith without being able to restate the natural grounds and moral values of that somehow precious system in which they no longer believe4 ,the dead gods1 in such cases1 leave ghosts behind them1 because the moral forces which the gods once expressed1 and which1 of course1 remain1 remain inarticulate2 and therefore1 in their dumbness1 these moral forces persistently suggest their only known but now discredited symbols4 ,to regain moral freedom--without which knowledge cannot be put to its rational use in the government of life--we must rediscover the origin of the gods1 reduce them analytically to their natural and moral constituents1 and then proceed to rearrange those materials1 without any quantitative loss1 in forms appropriate to a maturer reflection4 ,of the innumerable and rather monotonous mythologies that have flourished in the world1 only the ,grco-,roman and the ,christian need concern us here1 since they are by far the best known to us and the best defined in themselves1 as well as the only two likely to have any continued influence on the western mind4 ,both these systems pre-suppose a long prior development4 ,the gods of ,greece and of ,israel have a full-blown character when we first meet them in literature4 ,in both cases1 however1 we are fortunate in being able to trace somewhat further back the history of mythology1 and do not depend merely on philosophic analysis to reach the elements which we seek4 ,sidenote3 ,incipient myth in the ,vedas4 ,in the ,vedic hymns there survives the record of a religion remarkably like the ,greek in spirit1 but less dramatic and articulate in form4 ,the gods of the ,vedas are unmistakably natural elements4 ,vulcan is there nothing but fire1 ,jupiter nothing but the sky4 ,this patriarchal people1 fresh from the highlands1 had not yet been infected with the manias and diseases of the jungle4 ,it lived simply1 rationally1 piously1 loving all natural joys and delighted with all the instruments of a rude but pure civilisation4 ,it saluted without servility the forces of nature which ministered to its needs4 ,it burst into song in the presence of the magnificent panorama spread out before it--day-sky and night-sky1 dawn and gloaming1 clouds1 thunder and rain1 rivers1 cattle and horses1 grain1 fruit1 fire1 and wine4 ,nor were the social sanctities neglected4 ,commemoration was made of the stages of mortal life1 of the bonds of love and kinship1 of peace1 of battle1 and of mourning for the dead4 ,by a very intelligible figure and analogy the winds became shepherds1 the clouds flocks1 the day a conqueror1 the dawn a maid1 the night a wise sibyl and mysterious consort of heaven4 ,these personifications were tentative and vague1 and the consequent mythology was a system of rhetoric rather than of theology4 ,the various gods had interchangeable attributes1 and1 by a voluntary confusion1 quite in the manner of later ,hindu poetry1 each became on occasion any or all of the others4 ,here the ,indian pantheistic vertigo begins to appear4 ,many dark superstitions1 no doubt1 bubbled up in the torrent of that plastic reverie2 for this people1 clean and natural as on the whole it appears1 cannot have been without a long and ignoble ancestry4 ,the ,greeks themselves1 heirs to kindred general traditions1 retained some childish and obscene practices in their worship4 ,but such hobgoblins naturally vanish under a clear and beneficent sun and are scattered by healthy mountain breezes4 ,a cheerful people knows how to take them lightly1 play with them1 laugh at them1 and turn them again into figures of speech4 ,among the early speakers of ,sanskrit1 even more than among the ,greeks1 the national religion seems to have been nothing but a poetic naturalism4 ,such a mythology1 however1 is exceedingly plastic and unstable4 ,if the poet is observant and renews his impressions1 his myths will become more and more accurate descriptions of the facts1 and his hypotheses about phenomena will tend to be expressed more and more in terms of the phenomena themselves2 that is1 will tend to become scientific4 ,if1 on the contrary and as usually happens1 the inner suggestions and fertility of his fables absorb his interest1 and he neglects to consult his external perceptions any further1 or even forgets that any such perceptions originally inspired the myth1 he will tend to become a dramatic poet1 guided henceforth in his fictions only by his knowledge and love of human life4 ,sidenote3 ,natural suggestions soon exhausted4 ,sidenote3 ,they will be carried out in abstract fancy4 ,when we transport ourselves in fancy to patriarchal epochs and ,arcadian scenes1 we can well feel the inevitable tendency of the mind to mythologise and give its myths a more and more dramatic character4 ,the phenomena of nature1 unintelligible rationally but immensely impressive1 must somehow be described and digested4 ,but while they compel attention they do not1 after a while1 enlarge experience4 ,husbandmen's lore is profound1 practical1 poetic1 superstitious1 but it is singularly stagnant4 ,the cycle of natural changes goes its perpetual round and the ploughman's mind1 caught in that narrow vortex1 plods and plods after the seasons4 ,apart from an occasional flood1 drought1 or pestilence1 nothing breaks his laborious torpor4 ,the most cursory inspection of field and sky yields him information enough for his needs4 ,practical knowledge with him is all instinct and tradition4 ,his mythology can for that very reason ride on nature with a looser rein4 ,if at the same time1 however1 his circumstances are auspicious and he feels practically secure1 he will have much leisure to ripen inwardly and to think4 ,he hasten to unfold in meditation the abstract potentialities of his mind4 ,his social and ideal passions1 his aptitude for art and fancy1 will arouse within him a far keener and more varied experience than his outer life can supply4 ,yet all his fortunes continue to be determined by external circumstances and to have for their theatre this given and uncontrollable world4 ,some conception of nature and the gods--that is1 in his case1 some mythology--must therefore remain before him always and stand in his mind for the real forces controlling experience4 ,his moral powers and interests have meantime notably developed4 ,his sense for social relations has grown clear and full in proportion as his observation of nature has sunk into dull routine4 ,consequently1 the myths by which reality is represented lose1 so to speak1 their birthright and first nationality4 ,they pass under the empire of abstract cogitation and spontaneous fancy4 ,they become naturalised in the mind4 ,the poet cuts loose from nature and works out instead whatever hints of human character or romantic story the myth already supplies4 ,analogies drawn from moral and passionate experience replace the further portraiture of outer facts4 ,human tastes1 habits1 and dreams enter the fable1 expanding it into some little drama1 or some mystic anagram of mortal life4 ,while in the beginning the sacred poet had transcribed nothing but joyous perceptions and familiar industrial or martial actions1 he now introduces intrigue1 ingenious adventures1 and heroic passions4 ,sidenote3 ,they may become moral ideals4 ,when we turn from the theology of the ,vedas to that of ,homer we see this revolution already accomplished4 ,the new significance of mythology has obscured the old1 and was a symbol for material facts has become a drama1 an apologue1 and an ideal4 ,thus one function of mythology has been nothing less than to carry religion over from superstition into wisdom1 from an excuse and apology for magic into an ideal representation of moral goods4 ,in his impotence and sore need a man appeals to magic2 this appeal he justifies by imagining a purpose and a god behind the natural agency4 ,but after his accounts with the phenomena are settled by his own labour and patience1 he continues to be fascinated by the invisible spirit he has evoked4 ,he cherishes this image2 it becomes his companion1 his plastic and unaccountable witness and refuge in all the exigencies of life4 ,dwelling in the mind continually1 the deity becomes acclimated there2 the worship it receives endows it with whatever powers and ideal faculties are most feared or honoured by its votary4 ,now the thunder and the pestilence which were once its essence come to be regarded as its disguises and its foils4 ,faith comes to consist in disregarding what it was once religion to regard1 namely1 the ways of fortune and the conditions of earthly happiness4 ,thus the imagination sets up its ideals over against the world that occasioned them1 and mythology1 instead of cheating men with false and magic aids to action1 moralises them by presenting an ideal standard for action and a perfect object for contemplation4 ,sidenote3 ,the sun-god moralised4 ,if we consider again1 for instance1 ,apollo's various attributes and the endless myths connected with his name1 we shall find him changing his essence and forgetting to be the material sun in order to become the light of a cultivated spirit4 ,at first he is the sky's child1 and has the moon for twin sister4 ,his mother is an impersonation of darkness and mystery4 ,he travels yearly from the hyperborean regions toward the south1 and daily he traverses the firmament in a chariot4 ,he sleeps in a sea-nymph's bosom or rises from the dawn's couch4 ,in all this we see clearly a scarcely figurative description of the material sun and its motions4 ,a quasi-scientific fancy spins these fables almost inevitably to fill the vacuum not yet occupied by astronomy4 ,such myths are indeed compacted out of wonders1 not indeed to add wonder to them 7for the original and greatest marvel persists always in the sky71 but to entertain us with pleasant consideration of them and with their assimilation to our own fine feats4 ,this assimilation is unavoidable in a poet ignorant of physics1 whom human life must supply with all his vocabulary and similes4 ,fortunately in this need of introducing romance into phenomena lies the leaven that is to leaven the lump1 the subtle influence that is to moralise religion4 ,for presently ,apollo becomes a slayer of monsters 7a function no god can perform until he has ceased to be a monster himself71 he becomes the lovely and valorous champion of humanity1 the giver of prophecy1 of music1 of lyric song1 even the patron of medicine and gymnastics4 ,sidenote3 ,the leaven of religion is moral idealism4 ,what a humane and rational transformation6 ,the spirit of ,socrates was older than the man and had long been at work in the ,greeks4 ,interest had been transferred from nature to art1 from the sources to the fruits of life4 ,we in these days are accustomed as a matter of course to associate religion with ideal interests4 ,our piety1 unlike our barbarous pantheistic theology1 has long lost sight of its rudimentary material object1 and habituated us to the worship of human sanctity and human love4 ,we have need all the more to remember how slowly and reluctantly religion has suffered spiritualisation1 how imperfectly as yet its superstitious origin has been outgrown4 ,we have need to retrace with the greatest attention the steps by which a moral value has been insinuated into what would otherwise be nothing but a medley of magic rites and poetic physics4 ,it is this submerged idealism which alone1 in an age that should have finally learned how to operate in nature and how to conceive her processes1 could still win for religion a philosopher's attention or a legislator's mercy4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,hebraic ,,tradition ,sidenote3 ,phases of ,hebraism4 ,as the ,vedas offer a glimpse into the antecedents of ,greek mythology1 so ,hebrew studies open up vistas into the antecedents of ,christian dogma4 ,christianity in its ,patristic form was an adaptation of ,hebrew religion to the ,grco-,roman world1 and later1 in the ,protestant movement1 a readaptation of the same to what we may call the ,teutonic spirit4 ,in the first adaptation1 ,hebrew positivism was wonderfully refined1 transformed into a religion of redemption1 and endowed with a semi-pagan mythology1 a pseudo-,platonic metaphysics1 and a quasi-,roman organisation4 ,in the second adaptation1 ,christianity received a new basis and standard in the spontaneous faith of the individual2 and1 as the traditions thus undermined in principle gradually dropped away1 it was reduced by the ,german theologians to a romantic and mystical pantheism4 ,throughout its transformations1 however1 ,christianity remains indebted to the ,jews not only for its founder1 but for the nucleus of its dogma1 cult1 and ethical doctrine4 ,if the religion of the ,jews1 therefore1 should disclose its origin1 the origin of ,christianity would also be manifest4 ,now the ,bible1 when critically studied1 clearly reveals the source1 if not of the earliest religion of ,israel1 at least of those elements in later ,jewish faith which have descended to us and formed the kernel of ,christian revelation4 ,the earlier ,hebrews1 as their own records depict them1 had a mythology and cultus extremely like that of other ,semitic peoples4 ,it was natural religion--,i mean that religion which naturally expresses the imaginative life of a nation according to the conceptions there current about the natural world and to the interest then uppermost in men's hearts4 ,it was a religion without a creed or scripture or founder or clergy4 ,it consisted in local rites1 in lunar feasts1 in soothsayings and oracles1 in legends about divine apparitions commemorated in the spots they had made holy4 ,these spots1 as in all the rest of the world1 were tombs1 wells1 great trees1 and1 above all1 the tops of mountains4 ,sidenote3 ,israel's tribal monotheism4 ,a wandering tribe1 at once oppressed and aggressive1 as ,israel evidently was from the beginning is conscious of nothing so much as of its tribal unity4 ,to protect the tribe is accordingly the chief function of its god4 ,whatever character ,jehovah may originally have had1 whether a storm-god of ,sinai or of ,ararat1 or a sacred bull1 or each of these by affinity and confusion with the other1 when the ,israelites had once adopted him as their god they could see nothing essential in him but his power to protect them in the lands they had conquered4 ,to this exclusive devotion of ,jehovah to ,israel1 ,israel responded by a devotion to ,jehovah no less exclusive4 ,they neglected1 when at home1 the worship of every other divinity1 and later even while travelling abroad2 and they tended to deny altogether1 first the comparable power and finally even the existence of other gods4 ,sidenote3 ,problems involved4 ,israel was a small people overshadowed by great empires1 and its political situation was always highly precarious4 ,after a brief period of comparative vigour under ,david and ,solomon 7a period afterward idealised with that oriental imagination which1 creating so few glories1 dreams of so many7 they declined visibly toward an inevitable absorption by their neighbours4 ,but1 according to the significance which religion then had in ,israel1 the ruin of the state would have put ,jehovah's honour and power in jeopardy4 ,the nation and its god were like body and soul2 it occurred to no one as yet to imagine that the one could survive the other4 ,a few sceptical and unpatriotic minds1 despairing of the republic1 might turn to the worship of ,baal or of the stars invoked by the ,assyrians1 hoping thus to save themselves and their private fortunes by a timely change of allegiance4 ,but the true ,jew had a vehement and unshakable spirit4 ,he could not allow the waywardness of events to upset his convictions or the cherished habits of his soul4 ,accordingly he bethought himself of a new way of explaining and meeting the imminent catastrophe4 ,the prophets1 for to them the revolution in question was due1 conceived that the cause of ,israel's misfortunes might be not ,jehovah's weakness but his wrath--a wrath kindled against the immorality1 lukewarmness1 and infidelity of the people4 ,repentance and a change of life1 together with a purification of the cultus1 would bring back prosperity4 ,it was too late1 perhaps1 to rescue the whole state4 ,but a remnant might be saved like a brand from the burning1 to be the nucleus of a great restoration1 the seed of a mighty people that should live for ever in godliness and plenty4 ,jehovah's power would thus be vindicated1 even if ,israel were ruined2 nay1 his power would be magnified beyond anything formerly conceived1 since now the great powers of ,asia would be represented as his instruments in the chastisement of his people4 ,sidenote3 ,the prophets put new wine in old bottles4 ,these views1 if we regarded them from the standpoint common in theology as attempts to re-express the primitive faith1 would have to be condemned as absolutely heretical and spurious4 ,but the prophets were not interpreting documents or traditions2 they were publishing their own political experience4 ,they were themselves inspired4 ,they saw the identity of virtue and happiness1 the dependence of success upon conduct4 ,this new truth they announced in traditional language by saying that ,jehovah's favour was to be won only by righteousness and that vice and folly alienated his goodwill4 ,their moral insight was genuine2 yet by virtue of the mythical expression they could not well avoid and in respect to the old orthodoxy1 their doctrine was a subterfuge1 the first of those after-thoughts and ingenious reinterpretations by which faith is continually forced to cover up its initial blunders4 ,for the ,jews had believed that with such a ,god they were safe in any case2 but now they were told that1 to retain his protection1 they must practice just those virtues by which the heathen also might have been made prosperous and great4 ,it was a true doctrine1 and highly salutary1 but we need not wonder that before being venerated the prophets were stoned4 ,the ideal of this new prophetic religion was still wholly material and political4 ,the virtues1 emphasised and made the chief mark of a religious life1 were recommended merely as magic means to propitiate the deity1 and consequently to insure public prosperity4 ,the thought that virtue is a natural excellence1 the ideal expression of human life1 could not be expected to impress those vehement barbarians any more than it has impressed their myriad descendants and disciples1 ,jewish1 ,christian1 or ,moslem4 ,yet superstitious as the new faith still remained1 and magical as was the efficacy it attributed to virtue1 the fact that virtue rather than burnt offerings was now endowed with miraculous influence and declared to win the favour of heaven1 proved two things most creditable to the prophets3 in the first place1 they themselves loved virtue1 else they would hardly have imagined that ,jehovah loved it1 or have believed it to be the only path to happiness2 and in the second place1 they saw that public events depend on men's character and conduct1 not on omens1 sacrifices1 or intercessions4 ,there was accordingly a sense for both moral and political philosophy in these inspired orators4 ,by assigning a magic value to morality they gave a moral value to religion4 ,the immediate aim of this morality--to propitiate ,jehovah--was indeed imaginary1 and its ultimate aim--to restore the kingdom of ,israel--was worldly2 yet that imaginary aim covered1 in the form of a myth1 a sincere consecration to the ideal1 while the worldly purpose led to an almost scientific conception of the principles and movement of earthly things4 ,sidenote3 ,inspiration and authority4 ,to this transformation in the spirit of the law1 another almost as important corresponded in the letter4 ,scripture was codified1 proclaimed1 and given out formally to be inspired by ,jehovah and written by ,moses4 ,that all traditions1 legends1 and rites were inspired and sacred was a matter of course in antiquity4 ,nature was full of gods1 and the mind1 with its unaccountable dreams and powers1 could not be without them4 ,its inventions could not be less oracular than the thunder or the flight of birds4 ,israel1 like every other nation1 thought its traditions divine4 ,these traditions1 however1 had always been living and elastic2 the prophets themselves gave proof that inspiration was still a vital and human thing4 ,it is all the more remarkable1 therefore1 that while the prophets were preparing their campaign1 under pressure of the same threatened annihilation1 the same puritanical party should have edited a new code of laws and attributed it retroactively to ,moses4 ,while the prophet's lips were being touched by the coal of fire1 the priests and king in their conclave were establishing the ,bible and the ,church4 ,it is easy to suspect1 from the accounts we have1 that a pious fraud was perpetrated on this occasion2 but perhaps the finding of a forgotten book of the ,law and its proclamation by ,josiah1 after consulting a certain prophetess1 were not so remote in essence from prophetic sincerity4 ,in an age when every prophet1 seeing what was needful politically1 could cry1 8,so saith the ,lord10 it could hardly be illegitimate for the priests1 seeing what was expedient legally1 to declare1 8,so said ,moses40 ,conscience1 in a primitive and impetuous people1 may express itself in an apocryphal manner which in a critical age conscience would altogether exclude4 ,it would have been hardly conceivable that what was obviously right and necessary should not be the will of ,jehovah1 manifested of old to the fathers in the desert and now again whispered in their children's hearts4 ,to contrive a stricter observance was an act at once of experimental prudence--a means of making destiny1 perhaps1 less unfavourable--and an act of more fervent worship--a renewal of faith in ,jehovah1 to whose hands the nation was intrusted more solemnly and irrevocably than ever4 ,sidenote3 ,beginnings of the ,church4 ,this pious experiment failed most signally4 ,jerusalem was taken1 the ,temple destroyed1 and the flower of the people carried into exile4 ,the effect of failure1 however1 was not to discredit the ,law and the ,covenant1 now once for all adopted by the unshakable ,jews4 ,on the contrary1 when they returned from exile they re-established the theocracy with greater rigour than ever1 adding all the minute observances1 ritualistic and social1 enshrined in ,leviticus4 ,israel became an ecclesiastical community4 ,the ,temple1 half fortress1 half sanctuary1 resounded with perpetual psalms4 ,piety was fed on a sense at once of consecration and of guidance4 ,all was prescribed1 and to fulfil the ,law1 precisely because it involved so complete and1 as the world might say1 so arbitrary a regimen1 became a precious sacrifice1 a continual act of religion4 ,sidenote3 ,bigotry turned into a principle4 ,dogmas are at their best when nobody denies them1 for then their falsehood sleeps1 like that of an unconscious metaphor1 and their moral function is discharged instinctively4 ,they count and are not defined1 and the side of them that is not deceptive is the one that comes forward4 ,what was condemnable in the ,jews was not that they asserted the divinity of their law1 for that they did with substantial sincerity and truth4 ,their crime is to have denied the equal prerogative of other nations' laws and deities1 for this they did1 not from critical insight or intellectual scruples1 but out of pure bigotry1 conceit1 and stupidity4 ,they did not want other nations also to have a god4 ,the moral government of the world1 which the ,jews are praised for having first asserted1 did not mean for them that nature shows a generic benevolence toward life and reason wherever these arise4 ,such a moral government might have been conceived by a pagan philosopher and was not taught in ,israel until1 selfishness having been outgrown1 the birds and the heathen were also placed under divine protection4 ,what the moral government of things meant when it was first asserted was that ,jehovah expressly directed the destinies of heathen nations and the course of nature itself for the final glorification of the ,jews4 ,no civilised people had ever had such pretensions before4 ,they all recognised one another's religions1 if not as literally true 7for some familiarity is needed to foster that illusion71 certainly as more or less sacred and significant4 ,had the ,jews not rendered themselves odious to mankind by this arrogance1 and taught ,christians and ,moslems the same fanaticism1 the nature of religion would not have been falsified among us and we should not now have so much to apologise for and to retract4 ,sidenote3 ,penance accepted4 ,israel's calamities1 of which the prophets saw only the beginning1 worked a notable spiritualisation in its religion4 ,the happy thought of attributing misfortune to wickedness remained a permanent element in the creed2 but as no scrupulous administration of rites1 no puritanism1 no good conscience1 could avail to improve the political situation1 it became needful for the faithful to reconsider their idea of happiness4 ,since holiness must win divine favour1 and ,israel was undoubtedly holy1 the marks of divine favour must be looked for in ,israel's history4 ,to have been brought in legendary antiquity out of ,egypt was something2 to have been delivered from captivity in ,babylon was more2 yet these signs of favour could not suffice unless they were at the same time emblems of hope4 ,but ,jewish life had meantime passed into a new phase3 it had become pietistic1 priestly1 almost ascetic4 ,such is the might of suffering1 that a race whose nature and traditions were alike positivistic could for the time being find it sweet to wash its hands among the innocent1 to love the beauty of the ,lord's house1 and to praise him for ever and ever4 ,it was agreed and settled beyond cavil that ,god loved his people and continually blessed them1 and yet in the world of men tribulation after tribulation did not cease to fall upon them4 ,there was no issue but to assert 7what so chastened a spirit could now understand7 that tribulation endured for the ,lord was itself blessedness1 and the sign of some mystical election4 ,whom the ,lord loveth he chasteneth2 so the chosen children of ,god were1 without paradox1 to be looked for among the most unfortunate of earth's children4 ,sidenote3 ,christianity combines optimism and asceticism4 ,the prophets and psalmists had already shown some beginnings of this asceticism or inverted worldliness4 ,the ,essenes and the early ,christians made an explicit reversal of ancient ,jewish conceptions on this point the corner-stone of their morality4 ,true1 the old positivism remained in the background4 ,tribulation was to be short-lived4 ,very soon the kingdom of ,god would be established and a dramatic exchange of places would ensue between the proud and the humble4 ,the mighty would be hurled from their seat1 the lowly filled with good things4 ,yet insensibly the conception of a kingdom of ,god1 of a theocracy1 receded or became spiritualised4 ,the joys of it were finally conceived as immaterial altogether1 contemplative1 and reserved for a life after death4 ,although the official and literal creed still spoke of a day of judgment1 a resurrection of the body1 and a ,new ,jerusalem1 these things were instinctively taken by ,christian piety in a more or less symbolic sense4 ,a longing for gross spectacular greatness1 prolonged life1 and many children1 after the good old ,hebraic fashion1 had really nothing to do with the ,christian notion of salvation4 ,salvation consisted rather in having surrendered all desire for such things1 and all expectation of happiness to be derived from them4 ,thus the prophet's doctrine that not prosperity absolutely and unconditionally1 but prosperity merited by virtue1 was the portion of ,god's people changed by insensible gradations to an ascetic belief that prosperity was altogether alien to virtue and that a believer's true happiness would be such as ,saint ,francis paints it3 upon some blustering winter's night1 after a long journey1 to have the convent door shut in one's face with many muttered threats and curses4 ,sidenote3 ,reason smothered between the two4 ,in the history of ,jewish and ,christian ethics the pendulum has swung between irrational extremes1 without ever stopping at that point of equilibrium at which alone rest is possible4 ,yet this point was sometimes traversed and included in the gyrations of our tormented ancestral conscience4 ,it was passed1 for example1 at the moment when the prophets saw that it was human interest that governed right and wrong and conduct that created destiny4 ,but the mythical form in which this novel principle naturally presented itself to the prophets' minds1 and the mixture of superstition and national bigotry which remained in their philosophy1 contaminated its truth and were more prolific and contagious than its rational elements4 ,hence the incapacity of so much subsequent thinking to reach clear ideas1 and the failure of ,christianity1 with its prolonged discipline and opportunities1 to establish a serious moral education4 ,the perpetual painful readjustments of the last twenty centuries have been adjustments to false facts and imaginary laws2 so that neither could a worthy conception of prosperity and of the good be substituted for heathen and ,hebrew crudities on that subject1 nor could the natural goals of human endeavour come to be recognised and formulated1 but all was left to blind impulse or chance tradition4 ,sidenote3 ,religion made an institution4 ,these defeats of reason are not to be wondered at1 if we may indeed speak of the defeat of what never has led an army4 ,the primitive naturalism of the ,hebrews was not yet superseded by prophetic doctrines when a new form of materialism arose to stifle and denaturalise what was rational in those doctrines4 ,even before hope of earthly empire to be secured by ,jehovah's favour had quite vanished1 claims had arisen to supernatural knowledge founded on revelation4 ,mythology took a wholly new shape and alliance with ,god acquired a new meaning and implication4 ,for mythology grew1 so to speak1 double2 moral or naturalistic myths were now reinforced by others of a historical character1 to the effect that the former myths had been revealed supernaturally4 ,at the same time the sign of divine protection and favour ceased to be primarily political4 ,religion now chiefly boasted to possess the ,truth1 and with the ,truth to possess the secret of a perfectly metaphysical and posthumous happiness4 ,revelation1 enigmatically contained in ,scripture1 found its necessary explication in theology1 while the priests1 now guardians of the keys of heaven1 naturally enlarged their authority over the earth4 ,in fine1 the poetic legends and patriarchal worship that had formerly made up the religion of ,israel were transformed into two concrete and formidable engines--the ,bible and the ,church4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,christian ,,epic ,sidenote3 ,the essence of the good not adventitious but expressive4 ,revolutions are ambiguous things4 ,their success is generally proportionate to their power of adaptation and to the reabsorption within them of what they rebelled against4 ,a thousand reforms have left the world as corrupt as ever1 for each successful reform has founded a new institution1 and this institution has bred its new and congenial abuses4 ,what is capable of truly purifying the world is not the mere agitation of its elements1 but their organisation into a natural body that shall exude what redounds and absorb or generate what is lacking to the perfect expression of its soul4 ,whence fetch this seminal force and creative ideal8 ,it must evidently lie already in the matter it is to organise2 otherwise it would have no affinity to that matter1 no power over it1 and no ideality or value in respect to the existences whose standard and goal it was to be4 ,there can be no goods antecedent to the natures they benefit1 no ideals prior to the wills they define4 ,a revolution must find its strength and legitimacy not in the reformer's conscience and dream but in the temper of that society which he would transform2 for no transformation is either permanent or desirable which does not forward the spontaneous life of the world1 advancing those issues toward which it is already inwardly directed4 ,how should a gospel bring glad tidings1 save by announcing what was from the beginning native to the heart8 ,sidenote3 ,a universal religion must interpret the whole world4 ,no judgment could well be shallower1 therefore1 than that which condemns a great religion for not being faithful to that local and partial impulse which may first have launched it into the world4 ,a great religion has something better to consider3 the conscience and imagination of those it ministers to4 ,the prophet who announced it first was a prophet only because he had a keener sense and clearer premonition than other men of their common necessities2 and he loses his function and is a prophet no longer when the public need begins to outrun his intuitions4 ,could ,hebraism spread over the ,roman ,empire and take the name of ,christianity without adding anything to its native inspiration8 ,is it to be lamented that we are not all ,jews8 ,yet what makes the difference is not the teaching of ,jesus--which is pure ,hebraism reduced to its spiritual essence--but the worship of ,christ--something perfectly ,greek4 ,christianity would have remained a ,jewish sect had it not been made at once speculative1 universal1 and ideal by the infusion of ,greek thought1 and at the same time plastic and devotional by the adoption of pagan habits4 ,the incarnation of ,god in man1 and the divinisation of man in ,god are pagan conceptions1 expressions of pagan religious sentiment and philosophy4 ,yet what would ,christianity be without them8 ,it would have lost not only its theology1 which might be spared1 but its spiritual aspiration1 its artistic affinities1 and the secret of its metaphysical charity and joy4 ,it would have remained unconscious1 as the ,gospel is1 that the hand or the mind of man can ever construct anything4 ,among the ,jews there were no liberal interests for the ideal to express4 ,they had only elementary human experience--the perpetual ,oriental round of piety and servitude in the bosom of a scorched1 exhausted country4 ,a disillusioned eye1 surveying such a world1 could find nothing there to detain it2 religion1 when wholly spiritual1 could do nothing but succour the afflicted1 understand and forgive the sinful1 and pass through the sad pageant of life unspotted and resigned4 ,its pity for human ills would go hand in hand with a mystic plebeian insensibility to natural excellence4 ,it would breathe what ,tacitus1 thinking of the liberal life1 could call odium generis humani2 it would be inimical to human genius4 ,sidenote3 ,double appeal of ,christianity4 ,there were1 we may say1 two things in ,apostolic teaching which rendered it capable of converting the world4 ,one was the later ,jewish morality and mysticism1 beautifully expressed in ,christ's parables and maxims1 and illustrated by his miracles1 those cures and absolutions which he was ready to dispense1 whatever their sins1 to such as called upon his name4 ,this democratic and untrammelled charity could powerfully appeal to an age disenchanted with the world1 and especially to those lower classes which pagan polity had covered with scorn and condemned to hopeless misery4 ,the other point of contact which early ,christianity had with the public need was the theme it offered to contemplation1 the philosophy of history which it introduced into the western world1 and the delicious unfathomable mysteries into which it launched the fancy4 ,here1 too1 the figure of ,christ was the centre for all eyes4 ,its lowliness1 its simplicity1 its humanity were indeed1 for a while1 obstacles to its acceptance2 they did not really lend themselves to the metaphysical interpretation which was required4 ,yet even ,greek fable was not without its ,apollo tending flocks and its ,demeter mourning for her lost child and serving in meek disguise the child of another4 ,feeling was ripe for a mythology loaded with pathos4 ,the humble life1 the homilies1 the sufferings of ,jesus could be felt in all their incomparable beauty all the more when the tenderness and tragedy of them1 otherwise too poignant1 were relieved by the story of his miraculous birth1 his glorious resurrection1 and his restored divinity4 ,sidenote3 ,hebrew metaphors become ,greek myths4 ,the gospel1 thus grown acceptable to the pagan mind1 was1 however1 but a grain of mustard-seed destined to branch and flower in its new soil in a miraculous manner4 ,not only was the ,greek and ,roman to refresh himself under its shade1 but birds of other climates were to build their nests1 at least for a season1 in its branches4 ,hebraism1 when thus expanded and paganised1 showed many new characteristics native to the minds which had now adopted and transformed it4 ,the ,jews1 for instance1 like other ,orientals1 had a figurative way of speaking and thinking2 their poetry and religion were full of the most violent metaphors4 ,now to the classic mind violent and improper metaphors were abhorrent4 ,uniting1 as it did1 clear reason with lively fancy1 it could not conceive one thing to be another1 nor relish the figure of speech that so described it1 hoping by that unthinkable phrase to suggest its affinities4 ,but the classic mind could well conceive transformation1 of which indeed nature is full2 and in ,greek fables anything might change its form1 become something else1 and display its plasticity1 not by imperfectly being many things at once1 but by being the perfection of many things in succession4 ,while metaphor was thus unintelligible and confusing to the ,greek1 metamorphosis was perfectly familiar to him4 ,wherever ,hebrew tradition1 accordingly1 used violent metaphors1 puzzling to the ,greek ,christian1 he rationalised them by imagining a metamorphosis instead2 thus1 for instance1 the metaphors of the ,last ,supper1 so harmless and vaguely satisfying to an ,oriental audience1 became the doctrine of transubstantiation--a doctrine where images are indeed lacking to illustrate the concepts1 but where the concepts themselves are not confused4 ,for that bread should become flesh and wine blood is not impossible1 seeing that the change occurs daily in digestion2 what the assertion in this case contradicts is merely the evidence of sense4 ,thus at many a turn in ,christian tradition a metaphysical mystery takes the place of a poetic figure2 the former now expressing by a little miraculous drama the emotion which the latter expressed by a tentative phrase4 ,and the emotion is thereby immensely clarified and strengthened2 it is1 in fact1 for the first time really expressed4 ,for the idea that ,christ stands upon the altar and mingles still with our human flesh is an explicit assertion that his influence and love are perpetual2 whereas the original parable revealed at most the wish and aspiration1 contrary to fact1 that they might have been so4 ,by substituting embodiment for allegory1 the ,greek mind thus achieved something very congenial to its habits3 it imagined the full and adequate expression1 not in words but in existences1 of the emotion to be conveyed4 ,the ,eucharist is to the ,last ,supper what a centaur is to a horseman or a tragedy to a song4 ,similarly a ,dantesque conception of hell and paradise embodies in living detail the innocent apologue in the gospel about a separation of the sheep from the goats4 ,the result is a chimerical metaphysics1 containing much which1 in reference to existing facts1 is absurd2 but that metaphysics1 when taken for what it truly is1 a new mythology1 utters the subtler secrets of the new religion not less ingeniously and poetically than pagan mythology reflected the daily shifts in nature and in human life4 ,sidenote3 ,hebrew philosophy of history identified with ,platonic cosmology4 ,metaphysics became not only a substitute for allegory but at the same time a background for history4 ,neo-,platonism had enlarged1 in a way suited to the speculative demands of the time1 the cosmos conceived by ,greek science4 ,in an intelligible region1 unknown to cosmography and peopled at first by the ,platonic ideas and afterward by ,aristotle's solitary ,god1 there was now the ,absolute ,one1 too exalted for any predicates1 but manifesting its essence in the first place in a supreme ,intelligence1 the second hypostasis of a ,trinity2 and in the second place in the ,soul of the ,world1 the third hypostasis1 already relative to natural existence4 ,now the ,platonists conceived these entities to be permanent and immutable2 the physical world itself had a meaning and an expressive value1 like a statue1 but no significant history4 ,when the ,jewish notion of creation and divine government of the world presented itself to the ,greeks1 they hastened to assimilate it to their familiar notions of imitation1 expression1 finality1 and significance4 ,and when the ,christians spoke of ,christ as the ,son of ,god1 who now sat at his right hand in the heavens1 their ,platonic disciples immediately thought of the ,nous or ,logos1 the divine ,intelligence1 incarnate as they had always believed in the whole world1 and yet truly the substance and essence of divinity4 ,to say that this incarnation had taken place pre-eminently1 or even exclusively1 in ,christ was not an impossible concession to make to pious enthusiasm1 at least if the philosophy involved in the old conception could be retained and embodied in the new orthodoxy4 ,sacred history could thus be interpreted as a temporal execution of eternal decrees1 and the plan of salvation as an ideal necessity4 ,cosmic scope and metaphysical meaning were given to ,hebrew tenets1 so unspeculative in their original intention1 and it became possible even for a ,platonic philosopher to declare himself a ,christian4 ,sidenote3 ,the resulting orthodox system4 ,the eclectic ,christian philosophy thus engendered constitutes one of the most complete1 elaborate1 and impressive products of the human mind4 ,the ruins of more than one civilisation and of more than one philosophy were ransacked to furnish materials for this heavenly ,byzantium4 ,it was a myth circumstantial and sober enough in tone to pass for an account of facts1 and yet loaded with enough miracle1 poetry1 and submerged wisdom to take the place of a moral philosophy and present what seemed at the time an adequate ideal to the heart4 ,many a mortal1 in all subsequent ages1 perplexed and abandoned in this ungovernable world1 has set sail resolutely for that enchanted island and found there a semblance of happiness1 its narrow limits give so much room for the soul and its penitential soil breeds so many consolations4 ,true1 the brief time and narrow argument into which ,christian imagination squeezes the world must seem to a speculative pantheist childish and poor1 involving1 as it does1 a fatuous perversion of nature and history and a ridiculous emphasis laid on local events and partial interests4 ,yet just this violent reduction of things to a human stature1 this half-innocent1 half-arrogant assumption that what is important for a man must control the whole universe1 is what made ,christian philosophy originally appealing and what still arouses1 in certain quarters1 enthusiastic belief in its beneficence and finality4 ,nor should we wonder at this enduring illusion4 ,man is still in his childhood2 for he cannot respect an ideal which is not imposed on him against his will1 nor can he find satisfaction in a good created by his own action4 ,he is afraid of a universe that leaves him alone4 ,freedom appals him2 he can apprehend in it nothing but tedium and desolation1 so immature is he and so barren does he think himself to be4 ,he has to imagine what the angels would say1 so that his own good impulses 7which create those angels7 may gain in authority1 and none of the dangers that surround his poor life make the least impression upon him until he hears that there are hobgoblins hiding in the wood4 ,his moral life1 to take shape at all1 must appear to him in fantastic symbols4 ,the history of these symbols is therefore the history of his soul4 ,sidenote3 ,the brief drama of things4 ,there was in the beginning1 so runs the ,christian story1 a great celestial ,king1 wise and good1 surrounded by a court of winged musicians and messengers4 ,he had existed from all eternity1 but had always intended1 when the right moment should come1 to create temporal beings1 imperfect copies of himself in various degrees4 ,these1 of which man was the chief1 began their career in the year #djjd ,b4,c41 and they would live on an indefinite time1 possibly1 that chronological symmetry might not be violated1 until ,a4,d4 #djjd4 ,the opening and close of this drama were marked by two magnificent tableaux4 ,in the first1 in obedience to the word of ,god1 sun1 moon1 and stars1 and earth with all her plants and animals1 assumed their appropriate places1 and nature sprang into being with all her laws4 ,the first man was made out of clay1 by a special act of ,god1 and the first woman was fashioned from one of his ribs1 extracted while he lay in a deep sleep4 ,they were placed in an orchard where they often could see ,god1 its owner1 walking in the cool of the evening4 ,he suffered them to range at will and eat of all the fruits he had planted save that of one tree only4 ,but they1 incited by a devil1 transgressed this single prohibition1 and were banished from that paradise with a curse upon their head1 the man to live by the sweat of his brow and the woman to bear children in labour4 ,these children possessed from the moment of conception the inordinate natures which their parents had acquired4 ,they were born to sin and to find disorder and death everywhere within and without them4 ,at the same time ,god1 lest the work of his hands should wholly perish1 promised to redeem in his good season some of ,adam's children and restore them to a natural life4 ,this redemption was to come ultimately through a descendant of ,eve1 whose foot should bruise the head of the serpent4 ,but it was to be prefigured by many partial and special redemptions4 ,thus1 ,noah was to be saved from the deluge1 ,lot from ,sodom1 ,isaac from the sacrifice1 ,moses from ,egypt1 the captive ,jews from ,babylon1 and all faithful souls from heathen forgetfulness and idolatry4 ,for a certain tribe had been set apart from the beginning to keep alive the memory of ,god's judgments and promises1 while the rest of mankind1 abandoned to its natural depravity1 sank deeper and deeper into crimes and vanities4 ,the deluge that came to punish these evils did not avail to cure them4 8,the world was renewed,a and the earth rose again above the bosom of the waters1 but in this renovation there remained eternally some trace of divine vengeance4 ,until the deluge all nature had been exceedingly hardy and vigorous1 but by that vast flood of water which ,god had spread out over the earth1 and by its long abiding there1 all saps were diluted2 the air1 charged with too dense and heavy a moisture1 bred ranker principles of corruption4 ,the early constitution of the universe was weakened1 and human life1 from stretching as it had formerly done to near a thousand years1 grew gradually briefer4 ,herbs and roots lost their primitive potency and stronger food had to be furnished to man by the flesh of other animals4444 ,death gained upon life and men felt themselves overtaken by a speedier chastisement4 ,as day by day they sank deeper in their wickedness1 it was but right they should daily1 as it were1 stick faster in their woe4 ,the very change in nourishment made manifest their decline and degradation1 since as they became feebler they became also more voracious and blood-thirsty40 ,henceforth there were two spirits1 two parties1 or1 as ,saint ,augustine called them1 two cities in the world4 ,the ,city of ,satan1 whatever its artifices in art1 war1 or philosophy1 was essentially corrupt and impious4 ,its joy was but a comic mask and its beauty the whitening of a sepulchre4 ,it stood condemned before ,god and before man's better conscience by its vanity1 cruelty1 and secret misery1 by its ignorance of all that it truly behoved a man to know who was destined to immortality4 ,lost1 as it seemed1 within this ,babylon1 or visible only in its obscure and forgotten purlieus1 lived on at the same time the ,city of ,god1 the society of all the souls ,god predestined to salvation2 a city which1 however humble and inconspicuous it might seem on earth1 counted its myriad transfigured citizens in heaven1 and had its destinies1 like its foundations1 in eternity4 ,to this ,city of ,god belonged1 in the first place1 the patriarchs and the prophets who1 throughout their plaintive and ardent lives1 were faithful to what echoes still remained of a primeval revelation1 and waited patiently for the greater revelation to come4 ,to the same city belonged the magi who followed a star till it halted over the stable in ,bethlehem2 ,simeon1 who divined the present salvation of ,israel2 ,john the ,baptist1 who bore witness to the same and made straight its path2 and ,peter1 to whom not flesh and blood1 but the spirit of the ,father in heaven1 revealed the ,lord's divinity4 ,for salvation had indeed come with the fulness of time1 not1 as the carnal ,jews had imagined it1 in the form of an earthly restoration1 but through the incarnation of the ,son of ,god in the ,virgin ,mary1 his death upon a cross1 his descent into hell1 and his resurrection at the third day according to the ,scriptures4 ,to the same city belonged finally all those who1 believing in the reality and efficacy of ,christ's mission1 relied on his merits and followed his commandment of unearthly love4 ,all history was henceforth essentially nothing but the conflict between these two cities2 two moralities1 one natural1 the other supernatural2 two philosophies1 one rational1 the other revealed2 two beauties1 one corporeal1 the other spiritual2 two glories1 one temporal1 the other eternal2 two institutions1 one the world1 the other the ,church4 ,these1 whatever their momentary alliances or compromises1 were radically opposed and fundamentally alien to one another4 ,their conflict was to fill the ages until1 when wheat and tares had long flourished together and exhausted between them the earth for whose substance they struggled1 the harvest should come2 the terrible day of reckoning when those who had believed the things of religion to be imaginary would behold with dismay the ,lord visibly coming down through the clouds of heaven1 the angels blowing their alarming trumpets1 all generations of the dead rising from their graves1 and judgment without appeal passed on every man1 to the edification of the universal company and his own unspeakable joy or confusion4 ,whereupon the blessed would enter eternal bliss with ,god their master and the wicked everlasting torments with the devil whom they served4 ,the drama of history was thus to close upon a second tableau3 long-robed and beatified cohorts passing above1 amid various psalmodies1 into an infinite luminous space1 while below the damned1 howling1 writhing1 and half transformed into loathsome beasts1 should be engulfed in a fiery furnace4 ,the two cities1 always opposite in essence1 should thus be finally divided in existence1 each bearing its natural fruits and manifesting its true nature4 ,let the reader fill out this outline for himself with its thousand details2 let him remember the endless mysteries1 arguments1 martyrdoms1 consecrations that carried out the sense and made vital the beauty of the whole4 ,let him pause before the phenomenon2 he can ill afford1 if he wishes to understand history or the human mind1 to let the apparition float by unchallenged without delivering up its secret4 ,what shall we say of this ,christian dream8 ,sidenote3 ,mythology is a language and must be understood to convey something by symbols4 ,those who are still troubled by the fact that this dream is by many taken for a reality1 and who are consequently obliged to defend themselves against it1 as against some dangerous error in science or in philosophy1 may be allowed to marshal arguments in its disproof4 ,such1 however1 is not my intention4 ,do we marshal arguments against the miraculous birth of ,buddha1 or the story of ,cronos devouring his children8 ,we seek rather to honour the piety and to understand the poetry embodied in those fables4 ,if it be said that those fables are believed by no one1 ,i reply that those fables are or have been believed just as unhesitatingly as the ,christian theology1 and by men no less reasonable or learned than the unhappy apologists of our own ancestral creeds4 ,matters of religion should never be matters of controversy4 ,we neither argue with a lover about his taste1 nor condemn him1 if we are just1 for knowing so human a passion4 ,that he harbours it is no indication of a want of sanity on his part in other matters4 ,but while we acquiesce in his experience1 and are glad he has it1 we need no arguments to dissuade us from sharing it4 ,each man may have his own loves1 but the object in each case is different4 ,and so it is1 or should be1 in religion4 ,before the rise of those strange and fraudulent ,hebraic pretensions there was no question among men about the national1 personal1 and poetic character of religious allegiance4 ,it could never have been a duty to adopt a religion not one's own any more than a language1 a coinage1 or a costume not current in one's own country4 ,the idea that religion contains a literal1 not a symbolic1 representation of truth and life is simply an impossible idea4 ,whoever entertains it has not come within the region of profitable philosophising on that subject4 ,his science is not wide enough to cover all existence4 ,he has not discovered that there can be no moral allegiance except to the ideal4 ,his certitude and his arguments are no more pertinent to the religious question than would be the insults1 blows1 and murders to which1 if he could1 he would appeal in the next instance4 ,philosophy may describe unreason1 as it may describe force2 it cannot hope to refute them4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,a3 ,bossuet3 ,discours sur l'histoire universelle1 ,part ,,ii1 ,chap4 ,i4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,pagan ,,custom ,,and ,,barbarian ,,genius ,,infused ,,into ,,christianity ,sidenote3 ,need of paganising ,christianity4 ,the western intellect1 in order to accept the gospel1 had to sublimate it into a neo-,platonic system of metaphysics4 ,in like manner the western heart had to render ,christianity congenial and adequate by a rich infusion of pagan custom and sentiment4 ,this adaptation was more gentle and facile than might be supposed4 ,we are too much inclined to impute an abstract and ideal ,christianity to the polyglot souls of early ,christians1 and to ignore that mysterious and miraculous side of later paganism from which ,christian cultus and ritual are chiefly derived4 ,in the third century ,christianity and devout paganism were1 in a religious sense1 closely akin2 each differed much less from the other than from that religion which at other epochs had borne or should bear its own name4 ,had ,julian the ,apostate succeeded in his enterprise he would not have rescued anything which the admirers of classic paganism could at all rejoice in2 a disciple of ,iamblichus could not but plunge headlong into the same sea of superstition and dialectic which had submerged ,christianity4 ,in both parties ethics were irrational and morals corrupt4 ,the political and humane religion of antiquity had disappeared1 and the question between ,christians and pagans amounted simply to a choice of fanaticisms4 ,reason had suffered a general eclipse1 but civilisation1 although decayed1 still subsisted1 and a certain scholastic discipline1 a certain speculative habit1 and many an ancient religious usage remained in the world4 ,the people could change their gods1 but not the spirit in which they worshipped them4 ,christianity had insinuated itself almost unobserved into a society full of rooted traditions4 ,the first disciples had been disinherited ,jews1 with religious habits which men of other races and interests could never have adopted intelligently2 the ,church was accordingly wise enough to perpetuate in its practice at least an indispensable minimum of popular paganism4 ,how considerable this minimum was a glance at ,catholic piety will suffice to convince us4 ,sidenote3 ,catholic piety more human than the liturgy4 ,the ,grco-,jewish system of theology constructed by the ,fathers had its liturgical counterpart in the sacraments and in a devout eloquence which may be represented to us fairly enough by the ,roman missal and breviary4 ,this liturgy1 transfused as it is with pagan philosophy and removed thereby from the ,oriental directness and formlessness of the ,bible1 keeps for the most part its theological and patristic tone4 ,psalms abound1 ,virgin1 and saints are barely mentioned1 a certain universalism and concentration of thought upon the ,redemption and its speculative meaning pervades the ,latin ritual sung behind the altar-rails4 ,but any one who enters a ,catholic church with an intelligent interpreter will at once perceive the immense distance which separates that official and impersonal ritual from the daily prayers and practices of ,catholic people4 ,the latter refer to the real exigences of daily life and serve to express or reorganise personal passions4 ,while mass is being celebrated the old woman will tell her beads1 lost in a vague rumination over her own troubles2 while the priests chant something unintelligible about ,abraham or ,nebuchadnezzar1 the housewife will light her wax-candles1 duly blessed for the occasion1 before ,saint ,barbara1 to be protected thereby from the lightning2 and while the preacher is repeating1 by rote1 dialectical subtleties about the union of the two natures in ,christ's person1 a listener's fancy may float sadly over the mystery of love and of life1 and 7being himself without resources in the premises7 he may order a mass to be said for the repose of some departed soul4 ,in a ,catholic country1 every spot and every man has a particular patron4 ,these patrons are sometimes local worthies1 canonised by tradition or by the ,roman see1 but no less often they are simply local appellations of ,christ or the ,virgin1 appellations which are known theoretically to refer all to the same numen1 but which practically possess diverse religious values2 for the miracles and intercessions attributed to the ,virgin under one title are far from being miracles and intercessions attributable to her under another4 ,he who has been all his life devout to ,loreto will not place any special reliance on the ,pillar at ,saragossa4 ,a bereaved mother will not fly to the ,immaculate ,conception for comfort1 but of course to ,our ,lady of the ,seven ,sorrows4 ,each religious order and all the laity more or less affiliated to it will cultivate special saints and special mysteries4 ,there are also particular places and days on which graces are granted1 as not on others1 and the quantity of such graces is measurable by canonic standards4 ,so many days of remitted penance correspond to a work of a certain merit1 for there is a celestial currency in which mulcts and remissions may be accurately summed and subtracted by angelic recorders4 ,one man's spiritual earnings may by gift be attributed and imputed to another1 a belief which may seem arbitrary and superstitious but which is really a natural corollary to fundamental doctrines like the atonement1 the communion of saints1 and intercession for the dead and living4 ,sidenote3 ,natural pieties4 ,another phase of the same natural religion is seen in frequent festivals1 in the consecration of buildings1 ships1 fields1 labours1 and seasons2 in intercessions by the greater dead for the living and by the living for the lesser dead--a perfect survival of heroes and penates on the one hand and of pagan funeral rites and commemorations on the other4 ,add ,lent with its carnival1 ember-days1 all saints' and all souls'1 ,christmas with its magi or its ,saint ,nicholas1 ,saint ,agnes's and ,saint ,valentine's days with their profane associations1 a saint for finding lost objects and another for prospering amourettes1 since all great and tragic loves have their inevitable patrons in ,christ and the ,virgin1 in ,mary ,magdalene1 and in the mystics innumerable4 ,this1 with what more could easily be rehearsed1 makes a complete paganism within ,christian tradition1 a paganism for which little basis can be found in the gospel1 the mass1 the breviary1 or the theologians4 ,yet these accretions were as well authenticated as the substructure1 for they rested on human nature4 ,to feel1 for instance1 the special efficacy of your village ,virgin or of the miraculous ,christ whose hermitage is perched on the overhanging hill1 is a genuine experience4 ,the principle of it is clear and simple4 ,those shrines1 those images1 the festivals associated with them1 have entered your mind together with your earliest feelings4 ,your first glimpses of mortal vicissitudes have coincided with the awe and glitter of sacramental moments in which those numina were invoked2 and on that deeper level of experience1 in those lower reaches of irrationalism in which such impressions lie1 they constitute a mystic resource subsisting beneath all conventions and overt knowledge4 ,when the doctors blunder--as they commonly do--the saints may find a cure2 after all1 the saints' success in medicine seems to a crude empiricism almost as probable as the physicians'4 ,special and local patrons are the original gods1 and whatever religious value speculative and cosmic deities retain they retain surreptitiously1 by virtue of those very bonds with human interests and passionate desires which ancestral demons once borrowed from the hearth they guarded1 the mountain they haunted1 or the sacrifice they inhaled with pleasure1 until their hearts softened toward their worshippers4 ,in itself1 and as a minimised and retreating theology represents it1 a universal power has no specific energy1 no determinate interest at heart2 there is nothing friendly about it nor allied to your private necessities2 no links of place and time fortify and define its influence4 ,nor is it rational to appeal for a mitigation of evils or for assistance against them to the very being that has decreed and is inflicting them for some fixed purpose of its own4 ,sidenote3 ,refuge taken in the supernatural4 ,paganism or natural religion was at first1 like so many crude religious notions1 optimistic and material2 the worshipper expected his piety to make his pot boil1 to cure his disease1 to prosper his battles1 and to render harmless his ignorance of the world in which he lived4 ,but such faith ran up immediately against the facts2 it was discountenanced at every turn by experience and reflection4 ,the whole of nature and life1 when they are understood at all1 have to be understood on an opposite principle1 on the principle that fate1 having naturally furnished us with a determinate will and a determinate endowment1 gives us a free field and no favour in a natural world4 ,hence the retreat of religion to the supernatural1 a region to which in its cruder forms it was far from belonging4 ,now this retreat1 in the case of classic paganism1 took place with the decay of military and political life and would have produced an ascetic popular system1 some compound of ,oriental and ,greek traditions1 even if ,christianity had not intervened at that juncture and opportunely pre-empted the ground4 ,sidenote3 ,the episodes of life consecrated mystically4 ,christianity1 as we have seen1 had elements in it which gave it a decisive advantage2 its outlook was historical1 not cosmic1 and consequently admitted a non-natural future for the individual and for the ,church2 it was anti-political and looked for progress only in that region in which progress was at that time possible1 in the private soul2 it was democratic1 feminine1 and unworldly2 its ,oriental deity and prophets had a primitive simplicity and pathos not found in pagan heroes or polite metaphysical entities2 its obscure ,hebrew poetry opened1 like music1 an infinite field for brooding fancy and presumption4 ,the consequence was a doubling of the world1 so that every ,christian led a dual existence1 one full of trouble and vanity on earth1 which it was piety in him to despise and neglect1 another full of hope and consolation in a region parallel to earth and directly above it1 every part of which corresponded to something in earthly life and could be reached1 so to speak1 by a ,jacob's ladder upon which aspiration and grace ascended and descended continually4 ,birth had its sacramental consecration to the supernatural in baptism1 growth in confirmation1 self-consciousness in confession1 puberty in communion1 effort in prayer1 defeat in sacrifice1 sin in penance1 speculation in revealed wisdom1 art in worship1 natural kindness in charity1 poverty in humility1 death in self-surrender and resurrection4 ,when the mind grew tired of contemplation the lips could still echo some pious petition1 keeping the body's attitude and habit expressive of humility and propitious to receiving grace2 and when the knees and lips were themselves weary1 a candle might be left burning before the altar1 to witness that the desire momentarily forgotten was not extinguished in the heart4 ,through prayer and religious works the absent could be reached and the dead helped on their journey1 and amid earthly estrangements and injustices there always remained the church open to all and the society of heaven4 ,sidenote3 ,paganism chastened1 ,hebraism liberalised4 ,nothing is accordingly more patent than that ,christianity was paganised by the early ,church2 indeed1 the creation of the ,church was itself what to a ,hebraising mind must seem a corruption1 namely1 a mixing of pagan philosophy and ritual with the ,gospel4 ,but this sort of constitutive corruption would more properly be called an adaptation1 an absorption1 or even a civilisation of ,hebraism2 for by this marriage with paganism ,christianity fitted itself to live and work in the civilised world4 ,by this corruption it was completed and immensely improved1 like ,anglo-,saxon by its corruption through ,french and ,latin2 for it is always an improvement in religion1 whose business is to express and inspire spiritual sentiment1 that it should learn to express and inspire that sentiment more generously4 ,paganism was nearer than ,hebraism to the ,life of ,reason because its myths were more transparent and its temper less fanatical2 and so a paganised ,christianity approached more closely that ideality which constitutes religious truth than a bare and intense ,hebraism1 in its hostility to human genius1 could ever have done if isolated and unqualified4 ,sidenote3 ,the system post-rational and founded on despair4 ,the ,christianity which the pagans adopted1 in becoming itself pagan1 remained a religion natural to their country and their heart4 ,it constituted a paganism expressive of their later and calamitous experience1 a paganism acquainted with sorrow1 a religion that had passed through both civilisation and despair1 and had been reduced to translating the eclipsed values of life into supernatural symbols4 ,it became a post-rational religion4 ,of course1 to understand such a system it is necessary to possess the faculties it exercises and the experience it represents4 ,where life has not reached the level of reflection1 religion and philosophy must both be pre-rational2 they must remain crudely experimental1 unconscious of the limits of excellence and life4 ,under such circumstances it is obviously impossible that religion should be reconstituted on a supernatural plane1 or should learn to express experience rather than impulse4 ,now the ,christianity of the gospels was itself post-rational2 it had turned its back on the world4 ,in this respect the mixture with paganism altered nothing2 it merely reinforced the spiritualised and lyric despair of the ,hebrews with the personal and metaphysical despair of the ,romans and ,greeks4 ,for all the later classic philosophy--,stoic1 ,sceptic1 or ,epicurean--was founded on despair and was post-rational4 ,pagan ,christianity1 or ,catholicism1 may accordingly be said to consist of two elements3 first1 the genius of paganism1 the faculty of expressing spiritual experience in myth and external symbol1 and1 second1 the experience of disillusion1 forcing that pagan imagination to take wing from earth and to decorate no longer the political and material circumstances of life1 but rather to remove beyond the clouds and constitute its realm of spirit beyond the veil of time and nature1 in a posthumous and metaphysical sphere4 ,a mythical economy abounding in points of attachment to human experience and in genial interpretations of life1 yet lifted beyond visible nature and filling a reported world1 a world believed in on hearsay or1 as it is called1 on faith--that is ,catholicism4 ,when this religion was established in the ,roman ,empire1 that empire was itself threatened by the barbarians who soon permeated and occupied it and made a new and unhappy beginning to ,european history4 ,they adopted ,christianity1 not because it represented their religious needs or inspiration1 but because it formed part of a culture and a social organisation the influence of which they had not1 in their simplicity1 the means to withstand4 ,during several ages they could only modify by their misunderstandings and inertia arts wholly new to their lives4 ,sidenote3 ,external conversion of the barbarians4 ,what sort of religion these barbarians may previously have had is beyond our accurate knowledge4 ,they handed down a mythology not radically different from the ,grco-,roman1 though more vaguely and grotesquely conceived2 and they recognised tribal duties and glories from which religious sanctions could hardly have been absent4 ,but a barbarian mind1 like a child's1 is easy to convert and to people with what stories you will4 ,the ,northmen drank in with pleased astonishment what the monks told them about hell and heaven1 ,god the ,father and ,god the ,son1 the ,virgin and the beautiful angels2 they accepted the sacraments with vague docility2 they showed a qualified respect1 often broken upon1 it is true1 by instinctive rebellions1 for a clergy which after all represented whatever vestiges of learning1 benevolence1 or art still lingered in the world4 ,but this easy and boasted conversion was fanciful only and skin-deep4 ,a non-,christian ethics of valour and honour1 a non-,christian fund of superstition1 legend1 and sentiment1 subsisted always among medival peoples4 ,their soul1 so largely inarticulate1 might be overlaid with churchly habits and imprisoned for the moment in the panoply of patristic dogma2 but pagan ,christianity always remained a religion foreign to them1 accepted only while their minds continued in a state of helpless tutelage4 ,such a foreign religion could never be understood by them in its genuine motives and spirit4 ,they were without the experience and the plastic imagination which had given it birth4 ,it might catch them unawares and prevail over them for a time1 but even during that period it could not root out from barbarian souls anything opposed to it which subsisted there4 ,it was thus that the ,roman ,church hatched the duck's egg of ,protestantism4 ,sidenote3 ,expression of the northern genius within ,catholicism4 ,in its native seats the ,catholic system prompts among those who inwardly reject it satire and indifference rather than heresy1 because on the whole it expresses well enough the religious instincts of the people4 ,only those strenuously oppose it who hate religion itself4 ,but among converted barbarians the case was naturally different1 and opposition to the ,church came most vehemently from certain religious natures whose instincts it outraged or left unsatisfied4 ,even before heresy burst forth this religious restlessness found vent in many directions4 ,it endowed ,christianity with several beautiful but insidious gifts1 several incongruous though well-meant forms of expression4 ,among these we may count ,gothic art1 chivalrous sentiment1 and even scholastic philosophy4 ,these things came1 as we know1 ostensibly to serve ,christianity1 which has learned to regard them as its own emanations4 ,but in truth they barbarised ,christianity just as ,greek philosophy and worship and ,roman habits of administration had paganised it in the beginning4 ,and barbarised ,christianity1 even before it became heretical1 was something new1 something very different in temper and beauty from the pagan ,christianity of the ,south and ,east4 ,in the ,catholicism of the ,middle ,ages1 as it flourished in the ,north1 the barbarian soul1 apprenticed to monkish masters1 appeared in all its childlike trust1 originality1 and humour4 ,there was something touching and grotesque about it4 ,we seem to see a child playing with the toys of age1 his green hopes and fancies weaving themselves about an antique metaphysical monument1 the sanctuary of a decrepit world4 ,the structure of that monument was at first not affected1 and even when it had been undermined and partially ruined1 its style could not be transformed1 but1 clad in its northern ivy1 it wore at once a new aspect4 ,to races without experience--that is1 without cumulative traditions or a visible past--,christianity could be nothing but a fairy story and a gratuitous hope1 as if they had been told about the ,sultan of ,timbuctoo and promised that they should some day ride on his winged ,arabian horses4 ,the tragic meaning of the ,christian faith1 its immense renunciation of all things earthly and the merely metaphysical glory of its transfigured life1 commonly escaped their apprehension1 as it still continues to do4 ,they listened open-mouthed to the missionary and accepted his asseverations with unsuspecting emotion1 like the ,anglo-,saxon king who likened the soul to a bird flying in and out of a tent at night1 about whose further fortunes any account would be interesting to hear4 ,a seed planted in such a virgin and uncultivated soil must needs bring forth fruit of a new savour4 ,sidenote3 ,internal discrepancies between the two4 ,in northern ,christianity a fresh quality of brooding tenderness prevailed over the tragic passion elsewhere characteristic of ,catholic devotion4 ,intricacy was substituted for dignity and poetry for rhetoric2 the basilica became an abbey and the hermitage a school4 ,the feudal ages were a wonderful seed-time in a world all gaunt with ruins4 ,horrors were there mingled with delicacies and confusion with idyllic peace4 ,it was here a poet's childhood passed amid the crash of war1 there an alchemist's old age flickering away amid cobwebs and gibberish4 ,something jocund and mischievous peeped out even in the cloister2 gargoyles leered from the belfry1 while ivy and holly grew about the cross4 ,the ,middle ,ages were the true renaissance4 ,their ,christianity was the theme1 the occasion1 the excuse for their art and jollity1 their curiosity and tenderness2 it was far from being the source of those delightful inventions4 ,the ,crusades were not inspired by the ,prince of ,peace1 to whose honour they were fancifully and passionately dedicated2 so chivalry1 ,gothic architecture1 and scholastic philosophy were profane expressions of a self-discovering genius in a people incidentally ,christian4 ,the barbarians had indeed been indoctrinated1 they had been introduced into an alien spiritual and historic medium1 but they had not been made over or inwardly tamed4 ,it had perhaps been rendered easier for them1 by contact with an existing or remembered civilisation1 to mature their own genius1 even in the act of confusing its expression through foreign accretions4 ,they had been thereby stimulated to civilise themselves and encouraged also to believe themselves civilised somewhat prematurely1 when they had become heirs merely to the titles and trappings of civilisation4 ,the process of finding their own art and polity1 begun under foreign guidance1 was bound on the whole to diverge more and more from its ,latin model4 ,it consisted now of imitation1 now of revulsion and fanciful originality2 never was a race so much under the sway of fashions4 ,fashion is something barbarous1 for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit4 ,it marks very clearly that margin of irresponsible variation in manners and thoughts which among a people artificially civilised may so easily be larger than the solid core4 ,it is characteristic of occidental society in medival and modern times1 because this society is led by people who1 being educated in a foreign culture1 remain barbarians at heart4 ,to this day we have not achieved a really native civilisation4 ,our art1 morals1 and religion1 though deeply dyed in native feeling1 are still only definable and1 indeed1 conceivable by reference to classic and alien standards4 ,among the northern races culture is even more artificial and superinduced than among the southern2 whence the strange phenomenon of snobbery in society1 affectation in art1 and a violent contrast between the educated and the uneducated1 the rich and the poor1 classes that live on different intellectual planes and often have different religions4 ,some educated persons1 accordingly1 are merely students and imbibers2 they sit at the feet of a past which1 not being really theirs1 can produce no fruit in them but sentimentality4 ,others are merely protestants2 they are active in the moral sphere only by virtue of an inward rebellion against something greater and overshadowing1 yet repulsive and alien4 ,they are conscious truants from a foreign school of life4 ,sidenote3 ,tradition and instinct at odds in ,protestantism4 ,in the ,protestant religion it is necessary to distinguish inner inspiration from historical entanglements4 ,unfortunately1 as the whole doctrinal form of this religion is irrelevant to its spirit and imposed from without1 being due to the step-motherly nurture it received from the ,church1 we can reach a conception of its inner spirit only by studying its tendency and laws of change or its incidental expression in literature and custom4 ,yet these indirect symptoms are so striking that even an outsider1 if at all observant1 need not fear to misinterpret them4 ,taken externally1 ,protestantism is1 of course1 a form of ,christianity2 it retains the ,bible and a more or less copious selection of patristic doctrines4 ,but in its spirit and inward inspiration it is something quite as independent of ,judea as of ,rome4 ,it is simply the natural religion of the ,teutons raising its head above the flood of ,roman and ,judean influences4 ,its character may be indicated by saying that it is a religion of pure spontaneity1 of emotional freedom1 deeply respecting itself but scarcely deciphering its purposes4 ,it is the self-consciousness of a spirit in process of incubation1 jealous of its potentialities1 averse to definitions and finalities of any kind because it can itself discern nothing fixed or final4 ,it is adventurous and puzzled by the world1 full of rudimentary virtues and clear fire1 energetic1 faithful1 rebellious to experience1 inexpert in all matters of art and mind4 ,it boasts1 not without cause1 of its depth and purity2 but this depth and purity are those of any formless and primordial substance4 ,it keeps unsullied that antecedent integrity which is at the bottom of every living thing and at its core2 it is not acquainted with that ulterior integrity1 that sanctity1 which might be attained at the summit of experience through reason and speculative dominion4 ,it accordingly mistakes vitality1 both in itself and in the universe1 for spiritual life4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,protestant spirit remote from that of the gospel4 ,this underlying ,teutonic religion1 which we must call ,protestantism for lack of a better name1 is anterior to ,christianity and can survive it4 ,to identify it with the ,gospel may have seemed possible so long as1 in opposition to pagan ,christianity1 the ,teutonic spirit could appeal to the ,gospel for support4 ,the ,gospel has indeed nothing pagan about it1 but it has also nothing ,teutonic2 and the momentary alliance of two such disparate forces must naturally cease with the removal of the common enemy which alone united them4 ,the ,gospel is unworldly1 disenchanted1 ascetic2 it treats ecclesiastical establishments with tolerant contempt1 conforming to them with indifference2 it regards prosperity as a danger1 earthly ties as a burden1 ,sabbaths as a superstition2 it revels in miracles2 it is democratic and antinomian2 it loves contemplation1 poverty1 and solitude2 it meets sinners with sympathy and heartfelt forgiveness1 but ,pharisees and ,puritans with biting scorn4 ,in a word1 it is a product of the ,orient1 where all things are old and equal and a profound indifference to the business of earth breeds a silent dignity and high sadness in the spirit4 ,protestantism is the exact opposite of all this4 ,it is convinced of the importance of success and prosperity2 it abominates what is disreputable2 contemplation seems to it idleness1 solitude selfishness1 and poverty a sort of dishonourable punishment4 ,it is constrained and punctilious in righteousness2 it regards a married and industrious life as typically godly1 and there is a sacredness to it1 as of a vacant ,sabbath1 in the unoccupied higher spaces which such an existence leaves for the soul4 ,it is sentimental1 its ritual is meagre and unctuous1 it expects no miracles1 it thinks optimism akin to piety1 and regards profitable enterprise and practical ambition as a sort of moral vocation4 ,its ,evangelicalism lacks the notes1 so prominent in the gospel1 of disillusion1 humility1 and speculative detachment4 ,its benevolence is optimistic and aims at raising men to a conventional well-being2 it thus misses the inner appeal of ,christian charity which1 being merely remedial in physical matters1 begins by renunciation and looks to spiritual freedom and peace4 ,protestantism was therefore attached from the first to the ,old ,testament1 in which ,hebrew fervour appears in its worldly and pre-rational form4 ,it is not democratic in the same sense as post-rational religions1 which see in the soul an exile from some other sphere wearing for the moment1 perhaps1 a beggar's disguise3 it is democratic only in the sense of having a popular origin and bending easily to popular forces4 ,swayed as it is by public opinion1 it is necessarily conventional in its conception of duty and earnestly materialistic2 for the meaning of the word vanity never crosses the vulgar heart4 ,in fine1 it is the religion of a race young1 wistful1 and adventurous1 feeling its latent potentialities1 vaguely assured of an earthly vocation1 and possessing1 like the barbarian and the healthy child1 pure but unchastened energies4 ,thus in the ,protestant religion the faith natural to barbarism appears clothed1 by force of historical accident1 in the language of an adapted ,christianity4 ,sidenote3 ,obstacles to humanism4 ,as the ,middle ,ages advanced the new-born human genius which constituted their culture grew daily more playful1 curious1 and ornate4 ,it was naturally in the countries formerly pagan that this new paganism principally flourished4 ,religion began in certain quarters to be taken philosophically2 its relation to life began to be understood1 that it was a poetic expression of need1 hope1 and ignorance4 ,here prodigious vested interests and vested illusions of every sort made dangerous the path of sincerity4 ,genuine moral and religious impulses could not be easily dissociated from a system of thought and discipline with which for a thousand years they had been intimately interwoven4 ,scepticism1 instead of seeming1 what it naturally is1 a moral force1 a tendency to sincerity1 economy1 and fine adjustment of life and mind to experience--scepticism seemed a temptation and a danger4 ,this situation1 which still prevails in a certain measure1 strikingly shows into how artificial a posture ,christianity has thrown the mind4 ,if scepticism1 under such circumstances1 by chance penetrated among the clergy1 it was not favourable to consistency of life1 and it was the more certain to penetrate among them in that their ranks1 in a fat and unscrupulous age1 would naturally be largely recruited by men without conscience or ideal ambitions4 ,it became accordingly necessary to reform something2 either the gay world to suit the ,church's primitive austerity and asceticism1 or the ,church to suit the world's profane and general interests4 ,the latter task was more or less consciously undertaken by the humanists who would have abated the clergy's wealth and irrational authority1 advanced polite learning1 and1 while of course retaining ,christianity--for why should an ancestral religion be changed8--would have retained it as a form of paganism1 as an ornament and poetic expression of human life4 ,this movement1 had it not been overwhelmed by the fanatical ,reformation and the fanatical reaction against it1 would doubtless have met with many a check from the ,church's sincere zealots2 but it could have overcome them and1 had it been allowed to fight reason's battle with reason's weapons1 would ultimately have led to general enlightenment without dividing ,christendom1 kindling venomous religious and national passions1 or vitiating philosophy4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,reformation and counter-reformation4 ,it was not humanism1 however1 that was destined to restrain and soften the ,church1 completing by critical reflection that paganisation of ,christianity which had taken place at the beginning instinctively and of necessity4 ,there was now another force in the field1 the virgin conscience and wilfulness of the ,teutonic races1 sincerely attached to what they had assimilated in ,christianity and now awakening to the fact that they inwardly abhorred and rejected the rest4 ,this situation1 in so uncritical an age1 could be interpreted as a return to primitive ,christianity1 though this had been in truth1 as we may now perceive1 utterly opposed to the ,teutonic spirit4 ,accordingly1 the humanistic movement was crossed and obscured by another1 specifically religious and ostensibly more ,christian than the ,church4 ,controversies followed1 as puerile as they were bloody2 for it was not to be expected that the peoples once forming the ,roman ,empire were going to surrender their ancestral religion without a struggle and without resisting this new barbarian invasion into their imaginations and their souls4 ,they might have suffered their ,christianised paganism to fade with time2 worldly prosperity and arts might have weaned them gradually from their supernaturalism1 and science from their myths2 but how were they to abandon at once all their traditions1 when challenged to do so by a foreign supernaturalism so much poorer and cruder than their own8 ,what happened was that they intrenched themselves in their system1 cut themselves off from the genial influences that might have rendered it innocuous1 and became sectaries1 like their opponents4 ,enlightenment was only to come after a recrudescence of madness and by the mutual slaughter of a fresh crop of illusions1 usurpations1 and tyrannies4 ,sidenote3 ,protestantism an expression of character4 ,it would be easy to write1 in a satirical vein1 the history of ,protestant dogma4 ,its history was foreseen from the beginning by intelligent observers4 ,it consisted in a gradual and inevitable descent into a pious scepticism4 ,the attempt to cling to various intermediate positions on the inclined plane that slopes down from ancient revelation to private experience can succeed only for a time and where local influences limit speculative freedom4 ,you must slide smilingly down to the bottom or1 in horror at that eventuality1 creep up again and reach out pathetically for a resting-place at the top4 ,to insist on this rather obvious situation1 as exhibited for instance in the ,anglican ,church1 would be to thresh straw and to study in ,protestantism only its feeble and accidental side4 ,its true essence is not constituted by the ,christian dogmas that at a given moment it chances to retain1 but by the spirit in which it constantly challenges the others1 by the expression it gives to personal integrity1 to faith in conscience1 to human instinct courageously meeting the world4 ,it rebels1 for instance1 against the ,catholic system of measurable sins and merits1 with rewards and punishments legally adjusted and controlled by priestly as well as by divine prerogative4 ,such a supernatural mechanism seems to an independent and uncowed nature a profanation and an imposture4 ,away1 it says1 with all intermediaries between the soul and ,god1 with all meddlesome priestcraft and all mechanical salvation4 ,salvation shall be by faith alone1 that is1 by an attitude and sentiment private to the spirit1 by an inner co-operation of man with the world4 ,the ,church shall be invisible1 constituted by all those who possess this necessary faith and by no others4 ,it really follows from this1 although the conclusion may not be immediately drawn1 that religion is not an adjustment to other facts or powers1 or to other possibilities1 than those met with in daily life and in surrounding nature1 but is rather a spiritual adjustment to natural life1 an insight into its principles1 by which a man learns to identify himself with the cosmic power and to share its multifarious business no less than its ulterior security and calm4 ,sidenote3 ,it has the spirit of life4 ,protestantism1 in this perfectly instinctive trustfulness and self-assertion1 is not only prior to ,christianity but more primitive than reason and even than man4 ,the plants and animals1 if they could speak1 would express their attitude to their destiny in the ,protestant fashion4 8,he that formed us10 they would say1 8lives and energises within us4 ,he has sealed a covenant with us1 to stand by us if we are faithful and strenuous in following the suggestions he whispers in our hearts4 ,with fidelity to ourselves and1 what is the same thing1 to him1 we are bound to prosper and to have life more and more abundantly for ever40 ,this attitude1 where it concerns religion1 involves two corollaries3 first1 what in accordance with ,hebrew precedent may be called symbolically faith in ,god1 that is1 confidence in one's own impulse and destiny1 a confidence which the world in the end is sure to reward2 and second1 abomination of all contrary religious tenets and practices--of asceticism1 for instance1 because it denies the will2 of idolatry and myth1 because they render divinity concrete rather than relative to inner cravings and essentially responsive2 finally of tradition and institutional authority1 because these likewise jeopardise the soul's experimental development as1 in profound isolation1 she wrestles with reality and with her own inspiration4 ,sidenote3 and of courage4 ,in thus meeting the world the soul without experience shows a fine courage proportionate to its own vigour4 ,we may well imagine that lions and porpoises have a more masculine assurance that ,god is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jelly-fish4 ,this assurance1 when put to the test in adventurous living1 becomes in a strong and high-bred creature a refusal to be defeated1 a gallant determination to hold the last ditch and hope for the best in spite of appearances4 ,it is a part of ,protestantism to be austere1 energetic1 unwearied in some laborious task4 ,the end and profit are not so much regarded as the mere habit of self-control and practical devotion and steadiness4 ,the point is to accomplish something1 no matter particularly what2 so that ,protestants show on this ground some respect even for an artist when he has once achieved success4 ,a certain experience of ill fortune is only a stimulus to this fidelity4 ,so great is the antecedent trust in the world that the world1 as it appears at first blush1 may be confidently defied4 ,sidenote3 but the voice of inexperience4 ,hence1 in spite of a theoretic optimism1 disapproval and proscription play a large part in ,protestant sentiment4 ,the zeal for righteousness1 the practical expectation that all shall be well1 cannot tolerate recognised evils4 ,evils must be abolished or at least hidden2 they must not offend the face of day and give the lie to universal sanctimony4 ,this austerity and repression1 though they involve occasional hypocrisy1 lead also to substantial moral reconstruction4 ,protestantism1 springing from a pure heart1 purifies convention and is a tonic to any society in which it prominently exists4 ,it has the secret of that honest simplicity which belongs to unspoiled youth1 that keen integrity native to the ungalled spirit as yet unconscious of any duplicity in itself or of any inward reason why it should fail4 ,the only evils it recognises seem so many challenges to action1 so many conditions for some glorious unthought-of victory4 ,such a religion is indeed profoundly ignorant1 it is the religion of inexperience1 yet it has1 at its core1 the very spirit of life4 ,its error is only to consider the will omnipotent and sacred and not to distinguish the field of inevitable failure from that of possible success4 ,success1 however1 would never be possible without that fund of energy and that latent resolve and determination which bring also faith in success4 ,animal optimism is a great renovator and disinfectant in the world4 ,sidenote3 ,its emancipation from ,christianity4 ,it was this youthful religion--profound1 barbaric1 poetical--that the ,teutonic races insinuated into ,christianity and substituted for that last sigh of two expiring worlds4 ,in the end1 with the complete crumbling away of ,christian dogma and tradition1 ,absolute ,egotism appeared openly on the surface in the shape of ,german speculative philosophy4 ,this form1 which ,protestantism assumed at a moment of high tension and reckless self-sufficiency1 it will doubtless shed in turn and take on new expressions2 but that declaration of independence on the part of the ,teutonic spirit marks emphatically its exit from ,christianity and the end of that series of transformations in which it took the ,bible and patristic dogma for its materials4 ,it now bids fair to apply itself instead to social life and natural science and to attempt to feed its ,protean hunger directly from these more homely sources4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,conflict ,,of ,,mythology ,,with ,,moral ,,truth ,sidenote3 ,myth should dissolve with the advance of science4 ,that magic and mythology have no experimental sanction is clear so soon as experience begins to be gathered together with any care4 ,as magic attempts to do work by incantations1 so myth tries to attain knowledge by playing with lies4 ,the attempt is in the first instance inevitable and even innocent1 for it takes time to discriminate valid from valueless fancies in a mind in which they spring up together1 with no intrinsic mark to distinguish them4 ,the idle notion attracts attention no less than the one destined to prove significant2 often it pleases more4 ,only watchful eyes and that rare thing1 conscience applied to memory1 can pluck working notions from the gay and lascivious vegetation of the mind1 or learn to prefer ,cinderella to her impudent sisters4 ,if a myth has some modicum of applicability or significance it takes root all the more firmly side by side with knowledge4 ,there are many subjects of which man is naturally so ignorant that only mythical notions can seem to do them justice2 such1 for instance1 are the minds of other men4 ,myth remains for this reason a constituent part even of the most rational consciousness1 and what can at present be profitably attempted is not so much to abolish myth as to become aware of its mythical character4 ,the mark of a myth is that it does not interpret a phenomenon in terms capable of being subsumed under the same category with that phenomenon itself1 but fills it out instead with images that could never appear side by side with it or complete it on its own plane of existence4 ,thus if meditating on the moon ,i conceive her other side or the aspect she would wear if ,i were travelling on her surface1 or the position she would assume in relation to the earth if viewed from some other planet1 or the structure she would disclose could she be cut in halves1 my thinking1 however fanciful1 would be on the scientific plane and not mythical1 for it would forecast possible perceptions1 complementary to those ,i am trying to enlarge4 ,if1 on the other hand1 ,i say the moon is the sun's sister1 that she carries a silver bow1 that she is a virgin and once looked lovingly on the sleeping ,endymion1 only the fool never knew it--my lucubration is mythical2 for ,i do not pretend that this embroidery on the aspects which the moon actually wears in my feeling and in the interstices of my thoughts could ever be translated into perceptions making one system with the present image4 ,by going closer to that disc ,i should not see the silver bow1 nor by retreating in time should ,i come to the moment when the sun and moon were actually born of ,latona4 ,the elements are incongruous and do not form one existence but two1 the first sensible1 the other only to be enacted dramatically1 and having at best to the first the relation of an experience to its symbol4 ,these fancies are not fore-tastes of possible perceptions1 but are free interpretations or translations of the perceptions ,i have actually had4 ,mythical thinking has its roots in reality1 but1 like a plant1 touches the ground only at one end4 ,it stands unmoved and flowers wantonly into the air1 transmuting into unexpected and richer forms the substances it sucks from the soil4 ,it is therefore a fruit of experience1 an ornament1 a proof of animal vitality2 but it is no vehicle for experience2 it cannot serve the purposes of transitive thought or action4 ,science1 on the other hand1 is constituted by those fancies which1 arising like myths out of perception1 retain a sensuous language and point to further perceptions of the same kind2 so that the suggestions drawn from one object perceived are only ideas of other objects similarly perceptible4 ,a scientific hypothesis is one which represents something continuous with the observed facts and conceivably existent in the same medium4 ,science is a bridge touching experience at both ends1 over which practical thought may travel from act to act1 from perception to perception4 ,sidenote3 ,but myth is confused with the moral values it expresses4 ,to separate fable from knowledge nothing is therefore requisite except close scrutiny and the principle of parsimony4 ,were mythology merely a poetic substitute for natural science the advance of science would sufficiently dispose of it4 ,what remained over would1 like the myths in ,plato1 be at least better than total silence on a subject that interests us and makes us think1 although we have no means of testing our thoughts in its regard4 ,but the chief source of perplexity and confusion in mythology is its confusion with moral truth4 ,the myth which originally was but a symbol substituted for empirical descriptions becomes in the sequel an idol substituted for ideal values4 ,this complication1 from which half the troubles of philosophy arise1 deserves our careful attention4 ,european history has now come twice upon the dissolution of mythologies1 first among the ,stoics and then among the ,protestants4 ,the circumstances in the two cases were very unlike2 so were the mythical systems that were discarded2 and yet the issue was in both instances similar4 ,greek and ,christian mythology have alike ended in pantheism4 ,so soon as the constructions of the poets and the ,fathers were seen to be ingenious fictions1 criticism was confronted with an obvious duty3 to break up the mythical compound furnished by tradition into its elements1 putting on one side what natural observation or actual history had supplied1 and on the other what dramatic imagination had added4 ,for a cool and disinterested observer the task1 where evidence and records were not wanting1 would be simple enough4 ,but the critic in this case would not usually be cool or disinterested4 ,his religion was concerned2 he had no other object to hang his faith and happiness upon than just this traditional hybrid which his own enlightenment was now dissolving4 ,to which part should he turn for support8 ,in which quarter should he continue to place the object of his worship8 ,sidenote3 ,neo-,platonic revision4 ,from the age of the ,sophists to the final disappearance of paganism nearly a thousand years elapsed4 ,a thousand years from the infliction of a mortal wound to the moment of extinction is a long agony4 ,religions do not disappear when they are discredited2 it is requisite that they should be replaced4 ,for a thousand years the augurs may have laughed1 they were bound nevertheless to stand at their posts until the monks came to relieve them4 ,during this prolonged decrepitude paganism lived on inertia1 by accretions from the ,orient1 and by philosophic reinterpretations4 ,of these reinterpretations the first was that attempted by ,plato1 and afterward carried out by the neo-,platonists and ,christians into the notion of a supernatural spiritual hierarchy2 above1 a dialectical deity1 the hypostasis of intellect and its ontological phases2 below1 a host of angels and demons1 hypostases of faculties1 moral influences1 and evil promptings4 ,in other words1 in the diremption of myths which yielded here a natural phenomenon to be explained and there a moral value to be embodied1 ,platonism attached divinity exclusively to the moral element4 ,the ideas1 which were essentially moral functions1 were many and eternal2 their physical embodiments were adventitious to them and constituted a lapse1 a misfortune to be wiped out by an eventual reunion of the alienated nature with its own ideal4 ,religion in such a system necessarily meant redemption4 ,in this movement paganism turned toward the future1 toward supernatural and revealed religion1 and away from its own naturalistic principle4 ,revelation1 as ,plato himself had said1 was needed to guide a mind which distrusted phenomena and recoiled from earthly pursuits4 ,sidenote3 ,it made mythical entities of abstractions4 ,this religion had the strength of despair1 but all else in it was weakness4 ,apart from a revelation which1 until ,christianity appeared1 remained nebulous and arbitrary1 there could be no means of maintaining the existence of those hypostasised moral entities4 ,the effort to separate them from the natural functions which they evidently expressed could not succeed while any critical acumen or independence subsisted in the believer4 ,platonism1 to become a religion1 had to appeal to superstition4 ,unity1 for instance 7which1 according to ,plato himself1 is a category applicable to everything concomitantly with the complementary category of multiplicity1 for everything1 he says1 is evidently both one and many7--unity could not become the ,one1 an independent and supreme deity1 unless the meaning and function of unity were altogether forgotten and a foolish idolatry1 agape at words1 were substituted for understanding4 ,some one had to come with an air of authority and report his visions of the ,one before such an entity could be added to the catalogue of actual existences4 ,the reality of all neo-,platonic hypostasis was thus dependent on revelation and on forgetting the meaning once conveyed by the terms so mysteriously transfigured into metaphysical beings4 ,sidenote3 ,hypostasis ruins ideals4 ,this divorce of neo-,platonic ideas from the functions they originally represented in human life and discourse was found in the end to defeat the very interest that had prompted it--enthusiasm for the ideal4 ,enthusiasm for the ideal had led ,plato to treat all beauties as stepping-stones toward a perfect beauty in which all their charms might be present together1 eternally and without alloy4 ,enthusiasm for the ideal had persuaded him that mortal life was only an impeded effort to fall back into eternity4 ,these inspired but strictly unthinkable suggestions fell from his lips in his zeal to express how much the burden and import of experience exceeded its sensuous vehicle in permanence and value4 ,a thousand triangles revealed one pregnant proportion of lines and areas2 a thousand beds and bridles served one perpetual purpose in human life1 and found in fulfilling it their essence and standard of excellence2 a thousand fascinations taught the same lesson and coalesced into one reverent devotion to beauty and nobility wherever they might bloom4 ,it was accordingly a poignant sense for the excellence of real things that made ,plato wish to transcend them2 his metaphysics was nothing but a visionary intuition of values1 an idealism in the proper sense of the word4 ,but when the momentum of such enthusiasm remained without its motive power1 and its transcendence without its inspiration in real experience1 idealism ceased to be an idealisation1 an interpretation of reality reaching prophetically to its goals4 ,it became a super-numerary second physics1 a world to which an existence was attributed which could be hardly conceived and was certainly supported by no evidence1 while that significance which it really possessed in reference to natural processes was ignored1 or even denied4 ,an idealism which had consisted in understanding and discriminating values now became a superstition incapable of discerning existences4 ,it added a prodigious fictitious setting to the cosmos in which man had to operate2 it obscured his real interests and possible happiness by seeking to transport him into that unreal environment1 with its fantastic and disproportionate economy2 and1 worst of all1 it robbed the ideal of its ideality by tearing it up from its roots in natural will and in experienced earthly benefits4 ,for an ideal is not ideal if it is the ideal of nothing4 ,in that case it is only a ghostly existence1 with no more moral significance or authority in relation to the observer than has any happy creature which may happen to exist somewhere in the unknown reaches of the universe4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,stoic revision4 ,meantime1 a second reinterpretation of mythology was attempted by the ,stoics4 ,instead of moving forward1 like ,plato1 toward the supernaturalism that was for so many ages to dominate the world1 the ,stoics1 with greater loyalty to pagan principles1 reverted to the natural forces that had been the chief basis for the traditional deities4 ,the progress of philosophy had given the ,stoics a notion of the cosmos such as the early ,aryan could not have possessed when he recorded and took to heart his scattered observations in the form of divine influences1 as many and various as the observations themselves4 ,to the ,stoics the world was evidently one dynamic system4 ,the power that animated it was therefore one ,god4 ,accordingly1 after explaining away the popular myths by turning them somewhat ruthlessly into moral apologues1 they proceeded to identify ,zeus with the order of nature4 ,this identification was supported by many traditional tendencies and philosophic hints4 ,the resulting concept1 though still mythical1 was perhaps as rationalistic as the state of science at the time could allow4 ,zeus had been from the beginning a natural force1 at once serene and formidable1 the thunderer no less than the spirit of the blue4 ,he was the ruler of gods and men2 he was1 under limitations1 a sort of general providence4 ,anaxagoras1 too1 in proclaiming the cosmic function of reason1 had prepared the way for the ,stoics in another direction4 ,this 8reason10 which in ,socrates and ,plato was already a deity1 meant an order1 an order making for the good4 ,it was the name for a principle much like that which ,aristotle called ,nature1 an indwelling prophetic instinct by which things strive after their perfection and happiness4 ,now ,aristotle observed this instinct1 as behoved a disciple of ,socrates1 in its specific cases1 in which the good secured could be discriminated and visibly attained4 ,there were many souls1 each with its provident function and immutable guiding ideal1 one for each man and animal1 one for each heavenly sphere1 and one1 the prime mover1 for the highest sphere of all4 ,but the ,stoics1 not trained in the same humane and critical school1 had felt the unity1 of things more dramatically and vaguely in the realm of physics4 ,like ,xenophanes of old1 they gazed at the broad sky and exclaimed1 8,the ,all is ,one40 ,uniting these various influences1 they found it easy to frame a conception of ,zeus1 or the world1 or the universal justice and law1 so as to combine in it a dynamic unity with a provident reason4 ,a world conceived to be material and fatally determined was endowed with foresight of its own changes1 perfect internal harmony1 and absolute moral dignity4 ,thus mythology1 with the ,stoics1 ended in pantheism4 ,sidenote3 ,the ideal surrendered before the physical4 ,by reducing their gods to a single divine influence1 and identifying this in turn with natural forces1 the ,stoics had1 in one sense1 saved mythology4 ,for no one would be inclined to deny existence or power to the cosmos1 to the body the soul of which was ,zeus4 ,pantheism1 taken theoretically1 is only naturalism poetically expressed4 ,it therefore was a most legitimate and congenial interpretation of paganism for a rationalistic age4 ,on the other hand1 mythology had not been a mere poetic physics2 it had formulated the object of religion2 it had embodied for mankind its highest ideals in worshipful forms4 ,it was when this religious function was transferred to the god of pantheism that the paradox and impossibility of the reform became evident4 ,nature neither is nor can be man's ideal4 ,the substitution of nature for the traditional and ideal object of religion involves giving nature moral authority over man2 it involves that element of ,stoicism which is the synonym of inhumanity4 ,life and death1 good and ill fortune1 happiness and misery1 since they flow equally from the universal order1 shall be declared1 in spite of reason1 to be equally good4 ,true virtue shall be reduced to conformity4 ,he who has no ideal but that nature should possess her actual constitution will be wise and superior to all flattery and calamity2 he will be equal in dignity to ,zeus4 ,he who has any less conformable and more determinate interests will be a fool and a worm4 ,the wise man will1 meantime1 perform all the offices of nature2 he will lend his body and his mind to her predestined labours4 ,for pantheistic morals1 though post-rational1 are not ascetic4 ,in dislodging the natural ideal from the mind1 they put in its place not its supernatural exaggeration but a curtailment of it inspired by despair4 ,the passions are not renounced on the ground that they impede salvation or some visionary ecstasy2 they are merely chilled by the sense that their defeat1 when actual1 is also desirable4 ,as all the gods have been reduced to one substance or law1 so all human treasures are reduced to one privilege--that of fortitude4 ,you can always consent1 and by a forced and perpetual conformity to nature lift yourself above all vicissitudes4 ,those tender and tentative ideals which nature really breeds1 and which fill her with imperfect but genuine excellences1 you will be too stolid to perceive or too proud to share4 ,thus the hereditary taint of mythology1 the poison of lies1 survived in the two forms of philosophic paganism which it concerns us to study4 ,in ,plato's school1 myth helped to hypostasise the ideas and1 by divorcing them from their natural basis1 to deprive them of their significance and moral function1 and render the worship of them superstitious4 ,in the ,stoa the surviving mythological element turned nature1 when her unity and order had been perceived1 into an idol2 so that the worship of her blasted all humane and plastic ideals and set men upon a vain and fanatical self-denial4 ,both philosophies were post-rational1 as befitted a decadent age and as their rival and heir1 ,christianity1 was also4 ,sidenote3 ,parallel movements in ,christianity4 ,christianity had already within itself a similar duality2 being a doctrine of redemption1 like neo-,platonism1 it tended to deny the natural values of this life2 but1 being a doctrine of creation and providential government1 comparable in a way to the ,stoic1 it had an ineradicable inward tendency toward pantheism1 and toward a consequent acceptance of both the goods and evils of this world as sanctioned and required by providence4 ,sidenote3 ,hebraism1 if philosophical1 must be pantheistic4 ,the horror which pantheism has always inspired in the ,church is like that which materialism inspires in sentimental idealists2 they attack it continually1 not so much because anybody else defends it as because they feel it to be implied unmistakably in half their own tenets4 ,the non-,platonic half of ,christian theology1 the ,mosaic half1 is bound to become pantheism in the hands of a philosopher4 ,the ,jews were not pantheists themselves1 because they never speculated on the relation which omnipotence stood in to natural forces and human acts4 ,they conceived ,jehovah's omnipotence dramatically1 as they conceived everything4 ,he might pounce upon anything and anybody2 he might subvert or play with the laws of nature2 he might laugh at men's devices1 and turn them to his own ends2 his craft and energy could not but succeed in every instance2 but that was not to say that men and nature had no will of their own1 and did not proceed naturally on their respective ways when ,jehovah happened to be busy elsewhere4 ,so soon1 however1 as this dramatic sort of omnipotence was made systematic by dialectic1 so soon as the doctrines of creation1 omniscience1 and providential government were taken absolutely1 pantheism was clearly involved4 ,the consequences to moral philosophy were truly appalling1 for then the sins ,god punished so signally were due to his own contrivance4 ,the fervours of his saints1 the fate of his chosen people and holy temples1 became nothing but a puppet-show in his ironical self-consciousness4 ,sidenote3 ,pantheism1 even when psychic1 ignores ideals4 ,the strangest part of this system1 or what would seem so if its antecedents were not known1 is that it is only half-conscious of its physical temper1 and in calling itself an idealism 7because it makes perception and will the substance of their objects71 thinks itself an expression of human aspirations4 ,this illusion has deep historical roots4 ,it is the last stage of a mythical philosophy which has been earnestly criticising its metaphors1 on the assumption that they were not metaphorical2 whereby it has stripped them of all significance and reduced them at last to the bare principle of inversion4 ,nothing is any longer idealised1 yet all is still called an idealism4 ,a myth is an inverted image of things1 wherein their moral effects are turned into their dramatic antecedents--as when the wind's rudeness is turned into his anger4 ,when the natural basis of moral life is not understood1 myth is the only way of expressing it theoretically1 as eyes too weak to see the sun face to face may1 as ,plato says1 for a time study its image mirrored in pools1 and1 as we may add1 inverted there4 ,so the good1 which in itself is spiritual only1 is transposed into a natural power4 ,at first this amounts to an amiable misrepresentation of natural things2 the gods inhabit ,mount ,olympus and the ,elysian ,fields are not far west of ,cadiz4 ,with the advance of geography the mythical facts recede1 and in a cosmography like ,hegel's1 for instance1 they have disappeared altogether2 but there remain the mythical values once ascribed to those ideal objects but now transferred and fettered to the sad realities that have appeared in their place4 ,the titles of honour once bestowed on a fabled world are thus applied to the real world by right of inheritance4 ,sidenote3 ,truly divine action limited to what makes for the good4 ,nothing could be clearer than the grounds on which pious men in the beginning recognise divine agencies4 ,we see1 they say1 the hand of ,god in our lives4 ,he has saved us from dangers1 he has comforted us in sorrow4 ,he has blessed us with the treasures of life1 of intelligence1 of affection4 ,he has set around us a beautiful world1 and one still more beautiful within us4 ,pondering all these blessings1 we are convinced that he is mighty in the world and will know how to make all things good to those who trust in him4 ,in other words1 pious men discern ,god in the excellence of things4 ,if all were well1 as they hope it may some day be1 ,god would henceforth be present in everything4 ,while good is mixed with evil1 he is active in the good alone4 ,the pleasantness of life1 the preciousness of human possessions1 the beauty and promise of the world1 are proof of ,god's power2 so is the stilling of tempests and the forgiveness of sins4 ,but the sin itself and the tempest1 which optimistic theology has to attribute just as much to ,god's purposes1 are not attributed to him at all by pious feeling1 but rather to his enemies4 ,in spite of centuries wasted in preaching ,god's omnipotence1 his omnipotence is contradicted by every ,christian judgment and every ,christian prayer4 ,if the most pious of nations is engaged in war1 and suffers a great accidental disaster1 such as it might expect to be safe from1 ,te deums are sung for those that were saved and ,requiems for those that perished4 ,god's office1 in both cases1 is to save only4 ,no one seriously imagines that ,providence does more than govern--that is1 watch over and incidentally modify the natural course of affairs--not even in the other world1 if fortunes are still changeable there4 ,sidenote3 ,need of an opposing principle4 ,the criterion of divine activity could not be placed more squarely and unequivocally in the good4 ,plato and ,aristotle are not in this respect better moralists than is an unsophisticated piety4 ,god is the ideal1 and what manifests the ideal manifests ,god4 ,are you confident of the permanence and triumph of the things you prize8 ,then you trust in ,god1 you live in the consciousness of his presence4 ,the proof and measure of rationality in the world1 and of ,god's power over it1 is the extent of human satisfactions4 ,in hell1 good people would disbelieve in ,god1 and it is impious of the trembling devils to believe in him there4 ,the existence of any evil--and if evil is felt it exists1 for experience is its locus--is a proof that some accident has intruded into ,god's works4 ,if that loyalty to the good1 which is the prerequisite of rationality1 is to remain standing1 we must admit into the world1 while it contains anything practically evil1 a principle1 however minimised1 which is not rational4 ,this irrational principle may be inertia in matter1 accidental perversity in the will1 or ultimate conflict of interests4 ,somehow an element of resistance to the rational order must be introduced somewhere4 ,and immediately1 in order to distinguish the part furnished by reason from its irrational alloy1 we must find some practical test2 for if we are to show that there is a great and triumphant rationality in the world1 in spite of irrational accidents and brute opposition1 we must frame an idea of rationality different from that of being4 ,it will no longer do to say1 with the optimists1 the rational is the real1 the real is the rational4 ,for we wish to make a distinction1 in order to maintain our loyalty to the good1 and not to eviscerate the idea of reason by emptying it of its essential meaning1 which is action addressed to the good and thought envisaging the ideal4 ,to pious feeling1 the free-will of creatures1 their power1 active or passive1 of independent origination1 is the explanation of all defects2 and everything which is not helpful to men's purposes must be assigned to their own irrationality as its cause4 ,herein lies the explanation of that paradox in religious feeling which attributes sin to the free will1 but repentance and every good work to divine grace4 ,physically considered--as theology must consider the matter--both acts and both volitions are equally necessary and involved in the universal order2 but practical religion calls divine only what makes for the good4 ,whence it follows at once that1 both within and without us1 what is done well is ,god's doing1 and what is done ill is not4 ,sidenote3 ,the standard of value is human4 ,thus what we may call the practical or ,hebrew theory of cosmic rationality betrays in plainest possible manner that reason is primarily a function of human nature4 ,reason dwells in the world in so far as the world is good1 and the world is good in so far as it supports the wills it generates--the excellence of each creature1 the value of its life1 and the satisfaction of its ultimate desires4 ,thus ,hebrew optimism could be moral because1 although it asserted in a sense the morality of the universe1 it asserted this only by virtue of a belief that the universe supported human ideals4 ,undoubtedly much insistence on the greatness of that power which made for righteousness was in danger of passing over into idolatry of greatness and power1 for whatever they may make4 ,yet these relapses into ,nature-worship are the more rare in that the ,jews were not a speculative people1 and had in the end to endow even ,job with his worldly goods in order to rationalise his constancy4 ,it was only by a scandalous heresy that ,spinoza could so change the idea of ,god as to make him indifferent to his creatures2 and this transformation1 in spite of the mystic and stoical piety of its author1 passed very justly for atheism2 for that divine government and policy had been denied by which alone ,god was made manifest to the ,hebrews4 ,if ,job's reward seems to us unworthy1 we must remember that we have since passed through the discipline of an extreme moral idealism1 through a religion of sacrifice and sorrow4 ,we should not confuse the principle that virtue must somehow secure the highest good 7for what should not secure it would not be virtue7 with the gross symbols by which the highest good might be expressed at ,jerusalem4 ,that ,job should recover a thousand she-asses may seem to us a poor sop for his long anguish of mind and body1 and we may hardly agree with him in finding his new set of children just as good as the old4 ,yet if fidelity had led to no good end1 if it had not somehow brought happiness to somebody1 that fidelity would have been folly4 ,there is a noble folly which consists in pushing a principle usually beneficent to such lengths as to render it pernicious2 and the pertinacity of ,job would have been a case of such noble folly if we were not somehow assured of its ultimate fruits4 ,in ,christianity we have the same principle1 save that the fruits of virtue are more spiritually conceived2 they are inward peace1 the silence of the passions1 the possession of truth1 and the love of ,god and of our fellows4 ,this is a different conception of happiness1 incomplete1 perhaps1 in a different direction4 ,but were even this attenuated happiness impossible to realise1 all rationality would vanish not merely from ,christian charity and discipline1 but from the whole ,christian theory of creation1 redemption1 and judgment4 ,without some window open to heaven1 religion would be more fantastic than worldliness without being less irrational and vain4 ,sidenote3 ,hope for happiness makes belief in ,god4 ,revelation has intervened to bring about a conception of the highest good which never could have been derived from an impartial synthesis of human interests4 ,the influence of great personalities and the fanaticism of peculiar times and races have joined in imposing such variations from the natural ideal4 ,the rationality of the world1 as ,christianity conceived it1 is due to the plan of salvation2 and the satisfaction of human nature1 however purified and developed1 is what salvation means4 ,if an ascetic ideal could for a moment seem acceptable1 it was because the decadence and sophistication of the world had produced a great despair in all noble minds2 and they thought it better that an eye or a hand which had offended should perish1 and that they should enter blind and maimed into the kingdom of heaven1 than that1 whole and seeing1 they should remain for ever in hell-fire4 ,supernatural1 then1 as the ideal might seem1 and imposed on human nature from above1 it was yet accepted only because nothing else1 in that state of conscience and imagination1 could revive hope2 nothing else seemed to offer an escape from the heart's corruption and weariness into a new existence4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,the ,,christian ,,compromise ,the human spirit has not passed in historical times through a more critical situation or a greater revulsion than that involved in accepting ,christianity4 ,was this event favourable to the life of ,reason8 ,was it a progress in competence1 understanding1 and happiness8 ,any absolute answer would be misleading4 ,christianity did not come to destroy2 the ancient springs were dry already1 and for two or three centuries unmistakable signs of decadence had appeared in every sphere1 not least in that of religion and philosophy4 ,christianity was a reconstruction out of ruins4 ,in the new world competence could only be indirect1 understanding mythical1 happiness surreptitious2 but all three subsisted1 and it was ,christianity that gave them their necessary disguises4 ,sidenote3 ,suspense between hope and disillusion4 ,the young ,west had failed in its first great experiment1 for1 though classic virtue and beauty and a great classic state subsisted1 the force that had created them was spent4 ,was it possible to try again8 ,was it necessary to sit down1 like the ,orient1 in perpetual flux and eternal apathy8 ,this question was answered by ,christianity in a way1 under the circumstances1 extremely happy4 ,the ,gospel1 on which ,christianity was founded1 had drawn a very sharp contrast between this world and the kingdom of heaven--a phrase admitting many interpretations4 ,from the ,jewish millennium or a celestial paradise it could shift its sense to mean the invisible ,church1 or even the inner life of each mystical spirit4 ,platonic philosophy1 to which patristic theology was allied1 had made a contrast not less extreme between sense and spirit1 between life in time and absorption in eternity4 ,armed with this double dualism1 ,christianity could preach both renunciation and hope1 both asceticism and action1 both the misery of life and the blessing of creation4 ,it even enshrined the two attitudes in its dogma1 uniting the ,jewish doctrine of a divine ,creator and ,governor of this world with that of a divine ,redeemer to lead us into another4 ,persons were not lacking to perceive the contradiction inherent in such an eclecticism2 and it was the ,gnostic or neo-,platonic party1 which denied creation and taught a pure asceticism1 that had the best of the argument4 ,the ,west1 however1 would not yield to their logic4 ,it might1 in an hour of trouble and weakness1 make concessions to quietism and accept the cross1 but it would not suffer the naturalistic note to die out altogether4 ,it preferred an inconsistency1 which it hardly perceived1 to a complete surrender of its instincts4 ,it settled down to the conviction that ,god created the world and redeemed it2 that the soul is naturally good and needs salvation4 ,sidenote3 ,superficial solution4 ,this contradiction can be explained exoterically by saying that time and changed circumstances separate the two situations3 having made the world perfect1 ,god redeems it after it has become corrupt2 and whereas all things are naturally good1 they may by accident lose their excellence1 and need to have it restored4 ,there is1 however1 an esoteric side to the matter4 ,a soul that may be redeemed1 a will that may look forward to a situation in which its action will not be vain or sinful1 is one that in truth has never sinned2 it has merely been thwarted4 ,its ambition is rational1 and what its heart desires is essentially good and ideal4 ,so that the whole classic attitude1 the faith in action1 art1 and intellect1 is preserved under this protecting cuticle of dogma2 nothing was needed but a little courage1 and circumstances somewhat more favourable1 for the natural man to assert himself again4 ,a people believing in the resurrection of the flesh in heaven will not be averse to a reawakening of the mind on earth4 ,sidenote3 ,but from what shall we be redeemed8 ,another pitfall1 however1 opens here4 ,these contrasted doctrines may change rles4 ,so long as by redemption we understand1 in the mystic way1 exaltation above finitude and existence1 because all particularity is sin1 to be redeemed is to abandon the ,life of ,reason2 but redemption might mean extrication from untoward accidents1 so that a rational life might be led under right conditions4 ,instead of being like ,buddha1 the redeemer might be like ,prometheus4 ,in that case1 however1 the creator would become like ,zeus--a tyrant will responsible for our conditions rather than expressive of our ideal4 ,the doctrine of creation would become pantheism and that of redemption1 formerly ascetic1 would represent struggling humanity4 ,sidenote3 ,typical attitude of ,st4 ,augustine4 ,the seething of these potent and ambiguous elements can be studied nowhere better than in ,saint ,augustine4 ,he is a more genial and complete representative of ,christianity than any of the ,greek ,fathers1 in whom the ,hebraic and ,roman vitality was comparatively absent4 ,philosophy was only one phase of ,augustine's genius2 with him it was an instrument of zeal and a stepping-stone to salvation4 ,scarcely had it been born out of rhetoric when it was smothered in authority4 ,yet even in that precarious and episodic form it acquired a wonderful sweep1 depth1 and technical elaboration4 ,he stands at the watershed of history1 looking over either land2 his invectives teach us almost as much of paganism and heresy as his exhortations do of ,catholicism4 ,to ,greek subtlety he joins ,hebrew fervour and monkish intolerance2 he has a ,latin amplitude and 7it must be confessed7 coarseness of feeling2 but above all he is the illumined1 enraptured1 forgiven saint4 ,in him theology1 however speculative1 remains a vehicle for living piety2 and while he has1 perhaps1 done more than any other man to materialise ,christianity1 no one was ever more truly filled with its spirit4 ,sidenote3 ,he achieves ,platonism4 ,saint ,augustine was a thorough ,platonist1 but to reach that position he had to pass in his youth through severe mental struggles4 ,the difficult triumph over the sensuous imagination by which he attained the conception of intelligible objects was won only after long discipline and much reading of ,platonising philosophers4 ,every reality seemed to him at first an object of sense3 ,god1 if he existed1 must be perceptible1 for to ,saint ,augustine's mind also1 at this early and sensuous stage of its development1 esse was percipi4 ,he might never have worked himself loose from these limitations1 with which his vivid fancy and not too delicate eloquence might easily have been satisfied1 had it not been for his preoccupation with theology4 ,god must somehow be conceived2 for no one in that age of religious need and of theological passion felt both more intensely than ,saint ,augustine4 ,if sensible objects alone were real1 ,god must be somewhere discoverable in space2 he must either have a body like the human1 or be the body of the universe1 or some subtler body permeating and moving all the rest4 ,these conceptions all offered serious dialectical difficulties1 and1 what was more to the point1 they did not satisfy the religious and idealistic instinct which the whole movement of ,saint ,augustine's mind obeyed4 ,so he pressed his inquiries farther4 ,at length meditation1 and more1 perhaps1 that experience of the flux and vanity of natural things on which ,plato himself had built his heaven of ideas1 persuaded him that reality and substantiality1 in any eulogistic sense1 must belong rather to the imperceptible and eternal4 ,only that which is never an object of sense or experience can be the root and principle of experience and sense4 ,only the invisible and changeless can be the substance of a moving show4 ,god could now be apprehended and believed in precisely because he was essentially invisible3 had he anywhere appeared he could not be the principle of all appearance2 had he had a body and a locus in the universe1 he could not have been its spiritual creator4 ,the ultimate objects of human knowledge were accordingly ideas1 not things2 principles reached by the intellect1 not objects by any possibility offered to sense4 ,the methodological concepts of science1 by which we pass from fact to fact and from past perception to future1 did not attract ,augustine's attention4 ,he admitted1 it is true1 that there was a subordinate1 and to him apparently uninteresting1 region governed by 8certissima ratione vel experientia10 and he even wished science to be allowed a free hand within that empirical and logical sphere4 ,a mystic and allegorical interpretation of ,scripture was to be invoked to avoid the puerilities into which any literal interpretation--of the creation in six days1 for instance--would be sure to run4 ,unbelievers would thus not be scandalised by mythical dogmas 8concerning things which they might have actually experienced1 or discovered by sure calculation40 ,science was to have its way in the field of calculable experience2 that region could be the more readily surrendered by ,augustine because his attention was henceforth held by those ideal objects which he had so laboriously come to conceive4 ,these were concepts of the contemplative reason or imagination1 which envisages natures and eternal essences behind the variations of experience1 essences which at first receive names1 becoming thus the centres of rational discourse1 then acquire values1 becoming guides to action and measures of achievement1 and finally attract unconditional worship1 being regarded as the first causes and ultimate goals of all existence and aspiration4 ,sidenote3 ,he identifies it with ,christianity4 ,this purely ,platonic philosophy1 however1 was not to stand alone4 ,like every phase of ,saint ,augustine's speculation1 it came1 as we have said1 to buttress or express some religious belief4 ,but it is a proof of his depth and purity of soul that his searching philosophic intuition did more to spiritualise the dogmas he accepted from others than these dogmas could do to denaturalise his spontaneous philosophy4 ,platonic ideas had by that time long lost their moral and representative value1 their ,socratic significance4 ,they had become ontological entities1 whereas originally they had represented the rational functions of life4 ,this hypostasis of the rational1 by which the rational abdicates its meaning in the effort to acquire a metaphysical existence1 had already been carried to its extreme by the ,neo-,platonists4 ,but ,saint ,augustine1 while helpless as a philosopher to resist that speculative realism1 was able as a ,christian to infuse into those dead concepts some of the human blood which had originally quickened them4 ,metaphysics had turned all human interests into mythical beings1 and now religion1 without at all condemning or understanding that transformation1 was going to adopt those mythical beings and turn them again into moral influences4 ,in ,saint ,augustine's mind1 fed as it was by the ,psalmist1 the ,platonic figments became the ,christian ,god1 the ,christian ,church1 and the ,christian soul1 and thus acquired an even subtler moral fragrance than that which they had lost when they were uprooted by a visionary philosophy from the soil of ,greek culture4 ,sidenote3 ,god the good4 ,saint ,augustine's way of conceiving ,god is an excellent illustration of the power1 inherent in his religious genius and sincerity1 of giving life and validity to ideas which he was obliged to borrow in part from a fabulous tradition and in part from a petrified metaphysics4 ,god1 to him1 was simply the ideal eternal object of human thought and love4 ,all ideation on an intellectual plane was a vague perception of the divine essence4 8,the rational soul understands ,god1 for it understands what exists always unchanged40 444 8,god is happiness2 and in him and from him and through him all things are happy which are happy at all4 ,god is the good and the beautiful40 ,he was never tired of telling us that ,god is not true but the truth 7i4e41 the ideal object of thought in any sphere71 not good but the good 7i4e41 the ideal object of will in all its rational manifestations74 ,in other words1 whenever a man1 reflecting on his experience1 conceived the better or the best1 the perfect and the eternal1 he conceived ,god1 inadequately1 of course1 yet essentially1 because ,god signified the comprehensive ideal of all the perfections which the human spirit could behold in itself or in its objects4 ,of this divine essence1 accordingly1 every interesting thing was a manifestation2 all virtue and beauty were parcels of it1 tokens of its superabundant grace4 ,hence the inexhaustible passion of ,saint ,augustine toward his ,god2 hence the sweetness of that endless colloquy in prayer into which he was continually relapsing1 a passion and a sweetness which no one will understand to whom ,god is primarily a natural power and only accidentally a moral ideal4 ,sidenote3 ,primary and secondary religion4 ,herein lies the chief difference between those in whom religion is spontaneous and primary--a very few--those in whom it is imitative and secondary4 ,to the former1 divine things are inward values1 projected by chance into images furnished by poetic tradition or by external nature1 while to the latter1 divine things are in the first instance objective factors of nature or of social tradition1 although they have come1 perhaps1 to possess some point of contact with the interests of the inner life on account of the supposed physical influence which those super-human entities have over human fortunes4 ,in a word1 theology1 for those whose religion is secondary1 is simply a false physics1 a doctrine about eventual experience not founded on the experience of the past4 ,such a false physics1 however1 is soon discredited by events2 it does not require much experience or much shrewdness to discover that supernatural beings and laws are without the empirical efficacy which was attributed to them4 ,true physics and true history must always tend1 in enlightened minds1 to supplant those misinterpreted religious traditions4 ,therefore1 those whose reflection or sentiment does not furnish them with a key to the moral symbolism and poetic validity underlying theological ideas1 if they apply their intelligence to the subject at all1 and care to be sincere1 will very soon come to regard religion as a delusion4 ,where religion is primary1 however1 all that worldly dread of fraud and illusion becomes irrelevant1 as it is irrelevant to an artist's pleasure to be warned that the beauty he expresses has no objective existence1 or as it would be irrelevant to a mathematician's reasoning to suspect that ,pythagoras was a myth and his supposed philosophy an abracadabra4 ,to the religious man religion is inwardly justified4 ,god has no need of natural or logical witnesses1 but speaks himself within the heart1 being indeed that ineffable attraction which dwells in whatever is good and beautiful1 and that persuasive visitation of the soul by the eternal and incorruptible by which she feels herself purified1 rescued from mortality1 and given an inheritance in the truth4 ,this is precisely what ,saint ,augustine knew and felt with remarkable clearness and persistence1 and what he expressed unmistakably by saying that every intellectual perception is knowledge of ,god or has ,god's nature for its object4 ,proofs of the existence of ,god are therefore not needed1 since his existence is in one sense obvious and in another of no religious interest4 ,it is obvious in the sense that the ideal is a term of moral experience1 and that truth1 goodness1 and beauty are inevitably envisaged by any one whose life has in some measure a rational quality4 ,it is of no religious interest in the sense that perhaps some physical or dynamic absolute might be scientifically discoverable in the dark entrails of nature or of mind4 ,the great difference between religion and metaphysics is that religion looks for ,god at the top of life and metaphysics at the bottom2 a fact which explains why metaphysics has such difficulty in finding ,god1 while religion has never lost him4 ,this brings us to the grand characteristic and contradiction of ,saint ,augustine's philosophy1 a characteristic which can be best studied1 perhaps1 in him1 although it has been inherited by all ,christian theology and was already present in ,stoic and ,platonic speculation1 when the latter had lost its ethical moorings4 ,this is the idea that the same ,god who is the ideal of human aspiration is also the creator of the universe and its only primary substance4 ,sidenote3 ,ambiguous efficacy of the good in ,plato4 ,if ,plato1 when he wrote that fine and profound passage in the sixth book of the ,republic1 where he says that the good is the cause of all intelligence in the mind and of all intelligibility in the object1 and indeed the principle of all essence and existence--if ,plato could have foreseen what his oracular hyperbole was to breed in the world1 we may well believe that he would have expunged it from his pages with the same severity with which he banished the poets from his ,state4 ,in the lips of ,socrates1 and at that juncture in the argument of the ,republic1 those sentences have a legitimate meaning4 ,the good is the principle of benefit1 and the philosophers who are to rule the state will not be alienated by their contemplations from practical wisdom1 seeing that the idea of the good--i4e41 of the advantageous1 profitable1 and beneficial--is the highest concept of the whole dialectic1 that in reference to which all other ideas have place and significance4 ,if we ventured to extend the interpretation of the passage1 retaining its spirit1 into fields where we have more knowledge than ,plato could have1 we might say that the principle of the good generates essence and existence1 in the sense that all natural organs have functions and utilities by which they establish themselves in the world1 and that the system of these useful functions is the true essence or idea of any living thing4 ,but the ,socratic origin and sense of such a passage as this1 and of others 7in the ,timus1 for instance7 allied to it1 was soon lost in the headlong idolatry which took possession of the neo-,platonic school2 and it was through this medium that ,saint ,augustine received his ,platonic inspiration4 ,the good no longer meant1 as it did to ,plato1 the principle of benefit everywhere1 but it meant the good ,being2 and this1 for a ,christian1 could naturally be none other than ,god2 so that the idea that the good was the creator of all essence and existence now assumed a marvellously ,mosaic significance4 ,here was one of those bits of primeval revelation which1 it was explained1 had survived in the heathen world4 ,the hypostasis of moral conceptions1 then1 and of the idea of the good in particular1 led up from the ,platonic side to the doctrine of creation4 ,sidenote3 ,ambiguous goodness of the creator in ,job4 ,the history of the conception among the ,jews was entirely different1 the element of goodness in the creator being there adventitious and the element of power original4 ,jehovah for ,job was a universal force1 justified primarily by his omnipotence2 but this physical authority would in the end1 he hoped1 be partly rationalised and made to clash less scandalously with the authority of justice4 ,among the ,greeks1 as was to be expected1 the idea of justice was more independent and entire2 but once named and enshrined1 that divinity1 too1 tended to absoluteness1 and could be confused with the physical basis of existence4 ,in the ,stoic philosophy the latter actually gained the upper hand1 and the problem of ,job reappeared on the horizon4 ,it did not rise into painful prominence1 however1 until ,christian times1 when absolute moral perfection and absolute physical efficacy were predicated of ,god with equal emphasis1 if not among the people who never have conceived ,god as either perfectly good or entirely omnipotent1 at least among the theologians4 ,if not all felt the contradiction with equal acuteness1 the reason doubtless was that a large part of their thought was perfunctory and merely apologetic3 they did not quite mean what they said when they spoke of perfect goodness2 and we shall see how ,saint ,augustine himself1 when reduced to extremities1 surrendered his loyalty to the moral ideal rather than reconsider his traditional premisses4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,manicheans4 ,how tenaciously1 however1 he clung to the moral in the religious1 we can see by the difficulty he had in separating himself from the ,manicheans4 ,the ,manicheans admitted two absolutes1 the essence of the one being goodness and of the other badness4 ,this system was logically weak1 because these absolutes were in the first place two1 which is one contradiction1 and in the second place relative1 which is another4 ,but in spite of the pitfalls into which the ,manicheans were betrayed by their pursuit of metaphysical absolutes1 they were supported by a moral intuition of great truth and importance4 ,they saw that an essentially good principle could not have essential evil for its effect4 ,these moral terms are1 we may ourselves feel sure1 relative to existence and to actual impulse1 and it may accordingly be always misleading to make them the essence of metaphysical realities3 good and bad may be not existences but qualities which existences have only in relation to demands in themselves or in one another4 ,yet if we once launch1 as many metaphysicians would have us do1 into the hypostasis of qualities and relations1 it is certainly better and more honest to make contradictory qualities into opposed entities1 and not to render our metaphysical world unmeaning as well as fictitious by peopling it with concepts in which the most important categories of life are submerged and invalidated4 ,evil may be no more a metaphysical existence than good is2 both are undoubtedly mere terms for vital utilities and impediments2 but if we are to indulge in mythology at all1 it is better that our mythology should do symbolic justice to experience and should represent by contrasted figures the ineradicable practical difference between the better and the worse1 the beautiful and the ugly1 the trustworthy and the fallacious4 ,to discriminate between these things in practice is wisdom1 and it should be the part of wisdom to discriminate between them in theory4 ,the ,manicheans accordingly attributed what is good in the world to one power and what is bad to another4 ,the fable is transparent enough1 and we1 who have only just learned to smile at a personal devil1 may affect to wonder that any one should ever have taken it literally4 ,but in an age when the assertive imagination was unchecked by any critical sense1 such a device at least avoided the scandal of attributing all the evils and sins of this world to a principle essentially inviolate and pure4 ,by avoiding what must have seemed a blasphemy to ,saint ,augustine1 as to every one whose speculation was still relevant to his conscience and to his practical idealism1 the ,manicheans thus prevailed on many to overlook the contradictions which their system developed so soon as its figments were projected into the sphere of absolute existences4 ,sidenote3 ,all things good by nature4 ,the horror with which an idealistic youth at first views the truculence of nature and the turpitude of worldly life is capable of being softened by experience4 ,time subdues our initial preferences by showing us the complexity of moral relations in this world1 and by extending our imaginative sympathy to forms of existence and passion at first repulsive1 which from new and ultra-personal points of view may have their natural sweetness and value4 ,in this way1 ,saint ,augustine was ultimately brought to appreciate the catholicity and scope of those ,greek sages who had taught that all being was to itself good1 that evil was but the impediment of natural function1 and that therefore the conception of anything totally or essentially evil was only a petulance or exaggeration in moral judgment that took1 as it were1 the bit in its teeth1 and turned an incidental conflict of interests into a metaphysical opposition of natures4 ,all definite being is in itself congruous with the true and the good1 since its constitution is intelligible and its operation is creative of values4 ,were it not for the limitations of matter and the accidental crowding and conflict of life1 all existing natures might subsist and prosper in peace and concord1 just as their various ideas live without contradiction in the realm of conceptual truth4 ,we may say of all things1 in the words of the ,gospel1 that their angels see the face of ,god4 ,their ideals are no less cases of the good1 no less instances of perfection1 than is the ideal locked in our private bosom4 ,it is the part of justice and charity to recognise this situation1 in view of which we may justly say that evil is always relative and subordinate to some constituted nature in itself a standard of worth1 a point of departure for the moral valuation of eventual changes and of surrounding things4 ,evil is accordingly accidental and unnatural2 it follows upon the maladaptation of actions to natures and of natures to one another4 ,it can be no just ground for the condemnation of any of those natural essences which only give rise to it by their imperfect realisation4 ,the ,semitic idea of creation could now receive that philosophical interpretation which it so sadly needed4 ,primordially1 and in respect to what was positive in them1 all things might he expressions of the good2 in their essence and ideal state they might be said to be created by ,god4 ,for ,god was the supreme ideal1 to which all other goods were subordinate and instrumental2 and if we agree to make a cosmogony out of morals and to hypostasise the series of rational ideals1 taken in the inverse order1 into a series of efficient causes1 it is clear that the highest good1 which is at the end of the moral scale1 will now figure as a first cause at the beginning of the physical sequence4 ,this operation is what is recorded and demanded in the doctrine of creation3 a doctrine which would lose its dogmatic force if we allowed either the moral ideality or the physical efficacy of the creator to drop out of sight4 ,if the moral ideality is sacrificed1 we pass to an ordinary pantheism1 while if the physical efficacy is surrendered1 we take refuge in a naturalistic idealism of the ,aristotelian type1 where the good is a function of things and neither their substance nor their cause4 ,sidenote3 ,the doctrine of creation demands that of the fall4 ,to accept the doctrine of creation1 after it had become familiar1 was not very hard1 because the contradiction it contains could then be set down to our imperfect apprehension4 ,the unintelligibility of matters of fact does not lead us to deny them1 but merely to study them2 and when the creation was accepted as a fact1 its unintelligibility became merely a theological problem and a religious mystery1 such as no mortal philosophy can be without4 ,but for ,saint ,augustine the situation was wholly different4 ,a doctrine of the creation had to be constructed3 the disparate ideas had to be synthesised which posterity was afterward to regard as the obvious1 if not wholly reconcilable1 attributes of the deity4 ,the mystery could not then be recognised2 it had to be made4 ,and ,saint ,augustine1 with his vital religion1 with his spontaneous adoration of ,god the ideal1 could not attribute to that ideal unimpeded efficacy in the world4 ,to admit that all natures were essentially good might dispel the ,manichean fancy about an ,evil ,absolute engaged in single combat with an ,absolute ,good2 but insight into the meaning and the natural conditions of evil could only make its presence more obvious and its origin more intimately bound up with the general constitution of the world4 ,evil is only imperfection2 but everything is imperfect4 ,conflict is only maladaptation1 but there is maladaptation everywhere4 ,if we assume1 then1 what the doctrine of creation requires1 that all things at first proceeded out of the potency of the good--their matter and form1 their distribution and their energies1 being wholly attributable to the attraction of the ultimately best--it is clear that some calamity must have immediately supervened by which the fountains of life were defiled1 the strength of the ideal principle in living things weakened1 and the mortal conflict instituted which not only condemns all existent things ultimately to perish1 but hardly allows them1 even while they painfully endure1 to be truly and adequately themselves4 ,original sin1 with the fall of the angels and of man for its mythical ground1 thus enters into the inmost web of ,augustinian philosophy4 ,this fact cannot be too much insisted upon1 for only by the immediate introduction of original sin into the history of the world could a man to whom ,god was still a moral term believe at all in the natural and fundamental efficacy of ,god in the cosmos4 ,the doctrine of the fall made it possible for ,saint ,augustine to accept the doctrine of the creation4 ,both belonged to the same mythical region in which the moral values of life were made to figure as metaphysical agents2 but when once the metaphysical agency of the highest good was admitted into a poetic cosmogony1 it became imperative to admit also the metaphysical agency of sin into it2 for otherwise the highest good would be deprived of its ideal and moral character1 would cease to be the entelechy of rational life1 and be degraded into a flat principle of description or synthesis for experience and nature as they actually are4 ,god would thus become a natural agent1 like the fire of ,heraclitus1 in which human piety could take an interest only by force of traditional inertia and unintelligence1 while the continued muttering of the ritual prevented men from awaking to the disappearance of the god4 ,the essence of deity1 as ,augustine was inwardly convinced1 was correspondence to human aspiration1 moral perfection1 and ideality4 ,god1 therefore1 as the ,manicheans1 with ,plato and ,aristotle before them1 had taught1 could be the author of good only2 or1 to express the same thing in less figurative and misleading language1 it was only the good in things that could contribute to our idea of divinity4 ,what was evil must1 therefore1 be carried up into another concept1 must be referred1 if you will1 to another mythical agent2 and this mythical agent in ,saint ,augustine's theology was named sin4 ,sidenote3 ,original sin4 ,everything in the world which obscured the image of the creator or rebelled against his commandments 7everything1 that is1 which prevented in things the expression of their natural ideals7 was due to sin4 ,sin was responsible for disease of mind and body1 for all suffering1 for death1 for ignorance1 perversity1 and dulness4 ,sin was responsible--so truly original was it--for what was painful and wrong even in the animal kingdom1 and sin--such was the paradoxical apex of this inverted series of causes--sin was responsible for sin itself4 ,the insoluble problems of the origin of evil and of freedom1 in a world produced in its every fibre by omnipotent goodness1 can never be understood until we remember their origin4 ,they are artificial problems1 unknown to philosophy before it betook itself to the literal justification of fables in which the objects of rational endeavour were represented as causes of natural existence4 ,the former are internal products of life1 the latter its external conditions4 ,when the two are confused we reach the contradiction confronting ,saint ,augustine1 and all who to this day have followed in his steps4 ,the cause of everything must have been the cause of sin1 yet the principle of good could not be the principle of evil4 ,both propositions were obviously true1 and they were contradictory only after the mythical identification of the ,god which meant the ideal of life with the ,god which meant the forces of nature4 ,sidenote3 ,forced abandonment of the ideal4 ,it would help us little1 in trying to understand these doctrines1 to work over the dialectic of them1 and to express the contradiction in somewhat veiled terms or according to new pictorial analogies4 ,good and evil1 in the context of life1 undoubtedly have common causes2 but that system which involves both is for that very reason not an ideal system1 and to represent it as such is simply to ignore the conscience and the upward effort of life4 ,the contradiction can be avoided only by renouncing the meaning of one of the terms2 either1 that is1 by no longer regarding the good as an absolute creator1 but merely as a partial result or tendency in a living world whose life naturally involves values1 or else by no longer conceiving ,god as the ideal term in man's own existence4 ,the latter is the solution adopted by metaphysicians generally1 and by ,saint ,augustine himself when hard pressed by the exigencies of his double allegiance4 ,god1 he tells us1 is just1 although not just as man is1 nor as man should be4 ,in other words1 ,god is to be called just even when he is unjust in the only sense in which the word justice has a meaning among men4 ,we are forced1 in fact1 to obscure our moral concepts and make them equivocal in order to be able to apply them to the efficient forces and actual habits of this world4 ,the essence of divinity is no longer moral excellence1 but ontological and dynamic relations to the natural world1 so that the love of ,god would have to become1 not an exercise of reason and conscience1 as it naturally was with ,saint ,augustine1 but a mystical intoxication1 as it was with ,spinoza4 ,the sad effects of this degradation of ,god into a physical power are not hard to trace in ,augustine's own doctrine and feeling4 ,he became a champion of arbitrary grace and arbitrary predestination to perdition4 ,the eternal damnation of innocents gave him no qualms2 and in this we must admire the strength of his logic1 since if it is right that there should be wrong at all1 there is no particular reason for stickling at the quantity or the enormity of it4 ,and yet there are sentences which for their brutality and sycophancy cannot be read without pain--sentences inspired by this misguided desire to apologise for the crimes of the universe4 8,why should ,god not create beings that he foreknew were to sin1 when indeed in their persons and by their fates he could manifest both what punishment their guilt deserved and what free gifts he might bestow on them by his favour80 8,thinking it more lordly and better to do well even in the presence of evil than not to allow evil to exist at all40 ,here the pitiful maxim of doing evil that good may come is robbed of the excuse it finds in human limitations and is made the first principle of divine morality4 ,repellent and contorted as these ultimate metaphysical theories may seem1 we must not suppose that they destroyed in ,saint ,augustine that practical and devotional idealism which they contradicted3 the region of ,christian charity is fortunately far wider and far nearer home than that of ,christian apologetics4 ,the work of practical redemption went on1 while the dialectics about the perfection of the universe were forgotten2 and ,saint ,augustine never ceased1 by a happy inconsistency1 to bewail the sins and to combat the heresies which his ,god was stealthily nursing1 so that in their melodramatic punishment his glory might be more beautifully manifested4 ,sidenote3 ,the problem among the protestants4 ,it was ,saint ,augustine1 as we know1 who1 in spite of his fervid ,catholicism1 was the favourite master of both ,luther and ,calvin4 ,they emphasised1 however1 his more fanatical side1 and this very predestinarian and absolutist doctrine which he had prevailed on himself to accept4 ,here was the pantheistic leaven doing its work2 and concentration of attention on the ,old ,testament1 given the reformers' controversial and metaphysical habit of thought1 could only precipitate the inevitable4 ,while popular piety bubbled up into all sorts of emotional and captious sects1 each with its pathetic insistence on some text or on some whimsey1 but all inwardly inspired by an earnest religious hunger1 academic and cultivated ,protestantism became every day more pale and rationalistic4 ,mediocre natures continued to rehearse the old platitudes and tread the slippery middle courses of one orthodoxy or another2 but distinguished minds could no longer treat such survivals as more than allegories1 historic or mythical illustrations of general spiritual truths4 ,so ,lessing1 ,goethe1 and the idealists in ,germany1 and after them such lay prophets as ,carlyle and ,emerson1 had for ,christianity only an inessential respect4 ,they drank their genuine inspiration directly from nature1 from history1 from the total personal apprehension they might have of life4 ,in them speculative theology rediscovered its affinity to neo-,platonism2 in other words1 ,christian philosophy was washed clean of its legendary alloy to become a pure cosmic speculation4 ,it was ,gnosticism come again in a very different age to men in an opposite phase of culture1 but with its logic unchanged4 ,the creation was the self-diremption of the infinite into finite expression1 the fall was the self-discovery of this finitude1 the incarnation was the awakening of the finite to its essential infinity2 and here1 a sufficient number of pages having been engrossed1 the matter generally hastened to a conclusion2 for the redemption with its means of application1 once the central point in ,christianity1 was less pliable to the new pantheistic interpretation4 ,neo-,platonism had indeed cultivated asceticism1 ecstasies1 and a hope of reabsorption into the ,one2 but these things a modern1 and especially a ,teutonic1 temperament could hardly relish2 and though absolutism in a sense must discountenance all finite interests and dissolve all experience1 in theory1 into a neutral whole1 yet this inevitable mysticism remained1 as with the ,stoics1 sternly optimistic1 in order to respond to the vital social forces which ,protestantism embodied4 ,the ethical part of neo-,platonism and the corresponding ,christian doctrine of salvation had accordingly to be discarded2 for mystical as the northern soul may gladly be in speculation1 to satisfy its sentimentality1 it hardly can be mystical in action1 since it has to satisfy also its interest in success and its fidelity to instinct4 ,sidenote3 ,pantheism accepted4 ,an absolutism which thus encourages and sanctions the natural will is ,stoical and pantheistic2 it does not1 like ,indian and ,platonic absolutism1 seek to suspend the will in view of some supernatural destiny4 ,pantheism subordinates morally what it finds to be dependent in existence2 its religion bids human reason and interest abdicate before cosmic forces1 instead of standing out1 like ,buddhism and ,christianity1 for salvation1 for spiritual extrication1 from a world which they regard as delusive and fallen4 ,the world of ,german absolutism1 like the ,stoic world1 was not fallen4 ,on the contrary1 it was divinely inspired and altogether authoritative2 he alone who did not find his place and function in it was unholy and perverse4 ,this world-worship1 despising heartily every finite and rational ideal1 gives to impulse and fact1 whatever they may be1 liberty to flourish under a divine warrant4 ,were the people accepting such a system corrupt1 it would sanction their corruption1 and thereby1 most probably1 lead to its own abandonment1 for it would bring on an ascetic and supernaturalistic reaction by which its convenient sycophancy would be repudiated4 ,but reflection and piety1 even if their object be material and their worship idolatrous1 exalt the mind and raise it above vulgar impulse4 ,if you fetch from contemplation a theoretic license to be base1 your contemplative habit itself will have purified you more than your doctrine will have power to degrade you afresh1 for training affects instinct much more than opinion can4 ,antinomian theory can flourish blamelessly in a puritan soil1 for there it instinctively remains theoretical4 ,and the ,teutonic pantheists are for the most part uncontaminated souls1 puritan by training1 and only interested in furthering the political and intellectual efficiency of the society in which they live4 ,their pantheism under these circumstances makes them the more energetic and turns them into practical positivists1 docile to their social medium and apologists for all its conventions4 ,so that1 while they write books to disprove naturalism in natural philosophy where it belongs1 in morals where naturalism is treason they are themselves naturalists of the most uncritical description1 forgetting that only the interests of the finite soul introduce such a thing as good and evil into the world1 and that nature and society are so far from being authoritative and divine that they have no value whatever save by the services they may render to each spirit in its specific and genuine ambitions4 ,sidenote3 ,plainer scorn for the ideal4 ,indeed1 this pantheistic subordination of conscience to what happens to exist1 this optimism annulling every human ideal1 betrays its immoral tendency very clearly so soon as it descends from theological seminaries into the lay world4 ,poets at first begin to justify1 on its authority1 their favourite passions and to sing the picturesqueness of a blood-stained world4 8,practical0 men follow1 deprecating any reflection which may cast a doubt on the providential justification of their chosen activities1 and on the invisible value of the same1 however sordid1 brutal1 or inane they may visibly be4 ,finally1 politicians learn to invoke destiny and the movement of the age to save themselves the trouble of discerning rational ends and to colour their secret indifference to the world's happiness4 ,the follies thus sanctioned theoretically1 because they are involved in a perfect world1 would doubtless be perpetrated none the less by the same persons had they absorbed in youth a different religion2 for conduct is rooted in deep instincts which affect opinion more than opinion can avail to affect them in turn4 ,yet there is an added indignity in not preserving a clear and honest mind1 and in quitting the world without having in some measure understood and appreciated it4 ,sidenote3 ,the price of mythology is superstition4 ,pantheism is mythical and has1 as we have just seen1 all the subversive powers of ordinary superstition4 ,it turns the natural world1 man's stamping-ground and system of opportunities1 into a self-justifying and sacred life2 it endows the blameless giant with an inhuman soul and then worships the monstrous divinity it has fabricated4 ,it thereby encounters the same dilemma that defeats all mythology when it forgets its merely poetic office and trespasses upon moral ground4 ,it must either interpret the natural world faithfully1 attributing to the mythical deity the sort of life that dramatically suits its visible behaviour1 or if it idealises and moralises the spectacle it must renounce the material reality and efficacy of its gods4 ,either the cosmic power must cover the actual goodness and badness in nature impartially1 when to worship it would be idolatrous1 or it must cover only the better side of nature1 those aspects of it which support and resemble human virtue4 ,in the latter case it is human virtue that mythology is formulating in a dramatic fiction1 a human ideal that is being illustrated by a poet1 who selects for the purpose certain phases of nature and experience4 ,by this idealisation the affinity which things often have to man's interests may be brought out in a striking manner2 but their total and real mechanism is no better represented than that of animals in sop's fables4 ,to detect the divergence it suffices to open the eyes2 and while nature may be rationally admired and cherished for so supporting the soul1 it is her eventual ministry to man that makes her admirable1 not her independent magnitude or antiquity4 ,to worship nature as she really is1 with all her innocent crimes made intentional by our mythology and her unfathomable constitution turned into a caricature of barbarian passions1 is to subvert the order of values and to falsify natural philosophy4 ,yet this dislocation of reason1 both in its conceptions and in its allegiance1 is the natural outcome of thinking on mythical lines4 ,a myth1 by turning phenomena into expressions of thought and passion1 teaches man to look for models and goals of action in that external world where reason can find nothing but instruments and materials4 ,,chapter ,x ,,piety ,sidenote3 ,the core of religion not theoretical4 ,hebraism is a striking example of a religion tending to discard mythology and magic4 ,it was a ,hebraising apostle who said that true religion and undefiled was to visit the fatherless and the widow1 and do other works of mercy4 ,although a complete religion can hardly remain without theoretic and ritual expression1 we must remember that after all religion has other aspects less conspicuous1 perhaps1 than its mythology1 but often more worthy of respect4 ,if religion be1 as we have assumed1 an imaginative symbol for the ,life of ,reason1 it should contain not only symbolic ideas and rites1 but also symbolic sentiments and duties4 ,and so it everywhere does in a notable fashion4 ,piety and spirituality are phases of religion no less important than mythology1 or than those metaphysical spectres with which mythology terminates4 ,it is therefore time we should quite explicitly turn from religious ideas to religious emotions1 from imaginative history and science to imaginative morals4 ,piety1 in its nobler and ,roman sense1 may be said to mean man's reverent attachment to the sources of his being and the steadying of his life by that attachment4 ,a soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world4 ,if we wish to live associated with permanent racial interests we must plant ourselves on a broad historic and human foundation1 we must absorb and interpret the past which has made us1 so that we may hand down its heritage reinforced1 if possible1 and in no way undermined or denaturalised4 ,this consciousness that the human spirit is derived and responsible1 that all its functions are heritages and trusts1 involves a sentiment of gratitude and duty which we may call piety4 ,sidenote3 ,loyalty to the sources of our being4 ,the true objects of piety are1 of course1 those on which life and its interests really depend3 parents first1 then family1 ancestors1 and country2 finally1 humanity at large and the whole natural cosmos4 ,but had a lay sentiment toward these forces been fostered by clear knowledge of their nature and relation to ourselves1 the dutifulness or cosmic emotion thereby aroused would have remained purely moral and historical4 ,as science would not in the end admit any myth which was not avowed poetry1 so it would not admit any piety which was not plain reason and duty4 ,but man1 in his perplexities and pressing needs1 has plunged1 once for all1 into imaginative courses through which it is our business to follow him1 to see if he may not eventually reach his goal even by those by-paths and dark circumlocutions4 ,sidenote3 ,the pious neas4 ,what makes piety an integral part of traditional religions is the fact that moral realities are represented in the popular mind by poetic symbols4 ,the awe inspired by principles so abstract and consequences so remote and general is arrested at their conventional name4 ,we have all read in boyhood1 perhaps with derision1 about the pious neas4 ,his piety may have seemed to us nothing but a feminine sensibility1 a faculty of shedding tears on slight provocation4 ,but in truth neas's piety1 as ,virgil or any ,roman would have conceived it1 lay less in his feelings than in his function and vocation4 ,he was bearing the ,palladium of his country to a new land1 to found another ,troy1 so that the blood and traditions of his ancestors might not perish4 ,his emotions were only the appropriate expression of his priestly office4 ,the hero might have been stern and stolid enough on his own martial ground1 but since he bore the old ,anchises from the ruins of ,ilium he had assumed a sacred mission4 ,henceforth a sacerdotal unction and lyric pathos belonged rightfully to his person4 ,if those embers1 so religiously guarded1 should by chance have been extinguished1 there could never have been a ,vestal fire nor any ,rome4 ,so that all that ,virgil and his readers1 if they had any piety1 revered in the world had been hazarded in those legendary adventures4 ,it was not neas's own life or private ambition that was at stake to justify his emotion4 ,his tenderness1 like ,virgil's own1 was ennobled and made heroic by its magnificent and impersonal object4 ,it was truly an epic destiny that inspired both poet and hero4 ,sidenote3 ,an ideal background required4 ,if we look closer1 however1 we shall see that mythical and magic elements were requisite to lend this loftiness to the argument4 ,had neas not been ,venus's son1 had no prophetic instinct animated him1 had no ,juno been planning the rise of ,carthage1 how could the future destinies of this expedition have been imported into it1 to lift it above some piratical or desperate venture8 ,colonists passing in our day to ,america or ,australia might conceivably carry with them the seeds of empires as considerable as ,rome's4 ,but they would go out thinking of their private livelihood and convenience1 breaking or loosening whatever pious bonds might unite them to the past1 and quite irresponsibly laying the foundations for an unknown future4 ,a poet1 to raise them to the height of their unwitting function1 would have to endow them with second sight and a corresponding breadth of soul and purpose4 ,he would need1 in a word1 heroic figures and supernatural machinery4 ,now1 what supernatural machinery and heroic figures do for an epic poet piety does for a race4 ,it endows it1 through mythical and magic symbols1 with something like a vision or representation of its past and future4 ,religion is normally the most traditional and national of things4 ,it embodies and localises the racial heritage4 ,commandments of the law1 feasts and fasts1 temples and the tombs associated with them1 are so many foci of communal life1 so many points for the dissemination of custom4 ,the ,sabbath1 which a critical age might justify on hygienic grounds1 is inconceivable without a religious sanction4 ,the craving for rest and emotion expressed itself spontaneously in a practice which1 as it established itself1 had to be sanctioned by fables till the recurrent holiday1 with all its humane and chastening influences1 came to be established on supernatural authority4 ,it was now piety to observe it and to commemorate in it the sacred duties and traditions of the race4 ,in this function1 of course1 lay its true justification1 but the mythical one had to be assigned1 since the diffused prosaic advantages of such a practice would never avail to impose it on irrational wills4 ,indeed1 to revert to our illustration1 had neas foreseen in detail the whole history of ,rome1 would not his faith in his divine mission have been considerably dashed8 ,the reality1 precious and inestimable as on the whole it was to humanity1 might well have shocked him by its cruelties1 shames1 and disasters4 ,he would have wished to found only a perfect nation and a city eternal indeed4 ,a want of rationality and measure in the human will1 that has not learned to prize small betterments and finite but real goods1 compels it to deceive itself about the rewards of life in order to secure them4 ,that celestial mission1 those heavenly apparitions1 those incalculable treasures carried through many a storm1 abused ,eneas's mind in order to nerve him to his real duty4 ,yet his illusion was merely intellectual4 ,the mission undertaken was truly worth carrying out4 ,piety thus came to bear the fruits of philanthropy in an age when the love of man was inconceivable4 ,a dull and visionary intellect could hit on no other way of justifying a good instinct4 ,sidenote3 ,piety accepts natural conditions and present tasks4 ,sidenote3 ,the leadership of instinct is normal4 ,philosophers who harbour illusions about the status of intellect in nature may feel that this leadership of instinct in moral life is a sort of indignity1 and that to dwell on it so insistently is to prolong satire without wit4 ,but the leadership of instinct1 the conscious expression of mechanism1 is not merely a necessity in the ,life of ,reason1 it is a safeguard4 ,piety1 in spite of its allegories1 contains a much greater wisdom than a half-enlightened and pert intellect can attain4 ,natural beings have natural obligations1 and the value of things for them is qualified by distance and by accidental material connections4 ,intellect would tend to gauge things impersonally by their intrinsic values1 since intellect is itself a sort of disembodied and universal function2 it would tend to disregard material conditions and that irrational substratum of reason without which reason would have no organs and no points of application4 ,piety1 on the contrary1 esteems things apart from their intrinsic worth1 on account of their relation to the agent's person and fortune4 ,yet such esteem is perfectly rational1 partiality in man's affections and allegiance being justified by the partial nature and local status of his life4 ,piety is the spirit's acknowledgment of its incarnation4 ,so1 in filial and parental affection1 which is piety in an elementary form1 there is a moulding of will and emotion1 a check to irresponsible initiative1 in obedience to the facts of animal reproduction4 ,every living creature has an intrinsic and ideal worth2 he is the centre of actual and yet more of potential interests4 ,but this moral value1 which even the remotest observer must recognise in both parent and child1 is not the ground of their specific affection for each other1 which no other mortal is called to feel their regard4 ,this affection is based on the incidental and irrational fact that the one has this particular man for a father1 and the other that particular man for a son4 ,yet1 considering the animal basis of human life1 an attachment resting on that circumstance is a necessary and rational attachment4 ,this physical bond should not1 indeed1 disturb the intellect in its proper function or warp its judgments2 you should not1 under guise of tenderness1 become foolish and attribute to your father or child greater stature or cleverness or goodness than he actually possesses4 ,to do so is a natural foible but no part of piety or true loyalty4 ,it is one thing to lack a heart and another to possess eyes and a just imagination4 ,indeed1 piety is never so beautiful and touching1 never so thoroughly humane and invincible1 as when it is joined to an impartial intellect1 conscious of the relativity involved in existence and able to elude1 through imaginative sympathy1 the limits set to personal life by circumstance and private duty4 ,as a man dies nobly when1 awaiting his own extinction1 he is interested to the last in what will continue to be the interests and joys of others1 so he is most profoundly pious who loves unreservedly a country1 friends1 and associations which he knows very well to be not the most beautiful on earth1 and who1 being wholly content in his personal capacity with his natural conditions1 does not need to begrudge other things whatever speculative admiration they may truly deserve4 ,the ideal in this polyglot world1 where reason can receive only local and temporal expression1 is to understand all languages and to speak but one1 so as to unite1 in a manly fashion1 comprehension with propriety4 ,piety is in a sense pathetic because it involves subordination to physical accident and acceptance of finitude4 ,but it is also noble and eminently fruitful because1 in subsuming a life under the general laws of relativity1 it meets fate with simple sincerity and labours in accordance with the conditions imposed4 ,since man1 though capable of abstraction and impartiality1 is rooted like a vegetable to one point in space and time1 and exists by limitation1 piety belongs to the equilibrium of his being4 ,it resides1 so to speak1 at his centre of gravity1 at the heart and magnetic focus of his complex endowment4 ,it exercises there the eminently sane function of calling thought home4 ,it saves speculative and emotional life from hurtful extravagance by keeping it traditional and social4 ,conventional absurdities have at least this advantage1 that they may be taken conventionally and may come to be1 in practice1 mere symbols for their uses4 ,piety is more closely linked with custom than with thought4 ,it exercises an irrational suasion1 moralises by contagion1 and brings an emotional peace4 ,sidenote3 ,embodiment essential to spirit4 ,patriotism is another form of piety in which its natural basis and rational function may be clearly seen4 ,it is right to prefer our own essential to country to all others1 because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers4 ,specific character is a necessary point of origin for universal relations3 a pure nothing can have no radiation or scope4 ,it is no accident for the soul to be embodied2 her very essence is to express and bring to fruition the body's functions and resources4 ,its instincts make her ideals and its relations her world4 ,a native country is a sort of second body1 another enveloping organism to give the will definition4 ,a specific inheritance strengthens the soul4 ,cosmopolitanism has doubtless its place1 because a man may well cultivate in himself1 and represent in his nation1 affinities to other peoples1 and such assimilation to them as is compatible with personal integrity and clearness of purpose4 ,plasticity to things foreign need not be inconsistent with happiness and utility at home4 ,but happiness and utility are possible nowhere to a man who represents nothing and who looks out on the world without a plot of his own to stand on1 either on earth or in heaven4 ,he wanders from place to place1 a voluntary exile1 always querulous1 always uneasy1 always alone4 ,his very criticisms express no ideal4 ,his experience is without sweetness1 without cumulative fruits1 and his children1 if he has them1 are without morality4 ,for reason and happiness are like other flowers--they wither when plucked4 ,sidenote3 ,piety to the gods takes form from current ideals4 ,the object most commonly associated with piety is the gods4 ,popular philosophy1 inverting the natural order of ideas1 thinks piety to the gods the source of morality4 ,but piety1 when genuine1 is rather an incidental expression of morality4 ,its sources are perfectly natural4 ,a volitional life that reaches the level of reflection is necessarily moral in proportion to the concreteness and harmony of its instincts4 ,the fruits which such harmonious instincts1 expressed in consciousness1 may eventually bear1 fruits which would be the aim of virtue1 are not readily imaginable1 and the description of them has long ago been intrusted to poets and mythologists4 ,thus the love of ,god1 for example1 is said to be the root of ,christian charity1 but is in reality only its symbol4 ,for no man not having a superabundant need and faculty of loving real things could have given a meaning to the phrase1 8love of ,god10 or been moved by it to any action4 ,history shows in unequivocal fashion that the ,god loved shifts his character with the shift in his worshippers' real affections4 ,what the psalmist loves is the beauty of ,god's house and the place where his glory dwelleth4 ,a priestly quietude and pride1 a grateful1 meditative leisure after the storms of sedition and war1 some retired unity of mind after the contradictions of the world--this is what the love of ,god might signify for the levites4 ,saint ,john tells us that he who says he loves ,god and loves not his neighbour is a liar4 ,here the love of ,god is an anti-worldly estimation of things and persons1 a heart set on that kingdom of heaven in which the humble and the meek should be exalted4 ,again1 for modern ,catholicism the phrase has changed its meaning remarkably and signifies in effect love for ,christ's person1 because piety has taken a sentimental turn and centred on maintaining imaginary personal relations with the ,saviour4 ,how should we conceive that a single supernatural influence was actually responsible for moral effects themselves so various1 and producing1 in spite of a consecutive tradition1 such various notions concerning their object and supposed source8 ,sidenote3 ,the religion of humanity4 ,mankind at large is also1 to some minds1 an object of piety4 ,but this religion of humanity is rather a desideratum than a fact3 humanity does not actually appear to anybody in a religious light4 ,the nihil homine homini utittus remains a signal truth1 but the collective influence of men and their average nature are far too mixed and ambiguous to fill the soul with veneration4 ,piety to mankind must be three-fourths pity4 ,there are indeed specific human virtues1 but they are those necessary to existence1 like patience and courage4 ,supported on these indispensable habits1 mankind always carries an indefinite load of misery and vice4 ,life spreads rankly in every wrong and impracticable direction as well as in profitable paths1 and the slow and groping struggle with its own ignorance1 inertia1 and folly1 leaves it covered in every age of history with filth and blood4 ,it would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility4 ,there is a fond of unhappiness in every bosom1 but the depths are seldom probed2 and there is no doubt that sometimes frivolity and sometimes sturdy habit helps to keep attention on the surface and to cover up the inner void4 ,certain moralists1 without meaning to be satirical1 often say that the sovereign cure for unhappiness is work4 ,unhappily1 the work they recommend is better fitted to dull pain than to remove its cause4 ,it occupies the faculties without rationalising the life4 ,before mankind could inspire even moderate satisfaction1 not to speak of worship1 its whole economy would have to be reformed1 its reproduction regulated1 its thoughts cleared up1 its affections equalised and refined4 ,to worship mankind as it is would be to deprive it of what alone makes it akin to the divine--its aspiration4 ,for this human dust lives2 this misery and crime are dark in contrast to an imagined excellence2 they are lighted up by a prospect of good4 ,man is not adorable1 but he adores1 and the object of his adoration may be discovered within him and elicited from his own soul4 ,in this sense the religion of humanity is the only religion1 all others being sparks and abstracts of the same4 ,the indwelling ideal lends all the gods their divinity4 ,no power1 either physical or psychical1 has the least moral prerogative nor any just place in religion at all unless it supports and advances the ideal native to the worshipper's soul4 ,without moral society between the votary and his god religion is pure idolatry2 and even idolatry would be impossible but for the suspicion that somehow the brute force exorcised in prayer might help or mar some human undertaking4 ,sidenote3 ,cosmic piety4 ,there is1 finally1 a philosophic piety which has the universe for its object4 ,this feeling1 common to ancient and modern ,stoics1 has an obvious justification in man's dependence upon the natural world and in its service to many sides of the mind4 ,such justification of cosmic piety is rather obscured than supported by the euphemisms and ambiguities in which these philosophers usually indulge in their attempt to preserve the customary religious unction4 ,for the more they personify the universe and give it the name of ,god the more they turn it into a devil4 ,the universe1 so far as we can observe it1 is a wonderful and immense engine2 its extent1 its order1 its beauty1 its cruelty1 makes it alike impressive4 ,if we dramatise its life and conceive its spirit1 we are filled with wonder1 terror1 and amusement1 so magnificent is that spirit1 so prolific1 inexorable1 grammatical1 and dull4 ,like all animals and plants1 the cosmos has its own way of doing things1 not wholly rational nor ideally best1 but patient1 fatal1 and fruitful4 ,great is this organism of mud and fire1 terrible this vast1 painful1 glorious experiment4 ,why should we not look on the universe with piety8 ,is it not our substance8 ,are we made of other clay8 ,all our possibilities lie from eternity hidden in its bosom4 ,it is the dispenser of all our joys4 ,we may address it without superstitious terrors2 it is not wicked4 ,it follows its own habits abstractedly2 it can be trusted to be true to its word4 ,society is not impossible between it and us1 and since it is the source of all our energies1 the home of all our happiness1 shall we not cling to it and praise it1 seeing that it vegetates so grandly and so sadly1 and that it is not for us to blame it for what1 doubtless1 it never knew that it did8 ,where there is such infinite and laborious potency there is room for every hope4 ,if we should abstain from judging a father's errors or a mother's foibles1 why should we pronounce sentence on the ignorant crimes of the universe1 which have passed into our own blood8 ,the universe is the true ,adam1 the creation the true fall2 and as we have never blamed our mythical first parent very much1 in spite of the disproportionate consequences of his sin1 because we felt that he was but human and that we1 in his place1 might have sinned too1 so we may easily forgive our real ancestor1 whose connatural sin we are from moment to moment committing1 since it is only the necessary rashness of venturing to be without fore-knowing the price or the fruits of existence4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,spirituality ,,and ,,its ,,corruptions ,sidenote3 ,to be spiritual is to live in view of the ideal4 ,in honouring the sources of life1 piety is retrospective4 ,it collects1 as it were1 food for morality1 and fortifies it with natural and historic nutriment4 ,but a digestive and formative principle must exist to assimilate this nutriment2 a direction and an ideal have to be imposed on these gathered forces4 ,so that religion has a second and a higher side1 which looks to the end toward which we move as piety looks to the conditions of progress and to the sources from which we draw our energies4 ,this aspiring side of religion may be called ,spirituality4 ,spirituality is nobler than piety1 because what would fulfil our being and make it worth having is what alone lends value to that being's source4 ,nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things4 ,the gift of existence would be worthless unless existence was good and supported at least a possible happiness4 ,a man is spiritual when he lives in the presence of the ideal1 and whether he eat or drink does so for the sake of a true and ultimate good4 ,he is spiritual when he envisages his goal so frankly that his whole material life becomes a transparent and transitive vehicle1 an instrument which scarcely arrests attention but allows the spirit to use it economically and with perfect detachment and freedom4 ,there is no need that this ideal should be pompously or mystically described4 ,a simple life is its own reward1 and continually realises its function4 ,though a spiritual man may perfectly well go through intricate processes of thought and attend to very complex affairs1 his single eye1 fixed on a rational purpose1 will simplify morally the natural chaos it looks upon and will remain free4 ,this spiritual mastery is1 of course1 no slashing and forced synthesis of things into a system of philosophy which1 even if it were thinkable1 would leave the conceived logical machine without ideality and without responsiveness to actual interests2 it is rather an inward aim and fixity in affection that knows what to take and what to leave in a world over which it diffuses something of its own peace4 ,it threads its way through the landscape with so little temptation to distraction that it can salute every irrelevant thing1 as ,saint ,francis did the sun and moon1 with courtesy and a certain affectionate detachment4 ,sidenote3 ,spirituality natural4 ,spirituality likes to say1 ,behold the lilies of the field6 ,for its secret has the same simplicity as their vegetative art2 only spirituality has succeeded in adding consciousness without confusing instinct4 ,this success1 unfortunately so rare in man's life as to seem paradoxical1 is its whole achievement4 ,spirituality ought to have been a matter of course1 since conscious existence has inherent value and there is no intrinsic ground why it should smother that value in alien ambitions and servitudes4 ,but spirituality1 though so natural and obvious a thing1 is subject1 like the lilies' beauty1 to corruption4 ,i know not what army of microbes evidently invaded from the beginning the soul's physical basis and devoured its tissues1 so that sophistication and bad dreams entirely obscured her limpidity4 ,none the less1 spirituality1 or life in the ideal1 must be regarded as the fundamental and native type of all life2 what deviates from it is disease and incipient dissolution1 and is itself what might plausibly demand explanation and evoke surprise4 ,the spiritual man should be quite at home in a world made to be used2 the firmament is spread over him like a tent for habitation1 and sublunary furniture is even more obviously to be taken as a convenience4 ,he cannot1 indeed1 remove mountains1 but neither does he wish to do so4 ,he comes to endow the mountains with a function1 and takes them at that1 as a painter might take his brushes and canvas4 ,their beauty1 their metals1 their pasturage1 their defence--this is what he observes in them and celebrates in his addresses to them4 ,the spiritual man1 though not ashamed to be a beggar1 is cognisant of what wealth can do and of what it cannot4 ,his unworldliness is true knowledge of the world1 not so much a gaping and busy acquaintance as a quiet comprehension and estimation which1 while it cannot come without intercourse1 can very well lay intercourse aside4 ,sidenote3 ,primitive consciousness may be spiritual4 ,if the essence of life be spiritual1 early examples of life would seem to be rather the opposite4 ,but man's view of primitive consciousness is humanly biassed and relies too much on partial analogies4 ,we conceive an animal's physical life in the gross1 and must then regard the momentary feelings that accompany it as very poor expressions either of its extent or conditions4 ,these feelings are1 indeed1 so many ephemeral lives1 containing no comprehensive view of the animal's fortunes4 ,they accordingly fail to realise our notion of a spiritual human life which would have to be rational and to form some representation of man's total environment and interests4 ,but it hardly follows that animal feelings are not spiritual in their nature and1 on their narrow basis1 perfectly ideal4 ,the most ideal human passion is love1 which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral4 ,very likely1 if we could revert to an innocent and absorbed view of our early sensations1 we should find that each was a little spiritual universe like ,dante's1 with its internal hell1 purgatory1 and heaven4 ,cut off1 as those experiences were1 from all vistas and from sympathy with things remote1 they would contain a closed circle of interests1 a flying glimpse of eternity4 ,so an infant living in his mystical limbo1 without trailing in a literal sense any clouds of glory from elsewhere1 might well repeat on a diminutive scale the beatific vision1 insomuch as the only function of which he was conscious at all might be perfectly fulfilled by him and felt in its ideal import4 ,sucking and blinking are ridiculous processes1 perhaps1 but they may bring a thrill and satisfaction no less ideal than do the lark's inexhaustible palpitations4 ,narrow scope and low representative value are not defects in a consciousness having a narrow physical basis and comparatively simple conditions4 ,sidenote3 ,spirit crossed by instrumentalities4 ,the spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity1 but sophistication4 ,his instincts1 in becoming many1 became confused1 and in growing permanent1 grew feeble and subject to arrest and deviation4 ,nature1 we may say1 threw the brute form back into her cauldron1 to smelt its substance again before pouring it into a rational mould4 ,the docility which instinct1 in its feebleness1 acquired in the new creature was to be reason's opportunity1 but before the larger harmony could be established a sorry chaos was bound to reign in the mind4 ,every peeping impulse would drop its dark hint and hide its head in confusion1 while some pedantic and unjust law would be passed in its absence and without its vote4 ,secondary activities1 which should always be representative1 would establish themselves without being really such4 ,means would be pursued as if they were ends1 and ends1 under the illusion that they were forces1 would be expected to further some activity1 itself without justification4 ,so pedantry might be substituted for wisdom1 tyranny for government1 superstition for morals1 rhetoric for art4 ,this sophistication is what renders the pursuit of reason so perplexing and prolonged a problem4 ,half-formed adjustments in the brain and in the body politic are represented in consciousness by what are called passions1 prejudices1 motives1 animosities4 ,none of these felt ebullitions in the least understands its own causes1 effects1 or relations1 but is hatched1 so to speak1 on the wing and flutters along in the direction of its momentary preference until it lapses1 it knows not why1 or is crossed and overwhelmed by some contrary power4 ,thus the vital elements1 which in their comparative isolation in the lower animals might have yielded simple little dramas1 each with its obvious ideal1 its achievement1 and its quietus1 when mixed in the barbarous human will make a boisterous medley4 ,for they are linked enough together to feel a strain1 but not knit enough to form a harmony4 ,in this way the unity of apperception seems to light up at first nothing but disunion4 ,the first dawn of that rational principle which involves immortality breaks upon a discovery of death4 ,the consequence is that ideality seems to man something supernatural and almost impossible4 ,he finds himself at his awakening so confused that he puts chaos at the origin of the world4 ,but only order can beget a world or evoke a sensation4 ,chaos is something secondary1 composed of conflicting organisations interfering with one another4 ,it is compounded like a common noise out of jumbled vibrations1 each of which has its period and would in itself be musical4 ,the problem is to arrange these sounds1 naturally so tuneful1 into concerted music4 ,so long as total discord endures human life remains spasmodic and irresolute2 it can find no ideal and admit no total representation of nature4 ,only when the disordered impulses and perceptions settle down into a trained instinct1 a steady1 vital response and adequate preparation for the world1 do clear ideas and successful purposes arise in the mind4 ,the ,life of ,reason1 with all the arts1 then begins its career4 ,the forces at play in this drama are1 first1 the primary impulses and functions represented by elementary values2 second1 the thin network of signals and responses by which those functions are woven into a total organ1 represented by discursive thought and all secondary mental figments1 and1 third1 the equilibrium and total power of that new organism in action represented by the ideal4 ,spirituality1 which might have resided in the elementary values1 sensuous or passionate1 before the relational process supervened1 can now exist only in the ultimate activity to which these processes are instrumental4 ,obstacles to spirituality in human life may accordingly take the form of an arrest either at the elementary values--an entanglement in sense and passion--or at the instrumental processes--an entanglement in what in religious parlance is called 8the world40 ,sidenote3 ,one foe of the spirit is worldliness4 ,worldly minds bristle with conventional morality 7though in private they may nurse a vice or two to appease wayward nature71 and they are rational in everything except first principles4 ,they consider the voluptuary a weak fool1 disgraced and disreputable2 and if they notice the spiritual man at all--for he is easily ignored--they regard him as a useless and visionary fellow4 ,civilisation has to work algebraically with symbols for known and unknown quantities which only in the end resume their concrete values1 so that the journeymen and vulgar middlemen of the world know only conventional goods4 ,they are lost in instrumentalities and are themselves only instruments in the ,life of ,reason4 ,wealth1 station1 fame1 success of some notorious and outward sort1 make their standard of happiness4 ,their chosen virtues are industry1 good sense1 probity1 conventional piety1 and whatever else has acknowledged utility and seemliness4 ,sidenote3 ,the case for and against pleasure4 ,in its strictures on pleasure and reverie this ,philistia is perfectly right4 ,sensuous living 7and ,i do not mean debauchery alone1 but the palpitations of any poet without art or any mystic without discipline7 is not only inconsequential and shallow1 but dangerous to honour and to sincere happiness4 ,when life remains lost in sense or reverts to it entirely1 humanity itself is atrophied4 ,and humanity is tormented and spoilt when1 as more often happens1 a man disbelieving in reason and out of humour with his world1 abandons his soul to loose whimseys and passions that play a quarrelsome game there1 like so many ill-bred children4 ,nevertheless1 compared with the worldling's mental mechanism and rhetoric1 the sensualist's soul is a well of wisdom4 ,he lives naturally on an animal level and attains a kind of good4 ,he has free and concrete pursuits1 though they be momentary1 and he has sincere satisfactions4 ,he is less often corrupt than primitive1 and even when corrupt he finds some justification for his captious existence4 ,he harvests pleasures as he goes which intrinsically1 as we have seen1 may have the depth and ideality which nature breathes in all her oracles4 ,his experience1 for that reason1 though disastrous is interesting and has some human pathos2 it is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig4 ,true1 the libertine is pursued1 like the animals1 by unforeseen tortures1 decay1 and abandonment1 and he is vowed to a total death2 but in these respects the worldly man has hardly an advantage4 ,the ,babels he piles up may indeed survive his person1 but they are themselves vain and without issue1 while his brief life has been meantime spent in slavery and his mind cramped with cant and foolish ambitions4 ,the voluptuary is like some roving creature1 browsing on nettles and living by chance2 the worldling is like a beast of burden1 now ill-used and over-worked1 now fatted1 stalled1 and richly caparisoned4 sop might well have described their relative happiness in a fable about the wild ass and the mule4 ,sidenote3 ,upshot of worldly wisdom4 ,thus1 even if the voluptuary is sometimes a poet and the worldling often an honest man1 they both lack reason so entirely that reflection revolts equally against the life of both4 ,vanity1 vanity1 is their common epitaph4 ,now1 at the soul's christening and initiation into the ,life of ,reason1 the first vow must always be to 8renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world40 ,a person to whom this means nothing is one to whom1 in the end1 nothing has meaning4 ,he has not conceived a highest good1 no ultimate goal is within his horizon1 and it has never occurred to him to ask what he is living for4 ,with all his pompous soberness1 the worldly man is fundamentally frivolous2 with all his maxims and cant estimations he is radically inane4 ,he conforms to religion without suspecting what religion means1 not being in the least open to such an inquiry4 ,he judges art like a parrot1 without having ever stopped to evoke an image4 ,he preaches about service and duty without any recognition of natural demands or any standard of betterment4 ,his moral life is one vast anacoluthon in which the final term is left out that might have given sense to the whole1 one vast ellipsis in which custom seems to bridge the chasm left between ideas4 ,he denies the values of sense because they tempt to truancies from mechanical activity2 the values of reason he necessarily ignores because they lie beyond his scope4 ,he adheres to conventional maxims and material quantitative standards2 his production is therefore1 as far as he himself is concerned1 an essential waste and his activity an essential tedium4 ,if at least1 like the sensualist1 he enjoyed the process and expressed his fancy in his life1 there would be something gained2 and this sort of gain1 though over-looked in the worldling's maxims1 all of which have a categorical tone1 is really what often lends his life some propriety and spirit4 ,business and war and any customary task may come to form1 so to speak1 an organ whose natural function will be just that operation1 and the most abstract and secondary activity1 like that of adding figures or reading advertisements1 may in this way become the one function proper to some soul4 ,there are ,nibelungen dwelling by choice underground and happy pedants in the upper air4 ,facts are not wanting for these pillars of society to take solace in1 if they wish to defend their philosophy4 ,the time will come1 astronomers say1 when life will be extinct upon this weary planet4 ,all the delights of sense and imagination will be over4 ,it is these that will have turned out to be vain4 ,but the masses of matter which the worldlings have transformed with their machinery1 and carried from one place to another1 will remain to bear witness of them4 ,the collocation of atoms will never be what it would have been if their feet had less continually beaten the earth4 ,they may have the proud happiness of knowing that1 when nothing that the spirit values endures1 the earth may still sometimes1 because of them1 cast a slightly different shadow across the moon's craters4 ,sidenote3 ,two supposed escapes from vanity3 ,there is no more critical moment in the life of a man and a nation than that in which they are first conscience-stricken and convicted of vanity4 ,failure1 exhaustion1 confusion of aims1 or whatever else it be that causes a revulsion1 brings them before a serious dilemma4 ,has the vanity of life hitherto been essential or incidental8 ,are we to look for a new ambition1 free from all the illusions of natural impulse1 or are we rather to renounce all will indiscriminately and fall back upon conformity and consummate indifference8 ,as this question is answered in one way or the other1 two different types of unworldly religion arise4 ,sidenote3 fanaticism4 ,the first1 which heralds a new and unimpeachable special hope1 a highest duty finally recognised and driving out all lesser motives and satisfactions from the soul1 refers vanity to perversity1 to error1 to a sort of original misunderstanding of our own nature which has led us1 in pursuing our worldly interests1 to pursue in truth our own destruction4 ,the vanity of life1 according to this belief1 has been accidental4 ,the taint of existence is not innate vanity but casual sin2 what has misled us is not the will in general but only the false and ignorant direction of a will not recognising its only possible satisfaction4 ,what religion in this case opposes to the world is a special law1 a special hope1 a life intense1 ambitious1 and aggressive1 but excluding much which to an ingenuous will might seem excellent and tempting4 ,worldliness1 in a word1 is here met by fanaticism4 ,sidenote3 and mysticism4 ,the second type of unworldly religion does not propose to overwhelm the old ,adam by singleminded devotion to one selected interest1 nor does it refer vanity to an accidental error4 ,on the contrary1 it conceives that any special interest1 any claim made by a finite and mortal creature upon an infinite world1 is bound to be defeated4 ,it is not special acts1 it conceives1 which are sinful1 but action and will themselves that are intrinsically foolish4 ,the cure lies in rescinding the passionate interests that torment us1 not in substituting for them another artificial passion more imperious and merciless than the natural passions it comes to devour4 ,this form of religion accordingly meets worldliness with mysticism4 ,holiness is not placed in conformity to a prescriptive law1 in pursuit of a slightly regenerated bliss1 nor in advancing a special institution and doctrine4 ,holiness for the mystic consists rather in universal mildness and insight2 in freedom from all passion1 bias1 and illusion2 in a disembodied wisdom which accepts the world1 dominates its labyrinths1 and is able to guide others through it1 without pursuing1 for its own part1 any hope or desire4 ,sidenote3 ,both are irrational4 ,if these two expedients of the conscience convicted of vanity were to be subjected to a critical judgment1 they would both be convicted of vanity themselves4 ,the case of fanaticism is not doubtful1 for the choice it makes of a special law or institution or posthumous hope is purely arbitrary1 and only to be justified by the satisfaction it affords to those very desires which it boasts to supplant4 ,an oracular morality or revealed religion can hope to support its singular claims only by showing its general conformity to natural reason and its perfect beneficence in the world4 ,where such justification is wanting the system fanatically embraced is simply an epidemic mania1 a social disease for the philosopher to study and1 if possible1 to cure4 ,every strong passion tends to dislodge the others1 so that fanaticism may often involve a certain austerity1 impetuosity1 and intensity of life4 ,this vigour1 however1 is seldom lasting2 fanaticism dries its own roots and becomes1 when traditionally established1 a convention as arbitrary as any fashion and the nest for a new brood of mean and sinister habits4 ,the ,pharisee is a new worldling1 only his little world is narrowed to a temple1 a tribe1 and a clerical tradition4 ,mysticism1 as its meditative nature comports1 is never so pernicious1 nor can it be brought so easily round to worldliness again4 ,that its beneficent element is purely natural and inconsistent with a denial of will1 we shall have occasion elsewhere to observe4 ,suffice it here to point out1 that even if a moral nihilism could be carried through and all definite interests abandoned1 the vanity of life would not be thereby corrected1 but merely exposed4 ,when our steps had been retraced to the very threshold of being1 nothing better worth doing would have been discovered on the way4 ,that to suffer illusion is a bad thing might ordinarily be taken for an axiom1 because ordinarily we assume that true knowledge and rational volition are possible2 but if this assumption is denied1 the value of retracting illusions is itself impeached4 ,when vanity is represented as universal and salvation as purely negative1 every one is left free to declare that it is vain to renounce vanity and sinful to seek salvation4 ,this result1 fantastic though it may at first sight appear1 is one which mysticism actually comes to under certain circumstances4 ,absolute pessimism and absolute optimism are opposite sentiments attached to a doctrine identically the same4 ,in either case no improvement is possible1 and the authority of human ideals is denied4 ,to escape1 to stanch natural wounds1 to redeem society and the private soul1 are then mistaken and pitiable ambitions1 adding to their vanity a certain touch of impiety4 ,one who really believes that the world's work is all providentially directed and that whatever happens1 no matter how calamitous or shocking1 happens by divine right1 has a quietistic excuse for license2 to check energy by reason1 and seek to limit and choose its path1 seems to him a puny rebellion against omnipotence1 which works through madness and crime in man no less than through cataclysms in outer nature4 ,every particular desire is vain and bound1 perhaps1 to be defeated2 but the mystic1 when caught in the expansive mood1 accepts this defeat itself as needful4 ,thus a refusal to discriminate rationally or to accept human interests as the standard of right may culminate in a convulsive surrender to passion1 just as1 when caught in the contractile phase1 the same mysticism may lead to universal abstention4 ,sidenote3 ,is there a third course8 ,must unworldliness be either fanatical or mystical8 ,that is a question of supreme importance to the moral philosopher4 ,on the answer to it hangs the rationality of a spiritual life2 nay1 the existence of spirituality itself among the types of human activity4 ,for the fanatic and mystic are only spiritual in appearance because they separate themselves from the prevalent interests of the world1 the one by a special persistent aggression1 the other by a general passivity and unearthly calm4 ,the fanatic is1 notwithstanding1 nothing but a worldling too narrow and violent to understand the world1 while the mystic is a sensualist too rapt and voluptuous to rationalise his sensations4 ,both represent arrested forms of common-sense1 partial developments of a perfectly usual sensibility4 ,there is no divine inspiration in having only one passion left1 nor in dreamfully accepting or renouncing all the passions together4 ,spirituality1 if identified with such types1 might justly be called childish4 ,there is an innocent and incredulous childishness1 with its useless eyes wide open1 just as there is a malevolent and peevish childishness1 eaten up with some mischievous whim4 ,the man of experience and affairs can very quickly form an opinion on such phenomena4 ,he has no reason to expect superior wisdom in those quarters4 ,on the contrary1 his own customary political and humane standpoint gives him the only authoritative measure of their merits and possible uses4 8,these sectaries and dreamers10 he will say to himself1 8cannot understand one another nor the role they themselves play in society4 ,it is for us to make the best of them we can1 taking such prudent measures as are possible to enlist the forces they represent in works of common utility40 ,sidenote3 ,yes2 for experience has intrinsic inalienable values4 ,the philosopher's task1 in these premisses1 is to discover an escape from worldliness which shall offer a rational advance over it1 such as fanaticism and mysticism cannot afford4 ,does the ,life of ,reason differ from that of convention8 ,is there a spirituality really wiser than common-sense8 ,that there is appears in many directions4 ,worldliness is arrest and absorption in the instrumentalities of life2 but instrumentalities cannot exist without ultimate purposes1 and it suffices to lift the eyes to those purposes and to question the will sincerely about its essential preferences1 to institute a catalogue of rational goods1 by pursuing any of which we escape worldliness4 ,sense itself is one of these goods4 ,the sensualist at least is not worldly1 and though his nature be atrophied in all its higher part1 there is not lacking1 as we have seen1 a certain internal and abstract spirituality in his experience4 ,he is a sort of sprightly and incidental mystic1 treating his varied succession of little worlds as the mystic does his monotonous universe4 ,sense1 moreover1 is capable of many refinements1 by which physical existence becomes its own reward4 ,in the disciplined play of fancy which the fine arts afford1 the mind's free action justifies itself and becomes intrinsically delightful4 ,science not only exercises in itself the intellectual powers1 but assimilates nature to the mind1 so that all things may nourish it4 ,in love and friendship the liberal life extends also to the heart4 ,all these interests1 which justify themselves by their intrinsic fruits1 make so many rational episodes and patches in conventional life2 but it must be confessed in all candour that these are but oases in the desert1 and that as the springs of life are irrational1 so its most vehement and prevalent interests remain irrational to the end4 ,when the pleasures of sense and art1 of knowledge and sympathy1 are stretched to the utmost1 what part will they cover and justify of our passions1 our industry1 our governments1 our religion8 ,it was a signal error in those rationalists who attributed their ideal retrospectively to nature that they grotesquely imagined that people were hungry so that they might enjoy eating1 or curious in order to delight in discovering the truth1 or in love the better to live in conscious harmony4 ,such a view forgets that all the forces of life work originally and fundamentally a tergo1 that experience and reason are not the ground of preference but its result4 ,in order to live men will work disproportionately and eat all manner of filth without pleasure2 curiosity as often as not leads to illusion1 and argument serves to foster hatred of the truth2 finally1 love is notoriously a great fountain of bitterness and frequently a prelude to crime and death4 ,when we have skimmed from life its incidental successes1 when we have harvested the moments in which existence justifies itself1 its profound depths remain below in their obscure commotion1 depths that breed indeed a rational efflorescence1 but which are far from exhausted in producing it1 and continually threaten1 on the contrary1 to engulf it4 ,sidenote3 ,for these the religious imagination must supply an ideal standard4 ,the spiritual man needs1 therefore1 something more than a cultivated sympathy with the brighter scintillation of things4 ,he needs to refer that scintillation to some essential light1 so that in reviewing the motley aspects of experience he may not be reduced to culling superciliously the flowers that please him1 but may view in them all only images and varied symbols of some eternal good4 ,spirituality has never flourished apart from religion1 except momentarily1 perhaps1 in some master-mind1 whose original intuitions at once became a religion to his followers4 ,for it is religion that knows how to interpret the casual rationalities in the world and isolate their principle1 setting this principle up in the face of nature as nature's standard and model4 ,this ideal synthesis of all that is good1 this consciousness that over earth floats its congenial heaven1 this vision of perfection which gilds beauty and sanctifies grief1 has taken form1 for the most part1 in such grossly material images1 in a mythology so opaque and pseudo-physical1 that its ideal and moral essence has been sadly obscured2 nevertheless1 every religion worthy of the name has put into its gods some element of real goodness1 something by which they become representative of those scattered excellences and self-justifying bits of experience in which the ,life of ,reason consists4 ,that happy constitution which human life has at its best moments--that1 says ,aristotle1 the divine life has continually4 ,the philosopher thus expressed with absolute clearness the principle which the poets had been clumsily trying to embody from the beginning4 ,burdened as traditional faiths might be with cosmological and fanciful matter1 they still presented in a conspicuous and permanent image that which made all good things good1 the ideal and standard of all excellence4 ,by the help of such symbols the spiritual man could steer and steady his judgment2 he could say1 according to the form religion had taken in his country1 that the truly good was what ,god commanded1 or what made man akin to the divine1 or what led the soul to heaven4 ,such expressions1 though taken more or less literally by a metaphysical intellect1 did not wholly forfeit their practical and moral meaning4 ,god1 for a long time1 was understood to command what in fact was truly important1 the divine was long the truly noble and beautiful1 heaven hardly ever ceased to respond to impersonal and ideal aspirations4 ,under those figures1 therefore1 the ideals of life could confront life with clearness and authority4 ,the spiritual man1 fixing his eyes on them1 could live in the presence of ultimate purposes and ideal issues4 ,before each immediate task1 each incidental pleasure1 each casual success1 he could retain his sweetness and constancy1 accepting what good these moments brought and laying it on the altar of what they ought to bring4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,charity ,sidenote3 ,possible tyranny of reason4 ,those whom a genuine spirituality has freed from the foolish enchantment of words and conventions and brought back to a natural ideal1 have still another illusion to vanquish1 one into which the very concentration and deepening of their life might lead them4 ,this illusion is that they and their chosen interests alone are important or have a legitimate place in the moral world4 ,having discovered what is really good for themselves1 they assume that the like is good for everybody4 ,having made a tolerable synthesis and purification of their own natures1 they require every other nature to be composed of the same elements similarly combined4 ,what they have vanquished in themselves they disregard in others2 and the consequence sometimes is that an impossibly simplified and inconsiderate regimen is proposed to mankind1 altogether unrepresentative of their total interests4 ,spiritual men1 in a word1 may fall into the aristocrat's fallacy2 they may forget the infinite animal and vulgar life which remains quite disjointed1 impulsive1 and short-winded1 but which nevertheless palpitates with joys and sorrows1 and makes after all the bulk of moral values in this democratic world4 ,sidenote3 ,everything has its rights4 ,after adopting an ideal it is necessary1 therefore1 without abandoning it1 to recognise its relativity4 ,the right path is in such a matter rather difficult to keep to4 ,on the one hand lies fanatical insistence on an ideal once arrived at1 no matter how many instincts and interests 7the basis of all ideals7 are thereby outraged in others and ultimately also in one's self4 ,on the other hand lies mystical disintegration1 which leads men to feel so keenly the rights of everything in particular and of the ,all in general1 that they retain no hearty allegiance to any human interest4 ,between these two abysses winds the narrow path of charity and valour4 ,the ultimate ideal is absolutely authoritative1 because if any ground were found to relax allegiance to it in any degree or for any consideration1 that ground would itself be the ideal1 found to be more nearly absolute and ultimate than the one1 hastily so called1 which it corrected4 ,the ultimate ideal1 in order to maintain its finality and preclude the possibility of an appeal which should dislodge it from its place of authority1 must have taken all interests into consideration2 it must be universally representative4 ,now1 to take an interest into consideration and represent it means to intend1 as far as possible1 to secure the particular good which that particular interest looks to1 and never1 whatever measures may be adopted1 to cease to look back on the elementary impulse as upon something which ought1 if possible1 to have been satisfied1 and which we should still go back and satisfy now1 if circumstances and the claims of rival interests permitted4 ,justice and charity are identical4 ,to deny the initial right of any impulse is not morality but fanaticism4 ,however determined may be the prohibition which reason opposes to some wild instinct1 that prohibition is never reckless2 it is never inconsiderate of the very impulse which it suppresses4 ,it suppresses that impulse unwillingly1 pitifully1 under stress of compulsion and force majeure2 for reason1 in representing this impulse in the context of life and in relation to every other impulse which1 in its operation1 it would affect mechanically1 rejects and condemns it2 but it condemns it not by antecedent hate but by supervening wisdom4 ,the texture of the natural world1 the conflict of interests in the soul and in society1 all of which cannot be satisfied together1 is accordingly the ground for moral restrictions and compromises4 ,whatever the up-shot of the struggle may be1 whatever the verdict pronounced by reason1 the parties to the suit must in justice all be heard1 and heard sympathetically4 ,sidenote3 ,primary and secondary morality4 ,herein lies the great difference between first-hand and second-hand morality4 ,the retailers of moral truth1 the town-criers that go shouting in the streets some sentence passed long ago in reason's court against some inadmissible desire1 know nothing of justice or mercy or reason--three principles essentially identical4 ,they thunder conclusions without remembering the premisses1 and expose their precepts1 daily1 of course1 grown more thin and unrepresentative1 to the aversion and neglect of all who genuinely love what is good4 ,the masters of life1 on the contrary1 the first framers and discoverers of moral ideals1 are persons who disregard those worn conventions and their professional interpreters3 they are persons who have a fresh sense for the universal need and cry of human souls1 and reconstruct the world of duty to make it fit better with the world of desire and of possible happiness4 ,primary morality1 inspired by love of something naturally good1 is accordingly charitable and ready to forgive2 while secondary morality1 founded on prejudice1 is fanatical and ruthless4 ,sidenote3 ,uncharitable pagan justice is not just4 ,as virtue carries with it a pleasure which perfects it and without which virtue would evidently be spurious and merely compulsory1 so justice carries with it a charity which is its highest expression1 without which justice remains only an organised wrong4 ,of justice without charity we have a classic illustration in ,plato's ,republic and in general in the pagan world4 ,an end is assumed1 in this case an end which involves radical injustice toward every interest not included in it2 and then an organism is developed or conceived that shall subserve that end1 and political justice is defined as the harmonious adjustment of powers and functions within that organism4 ,reason and art suffice to discover the right methods for reaching the chosen end1 and the polity thus established1 with all its severities and sacrifices of personal will1 is rationally grounded4 ,the chosen end1 however1 is arbitrary1 and1 in fact1 perverse2 for to maintain a conventional city with stable institutions and perpetual military efficiency would not secure human happiness2 nor 7to pass to the individual virtue symbolised by such a state7 would the corresponding discipline of personal habits1 in the service of vested interests and bodily life1 truly unfold the potentialities of the human spirit4 ,plato himself1 in passing1 acknowledges that his political ideal is secondary and not ideal at all1 since only luxury1 corruption1 and physical accidents make a military state necessary2 but his absorption in current ,greek questions made him neglect the initial question of all1 namely1 how a non-military and non-competitive state might be established1 or rather how the remedial functions of the state might be forestalled by natural justice and rendered unnecessary4 ,the violence which such a fallen ideal1 with its iniquitous virtues1 does to humanity appeared only too clearly in the sequel1 when ,platonism took refuge in the supernatural4 ,the whole pagan world was convicted of injustice and the cities for whose glory the greatest heroes had lived and died were abandoned with horror4 ,only in a catacomb or a hermitage did there seem to be any room for the soul4 ,this revulsion1 perverse in its own way1 expressed rightly enough the perversity of that unjust justice1 those worldly and arbitrary virtues1 and that sad happiness which had enslaved the world4 ,sidenote3 ,the doom of ancient republics4 ,plato could never have answered the question whether his ,republic had a right to exist and to brush aside all other commonwealths2 he could never have justified the ways of man to the rest of creation nor 7what is more pertinent7 to man's more plastic and tenderer imagination4 ,the initial impulses on which his ,republic is founded1 which make war1 defensive and aggressive1 the first business of the state1 are not irresistible impulses1 they do not correspond to ultimate ends4 ,physical life cannot justify itself2 it cannot be made the purpose of those rational faculties which it generates2 these1 on the contrary1 are its own end4 ,the purpose of war must be peace2 the purpose of competition a more general prosperity2 the purpose of personal life ideal achievements4 ,a polity which should not tend to abolish private lusts1 competition1 and war would be an irrational polity4 ,the organisation which the ancients insisted on within each state1 the sacrifices they imposed on each class in the community for the general welfare1 have to be repeated in that greater commonwealth of which cities and nations are citizens2 for their own existence and prosperity depends on conciliating inwardly all that may affect them and turning foreign forces1 when contact with them is inevitable1 into friends4 ,duty and co-operation must extend as far as do physical bonds1 the function of reason being to bring life into harmony with its conditions1 so as to render it self-perpetuating and free4 ,this end can never be attained while the scope of moral fellowship is narrower than that of physical interplay4 ,ancient civilisation1 brilliant in proportion to its inner integration1 was brief in proportion to its outer injustice4 ,by defying the external forces on which also a commonwealth depends1 those commonwealths came to premature extinction4 ,sidenote3 ,rational charity4 ,there is accordingly a justice deeper and milder than that of pagan states1 a universal justice called charity1 a kind of all-penetrating courtesy1 by which the limits of personal or corporate interests are transgressed in imagination4 ,value is attributed to rival forms of life2 something of the intensity and narrowness inherent in the private will is surrendered to admiration and solicitude for what is most alien and hostile to one's self4 ,when this imaginative expansion ends in neutralising the will altogether1 we have mysticism2 but when it serves merely to co-ordinate felt interests with other actual interests conceived sympathetically1 and to make them converge1 we have justice and charity4 ,charity is nothing but a radical and imaginative justice4 ,so the ,buddhist stretches his sympathy to all real beings and to many imaginary monsters2 so the ,christian chooses for his love the diseased1 the sinful1 the unlovely4 ,his own salvation does not seem to either complete unless every other creature also is redeemed and forgiven4 ,sidenote3 ,its limits4 ,such universal solicitude is rational1 however1 only when the beings to which it extends are in practical efficient relations with the life that would co-operate with theirs4 ,in other words1 charity extends only to physical and discoverable creatures1 whose destiny is interwoven dynamically with our own4 ,absolute and irresponsible fancy can be the basis of no duty4 ,if not to take other real forces and interests into account made classic states unstable and unjust1 to take into consideration purely imaginary forces yields a polity founded on superstition1 one unjust to those who live under it4 ,a compromise made with non-existent or irrelevant interests is a wrong to the real interests on which that sacrifice is imposed gratuitously4 ,all sacrifices exacted by mere religion have accordingly been inhuman2 at best they have unintentionally made some amends by affording abstract discipline or artistic forms of expression4 ,the sacrifice must be fruitful in the end and bring happiness to somebody3 otherwise it cannot long remain tender or beautiful4 ,sidenote3 ,its mythical supports4 ,charity is seldom found uncoloured by fables which illustrate it and lend it a motive by which it can justify itself verbally4 ,metempsychosis1 heaven and hell1 ,christ's suffering for every sinner1 are notions by which charity has often been guided and warmed4 ,like myth everywhere1 these notions express judgments which they do not originate1 although they may strengthen or distort them in giving them expression4 ,the same myths1 in cruel hands1 become goads to fanaticism4 ,that natural sensitiveness in which charity consists has many degrees and many inequalities2 the spirit bloweth where it listeth4 ,incidental circumstances determine its phases and attachments in life4 ,christian charity1 for instance1 has two chief parts3 first1 it hastens to relieve the body2 then1 forgetting physical economy altogether1 it proceeds to redeem the soul4 ,the bodily works of mercy which ,christians perform with so much tact and devotion are not such as philanthropy alone would inspire2 they are more and less than that4 ,they are more1 because they are done with a certain disproportionate and absolute solicitude1 quite apart from ultimate benefit or a thought of the best distribution of energies2 they are also less1 because they stop at healing1 and cannot pass beyond the remedial and incidental phase without ceasing to be ,christian4 ,the poor1 says ,christian charity1 we have always with us2 every man must be a sinner--else what obligation should he have to repent8--and1 in fine1 this world is essentially the kingdom of ,satan4 ,charity comes only to relieve the most urgent bodily needs1 and then to wean the heart altogether from mortal interests4 ,thus ,christianity covers the world with hospitals and orphanages2 but its only positive labours go on in churches and convents1 nor will it found schools1 if left to itself1 to teach anything except religion4 ,these offices may be performed with more or less success1 with more or less appeal to the miraculous2 but1 with whatever mixture of magic and policy1 ,christian charity has never aimed at anything but healing the body and saving the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,there is intelligence in charity4 ,christ himself1 we may well feel1 did not affect publicans and sinners1 ignorant people and children1 in order to save them in the regimental and prescriptive fashion adopted by the ,church4 ,he commanded those he forgave to sin no more and those he healed to go1 as custom would have it1 to the priest4 ,he understood the bright good that each sinner was following when he stumbled into the pit4 ,for this insight he was loved4 ,to be rebuked in that sympathetic spirit was to be comforted2 to be punished by such a hand was to be made whole4 ,the ,magdalene was forgiven because she had loved much2 an absolution which rehabilitates the primary longing that had driven her on1 a longing not insulted but comprehended in such an absolution1 and purified by that comprehension4 ,it is a charitable salvation which enables the newly revealed deity to be absolutely loved4 ,charity has this art of making men abandon their errors without asking them to forget their ideals4 ,sidenote3 ,buddhist and ,christian forms of it4 ,in ,buddhism the same charity wears a more speculative form4 ,all beings are to be redeemed from the illusion which is the fountain of their troubles4 ,none is to be compelled to assume irrationally an alien set of duties or other functions than his own4 ,spirit is not to be incarcerated perpetually in grotesque and accidental monsters1 but to be freed from all fatality and compulsion4 ,the goal is not some more flattering incarnation1 but escape from incarnation altogether4 ,ignorance is to be enlightened1 passion calmed1 mistaken destiny revoked2 only what the inmost being desiderates1 only what can really quiet the longings embodied in any particular will1 is to occupy the redeemed mind4 ,here1 though creative reason is wholly wanting1 charity is truly understood2 for it avails little to make of kindness a vicarious selfishness and to use neighbourly offices to plunge our neighbour deeper into his favourite follies4 ,such servile sympathy would make men one another's accomplices rather than friends4 ,it would treat them with a weak promiscuous favour1 not with true mercy and justice4 ,in charity there can be nothing to repent of1 as there so often is in natural love and in partisan propaganda4 ,christians have sometimes interpreted charity as zeal to bring men into their particular fold2 or1 at other times1 when enthusiasm for doctrine and institutes has cooled1 they have interpreted charity to be mere blind co-operation1 no matter in what4 ,the ,buddhists seem to have shown a finer sense in their ministry1 knowing how to combine universal sympathy with perfect spirituality4 ,there was no brow-beating in their call to conversion1 no new tyranny imposed of sanctioned by their promised deliverance4 ,if they could not rise to a positive conception of natural life1 this inability but marks the well-known limitations of ,oriental fancy1 which has never been able to distinguish steadily that imagination which rests on and expresses material life from that which1 in its import1 breaks loose from the given conditions of life altogether1 and is therefore monstrous and dreamful4 ,but at least ,buddhism knew how to sound the heart and pierce to the genuine principles of happiness and misery4 ,if it did not venture to interpret reason positively1 it at least forbore to usurp its inward and autonomous authority1 and did not set up1 in the name of salvation1 some new partiality1 some new principle of distress and illusion4 ,in destroying worldliness this religion avoided imposture4 ,the clearing it made in the soul was soon overgrown again by the inexorable ,indian jungle2 but had a virile intellect been at hand1 it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of all accumulated rubbish4 ,sidenote3 ,apparent division of the spiritual and the natural4 ,against avarice1 lust1 and rancour1 against cruel and vain national ambitions1 tenderer and more recollected minds have always sought some asylum3 but they have the seldom possessed enough knowledge of nature and of human life to distinguish clearly the genuine and innocent goods which they longed for1 and their protest against 8the world0 has too often taken on a mystical and irrational accent4 ,charity1 for instance1 in its profounder deliverances1 has become a protest against the illusion of personality2 whereby existence and action seem to be wholly condemned after their principle has been identified with selfishness4 ,an artificial puzzle is thus created1 the same concept1 selfishness or an irrational partiality and injustice in the will1 being applied to two principles of action1 the one wrong and the other necessary4 ,every man is necessarily the seat of his own desires1 which1 if truly fulfilled1 would bring him satisfaction2 but the objects in which that satisfaction may be found1 and the forces that must co-operate to secure it1 lie far afield1 and his life will remain cramped and self-destructive so long as he does not envisage its whole basis and co-operate with all his potential allies4 ,the rationality which would then be attained is so immensely exalted above the microscopic vision and punctiform sensibility of those who think themselves practical1 that speculative natures seem to be proclaiming another set of interests1 another and quite miraculous life1 when they attempt to thaw out and vivify the vulgar mechanism2 and the sense of estrangement and contradiction often comes over the spiritually minded themselves1 making them confess sadly that the kingdom of heaven is not of this world4 ,as common morality itself falls easily into mythical expressions and speaks of a fight between conscience and nature1 reason and the passions1 as if these were independent in their origin or could be divided in their operation1 so spiritual life even more readily opposes the ideal to the real1 the revealed and heavenly truth to the extant reality1 as if the one could be anything but an expression and fulfilment of the other4 ,being equal convinced that spiritual life is authoritative and possible1 and that it is opposed to all that earthly experience has as yet supplied1 the prophet almost inevitably speaks of another world above the clouds and another existence beyond the grave2 he thus seeks to clothe in concrete and imaginable form the ideal to which natural existence seems to him wholly rebellious4 ,spiritual life comes to mean life abstracted from politics1 from art1 from sense1 even in the end from morality4 ,natural motives and natural virtues are contrasted with those which are henceforth called supernatural1 and all the grounds and sanctions of right living are transferred to another life4 ,a doctrine of immortality thus becomes the favourite expression of religion4 ,by its variations and greater or less transparency and ideality we can measure the degree of spiritual insight which has been reached at any moment4 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,the ,,belief ,,in ,a ,,future ,,life ,sidenote3 ,the length of life a subject for natural science4 ,at no point are the two ingredients of religion1 superstition and moral truth1 more often confused than in the doctrine of immortality1 yet in none are they more clearly distinguishable4 ,ideal immortality is a principle revealed to insight2 it is seen by observing the eternal quality of ideas and validities1 and the affinity to them native to reason or the cognitive energy of mind4 ,a future life1 on the contrary1 is a matter for faith or presumption2 it is a prophetic hypothesis regarding occult existences4 ,this latter question is scientific and empirical1 and should be treated as such4 ,a man is1 forensically speaking1 the same man after the nightly break in his consciousness4 ,after many changes in his body and after long oblivion1 parcels of his youth may be revived and may come to figure again among the factors in his action4 ,similarly1 if evidence to that effect were available1 we might establish the resurrection of a given soul in new bodies or its activity in remote places and times4 ,evidence of this sort has in fact always been offered copiously by rumour and superstition4 ,the operation of departed spirits1 like that of the gods1 has been recognised in many a dream1 or message1 or opportune succour4 ,the ,dioscuri and ,saint ,james the ,apostle have appeared--preferably on white horses--in sundry battles4 ,spirits duly invoked have repeated forgotten gossip and revealed the places where crimes had been committed or treasure buried4 ,more often1 perhaps1 ghosts have walked the night without any ostensible or useful purpose1 apparently in obedience to some ghastly compulsion that crept over them in death1 as if a hesitating sickle had left them still hanging to life by one attenuated fibre4 ,sidenote3 8,psychical0 phenomena4 ,the mass of this evidence1 ancient and modern1 traditional and statistical1 is beneath consideration2 the palpitating mood in which it is gathered and received1 even when ostensibly scientific1 is such that gullibility and fiction play a very large part in the report2 for it is not to be assumed that a man1 because he speaks in the first person and addresses a learned society1 has lost the primordial faculty of lying4 ,when due allowance has been made1 however1 for legend and fraud1 there remains a certain residuum of clairvoyance and telepathy1 and an occasional abnormal obedience of matter to mind which might pass for magic4 ,there are unmistakable indications that in these regions we touch lower and more rudimentary faculties4 ,there seems to be1 as is quite natural1 a sub-human sensibility in man1 wherein ideas are connected together by bonds so irrational and tenacious that they seem miraculous to a mind already trained in practical and relevant thinking4 ,this sub-human sense1 far from representing important truths more clearly than ordinary apprehension can1 reduces consciousness again to a tangle of trivial impressions1 shots of uncertain range1 as if a skin had not yet formed over the body4 ,it emerges in tense and disorganised moments4 ,its reports are the more trifling the more startingly literal their veracity4 ,it seems to represent a stratum of life beneath moral or intellectual functions1 and beneath all personality4 ,when proof has been found that a ghost has actually been seen1 proof is required that the phantom has been rightly recognised and named2 and this imputed identity is never demonstrable and in most cases impossible4 ,so in the magic cures which from time immemorial have been recorded at shrines of all religions1 and which have been attributed to wonder-workers of every sect3 the one thing certain about them is that they prove neither the truth of whatever myth is capriciously associated with them1 nor the goodness or voluntary power of the miracle-worker himself4 ,healer and medium are alike vehicles for some elemental energy they cannot control1 and which as often as not misses fire2 at best they feel a power going out of them which they themselves undergo1 and which radiates from them like electricity1 to work1 as chance will have it1 good or evil in the world4 ,the whole operation lies1 in so far as it really takes place at all1 on the lowest levels of unintelligence1 in a region closely allied to madness in consciousness and to sporadic organic impulses in the physical sphere4 ,sidenote3 ,hypertrophies of sense4 ,among the blind1 the retina having lost its function1 the rest of the skin is said to recover its primordial sensitiveness to distance and light1 so that the sightless have a clearer premonition of objects about them than seeing people could have in the dark4 ,so when reason and the ordinary processes of sense are in abeyance a certain universal sensibility seems to return to the soul2 influences at other times not appreciable make then a sensible impression1 and automatic reactions may be run through in response to a stimulus normally quite insufficient4 ,now the complexity of nature is prodigious2 everything that happens leaves1 like buried cities1 almost indelible traces which an eye1 by chance attentive and duly prepared1 can manage to read1 recovering for a moment the image of an extinct life4 ,symbols1 illegible to reason1 can thus sometimes read themselves out in trance and madness4 ,faint vestiges may be found in matter of forms which it once wore1 or which1 like a perfume1 impregnated and got lodgment within it4 ,slight echoes may suddenly reconstitute themselves in the mind's silence2 and a half-stunned consciousness may catch brief glimpses of long-lost and irrelevant things4 ,real ghosts are such reverberations of the past1 exceeding ordinary imagination and discernment both in vividness and in fidelity2 they may not be explicable without appealing to material influences subtler than those ordinarily recognised1 as they are obviously not discoverable without some derangement and hypertrophy of the senses4 ,sidenote3 ,these possibilities affect physical existence only4 ,that such subtler influences should exist is entirely consonant with reason and experience2 but only a hankering tenderness for superstition1 a failure to appreciate the function both of religion and of science1 can lead to reverence for such oracular gibberish as these influences provoke4 ,the world is weary of experimenting with magic4 ,in utter seriousness and with immense solemnity whole races have given themselves up to exploiting these shabby mysteries2 and while a new survey of the facts1 in the light of natural science and psychology1 is certainly not superfluous1 it can be expected to lead to nothing but a more detailed and conscientious description of natural processes4 ,the thought of employing such investigations to save at the last moment religious doctrines founded on moral ideas is a pathetic blunder2 the obscene supernatural has nothing to do with rational religion4 ,if it were discovered that wretched echoes of a past life could be actually heard by putting one's ear long enough to a tomb1 and if 7per impossibile7 those echoes could be legitimately attributed to another mind1 and to the very mind1 indeed1 whose former body was interred there1 a melancholy chapter would indeed be added to man's earthly fortunes1 since it would appear that even after death he retained1 under certain conditions1 a fatal attachment to his dead body and to the other material instruments of his earthly life4 ,obviously such a discovery would teach us more about dying than about immortality2 the truths disclosed1 since they would be disclosed by experiment and observation1 would be psycho-physical truths1 implying nothing about what a truly disembodied life might be1 if one were attainable2 for a disembodied life could by no possibility betray itself in spectres1 rumblings1 and spasms4 ,actual thunders from ,sinai and an actual discovery of two stone tables would have been utterly irrelevant to the moral authority of the ten commandments or to the existence of a truly supreme being4 ,no less irrelevant to a supramundane immortality is the length of time during which human spirits may be condemned to operate on earth after their bodies are quiet4 ,in other words1 spectral survivals would at most enlarge our conception of the soul's physical basis1 spreading out the area of its manifestations2 they could not possibly1 seeing the survivals are physical1 reveal the disembodied existence of the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,moral grounds for the doctrine4 ,the necessary assumption of a future4 ,such a disembodied existence1 removed by its nature from the sphere of empirical evidence1 might nevertheless be actual1 and grounds of a moral or metaphysical type might be sought for postulating its reality4 ,life and the will to live are at bottom identical4 ,experience itself is transitive and can hardly arise apart from a forward effort and prophetic apprehension by which adjustments are made to a future unmistakably foreseen4 ,this premonition1 by which action seeks to justify and explain itself to reflection1 may be analysed into a group of memories and sensations of movement1 generating ideal expectations which might easily be disappointed2 but scepticism about the future can hardly be maintained in the heat of action4 ,a postulate acted on is an act of genuine and dogmatic faith4 ,i not only postulate a morrow when ,i prepare for it1 but ingenuously and heartily believe that the morrow will come4 ,this faith does not amount to certitude2 ,i may confess1 if challenged1 that before to-morrow ,i and the world and time itself might conceivably come to an end together2 but that idle possibility1 so long as it does not slacken action1 will not disturb belief4 ,every moment of life accordingly trusts that life will continue2 and this prophetic interpretation of action1 so long as action lasts1 amounts to continual faith in futurity4 ,sidenote3 ,an assumption no evidence4 ,a sophist might easily transform this psychological necessity into a dazzling proof of immortality4 ,to believe anything1 he might say1 is to be active2 but action involves faith in a future and in the fruits of action2 and as no living moment can be without this confidence1 belief in extinction would be self-contradictory and at no moment a possible belief4 ,the question1 however1 is not whether every given moment has or has not a specious future before it to which it looks forward1 but whether the realisation of such foresight1 a realisation which during waking life is roughly usual1 is incapable of failing4 ,now expectation1 never without its requisite antecedents and natural necessity1 often lacks fulfilment1 and never finds its fulfilment entire2 so that the necessity of a postulate gives no warrant for its verification4 ,expectation and action are constantly suspended together2 and what happens whenever thought loses itself or stumbles1 what happens whenever in its shifts it forgets its former objects1 might well happen at crucial times to that train of intentions which we call a particular life or the life of humanity4 ,the prophecy involved in action is not insignificant1 but it is notoriously fallible and depends for its fulfilment on external conditions4 ,the question accordingly really is whether a man expecting to live for ever or one expecting to die in his time has the more representative and trustworthy notion of the future4 ,the question1 so stated1 cannot be solved by an appeal to evidence1 which is necessarily all on one side1 but only by criticising the value of evidence as against instinct and hope1 and by ascertaining the relative status which assumption and observation have in experience4 ,the transcendental compulsion under which action labours of envisaging a future1 and the animal instinct that clings to life and flees from death as the most dreadful of evils are the real grounds why immortality seems initially natural and good4 ,confidence in living for ever is anterior to the discovery that all men are mortal and to the discovery that the thinker is himself a man4 ,these discoveries flatly contradict that confidence1 in the form in which it originally presents itself1 and all doctrines of immortality which adult philosophy can entertain are more or less subterfuges and after-thoughts by which the observed fact of mortality and the native inconceivability of death are more or less clumsily reconciled4 ,sidenote3 ,a solipsistic argument4 ,the most lordly and genuine fashion of asserting immortality would be to proclaim one's self an exception to the animal race and to point out that the analogy between one's singular self and others is altogether lame and purely conventional4 ,any proud barbarian1 with a tincture of transcendental philosophy1 might adopt this tone4 8,creatures that perish10 he might say1 8are and can be nothing but puppets and painted shadows in my mind4 ,my conscious will forbids its own extinction2 it scorns to level itself with its own objects and instruments4 ,the world1 which ,i have never known to exist without me1 exists by my co-operation and consent2 it can never extinguish what lends it being4 ,the death prophetically accepted by weaklings1 with such small insight and courage1 ,i mock and altogether defy3 it can never touch me40 ,such solipsistic boasts may not have been heard in historic times from the lips of men speaking in their own persons4 ,language has an irresistible tendency to make thought communistic and ideally transferable to others4 ,it forbids a man to say of himself what it would be ridiculous to hear from another4 ,now solipsism in another man is a comic thing3 and a mind1 prompted perhaps by hell and heaven to speak solipsistically1 is stopped by the laughable echo of its own words1 when it remembers its bold sayings4 ,language1 being social1 resists a virgin egotism and forbids it to express itself publicly1 no matter how well grounded it may be in transcendental logic and in animal instinct4 ,social convention is necessarily materialistic1 since the beginning of all moral reasonableness consists in taming the transcendental conceit native to a living mind1 in attaching it to its body1 and bringing the will that thought itself absolute down to the rank of animals and men4 ,otherwise no man would acknowledge another's rights or even conceive his existence4 ,sidenote3 ,absoluteness and immortality transferred to the gods4 ,primeval solipsism--the philosophy of untamed animal will--has accordingly taken to the usual by-paths and expressed itself openly only in myth or by a speculative abstraction in which the transcendental spirit1 for which all the solipsistic privileges were still claimed1 was distinguished from the human individual4 ,the gods1 it was said1 were immortal2 and although on earth spirit must submit to the yoke and service of matter1 on whose occasions it must wait1 yet there existed in the ether other creatures more normally and gloriously compounded1 since their forms served and expressed their minds1 which ruled also over the elements and feared no assault from time4 ,with the advent of this mythology experience and presumption divided their realms2 experience was allowed to shape men's notions of vulgar reality1 but presumption1 which could not be silenced1 was allowed to suggest a second sphere1 thinly and momentarily veiled to mortal sense1 in which the premonitions of will were abundantly realised4 ,this expedient had the advantage of endowing the world with creatures that really satisfied human aspirations1 such as at any moment they might be4 ,the gods possessed longevity1 beauty1 magic celerity of movement1 leisure1 splendour of life1 indefinite strength1 and practical omniscience4 ,when the gods were also expressions for natural forces1 this function somewhat prejudiced their ideality1 and they failed to correspond perfectly to what their worshippers would have most esteemed2 but religious reformers tended to expunge naturalism from theology and to represent the gods as entirely admirable4 ,the ,greek gods1 to be sure1 always continued to have genealogies1 and the fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality2 but other religions1 and finally the ,greek philosophers themselves1 conceived unbegotten gods1 in whom the human rebellion against mutability was expressed absolutely4 ,thus a place was found in nature for the constant and perpetual element which crude experience seems to contain or at least to suggest4 ,unfortunately the immortal and the human were in this mythology wholly divorced1 so that while immortality was vindicated for something in the universe it was emphatically denied to man and to his works4 ,contemplation1 to be satisfied with this situation1 had to be heroically unselfish and resigned2 the gods' greatness and glory had to furnish sufficient solace for all mortal defeats4 ,at the same time all criticism had to be deprecated1 for reflection would at once have pointed out that the divine life in question was either a personification of natural processes and thus really in flux and full of oblivion and imperfection1 or else a hypostasis of certain mental functions and ideals1 which could not really be conceived apart from the natural human life which they informed and from which they had been violently abstracted4 ,sidenote3 ,or to a divine principle in all beings4 ,another expedient was accordingly found1 especially by mystics and critical philosophers1 for uniting the mortal and immortal in existence while still distinguishing them in essence4 ,cur ,deus ,homo might be said to be the theme of all such speculations4 ,plato had already found the eternal in the form which the temporal puts on1 or1 if the phrase be preferred1 had seen in the temporal and existential nothing but an individuated case of the ideal4 ,the soul was immortal1 unbegotten1 impassible2 the bodies it successively inhabited and the experience it gathered served merely to bring out its nature with greater or less completeness4 ,to somewhat the same effect the ,german transcendentalists identified and distinguished the private and the universal spirit4 ,what lived in each man and in each moment was the ,absolute--for nothing else could really exist--and the expression which the ,absolute there took on was but a transitional phase of its total self-expression1 which1 could it be grasped in its totality1 would no longer seem subject to contradiction and flux4 ,an immortal agent therefore went through an infinite series of acts1 each transitory and relative to the others1 but all possessed of inalienable reality and eternal significance4 ,in such formulations the divorce was avoided between the intellectual and the sensuous factor in experience--a divorce which the myth about immortal gods and mortal men had introduced4 ,on the other hand existential immortality was abandoned2 only an ideal permanence1 only significance1 was allowed to any finite being1 and the better or future world of which ancient poets had dreamt1 ,olympus1 and every other heaven1 was altogether abolished4 ,there was an eternal universe where everything was transitory and a single immortal spirit at no two moments the same4 ,the world of idealism realised no particular ideal1 and least of all the ideal of a natural and personal immunity from death4 ,sidenote3 ,in neither case is the individual immortal4 ,first1 then1 a man may refuse to admit that he must die at all2 then1 abashed at the arrogance of that assertion1 he may consider the immortal life of other creatures1 like the earth and stars1 which seem subject to no extinction1 and he may ascribe to these a perpetual consciousness and personality4 ,finally1 confessing the fabulous character of those deities1 he may distinguish an immortal agent or principle within himself1 identify it with the inner principle of all other beings1 and contrast it with its varying and conditioned expressions4 ,but scarcely is this abstraction attained when he must perceive its worthlessness1 since the natural life1 the concrete aims1 and the personal career which immortality was intended to save from dissolution are wholly alien to a nominal entity which endures through all change1 however fundamental1 and cohabits with every nature1 however hostile and odious to humanity4 ,if immortality is to be genuine1 what is immortal must be something definite1 and if this immortality is to concern life and not mere significance or ideal definition1 that which endures must be an individual creature with a fixed nucleus of habits and demands1 so that its persistence may contain progress and achievement4 ,herewith we may dismiss the more direct attempts to conceive and assert a future life4 ,their failure drives us to a consideration of indirect attempts to establish an unobservable but real immortality through revelation and dogma4 ,such an immortality would follow on transmigration or resurrection1 and would be assigned to a supernatural sphere1 a second empirical world present to the soul after death1 where her fortunes would not be really conceivable without a reconstituted body and a new material environment4 ,sidenote3 ,possible forms of survival4 ,many a man dies too soon and some are born in the wrong age or station4 ,could these persons drink at the fountain of youth at least once more they might do themselves fuller justice and cut a better figure at last in the universe4 ,most people think they have stuff in them for greater things than time suffers them to perform4 ,to imagine a second career is a pleasing antidote for ill-fortune2 the poor soul wants another chance4 ,but how should a future life be constituted if it is to satisfy this demand1 and how long need it last8 ,it would evidently have to go on in an environment closely analogous to earth2 ,i could not1 for instance1 write in another world the epics which the necessity of earning my living may have stifled here1 did that other world contain no time1 no heroic struggles1 or no metrical language4 ,nor is it clear that my epics1 to be perfect1 would need to be quite endless4 ,if what is foiled in me is really poetic genius and not simply a tendency toward perpetual motion1 it would not help me if in heaven1 in lieu of my dreamt-of epics1 ,i were allowed to beget several robust children4 ,in a word1 if hereafter ,i am to be the same man improved ,i must find myself in the same world corrected4 ,were ,i transformed into a cherub or transported into a timeless ecstasy1 it is hard to see in what sense ,i should continue to exist4 ,those results might be interesting in themselves and might enrich the universe2 they would not prolong my life nor retrieve my disasters4 ,for this reason a future life is after all best represented by those frankly material ideals which most ,christians--being ,platonists--are wont to despise4 ,it would be genuine happiness for a ,jew to rise again in the flesh and live for ever in ,ezekiel's ,new ,jerusalem1 with its ceremonial glories and civic order4 ,it would be truly agreeable for any man to sit in well-watered gardens with ,mohammed1 clad in green silks1 drinking delicious sherbets1 and transfixed by the gazelle-like glance of some young girl1 all innocence and fire4 ,amid such scenes a man might remain himself and might fulfil hopes that he had actually cherished on earth4 ,he might also find his friends again1 which in somewhat generous minds is perhaps the thought that chiefly sustains interest in a posthumous existence4 ,but to recognise his friends a man must find them in their bodies1 with their familiar habits1 voices1 and interests2 for it is surely an insult to affection to say that he could find them in an eternal formula expressing their idiosyncrasy4 ,when1 however1 it is clearly seen that another life1 to supplement this one1 must closely resemble it1 does not the magic of immortality altogether vanish8 ,is such a reduplication of earthly society at all credible8 ,and the prospect of awakening again among houses and trees1 among children and dotards1 among wars and rumours of wars1 still fettered to one personality and one accidental past1 still uncertain of the future1 is not this prospect wearisome and deeply repulsive8 ,having passed through these things once and bequeathed them to posterity1 is it not time for each soul to rest8 ,the universe doubtless contains all sorts of experiences1 better and worse than the human2 but it is idle to attribute to a particular man a life divorced from his circumstances and from his body4 ,sidenote3 ,arguments from retribution and need of opportunity4 ,dogmas about such a posthumous experience find some shadowy support in various illusions and superstitions that surround death1 but they are developed into articulate prophecies chiefly by certain moral demands4 ,one of these requires rewards and punishments more emphatic and sure than those which conduct meets with in this world4 ,another requires merely a more favourable and complete opportunity for the soul's development4 ,considerations like these are pertinent to moral philosophy4 ,it touches the notion of duty whether an exact hedonistic retribution is to be demanded for what is termed merit and guilt3 so that without such supernatural remuneration virtue1 perhaps1 would be discredited and deprived of a motive4 ,it likewise touches the ideality and nobleness of life whether human aims can be realised satisfactorily only in the agent's singular person1 so that the fruits of effort would be forth-with missed if the labourer himself should disappear4 ,sidenote3 ,ignoble temper of both4 ,to establish justice in the world and furnish an adequate incentive to virtue was once thought the chief business of a future life4 ,the ,hebraic religions somewhat overreached themselves on these points3 for the grotesque alternative between hell and heaven in the end only aggravated the injustice it was meant to remedy4 ,life is unjust in that it subordinates individuals to a general mechanical law1 and the deeper and longer hold fate has on the soul1 the greater that injustice4 ,a perpetual life would be a perpetual subjection to arbitrary power1 while a last judgment would be but a last fatality4 ,that hell may have frightened a few villains into omitting a crime is perhaps credible2 but the embarrassed silence which the churches1 in a more sensitive age1 prefer to maintain on that wholesome doctrine--once1 as they taught1 the only rational basis for virtue--shows how their teaching has to follow the independent progress of morals4 ,nevertheless1 persons are not wanting1 apparently free from ecclesiastical constraint1 who still maintain that the value of life depends on its indefinite prolongation4 ,by an artifice of reflection they substitute vanity for reason1 and selfish for ingenuous instincts in man4 ,being apparently interested in nothing but their own careers1 they forget that a man may remember how little he counts in the world and suffer that rational knowledge to inspire his purposes4 ,intense morality has always envisaged earthly goods and evils1 and even when a future life has been accepted vaguely1 it has never given direction to human will or aims1 which at best it could only proclaim more emphatically4 ,it may indeed be said that no man of any depth of soul has made his prolonged existence the touchstone of his enthusiasms4 ,such an instinct is carnal1 and if immortality is to add a higher inspiration to life it must not be an immortality of selfishness4 ,what a despicable creature must a man be1 and how sunk below the level of the most barbaric virtue1 if he cannot bear to live for his children1 for his art1 or for country6 ,sidenote3 ,false optimistic postulate involved4 ,to turn these moral questions1 however1 into arguments for a physical speculation1 like that about human longevity1 resurrection1 or metempsychosis1 a hybrid principle is required3 thus1 even if we have answered those moral questions in the conventional way and satisfied ourselves that personal immortality is a postulate of ethics1 we cannot infer that immortality therefore exists unless we import into the argument a tremendous optimistic postulate1 to the effect that what is requisite for moral rationality must in every instance be realised in experience4 ,such an optimistic postulate1 however1 as the reader must have repeatedly observed1 is made not only despite all experience but in ignorance of the conditions under which alone ideals are framed and retain their significance4 ,every ideal expresses individual and specific tendencies1 proper at some moment to some natural creature2 every ideal therefore has for its basis a part only of the dynamic world1 so that its fulfilment is problematical and altogether adventitious to its existence and authority4 ,to decide whether an ideal can be or will be fulfilled we must examine the physical relation between such organic forces as that ideal expresses and the environment in which those forces operate2 we may then perceive how far a realisation of the given aims is possible1 how far it must fail1 and how far the aims in question1 by a shift in their natural basis1 will lapse and yield to others1 possibly more capable of execution and more stable in the world4 ,the question of success is a question of physics4 ,to say that an ideal will be inevitably fulfilled simply because it is an ideal is to say something gratuitous and foolish4 ,pretence cannot in the end avail against experience4 ,sidenote3 ,transition to ideality4 ,nevertheless1 it is important to define ideals even before their realisation is known to be possible1 because they constitute one of the two factors whose interaction and adjustment is moral life1 factors which are complementary and diverse in function and may be independently ascertained4 ,the value of existences is wholly borrowed from their ideality1 without direct consideration of their fate1 while the existence of ideals is wholly determined by natural forces1 without direct relation to their fulfilment4 ,existence and ideal value can therefore be initially felt and observed apart1 although of course a complete description would lay bare physical necessity in the ideals entertained and inevitable ideal harmonies among the facts discovered4 ,human life1 lying as it does in the midst of a larger process1 will surely not be without some congruity with the universe4 ,every creature lends potential values to a world in which it can satisfy some at least of its demands and learn1 perhaps1 to modify the others4 ,happiness is always a natural and an essentially possible thing1 and a total despair1 since it ignores those goods which are attainable1 can express only a partial experience4 ,but before considering in what ways a disciplined soul might make its peace with reality1 we may consider what an undisciplined soul in the first instance desires2 and from this starting-point we may trace her chastening and education1 observing the ideal compensations which may console her for lost illusions4 ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,ideal ,,immortality ,sidenote3 ,olympian immortality the first ideal4 ,in order to give the will to live frank and direct satisfaction1 it would have been necessary to solve the problem of perpetual motion in the animal body1 as nature has approximately solved it in the solar system4 ,nutrition should have continually repaired all waste1 so that the cycle of youth and age might have repeated itself yearly in every individual1 like summer and winter on the earth4 ,nor are some hints of such an equilibrium altogether wanting4 ,convalescence1 sudden good fortune1 a belated love1 and even the ,april sunshine or morning air1 bring about a certain rejuvenescence in man prophetic of what is not ideally impossible--perpetuity and constant reinforcement in his vital powers4 ,had nature furnished the elixir of life1 or could art have discovered it1 the whole face of human society would have been changed4 ,the earth once full1 no more children would have been begotten and parental instincts would have been atrophied for want of function4 ,all men would have been contemporaries and1 having all time before them for travel and experiment1 would have allied themselves eventually with what was most congenial to them and would have come to be bound only by free and friendly ties4 ,they would all have been well known and would have acted perpetually in their ultimate and true character1 like the immortal gods4 ,one might have loved fixity1 like ,hestia1 and another motion1 like ,hermes2 a third might have been untiring in the plastic arts1 like ,hephstus1 or1 like ,apollo1 in music2 while the infinite realms of mathematics and philosophy would have lain open to spirits of a quality not represented in ,homer's pantheon4 ,that man's primary and most satisfying ideal is something of this sort is clear in itself1 and attested by mythology2 for the great use of the gods is that they interpret the human heart to us1 and help us1 while we conceive them1 to discover our inmost ambition and1 while we emulate them1 to pursue it4 ,christian fancy1 because of its ascetic meagreness and fear of life1 has not known how to fill out the picture of heaven and has left it mystical and vague2 but whatever paradise it has ventured to imagine has been modelled on the same primary ideal4 ,it has represented a society of eternal beings among which there was no marriage nor giving in marriage and where each found his congenial mansion and that perfected activity which brings inward peace4 ,after this easy fashion were death and birth conquered in the myths1 which truly interpreted the will to live according to its primary intention1 but in reality such direct satisfaction was impossible4 ,a total defeat1 on the other hand1 would have extinguished the will itself and obliterated every human impulse seeking expression4 ,man's existence is proof enough that nature was not altogether unpropitious1 but offered1 in an unlooked-for direction1 some thoroughfare to the soul4 ,roundabout imperfect methods were discovered by which something at least of what was craved might be secured4 ,the individual perished1 yet not without having segregated and detached a certain portion of himself capable of developing a second body and mind4 ,the potentialities of this seminal portion1 having been liberated long after the parent body had begun to feel the shock of the world1 could reach full expression after the parent body had begun to decay2 and the offspring needed not itself to succumb before it had launched a third generation4 ,a cyclical life or arrested death1 a continual motion by little successive explosions1 could thus establish itself and could repeat from generation to generation a process not unlike nutrition2 only that1 while in nutrition the individual form remains and the inner substance is renewed insensibly1 in reproduction the form is renewed openly and the inner substance is insensibly continuous4 ,sidenote3 ,its indirect attainment by reproduction4 ,reproduction seems1 from the will's point of view1 a marvellous expedient involving a curious mixture of failure and success4 ,the individual1 who alone is the seat and principle of will1 is thereby sacrificed1 so that reproduction is no response to his original hopes and aspirations2 yet in a double way he is enticed and persuaded to be almost satisfied3 first1 in that so like a counterfeit of himself actually survives1 a creature to which all his ideal interests may be transmitted2 and secondly1 because a new and as it were a rival aim is now insinuated into his spirit4 ,for the impulse toward reproduction has now become no less powerful1 even if less constant1 than the impulse toward nutrition2 in other words1 the will to live finds itself in the uncongenial yet inevitable company of the will to have an heir4 ,reproduction thus partly entertains the desire to be immortal by giving it a vicarious fulfilment1 and partly cancels it by adding an impulse and joy which1 when you think of it1 accepts mortality4 ,for love1 whether sexual1 parental1 or fraternal1 is essentially sacrificial1 and prompts a man to give his life for his friends4 ,in thus losing his life gladly he in a sense finds it anew1 since it has now become a part of his function and ideal to yield his place to others and to live afterwards only in them4 ,while the primitive and animal side of him may continue to cling to existence at all hazards and to find the thought of extinction intolerable1 his reason and finer imagination will build a new ideal on reality better understood1 and be content that the future he looks to should be enjoyed by others4 ,when we consider such a natural transformation and discipline of the will1 when we catch even a slight glimpse of nature's resources and mysteries1 how thin and verbal those belated hopes must seem which would elude death and abolish sacrifice6 ,such puerile dreams not only miss the whole pathos of human life1 but ignore those specifically mortal virtues which might console us for not being so radiantly divine as we may at first have thought ourselves4 ,nature1 in denying us perennial youth1 has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble4 ,a first shift in aspiration1 a capacity for radical altruism1 thus supervenes upon the lust to live and accompanies parental and social interests4 ,the new ideal1 however1 can never entirely obliterate the old and primary one1 because the initial functions which the old ,adam exclusively represented remain imbedded in the new life1 and are its physical basis4 ,if the nutritive soul ceased to operate1 the reproductive soul could never arise2 to be altruistic we must first be1 and spiritual interests can never abolish or cancel the material existence on which they are grafted4 ,the consequence is that death1 even when circumvented by reproduction and relieved by surviving impersonal interests1 remains an essential evil4 ,it may be accepted as inevitable1 and the goods its intrusion leaves standing may be heartily appreciated and pursued2 but something pathetic and incomplete will always attach to a life that looks to its own termination4 ,the effort of physical existence is not to accomplish anything definite but merely to persist for ever4 ,the will has its first law of motion1 corresponding to that of matter2 its initial tendency is to continue to operate in the given direction and in the given manner4 ,inertia is1 in this sense1 the essence of vitality4 ,to be driven from that perpetual course is somehow to be checked1 and an external and hostile force is required to change a habit or an instinct as much as to deflect a star4 ,indeed1 nutrition itself1 hunting1 feeding1 and digestion1 are forced activities1 and the basis of passions not altogether congenial nor ideal4 ,hunger is an incipient faintness and agony1 and an animal that needs to hunt1 gnaw1 and digest is no immortal1 free1 or essentially victorious creature4 ,his will is already driven into by-paths and expedients2 his primitive beatific vision has to be interrupted by remedial action to restore it for a while1 since otherwise it would obviously degenerate rapidly through all stages of distress until its total extinction4 ,sidenote3 ,moral acceptance of this compromise4 ,the tasks thus imposed upon the protoplasmic will raise it1 we may say1 to a higher level2 to hunt is better sport1 and more enlightening1 than to lie imbibing sunshine and air2 and to eat is1 we may well think1 a more positive and specific pleasure than merely to be4 ,such judgments1 however1 show a human bias4 ,they arise from incapacity to throw off acquired organs4 ,those necessities which have led to the forms of life which we happen to exemplify1 and in terms of which our virtues are necessarily expressed1 seem to us1 in retrospect1 happy necessities1 since without them our conventional goods would not have come to appeal to us4 ,these conventional goods1 however1 are only compromises with evil1 and the will would never have taken to pursuing them if it had not been dislodged and beaten back from its primary aims4 ,even food is1 for this reason1 no absolute blessing2 it is only the first and most necessary of comforts1 of restorations1 of truces and reprieves in that battle with death in which an ultimate defeat is too plainly inevitable2 for the pitcher that goes often to the well is at last broken1 and a creature that is forced to resist his inward collapse by adventitious aids will some day find that these aids have failed him1 and that inward dissolution has become1 for some mechanical reason1 quite irresistible4 ,it is therefore not only the lazy or mystical will that chafes at the need of material supports and deprecates anxieties about the morrow2 the most conventional and passionate mind1 when it attains any refinement1 confesses the essential servitude involved in such preoccupations by concealing or ignoring them as much as may be4 ,we study to eat as if we were not ravenous1 to win as if we were willing to lose1 and to treat personal wants in general as merely compulsory and uninteresting matters4 ,why dwell1 we say to ourselves1 on our stammerings and failures8 ,the intent is all1 and the bungling circumlocutions we may be driven to should be courteously ignored1 like a stammerer's troubles1 when once our meaning has been conveyed4 ,even animal passions are1 in this way1 after-thoughts and expedients1 and although in a brutal age they seem to make up the whole of life1 later it appears that they would be gladly enough outgrown1 did the material situation permit it4 ,intellectual life returns1 in its freedom1 to the attitude proper to primitive will1 except that through the new machinery underlying reason a more stable equilibrium has been established with external forces1 and the freedom originally absolute has become relative to certain underlying adjustments1 adjustments which may be ignored but cannot be abandoned with impunity4 ,original action1 as seen in the vegetable1 is purely spontaneous4 ,on the animal level instrumental action is added and chiefly attended to1 so that the creature1 without knowing what it lives for1 finds attractive tasks and a sort of glory in the chase1 in love1 and in labour4 ,in the ,life of ,reason this instrumental activity is retained1 for it is a necessary basis for human prosperity and power1 but the value of life is again sought in the supervening free activity which that adjustment to physical forces1 or dominion over them1 has made possible on a larger scale4 ,every free activity would gladly persist for ever2 and if any be found that involves and aims at its own arrest or transformation1 that activity is thereby proved to be instrumental and servile1 imposed from without and not ideal4 ,sidenote3 ,even vicarious immortality intrinsically impossible4 ,not only is man's original effort aimed at living for ever in his own person1 but1 even if he could renounce that desire1 the dream of being represented perpetually by posterity is no less doomed4 ,reproduction1 like nutrition1 is a device not ultimately successful4 ,if extinction does not defeat it1 evolution will4 ,doubtless the fertility of whatever substance may have produced us will not be exhausted in this single effort2 a potentiality that has once proved efficacious and been actualised in life1 though it should sleep1 will in time revive again4 ,in some form and after no matter what intervals1 nature may be expected always to possess consciousness4 ,but beyond this planet and apart from the human race1 experience is too little imaginable to be interesting4 ,no definite plan or ideal of ours can find its realisation except in ourselves4 ,accordingly1 a vicarious physical immortality always remains an unsatisfactory issue2 what is thus to be preserved is but a counterfeit of our being1 and even that counterfeit is confronted by omens of a total extinction more or less remote4 ,a note of failure and melancholy must always dominate in the struggle against natural death4 ,sidenote3 ,intellectual victory over change4 ,this defeat is not really problematical1 or to be eluded by reviving ill-digested hopes resting entirely on ignorance1 an ignorance which these hopes will wish to make eternal4 ,we need not wait for our total death to experience dying2 we need not borrow from observation of others' demise a prophecy of our own extinction4 ,every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor2 and the possession of memory1 by which we somehow survive in representation1 is the most unmistakable proof that we are perishing in reality4 ,in endowing us with memory1 nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unflective creation1 the truth of mortality4 ,everything moves in the midst of death1 because it indeed moves2 but it falls into the pit unawares and by its own action unmakes and disestablishes itself1 until a wonderful visionary faculty is added1 so that a ghost remains of what has perished to reveal that lapse and at the same time in a certain sense to neutralise it4 ,the more we reflect1 the more we live in memory and idea1 the more convinced and penetrated we shall be by the experience of death2 yet1 without our knowing it1 perhaps1 this very conviction and experience will have raised us1 in a way1 above mortality4 ,that was a heroic and divine oracle which1 in informing us of our decay1 made us partners of the gods' eternity1 and by giving us knowledge poured into us1 to that extent1 the serenity and balm of truth4 ,as it is memory that enables us to feel that we are dying and to know that everything actual is in flux1 so it is memory that opens to us an ideal immortality1 unacceptable and meaningless to the old ,adam1 but genuine in its own way and undeniably true4 ,it is an immortality in representation--a representation which envisages things in their truth as they have in their own day possessed themselves in reality4 ,it is no subterfuge or superstitious effrontery1 called to disguise or throw off the lessons of experience2 on the contrary1 it is experience itself1 reflection itself1 and knowledge of mortality4 ,memory does not reprieve or postpone the changes which it registers1 nor does it itself possess a permanent duration2 it is1 if possible1 less stable and more mobile than primary sensation4 ,it is1 in point of existence1 only an internal and complex kind of sensibility4 ,but in intent and by its significance it plunges to the depths of time2 it looks still on the departed and bears witness to the truth that1 though absent from this part of experience1 and incapable of returning to life1 they nevertheless existed once in their own right1 were as living and actual as experience is to-day1 and still help to make up1 in company with all past1 present1 and future mortals1 the filling and value of the world4 ,sidenote3 ,the glory of it4 ,as the pathos and heroism of life consists in accepting as an opportunity the fate that makes our own death1 partial or total1 serviceable to others1 so the glory of life consists in accepting the knowledge of natural death as an opportunity to live in the spirit4 ,the sacrifice1 the self-surrender1 remains real2 for1 though the compensation is real1 too1 and at moments1 perhaps1 apparently overwhelming1 it is always incomplete and leaves beneath an incurable sorrow4 ,yet life can never contradict its basis or reach satisfactions essentially excluded by its own conditions4 ,progress lies in moving forward from the given situation1 and satisfying as well as may be the interests that exist4 ,and if some initial demand has proved hopeless1 there is the greater reason for cultivating other sources of satisfaction1 possibly more abundant and lasting4 ,now1 reflection is a vital function2 memory and imagination have to the full the rhythm and force of life4 ,but these faculties1 in envisaging the past or the ideal1 envisage the eternal1 and the man in whose mind they predominate is to that extent detached in his affections from the world of flux1 from himself1 and from his personal destiny4 ,this detachment will not make him infinitely long-lived1 nor absolutely happy1 but it may render him intelligent and just1 and may open to him all intellectual pleasures and all human sympathies4 ,there is accordingly an escape from death open to man2 one not found by circumventing nature1 but by making use of her own expedients in circumventing her imperfections4 ,memory1 nay1 perception itself1 is a first stage in this escape1 which coincides with the acquisition and possession of reason4 ,when the meaning of successive perceptions is recovered with the last of them1 when a survey is made of objects whose constitutive sensations first arose independently1 this synthetic moment contains an object raised above time on a pedestal of reflection1 a thought indefeasibly true in its ideal deliverance1 though of course fleeting in its psychic existence4 ,existence is essentially temporal and life foredoomed to be mortal1 since its basis is a process and an opposition2 it floats in the stream of time1 never to return1 never to be recovered or repossessed4 ,but ever since substance became at some sensitive point intelligent and reflective1 ever since time made room and pause for memory1 for history1 for the consciousness of time1 a god1 as it were1 became incarnate in mortality and some vision of truth1 some self-forgetful satisfaction1 became a heritage that moment could transmit to moment and man to man4 ,this heritage is humanity itself1 the presence of immortal reason in creatures that perish4 ,apprehension1 which makes man so like a god1 makes him in one respect immortal2 it quickens his numbered moments with a vision of what never dies1 the truth of those moments and their inalienable values4 ,sidenote3 ,reason makes man's divinity4 ,to participate in this vision is to participate at once in humanity and in divinity1 since all other makes bonds are material and perishable1 but the bond between two thoughts that have grasped the same truth1 of two instants that have caught the same beauty1 is a spiritual and imperishable bond4 ,it is imperishable simply because it is ideal and resident merely in import and intent4 ,the two thoughts1 the two instants1 remain existentially different2 were they not two they could not come from different quarters to unite in one meaning and to behold one object in distinct and conspiring acts of apprehension4 ,being independent in existence1 they can be united by the identity of their burden1 by the common worship1 so to speak1 of the same god4 ,were this ideal goal itself an existence1 it would be incapable of uniting anything2 for the same gulf which separated the two original minds would open between them and their common object4 ,but being1 as it is1 purely ideal1 it can become the meeting-ground of intelligences and render their union ideally eternal4 ,among the physical instruments of thought there may be rivalry and impact--the two thinkers may compete and clash--but this is because each seeks his own physical survival and does not love the truth stripped of its accidental associations and provincial accent4 ,doctors disagree in so far as they are not truly doctors1 but1 as ,plato would say1 seek1 like sophists and wage-earners1 to circumvent and defeat one another4 ,the conflict is physical and can extend to the subject-matter only in so far as this is tainted by individual prejudice and not wholly lifted from the sensuous to the intellectual plane4 ,in the ether there are no winds of doctrine4 ,the intellect1 being the organ and source of the divine1 is divine and single2 if there were many sorts of intellect1 many principles of perspective1 they would fix and create incomparable and irrelevant worlds4 ,reason is one in that it gravitates toward an object1 called truth1 which could not have the function it has1 of being a focus for mental activities1 if it were not one in reference to the operations which converge upon it4 ,this unity in truth1 as in reason1 is of course functional only1 not physical or existential4 ,the heats of thought and the thinkers are innumerable2 indefinite1 too1 the variations to which their endowment and habits may be subjected4 ,but the condition of spiritual communion or ideal relevance in these intelligences is their possession of a method and grammar essentially identical4 ,language1 for example1 is significant in proportion to the constancy in meaning which words and locutions preserve in a speaker's mind at various times1 or in the minds of various persons4 ,this constancy is never absolute4 ,therefore language is never wholly significant1 never exhaustively intelligible4 ,there is always mud in the well1 if we have drawn up enough water4 ,yet in peaceful rivers1 though they flow1 there is an appreciable degree of translucency4 ,so1 from moment to moment1 and from man to man1 there is an appreciable element of unanimity1 of constancy and congruity of intent4 ,on this abstract and perfectly identical function science rests together with every rational formation4 ,sidenote3 and his immortality4 ,the same function is the seat of human immortality4 ,reason lifts a larger or smaller element in each man to the plane of ideality according as reason more or less thoroughly leavens and permeates the lump4 ,no man is wholly immortal1 as no philosophy is wholly true and no language wholly intelligible2 but only in so far as intelligible is a language a language rather than a noise1 only in so far as true is a philosophy more than a vent for cerebral humours1 and only in so far as a man is rational and immortal is he a man and not a sensorium4 ,it is hard to convince people that they have such a gift as intelligence4 ,if they perceive its animal basis they cannot conceive its ideal affinities or understand what is meant by calling it divine2 if they perceive its ideality and see the immortal essences that swim into its ken1 they hotly deny that it is an animal faculty1 and invent ultramundane places and bodiless persons in which it is to reside2 as if those celestial substances could be1 in respect to thought1 any less material than matter or1 in respect to vision and life1 any less instrumental than bodily organs4 ,it never occurs to them that if nature has added intelligence to animal life it is because they belong together4 ,intelligence is a natural emanation of vitality4 ,if eternity could exist otherwise than as a vision in time1 eternity would have no meaning for men in the world1 while the world1 men1 and time would have no vocation or status in eternity4 ,the travail of existence would be without excuse1 without issue or consummation1 while the conceptions of truth and of perfection would be without application to experience1 pure dreams about things preternatural and unreal1 vacantly conceived1 and illogically supposed to have something to do with living issues4 ,but truth and perfection1 for the very reason that they are not problematic existences but inherent ideals1 cannot be banished from discourse4 ,experience may lose any of its data2 it cannot lose1 while it endures1 the terms with which it operates in becoming experience4 ,now1 truth is relevant to every opinion which looks to truth for its standard1 and perfection is envisaged in every cry for relief1 in every effort at betterment4 ,opinions1 volitions1 and passionate refusals fill human life4 ,so that when the existence of truth is denied1 truth is given the only status which it ever required--it is conceived4 ,sidenote3 ,it is the locus of all truths4 ,nor can any better defense be found for the denial that nature and her life have a status in eternity4 ,this statement may not be understood1 but if grasped at all it will not be questioned4 ,by having a status in eternity is not meant being parts of an eternal existence1 petrified or congealed into something real but motionless4 ,what is meant is only that whatever exists in time1 when bathed in the light of reflection1 acquires an indelible character and discloses irreversible relations2 every fact1 in being recognised1 takes its place in the universe of discourse1 in that ideal sphere of truth which is the common and unchanging standard for all assertions4 ,language1 science1 art1 religion1 and all ambitious dreams are compacted of ideas4 ,life is as much a mosaic of notions as the firmament is of stars2 and these ideal and transpersonal objects1 bridging time1 fixing standards1 establishing values1 constituting the natural rewards of all living1 are the very furniture of eternity1 the goals and playthings of that reason which is an instinct in the heart as vital and spontaneous as any other4 ,or rather1 perhaps1 reason is a supervening instinct by which all other instincts are interpreted1 just as the sensus communis or transcendental unity of psychology is a faculty by which all perceptions are brought face to face and compared4 ,so that immortality is not a privilege reserved for a part only of experience1 but rather a relation pervading every part in varying measure4 ,we may1 in leaving the subject1 mark the degrees and phases of this idealisation4 ,sidenote3 ,epicurean immortality1 through the truth of existence4 ,animal sensation is related to eternity only by the truth that it has taken place4 ,the fact1 fleeting as it is1 is registered in ideal history and no inventory of the world's riches1 no true confession of its crimes1 would ever be complete that ignored that incident4 ,this indefeasible character in experience makes a first sort of ideal immortality1 one on which those rational philosophers like to dwell who have not speculation enough to feel quite certain of any other4 ,it was a consolation to the ,epicurean to remember that1 however brief and uncertain might be his tenure of delight1 the past was safe and the present sure4 8,he lives happy10 says ,horace1 8and master over himself1 who can say daily1 ,i have lived4 ,to-morrow let ,jove cover the sky with black clouds or flood it with sunshine2 he shall not thereby render vain what lies behind1 he shall not delete and make never to have existed what once the hour has brought in its flight40 ,such self-concentration and hugging of the facts has no power to improve them2 it gives to pleasure and pain an impartial eternity1 and rather tends to intrench in sensuous and selfish satisfactions a mind that has lost faith in reason and that deliberately ignores the difference in scope and dignity which exists among various pursuits4 ,yet the reflection is staunch and in its way heroic2 it meets a vague and feeble aspiration1 that looks to the infinite1 with a just rebuke2 it points to real satisfactions1 experienced successes1 and asks us to be content with the fulfilment of our own wills4 ,if you have seen the world1 if you have played your game and won it1 what more would you ask for8 ,if you have tasted the sweets of existence1 you should be satisfied2 if the experience has been bitter1 you should be glad that it comes to an end4 ,of course1 as we have seen1 there is a primary demand in man which death and mutation contradict flatly1 so that no summons to cease can ever be obeyed with complete willingness4 ,even the suicide trembles and the ascetic feels the stings of the flesh4 ,it is the part of philosophy1 however1 to pass over those natural repugnances and overlay them with as much countervailing rationality as can find lodgment in a particular mind4 ,the ,epicurean1 having abandoned politics and religion and being afraid of any far-reaching ambition1 applied philosophy honestly enough to what remained4 ,simple and healthy pleasures are the reward of simple and healthy pursuits2 to chafe against them because they are limited is to import a foreign and disruptive element into the case2 a healthy hunger has its limit1 and its satisfaction reaches a natural term4 ,philosophy1 far from alienating us from those values1 should teach us to see their perfection and to maintain them in our ideal4 ,in other words1 the happy filling of a single hour is so much gained for the universe at large1 and to find joy and sufficiency in the flying moment is perhaps the only means open to us for increasing the glory of eternity4 ,sidenote3 ,logical immortality1 through objects of thought4 ,moving events1 while remaining enshrined in this fashion in their permanent setting1 may contain other and less external relations to the immutable4 ,they may represent it4 ,if the pleasures of sense are not cancelled when they cease1 but continue to satisfy reason in that they once satisfied natural desires1 much more will the pleasures of reflection retain their worth1 when we consider that what they aspired to and reached was no momentary physical equilibrium but a permanent truth4 ,as ,archimedes1 measuring the hypothenuse1 was lost to events1 being engaged in an event of much greater transcendence1 so art and science interrupt the sense for change by engrossing attention in its issues and its laws4 ,old age often turns pious to look away from ruins to some world where youth endures and where what ought to have been is not overtaken by decay before it has quite come to maturity4 ,lost in such abstract contemplations1 the mind is weaned from mortal concerns4 ,it forgets for a few moments a world in which it has so little more to do and so much1 perhaps1 still to suffer4 ,as a sensation of pure light would not be distinguishable from light itself1 so a contemplation of things not implicating time in their structure becomes1 so far as its own deliverance goes1 a timeless existence4 ,unconsciousness of temporal conditions and of the very flight of time makes the thinker sink for a moment into identity with timeless objects4 ,and so immortality1 in a second ideal sense1 touches the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,ethical immortality1 through types of excellence4 ,the transitive phases of consciousness1 however1 have themselves a reference to eternal things4 ,they yield a generous enthusiasm and love of good which is richer in consolation than either ,epicurean self-concentration or mathematical ecstasy4 ,events are more interesting than the terms we abstract from them1 and the forward movement of the will is something more intimately real than is the catalogue of our past experiences4 ,now the forward movement of the will is an avenue to the eternal4 ,what would you have8 ,what is the goal of your endeavour8 ,it must be some success1 the establishment of some order1 the expression of some experience4 ,these points once reached1 we are not left merely with the satisfaction of abstract success or the consciousness of ideal immortality4 ,being natural goals1 these ideals are related to natural functions4 ,their attainment does not exhaust but merely liberates1 in this instance1 the function concerned1 and so marks the perpetual point of reference common to that function in all its fluctuations4 ,every attainment of perfection in an art--as for instance in government--makes a return to perfection easier for posterity1 since there remains an enlightening example1 together with faculties predisposed by discipline to recover their ancient virtue4 ,the better a man evokes and realises the ideal the more he leads the life that all others1 in proportion to their worth1 will seek to live after him1 and the more he helps them to live in that nobler fashion4 ,his presence in the society of immortals thus becomes1 so to speak1 more pervasive4 ,he not only vanquishes time1 by his own rationality1 living now in the eternal1 but he continually lives again in all rational beings4 ,since the ideal has this perpetual pertinence to mortal struggles1 he who lives in the ideal and leaves it expressed in society or in art enjoys a double immortality4 ,the eternal has absorbed him while he lived1 and when he is dead his influence brings others to the same absorption1 making them1 through that ideal identity with the best in him1 reincarnations and perennial seats of all in him which he could rationally hope to rescue from destruction4 ,he can say1 without any subterfuge or desire to delude himself1 that he shall not wholly die2 for he will have a better notion than the vulgar of what constitutes his being4 ,by becoming the spectator and confessor of his own death and of universal mutation1 he will have identified himself with what is spiritual in all spirits and masterful in all apprehension2 and so conceiving himself1 he may truly feel and know that he is eternal4 ,,chapter ,,xv ,,conclusion ,sidenote3 ,the failure of magic4 ,the preceding analysis of religion1 although it is illustrated mainly by ,christianity1 may enable us in a general way to distinguish the rational goal of all religious life4 ,in no sphere is the contrast clearer between wisdom and folly2 in none1 perhaps1 has there been so much of both4 ,it was a prodigious delusion to imagine that work could be done by magic2 and the desperate appeal which human weakness has made to prayer1 to castigations1 to miscellaneous fantastic acts1 in the hope of thereby bending nature to greater sympathy with human necessities1 is a pathetic spectacle2 all the more pathetic in that here the very importunity of evil1 which distracted the mind and allowed it no choice or deliberation1 prevented very often those practical measures which1 if lighted upon1 would have instantly relieved the situation4 ,religion when it has tried to do man's work for him has not only cheated hope1 but consumed energy and drawn away attention from the true means of success4 ,sidenote3 and of mythology4 ,sidenote3 ,their imaginative value4 ,no less useless and retarding has been the effort to give religion the function of science4 ,mythology1 in excogitating hidden dramatic causes for natural phenomena1 or in attributing events to the human values which they might prevent or secure1 has profoundly perverted and confused the intellect2 it has delayed and embarrassed the discovery of natural forces1 at the same time fostering presumptions which1 on being exploded1 tended to plunge men1 by revulsion1 into an artificial despair4 ,at the same time this experiment in mythology involved wonderful creations which have a poetic value of their own1 to offset their uselessness in some measure and the obstruction they have occasioned4 ,in imagining human agents behind every appearance fancy has given appearances some kinship to human life2 it has made nature a mass of hieroglyphics and enlarged to that extent the means of human expression4 ,while objects and events were capriciously moralised1 the mind's own plasticity has been developed by its great exercise in self-projection4 ,to imagine himself a thunder-cloud or a river1 the dispenser of silent benefits and the contriver of deep-seated universal harmonies1 has actually stimulated man's moral nature3 he has grown larger by thinking himself so large4 ,through the dense cloud of false thought and bad habit in which religion thus wrapped the world1 some rays broke through from the beginning2 for mythology and magic expressed life and sought to express its conditions4 ,human needs and human ideals went forth in these forms to solicit and to conquer the world2 and since these imaginative methods1 for their very ineptitude1 rode somewhat lightly over particular issues and envisaged rather distant goods1 it was possible through them to give aspiration and reflection greater scope than the meaner exigencies of life would have permitted4 ,where custom ruled morals and a narrow empiricism bounded the field of knowledge1 it was partly a blessing that imagination should be given an illegitimate sway4 ,without misunderstanding1 there might have been no understanding at all2 without confidence in supernatural support1 the heart might never have uttered its own oracles4 ,so that in close association with superstition and fable we find piety and spirituality entering the world4 ,sidenote3 ,piety and spirituality justified4 ,rational religion has these two phases3 piety1 or loyalty to necessary conditions1 and spirituality1 or devotion to ideal ends4 ,these simple sanctities make the core of all the others4 ,piety drinks at the deep1 elemental sources of power and order3 it studies nature1 honours the past1 appropriates and continues its mission4 ,spirituality uses the strength thus acquired1 remodelling all it receives1 and looking to the future and the ideal4 ,true religion is entirely human and political1 as was that of the ancient ,hebrews1 ,romans1 and ,greeks4 ,supernatural machinery is either symbolic of natural conditions and moral aims or else is worthless4 ,sidenote3 ,mysticism a primordial state of feeling4 ,there is one other phase or possible overtone of religion about which a word might be added in conclusion4 ,what is called mysticism is a certain genial loosening of convention1 whether rational or mythical2 the mystic smiles at science and plays with theology1 undermining both by force of his insight and inward assurance4 ,he is all faith1 all love1 all vision1 but he is each of these things in vacuo1 and in the absence of any object4 ,mysticism can exist1 in varied degrees1 at any stage of rational development4 ,its presence is therefore no indication of the worth or worthlessness of its possessor4 ,this circumstance tends to obscure its nature1 which would otherwise be obvious enough4 ,seeing the greatest saints and philosophers grow mystical in their highest flights1 an innocent observer might imagine that mysticism was an ultimate attitude1 which only his own incapacity kept him from understanding4 ,but exactly the opposite is the case4 ,mysticism is the most primitive of feelings and only visits formed minds in moments of intellectual arrest and dissolution4 ,it can exist in a child1 very likely in an animal2 indeed1 to parody a phrase of ,hegel's1 the only pure mystics are the brutes4 ,when articulation fails in the face of experience2 when instinct guides without kindling any prophetic idea to which action may be inwardly referred2 when life and hope and joy flow through the soul from an unknown region to an unknown end1 then consciousness is mystical4 ,such an experience may suffuse the best equipped mind1 if its primordial energies1 its will and emotions1 much outrun its intelligence4 ,just as at the beginning pure inexperience may flounder intellectually and yet may have a sense of not going astray1 a sense of being carried by earth and sky1 by contagion and pleasure1 into its animal paradise2 so at the end1 if the vegetative forces still predominate1 all articulate experience may be lifted up and carried down-stream bodily by the elementary flood rising from beneath4 ,sidenote3 ,it may recur at any stage of culture4 ,every religion1 all science1 all art1 is accordingly subject to incidental mysticism2 but in no case can mysticism stand alone and be the body or basis of anything4 ,in the ,life of ,reason it is1 if ,i may say so1 a normal disease1 a recurrent manifestation of lost equilibrium and interrupted growth2 but in these pauses1 when the depths rise to the surface and obliterate what scratches culture may have made there1 the rhythm of life may be more powerfully felt1 and the very disappearance of intellect may be taken for a revelation4 ,both in a social and a psychological sense revelations come from beneath1 like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions2 and while they fill the spirit with contempt for those fragile structures which they so easily overwhelm1 they are utterly incapable of raising anything on the ruins4 ,if they leave something standing it is only by involuntary accident1 and if they prepare the soil for anything1 it is commonly only for wild-flowers and weeds4 ,revelations are seldom beneficent1 therefore1 unless there is more evil in the world to destroy than good to preserve2 and mysticism1 under the same circumstances1 may also liberate and relieve the spirit4 ,sidenote3 ,form gives substance its life and value4 ,the feelings which in mysticism rise to the surface and speak in their own name are simply the ancient1 overgrown feelings of vitality1 dependence1 inclusion2 they are the background of consciousness coming forward and blotting out the scene4 ,what mysticism destroys is1 in a sense1 its only legitimate expression4 ,the ,life of ,reason1 in so far as it is life1 contains the mystic's primordial assurances1 and his rudimentary joys2 but in so far as it is rational it has discovered what those assurances rest on1 in what direction they may be trusted to support action and thought2 and it has given those joys distinction and connexion1 turning a dumb momentary ecstasy into a many-coloured and natural happiness4 999999 ,end of ,volume ,three 999999 ,,reason ,,in ,,art ,volume ,four of 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,,contents ,,reason ,,in ,,art ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,basis ,,of ,,art ,,in ,,instinct ,,and ,,experience ,man affects his environment1 sometimes to good purpose4--,art is plastic instinct conscious of its aims4--,it is automatic4--,so are the ideas it expresses4--,we are said to control whatever obeys us4--,utility is a result4--,the useful naturally stable4--,intelligence is docility4--,art is reason propagating itself4--,beauty an incident in rational art1 inseparable from the others4 ,pages #c-ag ,,chapter ,,ii ,,rationality ,,of ,,industrial ,,art ,utility is ultimately ideal4--,work wasted and chances missed4--,ideals must be interpreted1 not prescribed4--,the aim of industry is to live well4--,some arts1 but no men1 are slaves by nature4--,servile arts may grow spontaneous or their products may be renounced4--,art starts from two potentialities3 its material and its problem4--,each must be definite and congruous with the other4--,a sophism exposed4--,industry prepares matter for the liberal arts4--,each partakes of the other4 ,pages #ah-cc ,,chapter ,,iii ,,emergence ,,of ,,fine ,,art ,art is spontaneous action made stable by success4--,it combines utility and automatism4--,automatism fundamental and irresponsible4--,it is tamed by contact with the world4--,the dance4--,functions of gesture4--,automatic music4 ,pages #cd-dc ,,chapter ,,iv ,,music ,music is a world apart4--,it justifies itself4--,it is vital and transient4--,its physical affinities4--,physiology of music4--,limits of musical sensibility4--,the value of music is relative to them4--,wonders of musical structure4--,its inherent emotions4--,in growing specific they remain unearthly4--,they merge with common emotions1 and express such as find no object in nature4--,music lends elementary feelings an intellectual communicable form4--,all essences are in themselves good1 even the passions4--,each impulse calls for a possible congenial world4--,literature incapable of expressing pure feelings4--,music may do so4--,instability the soul of matter4--,peace the triumph of spirit4--,refinement is true strength4 ,pages #dd-fg ,,chapter ,v ,,speech ,,and ,,signification ,sounds well fitted to be symbols4--,language has a structure independent of things4--,words1 remaining identical1 serve to identify things that change4--,language the dialectical garment of facts4--,words are wise men's counters4--,nominalism right in psychology and realism in logic4--,literature moves between the extremes of music and denotation4--,sound and object1 in their sensuous presence1 may have affinity4--,syntax positively representative4--,yet it vitiates what it represents4--,difficulty in subduing a living medium4--,language foreshortens experience4--,it is a perpetual mythology4--,it may be apt or inapt1 with equal richness4--,absolute language a possible but foolish art ,pages #fh-hf ,,chapter ,,vi ,,poetry ,,and ,,prose ,force of primary expressions4--,its exclusiveness and narrowness4--,rudimentary poetry an incantation or charm4--,inspiration irresponsible4--,plato's discriminating view4--,explosive and pregnant expression4--,natural history of inspiration4--,expressions to be understood must be recreated1 and so changed4--,expressions may be recast perversely1 humourously1 or sublimely4--,the nature of prose4--,it is more advanced and responsible than poetry4--,maturity brings love of practical truth4--,pure prose would tend to efface itself4--,form alone1 or substance alone1 may be poetical4--,poetry has its place in the medium4--,it is the best medium possible4--,might it not convey what it is best to know8--,a rational poetry would exclude much now thought poetical4--,all apperception modifies its object4--,reason has its own bias and method4--,rational poetry would envelop exact knowledge in ultimate emotions4--,an illustration4--,volume can be found in scope better than in suggestion ,pages #hg-aae ,,chapter ,,vii ,,plastic ,,construction ,automatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world4--,such effects fruitful4--,magic authority of man's first creations4--,art brings relief from idolatry4--,inertia in technique4--,inertia in appreciation4--,adventitious effects appreciated first4--,approach to beauty through useful structure4--,failure of adapted styles4--,not all structure beautiful1 nor all beauty structural4--,structures designed for display4--,appeal made by decoration4--,its natural rights4--,its alliance with structure in ,greek architecture4--,relations of the two in ,gothic art4--,the result here romantic4--,the medival artist4--,representation introduced4--,transition to illustration4 ,pages #aaf-adc ,,chapter ,,viii ,,plastic ,,representation ,psychology of imitation4--,sustained sensation involves reproduction4--,imitative art repeats with intent to repeat1 and in a new material4--,imitation leads to adaptation and to knowledge4--,how the artist is inspired and irresponsible4--,need of knowing and loving the subject rendered4--,public interests determine the subject of art1 and the subject the medium4--,reproduction by acting ephemeral4--demands of sculpture4--,it is essentially obsolete4--,when men see groups and backgrounds they are natural painters4--,evolution of painting4--,sensuous and dramatic adequacy approached4--,essence of landscape-painting4--,its threatened dissolution4--,reversion to pure decorative design4--,sensuous values are primordial and so indispensable ,pages #add-afe ,,chapter ,,ix ,,justification ,,of ,,art ,art is subject to moral censorship4--,its initial or specific excellence is not enough4--,all satisfactions1 however hurtful1 have an initial worth4--,but1 on the whole1 artistic activity is innocent4--,it is liberal1 and typical of perfect activity4--,the ideal1 when incarnate1 becomes subject to civil society4--,plato's strictures3 he exaggerates the effect of myths4--,his deeper moral objections4--,their lightness4--,importance of sthetic alternatives4--,the importance of sthetic goods varies with temperaments4--,the sthetic temperament requires tutelage4--,aesthetic values everywhere interfused4--,they are primordial4--,to superpose them adventitiously is to destroy them4--,they flow naturally from perfect function4--,even inhibited functions1 when they fall into a new rhythm1 yield new beauties4--,he who loves beauty must chasten it ,pages #aff-aij ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,criterion ,,of ,,taste ,dogmatism is inevitable but may be enlightened4--,taste gains in authority as it is more and more widely based4--,different sthetic endowments may be compared in quantity or force4--,authority of vital over verbal judgments4--,tastes differ also in purity or consistency4--,they differ1 finally1 in pertinence1 and in width of appeal4--,art may grow classic by idealising the familiar1 or by reporting the ultimate4--,good taste demands that art should be rational1 i4e41 harmonious with all other interests4--,a mere 8work of art0 a baseless artifice4--,human uses give to works of art their highest expression and charm4--,the sad values of appearance4--,they need to be made prophetic of practical goods1 which in turn would be suffused with beauty ,pages #aia-bae ,,chapter ,,xi ,,art ,,and ,,happiness ,aesthetic harmonies are parodies of real ones1 which in turn would be suffused with beauty1 yet prototypes of true perfections4--,pros and cons of detached indulgences4--,the happy imagination is one initially in line with things1 and brought always closer to them by experience4--,reason is the principle of both art and happiness4--,only a rational society can have sure and perfect arts4--,why art is now empty and unstable4--,anomalous character of the irrational artist4--,true art measures and completes happiness4 ,pages #baf-bcj ,,reason ,,in ,,art ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,basis ,,of ,,art ,,in ,,instinct ,,and ,,experience ,sidenote3 ,man affects his environment1 sometimes to good purpose4 ,man exists amid a universal ferment of being1 and not only needs plasticity in his habits and pursuits but finds plasticity also in the surrounding world4 ,life is an equilibrium which is maintained now by accepting modification and now by imposing it4 ,since the organ for all activity is a body in mechanical relation to other material objects1 objects which the creature's instincts often compel him to appropriate or transform1 changes in his habits and pursuits leave their mark on whatever he touches4 ,his habitat must needs bear many a trace of his presence1 from which intelligent observers might infer something about his life and action4 ,these vestiges of action are for the most part imprinted unconsciously and aimlessly on the world4 ,they are in themselves generally useless1 like footprints2 and yet almost any sign of man's passage might1 under certain conditions1 interest a man4 ,a footprint could fill ,robinson ,crusoe with emotion1 the devastation wrought by an army's march might prove many things to a historian1 and even the disorder in which a room is casually left may express very vividly the owner's ways and character4 ,sometimes1 however1 man's traces are traces of useful action which has so changed natural objects as to make them congenial to his mind4 ,instead of a footprint we might find an arrow2 instead of a disordered room1 a well-planted orchard--things which would not only have betrayed the agent's habits1 but would have served and expressed his intent4 ,such propitious forms given by man to matter are no less instrumental in the ,life of ,reason than are propitious forms assumed by man's own habit or fancy4 ,any operation which thus humanises and rationalises objects is called art4 ,sidenote3 ,art is plastic instinct conscious of its aim4 ,all art has an instinctive source and a material embodiment4 ,if the birds in building nests felt the utility of what they do1 they would be practising an art2 and for the instinct to be called rational it would even suffice that their traditional purpose and method should become conscious occasionally4 ,thus weaving is an art1 although the weaver may not be at every moment conscious of its purpose1 but may be carried along1 like any other workman1 by the routine of his art2 and language is a rational product1 not because it always has a use or meaning1 but because it is sometimes felt to have one4 ,arts are no less automatic than instincts1 and usually1 as ,aristotle observed1 less thoroughly purposive2 for instincts1 being transmitted by inheritance and imbedded in congenital structure1 have to be economically and deeply organised4 ,if they go far wrong they constitute a burden impossible to throw off and impossible to bear4 ,the man harassed by inordinate instincts perishes through want1 vice1 disease1 or madness4 ,arts1 on the contrary1 being transmitted only by imitation and teaching1 hover more lightly over life4 ,if ill-adjusted they make less havoc and cause less drain4 ,the more superficial they are and the more detached from practical habits1 the more extravagant and meaningless they can dare to become2 so that the higher products of life are the most often gratuitous4 ,no instinct or institution was ever so absurd as is a large part of human poetry and philosophy1 while the margin of ineptitude is much broader in religious myth than in religious ethics4 ,sidenote3 ,it is automatic4 ,arts are instincts bred and reared in the open1 creative habits acquired in the light of reason4 ,consciousness accompanies their formation2 a certain uneasiness or desire and a more or less definite conception of what is wanted often precedes their full organisation4 ,that the need should be felt before the means for satisfying it have been found has led the unreflecting to imagine that in art the need produces the discovery and the idea the work4 ,causes at best are lightly assigned by mortals1 and this particular superstition is no worse than any other4 ,the data--the plan and its execution--as conjoined empirically in the few interesting cases which show successful achievement1 are made into a law1 in oblivion of the fact that in more numerous cases such conjunction fails wholly or in part1 and that even in the successful cases other natural conditions are present1 and must be present1 to secure the result4 ,in a matter where custom is so ingrained and supported by a constant apperceptive illusion1 there is little hope of making thought suddenly exact1 or exact language not paradoxical4 ,we must observe1 however1 that only by virtue of a false perspective do ideas seems to govern action1 or is a felt necessity the mother of invention4 ,in truth invention is the child of abundance1 and the genius or vital premonition and groping which achieve art1 simultaneously achieve the ideas which that art embodies2 or1 rather1 ideas are themselves products of an inner movement which has an automatic extension outwards2 and this extension manifests the ideas4 ,mere craving has no lights of its own to prophesy by1 no prescience of what the world may contain that would satisfy1 no power of imagining what would allay its unrest4 ,images and satisfactions have to come of themselves2 then the blind craving1 as it turns into an incipient pleasure1 first recognises its object4 ,the pure will's impotence is absolute1 and it would writhe for ever and consume itself in darkness if perception gave it no light and experience no premonition4 ,sidenote3 ,so are the ideas it expresses4 ,now1 a man cannot draw bodily from external perception the ideas he is supposed to create or invent2 and as his will or uneasiness1 before he creates the satisfying ideas1 is by hypothesis without them1 it follows that creation or invention is automatic4 ,the ideas come of themselves1 being new and unthought-of figments1 similar1 no doubt1 to old perceptions and compacted of familiar materials1 but reproduced in a novel fashion and dropping in their sudden form from the blue4 ,however instantly they may be welcomed1 they were not already known and never could have been summoned4 ,in the stock example1 for instance1 of groping for a forgotten name1 we know the context in which that name should lie2 we feel the environment of our local void2 but what finally pops into that place1 reinstated there by the surrounding tensions1 is itself unforeseen1 for it was just this that was forgotten4 ,could we have invoked the name we should not have needed to do so1 having it already at our disposal4 ,it is in fact a palpable impossibility that any idea should call itself into being1 or that any act or any preference should be its own ground4 ,the responsibility assumed for these things is not a determination to conceive them before they are conceived 7which is a contradiction in terms7 but an embrace and appropriation of them once they have appeared4 ,it is thus that ebullitions in parts of our nature become touchstones for the whole2 and the incidents within us seem hardly our own work till they are accepted and incorporated into the main current of our being4 ,all invention is tentative1 all art experimental1 and to be sought1 like salvation1 with fear and trembling4 ,there is a painful pregnancy in genius1 a long incubation and waiting for the spirit1 a thousand rejections and futile birth-pangs1 before the wonderful child appears1 a gift of the gods1 utterly undeserved and inexplicably perfect4 ,even this unaccountable success comes only in rare and fortunate instances4 ,what is ordinarily produced is so base a hybrid1 so lame and ridiculous a changeling1 that we reconcile ourselves with difficulty to our offspring and blush to be represented by our fated works4 ,sidenote3 ,we are said to control whatever obeys us4 ,the propensity to attribute happy events to our own agency1 little as we understand what we mean by it1 and to attribute only untoward results to external forces1 has its ground in the primitive nexus of experience4 ,what we call ourselves is a certain cycle of vegetative processes1 bringing a round of familiar impulses and ideas2 this stream has a general direction1 a conscious vital inertia1 in harmony with which it moves4 ,many of the developments within it are dialectical2 that is1 they go forward by inner necessity1 like an egg hatching within its shell1 warmed but undisturbed by an environment of which they are wholly oblivious2 and this sort of growth1 when there is adequate consciousness of it1 is felt to be both absolutely obvious and absolutely free4 ,the emotion that accompanies it is pleasurable1 but is too active and proud to call itself a pleasure2 it has rather the quality of assurance and right4 ,this part of life1 however1 is only its courageous core2 about it play all sorts of incidental processes1 allying themselves to it in more or less congruous movement4 ,whatever peripheral events fall in with the central impulse are accordingly lost in its energy and felt to be not so much peripheral and accidental as inwardly grounded1 being1 like the stages of a prosperous dialectic1 spontaneously demanded and instantly justified when they come4 ,the sphere of the self's power is accordingly1 for primitive consciousness1 simply the sphere of what happens well2 it is the entire unoffending and obedient part of the world4 ,a man who has good luck at dice prides himself upon it1 and believes that to have it is his destiny and desert4 ,if his luck were absolutely constant1 he would say he had the power to throw high2 and as the event would1 by hypothesis1 sustain his boast1 there would be no practical error in that assumption4 ,a will that never found anything to thwart it would think itself omnipotent2 and as the psychological essence of omniscience is not to suspect there is anything which you do not know1 so the psychological essence of omnipotence is not to suspect that anything can happen which you do not desire4 ,such claims would undoubtedly be made if experience lent them the least colour2 but would even the most comfortable and innocent assurances of this sort cease to be precarious8 ,might not any moment of eternity bring the unimagined contradiction1 and shake the dreaming god8 ,sidenote3 ,utility is a result4 ,utility1 like significance1 is an eventual harmony in the arts and by no means their ground4 ,all useful things have been discovered as the ,lilliputians discovered roast pig2 and the casual feat has furthermore to be supported by a situation favourable to maintaining the art4 ,the most useful act will never be repeated unless its secret remains embodied in structure4 ,practice and endeavour will not help an artist to remain long at his best2 and many a performance is applauded which cannot be imitated4 ,to create the requisite structure two preformed structures are needed3 one in the agent1 to give him skill and perseverance1 and another in the material1 to give it the right plasticity4 ,human progress would long ago have reached its goal if every man who recognised a good could at once appropriate it1 and possess wisdom for ever by virtue of one moment's insight4 ,insight1 unfortunately1 is in itself perfectly useless and inconsequential2 it can neither have produced its own occasion nor now insure its own recurrence4 ,nevertheless1 being proof positive that whatever basis it needs is actual1 insight is also an indication that the extant structure1 if circumstances maintain it1 may continue to operate with the same moral results1 maintaining the vision which it has once supported4 ,sidenote3 ,the useful naturally stable4 ,when men find that by chance they have started a useful change in the world1 they congratulate themselves upon it and call their persistence in that practice a free activity4 ,and the activity is indeed rational1 since it subserves an end4 ,the happy organisation which enables us to continue in that rational course is the very organisation which enabled us to initiate it4 ,if this new process was formed under external influences1 the same influences1 when they operate again1 will reconstitute the process each time more easily2 while if it was formed quite spontaneously1 its own inertia will maintain it quietly in the brain and bring it to the surface whenever circumstances permit4 ,this is what is called learning by experience4 ,such lessons are far from indelible and are not always at command4 ,yet what has once been done may be repeated2 repetition reinforces itself and becomes habit2 and a clear memory of the benefit once attained by fortunate action1 representing as it does the trace left by that action in the system1 and its harmony with the man's usual impulses 7for the action is felt to be beneficial71 constitutes a strong presumption that the act will be repeated automatically on occasion2 i4e41 that it has really been learned4 ,consciousness1 which willingly attends to results only1 will judge either the memory or the benefit1 or both confusedly1 to be the ground of this readiness to act2 and only if some hitch occurs in the machinery1 so that rational behaviour fails to takes place1 will a surprised appeal be made to material accidents1 or to a guilty forgetfulness or indocility in the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,intelligence is docility4 ,the idiot cannot learn from experience at all1 because a new process1 in his liquid brain1 does not modify structure2 while the fool uses what he has learned only inaptly and in frivolous fragments1 because his stretches of linked experience are short and their connections insecure4 ,but when the cerebral plasm is fresh and well disposed and when the paths are clear1 attention is consecutive and learning easy2 a multitude of details can be gathered into a single cycle of memory or of potential regard4 ,under such circumstances action is the unimpeded expression of healthy instinct in an environment squarely faced4 ,conduct from the first then issues in progress1 and1 by reinforcing its own organisation at each rehearsal1 makes progress continual4 ,for there will subsist not only a readiness to act and a great precision in action1 but if any significant circumstance has varied in the conditions or in the interests at stake1 this change will make itself felt2 it will check the process and prevent precipitate action4 ,deliberation or well-founded scruple has the same source as facility--a plastic and quick organisation4 ,to be sensitive to difficulties and dangers goes with being sensitive to opportunities4 ,sidenote3 ,art is reason propagating itself4 ,of all reason's embodiments art is therefore the most splendid and complete4 ,merely to attain categories by which inner experience may be articulated1 or to feign analogies by which a universe may be conceived1 would be but a visionary triumph if it remained ineffectual and went with no actual remodelling of the outer world1 to render man's dwelling more appropriate and his mind better fed and more largely transmissible4 ,mind grows self-perpetuating only by its expression in matter4 ,what makes progress possible is that rational action may leave traces in nature1 such that nature in consequence furnishes a better basis for the ,life of ,reason2 in other words progress is art bettering the conditions of existence4 ,until art arises1 all achievement is internal to the brain1 dies with the individual1 and even in him spends itself without recovery1 like music heard in a dream4 ,art1 in establishing instruments for human life beyond the human body1 and moulding outer things into sympathy with inner values1 establishes a ground whence values may continually spring up2 the thatch that protects from to-day's rain will last and keep out to-morrow's rain also2 the sign that once expresses an idea will serve to recall it in future4 ,not only does the work of art thus perpetuate its own function and produce a better experience1 but the process of art also perpetuates itself1 because it is teachable4 ,every animal learns something by living2 but if his offspring inherit only what he possessed at birth1 they have to learn life's lessons over again from the beginning1 with at best some vague help given by their parents' example4 ,but when the fruits of experience exist in the common environment1 when new instruments1 unknown to nature1 are offered to each individual for his better equipment1 although he must still learn for himself how to live1 he may learn in a humaner school1 where artificial occasions are constantly open to him for expanding his powers4 ,it is no longer merely hidden inner processes that he must reproduce to attain his predecessors' wisdom2 he may acquire much of it more expeditiously by imitating their outward habit--an imitation which1 furthermore1 they have some means of exacting from him4 ,wherever there is art there is a possibility of training4 ,a father who calls his idle sons from the jungle to help him hold the plough1 not only inures them to labour but compels them to observe the earth upturned and refreshed1 and to watch the germination there2 their wandering thought1 their incipient rebellions1 will be met by the hope of harvest2 and it will not be impossible for them1 when their father is dead1 to follow the plough of their own initiative and for their own children's sake4 ,so great is the sustained advance in rationality made possible by art which1 being embodied in matter1 is teachable and transmissible by training2 for in art the values secured are recognised the more easily for having been first enjoyed when other people furnished the means to them2 while the maintenance of these values is facilitated by an external tradition imposing itself contagiously or by force on each new generation4 ,sidenote3 ,beauty an incident in rational art4 ,art is action which transcending the body makes the world a more congenial stimulus to the soul4 ,all art is therefore useful and practical1 and the notable sthetic value which some works of art possess1 for reasons flowing for the most part out of their moral significance1 is itself one of the satisfactions which art offers to human nature as a whole4 ,between sensation and abstract discourse lies a region of deployed sensibility or synthetic representation1 a region where more is seen at arm's length than in any one moment could be felt at close quarters1 and yet where the remote parts of experience1 which discourse reaches only through symbols1 are recovered and recomposed in something like their native colours and experienced relations4 ,this region1 called imagination1 has pleasures more airy and luminous than those of sense1 more massive and rapturous than those of intelligence4 ,the values inherent in imagination1 in instant intuition1 in sense endowed with form1 are called sthetic values2 they are found mainly in nature and living beings1 but often also in man's artificial works1 in images evoked by language1 and in the realm of sound4 ,sidenote3 ,inseparable from the others4 ,productions in which an sthetic value is or is supposed to be prominent take the name of fine art2 but the work of fine art so defined is almost always an abstraction from the actual object1 which has many non-sthetic functions and values4 ,to separate the sthetic element1 abstract and dependent as it often is1 is an artifice which is more misleading than helpful2 for neither in the history of art nor in a rational estimate of its value can the sthetic function of things be divorced from the practical and moral4 ,what had to be done was1 by imaginative races1 done imaginatively2 what had to be spoken or made1 was spoken or made fitly1 lovingly1 beautifully4 ,or1 to take the matter up on its psychological side1 the ceaseless experimentation and ferment of ideas1 in breeding what it had a propensity to breed1 came sometimes on figments that gave it delightful pause2 these beauties were the first knowledges and these arrests the first hints of real and useful things4 ,the rose's grace could more easily be plucked from its petals than the beauty of art from its subject1 occasion1 and use4 ,an sthetic fragrance1 indeed1 all things may have1 if in soliciting man's senses or reason they can awaken his imagination as well2 but this middle zone is so mixed and nebulous1 and its limits are so vague1 that it cannot well be treated in theory otherwise than as it exists in fact--as a phase of man's sympathy with the world he moves in4 ,if art is that element in the ,life of ,reason which consists in modifying its environment the better to attain its end1 art may be expected to subserve all parts of the human ideal1 to increase man's comfort1 knowledge1 and delight4 ,and as nature1 in her measure1 is wont to satisfy these interests together1 so art1 in seeking to increase that satisfaction1 will work simultaneously in every ideal direction4 ,nor will any of these directions be on the whole good1 or tempt a well-trained will1 if it leads to estrangement from all other interests4 ,the sthetic good will be accordingly hatched in the same nest with the others1 and incapable of flying far in a different air4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,rationality ,,of ,,industrial ,,art ,sidenote3 ,utility is ultimately ideal4 ,if there were anything wholly instrumental or merely useful its rationality1 such as it was1 would be perfectly obvious4 ,such a thing would be exhaustively defined by its result and conditioned exclusively by its expediency4 ,yet the value of most human arts1 mechanical as they may appear1 has a somewhat doubtful and mixed character4 ,naval architecture1 for instance1 serves a clear immediate purpose4 ,yet to cross the sea is not an ultimate good1 and the ambition or curiosity that first led man1 being a land-animal1 to that now vulgar adventure1 has sometimes found moralists to condemn it4 ,a vessel's true excellence is more deeply conditioned than the ship-wright may imagine when he prides himself on having made something that will float and go4 ,the best battle-ship1 or racing yacht1 or freight steamer1 might turn out to be a worse thing for its specific excellence1 if the action it facilitated proved on the whole maleficent1 and if war or racing or trade could be rightly condemned by a philosopher4 ,the rationality of ship-building has several sets of conditions3 the patron's demands must be first fulfilled2 then the patron's specifications have to be judged by the purpose he in turn has in mind2 this purpose itself has to be justified by his ideal in life1 and finally his ideal by its adequacy to his total or ultimate nature4 ,error on any of these planes makes the ultimate product irrational2 and if a finer instinct1 even in the midst of absorbing subsidiary action1 warns a man that he is working against his highest good1 his art will lose its savour and its most skilful products will grow hateful1 even to his immediate apprehension1 infected as they will be by the canker of folly4 ,sidenote3 ,work wasted and chances missed4 ,art thus has its casuistry no less than morals1 and philosophers in the future1 if man should at last have ceased to battle with ghosts1 might be called upon to review material civilisation from its beginnings1 testing each complication by its known ultimate fruits and reaching in this way a purified and organic ideal of human industry1 an ideal which education and political action might help to embody4 ,if nakedness or a single garment were shown to be wholesomer and more agreeable than complicated clothes1 weavers and tailors might be notably diminished in number4 ,if1 in another quarter1 popular fancy should sicken at last of its traditional round of games and fictions1 it might discover infinite entertainment in the play of reality and truth1 and infinite novelties to be created by fruitful labour2 so that many a pleasure might be found which is now clogged by mere apathy and unintelligence4 ,human genius1 like a foolish ,endymion1 lies fast asleep amid its opportunities1 wasting itself in dreams and disinheriting itself by negligence4 ,sidenote3 ,ideals must be interpreted1 not prescribed4 ,descriptive economy1 however1 will have to make great progress before the concrete ethics of art can be properly composed4 ,history1 conceived hitherto as a barbarous romance1 does not furnish sufficient data by which the happiness of life under various conditions may be soberly estimated4 ,politics has receded into the region of blind impulse and factional interests1 and would need to be reconstituted before it could approach again that scientific problem which ,socrates and his great disciples would have wished it to solve4 ,meantime it may not be premature to say something about another factor in practical philosophy1 namely1 the ultimate interests by which industrial arts and their products have to be estimated4 ,even before we know the exact effects of an institution we can fix to some extent the purposes which1 in order to be beneficent1 it will have to subserve1 although in truth such antecedent fixing of aims cannot go far1 seeing that every operation reacts on the organ that executes it1 thereby modifying the ideal involved4 ,doubtless the most industrial people would still wish to be happy and might accordingly lay down certain principles which its industry should never transgress1 as for instance that production should at any price leave room for liberty1 leisure1 beauty1 and a spirit of general co-operation and goodwill4 ,but a people once having become industrial will hardly be happy if sent back to ,arcadia2 it will have formed busy habits which it cannot relax without tedium2 it will have developed a restlessness and avidity which will crave matter1 like any other kind of hunger4 ,every experiment in living qualifies the initial possibilities of life1 and the moralist would reckon without his host if he did not allow for the change which forced exercise makes in instinct1 adjusting it more or less to extant conditions originally1 perhaps1 unwelcome4 ,it is too late for the highest good to prescribe flying for quadrupeds or peace for the sea waves4 ,what antecedent interest does mechanical art subserve8 ,what is the initial and commanding ideal of life by which all industrial developments are to be proved rational or condemned as vain8 ,if we look to the most sordid and instrumental of industries we see that their purpose is to produce a foreordained result with the minimum of effort4 ,they serve1 in a word1 to cheapen commodities4 ,but the value of such an achievement is clearly not final2 it hangs on two underlying ideals1 one demanding abundance in the things produced and the other diminution in the toil required to produce them4 ,at least the latter interest may in turn be analysed further1 for to diminish toil is itself no absolute good2 it is a good only when such diminution in one sphere liberates energies which may be employed in other fields1 so that the total human accomplishment may be greater4 ,doubtless useful labour has its natural limits1 for if overdone any activity may impair the power of enjoying both its fruits and its operation4 ,yet in so far as labour can become spontaneous and in itself delightful it is a positive benefit2 and to its intrinsic value must be added all those possessions or useful dispositions which it may secure4 ,thus one ideal--to diminish labour--falls back into the other--to diffuse occasions for enjoyment4 ,the aim is not to curtail occupation but rather to render occupation liberal by supplying it with more appropriate objects4 ,sidenote3 ,the aim of industry is to live well4 ,it is then liberal life1 fostered by industry and commerce or involved in them1 that alone can justify these instrumental pursuits4 ,those philosophers whose ethics is nothing but sentimental physics like to point out that happiness arises out of work and that compulsory activities1 dutifully performed1 underlie freedom4 ,of course matter or force underlies everything2 but rationality does not accrue to spirit because mechanism supports it2 it accrues to mechanism in so far as spirit is thereby called into existence2 so that while values derive existence only from their causes1 causes derive value only from their results4 ,functions cannot be exercised until their organs exist and are in operation1 so that what is primary in the order of genesis is always last and most dependent in the order of worth4 ,the primary substance of things is their mere material2 their first cause is their lowest instrument4 ,matter has only the values of the forms which it assumes1 and while each stratification may create some intrinsic ideal and achieve some good1 these goods are dull and fleeting in proportion to their rudimentary character and their nearness to protoplasmic thrills4 ,where reason exists life cannot1 indeed1 be altogether slavish2 for any operation1 however menial and fragmentary1 when it is accompanied by ideal representation of the ends pursued and by felt success in attaining them1 becomes a sample and anagram of all freedom4 ,nevertheless to arrest attention on a means is really illiberal1 though not so much by what such an interest contains as by what it ignores4 ,happiness in a treadmill is far from inconceivable2 but for that happiness to be rational the wheel should be nothing less than the whole sky from which influences can descend upon us4 ,there would be meanness of soul in being content with a smaller sphere1 so that not everything that was relevant to our welfare should be envisaged in our thoughts and purposes4 ,to be absorbed by the incidental is the animal's portion2 to be confined to the instrumental is the slave's4 ,for though within such activity there may be a rational movement1 the activity ends in a fog and in mere physical drifting4 ,happiness has to be begged of fortune or found in mystical indifference3 it is not yet subtended by rational art4 ,sidenote3 ,some arts1 but no men1 are slaves by nature4 ,the ,aristotelian theory of slavery1 in making servile action wholly subservient1 sins indeed against persons1 but not against arts4 ,it sins against persons because there is inconsiderate haste in asserting that whole classes of men are capable of no activities1 except the physical1 which justify themselves inherently4 ,the lower animals also have physical interests and natural emotions4 ,a man1 if he deserves the name1 must be credited with some rational capacity3 prospect and retrospect1 hope and the ideal portraiture of things1 must to some extent employ him4 ,freedom to cultivate these interests is then his inherent right4 ,as the lion vindicates his prerogative to ferocity and dignity1 so every rational creature vindicates his prerogative to spiritual freedom4 ,but a too summary classification of individuals covers1 in ,aristotle1 a just discrimination among the arts4 ,in so far as a man's occupation is merely instrumental and justified only externally1 he is obviously a slave and his art at best an evil necessity4 ,for the operation is by hypothesis not its own end2 and if the product1 needful for some ulterior purpose1 had been found ready made in nature1 the other and self-justifying activities could have gone on unimpeded1 without the arrest or dislocation which is involved in first establishing the needful conditions for right action4 ,if air had to be manufactured1 as dwellings must be1 or breathing to be learned like speech1 mankind would start with an even greater handicap and would never have come within sight of such goals as it can now pursue4 ,thus all instrumental and remedial arts1 however indispensable1 are pure burdens2 and progress consists in abridging them as much as is possible without contracting the basis for moral life4 ,sidenote3 ,servile arts may grow spontaneous or their products may be renounced4 ,this needful abridgment can take place in two directions4 ,the art may become instinctive1 unconscious of the utility that backs it and conscious only of the solicitation that leads it on4 ,in that measure human nature is adapted to its conditions2 lessons long dictated by experience are actually learned and become hereditary habits4 ,so inclination to hunt and fondness for nursing children have passed into instincts in the human race2 and what if it were a forced art would be servile1 by becoming spontaneous has risen to be an ingredient in ideal life2 for sport and maternity are human ideals4 ,in an opposite direction servile arts may be abridged by a lapse of the demand which required them4 ,the servile art of vine-dressers1 for instance1 would meet such a fate if the course of history1 instead of tending to make the vintage an ideal episode and to create worshippers of ,bacchus and ,priapus1 tended rather to bring about a distaste for wine and made the whole industry superfluous4 ,this solution is certainly less happy than the other1 insomuch as it suppresses a function instead of taking it up into organic life2 yet life to be organic has to be exclusive and finite2 it has to work out specific tendencies in a specific environment2 and therefore to surrender a particular impeded impulse may involve a clear gain1 if only a compensating unimpeded good thereby comes to light elsewhere4 ,if wine disappeared1 with all its humane and symbolic consecrations1 that loss might bring an ultimate gain1 could some less treacherous friend of frankness and merriment be thereby brought into the world4 ,in practice servile art is usually mitigated by combining these two methods2 the demand subserved1 being but ill supported1 learns to restrain itself and be less importunate2 while at the same time habit renders the labour which was once unwilling largely automatic1 and even overlays it with ideal associations4 ,human nature is happily elastic2 there is hardly a need that may not be muffled or suspended1 and hardly an employment that may not be relieved by the automatic interest with which it comes to be pursued4 ,to this automatic interest other palliatives are often added1 sometimes religion1 sometimes mere dulness and resignation2 but in these cases the evil imposed is merely counterbalanced or forgotten1 it is not remedied4 ,reflective and spiritual races minimise labour by renunciation1 for they find it easier to give up its fruits than to justify its exactions4 ,among energetic and self-willed men1 on the contrary1 the demand for material progress remains predominant1 and philosophy dwells by preference on the possibility that a violent and continual subjection in the present might issue in a glorious future dominion4 ,this possible result was hardly realised by the ,jews1 nor long maintained by the ,greeks and ,romans1 and it remains to be seen whether modern industrialism can achieve it4 ,in fact1 we may suspect that success only comes when a nation's external task happens to coincide with its natural genius1 so that a minimum of its labour is servile and a maximum of its play is beneficial4 ,it is in such cases that we find colossal achievements and apparently inexhaustible energies4 ,prosperity is indeed the basis of every ideal attainment1 so that prematurely to recoil from hardship1 or to be habitually conscious of hardship at all1 amounts to renouncing beforehand all earthly goods and all chance of spiritual greatness4 ,yet a chance is no certainty4 ,when glory requires ,titanic labours it often finds itself in the end buried under a pyramid rather than raised upon a pedestal4 ,energies which are not from the beginning self-justifying and flooded with light seldom lead to ideal greatness4 ,sidenote3 ,art starts from two potentialities3 its material and its problem4 ,the action to which industry should minister is accordingly liberal or spontaneous action2 and this one condition of rationality in from two the arts4 ,but a second condition is implicit in the first3 freedom means freedom in some operation1 ideality means the ideality of something embodied and material4 ,activity1 achievement1 a passage from prospect to realisation1 is evidently essential to life4 ,if all ends were already reached1 and no art were requisite1 life could not exist at all1 much less a ,life of ,reason4 ,no politics1 no morals1 no thought would be possible1 for all these move towards some ideal and envisage a goal to which they presently pass4 ,the transition is the activity1 without which achievement would lose its zest and indeed its meaning2 for a situation could never be achieved which had been given from all eternity4 ,the ideal is a concomitant emanation from the natural and has no other possible status4 ,those human possessions which are perennial and of inalienable value are in a manner potential possessions only4 ,knowledge1 art1 love are always largely in abeyance1 while power is absolutely synonymous with potentiality4 ,fruition requires a continual recovery1 a repeated re-establishment of the state we enjoy4 ,so breath and nutrition1 feeling and thought1 come in pulsations2 they have only a periodic and rhythmic sort of actuality4 ,the operation may be sustained indefinitely1 but only if it admits a certain internal oscillation4 ,a creature like man1 whose mode of being is a life or experience and not a congealed ideality1 such as eternal truth might show1 must accordingly find something to do2 he must operate in an environment in which everything is not already what he is presently to make it4 ,in the actual world this first condition of life is only too amply fulfilled2 the real difficulty in man's estate1 the true danger to his vitality1 lies not in want of work but in so colossal a disproportion between demand and opportunity that the ideal is stunned out of existence and perishes for want of hope4 ,the ,life of ,reason is continually beaten back upon its animal sources1 and nations are submerged in deluge after deluge of barbarism4 ,impressed as we may well be by this ancient experience1 we should not overlook the complementary truth which under more favourable circumstances would be as plain as the other3 namely1 that our deepest interest is after all to live1 and we could not live if all acquisition1 assimilation1 government1 and creation had been made impossible for us by their foregone realisation1 so that every operation was forestalled by the given fact4 ,the distinction between the ideal and the real is one which the human ideal itself insists should be preserved4 ,it is an essential expression of life1 and its disappearance would be tantamount to death1 making an end to voluntary transition and ideal representation4 ,all objects envisaged either in vulgar action or in the airiest cognition must be at first ideal and distinct from the given facts1 otherwise action would have lost its function at the same moment that thought lost its significance4 ,all life would have collapsed into a purposeless datum4 ,the ideal requires1 then1 that opportunities should be offered for realising it through action1 and that transition should be possible to it from a given state of things4 ,one form of such transition is art1 where the ideal is a possible and more excellent form to be given to some external substance or medium4 ,art needs to find a material relatively formless which its business is to shape2 and this initial formlessness in matter is essential to art's existence4 ,were there no stone not yet sculptured and built into walls1 no sentiment not yet perfectly uttered in poetry1 no distance or oblivion yet to be abolished by motion or inferential thought1 activity of all sorts would have lost its occasion4 ,matter1 or actuality in what is only potentially ideal1 is therefore a necessary condition for realising an ideal at all4 ,sidenote3 ,each must be definite and congruous with the other4 ,this potentiality1 however1 in so far as the ideal requires it1 is a quite definite disposition4 ,absolute chaos would defeat life as surely as would absolute ideality4 ,activity1 in presupposing material conditions1 presupposes them to be favourable1 so that a movement towards the ideal may actually take place4 ,matter1 which from the point of view of a given ideal is merely its potentiality1 is in itself the potentiality of every other ideal as well2 it is accordingly responsible to no ideal in particular and proves in some measure refractory to all4 ,it makes itself felt1 either as an opportune material or as an accidental hindrance1 only when it already possesses definite form and affinities2 given in a certain quantity1 quality1 and order1 matter feeds the specific life which1 if given otherwise1 it would impede or smother altogether4 ,sidenote3 ,a sophism exposed ,art1 in calling for materials1 calls for materials plastic to its influence and definitely predisposed to its ends4 ,unsuitableness in the data far from grounding action renders it abortive1 and no expedient could be more sophistical than that into which theodicy1 in its desperate straits1 has sometimes been driven1 of trying to justify as conditions for ideal achievement the very conditions which make ideal achievement impossible4 ,the given state from which transition is to take place to the ideal must support that transition2 so that the desirable want of ideality which plastic matter should possess is merely relative and strictly determined4 ,art and reason find in nature the background they require2 but nature1 to be wholly justified by its ideal functions1 would have to subserve them perfectly4 ,it would have to offer to reason and art a sufficient and favourable basis2 it would have to feed sense with the right stimuli at the right intervals1 so that art and reason might continually flourish and be always moving to some new success4 ,a poet needs emotions and perceptions to translate into language1 since these are his subject-matter and his inspiration2 but starvation1 physical or moral1 will not help him to sing4 ,one thing is to meet with the conditions inherently necessary for a given action2 another thing is to meet with obstacles fatal to the same4 ,a propitious formlessness in matter is no sort of evil2 and evil is so far from being a propitious formlessness in matter that it is rather an impeding form which matter has already assumed4 ,sidenote3 ,industry prepares matter for the liberal arts4 ,out of this appears1 with sufficient clearness1 the rational function which the arts possess4 ,they give1 as nature does1 a form to matter1 but they give it a more propitious form4 ,such success in art is possible only when the materials and organs at hand are in a large measure already well disposed2 for it can as little exist with a dull organ as with no organ at all1 while there are winds in which every sail must be furled4 ,art depends upon profiting by a bonanza and learning to sail in a good breeze1 strong enough for speed and conscious power but placable enough for dominion and liberty of soul4 ,then perfection in action can be attained and a self-justifying energy can emerge out of apathy on the one hand and out of servile and wasteful work on the other4 ,art has accordingly two stages3 one mechanical or industrial1 in which untoward matter is better prepared1 or impeding media are overcome2 the other liberal1 in which perfectly fit matter is appropriated to ideal uses and endowed with a direct spiritual function4 ,a premonition or rehearsal of these two stages may be seen in nature1 where nutrition and reproduction fit the body for its ideal functions1 whereupon sensation and cerebration make it a direct organ of mind4 ,industry merely gives nature that form which1 if more thoroughly humane1 she might have originally possessed for our benefit2 liberal arts bring to spiritual fruition the matter which either nature or industry has prepared and rendered propitious4 ,this spiritual fruition consists in the activity of turning an apt material into an expressive and delightful form1 thus filling the world with objects which by symbolising ideal energies tend to revive them under a favouring influence and therefore to strengthen and refine them4 ,sidenote3 ,each partakes of the other ,it remains merely to note that all industry contains an element of fine art and all fine art an element of industry2 since every proximate end1 in being attained1 satisfies the mind and manifests the intent that pursued it2 while every operation upon a material1 even one so volatile as sound1 finds that material somewhat refractory4 ,before the product can attain its ideal function many obstacles to its transparency and fitness have to be removed4 ,a certain amount of technical and instrumental labour is thus involved in every work of genius1 and a certain genius in every technical success4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,emergence ,,of ,,fine ,,art ,sidenote3 ,art is spontaneous action made stable by success4 ,action which is purely spontaneous is merely tentative4 ,any experience of success or utility which might have preceded1 if it availed to make action sure1 would avail to make it also intentional and conscious of its ulterior results4 ,now the actual issue which an action is destined to have1 since it is something future and problematical1 can exert no influence on its own antecedents2 but if any picture of what the issue is likely to be accompanies the heat and momentum of action1 that picture being1 of all antecedents in the operation1 the one most easily remembered and described1 may be picked out as essential1 and dignified with the name of motive or cause4 ,this will not happen to every prophetic idea2 we may live in fear and trembling as easily as with an arrogant consciousness of power4 ,the difference flows from the greater or lesser affinity that happens to exist between expectation and instinct4 ,action remains always1 in its initial phase1 spontaneous and automatic2 it retains an inwardly grounded and perfectly blind tendency of its own2 but this tendency may agree or clash with the motor impulses subtending whatever ideas may at the same time people the fancy4 ,if the blind and the ideal impulses agree1 spontaneous action is voluntary and its result intentional2 if they clash1 the ideas remain speculative and idle1 random1 ineffectual wishes2 while the result1 not being referable to any idea1 is put down to fate4 ,the sense of power1 accordingly1 shows either that events have largely satisfied desire1 so that natural tendency goes hand in hand with the suggestions of experience1 or else that experience has not been allowed to count at all and that the future is being painted a priori4 ,in the latter case the sense of power is illusory4 ,action will then never really issue in the way intended1 and even thought will only seem to make progress by constantly forgetting its original direction4 ,though life1 however1 is initially experimental and always remains experimental at bottom1 yet experiment fortifies certain tendencies and cancels others1 so that a gradual sediment of habit and wisdom is formed in the stream of time4 ,action then ceases to be merely tentative and spontaneous1 and becomes art4 ,foresight begins to accompany practice and1 as we say1 to guide it4 ,purpose thus supervenes on useful impulse1 and conscious expression on self-sustaining automatism4 ,art lies between two extremes4 ,on the one side is purely spontaneous fancy1 which would never foresee its own works and scarcely recognise or value them after they had been created1 since at the next moment the imaginative current would as likely as not have faced about and might be making in the opposite direction2 and on the other side is pure utility1 which would deprive the work of all inherent ideality1 and render it inexpressive of anything in man save his necessities4 ,war1 for instance1 is an art when1 having set itself an ideal end1 it devises means of attaining it2 but this ideal end has for its chief basis some failure in politics and morals4 ,war marks a weakness and disease in human society1 and its best triumphs are glorious evils--cruel and treacherous remedies1 big with new germs of disease4 ,war is accordingly a servile art and not essentially liberal2 whatever inherent values its exercise may have would better be realised in another medium4 ,yet out of the pomp and circumstance of war fine arts may arise--music1 armoury1 heraldry1 and eloquence4 ,so utility leads to art when its vehicle acquires intrinsic value and becomes expressive4 ,on the other hand1 spontaneous action leads to art when it acquires a rational function4 ,thus utterance1 which is primarily automatic1 becomes the art of speech when it serves to mark crises in experience1 making them more memorable and influential through their artificial expression2 but expression is never art while it remains expressive to no purpose4 ,sidenote3 ,it combines utility and automatism4 ,a good way of understanding the fine arts would be to study how they grow1 now out of utility1 now out of automatism4 ,we should thus see more clearly how they approach their goal1 which can be nothing but the complete superposition of these two characters4 ,if all practice were art and all art perfect1 no action would remain compulsory and not justified inherently1 while no creative impulse would any longer be wasteful or1 like the impulse to thrum1 symptomatic merely and irrelevant to progress4 ,it is by contributing to the ,life of ,reason and merging into its substance that art1 like religion or science1 first becomes worthy of praise4 ,each element comes from a different quarter1 bringing its specific excellence and needing its peculiar purification and enlightenment1 by co-ordination with all the others2 and this process of enlightenment and purification is what we call development in each department4 ,the meanest arts are those which lie near the limit either of utility or of automatic self-expression4 ,they become nobler and more rational as their utility is rendered spontaneous or their spontaneity beneficent4 ,sidenote3 ,automatism fundamental and irresponsible4 ,the spontaneous arts are older than the useful1 since man must live and act before he can devise instruments for living and acting better4 ,both the power to construct machines and the end which1 to be useful1 they would have to serve1 need to be given in initial impulse4 ,there is accordingly a vast amount of irresponsible play and loose experiment in art1 as in consciousness1 before these gropings acquire a settled habit and function1 and rationality begins4 ,the farther back we go into barbarism the more we find life and mind busied with luxuries2 and though these indulgences may repel a cultivated taste and seem in the end cruel and monotonous1 their status is really nearer to that of religion and spontaneous art than to that of useful art or of science4 ,ceremony1 for instance1 is compulsory in society and sometimes truly oppressive1 yet its root lies in self-expression and in a certain ascendency of play which drags all life along into conventional channels originally dug out in irresponsible bursts of action4 ,this occurs inevitably and according to physical analogies4 ,bodily organs grow automatically and become necessary moulds of life4 ,we must either find a use for them or bear as best we may the idle burden they impose4 ,of such burdens the barbarian carries the greatest possible sum2 and while he paints the heavens with his grotesque mythologies1 he encumbers earth with inventions and prescriptions almost as gratuitous4 ,the fiendish dances and shouts1 the cruel initiations1 mutilations1 and sacrifices in which savages indulge1 are not planned by them deliberately nor justified in reflection4 ,men find themselves falling into these practices1 driven by a tradition hardly distinguishable from instinct4 ,in its periodic fury the spirit hurries them into wars and orgies1 quite as it kindles sudden flaming visions in their brains1 habitually so torpid4 ,the spontaneous is the worst of tyrants1 for it exercises a needless and fruitless tyranny in the guise of duty and inspiration4 ,without mitigating in the least the subjection to external forces under which man necessarily labours1 it adds a new artificial subjection to his own false steps and childish errors4 ,sidenote3 ,it is tamed by contact with the world4 ,this mental vegetation1 this fitful nervous groping1 is nevertheless a sign of life1 out of which art emerges by discipline and by a gradual application to real issues4 ,an artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world2 he is a highly suggestible mind hypnotised by reality4 ,even barbaric genius may find points of application in the world4 ,these points will be more numerous the more open the eyes have been1 the more docile and intelligent the mind is that gathers and renders back its impressions in a synthetic and ideal form4 ,intuition will then represent1 at least symbolically1 an actual situation4 ,grimace and gesture and ceremony will be modified by a sense of their effect2 they will become artful and will transform their automatic expressiveness into ideal expression4 ,they will become significant of what it is intended to communicate and important to know2 they will have ceased to be irresponsible exercises and vents for passing feeling1 by which feeling is dissipated1 as in tears1 without being embodied and intellectualised1 as in a work of art4 ,sidenote3 ,the dance4 ,sidenote3 ,functions of gesture4 ,the dance is an early practice that passes after this fashion into an art4 ,a prancing stallion may transfigure his movements more beautifully than man is capable of doing2 for the springs and limits of effect are throughout mechanical1 and man1 in more than one respect1 would have to become a centaur before he could rival the horse's prowess4 ,human instinct is very imperfect in this direction1 and grows less happy the more artificial society becomes2 most dances1 even the savage ones1 are somewhat ridiculous4 ,a rudimentary instinct none the less remains1 which not only involves a faculty of heightened and rhythmic motion1 but also assures a direct appreciation of such motion when seen in others4 ,the conscious agility1 fougue1 and precision which fill the performer become contagious and delight the spectator as well4 ,there are indeed dances so ugly that1 like those of contemporary society1 they cannot be enjoyed unless they are shared2 they yield pleasures of exercise only1 or at best of movement in unison4 ,but when man was nearer to the animal and his body and soul were in happier conjunction1 when society1 too1 was more compulsive over the individual1 he could lend himself more willingly and gracefully to being a figure in the general pageant of the world4 ,the dance could then detach itself from its early association with war and courtship and ally itself rather to religion and art4 ,from being a spontaneous vent for excitement1 or a blind means of producing it1 the dance became a form of discipline and conscious social control--a cathartic for the soul2 and this by a quite intelligible transition4 ,gesture1 of which the dance is merely a pervasive use1 is an incipient action4 ,it is conduct in the groping stage1 before it has lit on its purpose1 as can be seen unmistakably in all the gesticulation of love and defiance4 ,in this way the dance is attached to life initially by its physiological origin4 ,being an incipient act1 it naturally leads to its own completion and may arouse in others the beginnings of an appropriate response4 ,gesture is only less catching and less eloquent than action itself4 ,but gesture1 while it has this power of suggesting action and stimulating the response which would be appropriate if the action took place1 may be arrested in the process of execution1 since it is incipient only2 it will then have revealed an intention and betrayed a state of mind4 ,thus it will have found a function which action itself can seldom fulfil4 ,when an act is done1 indications of what it was to be are superfluous2 but indications of possible acts are in the highest degree useful and interesting4 ,in this way gesture assumes the rle of language and becomes a means of rational expression4 ,it remains suggestive and imitable enough to convey an idea1 but not enough to precipitate a full reaction2 it feeds that sphere of merely potential action which we call thought2 it becomes a vehicle for intuition4 ,under these circumstances1 to tread the measures of a sacred dance1 to march with an army1 to bear one's share in any universal act1 fills the heart with a voluminous silent emotion4 ,the massive suggestion1 the pressure of the ambient will1 is out of all proportion to the present call for action4 ,infinite resources and definite premonitions are thus stored up in the soul2 and merely to have moved solemnly together is the best possible preparation for living afterwards1 even if apart1 in the consciousness of a general monition and authority4 ,sidenote3 ,automatic music4 ,parallel to this is the genesis and destiny of music1 an art originally closely intertwined with the dance4 ,the same explosive forces that agitate the limbs loosen the voice2 hand1 foot1 and throat mark their wild rhythm together4 ,birds probably enjoy the pulsation of their singing rather than its sound4 ,even human music is performed long before it is listened to1 and is at first no more an art than sighing4 ,the original emotions connected with it are felt by participation in the performance--a participation which can become ideal only because1 at bottom1 it is always actual4 ,the need of exercise and self-expression1 the force of contagion and unison1 bears the soul along before an artistic appreciation of music arises2 and we may still observe among civilised races how music asserts itself without any sthetic intent1 as when the pious sing hymns in common1 or the sentimental1 at sea1 cannot refrain from whining their whole homely repertory in the moonlight4 ,here as elsewhere1 instinct and habit are phases of the same inner disposition4 ,what has once occurred automatically on a given occasion will be repeated in much the same form when a similar occasion recurs4 ,thus impulse1 reinforced by its own remembered expression1 passes into convention4 ,savages have a music singularly monotonous1 automatic1 and impersonal2 they cannot resist the indulgence1 though they probably have little pleasure in it4 ,the same thing happens with customary sounds as with other prescribed ceremonies2 to omit them would be shocking and well-nigh impossible1 yet to repeat them serves no end further than to avoid a sense of strangeness or inhibition4 ,these automatisms1 however1 in working themselves out1 are not without certain retroactive effects3 they leave the system exhausted or relieved1 and they have meantime played more or less agreeably on the senses4 ,the music we make automatically we cannot help hearing incidentally2 the sensation may even modify the expression1 since sensation too has its physical side4 ,the expression is reined in and kept from becoming vagrant1 in proportion as its form and occasion are remembered4 ,the automatic performer1 being henceforth controlled more or less by reflection and criticism1 becomes something of an artist3 he trains himself to be consecutive1 impressive1 agreeable2 he begins to compare his improvisation with its subject and function1 and thus he develops what is called style and taste4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,music ,sidenote3 ,music is a world apart4 ,sound readily acquires ideal values4 ,it has power in itself to engross attention and at the same time may be easily diversified1 so as to become a symbol for other things4 ,its direct empire is to be compared with that of stimulants and opiates1 yet it presents to the mind1 as these do not1 a perception that corresponds1 part by part1 with the external stimulus4 ,to hear is almost to understand4 ,the process we undergo in mathematical or dialectical thinking is called understanding1 because a natural sequence is there adequately translated into ideal terms4 ,logical connections seem to be internally justified1 while only the fact that we perceive them here and now1 with more or less facility1 is attributed to brute causes4 ,sound approaches this sort of ideality2 it presents to sense something like the efficacious structure of the object4 ,it is almost mathematical2 but like mathematics it is adequate only by being abstract2 and while it discloses point by point one strain in existence1 it leaves many other strains1 which in fact are interwoven with it1 wholly out of account4 ,music is accordingly1 like mathematics1 very nearly a world by itself2 it contains a whole gamut of experience1 from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies4 ,yet this second existence1 this life in music1 is no mere ghost of the other2 it has its own excitements1 its quivering alternatives1 its surprising turns2 the abstract energy of it takes on so much body1 that in progression or declension it seems quite as impassioned as any animal triumph or any moral drama4 ,sidenote3 ,it justifies itself4 ,that a pattering of sounds on the ear should have such moment is a fact calculated to give pause to those philosophers who attempt to explain consciousness by its utility1 or who wish to make physical and moral processes march side by side from all eternity4 ,music is essentially useless1 as life is3 but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions4 ,that the way in which idle sounds run together should matter so much is a mystery of the same order as the spirit's concern to keep a particular body alive1 or to propagate its life4 ,such an interest is1 from an absolute point of view1 wholly gratuitous2 and so long as the natural basis and expressive function of spirit are not perceived1 this mystery is baffling4 ,in truth the order of values inverts that of causes2 and experience1 in which all values lie1 is an ideal resultant1 itself ineffectual1 of the potencies it can conceive4 ,delight in music is liberal2 it makes useful the organs and processes that subserve it4 ,these agencies1 when they support a conscious interest in their operation1 give that operation its first glimmering justification1 and admit it to the rational sphere4 ,just so when organic bodies generate a will bent on their preservation1 they add a value and a moral function to their equilibrium4 ,in vain should we ask for what purpose existences arise1 or become important2 that purpose1 to be such1 must already have been important to some existence2 and the only question that can be asked or answered is what recognised importance1 what ideal values1 actual existences involve4 ,sidenote3 ,it is vital and transient4 ,we happen to breathe1 and on that account are interested in breathing2 and it is no greater marvel that1 happening to be subject to intricate musical sensations1 we should be in earnest about these too4 ,the human ear discriminates sounds with ease2 what it hears is so diversified that its elements can be massed without being confused1 or can form a sequence having a character of its own1 to be appreciated and remembered4 ,the eye too has a field in which clear distinctions and relations appear1 and for that reason is an organ favourable to intelligence2 but what gives music its superior emotional power is its rhythmic advance4 ,time is a medium which appeals more than space to emotion4 ,since life is itself a flux1 and thought an operation1 there is naturally something immediate and breathless about whatever flows and expands4 ,the visible world offers itself to our regard with a certain lazy indifference4 8,peruse me10 it seems to say1 8if you will4 ,i am here2 and even if you pass me by now and later find it to your advantage to resurvey me1 ,i may still be here40 ,the world of sound speaks a more urgent language4 ,it insinuates itself into our very substance1 and it is not so much the music that moves us as we that move with it4 ,its rhythms seize upon our bodily life1 to accelerate or to deepen it2 and we must either become inattentive altogether or remain enslaved4 ,sidenote3 ,its physical affinities4 ,this imperious function in music has lent it functions which are far from sthetic4 ,song can be used to keep in unison many men's efforts1 as when sailors sing as they heave2 it can make persuasive and obvious sentiments which1 if not set to music1 might seem absurd1 as often in love songs and in psalmody4 ,it may indeed serve to prepare the mind for any impression whatever1 and render the same more intense when it comes4 ,music was long used before it was loved or people took pains to refine it4 ,it would have seemed as strange in primitive times to turn utterance into a fine art as now to make sthetic paces out of mourning or child-birth4 ,primitive music is indeed a wail and a parturition2 magical and suggestive as it may be1 for long ages it never bethinks itself to be beautiful4 ,it is content to furnish a contagious melancholy employment to souls without a language and with little interest in the real world4 ,barbaric musicians1 singing and playing together more or less at random1 are too much carried away by their performance to conceive its effect2 they cry far too loud and too unceasingly to listen4 ,a contagious tradition carries them along and controls them1 in a way1 as they improvise2 the assembly is hardly an audience2 all are performers1 and the crowd is only a stimulus that keeps every one dancing and howling in emulation4 ,this unconsidered flow of early art remains present1 more or less1 to the end4 ,instead of vague custom we have schools1 and instead of swaying multitudes academic example2 but many a discord and mannerism survive simply because the musician is so suggestible1 or so lost in the tumult of production1 as never to reconsider what he does1 or to perceive its wastefulness4 ,nevertheless an inherent value exists in all emitted sounds1 although barbaric practice and theory are slow to recognise it4 ,each tone has its quality1 like jewels of different water2 every cadence has its vital expression1 no less inherent in it than that which comes in a posture or in a thought4 ,everything audible thrills merely by sounding1 and though this perceptual thrill be at first overpowered by the effort and excitement of action1 yet it eventually fights its way to the top4 ,participation in music may become perfunctory or dull for the great majority1 as when hymns are sung in church2 a mere suggestion of action will doubtless continue to colour the impression received1 for a tendency to act is involved in perception2 but this suggestion will be only an over-tone or echo behind an auditory feeling4 ,some performers will be singled out from the crowd2 those whom the public likes to hear will be asked to continue alone2 and soon a certain suasion will be exerted over them by the approval or censure of others1 so that consciously or unconsciously they will train themselves to please4 ,sidenote3 ,physiology of music4 ,the musical quality of sounds has a simple physical measure for its basis2 and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness1 and by concomitant sounds4 ,what a rich note is to a pure and thin one1 that a chord is to a note2 nor is melody wholly different in principle1 for it is a chord rendered piece-meal4 ,time intervenes1 and the harmony is deployed2 so that in melody rhythm is added1 with its immense appeal1 to the cumulative effect already secured by rendering many notes together4 ,the heightened effect which a note gets by figuring in a phrase1 or a phrase in a longer passage1 comes of course from the tensions established and surviving in the sensorium--a case1 differently shaded1 of chords and overtones4 ,the difference is only that the more emphatic parts of the melody survive clearly to the end1 while the detail1 which if perceived might now clash1 is largely lost1 and out of the preceding parts perhaps nothing but a certain swing and potency is present at the close4 ,the mind has been raked and set vibrating in an unusual fashion1 so that the finale comes like a fulfilment after much premonition and desire1 whereas the same event1 unprepared for1 might hardly have been observed4 ,the whole technique of music is but an immense elaboration of this principle4 ,it deploys a sensuous harmony by a sort of dialectic1 suspending and resolving it1 so that the parts become distinct and their relation vital4 ,sidenote3 ,limits of musical sensibility4 ,such elaboration often exceeds the synthetic power of all but the best trained minds4 ,both in scope and in articulation musical faculty varies prodigiously4 ,there is no fixed limit to the power of sustaining a given conscious process while new features appear in the same field2 nor is there any fixed limit to the power of recovering1 under changed circumstances1 a process that was formerly suspended4 ,a whole symphony might be felt at once1 if the musician's power of sustained or cumulative hearing could stretch so far4 ,as we all survey two notes and their interval in one sensation 7actual experience being always transitive and pregnant1 and its terms ideal71 so a trained mind might survey a whole composition4 ,this is not to say that time would be transcended in such an experience2 the apperception would still have duration and the object would still have successive features1 for evidently music not arranged in time would not be music1 while all sensations with a recognisable character occupy more than an instant in passing4 ,but the passing sensation1 throughout its lapse1 presents some experience2 and this experience1 taken at any point1 may present a temporal sequence with any number of members1 according to the synthetic and analytic power exerted by the given mind4 ,what is tedious and formless to the inattentive may seem a perfect whole to one who1 as they say1 takes it all in2 and similarly what is a frightful deafening discord to a sense incapable of discrimination1 for one who can hear the parts may break into a celestial chorus4 ,a musical education is necessary for musical judgment4 ,what most people relish is hardly music2 it is rather a drowsy revery relieved by nervous thrills4 ,sidenote3 ,the value of music is relative to them4 ,the degree to which music should be elaborated depends on the capacity possessed by those it addresses4 ,there are limits to every man's synthetic powers1 and to stretch those powers to their limit is exhausting4 ,excitement then becomes a debauch2 it leaves the soul less capable of habitual harmony4 ,especially is such extreme tension disastrous when1 as in music1 nothing remains to be the fruit of that mighty victory2 the most pregnant revelation sinks to an illusion and is discredited when it cannot maintain its inspiration in the world's presence4 ,everything has its own value and sets up its price2 but others must judge if that price is fair1 and sociability is the condition of all rational excellence4 ,there is therefore a limit to right complexity in music1 a limit set not by the nature of music itself1 but by its place in human economy4 ,this limit1 though clear in principle1 is altogether variable in practice2 duly cultivated people will naturally place it higher than the unmusical would4 ,in other words1 popular music needs to be simple1 although elaborate music may be beautiful to the few4 ,when elaborate music is the fashion among people to whom all music is a voluptuous mystery1 we may be sure that what they love is voluptuousness or fashion1 and not music itself4 ,sidenote3 ,wonders of musical structure4 ,beneath its hypnotic power music1 for the musician1 has an intellectual essence4 ,out of simple chords and melodies1 which at first catch only the ear1 he weaves elaborate compositions that by their form appeal also to the mind4 ,this side of music resembles a richer versification2 it may be compared also to mathematics or to arabesques4 ,a moving arabesque that has a vital dimension1 an audible mathematics1 adding sense to form1 and a versification that1 since it has no subject-matter1 cannot do violence to it by its complex artifices--these are types of pure living1 altogether joyful and delightful things4 ,they combine life with order1 precision with spontaneity2 the flux in them has become rhythmical and its freedom has passed into a rational choice1 since it has come in sight of the eternal form it would embody4 ,the musician1 like an architect or goldsmith working in sound1 but freer than they from material trammels1 can expand for ever his yielding labyrinth2 every step opens up new vistas1 every decision--how unlike those made in real life6--multiplies opportunities1 and widens the horizon before him1 without preventing him from going back at will to begin afresh at any point1 to trace the other possible paths leading thence through various magic landscapes4 ,pure music is pure art4 ,its extreme abstraction is balanced by its entire spontaneity1 and1 while it has no external significance1 it bears no internal curse4 ,it is something to which a few spirits may well surrender themselves1 sure that in a liberal commonwealth they will be thanked for their ideal labour1 the fruits of which many may enjoy4 ,such excursions into ultra-mundane regions1 where order is free1 refine the mind and make it familiar with perfection4 ,by analogy an ideal form comes to be conceived and desiderated in other regions1 where it is not produced so readily1 and the music heard1 as the ,pythagoreans hoped1 makes the soul also musical4 ,sidenote3 ,its inherent emotions4 ,it must be confessed1 however1 that a world of sounds and rhythms1 all about nothing1 is a by-world and a mere distraction for a political animal4 ,its substance is air1 though the spell of it may have moral affinities4 ,nevertheless this ethereal art may be enticed to earth and married with what is mortal4 ,music interests humanity most when it is wedded to human events4 ,the alliance comes about through the emotions which music and life arouse in common4 ,for sound1 in sweeping through the body and making felt there its kinetic and potential stress1 provokes no less interest than does any other physical event or premonition4 ,music can produce emotion as directly as can fighting or love4 ,if in the latter instances the body's whole life may be in jeopardy1 this fact is no explanation of our concern2 for many a danger is not felt and there is no magic in the body's future condition1 that it should now affect the soul4 ,what touches the soul is the body's condition at the moment2 and this is altered no less truly by a musical impression than by some protective or reproductive act4 ,if emotions accompany the latter1 they might as well accompany the former2 and in fact they do4 ,nor is music the only idle cerebral commotion that enlists attention and presents issues no less momentous for being quite imaginary2 dreams do the same1 and seldom can the real crises of life so absorb the soul1 or prompt it to such extreme efforts1 as can delirium in sickness1 or delusion in what passes for health4 ,sidenote3 ,in growing specific they remain unearthly4 ,there is perhaps no emotion incident to human life that music cannot render in its abstract medium by suggesting the pang of it2 though of course music cannot describe the complex situation which lends earthly passions their specific colour4 ,it is by fusion with many suggested emotions that sentiment grows definite2 this fusion can hardly come about without ideas intervening1 and certainly it could never be sustained or expressed without them4 ,occasions define feelings2 we can convey a delicate emotion only by delicately describing the situation which brings it on4 ,music1 with its irrelevant medium1 can never do this for common life1 and the passions1 as music renders them1 are always general4 ,but music has its own substitute for conceptual distinctness4 ,it makes feeling specific1 nay1 more delicate and precise than association with things could make it1 by uniting it with musical form4 ,we may say that besides suggesting abstractly all ordinary passions1 music creates a new realm of form far more subtly impassioned than is vulgar experience4 ,human life is confined to a dramatic repertory which has already become somewhat classical and worn1 but music has no end of new situations1 shaded in infinite ways2 it moves in all sorts of bodies to all sorts of adventures4 ,in life the ordinary routine of destiny beats so emphatic a measure that it does not allow free play to feeling2 we cannot linger on anything long enough to exhaust its meaning1 nor can we wander far from the beaten path to catch new impressions4 ,but in music there are no mortal obligations1 no imperious needs calling us back to reality4 ,here nothing beautiful is extravagant1 nothing delightful unworthy4 ,musical refinement finds no limit but its own instinct1 so that a thousand shades of what1 in our blundering words1 we must call sadness or mirth1 find in music their distinct expression4 ,each phrase1 each composition1 articulates perfectly what no human situation could embody4 ,these fine emotions are really new2 they are altogether musical and unexampled in practical life2 they are native to the passing cadence1 absolute postures into which it throws the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,they merge with common emotions1 and express such as find no object in nature4 ,there is enough likeness1 however1 between musical and mundane feeling for the first to be used in entertaining the second4 ,hence the singular privilege of this art3 to give form to what is naturally inarticulate and express those depths of human nature which can speak no language current in the world4 ,emotion is primarily about nothing1 and much of it remains about nothing to the end4 ,what rescues a part of our passions from this pathological plight1 and gives them some other function than merely to be1 is the ideal relevance1 the practical and mutually representative character1 which they sometimes acquire4 ,all experience is pathological if we consider its ground2 but a part of it is also rational if we consider its import4 ,the words ,i am now writing have a meaning not because at this moment they are fused together in my animal soul as a dream might fuse them1 however incongruous the situation they depict might be in waking life2 they are significant only if this moment's product can meet and conspire with some other thought speaking of what elsewhere exists1 and uttering an intuition that from time to time may be actually recovered4 ,the art of distributing interest among the occasions and vistas of life so as to lend them a constant worth1 and at the same time to give feeling an ideal object1 is at bottom the sole business of education2 but the undertaking is long1 and much feeling remains unemployed and unaccounted for4 ,this objectless emotion chokes the heart with its dull importunity2 now it impedes right action1 now it feeds and fattens illusion4 ,much of it radiates from primary functions which1 though their operation is half known1 have only base or pitiful associations in human life2 so that they trouble us with deep and subtle cravings1 the unclaimed ,hinterland of life4 ,when music1 either by verbal indications or by sensuous affinities1 or by both at once1 succeeds in tapping this fund of suppressed feeling1 it accordingly supplies a great need4 ,it makes the dumb speak1 and plucks from the animal heart potentialities of expression which might render it1 perhaps1 even more than human4 ,sidenote3 ,music lends elementary feelings an intellectual communicable form4 ,by its emotional range music is appropriate to all intense occasions3 we dance1 pray1 and mourn to music1 and the more inadequate words or external acts are to the situation1 the more grateful music is4 ,as the only bond between music and life is emotion1 music is out of place only where emotion itself is absent4 ,if it breaks in upon us in the midst of study or business it becomes an interruption or alternative to our activity1 rather than an expression of it2 we must either remain inattentive or pass altogether into the realm of sound 7which may be unemotional enough7 and become musicians for the nonce4 ,music brings its sympathetic ministry only to emotional moments2 there it merges with common existence1 and is a welcome substitute for descriptive ideas1 since it co-operates with us and helps to deliver us from dumb subjection to influences which we should not know how to meet otherwise4 ,there is often in what moves us a certain ruthless persistence1 together with a certain poverty of form2 the power felt is out of proportion to the interest awakened1 and attention is kept1 as in pain1 at once strained and idle4 ,at such a moment music is a blessed resource4 ,without attempting to remove a mood that is perhaps inevitable1 it gives it a congruous filling4 ,thus the mood is justified by an illustration or expression which seems to offer some objective and ideal ground for its existence2 and the mood is at the same time relieved by absorption in that impersonal object4 ,so entertained1 the feeling settles4 ,the passion to which at first we succumbed is now tamed and appropriated4 ,we have digested the foreign substance in giving it a rational form3 its energies are merged in that strength by which we freely operate4 ,in this way the most abstract of arts serves the dumbest emotions4 ,matter which cannot enter the moulds of ordinary perception1 capacities which a ruling instinct usually keeps under1 flow suddenly into this new channel4 ,music is like those branches which some trees put forth close to the ground1 far below the point where the other boughs separate2 almost a tree by itself1 it has nothing but the root in common with its parent4 ,somewhat in this fashion music diverts into an abstract sphere a part of those forces which abound beneath the point at which human understanding grows articulate4 ,it nourishes on saps which other branches of ideation are too narrow or rigid to take up4 ,those elementary substances the musician can spiritualise by his special methods1 taking away their reproach and redeeming them from blind intensity4 ,sidenote3 ,all essences are in themselves good1 even the passions4 ,there is consequently in music a sort of ,christian piety1 in that it comes not to call the just but sinners to repentance1 and understands the spiritual possibilities in outcasts from the respectable world4 ,if we look at things absolutely enough1 and from their own point of view1 there can be no doubt that each has its own ideal and does not question its own justification4 ,lust and frenzy1 revery or despair1 fatal as they may be to a creature that has general ulterior interests1 are not perverse in themselves3 each searches for its own affinities1 and has a kind of inertia which tends to maintain it in being1 and to attach or draw in whatever is propitious to it4 ,feelings are as blameless as so many forms of vegetation2 they can be poisonous only to a different life4 ,they are all primordial motions1 eddies which the universal flux makes for no reason1 since its habit of falling into such attitudes is the ground-work and exemplar for nature and logic alike4 ,that such strains should exist is an ultimate datum2 justification cannot be required of them1 but must be offered to each of them in turn by all that enters its particular orbit4 ,there is no will but might find a world to disport itself in and to call good1 and thereupon boast to have created that in which it found itself expressed4 ,but such satisfaction has been denied to the majority2 the equilibrium of things has at least postponed their day4 ,yet they are not altogether extinguished1 since the equilibrium of things is mechanical and results from no preconcerted harmony such as would have abolished everything contrary to its own perfection4 ,many ill-suppressed possibilities endure in matter1 and peep into being through the crevices1 as it were1 of the dominant world4 ,weeds they are called by the tyrant1 but in themselves they are aware of being potential gods4 ,why should not every impulse expand in a congenial paradise8 ,why should each1 made evil now only by an adventitious appellation or a contrary fate1 not vindicate its own ideal8 ,if there is a piety towards things deformed1 because it is not they that are perverse1 but the world that by its laws and arbitrary standards decides to treat them as if they were1 how much more should there be a piety towards things altogether lovely1 when it is only space and matter that are wanting for their perfect realisation8 ,sidenote3 ,each impulse calls for a possible congenial world4 ,philosophers talk of self-contradiction1 but there is evidently no such thing1 if we take for the self what is really vital1 each propulsive1 definite strain of being1 each nucleus for estimation and for pleasure and pain4 ,bach impulse may be contradicted1 but not by itself2 it may find itself opposed1 in a theatre which it has entered it knows not how1 by violent personages that it has never wished to encounter4 ,the environment it calls for is congenial with it3 and by that environment it could never be thwarted or condemned4 ,the lumbering course of events may indeed involve it in rum1 and a mind with permanent interests to defend may at once rule out everything inconsistent with possible harmonies2 but such rational judgments come from outside and represent a compromise struck with material forces4 ,moral judgments and conflicts are possible only in the mind that represents many interests synthetically3 in nature1 where primary impulses collide1 all conflict is physical and all will innocent4 ,imagine some ingredient of humanity loosed from its oppressive environment in human economy3 it would at once vegetate and flower into some ideal form1 such as we see exuberantly displayed in nature4 ,if we can only suspend for a moment the congested traffic in the brain1 these initial movements will begin to traverse it playfully and show their paces1 and we shall live in one of those plausible worlds which the actual world has made impossible4 ,sidenote3 ,literature incapable of expressing pure feelings4 ,man possesses1 for example1 a native capacity for joy4 ,there are moments1 in friendship or in solitude1 when joy is realised2 but the occasions are often trivial and could never justify in reflection the feelings that then happen to bubble up4 ,nor can pure joy be long sustained3 cross-currents of lassitude or anxiety1 distracting incidents1 irrelevant associations1 trouble its course and make it languish1 turning it before long into dulness or melancholy4 ,language cannot express a joy that shall be full and pure2 for to keep the purity nothing would have to be named which carried the least suggestion of sadness with it1 and1 in the world that human language refers to1 such a condition would exclude every situation possible4 8,o joy1 ,o joy10 would be the whole ditty3 hence some dialecticians1 whose experience is largely verbal1 think whatever is pure necessarily thin4 ,sidenote3 ,music may do so4 ,that feeling should be so quickly polluted is1 however1 a superficial and earthly accident4 ,spirit is clogged by what it flows through1 but at its springs it is both limpid and abundant4 ,there is matter enough in joy for many a universe1 though the actual world has not a single form quite fit to embody it1 and its too rapid syllables are excluded from the current hexameter4 ,music1 on the contrary1 has a more flexible measure2 its prosody admits every word4 ,its rhythms can explicate every emotion1 through all degrees of complexity and volume1 without once disavowing it4 ,thus unused matter1 which is not less fertile than that which nature has absorbed1 comes to fill out an infinity of ideal forms4 ,the joy condemned by practical exigencies to scintillate for a moment uncommunicated1 and then1 as it were1 to be buried alive1 may now find an abstract art to embody it and bring it before the public1 formed into a rich and constant object called a musical composition4 ,so art succeeds in vindicating the forgotten regions of spirit3 a new spontaneous creation shows how little authority or finality the given creation has4 ,sidenote3 ,instability the soul of matter4 ,what is true of joy is no less true of sorrow1 which1 though it arises from failure in some natural ideal1 carries with it a sentimental ideal of its own4 ,even confusion can find in music an expression and a catharsis4 ,that death or change should grieve does not follow from the material nature of these phenomena4 ,to change or to disappear might be as normal a tendency as to move2 and it actually happens1 when nothing ideal has been attained1 that not to be thus is the whole law of being4 ,there is then a nameless satisfaction in passing on2 which is the virtual ideal of pain and mere willing4 ,death and change acquire a tragic character when they invade a mind which is not ready for them in all its parts1 so that those elements in it which are still vigorous1 and would maintain somewhat longer their ideal identity1 suffer violence at the hands of the others1 already mastered by decay and willing to be self-destructive4 ,thus a man whose physiological complexion involves more poignant emotion than his ideas can absorb--one who is sentimental--will yearn for new objects that may explain1 embody1 and focus his dumb feelings2 and these objects1 if art can produce them1 will relieve and glorify those feelings in the act of expressing them4 ,catharsis is nothing more4 ,sidenote3 ,peace the triumph of spirit4 ,there would be no pleasure in expressing pain1 if pain were not dominated through its expression4 ,to know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation1 for it is already a shift from feeling to understanding4 ,by such consideration of a passion1 the intellectual powers turn it into subject-matter to operate upon4 ,all utterance is a feat1 all apprehension a discovery2 and this intellectual victory1 sounding in the midst of emotional struggles1 hushes some part of their brute importunity4 ,it is at once sublime and beneficent1 like a god stilling a tempest4 ,melancholy can in this way be the food of art2 and it is no paradox that such a material may be beautiful when a fit form is imposed upon it1 since a fit form turns anything into an agreeable object2 its beauty runs as deep as its fitness1 and stops where its adaptation to human nature begins to fail4 ,whatever can interest may prompt to expression1 as it may have satisfied curiosity2 and the mind celebrates a little triumph whenever it can formulate a truth1 however unwelcome to the flesh1 or discover an actual force1 however unfavourable to given interests4 ,as meditation on death and on life make equally for wisdom1 so the expression of sorrow and joy make equally for beauty4 ,meditation and expression are themselves congenial activities with an intrinsic value which is not lessened if what they deal with could have been abolished to advantage4 ,if once it exists1 we may understand and interpret it2 and this reaction will serve a double purpose4 ,at first1 in its very act1 it will suffuse and mollify the unwelcome experience by another1 digesting it1 which is welcome2 and later1 by the broader adjustment which it will bring into the mind1 it will help us to elude or confront the evils thus laid clearly before us4 ,catharsis has no such effect as a sophistical optimism wishes to attribute to it2 it does not show us that evil is good1 or that calamity and crime are things to be grateful for3 so forced an apology for evil has nothing to do with tragedy or wisdom2 it belongs to apologetics and an artificial theodicy4 ,catharsis is rather the consciousness of how evil evils are1 and how besetting2 and how possible goods lie between and involve serious renunciations4 ,to understand1 to accept1 and to use the situation in which a mortal may find himself is the function of art and reason4 ,such mastery is desirable in itself and for its fruits2 it does not make itself responsible for the chaos of goods and evils that it supervenes upon4 ,whatever writhes in matter1 art strives to give form to2 and however unfavourable the field may be for its activity1 it does what it can there1 since no other field exists in which it may labour4 ,sidenote3 ,refinement is true strength4 ,sad music pleases the melancholy because it is sad and other men because it is music4 ,when a composer attempts to reproduce complex conflicts in his score he will please complex or disordered spirits for expressing their troubles1 but other men only for the order and harmony he may have brought out of that chaos4 ,the chaos in itself will offend1 and it is no part of rational art to produce it4 ,as well might a physician poison in order to give an antidote1 or maim in order to amputate4 ,the subject matter of art is life1 life as it actually is2 but the function of art is to make life better4 ,the depth to which an artist may find current experience to be sunk in discord and confusion is not his special concern2 his concern is1 in some measure1 to lift experience out4 ,the more barbarous his age1 the more drastic and violent must be his operation4 ,he will have to shout in a storm4 ,his strength must needs1 in such a case1 be very largely physical and his methods sensational4 ,in a gentler age he may grow nobler1 and blood and thunder will no longer seem impressive4 ,only the weak are obliged to be violent2 the strong1 having all means at command1 need not resort to the worst4 ,refined art is not wanting in power if the public is refined also4 ,and as refinement comes only by experience1 by comparison1 by subordinating means to ends and rejecting what hinders1 it follows that a refined mind will really possess the greater volume1 as well as the subtler discrimination4 ,its ecstasy without grimace1 and its submission without tears1 will hold heaven and earth better together--and hold them better apart--than could a mad imagination4 ,,chapter ,v ,,speech ,,and ,,signification ,sidenote3 ,sounds well fitted to be symbols4 ,music rationalises sound1 but a more momentous rationalising of sound is seen in language4 ,language is one of the most useful of things1 yet the greater part of it still remains 7what it must all have been in the beginning7 useless and without ulterior significance4 ,the musical side of language is its primary and elementary side4 ,man is endowed with vocal organs so plastic as to emit a great variety of delicately varied sounds2 and by good fortune his ear has a parallel sensibility1 so that much vocal expression can be registered and confronted by auditory feeling4 ,it has been said that man's pre-eminence in nature is due to his possessing hands2 his modest participation in the ideal world may similarly be due to his possessing tongue and ear4 ,for when he finds shouting and vague moaning after a while fatiguing1 he can draw a new pleasure from uttering all sorts of labial1 dental1 and gutteral sounds4 ,their rhythms and oppositions can entertain him1 and he can begin to use his lingual gamut to designate the whole range of his perceptions and passions4 ,here we touch upon one of the great crises in creation4 ,as nutrition at first established itself in the face of waste1 and reproduction in the face of death1 so representation was able1 by help of vocal symbols1 to confront that dispersion inherent in experience1 which is something in itself ephemeral4 ,merely to associate one thing with another brings little gain2 and merely to have added a vocal designation to fleeting things--a designation which of course would have been taken for a part of their essence--would in itself have encumbered phenomena without rendering them in any way more docile to the will4 ,but the encumbrance in this instance proved to be a wonderful preservative and means of comparison4 ,it actually gave each moving thing its niche and cenotaph in the eternal4 ,for the universe of vocal sounds was a field1 like that of colour or number1 in which the elements showed relations and transitions easy to dominate4 ,it was a key-board over which attention could run back and forth1 eliciting many implicit harmonies4 ,henceforth when various sounds had been idly associated with various things1 and identified with them1 the things could1 by virtue of their names1 be carried over mentally into the linguistic system2 they could be manipulated there ideally1 and vicariously preserved in representation4 ,needless to say that the things themselves remained unchanged all the while in their efficacy and mechanical succession1 just as they remain unchanged in those respects when they pass for the mathematical observer into their measure or symbol2 but as this reduction to mathematical form makes them calculable1 so their earlier reduction to words rendered them comparable and memorable1 first enabling them to figure in discourse at all4 ,sidenote3 ,language has a structure independent of things4 ,language had originally no obligation to subserve an end which we may sometimes measure it by now1 and depute to be its proper function1 namely1 to stand for things and adapt itself perfectly to their structure4 ,in language as in every other existence idealism precedes realism1 since it must be a part of nature living its own life before it can become a symbol for the rest and bend to external control4 ,the vocal and musical medium is1 and must always remain1 alien1 to the spatial4 ,what makes terms correspond and refer to one another is a relation eternally disparate from the relation of propinquity or derivation between existences4 ,yet when sounds were attached to an event or emotion1 the sounds became symbols for that disparate fact4 ,the net of vocal relations caught that natural object as a cobweb might catch a fly1 without destroying or changing it4 ,the object's quality passed to the word at the same time that the word's relations enveloped the object2 and thus a new weight and significance was added to sound1 previously nothing but a dull music4 ,a conflict at once established itself between the drift proper to the verbal medium and that proper to the designated things2 a conflict which the whole history of language and thought has embodied and which continues to this day4 ,sidenote3 ,words remaining identical1 serve to identify things that change4 ,suppose an animal going down to a frozen river which he had previously visited in summer4 ,marks of all sorts would awaken in him an old train of reactions2 he would doubtless feel premonitions of satisfied thirst and the splash of water4 ,on finding1 however1 instead of the fancied liquid1 a mass of something like cold stone1 he would be disconcerted4 ,his active attitude would be pulled up short and contradicted4 ,in his fairyland of faith and magic the old river would have been simply annihilated1 the dreamt-of water would have become a vanished ghost1 and this ice for the moment the hard reality4 ,he would turn away and live for a while on other illusions4 ,when this shock was overgrown by time and it was summer again1 the original habit might1 however1 reassert itself once more4 ,if he revisited the stream1 some god would seem to bring back something from an old familiar world2 and the chill of that temporary estrangement1 the cloud that for a while had made the good invisible1 would soon be gone and forgotten4 ,if we imagine1 on the contrary1 that this animal could speak and had from the first called his haunt the river1 he would have repeated its name on seeing it even when it was frozen1 for he had not failed to recognise it in that guise4 ,the variation afterwards noticed1 upon finding it hard1 would seem no total substitution1 but a change2 for it would be the same river1 once flowing1 that was now congealed4 ,an identical word1 covering all the identical qualities in the phenomena and serving to abstract them1 would force the inconsistent qualities in those phenomena to pass for accidents2 and the useful proposition could at once be framed that the same river may be sometimes free and sometimes frozen4 ,sidenote3 ,language the dialectical garment of facts4 ,this proposition is true1 yet it contains much that is calculated to offend a scrupulous dialectician4 ,its language and categories are not purely logical1 but largely physical and representative4 ,the notion that what changes nevertheless endures is a remarkable hybrid4 ,it arises when rigid ideal terms are imposed on evanescent existence4 ,feelings1 taken alone1 would show no identities2 they would be lost in changing1 or be woven into the infinite feeling of change4 ,notions1 taken alone1 would allow no lapse1 but would merely lead attention about from point to point over an eternal system of relations4 ,power to understand the world1 logical or scientific mastery of existence1 arises only by the forced and conventional marriage of these two essences1 when the actual flux is ideally suspended and an ideal harness is loosely flung upon things4 ,for this purpose words are an admirable instrument4 ,they have dialectical relations based on an ideal import1 or tendency to definition1 which makes their essence their signification2 yet they can be freely bandied about and applied for a moment to the ambiguous things that pass through existence4 ,sidenote3 ,words are wise men's counters4 ,had men been dumb1 an exchange and circulation of images need not have been wanting1 and associations might have arisen between ideals in the mind and corresponding reactive habits in the body4 ,what words add is not power of discernment or action1 but a medium of intellectual exchange4 ,language is like money1 without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt1 but cannot be reduced to a common denominator4 ,and as money must have a certain intrinsic value of its own in order that its relation to other values may be stable1 so a word1 by which a thing is represented in discourse1 must be a part of that thing's context1 an ingredient in the total apparition it is destined to recall4 ,words1 in their existence1 are no more universal than gold by nature is a worthless standard of value in other things4 ,words are a material accompaniment of phenomena1 at first an idle accompaniment1 but one which happens to subserve easily a universal function4 ,some other element in objects might conceivably have served for a common denominator between them2 but words1 just by virtue of their adventitious1 detachable status1 and because they are so easily compared and manipulated in the world of sound1 were singularly well fitted for this office4 ,they are not vague1 as any common quality abstracted from things would necessarily become2 and though vagueness is a quality only too compatible with perception1 so that vague ideas can exist without end1 this vagueness is not what makes them universal in their functions4 ,it is one thing to perceive an ill-determined form and quite another to attribute to it a precise general predicate4 ,words1 distinct in their own category and perfectly recognisable1 can accordingly perform very well the function of embodying a universal2 for they can be identified in turn with many particulars and yet remain throughout particular themselves4 ,sidenote3 ,nominalism right in psychology and realism in logic ,the psychology of nominalism is undoubtedly right where it insists that every image is particular and every term1 in its existential aspect1 a flatum vocis2 but nominalists should have recognised that images may have any degree of vagueness and generality when measured by a conceptual standard4 ,a figure having obviously three sides and three corners may very well be present to the mind when it is impossible to say whether it is an equilateral or a rectangular triangle4 ,functional or logical universality lies in another sphere altogether1 being a matter of intent and not of existence4 ,when we say that 8universals alone exist in the mind0 we mean by 8mind0 something unknown to ,berkeley2 not a bundle of psychoses nor an angelic substance1 but quick intelligence1 the faculty of discourse4 ,predication is an act1 understanding a spiritual and transitive operation3 its existential basis may well be counted in psychologically and reduced to a stream of immediate presences2 but its meaning can be caught only by another meaning1 as life only can exemplify life4 ,vague or general images are as little universal as sounds are2 but a sound better than a flickering abstraction can serve the intellect in its operation of comparison and synthesis4 ,words are therefore the body of discourse1 of which the soul is understanding4 ,sidenote3 ,literature moves between the extremes of music and denotation4 ,the categories of discourse are in part merely representative1 in part merely grammatical1 and in part attributable to both spheres4 ,euphony and phonetic laws are principles governing language without any reference to its meaning2 here speech is still a sort of music4 ,at the other extreme lies that ultimate form of prose which we see in mathematical reasoning or in a telegraphic style1 where absolutely nothing is rhetorical and speech is denuded of every feature not indispensable to its symbolic rle4 ,between these two extremes lies the broad field of poetry1 or rather of imaginative or playful expression1 where the verbal medium is a medium indeed1 having a certain transparency1 a certain reference to independent facts1 but at the same time elaborates the fact in expressing it1 and endows it with affinities alien to its proper nature4 ,a pun is a grotesque example of such diremption1 where ambiguities belonging only to speech are used to suggest impossible substitutions in ideas4 ,less frankly1 language habitually wrests its subject-matter in some measure from its real context and transfers it to a represented and secondary world1 the world of logic and reflection4 ,concretions in existence are subsumed1 when named1 under concretions in discourse4 ,grammar lays violent hands upon experience1 and everything becomes a prey to wit and fancy1 a material for fiction and eloquence4 ,man's intellectual progress has a poetic phase1 in which he imagines the world2 and then a scientific phase1 in which he sifts and tests what he has imagined4 ,sidenote3 ,sound and object1 in their sensuous presence1 may have affinity4 ,in what measure do inflection and syntax represent anything in the subject-matter of discourse8 ,in what measure are they an independent play of expression1 a quasi-musical1 quasi-mathematical veil interposed between reflection and existence8 ,one who knows only languages of a single family can give but a biassed answer to this question4 ,there are doubtless many approaches to correct symbolism in language1 which grammar may have followed up at different times in strangely different ways4 ,that the medium in every art has a character of its own1 a character limiting its representative value1 may perhaps be safely asserted1 and this intrinsic character in the medium antedates and permeates all representation4 ,phonetic possibilities and phonetic habits belong1 in language1 to this indispensable vehicle2 what the throat and lips can emit easily and distinguishably1 and what sequences can appeal to the ear and be retained1 depend alike on physiological conditions2 and no matter how convenient or inconvenient these conditions may be for signification1 they will always make themselves felt and may sometimes remain predominant4 ,in poetry they are still conspicuous4 ,euphony1 metre1 and rhyme colour the images they transmit and add a charm wholly extrinsic and imputed4 ,in this immersion of the message in the medium and in its intrinsic movement the magic of poetry lies2 and the miracle grows as there is more or less native analogy between the medium's movement and that of the subject-matter4 ,both language and ideas involve processes in the brain4 ,the two processes may be wholly disparate if we regard their objects only and forget their seat1 as ,athena is in no way linked to an elephant's tusk2 yet in perception all processes are contiguous and exercise a single organism1 in which they may find themselves in sympathetic or antipathetic vibration4 ,on this circumstance hangs that subtle congruity between subject and vehicle which is otherwise such a mystery in expression4 ,if to think of ,athena and to look on ivory are congruous physiological processes1 if they sustain or heighten each other1 then to represent ,athena in ivory will be a happy expedient1 in which the very nature of the medium will already be helping us forward4 ,scent and form go better together1 for instance1 in the violet or the rose than in the hyacinth or the poppy3 and being better compacted for human perception they seem more expressive and can be linked more unequivocally with other sources of feeling4 ,so a given vocal sound may have more or less analogy to the thing it is used to signify2 this analogy may be obvious1 as in onomatopoeia1 or subtle1 as when short1 sharp sounds go with decision1 or involved rhythms and vague reverberations with a floating dream4 ,what seems exquisite to one poet may accordingly seem vapid to another1 when the texture of experience in the two minds differs1 so that a given composition rustles through one man's fancy as a wind might through a wood1 but finds no sympathetic response in the other organism1 nerved as it may be1 perhaps1 to precision in thought and action4 ,sidenote3 ,syntax positively representative4 ,the structure of language1 when it passes beyond the phonetic level1 begins at once to lean upon existences and to imitate the structure of things4 ,we distinguish the parts of speech1 for instance1 in subservience to distinctions which we make in ideas4 ,the feeling or quality represented by an adjective1 the relation indicated by a verb1 the substance or concretion of qualities designated by a noun1 are diversities growing up in experience1 by no means attributable to the mere play of sound4 ,the parts of speech are therefore representative4 ,their inflection is representative too1 since tenses mark important practical differences in the distribution of the events described1 and cases express the respective rles played by objects in the operation4 8,i struck him and he will strike me10 renders in linguistic symbols a marked change in the situation2 the variation in phrase is not rhetorical4 ,language here1 though borrowed no doubt from ancestral poetry1 has left all revery far behind1 and has been submerged in the ,life of ,reason4 ,sidenote3 ,yet it vitiates what it represents4 ,the medium1 however1 constantly reasserts itself4 ,an example may be found in gender1 which1 clearly representative in a measure1 cuts loose in language from all genuine representation and becomes a feature in abstract linguistic design1 a formal characteristic in expression4 ,contrasted sentiments permeate an animal's dealings with his own sex and with the other2 nouns and adjectives represent this contrast by taking on masculine and feminine forms4 ,the distinction is indeed so important that wholly different words--man and woman1 bull and cow--stand for the best-known animals of different sex2 while adjectives1 where declension is extinct1 as in ,english1 often take on a connotation of gender and are applied to one sex only--as we say a beautiful woman1 but hardly a beautiful man4 ,but gender in language extends much farther than sex1 and even if by some subtle analogy all the masculine and feminine nouns in a language could be attached to something suggesting sex in the objects they designate1 yet it can hardly be maintained that the elaborate concordance incident upon that distinction is representative of any felt quality in the things4 ,so remote an analogy to sex could not assert itself pervasively4 ,thus ,horace says3 ,quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa perfusis liquidis urget odoribus grato1 ,pyrrha1 sub antro8 ,here we may perceive why the rose was instinctively made feminine1 and we may grant that the bower1 though the reason escape us1 was somehow properly masculine2 but no one would urge that a profusion of roses was also intrinsically feminine1 or that the pleasantness of a bower was ever specifically masculine to sense4 ,the epithets multa and grato take their gender from the nouns1 even though the quality they designate fails to do so4 ,their gender is therefore non-representative and purely formal2 it marks an intra-linguistic accommodation4 ,the medium has developed a syntactical structure apart from any intrinsic significance thereby accruing to its elements4 ,artificial concordance in gender does not express gender3 it merely emphasises the grammatical links in the phrases and makes greater variety possible in the arrangement of words4 ,sidenote3 ,difficulty in subduing a living medium4 ,this example may prepare us to understand a general principle3 that language1 while essentially significant viewed in its function1 is indefinitely wasteful1 being mechanical and tentative in its origin4 ,it overloads itself1 and being primarily music1 and a labyrinth of sounds1 it develops an articulation and method of its own1 which only in the end1 and with much inexactness1 reverts to its function of expression4 ,how great the possibilities of effect are in developing a pure medium we can best appreciate in music2 but in language a similar development goes on while it is being applied to representing things4 ,the organ is spontaneous1 the function adventitious and superimposed4 ,rhetoric and utility keep language going1 as centrifugal and centripetal forces keep a planet in its course4 ,euphony1 verbal analogy1 grammatical fancy1 poetic confusion1 continually drive language afield1 in its own tangential direction2 while the business of life1 in which language is employed1 and the natural lapse of rhetorical fashions1 as continually draw it back towards convenience and exactitude4 ,sidenote3 ,language foreshortens experience4 ,between music and bare symbolism language has its florid expansion4 ,until music is subordinated1 speech has little sense2 it can hardly tell a story or indicate an object unequivocally4 ,yet if music were left behind altogether1 language would pass into a sort of algebra or vocal shorthand1 without literary quality2 it would become wholly indicative and record facts without colouring them ideally4 ,this medium and its intrinsic development1 though they make the bane of reproduction1 make the essence of art2 they give representation a new and specific value such as the object1 before representation1 could not have possessed4 ,consciousness itself is such a medium in respect to diffuse existence1 which it foreshortens and elevates into synthetic ideas4 ,reason1 too1 by bringing the movement of events and inclinations to a head in single acts of reflection1 thus attaining to laws and purposes1 introduces into life the influence of a representative medium1 without which life could never pass from a process into an art4 ,language acquires scope in the same way1 by its kindly infidelities2 its metaphors and syntax lend experience perspective4 ,language vitiates the experience it expresses1 but thereby makes the burden of one moment relevant to that of another4 ,the two experiences1 identified roughly with the same concretion in discourse1 are pronounced similar or comparable in character4 ,thus a proverb1 by its verbal pungency and rhythm1 becomes more memorable than the event it first described would ever have been if not translated into an epigram and rendered1 so to speak1 applicable to new cases2 for by that translation the event has become an idea4 ,sidenote3 ,it is a perpetual mythology4 ,to turn events into ideas is the function of literature4 ,music1 which in a certain sense is a mass of pure forms1 must leave its 8ideas0 imbedded in their own medium--they are musical ideas--and cannot impose them on any foreign material1 such as human affairs4 ,science1 on the contrary1 seeks to disclose the bleak anatomy of existence1 stripping off as much as possible the veil of prejudice and words4 ,literature takes a middle course and tries to subdue music1 which for its purposes would be futile and too abstract1 into conformity with general experience1 making music thereby significant4 ,literary art in the end rejects all unmeaning nourishes1 all complications that have no counterpart in things or no use in expressing their relations2 at the same time it aspires to digest that reality to which it confines itself1 making it over into ideal substance and material for the mind4 ,it looks at things with an incorrigibly dramatic eye1 turning them into permanent unities 7which they never are7 and almost into persons1 grouping them by their imaginative or moral affinities and retaining in them chiefly what is incidental to their being1 namely1 the part they may chance to play in man's adventures4 ,such literary art demands a subject-matter other than the literary impulse itself4 ,the literary man is an interpreter and hardly succeeds1 as the musician may1 without experience and mastery of human affairs4 ,his art is half genius and half fidelity4 ,he needs inspiration2 he must wait for automatic musical tendencies to ferment in his mind1 proving it to be fertile in devices1 comparisons1 and bold assimilations4 ,yet inspiration alone will lead him astray1 for his art is relative to something other than its own formal impulse2 it comes to clarify the real world1 not to encumber it2 and it needs to render its native agility practical and to attach its volume of feeling to what is momentous in human life4 ,literature has its piety1 its conscience2 it cannot long forget1 without forfeiting all dignity1 that it serves a burdened and perplexed creature1 a human animal struggling to persuade the universal ,sphinx to propose a more intelligible riddle4 ,irresponsible and trivial in its abstract impulse1 man's simian chatter becomes noble as it becomes symbolic2 its representative function lends it a serious beauty1 its utility endows it with moral worth4 ,sidenote3 ,it may be apt or inapt1 with equal richness4 ,sidenote3 ,absolute language a possible but foolish art4 ,these relations1 in determining the function of language1 determine the ideal which its structure should approach4 ,any sort of grammar and rhetoric1 the most absurd and inapplicable as well as the most descriptive1 can be spontaneous2 fit organisms are not less natural than those that are unfit4 ,felicitous genius is so called because it meets experience half-way4 ,a genius which flies in the opposite direction1 though not less fertile internally1 is externally inept and is called madness4 ,ineptitude is something which language needs to shake off4 ,better surrender altogether some verbal categories and start again1 in that respect1 with a clean slate1 than persist in any line of development that alienates thought from reality4 ,the language of birds is excellent in its way1 and those ancient sages who are reported to have understood it very likely had merely perceived that it was not meant to be intelligible2 for it is not to understand nature to reduce her childishly to a human scale4 ,man1 who is merged in universal nature at the roots of his being1 is not without profound irrational intuitions by which he can half divine her secret processes2 and his heart1 in its own singing and fluttering1 might not wholly misinterpret the birds4 ,but human discourse is not worth having if it is mere piping1 and helps not at all in mastering things2 for man is intelligent1 which is another way of saying that he aspires to envisage in thought what he is dealing with in action4 ,discourse that absolved itself from that observant duty would not be cognitive2 and in failing to be cognitive it would fail to redeem the practical forces it ignored from their brute externality1 and to make them tributary to the ,life of ,reason4 ,thus its own dignity and continued existence depend on its learning to express momentous facts1 facts important for action and happiness2 and there is nothing which so quickly discredits itself as empty rhetoric and dialectic1 or poetry that wanders in dim and private worlds4 ,if pure music1 even with its immense sensuous appeal1 is so easily tedious1 what a universal yawn must meet the verbiage which develops nothing but its own iridescence4 ,absolute versification and absolute dialectic may have their place in society2 they give play to an organ that has its rights like any other1 and that1 after serving for a while in the economy of life1 may well claim a holiday in which to disport itself irresponsibly among the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field4 ,but the exercise is trivial2 and if its high priests go through their mummeries with a certain unction1 and pretend to be wafted by them into a higher world1 the phenomenon is neither new nor remarkable4 ,language is a wonderful and pliant medium1 and why should it not lend itself to imposture8 ,a systematic abuse of words1 as of other things1 is never without some inner harmony or propriety that makes it prosper2 only the man who looks beyond and sees the practical results awakes to the villainy of it4 ,in the end1 however1 those who play with words lose their labour1 and pregnant as they feel themselves to be with new and wonderful universes1 they cannot humanise the one in which they live and rather banish themselves from it by their persistent egotism and irrelevance4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,poetry ,,and ,,prose ,sidenote3 ,force of primary expressions4 ,there is both truth and illusion in the saying that primitive poets are sublime4 ,genesis and the ,iliad 7works doubtless backed by a long tradition7 are indeed sublime4 ,primitive men1 having perhaps developed language before the other arts1 used it with singular directness to describe the chief episodes of life1 which was all that life as yet contained4 ,they had frank passions and saw things from single points of view4 ,a breath from that early world seems to enlarge our natures1 and to restore to language1 which we have sophisticated1 all its magnificence and truth4 ,but there is more1 for 7as we have seen7 language is spontaneous2 it constitutes an act before it registers an observation4 ,it gives vent to emotion before it is adjusted to things external and reduced1 as it were1 to its own echo rebounding from a refractory world4 ,the lion's roar1 the bellowing of bulls1 even the sea's cadence has a great sublimity4 ,though hardly in itself poetry1 an animal cry1 when still audible in human language1 renders it also the unanswerable1 the ultimate voice of nature4 ,nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body4 ,there is no utterance so thrilling as that of absolute impulse1 if absolute impulse has learned to speak at all4 ,an intense1 inhospitable mind1 filled with a single idea1 in which all animal1 social1 and moral interests are fused together1 speaks a language of incomparable force4 ,thus the ,hebrew prophets1 in their savage concentration1 poured into one torrent all that their souls possessed or could dream of4 ,what other men are wont to pursue in politics1 business1 religion1 or art1 they looked for from one wave of national repentance and consecration4 ,their age1 swept by this ideal passion1 possessed at the same time a fresh and homely vocabulary2 and the result was an eloquence so elemental and combative1 so imaginative and so bitterly practical1 that the world has never heard its like4 ,such single-mindedness1 with such heroic simplicity in words and images1 is hardly possible in a late civilisation4 ,cultivated poets are not unconsciously sublime4 ,sidenote3 ,its exclusiveness and narrowness4 ,the sublimity of early utterances should not be hailed1 however1 with unmixed admiration4 ,it is a sublimity born of defect or at least of disproportion4 ,the will asserts itself magnificently2 images1 like thunder-clouds1 seem to cover half the firmament at once4 ,but such a will is sadly inexperienced2 it has hardly tasted or even conceived any possible or high satisfactions4 ,its lurid firmament is poor in stars4 ,to throw the whole mind upon something is not so great a feat when the mind has nothing else to throw itself upon4 ,every animal when goaded becomes intense2 and it is perhaps merely the apathy in which mortals are wont to live that keeps them from being habitually sublime in their sentiments4 ,the sympathy that makes a sheep hasten after its fellows1 in vague alarm or in vague affection2 the fierce premonitions that drive a bull to the heifer2 the patience with which a hen sits on her eggs2 the loyalty which a dog shows to his master--what thoughts may not all these instincts involve1 which it needs only a medium of communication to translate into poetry8 ,man1 though with less wholeness of soul1 enacts the same dramas4 ,he hears voices on all occasions2 he incorporates what little he observes of nature into his verbal dreams2 and as each new impulse bubbles to the surface he feels himself on the verge of some inexpressible heaven or hell4 ,he needs but to abandon himself to that seething chaos which perpetually underlies conventional sanity--a chaos in which memory and prophecy1 vision and impersonation1 sound and sense1 are inextricably jumbled together--to find himself at once in a magic world1 irrecoverable1 largely unmeaning1 terribly intricate1 but1 as he will conceive1 deep1 inward1 and absolutely real4 ,he will have reverted1 in other words1 to crude experience1 to primordial illusion4 ,the movement of his animal or vegetative mind will be far from delightful2 it will be unintelligent and unintelligible2 nothing in particular will be represented therein2 but it will be a movement in the soul and for the soul1 as exciting and compulsive as the soul's volume can make it4 ,in this muddy torrent words also may be carried down2 and if these words are by chance strung together into a cadence1 and are afterwards written down1 they may remain for a memento of that turbid moment4 ,such words we may at first hesitate to call poetry1 since very likely they are nonsense2 but this nonsense will have some quality--some rhyme or rhythm--that makes it memorable 7else it would not have survived72 and moreover the words will probably show1 in their connotation and order1 some sympathy with the dream that cast them up4 ,for the man himself1 in whom such a dream may be partly recurrent1 they may consequently have a considerable power of suggestion1 and they may even have it for others1 whenever the rhythm and incantation avail to plunge them also into a similar trance4 ,sidenote3 ,rudimentary poetry an incantation or charm4 ,memorable nonsense1 or sound with a certain hypnotic power1 is the really primitive and radical form of poetry4 ,nor is such poetry yet extinct3 children still love and compose it and every genuine poet1 on one side of his genius1 reverts to it from explicit speech4 ,as all language has acquired its meaning1 and did not have it in the beginning1 so the man who launches a new locution1 the poet who creates a symbol1 must do so without knowing what significance it may eventually acquire1 and conscious at best only of the emotional background from which it emerged4 ,pure poetry is pure experiment2 and it is not strange that nine-tenths of it should be pure failure4 ,for it matters little what unutterable things may have originally gone together with a phrase in the dreamer's mind2 if they were not uttered and the phrase cannot call them back1 this verbal relic is none the richer for the high company it may once have kept4 ,expressiveness is a most accidental matter4 ,what a line suggests at one reading1 it may never suggest again even to the same person4 ,for this reason1 among others1 poets are partial to their own compositions2 they truly discover there depths of meaning which exist for nobody else4 ,those readers who appropriate a poet and make him their own fall into a similar illusion2 they attribute to him what they themselves supply1 and whatever he reels out1 lost in his own personal revery1 seems to them1 like sortes biblicoe1 written to fit their own case4 ,sidenote3 ,inspiration irresponsible4 ,justice has never been done to ,plato's remarkable consistency and boldness in declaring that poets are inspired by a divine madness and yet1 when they transgress rational bounds1 are to be banished from an ideal republic1 though not without some marks of ,platonic regard4 ,instead of fillets1 a modern age might assign them a coterie of flattering dames1 and instead of banishment1 starvation2 but the result would be the same in the end4 ,a poet is inspired because what occurs in his brain is a true experiment in creation4 ,his apprehension plays with words and their meanings as nature1 in any spontaneous variation1 plays with her own structure4 ,a mechanical force shifts the kaleidoscope2 a new direction is given to growth or a new gist to signification4 ,this inspiration1 moreover1 is mad1 being wholly ignorant of its own issue2 and though it has a confused fund of experience and verbal habit on which to draw1 it draws on this fund blindly and quite at random1 consciously possessed by nothing but a certain stress and pregnancy and the pains1 as it were1 of parturition4 ,finally the new birth has to be inspected critically by the public censor before it is allowed to live2 most probably it is too feeble and defective to prosper in the common air1 or is a monster that violates some primary rule of civic existence1 tormenting itself to disturb others4 ,sidenote3 ,plato's discriminating view4 ,plato seems to have exaggerated the havoc which these poetic dragons can work in the world4 ,they are in fact more often absurd than venomous1 and no special legislation is needed to abolish them4 ,they soon die quietly of universal neglect4 ,the poetry that ordinarily circulates among a people is poetry of a secondary and conventional sort that propagates established ideas in trite metaphors4 ,popular poets are the parish priests of the ,muse1 retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public4 ,plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity3 he was preaching a crusade against the established church4 ,for naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols2 for the joys of sense1 austerity and abstraction4 ,to proscribe ,homer was a marked way of protesting against the frivolous reigning ideals4 ,the case is much as if we should now proscribe the book of ,genesis1 on account of its mythical cosmogony1 or in order to proclaim the philosophic truth that the good1 being an adequate expression to be attained by creation1 could not possibly have preceded it or been its source4 ,we might admit at the same time that ,genesis contains excellent images and that its poetic force is remarkable2 so that if serious misunderstanding could be avoided the censor might be glad to leave it in everybody's hands4 ,plato in some such way recognised that ,homer was poetical and referred his works1 mischievous as they might prove incidentally1 to divine inspiration4 ,poetic madness1 like madness in prophecy or love1 bursts the body of things to escape from it into some ideal2 and even the ,homeric world1 though no model for a rational state1 was a cheerful heroic vision1 congenial to many early impulses and dreams of the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,explosive and pregnant expression4 ,homer1 indeed1 was no primitive poet2 he was a consummate master1 the heir to generations of discipline in both life and art4 ,this appears in his perfect prosody1 in his limpid style1 in his sense for proportion1 his abstentions1 and the frank pathos of his portraits and principles1 in which there is nothing gross1 subjective1 or arbitrary4 ,the inspirations that came to him never carried him into crudeness or absurdity4 ,every modern poet1 though the world he describes may be more refined in spots and more elaborate1 is less advanced in his art2 for art is made rudimentary not by its date but by its irrationality4 ,yet even if ,homer had been primitive he might well have been inspired1 in the same way as a ,bacchic frenzy or a mystic trance2 the most blundering explosions may be justified antecedently by the plastic force that is vented in them4 ,they may be expressive1 in the physical sense of this ambiguous word2 for1 far as they may be from conveying an idea1 they may betray a tendency and prove that something is stirring in the soul4 ,expressiveness is often sterile2 but it is sometimes fertile and capable of reproducing in representation the experience from which it sprang4 ,as a tree in the autumn sheds leaves and seeds together1 so a ripening experience comes indifferently to various manifestations1 some barren and without further function1 others fit to carry the parent experience over into another mind1 and give it a new embodiment there4 ,expressiveness in the former case is dead1 like that of a fossil2 in the latter it is living and efficacious1 recreating its original4 ,the first is idle self-manifestation1 the second rational art4 ,sidenote3 ,natural history of inspiration4 ,self-manifestation1 so soon as it is noted and accepted as such1 seems to present the same marvel as any ideal success4 ,such self-manifestation is incessant1 many-sided1 unavoidable2 yet it seems a miracle when its conditions are looked back upon from the vantage ground of their result4 ,by reading spirit out of a work we turn it into a feat of inspiration4 ,thus even the crudest and least coherent utterances1 when we suspect some soul to be groping in them1 and striving to address us1 become oracular2 a divine afflatus breathes behind their gibberish and they seem to manifest some deep intent4 ,the miracle of creation or inspiration consists in nothing but this1 that an external effect should embody an inner intention4 ,the miracle1 of course1 is apparent only1 and due to an inverted and captious point of view4 ,in truth the tendency that executed the work was what first made its conception possible2 but this conception1 finding the work responsive in some measure to its inner demand1 attributes that response to its own magic prerogative4 ,hence the least stir and rumble of formative processes1 when it generates a soul1 makes itself somehow that soul's interpreter2 and dim as the spirit and its expression may both remain1 they are none the less in profound concord1 a concord which wears a miraculous providential character when it is appreciated without being understood4 ,sidenote3 ,expressions to be understood must be recreated1 and so changed4 ,primitive poetry is the basis of all discourse4 ,if we open any ancient book we come at once upon an elaborate language1 and on divers conventional concepts1 of whose origin and history we hear nothing4 ,we must read on1 until by dint of guessing and by confronting instances we grow to understand those symbols4 ,the writer was himself heir to a linguistic tradition which he made his own by the same process of adoption and tentative use by which we1 in turn1 interpret his phrases3 he understood what he heard in terms of his own experience1 and attributed to his predecessors 7no matter what their incommunicable feelings may have been7 such ideas as their words generated in his own thinking4 ,in this way expressions continually change their sense2 they can communicate a thought only by diffusing a stimulus1 and in passing from mouth to mouth they will wholly reverse their connotation1 unless some external object or some recurring human situation gives them a constant standard1 by which private aberrations may be checked4 ,thus in the first phrase of ,genesis1 8,in the beginning ,god created the heavens and the earth10 the words have a stable meaning only in so far as they are indicative and bring us back to a stable object4 ,what 8heavens0 and 8earth0 stand for can be conveyed by gestures1 by merely pointing up and down2 but beyond that sensuous connotation their meaning has entirely changed since they were here written2 and no two minds1 even to-day1 will respond to these familiar words with exactly the same images4 8,beginning0 and 8created0 have a superficial clearness1 though their implications cannot be defined without precipitating the most intricate metaphysics1 which would end in nothing but a proof that both terms were ambiguous and unthinkable4 ,as to the word 8,god10 all mutual understanding is impossible4 ,it is a floating literary symbol1 with a value which1 if we define it scientifically1 becomes quite algebraic4 ,as no experienced object corresponds to it1 it is without fixed indicative force1 and admits any sense which its context in any mind may happen to give it4 ,in the first sentence of ,genesis its meaning1 we may safely say1 is 8a masculine being by whom heaven and earth were created40 ,to fill out this implication other instances of the word would have to be gathered1 in each of which1 of course1 the word would appear with a new and perhaps incompatible meaning4 ,sidenote3 ,expressions may be recast perversely1 humorously1 or sublimely4 ,whenever a word appears in a radically new context it has a radically new sense3 the expression in which it so figures is a poetic figment1 a fresh literary creation4 ,such invention is sometimes perverse1 sometimes humorous1 sometimes sublime2 that is1 it may either buffet old associations without enlarging them1 or give them a plausible but impossible twist1 or enlarge them to cover1 with unexpected propriety1 a much wider or more momentous experience4 ,the force of experience in any moment--if we abstract from represented values--is emotional2 so that for sublime poetry what is required is to tap some reservoir of feeling4 ,if a phrase opens the flood-gates of emotion1 it has made itself most deeply significant4 ,its discursive range and clearness may not be remarkable2 its emotional power will quite suffice4 ,for this reason again primitive poetry may be sublime3 in its inchoate phrases there is affinity to raw passion and their very blindness may serve to bring that passion back4 ,poetry has body2 it represents the volume of experience as well as its form1 and to express volume a primitive poet will rely rather on rhythm1 sound1 and condensed suggestion than on discursive fulness or scope4 ,sidenote3 ,the nature of prose4 ,the descent from poetry to prose is in one sense a progress4 ,when use has worn down a poetic phrase to its external import1 and rendered it an indifferent symbol for a particular thing1 that phrase has become prosaic2 it has also become1 by the same process1 transparent and purely instrumental4 ,in poetry feeling is transferred by contagion2 in prose it is communicated by bending the attention upon determinate objects2 the one stimulates and the other informs4 ,under the influence of poetry various minds radiate from a somewhat similar core of sensation1 from the same vital mood1 into the most diverse and incommunicable images4 ,interlocutors speaking prose1 on the contrary1 pelt and besiege one another with a peripheral attack2 they come into contact at sundry superficial points and thence push their agreement inwards1 until perhaps a practical coincidence is arrived at in their thought4 ,agreement is produced by controlling each mind externally1 through a series of checks and little appeals to possible sensation2 whereas in poetry the agreement1 where it exists1 is vague and massive2 there is an initial fusion of minds under hypnotic musical influences1 from which each listener1 as he awakes1 passes into his own thoughts and interpretations4 ,in prose the vehicle for communication is a conventional sign1 standing in the last analysis for some demonstrable object or controllable feeling4 ,by marshalling specific details a certain indirect suasion is exercised on the mind1 as nature herself1 by continual checks and denials1 gradually tames the human will4 ,the elements of prose are always practical1 if we run back and reconstruct their primitive essence1 for at bottom every experience is an original and not a copy1 a nucleus for ideation rather than an object to which ideas may refer4 ,it is when these stimulations are shaken together and become a system of mutual checks that they begin to take on ideally a rhythm borrowed from the order in which they actually recurred4 ,then a prophetic or representative movement arises in thought4 ,before this comes about1 experience remains a constantly renovated dream1 as poetry to the end conspires to keep it4 ,for poetry1 while truly poetical1 never loses sight of initial feelings and underlying appeals2 it is incorrigibly transcendental1 and takes every present passion and every private dream in turn for the core of the universe4 ,by creating new signs1 or by recasting and crossing those which have become conventional1 it keeps communication massive and instinctive1 immersed in music1 and inexhaustible by clear thought4 ,sidenote3 ,it is more advanced and responsible than poetry4 ,lying is a privilege of poets because they have not yet reached the level on which truth and error are discernible4 ,veracity and significance are not ideals for a primitive mind2 we learn to value them as we learn to live1 when we discover that the spirit cannot be wholly free and solipsistic4 ,to have to distinguish fact from fancy is so great a violence to the inner man that not only poets1 but theologians and philosophers1 still protest against such a distinction4 ,they urge 7what is perfectly true for a rudimentary creature7 that facts are mere conceptions and conceptions full-fledged facts2 but this interesting embryonic lore they apply1 in their intellectual weakness1 to retracting or undermining those human categories which1 though alone fruitful or applicable in life1 are not congenial to their half-formed imagination4 ,retreating deeper into the inner chaos1 they bring to bear the whole momentum of an irresponsible dialectic to frustrate the growth of representative ideas3 ,in this they are genuine1 if somewhat belated1 poets1 experimenting anew with solved problems1 and fancying how creation might have moved upon other lines4 ,the great merit that prose shares with science is that it is responsible4 ,its conscience is a new and wiser imagination1 by which creative thought is rendered cumulative and progressive2 for a man does not build less boldly or solidly if he takes the precaution of building in baked brick4 ,prose is in itself meagre and bodiless1 merely indicating the riches of the world4 ,its transparency helps us to look through it to the issue1 and the signals it gives fill the mind with an honest assurance and a prophetic art far nobler than any ecstasy4 ,sidenote3 ,maturity brings love of practical truth4 ,as men of action have a better intelligence than poets1 if only their action is on a broad enough stage1 so the prosaic rendering of experience has the greater value1 if only the experience rendered covers enough human interests4 ,youth and aspiration indulge in poetry2 a mature and masterful mind will often despise it1 and prefer to express itself laconically in prose4 ,it is clearly proper that prosaic habits should supervene in this way on the poetical2 for youth1 being as yet little fed by experience1 can find volume and depth only in the soul2 the half-seen1 the supra-mundane1 the inexpressible1 seem to it alone beautiful and worthy of homage4 ,time modifies this sentiment in two directions4 ,it breeds lassitude and indifference towards impracticable ideals1 originally no less worthy than the practicable4 ,ideals which cannot be realised1 and are not fed at least by partial realisations1 soon grow dormant4 ,life-blood passes to other veins2 the urgent and palpitating interests of life appear in other quarters4 ,while things impossible thus lose their serious charm1 things actual reveal their natural order and variety2 these not only can entertain the mind abstractly1 but they can offer a thousand material rewards in observation and action4 ,in their presence1 a private dream begins to look rather cheap and hysterical4 ,not that existence has any dignity or prerogative in the presence of will1 but that will itself1 being elastic1 grows definite and firm when it is fed by success2 and its formed and expressible ideals then put to shame the others1 which have remained vague for want of practical expression4 ,mature interests centre on soluble problems and tasks capable of execution2 it is at such points that the ideal can be really served4 ,the individual's dream straightens and reassures itself by merging with the dream of humanity4 ,to dwell1 as irrational poets do1 on some private experience1 on some emotion without representative or ulterior value1 then seems a waste of time4 ,fiction becomes less interesting than affairs1 and poetry turns into a sort of incompetent whimper1 a childish fore-shortening of the outspread world4 ,sidenote3 ,pure prose would tend to efface itself4 ,on the other hand1 prose has a great defect1 which is abstractness4 ,it drops the volume of experience in finding bodiless algebraic symbols by which to express it4 ,the verbal form1 instead of transmitting an image1 seems to constitute it1 in so far as there is an image suggested at all2 and the ulterior situation is described only in the sense that a change is induced in the hearer which prepares him to meet that situation4 ,prose seems to be a use of language in the service of material life4 ,it would tend1 in that case1 to undermine its own basis2 for in proportion as signals for action are quick and efficacious they diminish their sensuous stimulus and fade from consciousness4 ,were language such a set of signals it would be something merely instrumental1 which if made perfect ought to be automatic and unconscious4 ,it would be a buzzing in the ears1 not a music native to the mind4 ,such a theory of language would treat it as a necessary evil and would look forward hopefully to the extinction of literature1 in which it would recognise nothing ideal4 ,there is of course no reason to deprecate the use of vocables1 or of any other material agency1 to expedite affairs2 but an art of speech1 if it is to add any ultimate charm to life1 has to supervene upon a mere code of signals4 ,prose1 could it be purely representative1 would be ideally superfluous4 ,a literary prose accordingly owns a double allegiance1 and its life is amphibious4 ,it must convey intelligence1 but intelligence clothed in a language that lends the message an intrinsic value1 and makes it delightful to apprehend apart from its importance in ultimate theory or practice4 ,prose is in that measure a fine art4 ,it might be called poetry that had become pervasively representative1 and was altogether faithful to its rational function4 ,sidenote3 ,form alone1 or substance alone1 may be poetical4 ,we may therefore with good reason distinguish prosaic form from prosaic substance4 ,a novel1 a satire1 a book of speculative philosophy1 may have a most prosaic exterior2 every phrase may convey its idea economically2 but the substance may nevertheless be poetical1 since these ideas may be irrelevant to all ulterior events1 and may express nothing but the imaginative energy that called them forth4 ,on the other hand1 a poetic vehicle in which there is much ornamental play of language and rhythm may clothe a dry ideal skeleton4 ,so those tremendous positivists1 the ,hebrew prophets1 had the most prosaic notions about the goods and evils of life4 ,so ,lucretius praised1 ,i will not say the atoms merely1 but even fecundity and wisdom4 ,the motives1 to take another example1 which ,racine attributed to his personages1 were prosaically conceived2 a physiologist could not be more exact in his calculations1 for even love may be made the mainspring in a clock-work of emotions4 ,yet that ,racine was a born poet appears in the music1 nobility1 and tenderness of his medium2 he clothed his intelligible characters in magical and tragic robes2 the aroma of sentiment rises like a sort of pungent incense between them and us1 and no dramatist has ever had so sure a mastery over transports and tears4 ,sidenote3 ,poetry has its place in the medium4 ,in the medium a poet is at home2 in the world he tries to render1 he is a child and a stranger4 ,poetic notions are false notions2 in so far as their function is representative they are vitiated by containing elements not present in things4 ,truth is a jewel which should not be painted over2 but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light4 ,the poetic way of idealising reality is dull1 bungling1 and impure2 a better acquaintance with things renders such flatteries ridiculous4 ,that very effort of thought by which opaque masses of experience were first detached from the flux and given a certain individuality1 seeks to continue to clarify them until they become as transparent as possible4 ,to resist this clarification1 to love the chance incrustations that encumber human ideas1 is a piece of timid folly1 and poetry in this respect is nothing but childish confusion4 ,poetic apprehension is a makeshift1 in so far as its cognitive worth is concerned2 it is exactly1 in this respect1 what myth is to science4 ,approaching its subject-matter from a distance1 with incongruous categories1 it translates it into some vague and misleading symbol rich in emotions which the object as it is could never arouse and is sure presently to contradict4 ,what lends these hybrid ideas their temporary eloquence and charm is their congruity with the mind that breeds them and with its early habits4 ,falsification1 or rather clouded vision1 gives to poetry a more human accent and a readier welcome than to truth4 ,in other words1 it is the medium that asserts itself2 the apperceptive powers indulge their private humours1 and neglect the office to which they were assigned once for all by their cognitive essence4 ,sidenote3 ,it is the best medium possible4 ,that the medium should so assert itself1 however1 is no anomaly1 the cognitive function being an ulterior one to which ideas are by no means obliged to conform4 ,apperception is itself an activity or art1 and like all others terminates in a product which is a good in itself1 apart from its utilities4 ,if we abstract1 then1 from the representative function which may perhaps accrue to speech1 and regard it merely as an operation absorbing energy and occasioning delight1 we see that poetic language is language at its best4 ,its essential success consists in fusing ideas in charming sounds or in metaphors that shine by their own brilliance4 ,poetry is an eloquence justified by its spontaneity1 as eloquence is a poetry justified by its application4 ,the first draws the whole soul into the situation1 and the second puts the whole situation before the soul4 ,sidenote3 ,might it not convey what it is best to know8 ,is there not1 we may ask1 some ideal form of discourse in which apperceptive life could be engaged with all its volume and transmuting power1 and in which at the same time no misrepresentation should be involved8 ,transmutation is not erroneous when it is intentional2 misrepresentation does not please for being false1 but only because truth would be more congenial if it resembled such a fiction4 ,why should not discourse1 then1 have nothing but truth in its import and nothing but beauty in its form8 ,with regard to euphony and grammatical structure there is evidently nothing impossible in such an ideal2 for these radical beauties of language are independent of the subject-matter4 ,they form the body of poetry2 but the ideal and emotional atmosphere which is its soul depends on things external to language1 which no perfection in the medium could modify4 ,it might seem as if the brilliant substitutions1 the magic suggestions essential to poetry1 would necessarily vanish in the full light of day4 ,the light of day is itself beautiful2 but would not the loss be terrible if no other light were ever suffered to shine8 ,sidenote3 ,a rational poetry would exclude much now thought poetical4 ,the ,life of ,reason involves sacrifice4 ,what forces yearn for the ideal1 being many and incompatible1 have to yield and partly deny themselves in order to attain any ideal at all4 ,there is something sad in all possible attainment so long as the rational virtue 7which wills such attainment7 is not pervasive2 and even then there is limitation to put up with1 and the memory of many a defeat4 ,rational poetry is possible and would be infinitely more beautiful than the other2 but the charm of unreason1 if unreason seem charming1 it certainly could not preserve4 ,in what human fancy demands1 as at present constituted1 there are irrational elements4 ,the given world seems insufficient2 impossible things have to be imagined1 both to extend its limits and to fill in and vivify its texture4 ,homer has a mythology without which experience would have seemed to him undecipherable2 ,dante has his allegories and his mock science2 ,shakespeare has his romanticism2 ,goethe his symbolic characters and artificial machinery4 ,all this lumber seems to have been somehow necessary to their genius2 they could not reach expression in more honest terms4 ,if such indirect expression could be discarded1 it would not be missed2 but while the mind1 for want of a better vocabulary1 is reduced to using these symbols1 it pours into them a part of its own life and makes them beautiful4 ,their loss is a real blow1 while the incapacity that called for them endures2 and the soul seems to be crippled by losing its crutches4 ,sidenote3 ,all apperception modifies its object4 ,there are certain adaptations and abbreviations of reality which thought can never outgrow4 ,thought is representative2 it enriches each soul and each moment with premonitions of surrounding existences4 ,if discourse is to be significant it must transfer to its territory and reduce to its scale whatever objects it deals with3 in other words1 thought has a point of view and cannot see the world except in perspective4 ,this point of view is not1 for reason1 locally or naturally determined2 sense alone is limited in that material fashion1 being seated in the body and looking thence centrifugally upon things in so far as they come into dynamic relations with that body4 ,intelligence1 on the contrary1 sallies from that physical stronghold and consists precisely in shifting and universalising the point of view1 neutralising all local1 temporal1 or personal conditions4 ,yet intelligence1 notwithstanding1 has its own centre and point of origin1 not explicitly in space or in a natural body1 but in some specific interest or moral aim4 ,it translates animal life into moral endeavour1 and what figured in the first as a local existence figures in the second as a specific good4 ,reason accordingly has its essential bias1 and looks at things as they affect the particular form of life which reason expresses2 and though all reality should be ultimately swept by the eye of reason1 the whole would still be surveyed by a particular method1 from a particular starting-point1 for a particular end2 nor would it take much shrewdness to perceive that this nucleus for discourse and estimation1 this ideal life1 corresponds in the moral world to that animal body which gave sensuous experience its seat and centre2 so that rationality is nothing but the ideal function or aspect of natural life4 ,reason is universal in its outlook and in its sympathies3 it is the faculty of changing places ideally and representing alien points of view2 but this very self-transcendence manifests a certain special method in life1 an equilibrium which a far-sighted being is able to establish between itself and its comprehended conditions4 ,reason remains to the end essentially human and1 in its momentary actuality1 necessarily personal4 ,sidenote3 ,reason has its own bias and method4 ,we have here an essential condition of discourse which renders it at bottom poetical4 ,selection and applicability govern all thinking1 and govern it in the interests of the soul4 ,reason is itself a specific medium2 so that prose can never attain that perfect transparency and mere utility which we were attributing to it4 ,we should not wish to know 8things in themselves10 even if we were able4 ,what it concerns us to know about them is merely the service or injury they are able to do us1 and in what fashion they can affect our lives4 ,to know this would be1 in so far1 truly to know them2 but it would be to know them through our own faculties and through their supposed effects2 it would be to know them by their appearance4 ,a singular proof of the frivolous way in which philosophers often proceed1 when they think they are particularly profound1 is seen in this puzzle1 on which they solemnly ask us to fix our thoughts3 ,how is it possible to know reality1 if all we can attain in experience is but appearance8 ,the meaning of knowledge1 which is an intellectual and living thing1 is here forgotten1 and the notion of sensation1 or bodily possession1 is substituted for it2 so what we are really asked to consider is how1 had we no understanding1 we should be able to understand what we endure4 ,it is by conceiving what we endure to be the appearance of something beyond us1 that we reach knowledge that something exists beyond us1 and that it plays in respect to us a determinate rle4 ,there could be no knowledge of reality if what conveyed that knowledge were not felt to be appearance2 nor can a medium of knowledge better than appearance be by any possibility conceived4 ,to have such appearances is what makes realities knowable4 ,knowledge transcends sensation by relating it to other sensation1 and thereby rising to a supersensuous plane1 the plane of principles and causes by which sensibles are identified in character and distributed in existence4 ,these principles and causes are what we call the intelligible or the real world2 and the sensations1 when they have been so interpreted and underpinned1 are what we call experience4 ,sidenote3 ,rational poetry would envelop exact knowledge in ultimate emotions4 ,if a poet could clarify the myths he begins with1 so as to reach ultimate scientific notions of nature and life1 he would still be dealing with vivid feeling and with its imaginative expression4 ,the prosaic landscape before him would still be a work of art1 painted on the human brain by human reason4 ,if he found that landscape uninteresting1 it would be because he was not really interested in life2 if he found it dull and unpoetical1 he would be manifesting his small capacity and childish whims4 ,tragic1 fatal1 intractable1 he might well feel that the truth was2 but these qualities have never been absent from that half-mythical world through which poets1 for want of a rational education1 have hitherto wandered4 ,a rational poet's vision would have the same moral functions which myth was asked to fulfil1 and fulfilled so treacherously2 it would employ the same ideal faculties which myth expressed in a confused and hasty fashion4 ,more detail would have been added1 and more variety in interpretation4 ,to deal with so great an object1 and retain his mastery over it1 a poet would doubtless need a robust genius4 ,if he possessed it1 and in transmuting all existence falsified nothing1 giving that picture of everything which human experience in the end would have drawn1 he would achieve an ideal result4 ,in prompting mankind to imagine1 he would be helping them to live4 ,his poetry1 without ceasing to be a fiction in its method and ideality1 would be an ultimate truth in its practical scope4 ,it would present in graphic images the total efficacy of real things4 ,such a poetry would be more deeply rooted in human experience than is any casual fancy1 and therefore more appealing to the heart4 ,such a poetry would represent more thoroughly than any formula the concrete burden of experience2 it would become the most trustworthy of companions4 ,the images it had worked out would confront human passion more intelligibly than does the world as at present conceived1 with its mechanism half ignored and its ideality half invented2 they would represent vividly the uses of nature1 and thereby make all natural situations seem so many incentives to art4 ,sidenote3 ,an illustration4 ,rational poetry is not wholly unknown4 ,when ,homer mentions an object1 how does he render it poetical8 ,first1 doubtless1 by the euphony of its name or the sensuous glow of some epithet coupled with it4 ,sometimes1 however1 even this ornamental epithet is not merely sensuous2 it is very likely a patronymic1 the name of some region or some mythical ancestor4 ,in other words1 it is a signal for widening our view and for conceiving the object1 not only vividly and with pause1 but in an adequate historic setting4 ,macbeth tells us that his dagger was 8unmannerly breeched in gore40 ,achilles would not have amused himself with such a metaphor1 even if breeches had existed in his day1 but would rather have told us whose blood1 on other occasions1 had stained the same blade1 and perhaps what father or mother had grieved for the slaughtered hero1 or what brave children remained to continue his race4 ,shakespeare's phrase is ingenious and fanciful2 it dazzles for a moment1 but in the end it seems violent and crude4 ,what ,homer would have said1 on the contrary1 being simple and true1 might have grown1 as we dwelt upon it1 always more noble1 pathetic1 and poetical4 ,shakespeare1 too1 beneath his occasional absurdities of plot and diction1 ennobles his stage with actual history1 with life painted to the quick1 with genuine human characters1 politics1 and wisdom2 and surely these are not the elements that do least credit to his genius4 ,in every poet1 indeed1 there is some fidelity to nature1 mixed with that irrelevant false fancy with which poetry is sometimes identified2 and the degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is1 in the end1 the exact measure of his importance and dignity4 ,sidenote3 ,volume can be found in scope better than in suggestion4 ,before prosaic objects are descried1 the volume and richness needful for poetry lie in a blurred and undigested chaos2 but after the common world has emerged and has called on prose to describe it1 the same volume and richness may be recovered2 and a new and clarified poetry may arise through synthesis4 ,scope is a better thing than suggestion1 and more truly poetical4 ,it has expressed what suggestion pointed to and felt in the bulk3 it possesses what was yearned for4 ,a real thing1 when all its pertinent natural associates are discerned1 touches wonder1 pathos1 and beauty on every side2 the rational poet is one who1 without feigning anything unreal1 perceives these momentous ties1 and presents his subject loaded with its whole fate1 missing no source of worth which is in it1 no ideal influence which it may have4 ,homer remains1 perhaps1 the greatest master in this art4 ,the world he glorified by showing in how many ways it could serve reason and beauty was but a simple world1 and an equal genius in these days might be distracted by the ,babel about him1 and be driven1 as poets now are1 into incidental dreams4 ,yet the ideal of mastery and idealisation remains the same1 if any one could only attain it3 mastery1 to see things as they are and dare to describe them ingenuously2 idealisation1 to select from this reality what is pertinent to ultimate interests and can speak eloquently to the soul4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,plastic ,,construction ,sidenote3 ,automatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world4 ,we have seen how arts founded on exercise and automatic self-expression develop into music1 poetry1 and prose4 ,by an indirect approach they come to represent outer conditions1 till they are interwoven in a life which has in some measure gone out to meet its opportunities and learned to turn them to an ideal use4 ,we have now to see how man's reactive habits pass simultaneously into art in a wholly different region4 ,spontaneous expression1 such as song1 comes when internal growth in an animal system vents itself1 as it were1 by the way4 ,at the same time animal economy has playful manifestations concerned with outer things1 such as burrowing or collecting objects4 ,these practices are not less spontaneous than the others1 and no less expressive2 but they seem more external because the traces they leave on the environment are more clearly marked4 ,to change an object is the surest and most glorious way of changing a perception4 ,a shift in posture may relieve the body1 and in that way satisfy1 but the new attitude is itself unstable4 ,its pleasantness1 like its existence1 is transient1 and scarcely is a movement executed when both its occasion and its charm are forgotten4 ,self-expression by exercise1 in spite of its pronounced automatism1 is therefore something comparatively passive and inglorious4 ,a man has hardly done anything when he has laughed or yawned4 ,even the inspired poet retains something of this passivity3 his work is not his1 but that of a restless1 irresponsible spirit passing through him1 and hypnotising him for its own ends4 ,of the result he has no profit1 no glory1 and little understanding4 ,so the mystic also positively gloats on his own nothingness1 and puts his whole genuine being in a fancied instrumentality and subordination to something else4 ,far more virile and noble is the sense of having actually done something1 and left at least the temporary stamp of one's special will on the world4 ,to chop a stick1 to catch a fly1 to pile a heap of sand1 is a satisfying action2 for the sand stays for a while in its novel arrangement1 proclaiming to the surrounding level that we have made it our instrument1 while the fly will never stir nor the stick grow together again in all eternity4 ,if the impulse that has thus left its indelible mark on things is constant in our own bosom1 the world will have been permanently improved and humanised by our action4 ,nature cannot but be more favourable to those ideas which have once found an efficacious champion4 ,sidenote3 ,such effects fruitful4 ,plastic impulses find in this way an immediate sanction in the sense of victory and dominion which they carry with them2 it is so evident a proof of power in ourselves to see things and animals bent out of their habitual form and obedient instead to our idea4 ,but a far weightier sanction immediately follows4 ,man depends on things for his experience1 yet by automatic action he changes these very things so that it becomes possible that by his action he should promote his welfare4 ,he may1 of course1 no less readily precipitate his ruin4 ,the animal is more subject to vicissitudes than the plant1 which makes no effort to escape them or to give chase to what it feeds upon4 ,the greater perils of action1 however1 are in animals covered partly by fertility1 partly by adaptability1 partly by success4 ,the mere possibility of success1 in a world governed by natural selection1 is an earnest of progress4 ,sometimes1 in impressing the environment1 a man will improve it3 which is merely to say that a change may sometimes fortify the impulse which brought it about4 ,as soon as this retroaction is perceived and the act is done with knowledge of its ensuing benefits1 plastic impulse becomes art1 and the world begins actually to change in obedience to reason4 ,one respect1 for instance1 in which man depends on things is for the sthetic quality of his perceptions4 ,if he happens1 by a twist of the hand1 to turn a flowering branch into a wreath1 thereby making it more interesting1 he will have discovered a decorative art and initiated himself auspiciously into the practice of it4 ,experimentation may follow1 and whenever the new form given to the object improves it--i4e41 increases its interest for the eye--the experimenter will triumph and will congratulate himself on his genius4 ,the garland so arranged will be said to express the taste it satisfies2 insight and reason will be mythically thought to have guided the work by which they are sustained in being4 ,it is no small harmony1 however1 that they should be sustained by it4 ,the consonances man introduces into nature will follow him wherever he goes4 ,it will no longer be necessary that nature should supply them spontaneously1 by a rare adventitious harmony with his demands4 ,his new habit will habitually rear-range her chance arrangements1 and his path will be marked by the beauties he has strewn it with4 ,so long as the same plastic impulse continues operative it will be accompanied by knowledge and criticism of its happy results4 ,self-criticism1 being a second incipient artistic impulse1 contrasting itself with the one which a work embodies1 may to some extent modify the next performance4 ,if life is drawn largely into this deepening channel1 physical proficiency and its ideal sanctions will develop more or less harmoniously into what is called a school of art4 ,sidenote3 ,magic authority of man's first creations4 ,the first felt utilities by which plastic instinct is sanctioned are of course not distinctly sthetic1 much less distinctly practical2 they are magical4 ,a stone cut into some human or animal semblance fascinates the savage eye much more than would a useful tool or a beautiful idol4 ,the man wonders at his own work1 and petrifies the miracle of his art into miraculous properties in its product4 ,primitive art is incredibly conservative2 its first creations1 having once attracted attention1 monopolise it henceforth and nothing else will be trusted to work the miracle4 ,it is a sign of stupidity in general to stick to physical objects and given forms apart from their ideal functions1 as when a child cries for a broken doll1 even if a new and better one is at hand to replace it4 ,inert associations establish themselves1 in such a case1 with that part of a thing which is irrelevant to its value--its material substance or perhaps its name4 ,art can make no progress in such a situation4 ,a man remains incorrigibly unhappy and perplexed1 cowed1 and helpless1 because not intelligent enough to readjust his actions2 his idol must be the self-same hereditary stock1 or at least it must have the old sanctified rigidity and stare4 ,plastic impulse1 as yet sporadic1 is overwhelmed by a brute idolatrous awe at mere existence and actuality4 ,what is1 what has always been1 what chance has associated with one person1 alone seems acceptable or conceivable4 ,sidenote3 ,art brings relief from idolatry4 ,idolatry is by no means incident to art2 art1 on the contrary1 is a release from idolatry4 ,a cloud1 an animal1 a spring1 a stone1 or the whole heaven1 will serve the pure idolater's purpose to perfection2 these things have existence and a certain hypnotic power1 so that he may make them a focus for his dazed contemplation4 ,when the mind takes to generalities it finds the same fascination in ,being or in the ,absolute1 something it needs no art to discover4 ,the more indeterminate1 immediate1 and unutterable the idol is1 the better it induces panic self-contraction and a reduction of all discourse to the infinite intensity of zero4 ,when idolaters pass from trying to evoke the ,absolutely ,existent to apostrophising the sun or an ithyphallic bull they have made an immense progress in art and religion1 for now their idols represent some specific and beneficent function in nature1 something propitious to ideal life and to its determinate expression4 ,isaiah is very scornful of idols made with hands1 because they have no physical energy4 ,he forgets that perhaps they represent something1 and so have a spiritual dignity which things living and powerful never have unless they too become representative and express some ideal4 ,isaiah's conception of ,jehovah1 for instance1 is itself a poetic image1 the work of man's brain2 and the innocent worship of it would not be idolatry1 if that conception represented something friendly to human happiness and to human art4 ,the question merely is whether the sculptor's image or the prophet's stands for the greater interest and is a more adequate symbol for the good4 ,the noblest art will be the one1 whether plastic or literary or dialectical1 which creates figments most truly representative of what is momentous in human life4 ,similarly the least idolatrous religion would be the one which used the most perfect art1 and most successfully abstracted the good from the real4 ,sidenote3 ,inertia in technique4 ,conservatism rules also in those manufactures which are tributary to architecture and the smaller plastic arts4 ,utility makes small headway against custom1 not only when custom has become religion1 but even when it remains inert and without mythical sanction4 ,to admit or trust anything new is to overcome that inertia which is a general law in the brain no less than elsewhere1 and which may be distinguished in reflection into a technical and a social conservatism4 ,technical conservatism appears1 for instance1 in a man's handwriting1 which is so seldom improved1 even when admitted1 perhaps1 to be execrable4 ,every artist has his tricks of execution1 every school its hereditary1 irrational processes4 ,these refractory habits are to blame for the rare and inimitable quality of genius2 they impose excellence on one man and refuse it to a million4 ,a happy physiological structure1 by creating a mannerism under the special circumstances favourable to expression1 may lift a man1 perhaps inferior in intelligence1 to heights which no insight can attain with inferior organs4 ,as a voice is necessary for singing1 so a certain quickness of eye and hand is needed for good execution in the plastic arts4 ,the same principle goes deeper4 ,conception and imagination are themselves automatic and run in grooves1 so that only certain forms in certain combinations will ever suggest themselves to a given designer4 ,every writer's style1 too1 however varied within limits1 is single and monotonous compared with the ideal possibilities of expression4 ,genius at every moment is confined to the idiom it is creating4 ,sidenote3 ,inertia in appreciation4 ,social inertia is due to the same causes working in the community at large4 ,the fancy1 for instance1 of building churches in the shape of a cross has largely determined ,christian architecture4 ,builders were prevented by a foregone suggestion in themselves and by their patrons' demands from conceiving any alternative to that convention4 ,early pottery1 they say1 imitates wicker-work1 and painted landscape was for ages not allowed to exist without figures1 although even the old masters show plainly enough in their backgrounds that they could love landscape for its own sake4 ,when one link with humanity has been rendered explicit and familiar1 people assume that by no other means can humanity be touched at all2 even if at the same time their own heart is expanding to the highest raptures in a quite different region4 ,the severer ,greeks reprobated music without words2 ,saint ,augustine complained of chants that rendered the sacred text unintelligible2 the ,puritans regarded elaborate music as diabolical1 little knowing how soon some of their descendants would find religion in nothing else4 ,a stupid convention still looks on material and mathematical processes as somehow distressing and ugly1 and systems of philosophy1 artificially mechanical1 are invented to try to explain natural mechanism away2 whereas in no region can the spirit feel so much at home as among natural causes1 or realise so well its universal affinities1 or so safely enlarge its happiness4 ,mechanism is the source of beauty4 ,it is not necessary to look so high as the stars to perceive this truth3 the action of an animal's limbs or the movement of a waterfall will prove it to any one who has eyes and can shake himself loose from verbal prejudices1 those debris of old perceptions which choke all fresh perception in the soul4 ,irrational hopes1 irrational shames1 irrational decencies1 make man's chief desolation4 ,a slight knocking of fools' heads together might be enough to break up the ossifications there and start the blood coursing again through possible channels4 ,art has an infinite range2 nothing shifts so easily as taste and yet nothing so persistently avoids the directions in which it might find most satisfaction4 ,sidenote3 ,adventitious effects appreciated first4 ,since construction grows rational slowly and by indirect pressure1 we may expect that its most superficial merits will be the first appreciated4 ,ultimate beauty in a building would consist1 of course1 in responding simultaneously to all the human faculties affected3 to the eye1 by the building's size1 form1 and colour2 to the imagination1 by its fitness and ideal expression4 ,of all grounds for admiration those most readily seized are size1 elaboration1 splendour of materials1 and difficulties or cost involved4 ,having built or dug in the conventional way a man may hang before his door some trophy of battle or the chase1 bearing witness to his prowess2 just as people now1 not thinking of making their rooms beautiful1 fill them with photographs of friends or places they have known1 to suggest and reburnish in their minds their interesting personal history1 which even they1 unstimulated1 might tend to forget4 ,that dwelling will seem best adorned which contains most adventitious objects2 bare and ugly will be whatever is not concealed by something else4 ,again1 a barbarous architect1 without changing his model1 may build in a more precious material2 and his work will be admired for the evidence it furnishes of wealth and wilfulness4 ,as a community grows luxurious and becomes accustomed to such display1 it may come to seem strange and hideous to see a wooden plate or a pewter spoon4 ,a beautiful house will need to be in marble and the sight of plebeian brick will banish all satisfaction4 ,less irrational1 and therefore less vulgar1 is the wonder aroused by great bulk or difficulty in the work4 ,exertions1 to produce a great result1 even if it be material1 must be allied to perseverance and intelligent direction4 ,roman bridges and aqueducts1 for instance1 gain a profound emotional power when we see in their monotonous arches a symbol of the mightiest enterprise in history1 and in their decay an evidence of its failure4 ,curiosity is satisfied1 historic imagination is stimulated1 tragic reflection is called forth4 ,we cannot refuse admiration to a work so full of mind1 even if no great plastic beauty happens to distinguish it4 ,it is at any rate beautiful enough1 like the sea or the skeleton of a mountain4 ,we may rely on the life it has made possible to add more positive charms and clothe it with imaginative functions4 ,modern engineering works often have a similar value2 the force and intelligence they express merge in an sthetic essence1 and the place they hold in a portentous civilisation lends them an almost epic dignity4 ,new ,york1 since it took to doing business in towers1 has become interesting to look at from the sea2 nor is it possible to walk through the overshadowed streets without feeling a pleasing wonder4 ,a city1 when enough people swarm in it1 is as fascinating as an ant-hill1 and its buildings1 whatever other charms they may have1 are at least as curious and delightful as sea-shells or birds' nests4 ,the purpose of improvements in modern structures may be economic1 just as the purpose of castles was military2 but both may incidentally please the contemplative mind by their huge forms and human associations4 ,sidenote3 ,approach to beauty through useful structure4 ,of the two approaches which barbaric architecture makes to beauty--one through ornamentation and the other through mass--the latter is in general the more successful4 ,an engineer fights with nature hand to hand3 he is less easily extravagant than a decorator2 he can hardly ever afford to be absurd4 ,he becomes accordingly more rapidly civilised and his work acquires1 in spite of itself1 more rationality and a more permanent charm4 ,a self-sustaining structure1 in art as in life1 is the only possible basis for a vital ideal4 ,when the framework is determined1 when it is tested by trial and found to stand and serve1 it will gradually ingratiate itself with the observer2 affinities it may have in his memory or apperceptive habits will come to light2 they will help him to assimilate the new vision and will define its sthetic character4 ,whatever beauty its lines may have will become a permanent possession and whatever beauties they exclude will be rejected by a faithful artist1 no matter how sorely at first they may tempt him4 ,not that these excluded beauties would not be really beautiful2 like fashions1 they would truly please in their day and very likely would contain certain absolute excellences of form or feeling which an attentive eye could enjoy at any time4 ,yet if appended to a structure they have no function in1 these excellences will hardly impose themselves on the next builder4 ,being adventitious they will remain optional1 and since fancy is quick1 and exotic beauties are many1 there will be no end to the variations1 in endless directions1 which art will undergo4 ,caprice will follow caprice and no style will be developed4 ,sidenote3 ,failure of adapted styles4 ,a settled style is perhaps in itself no desideratum4 ,a city that should be a bazaar of all possible architectures1 adding a multitude of new inventions to samples of every historical style1 might have a certain interest2 yet carnival can hardly be enjoyed all the year round and there is a certain latent hideousness in masquerades in spite of their glitter4 ,not only are the effects juxtaposed incongruous1 but each apart is usually shallow and absurd4 ,a perruque cannot bring back courtly manners1 and a style of architecture1 when revived1 is never quite genuine2 adaptations have to be introduced and every adaptation1 the bolder it is1 runs the greater risk of being extravagant4 ,nothing is more pitiable than the attempts people make1 who think they have an exquisite sensibility1 to live in a house all of one period4 ,the connoisseur1 like an uncritical philosopher1 boasts to have patched his dwelling perfectly together1 but he has forgotten himself1 its egregious inhabitant4 ,nor is he merely a blot in his own composition2 his presence secretly infects and denaturalises everything in it4 ,ridiculous himself in such a setting1 he makes it ridiculous too by his sthetic pose and appreciations2 for the objects he has collected or reproduced were once used and prized in all honesty1 when life and inevitable tradition had brought them forth1 while now they are studied and exhibited1 relics of a dead past and evidences of a dead present4 ,historic remains and restorations might well be used as one uses historic knowledge1 to serve some living interest and equip the mind for the undertakings of the hour4 ,an artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there4 ,ideas that have long been used may be used still1 if they remain ideas and have not been congealed into memories4 ,incorporated into a design that calls for them1 traditional forms cease to be incongruous1 as words that still have a felt meaning may be old without being obsolete4 ,all depends on men subserving an actual ideal and having so firm and genuine an appreciation of the past as to distinguish at once what is still serviceable in it from what is already ghostly and dead4 ,sidenote3 ,not all structure beautiful1 nor all beauty structural4 ,an artist may be kept true to his style either by ignorance of all others or by love of his own4 ,this fidelity is a condition of progress4 ,when he has learned to appreciate whatever is sthetically appreciable in his problem1 he can go on to refine his construction1 to ennoble1 and finally to decorate it4 ,as fish1 flesh1 and fowl have specific forms1 each more or less beautiful and adorned1 so every necessary structure has its specific character and its essential associations4 ,taking his cue from these1 an artist may experiment freely2 he may emphasise the structure in the classic manner and turn its lines into ornament1 adding only what may help to complete and unite its suggestions4 ,this puritanism in design is rightly commended1 but its opposite may be admirable too4 ,we may admit that nudity is the right garment for the gods1 but it would hardly serve the interests of beauty to legislate that all mortals should always go naked4 ,the veil that conceals natural imperfections may have a perfection of its own4 ,maxims in art are pernicious2 beauty is here the only commandment4 ,and beauty is a free natural gift4 ,when it has appeared1 we may perceive that its influence is rational1 since it both expresses and fosters a harmony of impressions and impulses in the soul2 but to take any mechanism whatever1 and merely because it is actual or necessary to insist that it is worth exhibiting1 and that by divine decree it shall be pronounced beautiful1 is to be quite at sea in moral philosophy4 ,beauty is adventitious1 occasional1 incidental1 in human products no less than in nature4 ,works of art are automatic figments which nature fashions through man4 ,it is impossible they should be wholly beautiful1 as it is impossible that they should offer no foothold or seed-plot for beauty at all4 ,beauty is everywhere potential and in a way pervasive because existence itself presupposes a modicum of harmony1 first within the thing and then between the thing and its environment4 ,of this environment the observer's senses are in this case an important part4 ,man can with difficulty maintain senses quite out of key with the stimuli furnished by the outer world4 ,they would then be useless burdens to his organism4 ,on the other side1 even artificial structures must be somehow geometrical or proportional1 because only such structures hold physically together4 ,objects that are to be esteemed by man must further possess or acquire some function in his economy2 otherwise they would not be noticed nor be so defined as to be recognisable4 ,out of these physical necessities beauty may grow2 but an adjustment must first take place between the material stimulus and the sense it affects4 ,beauty is something spiritual and1 being such1 it rests not on the material constitution of each existence taken apart1 but on their conspiring ideally together1 so that each furthers the other's endeavour4 ,structure by itself is no more beautiful than existence by itself is good4 ,they are only potentialities or conditions of excellence4 ,sidenote3 ,structures designed for display4 ,an architect1 when his main structure is uninteresting1 may have recourse to a subsidiary construction4 ,the faade1 or a part of it1 or the interior may still have a natural form that lends itself to elaboration4 ,this beautiful feature may be developed so as to ignore or even conceal the rest2 then the visible portion may be entirely beautiful1 like the ideal human figure1 though no pledges be given concerning the anatomy within4 ,many an ,italian palace has a false front in itself magnificent4 ,we may chance to observe1 however1 that it overtops its backing1 perhaps an amorphous rambling pile in quite another material4 ,what we admire is not so much a faade as a triumphal gateway1 set up in front of the house to be its ambassador to the world1 wearing decidedly richer apparel than its master can afford at home4 ,this was not vanity in the ,italians so much as civility to the public1 to whose taste this flattering embassy was addressed4 ,however our moral sense may judge the matter1 it is clear that two separate monuments occupied the architect in such cases1 if indeed inside and outside were actually designed by the same hand4 ,structure may appear in each independently and may be frankly enough expressed4 ,the most beautiful faades1 even if independent of their building1 are buildings themselves1 and since their construction is decorative there is the greater likelihood that their decoration should be structural4 ,in relation to the house1 however1 the faade in such an extreme case would be an abstract ornament2 and so1 though the ornament be structural within its own lines1 we have reverted to the style of building where construction is one thing and decoration another4 ,applied ornament has an indefinite range and there would be little profit in reasoning about it4 ,philosophy can do little more at this point than expose the fallacies into which dogmatic criticism is apt to fall4 ,everything is true decoration which truly adorns1 and everything adorns which enriches the impression and pleasantly entertains the eye4 ,there is a decorative impulse as well as a sense for decoration4 ,as ,i sit idle my stick makes meaningless marks upon the sand2 or 7what is nearer to the usual origin of ornament7 ,i make a design out of somebody's initials1 or symbolise fantastically something lying in my thoughts4 ,we place also one thing upon another1 the better to see and to think of two things at once4 ,sidenote3 ,appeal made by decoration4 ,to love decoration is to enjoy synthesis3 in other words1 it is to have hungry senses and unused powers of attention4 ,this hunger1 when it cannot well be fed by recollecting things past1 relishes a profusion of things simultaneous4 ,nothing is so much respected by unintelligent people as elaboration and complexity4 ,they are simply dazed and overawed at seeing at once so much more than they can master4 ,to overwhelm the senses is1 for them1 the only way of filling the mind4 ,it takes cultivation to appreciate in art1 as in philosophy1 the consummate value of what is simple and finite1 because it has found its pure function and ultimate import in the world4 ,what is just1 what is delicately and silently adjusted to its special office1 and thereby in truth to all ultimate issues1 seems to the vulgar something obvious and poor4 ,what astonishes them is the crude and paradoxical jumble of a thousand suggestions in a single view4 ,as the mystic yearns for an infinitely glutted consciousness that feels everything at once and is not put to the inconvenience of any longer thinking or imagining1 so the barbarian craves the assault of a myriad sensations together1 and feels replete and comfortable when a sort of infinite is poured into him without ideal mediation4 ,as ideal mediation is another name for intelligence1 so it is the condition of elegance4 ,intelligence and elegance naturally exist together1 since they both spring from a subtle sense for absent and eventual processes4 ,they are sustained by experience1 by nicety in foretaste and selection4 ,before ideality1 however1 is developed1 volume and variety must be given bodily or they cannot be given at all4 ,at that earlier stage a furious ornamentation is the chief vehicle for beauty4 ,sidenote3 ,its natural rights4 ,that the ornate may be very beautiful1 that in fact what is to be completely beautiful needs to be somehow rich1 is a fact of experience which further justifies the above analysis4 ,for sensation is the matter of ideas2 all representation is such only in its function2 in its existence it remains mere feeling4 ,decoration1 by stimulating the senses1 not only brings a primary satisfaction with it1 independent of any that may supervene1 but it furnishes an element of effect which no higher beauty can ever render unwelcome or inappropriate1 since any higher beauty1 in moving the mind1 must give it a certain sensuous and emotional colouring4 ,decoration is accordingly an independent art1 to be practised for its own sake1 in obedience to elementary plastic instincts4 ,it is fundamental in design1 for everything structural or significant produces in the first instance some sensuous impression and figures as a spot or pattern in the field of vision4 ,the fortunate architect is he who has1 for structural skeleton in his work1 a form in itself decorative and beautiful1 who can carry it out in a beautiful material1 and who finally is suffered to add so much decoration as the eye may take in with pleasure1 without losing the expression and lucidity of the whole4 ,it is impossible1 however1 to imagine beforehand what these elements should be or how to combine them4 ,the problem must exist before its solution can be found4 ,the forms of good taste and beauty which a man can think of or esteem are limited by the scope of his previous experience4 ,it would be impossible to foresee or desire a beauty which had not somehow grown up of itself and been recognised receptively4 ,a satisfaction cannot be conceived ideally when neither its organ nor its occasion has as yet arisen4 ,that ideal conception1 to exist1 would have to bring both into play4 ,the fine arts are butter to man's daily bread2 there is no conceiving or creating them except as they spring out of social exigencies4 ,their types are imposed by utility3 their ornamentation betrays the tradition that happens to envelop and diversify them2 their expression and dignity are borrowed from the company they keep in the world4 ,sidenote3 ,its alliance with structure in ,greek architecture4 ,the ,greek temple1 for instance1 if we imagine it in its glory1 with all its colour and furniture1 was a type of human art at its best1 where decoration1 without in the least restricting itself1 took naturally an exquisitely subordinate and pervasive form3 each detail had its own splendour and refinement1 yet kept its place in the whole4 ,structure and decoration were alike traditional and imposed by ulterior practical or religious purposes2 yet1 by good fortune and by grace of that rationality which unified ,greek life1 they fell together easily into a harmony such as imagination could never have devised had it been invited to decree pleasure-domes for non-existent beings4 ,had the ,greek gods been hideous1 their images and fable could not so readily have beautified the place where they were honoured2 and had the structural theme and uses of the temple been more complicated1 they would not have lent themselves so well to decoration without being submerged beneath it4 ,sidenote3 ,relations of the two in ,gothic art4 ,in some ways the ideal ,gothic church attained a similar perfection1 because there too the structure remained lucid and predominant1 while it was enriched by many necessary appointments--altars1 stalls1 screens1 chantries--which1 while really the raison d'tre of the whole edifice1 sthetically regarded1 served for its ornaments4 ,it may be doubted1 however1 whether ,gothic construction was well grounded enough in utility to be a sound and permanent basis for beauty2 and the extreme instability of ,gothic style1 the feverish1 inconstancy of architects straining after effects never1 apparently1 satisfactory when achieved1 shows that something was wrong and artificial in the situation4 ,the structure1 in becoming an ornament1 ceased to be anything else and could be discarded by any one whose fancy preferred a different image4 ,for this reason a building like the cathedral of ,amiens1 where a structural system is put through consistently1 is far from representing medival art in its full and ideal essence2 it is rather an incidental achievement1 a sport in which an adventitious interest is1 for a moment1 emphasised overwhelmingly4 ,intelligence here comes to the fore1 and a sort of mathematical virtuosity3 but it was not mathematical virtuosity nor even intelligence to which1 in ,christian art1 the leading rle properly belonged4 ,what structural elucidation did for church architecture was much like what scholastic elucidation did for church dogma3 it insinuated a logic into the traditional edifice which was far from representing its soul or its genuine value4 ,the dialectic introduced might be admirable in itself1 in its lay and abstruse rationality2 but it could not be applied to the poetic material in hand without rendering it absurd and sterile4 ,the given problem was scientifically carried out1 but the given problem was itself fantastic4 ,to vault at such heights and to prop that vault with external buttresses was a gratuitous undertaking4 ,the result was indeed interesting1 the ingenuity and method exhibited were masterly in their way2 yet the result was not proportionate in beauty to the effort required2 it was after all a technical and a vain triumph4 ,sidenote3 ,the result here romantic4 ,the true magic of that very architecture lay not in its intelligible structure but in the bewildering incidental effects which that structure permitted4 ,the part in such churches is better than the symmetrical whole2 often incompleteness and accretions alone give grace or expression1 to the monument4 ,a cross vista where all is wonder1 a side chapel where all is peace1 strike the key-note here2 not that punctilious and wooden repetition of props and arches1 as a builder's model might boast to exhibit them4 ,perhaps the most beautiful ,gothic interiors are those without aisles1 if what we are considering is their proportion and majesty2 elsewhere the structure1 if perceived at all1 is too artificial and strange to be perceived intuitively and to have the glow of a genuine beauty4 ,there is an over-ingenious mechanism1 redeemed by its colour and the thousand intervening objects1 when these have not been swept away4 ,glazed and painted as ,gothic churches were meant to be1 they were no doubt exceedingly gorgeous4 ,when we admire their structural scheme we are perhaps nursing an illusion like that which sentimental classicists once cherished when they talked about the purity of white marble statues and the ideality of their blank and sightless eyes4 ,what we treat as a supreme quality may have been a mere means to medival builders1 and a mechanical expedient3 their simple hearts were set on making their churches1 for ,god's glory and their own1 as large1 as high1 and as rich as possible4 ,after all1 an uninterrupted tradition attached them to ,byzantium2 and it was the sudden passion for stained glass and the goldsmith's love of intricate fineness--which the ,saracens also had shown--that carried them in a century from ,romanesque to flamboyant4 ,the structure was but the inevitable underpinning for the desired display4 ,if these sanctuaries1 in their spoliation and ruin1 now show us their admirable bones1 we should thank nature for that rational skeleton1 imposed by material conditions on an art which in its life-time was goaded on only by a pious and local emulation1 and wished at all costs to be sumptuous and astonishing4 ,sidenote3 ,the medival artist4 ,it was rather in another direction that groping medival art reached its most congenial triumphs4 ,that was an age1 so to speak1 of epidemic privacy2 social contagion was irresistible1 yet it served only to make each man's life no less hard1 narrow1 and visionary than that of every one else4 ,like bees in a hive1 each soul worked in its separate cell by the same impulse as every other4 ,each was absorbed in saving itself only1 but according to a universal prescription4 ,this isolation in unanimity appears in those patient and childlike artists who copied each his leaf or flower1 or imagined each his curious angels and devils1 taking what was told of them so much to heart that his rendering became deeply individual4 ,the lamp of sacrifice--or perhaps rather of ignorance--burned in every workshop2 much labour was wasted in forgetfulness of the function which the work was to perform1 yet a certain pathos and expression was infused into the detail1 on which all invention and pride had to be lavished4 ,carvings and statues at impossible elevations1 minute symbols hidden in corners1 the choice for architectural ornament of animal and vegetable forms1 copied as attentively and quaintly as possible--all this shows how abstractedly the artist surrendered himself to the given task4 ,he dedicated his genius like the widow's mite1 and left the universal composition to ,providence4 ,nor was this humility1 on another side1 wholly pious and sacrificial4 ,the ,middle ,ages were1 in their way1 merry1 sturdy1 and mischievous4 ,a fresh breath1 as of convalescence1 breathed through their misery4 ,never was spring so green and lovely as when men greeted it in a cloistered garden1 with hearts quite empty and clean1 only half-awakened from a long trance of despair4 ,it mattered little at such a moment where a work was to figure or whether any one should ever enjoy it4 ,the pleasure and the function lay here1 in this private revelation1 in this playful dialogue between a bit of nature and a passing mood4 ,when a ,greek workman cut a volute or a moulding1 he was not asked to be a poet2 he was merely a scribe1 writing out what some master had composed before him4 ,the spirit of his art1 if that was called forth consciously at all1 could be nothing short of intelligence4 ,those lines and none other1 he would say to himself1 are requisite and sufficient3 to do less would be unskilful1 to do more would be perverse4 ,but the medival craftsman was irresponsible in his earnestness4 ,the whole did not concern him1 for the whole was providential and therefore1 to the artist1 irrelevant4 ,he was only responsible inwardly1 to his casual inspiration1 to his individual model1 and his allotted block of stone4 ,with these he carried on1 as it were1 an ingenuous dialectic1 asking them questions by a blow of the hammer1 and gathering their oracular answers experimentally from the result4 ,art1 like salvation1 proceeded by a series of little miracles2 it was a blind work1 half stubborn patience1 half unmerited grace4 ,if the product was destined to fill a niche in the celestial edifice1 that was ,god's business and might be left to him3 what concerned the sculptor was to-day's labour and joy1 with the shrewd wisdom they might bring after them4 ,sidenote3 ,representation introduced4 ,gothic ornament was accordingly more than ornament2 it was sculpture4 ,to the architect sculpture and painting are only means of variegating a surface2 light and shade1 depth and elaboration1 are thereby secured and aid him in distributing his masses4 ,for this reason geometrical or highly conventionalised ornament is all the architect requires4 ,if his decorators furnish more1 if they insist on copying natural forms or illustrating history1 that is their own affair4 ,their humanity will doubtless give them1 as representative artists1 a new claim on human regard1 and the building they enrich in their pictorial fashion will gain a new charm1 just as it would gain by historic associations or by the smell of incense clinging to its walls4 ,when the arts superpose their effects the total impression belongs to none of them in particular2 it is imaginative merely or in the broadest sense poetical4 ,so the monumental function of ,greek sculpture1 and the interpretations it gave to national myths1 made every temple a storehouse of poetic memories4 ,in the same way every great cathedral became a pious story-book4 ,construction1 by admitting applied decoration1 offers a splendid basis and background for representative art4 ,it is in their decorative function that construction and representation meet2 they are able to conspire in one ideal effect by virtue of the common appeal which they unwittingly make to the senses4 ,if construction were not decorative it could never ally itself imaginatively to decoration2 and decoration in turn would never be willingly representative if the forms which illustration requires were not decorative in themselves4 ,sidenote3 ,transition to illustration4 ,illustration has nevertheless an intellectual function by which it diverges altogether from decoration and even1 in the narrowest sense of the word1 from art3 for the essence of illustration lies neither in use nor in beauty4 ,the illustrator's impulse is to reproduce and describe given objects4 ,he wishes in the first place to force observers--overlooking all logical scruples--to call his work by the name of its subject matter2 and then he wishes to inform them further1 through his representation1 and to teach them to apprehend the real object as1 in its natural existence1 it might never have been apprehended4 ,his first task is to translate the object faithfully into his special medium2 his second task1 somewhat more ambitious1 is so to penetrate into the object during that process of translation that this translation may become at the same time analytic and imaginative1 in that it signalises the object's structure and emphasises its ideal suggestions4 ,in such reproduction both hand and mind are called upon to construct and build up a new apparition2 but here construction has ceased to be chiefly decorative or absolute in order to become representative4 ,the sthetic element in art has begun to recede before the intellectual2 and sensuous effects1 while of course retained and still studied1 seem to be impressed into the service of ideas4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,plastic ,,representation ,sidenote3 ,psychology of imitation4 ,imitation is a fertile principle in the ,life of ,reason4 ,we have seen that it furnishes the only rational sanction for belief in any fellow mind2 now we shall see how it creates the most glorious and interesting of plastic arts4 ,the machinery of imitation is obscure but its prevalence is obvious1 and even in the present rudimentary state of human biology we may perhaps divine some of its general features4 ,in a motor image the mind represents prophetically what the body is about to execute3 but all images are more or less motor1 so that no idea1 apparently1 can occupy the mind unless the body has received some impulse to enact the same4 ,the plastic instinct to reproduce what is seen is therefore simply an uninterrupted and adequate seeing2 these two phenomena1 separable logically and divided in ,cartesian psychology by an artificial chasm1 are inseparable in existence and are1 for natural history1 two parts of the same event4 ,that an image should exist for consciousness is1 abstractly regarded1 a fact which neither involves motion nor constitutes knowledge2 but that natural relation to ulterior events which endows that image with a cognitive function identifies it at the same time with the motor impulse which accompanies the idea4 ,if the image involved no bodily attitude and prophesied no action it would refer to no eventual existence and would have no practical meaning4 ,even if it meant to refer to something ulterior it would1 under those circumstances1 miss its aim1 seeing that no natural relation connected it with any object which could support or verify its asseverations4 ,it might feel significant1 like a dream1 but its significance would be vain and not really self-transcendent2 for it is in the world of events that logic must find application1 if it cares for applicability at all4 ,this needful bond between ideas and the further existences they forebode is not merely a logical postulate1 taken on trust because the ideas in themselves assert it2 it is a previous and genetic bond1 proper to the soil in which the idea flourishes and a condition of its existence4 ,for the idea expresses unawares a present cerebral event of which the ulterior event consciously looked to is a descendant or an ancestor2 so that the ripening of that idea1 or its prior history1 leads materially to the fact which the idea seeks to represent ideally4 ,sidenote3 ,sustained sensation involves reproduction4 ,in some such fashion we may come to conceive how imitative art is simply the perfection and fulfilment of sensation4 ,the act of apperception in which a sensation is reflected upon and understood is already an internal reproduction4 ,the object is retraced and gone over in the mind1 not without quite perceptible movements in the limbs1 which sway1 as it were1 in sympathy with the object's habit4 ,presumably this incipient imitation of the object is the physical basis for apperception itself2 the stimulus1 whatever devious courses it may pursue1 reconstitutes itself into an impulse to render the object again1 as we acquire the accent which we often hear4 ,this imitation sometimes has the happiest results1 in that the animal fights with one that fights1 and runs after one that runs away from him4 ,all this happens initially1 as we may still observe in ourselves1 quite without thought of eventual profit2 although if chase leads to contact1 and contact stimulates hunger or lust1 movements important for preservation will quickly follow4 ,such eventual utilities1 however1 like all utilities1 are supported by a prodigious gratuitous vitality1 and long before a practical or scientific use of sensation is attained its artistic force is in full operation4 ,if art be play1 it is only because all life is play in the beginning4 ,rational adjustments to truth and to benefit supervene only occasionally and at a higher level4 ,sidenote3 ,imitative art repeats with intent to repeat1 and in a new material4 ,imitation cannot1 of course1 result in a literal repetition of the object that suggests it4 ,the copy is secondary2 it does not iterate the model by creating a second object on the same plane of reality1 but reproduces the form in a new medium and gives it a different function4 ,in these latter circumstances lies the imitative essence of the second image3 for one leaf does not imitate another nor is each twin the other's copy4 ,like sensibility1 imitation remodels a given being so that it becomes1 in certain formal respects1 like another being in its environment4 ,it is a response and an index1 by which note is taken of a situation or of its possible developments4 ,when a man involuntarily imitates other men1 he does not become those other persons2 he is simply modified by their presence in a manner that allows him to conceive their will and their independent existence1 not without growing similar to them in some measure and framing a genuine representation of them in his soul4 ,he enacts what he understands1 and his understanding consists precisely in knowing that he is re-enacting something which has its collateral existence elsewhere in nature4 ,an element in the percipient repeats the total movement and tendency of the person perceived4 ,the imitation1 though akin to what it imitates1 and reproducing it1 lies in a different medium1 and accordingly has a specific individuality and specific effects4 ,imitation is far more than similarity1 nor does its ideal function lie in bringing a flat and unmeaning similarity about4 ,it has a representative and intellectual value because in reproducing the forms of things it reproduces them in a fresh substance to a new purpose4 ,if ,i imitate mankind by following their fashions1 ,i add one to the million and improve nothing3 but if ,i imitate them under proper inhibitions and in the service of my own ends1 ,i really understand them1 and1 by representing what ,i do not bodily become1 ,i preserve and enlarge my own being and make it relevant ideally to what it physically depends upon4 ,assimilation is a way of drifting through the flux or of letting it drift through oneself2 representation1 on the contrary1 is a principle of progress4 ,to grow by accumulating passions and fancies is at best to grow in bulk3 it is to become what a colony or a hydra might be4 ,but to make the accretions which time brings to your being representative of what you are not1 and do not wish to be1 is to grow in dignity4 ,it is to be wise and prepared4 ,it is to survey a universe without ceasing to be a mind4 ,sidenote3 ,imitation leads to adaptation and to knowledge4 ,a product of imitative sensibility is accordingly on a higher plane than the original existences it introduces to one another--the ignorant individual and the unknown world4 ,imitation in softening the body into physical adjustment stimulates the mind to ideal representation4 ,this is the case even when the stimulus is a contagious influence or habit1 though the response may then be slavish and the representation vague4 ,sheep jumping a wall after their leader doubtless feel that they are not alone2 and though their action may have no purpose it probably has a felt sanction and reward4 ,men also think they invoke an authority when they appeal to the quod semper et ubique et ab omnibus1 and a conscious unanimity is a human if not a rational joy4 ,when1 however1 the stimulus to imitation is not so pervasive and touches chiefly a single sense1 when what it arouses is a movement of the hand or eye retracing the object1 then the response becomes very definitely cognitive4 ,it constitutes an observation of fact1 an acquaintance with a thing's structure amounting to technical knowledge2 for such a survey leaves behind it a power to reconstitute the process it involved4 ,it leaves an efficacious idea4 ,in an idle moment1 when the information thus acquired need not be put to instant use1 the new-born faculty may work itself out spontaneously4 ,the sound heard is repeated1 the thing observed is sketched1 the event conceived is acted out in pantomime4 ,then imitation rounds itself out2 an uninhibited sensation has become an instinct to keep that sensation alive1 and plastic representation has begun4 ,sidenote3 ,how the artist is inspired and irresponsible4 ,the secret of representative genius is simple enough4 ,all hangs on intense1 exhaustive1 rehearsed sensation4 ,to paint is a way of letting vision work2 nor should the amateur imagine that while he lacks technical knowledge he can have in his possession all the ideal burden of an art4 ,his reaction will be personal and adventitious1 and he will miss the artist's real inspiration and ignore his genuine successes4 ,you may instruct a poet about literature1 but his allegiance is to emotion4 ,you may offer the sculptor your comparative observations on style and taste2 he may or may not care to listen1 but what he knows and loves is the human body4 ,critics are in this way always one stage behind or beyond the artist2 their operation is reflective and his is direct4 ,in transferring to his special medium what he has before him his whole mind is lost in the object2 as the marksman1 to shoot straight1 looks at the mark4 ,how successful the result is1 or how appealing to human nature1 he judges afterwards1 as an outsider might1 and usually judges ill2 since there is no life less apt to yield a broad understanding for human affairs or even for the residue of art itself1 than the life of a man inspired1 a man absorbed1 as the genuine artist is1 in his own travail4 ,but into this travail1 into this digestion and reproduction of the thing seen1 a critic can hardly enter4 ,having himself the ulterior office of judge1 he must not hope to rival nature's children in their sportiveness and intuition4 ,in an age of moral confusion1 these circumstances may lead to a strange shifting of rles4 ,the critic1 feeling that something in the artist has escaped him1 may labour to put himself in the artist's place4 ,if he succeeded1 the result would only be to make him a biographer2 he would be describing in words the very intuitions which the artist had rendered in some other medium4 ,to understand how the artist felt1 however1 is not criticism2 criticism is an investigation of what the work is good for4 ,its function may be chiefly to awaken certain emotions in the beholder1 to deepen in him certain habits of apperception2 but even this most sthetic element in a work's operation does not borrow its value from the possible fact that the artist also shared those habits and emotions4 ,if he did1 and if they are desirable1 so much the better for him2 but his work's value would still consist entirely in its power to propagate such good effects1 whether they were already present in him or not4 ,all criticism is therefore moral1 since it deals with benefits and their relative weight4 ,psychological penetration and reconstructed biography may be excellent sport2 if they do not reach historic truth they may at least exercise dramatic talent4 ,criticism1 on the other hand1 is a serious and public function2 it shows the race assimilating the individual1 dividing the immortal from the mortal part of a soul4 ,sidenote3 ,need of knowing and loving the subject rendered4 ,representation naturally repeats those objects which are most interesting in themselves4 ,even the medium1 when a choice is possible1 is usually determined by the sort of objects to be reproduced4 ,instruments lose their virtue with their use and a medium of representation1 together with its manipulation1 is nothing but a vehicle4 ,it is fit if it makes possible a good rendition4 ,all accordingly hangs on what life has made interesting to the senses1 on what presents itself persuasively to the artist for imitation2 and living arts exist only while well-known1 much-loved things imperatively demand to be copied1 so that their reproduction has some honest non-sthetic interest for mankind4 ,although subject matter is often said to be indifferent to art1 and an artist1 when his art is secondary1 may think of his technique only1 nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject4 ,if any remnant of inspiration or value clings to such a performance1 it comes from a surviving taste for something in the real world4 ,thus the literature that calls itself purely sthetic is in truth prurient2 without this half-avowed weakness to play upon1 the coloured images evoked would have had nothing to marshall or to sustain them4 ,sidenote3 ,public interests determine the subject of art1 and the subject the medium4 ,a good way to understand schools and styles and to appreciate their respective functions and successes is to consider first what region of nature preoccupied the age in which they arose4 ,perception can cut the world up into many patterns1 which it isolates and dignifies with the name of things4 ,it must distinguish before it can reproduce and the objects which attention distinguishes are of many strange sorts4 ,thus the single man1 the hero1 in his acts of prowess or in his readiness1 may be the unit and standard in discourse4 ,it will then be his image that will preoccupy the arts4 ,for such a task the most adequate art is evidently sculpture1 for sculpture is the most complete of imitations4 ,in no other art can apprehension render itself so exhaustively and with such recuperative force4 ,sculpture retains form and colour1 with all that both can suggest1 and it retains them in their integrity1 leaving the observer free to resurvey them from any point of view and drink in their quality exhaustively4 ,sidenote3 ,reproduction by acting ephemera4 ,the movement and speech which are wanting1 the stage may be called upon to supply2 but it cannot supply them without a terrible sacrifice1 for it cannot give permanence to it expression4 ,acting is for this reason an inferior art1 not perhaps in difficulty and certainly not in effect1 but inferior in dignity1 since the effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence1 to recreate it in the eternal1 and this ideal is half frustrated if the representation is itself fleeting and the rendering has no firmer subsistence than the inspiration that gave it birth4 ,by making himself1 almost in his entirety1 the medium of his art1 the actor is morally diminished1 and as little of him remains in his work1 when this is good1 as of his work in history4 ,he lends himself without interest1 and after being ,brutus at one moment and ,falstaff at another1 he is not more truly himself4 ,he is abolished by his creations1 which nevertheless cannot survive him4 ,sidenote3 ,high demands of sculpture4 ,being so adequate a rendering of its object1 sculpture demands a perfect mastery over it and is correspondingly difficult4 ,it requires taste and training above every other art2 for not only must the material form be reproduced1 but its motor suggestions and moral expression must be rendered2 things which in the model itself are at best transitory1 and which may never be found there if a heroic or ideal theme is proposed4 ,the sculptor is obliged to have caught on the wing attitudes momentarily achieved or vaguely imagined2 yet these must grow firm and harmonious under his hand4 ,nor is this enough2 for sculpture is more dependent than other arts on its model4 ,if the statue is to be ideal1 i4e41 if it is to express the possible motions and vital character of its subject1 the model must itself be refined4 ,training must have cut in the flesh those lines which are to make the language and eloquence of the marble4 ,trivial and vulgar forms1 such as modern sculpture abounds in1 reflect an undisciplined race of men1 one in which neither soul nor body has done anything well1 because the two have done nothing together4 ,the frame has remained gross or awkward1 while the face has taken on a tense expression1 betraying loose and undignified habits of mind4 ,to carve such a creature is to perpetuate a caricature4 ,the modern sculptor is stopped short at the first conception of a figure2 if he gives it its costume1 it is grotesque2 if he strips it1 it is unmeaning and pitiful4 ,sidenote3 ,it is essentially obsolete4 ,greece was in all these respects a soil singularly favourable to sculpture4 ,the success there achieved was so conspicuous that two thousand years of essential superfluity have not availed to extirpate the art4 ,plastic impulse is indeed immortal1 and many a hand1 even without classic example1 would have fallen to modelling4 ,in the middle ages1 while monumental sculpture was still rudely reminiscent1 ornamental carving arose spontaneously4 ,yet at every step the experimental sculptor would run up against disaster4 ,what could be seen in the streets1 while it offered plenty of subjects1 offered none that could stimulate his talent4 ,his patrons asked only for illustration and applied ornament2 his models offered only the smirk and sad humour of a stunted life4 ,here and there his statues might attain a certain sweetness and grace1 such as painting might perfectly well have rendered2 but on the whole sculpture remained decorative and infantile4 ,the ,renaissance brought back technical freedom and a certain inspiration1 unhappily a retrospective and exotic one4 ,the art cut praiseworthy capers in the face of the public1 but nobody could teach the public itself to dance4 ,if several great temperaments1 under the auspices of fashion1 could then call up a magic world in which bodies still spoke a heroic language1 that was a passing dream4 ,society could not feed such an artificial passion1 nor the schools transmit an arbitrary personal style that responded to nothing permanent in social conditions4 ,academies continued to offer prizes for sculpture1 the nude continued to be seen in studios1 and equestrian or other rhetorical statues continued occasionally to be erected in public squares4 ,heroic sculpture1 however1 in modern society1 is really an anomaly and confesses as much by being a failure4 ,no personal talent avails to rescue an art from laboured insignificance when it has no steadying function in the moral world1 and must waver between caprice and convention4 ,where something modest and genuine peeped out was in portraiture1 and also at times in that devotional sculpture in wood which still responded to a native interest and consequently kept its sincerity and colour4 ,pious images may be feeble in the extreme1 but they have not the weakness of being merely sthetic4 ,the purveyor of church wares has a stated theme2 he is employed for a purpose2 and if he has enough technical resource his work may become truly beautiful3 which is not to say that he will succeed if his conceptions are without dignity or his style without discretion4 ,there are good ,mater dolorosas2 there is no good ,sacred ,heart4 ,sidenote3 ,when men see groups and backgrounds they are natural painters4 ,it may happen1 however1 that people are not interested in subjects that demand or allow reproduction in bulk4 ,the isolated figure or simple group may seem cold apart from its natural setting4 ,in rendering an action you may need to render its scene1 if it is the circumstance that gives it value rather than the hero4 ,you may also wish to trace out the action through a series of episodes with many figures4 ,in the latter case you might have recourse to a bas-relief1 which1 although durable1 is usually a thankless work2 there is little in it that might not be conveyed in a drawing with distinctness4 ,as some artists1 like ,michael ,angelo1 have carried the sculptor's spirit into painting1 many more1 when painting is the prevalent and natural art1 have produced carved pictures4 ,it may be said that any work is essentially a picture which is conceived from a single quarter and meant to be looked at only in one light4 ,objects in such a case need not be so truly apperceived and appropriated as they would have to be in true sculpture4 ,one aspect suffices3 the subject presented is not so much constructed as dreamt4 ,sidenote3 ,evolution of painting4 ,the whole history of painting may be strung on this single thread--the effort to reconstitute impressions1 first the dramatic impression and then the sensuous4 ,a summary and symbolic representation of things is all that at first is demanded2 the point is to describe something pictorially and recall people's names and actions4 ,it is characteristic of archaic painting to be quite discursive and symbolic2 each figure is treated separately and stuck side by side with the others upon a golden ground4 ,the painter is here smothered in the recorder1 in the annalist2 only those perceptions are allowed to stand which have individual names or chronicle facts mentioned in the story4 ,but vision is really more sensuous and rich than report1 if art is only able to hold vision in suspense and make it explicit4 ,when painting is still at this stage1 and is employed on hieroglyphics1 it may reach the maximum of decorative splendour4 ,whatever sensuous glow finer representations may later acquire will be not sensuous merely1 but poetical2 ,titians1 ,murillos1 or ,turners are colourists in representation1 and their canvases would not be particularly warm or luminous if they represented nothing human or mystical or atmospheric4 ,a stained-glass window or a wall of tiles can outdo them for pure colour and decorative magic4 ,leaving decoration1 accordingly1 to take care of itself and be applied as sense may from time to time require1 painting goes on to elaborate the symbols with which it begins1 to make them symbolise more and more of what their object contains4 ,a catalogue of persons will fall into a group1 a group will be fused into a dramatic action4 ,conventional as the separate figures may still be1 their attitudes and relations will reconstitute the dramatic impression4 ,the event will be rendered in its own language2 it will not1 to be recognised1 have to appeal to words4 ,thus a symbolic crucifixion is a crucifixion only because we know by report that it is2 a plastic crucifixion would first teach us1 on the contrary1 what a real crucifixion might be4 ,it only remains to supply the aerial medium and make dramatic truth sensuous truth also4 ,sidenote3 ,sensuous and dramatic adequacy approached4 ,to work up a sensation intellectually and reawaken all its passionate associations is to reach a new and more exciting sensation which we call emotion or thought4 ,as in poetry there are two stages1 one pregnant and prior to prose and another posterior and synthetic1 so in painting we have not only a reversion to sense but an ulterior synthesis of the sensuous1 its interpretation in a dramatic or poetic vision4 ,archaic painting1 with its abstract rendering of separate things1 is the prose of design4 ,it would not be beautiful at all but for its colour and technical feeling--that expression of candour and satisfaction which may pervade it1 as it might a ,latin rhyme4 ,to correct this thinness and dislocation1 to restore life without losing significance1 painting must proceed to accumulate symbol upon symbol1 till the original impression is almost restored1 but so restored that it contains all the articulation which a thorough analysis had given it4 ,such painting as ,tintoretto's or ,paolo ,veronese's records impressions as a cultivated sense might receive them4 ,it glows with visible light and studies the sensuous appearance1 but it contains at the same time an intelligent expression of all those mechanisms1 those situations and passions1 with which the living world is diversified4 ,it is not a design in spots1 meant merely to outdo a sunset2 it is a richer dream of experience1 meant to outshine the reality4 ,in order to reconstitute the image we may take an abstract representation or hieroglyphic and gradually increase its depth and its scope4 ,as the painter becomes aware of what at first he had ignored1 he adds colour to outline1 modelling to colour1 and finally an observant rendering of tints and values4 ,this process gives back to objects their texture and atmosphere1 and the space in which they lie4 ,from a representation which is statuesque in feeling and which renders figures by furnishing a visible inventory of their parts and attributes1 the artist passes to considering his figures more and more as parts of a whole and as moving in an ambient ether4 ,they tend accordingly to lose their separate emphasis1 in order to be like flowers in a field or trees in a forest4 ,they become elements1 interesting chiefly by their interplay1 and shining by a light which is mutually reflected4 ,sidenote3 ,essence of landscape-painting4 ,when this transformation is complete the painting is essentially a landscape4 ,it may not represent precisely the open country2 it may even depict an interior1 like ,velasquez's ,meninas4 ,but the observer1 even in the presence of men and artificial objects1 has been overcome by the medium in which they swim4 ,he is seeing the air and what it happens to hold4 ,he is impartially recreating from within all that nature puts before him1 quite as if his imagination had become their diffused material substance4 ,whatever individuality and moral value these bits of substance may have they acquire for him1 as for nature1 incidentally and by virtue of ulterior relations consequent on their physical being4 ,if this physical being is wholly expressed1 the humanity and morality involved will be expressed likewise1 even if expressed unawares4 ,thus a profound and omnivorous reverie overflows the mind2 it devours its objects or is absorbed into them1 and the mood which this active self-alienation brings with it is called the spirit of the scene1 the sentiment of the landscape4 ,perception and art1 in this phase1 easily grow mystical2 they are readily lost in primordial physical sympathies4 ,although at first a certain articulation and discursiveness may be retained in the picture1 so that the things seen in their atmosphere and relations may still be distinguished clearly1 the farther the impartial absorption in them goes1 the more what is inter-individual rises and floods the individual over4 ,all becomes light and depth and air1 and those particular objects threaten to vanish which we had hoped to make luminous1 breathing1 and profound4 ,the initiated eye sees so many nameless tints and surfaces1 that it can no longer select any creative limits for things4 ,there cease to be fixed outlines1 continuous colours1 or discrete existences in nature4 ,sidenote3 ,its threatened dissolution4 ,an artist1 however1 cannot afford to forget that even in such a case units and divisions would have to be introduced by him into his work4 ,a man1 in falling back on immediate reality1 or immediate appearance1 may well feel his mind's articulate grammar losing its authority1 but that grammar must evidently be reasserted if from the immediate he ever wishes to rise again to articulate mind2 and art1 after all1 exists for the mind and must speak humanly4 ,if we crave something else1 we have not so far to go3 there is always the infinite about us and the animal within us to absolve us from human distinctions4 ,moreover1 it is not quite true that the immediate has no real diversity4 ,it evidently suggests the ideal terms into which we divide it1 and it sustains our apprehension itself1 with all the diversities this may create4 ,to what ,i call right and left1 light and darkness1 a real opposition must correspond in any reality which is at all relevant to my experience2 so that ,i should fail to integrate my impression1 and to absorb the only reality that concerns me1 if ,i obliterated those points of reference which originally made the world figured and visible4 ,space remains absolutely dark1 for all the infinite light which we may declare to be radiating through it1 until this light is concentrated in one body or reflected from another2 and a landscape cannot be so much as vaporous unless mists are distinguishable in it1 and through them some known object which they obscure4 ,in a word1 landscape is always1 in spite of itself1 a collection of particular representations4 ,it is a mass of hieroglyphics1 each the graphic symbol for some definite human sensation or reaction2 only these symbols have been extraordinarily enriched and are fused in representation1 so that1 like instruments in an orchestra1 they are merged in the voluminous sensation they constitute together1 a sensation in which1 for attentive perception1 they never cease to exist4 ,sidenote3 ,reversion to pure decorative design4 ,impatience of such control as reality must always exercise over representation may drive painting back to a simpler function4 ,when a designer1 following his own automatic impulse1 conventionalises a form1 he makes a legitimate exchange1 substituting fidelity to his apperceptive instincts for fidelity to his external impressions4 ,when a landscape-painter1 revolting against a tedious discursive style1 studies only masses of colour and abstract systems of lines1 he retains something in itself beautiful1 although no longer representative1 perhaps1 of anything in nature4 ,a pure impression cannot be illegitimate2 it cannot be false until it pretends to represent something1 and then it will have ceased to be a simple feeling1 since something in it will refer to an ulterior existence1 to which it ought to conform4 ,this ulterior existence 7since intelligence is life understanding its own conditions7 can be nothing in the end but what produced that impression4 ,sensuous life1 however1 has its value within itself2 its pleasures are not significant4 ,representative art is accordingly in a sense secondary2 beauty and expression begin farther back4 ,they are present whenever the outer stimulus agreeably strikes an organ and thereby arouses a sustained image1 in which the consciousness of both stimulation and reaction is embodied4 ,an abstract design in outline and colour will amply fulfil these conditions1 if sensuous and motor harmonies are preserved in it1 and if a sufficient sweep and depth of reaction is secured4 ,stained-glass1 tapestry1 panelling1 and in a measure all objects1 by their mere presence and distribution1 have a decorative function4 ,when sculpture and painting cease to be representative they pass into the same category4 ,decoration in turn merges in construction2 and so all art1 like the whole ,life of ,reason1 is joined together at its roots1 and branches out from the vital processes of sensation and reaction4 ,diversity arises centrifugally1 according to the provinces explored and the degree of mutual checking and control to which the various extensions are subjected4 ,sidenote3 ,sensuous values are primordial and so indispensable4 ,organisation1 both internal and adaptive1 marks the dignity and authority which each art may have attained2 but this advantage1 important as is must seem to a philosopher or a legislator1 is not what the artist chiefly considers4 ,his privilege is to remain capricious in his response to the full-blown universe of science and passion1 and to be still sensuous in his highest imaginings4 ,he cares for structure only when it is naturally decorative4 ,he thinks gates were invented for the sake of triumphal arches1 and forests for the sake of poets and deer4 ,representation1 with all it may represent1 means to him simply what it says to his emotions4 ,in all this the artist1 though in one sense foolish1 in another way is singularly sane2 for1 after all1 everything must pass through the senses1 and life1 whatever its complexity1 remains always primarily a feeling4 ,to render this feeling delightful1 to train the senses to their highest potency and harmony in operation1 is to begin life well4 ,were the foundations defective and subject to internal strain there could be little soundness in the superstructure4 sthetic activity is far from being a late or adventitious ornament in human economy2 it is an elementary factor1 the perfection of an indispensable vehicle4 ,whenever science or morals have done violence to sense they have decreed their own dissolution4 ,to sense a rebellious appeal will presently be addressed1 and the appeal will go against rash and empty dogmas4 ,a keen sthetic sensibility and a flourishing art mark the puberty of reason4 ,fertility comes later1 after a marriage with the practical world4 ,but a sensuous ripening is needed first1 such as myth and ornament betray in their exuberance4 ,a man who has no feeling for feeling and no felicity in expression will hardly know what he is about in his further undertakings4 ,he will have missed his first lesson in living spontaneously and well4 ,not knowing himself1 he will be all hearsay and pedantry4 ,he may fall into the superstition of supposing that what gives life value can be something external to life4 ,science and morals are themselves arts that express natural impulses and find experimental rewards4 ,this fact1 in betraying their analogy to sthetic activity1 enables them also to vindicate their excellence4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,justification ,,of ,,art ,sidenote3 ,art is subject to moral censorship4 ,it is no longer the fashion among philosophers to decry art4 ,either its influence seems to them too slight to excite alarm1 or their systems are too lax to subject anything to censure which has the least glamour or ideality about it4 ,tired1 perhaps1 of daily resolving the conflict between science and religion1 they prefer to assume silently a harmony between morals and art4 ,moral harmonies1 however1 are not given2 they have to be made4 ,the curse of superstition is that it justifies and protracts their absence by proclaiming their invisible presence4 ,of course a rational religion could not conflict with a rational science2 and similarly an art that was wholly admirable would necessarily play into the hands of progress4 ,but as the real difficulty in the former case lies in saying what religion and what science would be truly rational1 so here the problem is how far extant art is a benefit to mankind1 and how far1 perhaps1 a vice or a burden4 ,sidenote3 ,its initial or specific excellence is not enough4 ,that art is prima facie and in itself a good cannot be doubted4 ,it is a spontaneous activity1 and that settles the question4 ,yet the function of ethics is precisely to revise prima facie judgments of this kind and to fix the ultimate resultant of all given interests1 in so far as they can be combined4 ,in the actual disarray of human life and desire1 wisdom consists in knowing what goods to sacrifice and what simples to pour into the supreme mixture4 ,the extent to which sthetic values are allowed to colour the resultant or highest good is a point of great theoretic importance1 not only for art but for general philosophy4 ,if art is excluded altogether or given only a trivial rle1 perhaps as a necessary relaxation1 we feel at once that a philosophy so judging human arts is ascetic or post-rational4 ,it pretends to guide life from above and from without2 it has discredited human nature and mortal interests1 and has thereby undermined itself1 since it is at best but a partial expression of that humanity which it strives to transcend4 ,if1 on the contrary1 art is prized as something supreme and irresponsible1 if the poetic and mystic glow which it may bring seems its own complete justification1 then philosophy is evidently still prerational or1 rather1 non-existent2 for the beasts that listened to ,orpheus belong to this school4 ,to be bewitched is not to be saved1 though all the magicians and sthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so4 ,intoxication is a sad business1 at least for a philosopher2 for you must either drown yourself altogether1 or else when sober again you will feel somewhat fooled by yesterday's joys and somewhat lost in to-day's vacancy4 ,the man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality1 not merely in art1 but in all existence4 ,he is vexed at conditions of excellence that make him conscious of his own incompetence and failure4 ,rather than consider his function1 he proclaims his self-sufficiency4 ,a way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world4 ,it is in the world1 however1 that art must find its level4 ,it must vindicate its function in the human commonwealth4 ,what direct acceptable contribution does it make to the highest good8 ,what sacrifices1 if any1 does it impose8 ,what indirect influence does it exert on other activities8 ,our answer to these questions will be our apology for art1 our proof that art belongs to the ,life of ,reason4 ,sidenote3 ,all satisfactions1 however hurtful1 have an initial worth4 ,when moralists deprecate passion and contrast it with reason1 they do so1 if they are themselves rational1 only because passion is so often 8guilty10 because it works havoc so often in the surrounding world and leaves1 among other ruins1 8a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed40 ,were there no danger of such after-effects within and without the sufferer1 no passion would be reprehensible4 ,nature is innocent1 and so are all her impulses and moods when taken in isolation2 it is only on meeting that they blush4 ,if it be true that matter is sinful1 the logic of this truth is far from being what the fanatics imagine who commonly propound it4 ,matter is sinful only because it is insufficient1 or is wastefully distributed4 ,there is not enough of it to go round among the legion of hungry ideas4 ,to embody or enact an idea is the only way of making it actual2 but its embodiment may mutilate it1 if the material or the situation is not propitious4 ,so an infant may be maimed at birth1 when what injures him is not being brought forth1 but being brought forth in the wrong manner4 ,matter has a double function in respect to existence2 essentially it enables the spirit to be1 yet chokes it incidentally4 ,men sadly misbegotten1 or those who are thwarted at every step by the times' penury1 may fall to thinking of matter only by its defect1 ignoring the material ground of their own aspirations4 ,all flesh will seem to them weak1 except that forgotten piece of it which makes their own spiritual strength4 ,every impulse1 however1 had initially the same authority as this censorious one1 by which the others are now judged and condemned4 ,sidenote3 ,but1 on the whole1 artistic activity is innocent4 ,if a practice can point to its innocence1 if it can absolve itself from concern for a world with which it does not interfere1 it has justified itself to those who love it1 though it may not yet have recommended itself to those who do not4 ,now art1 more than any other considerable pursuit1 more even than speculation1 is abstract and inconsequential4 ,born of suspended attention1 it ends in itself4 ,it encourages sensuous abstraction1 and nothing concerns it less than to influence the world4 ,nor does it really do so in a notable degree4 ,social changes do not reach artistic expression until after their momentum is acquired and their other collateral effects are fully predetermined4 ,scarcely is a school of art established1 giving expression to prevailing sentiment1 when this sentiment changes and makes that style seem empty and ridiculous4 ,the expression has little or no power to maintain the movement it registers1 as a waterfall has little or no power to bring more water down4 ,currents may indeed cut deep channels1 but they cannot feed their own springs--at least not until the whole revolution of nature is taken into account4 ,in the individual1 also1 art registers passions without stimulating them2 on the contrary1 in stopping to depict them it steals away their life2 and whatever interest and delight it transfers to their expression it subtracts from their vital energy4 ,this appears unmistakably in erotic and in religious art4 ,though the artist's avowed purpose here be to arouse a practical impulse1 he fails in so far as he is an artist in truth2 for he then will seek to move the given passions only through beauty1 but beauty is a rival object of passion in itself4 ,lascivious and pious works1 when beauty has touched them1 cease to give out what is wilful and disquieting in their subject and become altogether intellectual and sublime4 ,there is a high breathlessness about beauty that cancels lust and superstition4 ,the artist1 in taking the latter for his theme1 renders them innocent and interesting1 because he looks at them from above1 composes their attitudes and surroundings harmoniously1 and makes them food for the mind4 ,accordingly it is only in a refined and secondary stage that active passions like to amuse themselves with their sthetic expression4 ,unmitigated lustiness and raw fanaticism will snarl at pictures4 ,representations begin to interest when crude passions recede1 and feel the need of conciliating liberal interests and adding some intellectual charm to their dumb attractions4 ,thus art1 while by its subject it may betray the preoccupations among which it springs up1 embodies a new and quite innocent interest4 ,sidenote3 ,it is liberal4 ,this interest is more than innocent1 it is liberal4 ,not being concerned with material reality so much as with the ideal1 it knows neither ulterior motives nor quantitative limits2 the more beauty there is the more there can be1 and the higher one artist's imagination soars the better the whole flock flies4 ,in sthetic activity we have accordingly one side of rational life2 sensuous experience is dominated there as mechanical or social realities ought to be dominated in science and politics4 ,such dominion comes of having faculties suited to their conditions and consequently finding an inherent satisfaction in their operation4 ,the justification of life must be ultimately intrinsic2 and wherever such self-justifying experience is attained1 the ideal has been in so far embodied4 ,to have realised it in a measure helps us to realise it further2 for there is a cumulative fecundity in those goods which come not by increase of force or matter1 but by a better organisation and form4 ,sidenote3 and typical of perfect activity4 ,art has met1 on the whole1 with more success than science or morals4 ,beauty gives men the best hint of ultimate good which their experience as yet can offer2 and the most lauded geniuses have been poets1 as if people felt that those seers1 rather than men of action or thought1 had lived ideally and known what was worth knowing4 ,that such should be the case1 if the fact be admitted1 would indeed prove the rudimentary state of human civilisation4 ,the truly comprehensive life should be the statesman's1 for whom perception and theory might be expressed and rewarded in action4 ,the ideal dignity of art is therefore merely symbolic and vicarious4 ,as some people study character in novels1 and travel by reading tales of adventure1 because real life is not yet so interesting to them as fiction1 or because they find it cheaper to make their experiments in their dreams1 so art in general is a rehearsal of rational living1 and recasts in idea a world which we have no present means of recasting in reality4 ,yet this rehearsal reveals the glories of a possible performance better than do the miserable experiments until now executed on the reality4 ,when we consider the present distracted state of government and religion1 there is much relief in turning from them to almost any art1 where what is good is altogether and finally good1 and what is bad is at least not treacherous4 ,when we consider further the senseless rivalries1 the vanities1 the ignominy that reign in the 8practical0 world1 how doubly blessed it becomes to find a sphere where limitation is an excellence1 where diversity is a beauty1 and where every man's ambition is consistent with every other man's and even favourable to it6 ,it is indeed so in art2 for we must not import into its blameless labours the bickerings and jealousies of criticism4 ,critics quarrel with other critics1 and that is a part of philosophy4 ,with an artist no sane man quarrels1 any more than with the colour of a child's eyes4 ,as nature1 being full of seeds1 rises into all sorts of crystallisations1 each having its own ideal and potential life1 each a nucleus of order and a habitation for the absolute self1 so art1 though in a medium poorer than pregnant matter1 and incapable of intrinsic life1 generates a semblance of all conceivable beings4 ,what nature does with existence1 art does with appearance2 and while the achievement leaves us1 unhappily1 much where we were before in all our efficacious relations1 it entirely renews our vision and breeds a fresh world in fancy1 where all form has the same inner justification that all life has in the real world4 ,as no insect is without its rights and every cripple has his dream of happiness1 so no artistic fact1 no child of imagination1 is without its small birthright of beauty4 ,in this freer element1 competition does not exist and everything is ,olympian4 ,hungry generations do not tread down the ideal but only its spokesmen or embodiments1 that have cast in their lot with other material things4 ,art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience--the union of life and peace4 ,sidenote3 ,the ideal1 when incarnate1 becomes subject to civil society4 ,sidenote3 ,plato's strictures3 he exaggerates the effect of myths4 ,the ideal1 however1 would not come down from the empyrean and be conceived unless somebody's thought were absorbed in the conception4 ,art actually segregates classes of men and masses of matter to serve its special interests4 ,this involves expense2 it impedes some possible activities and imposes others4 ,on this ground1 from the earliest times until our own1 art has been occasionally attacked by moralists1 who have felt that it fostered idolatry or luxury or irresponsible dreams4 ,of these attacks the most interesting is ,plato's1 because he was an artist by temperament1 bred in the very focus of artistic life and discussion1 and at the same time a consummate moral philosopher4 ,his thetic sensibility was indeed so great that it led him1 perhaps1 into a relative error1 in that he overestimated the influence which art can have on character and affairs4 ,homer's stories about the gods can hardly have demoralised the youths who recited them4 ,no religion has ever given a picture of deity which men could have imitated without the grossest immorality4 ,yet these shocking representations have not had a bad effect on believers4 ,the deity was opposed to their own vices2 those it might itself be credited with offered no contagious example4 ,in spite of the theologians1 we know by instinct that in speaking of the gods we are dealing in myths and symbols4 ,some aspect of nature or some law of life1 expressed in an attribute of deity1 is what we really regard1 and to regard such things1 however sinister they may be1 cannot but chasten and moralise us4 ,the personal character that such a function would involve1 if it were exercised willingly by a responsible being1 is something that never enters our thoughts4 ,no such painful image comes to perplex the plain sense of instinctive1 poetic religion4 ,to give moral importance to myths1 as ,plato tended to do1 is to take them far too seriously and to belittle what they stand for4 ,left to themselves they float in an ineffectual stratum of the brain4 ,they are understood and grow current precisely by not being pressed1 like an idiom or a metaphor4 ,the same sthetic sterility appears at the other end of the scale1 where fancy is anything but sacred4 ,a ,frenchman once saw in 8,punch and ,judy0 a shocking proof of ,british brutality1 destined further to demoralise the nation2 and yet the scandal may pass4 ,that black tragedy reflects not very pretty manners1 but puppets exercise no suasion over men4 ,sidenote3 ,his deeper moral objections4 ,to his supersensitive censure of myths ,plato added strictures upon music and the drama3 to excite passions idly was to enervate the soul4 ,only martial or religious strains should be heard in the ideal republic4 ,furthermore1 art put before us a mere phantom of the good4 ,true excellence was the function things had in use2 the horseman knew the bridle's value and essence better than the artisan did who put it together2 but a painted bridle would lack even this relation to utility4 ,it would rein in no horse1 and was an impertinent sensuous reduplication of what1 even when it had material being1 was only an instrument and a means4 ,this reasoning has been little understood1 because ,platonists so soon lost sight of their master's ,socratic habit and moral intent4 ,they turned the good into an existence1 making it thereby unmeaning4 ,plato's dialectic1 if we do not thus abolish the force of its terms1 is perfectly cogent3 representative art has indeed no utility1 and1 if the good has been identified with efficiency in a military state1 it can have no justification4 ,plato's ,republic was avowedly a fallen state1 a church militant1 coming sadly short of perfection2 and the joy which ,plato as much as any one could feel in sensuous art he postponed1 as a man in mourning might1 until life should be redeemed from baseness4 ,sidenote3 ,their rightness4 ,never have art and beauty received a more glowing eulogy than is implied in ,plato's censure4 ,to him nothing was beautiful that was not beautiful to the core1 and he would have thought to insult art--the remodelling of nature by reason--if he had given it a narrower field than all practice4 ,as an architect who had fondly designed something impossible1 or which might not please in execution1 would at once erase it from the plan and abandon it for the love of perfect beauty and perfect art1 so ,plato wished to erase from pleasing appearance all that1 when its operation was completed1 would bring discord into the world4 ,this was done in the ultimate interest of art and beauty1 which in a cultivated mind are inseparable from the vitally good4 ,it is mere barbarism to feel that a thing is sthetically good but morally evil1 or morally good but hateful to perception4 ,things partially evil or partially ugly may have to be chosen under stress of unfavourable circumstances1 lest some worse thing come2 but if a thing were ugly it would thereby not be wholly good1 and if it were altogether good it would perforce be beautiful4 ,to criticise art on moral grounds is to pay it a high compliment by assuming that it aims to be adequate1 and is addressed to a comprehensive mind4 ,the only way in which art could disallow such criticism would be to protest its irresponsible infancy1 and admit that it was a more or less amiable blatancy in individuals1 and not art at all4 ,young animals often gambol in a delightful fashion1 and men also may1 though hardly when they intend to do so4 ,sportive self-expression can be prized because human nature contains a certain elasticity and margin for experiment1 in which waste activity is inevitable and may be precious3 for this license may lead1 amid a thousand failures1 to some real discovery and advance4 ,art1 like life1 should be free1 since both are experimental4 ,but it is one thing to make room for genius and to respect the sudden madness of poets through which1 possibly1 some god may speak1 and it is quite another not to judge the result by rational standards4 ,the earth's bowels are full of all sorts of rumblings2 which of the oracles drawn thence is true can be judged only by the light of day4 ,if an artist's inspiration has been happy1 it has been so because his work can sweeten or ennoble the mind and because its total effect will be beneficent4 ,art being a part of life1 the criticism of art is a part of morals4 ,sidenote3 ,importance of sthetic alternatives4 ,maladjustments in human society are still so scandalous1 they touch matters so much more pressing than fine art1 that maladjustments in the latter are passed over with a smile1 as if art were at any rate an irresponsible miraculous parasite that the legislator had better not meddle with4 ,the day may come1 however1 if the state is ever reduced to a tolerable order1 when questions of art will be the most urgent questions of morals1 when genius at last will feel responsible1 and the twist given to imagination will seem the most crucial thing in life4 ,under a thin disguise1 the momentous character of imaginative choices has already been fully recognised by mankind4 ,men have passionately loved their special religions1 languages1 and manners1 and preferred death to a life flowering in any other fashion4 ,in justifying this attachment forensically1 with arguments on the low level of men's named and consecrated interests1 people have indeed said1 and perhaps come to believe1 that their imaginative interests were material interests at bottom1 thinking thus to give them more weight and legitimacy2 whereas in truth material life itself would be nothing worth1 were it not1 in its essence and its issue1 ideal4 ,it was stupidly asserted1 however1 that if a man omitted the prescribed ceremonies or had unauthorised dreams about the gods1 he would lose his battles in this world and go to hell in the other4 ,he who runs can see that these expectations are not founded on any evidence1 on any observation of what actually occurs2 they are obviously a mirage arising from a direct ideal passion1 that tries to justify itself by indirection and by falsehoods1 as it has no need to do4 ,we all read facts in the way most congruous with our intellectual habit1 and when this habit drives us to effulgent creations1 absorbing and expressing the whole current of our being1 it not merely biasses our reading of this world but carries us into another world altogether1 which we posit instead of the real one1 or beside it4 ,grotesque as the blunder may seem by which we thus introduce our poetic tropes into the sequence of external events or existences1 the blunder is intellectual only2 morally1 zeal for our special rhetoric may not be irrational4 ,the lovely ,phoebus is no fact for astronomy1 nor does he stand behind the material sun1 in some higher heaven1 physically superintending its movements2 but ,phoebus is a fact in his own region1 a token of man's joyful piety in the presence of the forces that really condition his welfare4 ,in the region of symbols1 in the world of poetry1 ,phoebus has his inalienable rights4 ,forms of poetry are forms of human life4 ,languages express national character and enshrine particular ways of seeing and valuing events4 ,to make substitutions and extensions in expression is to give the soul1 in her inmost substance1 a somewhat new constitution4 ,a method of apperception is a spontaneous variation in mind1 perhaps the origin of a new moral species4 ,the value apperceptive methods have is of course largely representative1 in that they serve more or less aptly to dominate the order of events and to guide action2 but quite apart from this practical value1 expressions possess a character of their own1 a sort of vegetative life1 as languages possess euphony4 ,two reports of the same fact may be equally trustworthy1 equally useful as information1 yet they may embody two types of mental rhetoric1 and this diversity in genius may be of more intrinsic importance than the raw fact it works upon4 ,the non-representative side of human perception may thus be the most momentous side of it1 because it represents1 or even constitutes1 the man4 ,after all1 the chief interest we have in things lies in what we can make of them or what they can make of us4 ,there is consequently nothing fitted to colour human happiness more pervasively than art does1 nor to express more deeply the mind's internal habit4 ,in educating the imagination art crowns all moral endeavour1 which from the beginning is a species of art1 and which becomes a fine art more completely as it works in a freer medium4 ,sidenote3 ,the importance of sthetic goods varies with temperaments4 ,how great a portion of human energies should be spent on art and its appreciation is a question to be answered variously by various persons and nations4 ,there is no ideal priori2 an ideal can but express1 if it is genuine1 the balance of impulses and potentialities in a given soul4 ,a mind at once sensuous and mobile will find its appropriate perfection in studying and reconstructing objects of sense4 ,its rationality will appear chiefly on the plane of perception1 to render the circle of visions which makes up its life as delightful as possible4 ,for such a man art will be the most satisfying1 the most significant activity1 and to load him with material riches or speculative truths or profound social loyalties will be to impede and depress him4 ,the irrational is what does not justify itself in the end2 and the born artist1 repelled by the soberer and bitterer passions of the world1 may justly call them irrational4 ,they would not justify themselves in his experience2 they make grievous demands and yield nothing in the end which is intelligible to him4 ,his picture of them1 if he be a dramatist1 will hardly fail to be satirical2 fate1 frailty1 illusion will be his constant themes4 ,if his temperament could find political expression1 he would minimise the machinery of life and deprecate any calculated prudence4 ,he would trust the heart1 enjoy nature1 and not frown too angrily on inclination4 ,such a ,bohemia he would regard as an ideal world in which humanity might flourish congenially4 ,sidenote3 ,the sthetic temperament requires tutelage4 ,a puritan moralist1 before condemning such an infantile paradise1 should remember that a commonwealth of butterflies actually exists4 ,it is not any inherent wrongness in such an ideal that makes it unacceptable1 but only the fact that human butterflies are not wholly mercurial and that even imperfect geniuses are but an extreme type in a society whose guiding ideal is based upon a broader humanity than the artist represents4 ,men of science or business will accuse the poet of folly1 on the very grounds on which he accuses them of the same4 ,each will seem to the other to be obeying a barren obsession4 ,the statesman or philosopher who should aspire to adjust their quarrel could do so only by force of intelligent sympathy with both sides1 and in view of the common conditions in which they find themselves4 ,what ought to be done is that which1 when done1 will most nearly justify itself to all concerned4 ,practical problems of morals are judicial and political problems4 ,justice can never be pronounced without hearing the parties and weighing the interests at stake4 ,sidenote3 sthetic values everywhere interfused4 ,a circumstance that complicates such a calculation is this3 esthetic and other interests are not separable units1 to be compared externally2 they are rather strands interwoven in the texture of everything4 sthetic sensibility colours every thought1 qualifies every allegiance1 and modifies every product of human labour4 ,consequently the love of beauty has to justify itself not merely intrinsically1 or as a constituent part of life more or less to be insisted upon2 it has to justify itself also as an influence4 ,a hostile influence is the most odious of things4 ,the enemy himself1 the alien creature1 lies in his own camp1 and in a speculative moment we may put ourselves in his place and learn to think of him charitably2 but his spirit in our own souls is like a private tempter1 a treasonable voice weakening our allegiance to our own duty4 ,a zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace1 did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own dogmatic calm4 ,in the same way practical people might leave the artist alone in his oasis1 and even grant him a pittance on which to live1 as they feed the animals in a zoological garden1 did he not intrude into their inmost conclave and vitiate the abstract cogency of their designs4 ,it is not so much art in its own field that men of science look askance upon1 as the love of glitter and rhetoric and false finality trespassing upon scientific ground2 while men of affairs may well deprecate a rooted habit of sensuous absorption and of sudden transit to imaginary worlds1 a habit which must work havoc in their own sphere4 ,in other words1 there is an element of poetry inherent in thought1 in conduct1 in affection2 and we must ask ourselves how far this ingredient is an obstacle to their proper development4 ,sidenote3 ,they are primordial4 ,the fabled dove who complained1 in flying1 of the resistance of the air1 was as wise as the philosopher who should lament the presence and influence of sense4 ,sense is the native element and substance of experience2 all its refinements are still parts of it existentially2 and whatever excellence belongs specifically to sense is a preliminary excellence1 a value antecedent to any which thought or action can achieve4 ,science and morals have but representative authority2 they are principles of ideal synthesis and safe transition2 they are bridges from moment to moment of sentience4 ,their function is indeed universal and their value overwhelming1 yet their office remains derivative or secondary1 and what they serve to put in order has previously its intrinsic worth4 ,an sthetic bias is native to sense1 being indeed nothing but its form and potency2 and the influence which sthetic habits exercise on thought and action should not be regarded as an intrusion to be resented1 but rather as an original interest to be built upon and developed4 ,sensibility contains the distinctions which reason afterward carries out and applies2 it is sensibility that involves and supports primitive diversities1 such as those between good and bad1 here and there1 fast and slow1 light and darkness4 ,there are complications and harmonies inherent in these oppositions1 harmonies which sthetic faculty proceeds to note2 and from these we may then construct others1 not immediately presentable1 which we distinguish by attributing them to reason4 ,reason may well outflank and transform sthetic judgments1 but can never undermine them4 ,its own materials are the perceptions which if full and perfect are called beauties4 ,its function is to endow the parts of sentience with a consciousness of the system in which they lie1 so that they may attain a mutual relevance and ideally support one another4 ,but what could relevance or support be worth if the things to be buttressed were themselves worthless8 ,it is not to organise pain1 ugliness1 and boredom that reason can be called into the world4 ,sidenote3 ,to superpose them adventitiously is to destroy them4 ,when a practical or scientific man boasts that he has laid aside sthetic prejudices and is following truth and utility with a single eye1 he can mean1 if he is judicious1 only that he has not yielded to sthetic preference after his problem was fixed1 nor in an arbitrary and vexatious fashion4 ,he has not consulted taste when it would have been in bad taste to do so4 ,if he meant that he had rendered himself altogether insensible to sthetic values1 and that he had proceeded to organise conduct or thought in complete indifference to the beautiful1 he would be simply proclaiming his inhumanity and incompetence4 ,a right observance of sthetic demands does not obstruct utility nor logic2 for utility and logic are themselves beautiful1 while a sensuous beauty that ran counter to reason could never be1 in the end1 pleasing to an exquisite sense4 sthetic vice is not favourable to sthetic faculty3 it is an impediment to the greatest sthetic satisfactions4 ,and so when by yielding to a blind passion for beauty we derange theory and practice1 we cut ourselves off from those beauties which alone could have satisfied our passion4 ,what we drag in so obstinately will bring but a cheap and unstable pleasure1 while a double beauty will thereby be lost or obscured--first1 the unlooked-for beauty which a genuine and stable system of things could not but betray1 and secondly the coveted beauty itself1 which1 being imported here into the wrong context1 will be rendered meretricious and offensive to good taste4 ,if a jewel worn on the wrong finger sends a shiver through the flesh1 how disgusting must not rhetoric be in diplomacy or unction in metaphysics6 ,sidenote3 ,they flow naturally from perfect function4 ,the poetic element inherent in thought1 affection1 and conduct is prior to their prosaic development and altogether legitimate4 ,clear1 well-digested perception and rational choices follow upon those primary creative impulses1 and carry out their purpose systematically4 ,at every stage in this development new and appropriate materials are offered for sthetic contemplation4 ,straightness1 for instance1 symmetry1 and rhythm are at first sensuously defined2 they are characters arrested by sthetic instinct2 but they are the materials of mathematics4 ,and long after these initial forms have disowned their sensuous values1 and suffered a wholly dialectical expansion or analysis1 mathematical objects again fall under the sthetic eye1 and surprise the senses by their emotional power4 ,a mechanical system1 such as astronomy in one region has already unveiled1 is an inexhaustible field for sthetic wonder4 ,similarly1 in another sphere1 sensuous affinity leads to friendship and love1 and makes us huddle up to our fellows and feel their heart-beats2 but when human society has thereupon established a legal and moral edifice1 this new spectacle yields new imaginative transports1 tragic1 lyric1 and religious4 sthetic values everywhere precede and accompany rational activity1 and life is1 in one aspect1 always a fine art2 not by introducing inaptly sthetic vetoes or sthetic flourishes1 but by giving to everything a form which1 implying a structure1 implies also an ideal and a possible perfection4 ,this perfection1 being felt1 is also a beauty1 since any process1 though it may have become intellectual or practical1 remains for all that a vital and sentient operation1 with its inherent sensuous values4 ,whatever is to be representative in import must first be immediate in existence2 whatever is transitive in operation must be at the same time actual in being4 ,so that an sthetic sanction sweetens all successful living2 animal efficiency cannot be without grace1 nor moral achievement without a sensible glory4 ,sidenote3 ,even inhibited functions1 when they fall into a new rhythm1 yield new beauties4 ,these vital harmonies are natural2 they are neither perfect nor preordained4 ,we often come upon beauties that need to be sacrificed1 as we come upon events and practical necessities without number that are truly regrettable4 ,there are a myriad conflicts in practice and in thought1 conflicts between rival possibilities1 knocking inopportunely and in vain at the door of existence4 ,owing to the initial disorganisation of things1 some demands continually prove to be incompatible with others arising no less naturally4 ,reason in such cases imposes real and irreparable sacrifices1 but it brings a stable consolation if its discipline is accepted4 ,decay1 for instance1 is a moral and sthetic evil2 but being a natural necessity it can become the basis for pathetic and magnificent harmonies1 when once imagination is adjusted to it4 ,the hatred of change and death is ineradicable while life lasts1 since it expresses that self-sustaining organisation in a creature which we call its soul2 yet this hatred of change and death is not so deeply seated in the nature of things as are death and change themselves1 for the flux is deeper than the ideal4 ,discipline may attune our higher and more adaptable part to the harsh conditions of being1 and the resulting sentiment1 being the only one which can be maintained successfully1 will express the greatest satisfactions which can be reached1 though not the greatest that might be conceived or desired4 ,to be interested in the changing seasons is1 in this middling zone1 a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring4 ,wisdom discovers these possible accommodations1 as circumstances impose them2 and education ought to prepare men to accept them4 ,sidenote3 ,he who loves beauty must chasten it4 ,it is for want of education and discipline that a man so often insists petulantly on his random tastes1 instead of cultivating those which might find some satisfaction in the world and might produce in him some pertinent culture4 ,untutored self-assertion may even lead him to deny some fact that should have been patent1 and plunge him into needless calamity4 ,his ,utopias cheat him in the end1 if indeed the barbarous taste he has indulged in clinging to them does not itself lapse before the dream is half formed4 ,so men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid1 and a hell to find it ridiculous4 ,theodicies that were to demonstrate an absolute cosmic harmony have turned the universe into a tyrannous nightmare1 from which we are glad to awake again in this unintentional and somewhat tractable world4 ,thus the fancies of effeminate poets in violating science are false to the highest art1 and the products of sheer confusion1 instigated by the love of beauty1 turn out to be hideous4 ,a rational severity in respect to art simply weeds the garden2 it expresses a mature sthetic choice and opens the way to supreme artistic achievements4 ,to keep beauty in its place is to make all things beautiful4 ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,criterion ,,of ,,taste ,sidenote3 ,dogmatism is inevitable but may be enlightened4 ,dogmatism in matters of taste has the same status as dogmatism in other spheres4 ,it is initially justified by sincerity1 being a systematic expression of a man's preferences2 but it becomes absurd when its basis in a particular disposition is ignored and it pretends to have an absolute or metaphysical scope4 ,reason1 with the order which in every region it imposes on life1 is grounded on an animal nature and has no other function than to serve the same2 and it fails to exercise its office quite as much when it oversteps its bounds and forgets whom it is serving as when it neglects some part of its legitimate province and serves its master imperfectly1 without considering all his interests4 ,dialectic1 logic1 and morals lose their authority and become inept if they trespass upon the realm of physics and try to disclose existences2 while physics is a mere idea in the realm of poetic meditation4 ,so the notorious diversities which human taste exhibits do not become conflicts1 and raise no moral problem1 until their basis or their function has been forgotten1 and each has claimed a right to assert itself exclusively4 ,this claim is altogether absurd1 and we might fail to understand how so preposterous an attitude could be assumed by anybody did we not remember that every young animal thinks himself absolute1 and that dogmatism in the thinker is only the speculative side of greed and courage in the brute4 ,the brute cannot surrender his appetites nor abdicate his primary right to dominate his environment4 ,what experience and reason may teach him is merely how to make his self-assertion well balanced and successful4 ,in the same way taste is bound to maintain its preferences but free to rationalise them4 ,after a man has compared his feelings with the no less legitimate feelings of other creatures1 he can reassert his own with more complete authority1 since now he is aware of their necessary ground in his nature1 and of their affinities with whatever other interests his nature enables him to recognise in others and to co-ordinate with his own4 ,sidenote3 ,taste gains in authority as it is more and more widely based4 ,a criterion of taste is1 therefore1 nothing but taste itself in its more deliberate and circumspect form4 ,reflection refines particular sentiments by bringing them into sympathy with all rational life4 ,there is consequently the greatest possible difference in authority between taste and taste1 and while delight in drums and eagle's feathers is perfectly genuine and has no cause to blush for itself1 it cannot be compared in scope or representative value with delight in a symphony or an epic4 ,the very instinct that is satisfied by beauty prefers one beauty to another2 and we have only to question and purge our sthetic feelings in order to obtain our criterion of taste4 ,this criterion will be natural1 personal1 autonomous2 a circumstance that will give it authority over our own judgment--which is all moral science is concerned about--and will extend its authority over other minds also1 in so far as their constitution is similar to ours4 ,in that measure what is a genuine instance of reason in us1 others will recognise for a genuine expression of reason in themselves also4 ,sidenote3 ,different sthetic endowments may be compared in quantity or force4 sthetic feeling1 in different people1 may make up a different fraction of life and vary greatly in volume4 ,the more nearly insensible a man is the more incompetent he becomes to proclaim the values which sensibility might have4 ,to beauty men are habitually insensible1 even while they are awake and rationally active4 ,tomes of sthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition4 ,it is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers1 who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours4 ,an sthetic glow may pervade experience1 but that circumstance is seldom remarked2 it figures only as an influence working subterraneously on thoughts and judgments which in themselves take a cognitive or practical direction4 ,only when the sthetic ingredient becomes predominant do we exclaim1 ,how beautiful6 ,ordinarily the pleasures which formal perception gives remain an undistinguished part of our comfort or curiosity4 ,sidenote3 ,authority of vital over verbal judgments ,taste is formed in those moments when sthetic emotion is massive and distinct2 preferences then grown conscious1 judgments then put into words1 will reverberate through calmer hours2 they will constitute prejudices1 habits of apperception1 secret standards for all other beauties4 ,a period of life in which such intuitions have been frequent may amass tastes and ideals sufficient for the rest of our days4 ,youth in these matters governs maturity1 and while men may develop their early impressions more systematically and find confirmations of them in various quarters1 they will seldom look at the world afresh or use new categories in deciphering it4 ,half our standards come from our first masters1 and the other half from our first loves4 ,never being so deeply stirred again1 we remain persuaded that no objects save those we then discovered can have a true sublimity4 ,these high-water marks of sthetic life may easily be reached under tutelage4 ,it may be some eloquent appreciations read in a book1 or some preference expressed by a gifted friend1 that may have revealed unsuspected beauties in art or nature2 and then1 since our own perception was vicarious and obviously inferior in volume to that which our mentor possessed1 we shall take his judgments for our criterion1 since they were the source and exemplar of all our own4 ,thus the volume and intensity of some appreciations1 especially when nothing of the kind has preceded1 makes them authoritative over our subsequent judgments4 ,on those warm moments hang all our cold systematic opinions2 and while the latter fill our days and shape our careers it is only the former that are crucial and alive4 ,a race which loves beauty holds the same place in history that a season of love or enthusiasm holds in an individual life4 ,such a race has a pre-eminent right to pronounce upon beauty and to bequeath its judgments to duller peoples4 ,we may accordingly listen with reverence to a ,greek judgment on that subject1 expecting that what might seem to us wrong about it is the expression of knowledge and passion beyond our range2 it will suffice that we learn to live in the world of beauty1 instead of merely studying its relics1 for us to understand1 for instance1 that imitation is a fundamental principle in art1 and that any rational judgment on the beautiful must be a moral and political judgment1 enveloping chance sthetic feelings and determining their value4 ,what most ,german philosophers1 on the contrary1 have written about art and beauty has a minimal importance3 it treats artificial problems in a grammatical spirit1 seldom giving any proof of experience or imagination4 ,what painters say about painting and poets about poetry is better than lay opinion2 it may reveal1 of course1 some petty jealousy or some partial incapacity1 because a special gift often carries with it complementary defects in apprehension2 yet what is positive in such judgments is founded on knowledge and avoids the romancing into which litterateurs and sentimentalists will gladly wander4 ,the specific values of art are technical values1 more permanent and definite than the adventitious analogies on which a stray observer usually bases his views4 ,only a technical education can raise judgments on musical compositions above impertinent auto-biography4 ,the ,japanese know the beauty of flowers1 and tailors and dressmakers have the best sense for the fashions4 ,we ask them for suggestions1 and if we do not always take their advice1 it is not because the fine effects they love are not genuine1 but because they may not be effects which we care to produce4 ,sidenote3 ,tastes differ also in purity or consistency4 ,this touches a second consideration1 besides the volume and vivacity of feeling1 which enters into good taste4 ,what is voluminous may be inwardly confused or outwardly confusing4 ,excitement1 though on the whole and for the moment agreeable1 may verge on pain and may be1 when it subsides a little1 a cause of bitterness4 ,a thing's attractions may be partly at war with its ideal function4 ,in such a case what1 in our haste1 we call a beauty becomes hateful on a second view1 and according to the key of our dissatisfaction we pronounce that effect meretricious1 harsh1 or affected4 ,these discords appear when elaborate things are attempted without enough art and refinement2 they are essentially in bad taste4 ,rudimentary effects1 on the contrary1 are pure1 and though we may think them trivial when we are expecting something richer1 their defect is never intrinsic2 they do not plunge us1 as impure excitements do1 into a corrupt artificial conflict4 ,so wild-flowers1 plain chant1 or a scarlet uniform are beautiful enough2 their simplicity is a positive merit1 while their crudity is only relative4 ,there is a touch of sophistication and disease in not being able to fall back on such things and enjoy them thoroughly1 as if a man could no longer relish a glass of water4 ,your true epicure will study not to lose so genuine a pleasure4 ,better forego some artificial stimulus1 though that1 too1 has its charm1 than become insensible to natural joys4 ,indeed1 ability to revert to elementary beauties is a test that judgment remains sound4 ,vulgarity is quite another matter4 ,an old woman in a blonde wig1 a dirty hand covered with jewels1 ostentation without dignity1 rhetoric without cogency1 all offend by an inner contradiction4 ,to like such things we should have to surrender our better intuitions and suffer a kind of dishonour4 ,yet the elements offensively combined may be excellent in isolation1 so that an untrained or torpid mind will be at a loss to understand the critic's displeasure4 ,oftentimes barbaric art almost succeeds1 by dint of splendour1 in banishing the sense of confusion and absurdity2 for everything1 even reason1 must bow to force4 ,yet the impression remains chaotic1 and we must be either partly inattentive or partly distressed4 ,nothing could show better than this alternative how mechanical barbaric art is4 ,driven by blind impulse or tradition1 the artist has worked in the dark4 ,he has dismissed his work without having quite understood it or really justified it to his own mind4 ,it is rather his excretion than his product4 ,astonished1 very likely1 at his own fertility1 he has thought himself divinely inspired1 little knowing that clear reason is the highest and truest of inspirations4 ,other men1 observing his obscure work1 have then honoured him for profundity2 and so mere bulk or stress or complexity have produced a mystical wonder by which generation after generation may be enthralled4 ,barbaric art is half necromantic2 its ascendancy rests in a certain measure on bewilderment and fraud4 ,to purge away these impurities nothing is needed but quickened intelligence1 a keener spiritual flame4 ,where perception is adequate1 expression is so too1 and if a man will only grow sensitive to the various solicitations which anything monstrous combines1 he will thereby perceive its monstrosity4 ,let him but enact his sensations1 let him pause to make explicit the confused hints that threaten to stupefy him2 he will find that he can follow out each of them only by rejecting and forgetting the others4 ,to free his imagination in any direction he must disengage it from the contrary intent1 and so he must either purify his object or leave it a mass of confused promptings4 ,promptings essentially demand to be carried out1 and when once an idea has become articulate it is not enriched but destroyed if it is still identified with its contrary4 ,any complete expression of a barbarous theme will1 therefore1 disengage its incompatible elements and turn it into a number of rational beauties4 ,sidenote3 ,they differ1 finally1 in pertinence1 and in width of appeal4 ,when good taste has in this way purified and digested some turgid medley1 it still has a progress to make4 ,ideas1 like men1 live in society4 ,not only has each a will of its own and an inherent ideal1 but each finds itself conditioned for its expression by a host of other beings1 on whose co-operation it depends4 ,good taste1 besides being inwardly clear1 has to be outwardly fit4 ,a monstrous ideal devours and dissolves itself1 but even a rational one does not find an immortal embodiment simply for being inwardly possible and free from contradiction4 ,it needs a material basis1 a soil and situation propitious to its growth4 ,this basis1 as it varies1 makes the ideal vary which is simply its expression2 and therefore no ideal can be ultimately fixed in ignorance of the conditions that may modify it4 ,it subsists1 to be sure1 as an eternal possibility1 independently of all further earthly revolutions4 ,once expressed1 it has revealed the inalienable values that attach to a certain form of being1 whenever that form is actualised4 ,but its expression may have been only momentary1 and that eternal ideal may have no further relevance to the living world4 ,a criterion of taste1 however1 looks to a social career2 it hopes to educate and to judge4 ,in order to be an applicable and a just law1 it must represent the interests over which it would preside4 ,there are many undiscovered ideals4 ,there are many beauties which nothing in this world can embody or suggest4 ,there are also many once suggested or even embodied1 which find later their basis gone and evaporate into their native heaven4 ,the saddest tragedy in the world is the destruction of what has within it no inward ground of dissolution1 death in youth1 and the crushing out of perfection4 ,imagination has its bereavements of this kind4 ,a complete mastery of existence achieved at one moment gives no warrant that it will be sustained or achieved again at the next4 ,the achievement may have been perfect2 nature will not on that account stop to admire it4 ,she will move on1 and the meaning which was read so triumphantly in her momentary attitude will not fit her new posture4 ,like ,polonius's cloud1 she will always suggest some new ideal1 because she has none of her own4 ,in lieu of an ideal1 however1 nature has a constitution1 and this1 which is a necessary ground for ideals1 is what it concerns the ideal to reckon with4 ,a poet1 spokesman of his full soul at a given juncture1 cannot consider eventualities or think of anything but the message he is sent to deliver1 whether the world can then hear it or not4 ,god1 he may feel sure1 understands him1 and in the eternal the beauty he sees and loves immortally justifies his enthusiasm4 ,nevertheless1 critics must view his momentary ebullition from another side4 ,they do not come to justify the poet in his own eyes2 he amply relieves them1 of such a function4 ,they come only to inquire how significant the poet's expressions are for humanity at large or for whatever public he addresses4 ,they come to register the social or representative value of the poet's soul4 ,his inspiration may have been an odd cerebral rumbling1 a perfectly irrecoverable and wasted intuition2 the exquisite quality it doubtless had to his own sense is now not to the purpose4 ,a work of art is a public possession2 it is addressed to the world4 ,by taking on a material embodiment1 a spirit solicits attention and claims some kinship with the prevalent gods4 ,has it1 critics should ask1 the affinities needed for such intercourse8 ,is it humane1 is it rational1 is it representative8 ,to its inherent incommunicable charms it must add a kind of courtesy4 ,if it wants other approval than its own1 it cannot afford to regard no other aspiration4 ,this scope1 this representative faculty or wide appeal1 is necessary to good taste4 ,all authority is representative2 force and inner consistency are gifts on which ,i may well congratulate another1 but they give him no right to speak for me4 ,either sthetic experience would have remained a chaos--which it is not altogether--or it must have tended to conciliate certain general human demands and ultimately all those interests which its operation in any way affects4 ,the more conspicuous and permanent a work of art is1 the more is such an adjustment needed4 ,a poet or philosopher may be erratic and assure us that he is inspired2 if we cannot well gainsay it1 we are at least not obliged to read his works4 ,an architect or a sculptor1 however1 or a public performer of any sort1 that thrusts before us a spectacle justified only in his inner consciousness1 makes himself a nuisance4 ,a social standard of taste must assert itself here1 or else no efficacious and cumulative art can exist at all4 ,good taste in such matters cannot abstract from tradition1 utility1 and the temper of the world4 ,it must make itself an interpreter of humanity and think esoteric dreams less beautiful than what the public eye might conceivably admire4 ,sidenote3 ,art may grow classic by idealising the familiar4 ,there are various affinities by which art may acquire a representative or classic quality4 ,it may do so by giving form to objects which everybody knows1 by rendering experiences that are universal and primary4 ,the human figure1 elementary passions1 common types and crises of fate--these are facts which pass too constantly through apperception not to have a normal thetic value4 ,the artist who can catch that effect in its fulness and simplicity accordingly does immortal work4 ,this sort of art immediately becomes popular2 it passes into language and convention so that its sthetic charm is apparently worn down4 ,the old images after a while hardly stimulate unless they be presented in some paradoxical way2 but in that case attention will be diverted to the accidental extravagance1 and the chief classic effect will be missed4 ,it is the honourable fate or euthanasia of artistic successes that they pass from the field of professional art altogether and become a portion of human faculty4 ,every man learns to be to that extent an artist2 approved figures and maxims pass current like the words and idioms of a mother-tongue1 themselves once brilliant inventions4 ,the lustre of such successes is not really dimmed1 however1 when it becomes a part of man's daily light2 a retrogression from that habitual style or habitual insight would at once prove1 by the shock it caused1 how precious those ingrained apperceptions continued to be4 ,sidenote3 or by reporting the ultimate4 ,universality may also be achieved1 in a more heroic fashion1 by art that expresses ultimate truths1 cosmic laws1 great human ideals4 ,virgil and ,dante are classic poets in this sense1 and a similar quality belongs to ,greek sculpture and architecture4 ,they may not cause enthusiasm in everybody2 but in the end experience and reflection renew their charm2 and their greatness1 like that of high mountains1 grows more obvious with distance4 ,such eminence is the reward of having accepted discipline and made the mind a clear anagram of much experience4 ,there is a great difference between the depth of expression so gained and richness or realism in details4 ,a supreme work presupposes minute study1 sympathy with varied passions1 many experiments in expression2 but these preliminary things are submerged in it and are not displayed side by side with it1 like the foot-notes to a learned work1 so that the ignorant may know they have existed4 ,some persons1 themselves inattentive1 imagine1 for instance1 that ,greek sculpture is abstract1 that it has left out all the detail and character which they cannot find on the surface1 as they might in a modern work4 ,in truth it contains those features1 as it were1 in solution and in the resultant which1 when reduced to harmony1 they would produce4 ,it embodies a finished humanity which only varied exercises could have attained1 for as the body is the existent ground for all possible actions1 in which as actions they exist only potentially1 so a perfect body1 such as a sculptor might conceive1 which ought to be ready for all excellent activities1 cannot present them all in act but only the readiness for them4 ,the features that might express them severally must be absorbed and mastered1 hidden like a sword in its scabbard1 and reduced to a general dignity or grace4 ,though such immersed eloquence be at first overlooked and seldom explicitly acknowledged1 homage is nevertheless rendered to it in the most unmistakable ways4 ,when lazy artists1 backed by no great technical or moral discipline1 think they1 too1 can produce masterpieces by summary treatment1 their failure shows how pregnant and supreme a thing simplicity is4 ,every man1 in proportion to his experience and moral distinction1 returns to the simple but inexhaustible work of finished minds1 and finds more and more of his own soul responsive to it4 ,human nature1 for all its margin of variability1 has a substantial core which is invariable1 as the human body has a structure which it cannot lose without perishing altogether2 for as creatures grow more complex a greater number of their organs become vital and indispensable4 ,advanced forms will rather die than surrender a tittle of their character2 a fact which is the physical basis for loyalty and martyrdom4 ,any deep interpretation of oneself1 or indeed of anything1 has for that reason a largely representative truth4 ,other men1 if they look closely1 will make the same discovery for themselves4 ,hence distinction and profundity1 in spite of their rarity1 are wont to be largely recognised4 ,the best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive4 ,these men have on their side the weight of superior intelligence1 and1 though they are few1 they might even claim the weight of numbers1 since the few of all ages1 added together1 may be more than the many who in any one age follow a temporary fashion4 ,classic work is nevertheless always national1 or at least characteristic of its period1 as the classic poetry of each people is that in which its language appears most pure and free4 ,to translate it is impossible2 but it is easy to find that the human nature so inimitably expressed in each masterpiece is the same that1 under different circumstance1 dictates a different performance4 ,the deviations between races and men are not yet so great as is the ignorance of self1 the blindness to the native ideal1 which prevails in most of them4 ,hence a great man of a remote epoch is more intelligible than a common man of our own time4 ,sidenote3 ,good taste demands that art should be rational1 i4e41 harmonious with all other interests4 ,both elementary and ultimate judgments1 then1 contribute to a standard of taste2 yet human life lies between these limits1 and an art which is to be truly adjusted to life should speak also for the intermediate experience4 ,good taste is indeed nothing but a name for those appreciations which the swelling incidents of life recall and reinforce4 ,good taste is that taste which is a good possession1 a friend to the whole man4 ,it must not alienate him from anything except to ally him to something greater and more fertile in satisfactions4 ,it will not suffer him to dote on things1 however seductive1 which rob him of some nobler companionship4 ,to have a foretaste of such a loss1 and to reject instinctively whatever will cause it1 is the very essence of refinement4 ,good taste comes1 therefore1 from experience1 in the best sense of that word2 it comes from having united in one's memory and character the fruit of many diverse undertakings4 ,mere taste is apt to be bad taste1 since it regards nothing but a chance feeling4 ,every man who pursues an art may be presumed to have some sensibility2 the question is whether he has breeding1 too1 and whether what he stops at is not1 in the end1 vulgar and offensive4 ,chance feeling needs to fortify itself with reasons and to find its level in the great world4 ,when it has added fitness to its sincerity1 beneficence to its passion1 it will have acquired a right to live4 ,violence and self-justification will not pass muster in a moral society1 for vipers possess both1 and must nevertheless be stamped out4 ,citizenship is conferred only on creatures with human and co-operative instincts4 ,a civilised imagination has to understand and to serve the world4 ,the great obstacle which art finds in attempting to be rational is its functional isolation4 ,sense and each of the passions suffers from a similar independence4 ,the disarray of human instincts lets every spontaneous motion run too far2 life oscillates between constraint and unreason4 ,morality too often puts up with being a constraint and even imagines such a disgrace to be its essence4 ,art1 on the contrary1 as often hugs unreason for fear of losing its inspiration1 and forgets that it is itself a rational principle of creation and order4 ,morality is thus reduced to a necessary evil and art to a vain good1 all for want of harmony among human impulses4 ,if the passions arose in season1 if perception fed only on those things which action should be adjusted to1 turning them1 while action proceeded1 into the substance of ideas--then all conduct would be voluntary and enlightened1 all speculation would be practical1 all perceptions beautiful1 and all operations arts4 ,the ,life of ,reason would then be universal4 ,to approach this ideal1 so far as art is concerned1 would involve diffusing its processes and no longer confining them to a set of dead and unproductive objects called works of art4 ,sidenote3 ,a mere 8work of art0 a baseless artifice4 ,why art1 the most vital and generative of activities1 should produce a set of abstract images1 monuments to lost intuitions1 is a curious mystery4 ,nature gives her products life1 and they are at least equal to their sources in dignity4 ,why should mind1 the actualisation of nature's powers1 produce something so inferior to itself1 reverting in its expression to material being1 so that its witnesses seem so many fossils with which it strews its path8 ,what we call museums--mausoleums1 rather1 in which a dead art heaps up its remains--are those the places where the ,muses intended to dwell8 ,we do not keep in show-cases the coins current in the world4 ,a living art does not produce curiosities to be collected but spiritual necessaries to be diffused4 ,artificial art1 made to be exhibited1 is something gratuitous and sophisticated1 and the greater part of men's concern about it is affectation4 ,there is a genuine pleasure in planning a work1 in modelling and painting it2 there is a pleasure in showing it to a sympathetic friend1 who associates himself in this way with the artist's technical experiment and with his interpretation of some human episode2 and there might be a satisfaction in seeing the work set up in some appropriate space for which it was designed1 where its decorative quality might enrich the scene1 and the curious passer-by might stop to decipher it4 ,the pleasures proper to an ingenuous artist are spontaneous and human2 but his works1 once delivered to his patrons1 are household furniture for the state4 ,set up to-day1 they are outworn and replaced to-morrow1 like trees in the parks or officers in the government4 ,a community where art was native and flourishing would have an uninterrupted supply of such ornaments1 furnished by its citizens in the same modest and cheerful spirit in which they furnish other commodities4 ,every craft has its dignity1 and the decorative and monumental crafts certainly have their own2 but such art is neither singular nor pre-eminent1 and a statesman or reformer who should raise somewhat the level of thought or practice in the state would do an infinitely greater service4 ,sidenote3 ,human uses give to works of art their highest expression and charm4 ,the joys of creating are not confined1 moreover1 to those who create things without practical uses4 ,the merely sthetic1 like rhyme and fireworks1 is not the only subject that can engage a playful fancy or be planned with a premonition of beautiful effects4 ,architecture may be useful1 sculpture commemorative1 poetry reflective1 even1 music1 by its expression1 religious or martial4 ,in a word1 practical exigencies1 in calling forth the arts1 give them moral functions which it is a pleasure to see them fulfil4 ,works may not be sthetic in their purpose1 and yet that fact may be a ground for their being doubly delightful in execution and doubly beautiful in effect4 ,a richer plexus of emotions is concerned in producing or contemplating something humanly necessary than something idly conceived4 ,what is very rightly called a sense for fitness is a vital experience1 involving sthetic satisfactions and sthetic shocks4 ,the more numerous the rational harmonies are which are present to the mind1 the more sensible movements will be going on there to give immediate delight2 for the perception or expectation of an ulterior good is a present good also4 ,accordingly nothing can so well call forth or sustain attention as what has a complex structure relating it to many complex interests4 ,a work woven out of precious threads has a deep pertinence and glory2 the artist who creates it does not need to surrender his practical and moral sense in order to indulge his imagination4 ,the truth is that mere sensation or mere emotion is an indignity to a mature human being4 ,when we eat1 we demand a pleasant vista1 flowers1 or conversation1 and failing these we take refuge in a newspaper4 ,the monks1 knowing that men should not feed silently like stalled oxen1 appointed some one to read aloud in the refectory2 and the ,fathers1 obeying the same civilised instinct1 had contrived in their theology intelligible points of attachment for religious emotion4 ,a refined mind finds as little happiness in love without friendship as in sensuality without love2 it may succumb to both1 but it accepts neither4 ,what is true of mere sensibility is no less true of mere fancy4 ,the ,arabian ,nights--futile enough in any case--would be absolutely intolerable if they contained no ,oriental manners1 no human passions1 and no convinced epicureanism behind their miracles and their tattle4 ,any absolute work of art which serves no further purpose than to stimulate an emotion has about it a certain luxurious and visionary taint4 ,we leave it with a blank mind1 and a pang bubbles up from the very fountain of pleasures4 ,art1 so long as it needs to be a dream1 will never cease to prove a disappointment4 ,its facile cruelty1 its narcotic abstraction1 can never sweeten the evils we return to at home2 it can liberate half the mind only by leaving the other half in abeyance4 ,in the mere artist1 too1 there is always something that falls short of the gentleman and that defeats the man4 ,sidenote3 ,the sad values of appearance4 ,surely it is not the artistic impulse in itself that involves such lack of equilibrium4 ,to impress a meaning and a rational form on matter is one of the most masterful of actions4 ,the trouble lies in the barren and superficial character of this imposed form3 fine art is a play of appearance4 ,appearance1 for a critical philosophy1 is distinguished from reality by its separation from the context of things1 by its immediacy and insignificance4 ,a play of appearance is accordingly some little closed circle in experience1 some dream in which we lose ourselves by ignoring most of our interests1 and from which we awake into a world in which that lost episode plays no further part and leaves no heirs4 ,art as mankind has hitherto practised it falls largely under this head and too much resembles an opiate or a stimulant4 ,life and history are not thereby rendered better in their principle1 but a mere ideal is extracted out of them and presented for our delectation in some cheap material1 like words or marble4 ,the only precious materials are flesh and blood1 for these alone can defend and propagate the ideal which has once informed them4 ,artistic creation shows at this point a great inferiority to natural reproduction1 since its product is dead4 ,fine art shapes inert matter and peoples the mind with impotent ghosts4 ,what influence it has--for every event has consequences--is not pertinent to its inspiration4 ,the art of the past is powerless even to create similar art in the present1 unless similar conditions recur independently4 ,the moments snatched for art have been generally interludes in life and its products parasites in nature1 the body of them being materially functionless and the soul merely represented4 ,to exalt fine art into a truly ideal activity we should have to knit it more closely with other rational functions1 so that to beautify things might render them more useful and to represent them most imaginatively might be to see them in their truth4 ,something of the sort has been actually attained by the noblest arts in their noblest phases4 ,a ,sophocles or a ,leonardo dominates his dreamful vehicle and works upon the real world by its means4 ,these small centres1 where interfunctional harmony is attained1 ought to expand and cover the whole field4 ,art1 like religion1 needs to be absorbed in the ,life of ,reason4 ,sidenote3 ,they need to be made prophetic of practical goods4 ,what might help to bring about this consummation would be1 on the one side1 more knowledge2 on the other1 better taste4 ,when a mind is filled with important and true ideas and sees the actual relations of things1 it cannot relish pictures of the world which wantonly misrepresent it4 ,myth and metaphor remain beautiful so long as they are the most adequate or graphic means available for expressing the facts1 but so soon as they cease to be needful and sincere they become false finery4 ,the same thing happens in the plastic arts4 ,unless they spring from love of their subject1 and employ imagination only to penetrate into that subject and interpret it with a more inward sympathy and truth1 they become conventional and overgrown with mere ornament4 ,they then seem ridiculous to any man who can truly conceive what they represent4 ,so in putting antique heroes on the stage we nowadays no longer tolerate a modern costume1 because the externals of ancient life are too well known to us2 but in the seventeenth century people demanded in such personages intelligence and nobleness1 since these were virtues which the ancients were clothed with in their thought4 ,a knowledge that should be at once full and appreciative would evidently demand fidelity in both matters4 ,knowledge1 where it exists1 undermines satisfaction in what does violence to truth1 and it renders such representations grotesque4 ,if knowledge were general and adequate the fine arts would accordingly be brought round to expressing reality4 ,sidenote3 which in turn would be suffused with beauty4 ,at the same time1 if the rendering of reality is to remain artistic1 it must still study to satisfy the senses2 but as this study would now accompany every activity1 taste would grow vastly more subtle and exacting4 ,whatever any man said or did or made1 he would be alive to its sthetic quality1 and beauty would be a pervasive ingredient in happiness4 ,no work would be called1 in a special sense1 a work of art1 for all works would be such intrinsically2 and even instinctive mimicry and reproduction would themselves operate1 not when mischief or idleness prompted1 but when some human occasion and some general utility made the exercise of such skill entirely delightful4 ,thus there would need to be no division of mankind into mechanical blind workers and half-demented poets1 and no separation of useful from fine art1 such as people make who have understood neither the nature nor the ultimate reward of human action4 ,all arts would be practised together and merged in the art of life1 the only one wholly useful or fine among them4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,art ,,and ,,happiness ,sidenote3 sthetic harmonies are parodies of real ones4 ,the greatest enemy harmony can have is a premature settlement in which some essential force is wholly disregarded4 ,this excluded element will rankle in the flesh2 it will bring about no end of disorders until it is finally recognised and admitted into a truly comprehensive regimen4 ,the more numerous the interests which a premature settlement combines the greater inertia will it oppose to reform1 and the more self-righteously will it condemn the innocent pariah that it leaves outside4 ,art has had to suffer much ,pharisaical opposition of this sort4 ,sometimes political systems1 sometimes religious zeal1 have excluded it from their programme1 thereby making their programme unjust and inadequate4 ,yet of all premature settlements the most premature is that which the fine arts are wont to establish4 ,a harmony in appearance only1 one that touches the springs of nothing and has no power to propagate itself1 is so partial and momentary a good that we may justly call it an illusion4 ,to gloat on rhythms and declamations1 to live lost in imaginary passions and histrionic woes1 is an unmanly life1 cut off from practical dominion and from rational happiness4 ,a lovely dream is an excellent thing in itself1 but it leaves the world no less a chaos and makes it by contrast seem even darker than it did4 ,by dwelling in its mock heaven art may inflict on men the same kind of injury that any irresponsible passion or luxurious vice might inflict4 ,for this reason it sometimes passes for a misfortune in a family if a son insists on being a poet or an actor4 ,such gifts suggest too much incompetence and such honours too much disrepute4 ,a man does not avoid real evils by having visionary pleasures1 but besides exposing himself to the real evils quite unprotected1 he probably adds fancied evils to them in generous measure4 ,he becomes supersensitive1 envious1 hysterical2 the world1 which was perhaps carried away at first by his ecstasies1 at the next moment merely applauds his performance1 then criticises it superciliously1 and very likely ends by forgetting it altogether4 ,thus the fine arts are seldom an original factor in human progress4 ,if they express moral and political greatness1 and serve to enhance it1 they acquire a certain dignity2 but so soon as this expressive function is abandoned they grow meretricious4 ,the artist becomes an abstracted trifler1 and the public is divided into two camps3 the dilettanti1 who dote on the artist's affectations1 and the rabble1 who pay him to grow coarse4 ,both influences degrade him and he helps to foster both4 ,an atmosphere of dependence and charlatanry gathers about the artistic attitude and spreads with its influence4 ,religion1 philosophy1 and manners may in turn be infected with this spirit1 being reduced to a voluntary hallucination or petty flattery4 ,romanticism1 ritualism1 stheticism1 symbolism are names this disease has borne at different times as it appeared in different circles or touched a different object4 ,needless to say that the arts themselves are the first to suffer4 ,that beauty which should have been an inevitable smile on the face of society1 an overflow of genuine happiness and power1 has to be imported1 stimulated artificially1 and applied from without2 so that art becomes a sickly ornament for an ugly existence4 ,sidenote3 yet prototypes of true perfections4 ,nevertheless1 sthetic harmony1 so incomplete in its basis as to be fleeting and deceptive1 is most complete in its form4 ,this so partial synthesis is a synthesis indeed1 and just because settlements made in fancy are altogether premature1 and ignore almost everything in the world1 in type they can be the most perfect settlements4 ,the artist1 being a born lover of the good1 a natural breeder of perfections1 clings to his insight4 ,if the world calls his accomplishments vain1 he can1 with better reason1 call vain the world's cumbrous instrumentalities1 by which nothing clearly good is attained4 ,appearances1 he may justly urge1 are alone actual4 ,all forces1 substances1 realities1 and principles are inferred and potential only and in the moral scale mere instruments to bring perfect appearances about4 ,to have grasped such an appearance1 to have embodied a form in matter1 is to have justified for the first time whatever may underlie appearance and to have put reality to some use4 ,it is to have begun to live4 ,as the standard of perfection is internal and is measured by the satisfaction felt in realising it1 every artist has tasted1 in his activity1 what activity essentially is4 ,he has moulded existence into the likeness of thought and lost himself in that ideal achievement which1 so to speak1 beckons all things into being4 ,even if a thousand misfortunes await him and a final disappointment1 he has been happy once4 ,he may be inclined to rest his case there and challenge practical people to justify in the same way the faith that is in them4 ,sidenote3 ,pros and cons of detached indulgences4 ,that a moment of the most perfect happiness should prove a source of unhappiness is no paradox to any one who has observed the world4 ,a hope1 a passion1 a crime1 is a flash of vitality4 ,it is inwardly congruous with the will that breeds it1 yet the happiness it pictures is so partial that even while it is felt it may be overshadowed by sinister forebodings4 ,a certain unrest and insecurity may consciously harass it4 ,with time1 or by a slight widening in the field of interest1 this submerged unhappiness may rise to the surface4 ,if1 as is probable1 it is caused or increased by the indulgence which preceded1 then the only moment in which a good was tasted1 the only vista that had opened congenially before the mind1 will prove a new and permanent curse4 ,in this way love often misleads individuals1 ambition cities1 and religion whole races of men4 ,that art1 also1 should often be an indulgence1 a blind that hides reality from ill-balanced minds and ultimately increases their confusion1 is by no means incompatible with art's ideal essence4 ,on the contrary1 such a result is inevitable when ideality is carried at all far upon a narrow basis4 ,the more genuine and excellent the vision the greater havoc it makes if1 being inadequate1 it establishes itself authoritatively in the soul4 ,art1 in the better sense1 is a condition of happiness for a practical and labouring creature1 since without art he remains a slave2 but it is one more source of unhappiness for him so long as it is not squared with his necessary labours and merely interrupts them4 ,it then alienates him from his world without being able to carry him effectually into a better one4 ,sidenote3 ,the happy imagination is one initially in line with things4 ,the artist is in many ways like a child4 ,he seems happy1 because his life is spontaneous1 yet he is not competent to secure his own good4 ,to be truly happy he must be well bred1 reared from the cradle1 as it were1 under propitious influences1 so that he may have learned to love what conduces to his development4 ,in that rare case his art will expand as his understanding ripens2 he will not need to repent and begin again on a lower key4 ,the ideal artist1 like the ideal philosopher1 has all time and all existence for his virtual theme4 ,fed by the world he can help to mould it1 and his insight is a kind of wisdom1 preparing him as science might for using the world well and making it more fruitful4 ,he can then be happy1 not merely in the sense of having now and then an ecstatic moment1 but happy in having light and resource enough within him to cope steadily with real things and to leave upon them the vestige of his mind4 ,sidenote3 and brought always closer to them by experience4 ,one effect of growing experience is to render what is unreal uninteresting4 ,momentous alternatives in life are so numerous and the possibilities they open up so varied that imagination finds enough employment of a historic and practical sort in trying to seize them4 ,a child plans ,towers of ,babel2 a mature architect1 in planning1 would lose all interest if he were bidden to disregard gravity and economy4 ,the conditions of existence1 after they are known and accepted1 become conditions for the only pertinent beauty4 ,in each place1 for each situation1 the plastic mind finds an appropriate ideal4 ,it need not go afield to import something exotic4 ,it need make no sacrifices to whim and to personal memories4 ,it rather breeds out of the given problem a new and singular solution1 thereby exercising greater invention than would be requisite for framing an arbitrary ideal and imposing it at all costs on every occasion4 ,sidenote3 ,reason is the principle of both art and happiness4 ,in other words1 a happy result can be secured in art1 as in life1 only by intelligence4 ,intelligence consists in having read the heart and deciphered the promptings latent there1 and then in reading the world and deciphering its law and constitution1 to see how and where the heart's ideal may be embodied4 ,our troubles come from the colossal blunders made by our ancestors 7who had worse ancestors of their own7 in both these interpretations1 blunders which have come down to us in our blood and in our institutions4 ,the vices thus transmitted cloud our intelligence4 ,we fail in practical affairs when we ignore the conditions of action and we fail in works of imagination when we concoct what is fantastic and without roots in the world4 ,the value of art lies in making people happy1 first in practising the art and then in possessing its product4 ,this observation might seem needless1 and ought to be so2 but if we compare it with what is commonly said on these subjects1 we must confess that it may often be denied and more often1 perhaps1 may not be understood4 ,happiness is something men ought to pursue1 although they seldom do so2 they are drawn away from it at first by foolish impulses and afterwards by perverse laws4 ,to secure happiness conduct would have to remain spontaneous while it learned not to be criminal2 but the fanatical attachment of men1 now to a fierce liberty1 now to a false regimen1 keeps them barbarous and wretched4 ,a rational pursuit of happiness--which is one thing with progress or with the ,life of ,reason--would embody that natural piety which leaves to the episodes of life their inherent values1 mourning death1 celebrating love1 sanctifying civic traditions1 enjoying and correcting nature's ways4 ,to discriminate happiness is therefore the very soul of art1 which expresses experience without distorting it1 as those political or metaphysical tyrannies distort it which sanctify unhappiness4 ,a free mind1 like a creative imagination1 rejoices at the harmonies it can find or make between man and nature2 and1 where it finds none1 it solves the conflict so far as it may and then notes and endures it with a shudder4 ,a morality organised about the human heart in an ingenuous and sincere fashion would involve every fine art and would render the world pervasively beautiful--beautiful in its artificial products and beautiful in its underlying natural terrors4 ,the closer we keep to elementary human needs and to the natural agencies that may satisfy them1 the closer we are to beauty4 ,industry1 sport1 and science1 with the perennial intercourse and passions of men1 swarm with incentives to expression1 because they are everywhere creating new moulds of being and compelling the eye to observe those forms and to recast them ideally4 ,art is simply an adequate industry2 it arises when industry is carried out to the satisfaction of all human demands1 even of those incidental sensuous demands which we call sthetic and which a brutal industry1 in its haste1 may despise or ignore4 ,arts responsive in this way to all human nature would be beautiful according to reason and might remain beautiful long4 ,poetic beauty touches the world whenever it attains some unfeigned harmony either with sense or with reason2 and the more unfeignedly human happiness was made the test of all institutions and pursuits1 the more beautiful they would be1 having more numerous points of fusion with the mind1 and fusing with it more profoundly4 ,to distinguish and to create beauty would then be no art relegated to a few abstracted spirits1 playing with casual fancies2 it would be a habit inseparable from practical efficiency4 ,all operations1 all affairs1 would then be viewed in the light of ultimate interests1 and in their deep relation to human good4 ,the arts would thus recover their ,homeric glory2 touching human fate as they clearly would1 they would borrow something of its grandeur and pathos1 and yet the interest that worked in them would be warm1 because it would remain unmistakably animal and sincere4 ,sidenote3 ,only a rational society can have sure and perfect arts4 ,the principle that all institutions should subserve happiness runs deeper than any cult for art and lays the foundation on which the latter might rest safely4 ,if social structure were rational its free expression would be so too4 ,many observers1 with no particular philosophy to adduce1 feel that the arts among us are somehow impotent1 and they look for a better inspiration1 now to ancient models1 now to the raw phenomena of life4 ,a dilettante may1 indeed1 summon inspiration whence he will2 and a virtuoso will never lack some material to keep him busy2 but if what is hoped for is a genuine1 native1 inevitable art1 a great revolution would first have to be worked in society4 ,we should have to abandon our vested illusions1 our irrational religions and patriotisms and schools of art1 and to discover instead our genuine needs1 the forms of our possible happiness4 ,to call for such self-examination seems revolutionary only because we start from a sophisticated system1 a system resting on traditional fashions and superstitions1 by which the will of the living generation is misinterpreted and betrayed4 ,to shake off that system would not subvert order but rather institute order for the first time2 it would be an ,instauratio ,magna1 a setting things again on their feet4 ,we in ,christendom are so accustomed to artificial ideals and to artificial institutions1 kept up to express them1 that we hardly conceive how anomalous our situation is1 sorely as we may suffer from it4 ,we found academies and museums1 as we found missions1 to fan a flame that constantly threatens to die out for lack of natural fuel4 ,our overt ideals are parasites in the body politic1 while the ideals native to the body politic1 those involved in our natural structure and situation1 are either stifled by that alien incubus1 leaving civic life barbarous1 or else force their way up1 unremarked or not justly honoured as ideals4 ,industry and science and social amenities1 with all the congruous comforts and appurtenances of contemporary life1 march on their way1 as if they had nothing to say to the spirit1 which remains entangled in a cobweb of dead traditions4 ,an idle pottering of the fancy over obsolete forms--theological1 dramatic1 or plastic--makes that by-play to the sober business of life which men call their art or their religion2 and the more functionless and gratuitous this by-play is the more those who indulge in it think they are idealists4 ,they feel they are champions of what is most precious in the world1 as a sentimental lady might fancy herself a lover of flowers when she pressed them in a book instead of planting their seeds in the garden4 ,sidenote3 ,why art is now empty and unstable4 ,it is clear that gratuitous and functionless habits cannot bring happiness2 they do not constitute an activity at once spontaneous and beneficent1 such as noble art is an instance of4 ,those habits may indeed give pleasure2 they may bring extreme excitement1 as madness notably does1 though it is in the highest degree functionless and gratuitous4 ,nor is such by-play without consequences1 some of which might conceivably be fortunate4 ,what is functionless is so called for being worthless from some ideal point of view1 and not conducing to the particular life considered4 ,but nothing real is dissociated from the universal flux2 everything--madness and all unmeaning cross-currents in being--count in the general process and discharge somewhere1 not without effect1 the substance they have drawn for a moment into their little vortex4 ,so our vain arts and unnecessary religions are not without real effects and not without a certain internal vitality4 ,when life is profoundly disorganised it may well happen that only in detached episodes1 only in moments snatched for dreaming in1 can men see the blue or catch a glimpse of something like the ideal4 ,in that case their esteem for their irrelevant visions may be well grounded1 and their thin art and far-fetched religion may really constitute what is best in their experience4 ,in a pathetic way these poor enthusiasms may be justified1 but only because the very conception of a rational life lies entirely beyond the horizon4 ,sidenote3 ,anomalous character of the irrational artist4 ,it is no marvel1 when art is a brief truancy from rational practice1 that the artist himself should be a vagrant1 and at best1 as it were1 an infant prodigy4 ,the wings of genius serve him only for an escapade1 enabling him to skirt the perilous edge of madness and of mystical abysses4 ,but such an erratic workman does not deserve the name of artist or master2 he has burst convention only to break it1 not to create a new convention more in harmony with nature4 ,his originality1 though it may astonish for a moment1 will in the end be despised and will find no thoroughfare4 ,he will meantime be wretched himself1 torn from the roots of his being by that cruel1 unmeaning inspiration2 or1 if too rapt to see his own plight1 he will be all the more pitied by practical men1 who cannot think it a real blessing to be lost in joys that do not strengthen the character and yield nothing for posterity4 ,art1 in its nobler acceptation1 is an achievement1 not an indulgence4 ,it prepares the world in some sense to receive the soul1 and the soul to master the world2 it disentangles those threads in each that can be woven into the other4 ,that the artist should be eccentric1 homeless1 dreamful may almost seem a natural law1 but it is none the less a scandal4 ,an artist's business is not really to cut fantastical capers or be licensed to play the fool4 ,his business is simply that of every keen soul to build well when it builds1 and to speak well when it speaks1 giving practice everywhere the greatest possible affinity to the situation1 the most delicate adjustment to every faculty it affects4 ,the wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration1 with the instinctive sympathy that makes him1 in his mortal isolation1 considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret1 so that his work speaks to them kindly1 with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves4 ,and the joy of his great sanity1 the power of his adequate vision1 is not the less intense because he can lend it to others and has borrowed it from a faithful study of the world4 ,sidenote3 ,true art measures and completes happiness4 ,if happiness is the ultimate sanction of art1 art in turn is the best instrument of happiness4 ,in art more directly than in other activities man's self-expression is cumulative and finds an immediate reward2 for it alters the material conditions of sentience so that sentience becomes at once more delightful and more significant4 ,in industry man is still servile1 preparing the materials he is to use in action4 ,in action itself1 though he is free1 he exerts his influence on a living and treacherous medium and sees the issue at each moment drift farther and farther from his intent4 ,in science he is an observer1 preparing himself for action in another way1 by studying its results and conditions4 ,but in art he is at once competent and free2 he is creative4 ,he is not troubled by his materials1 because he has assimilated them and may take them for granted2 nor is he concerned with the chance complexion of affairs in the actual world1 because he is making the world over1 not merely considering how it grew or how it will consent to grow in future4 ,nothing1 accordingly1 could be more delightful than genuine art1 nor more free from remorse and the sting of vanity4 ,art springs so completely from the heart of man that it makes everything speak to him in his own language2 it reaches1 nevertheless1 so truly to the heart of nature that it co-operates with her1 becomes a parcel of her creative material energy1 and builds by her instinctive hand4 ,if the various formative impulses afoot in the world never opposed stress to stress and made no havoc with one another1 nature might be called an unconscious artist4 ,in fact1 just where such a formative impulse finds support from the environment1 a consciousness supervenes4 ,if that consciousness is adequate enough to be prophetic1 an art arises4 ,thus the emergence of arts out of instincts is the token and exact measure of nature's success and of mortal happiness4 999999 ,end of ,volume ,four 999999 ,,reason ,,in ,,science ,volume ,five of 8,the ,life of ,reason0 ,,george ,,santayana h gar noy enhergeia zh ,,contents ,,reason ,,in ,,science ,,chapter ,i ,,types ,,and ,,aims ,,of ,,science ,science still young4--,its miscarriage in ,greece4--,its timid reappearance in modern times4--,distinction between science and myth4--,platonic status of hypothesis4--,meaning of verification4--,possible validity of myths4--,any dreamed-of thing might be experienced4--,but science follows the movement of its subject-matter4--,moral value of science4--,its continuity with common knowledge4--,its intellectual essence4--,unity of science4--,in existence1 judged by reflection1 there is a margin of waste4--,sciences converge from different points of origin4--,two chief kinds of science1 physics and dialectic4--,their mutual implication4--,their coperation4--,no science a priori4--,role of criticism4 ,pages #c-ch ,,chapter ,,ii ,,history ,history an artificial memory4--,second sight requires control4--,nature the theme common to various memories4--,growth of legend4--,no history without documents4--,the aim is truth4--,indirect methods of attaining it4--,historical research a part of physics4--,verification here indirect4--,futile ideal to survey all facts4--,historical theory4--,it is arbitrary4--,a moral critique of the past is possible4--,how it might be just4--,transition to historical romance4--,possibility of genuine epics4--,literal truth abandoned4--,history exists to be transcended4--,its great rle4 ,pages #ci-fh ,,chapter ,,iii ,,mechanism ,recurrent forms in nature4--,their discovery makes the flux calculable4--,looser principles tried first4--,mechanism for the most part hidden4--,yet presumably pervasive4--,inadequacy of consciousness4--,its articulation inferior to that of its objects4--,science consequently retarded1 and speculation rendered necessary4--,dissatisfaction with mechanism partly natural1 and partly artificial4--,biassed judgments inspired by moral inertia4--,positive emotions proper to materialism4--,the material world not dead nor ugly1 nor especially cruel4--,mechanism to be judged by its fruits4 ,pages #fi-id ,,chapter ,,iv ,,hesitations ,,in ,,method ,mechanism restricted to one-half of existence4--,men of science not speculative4--,confusion in semi-moral subjects4--8,physic of metaphysic begs defence40--,evolution by mechanism4--,evolution by ideal attraction4--,if species are evolved they cannot guide evolution4--,intrusion of optimism4--,evolution according to ,hegel4--,the conservative interpretation4--,the radical one4--,megalomania4--,chaos in the theory of mind4--,origin of self-consciousness4--,the notion of spirit4--,the notion of sense4--,competition between the two4--,the rise of scepticism4 ,pages #ie-abe ,,chapter ,v ,,psychology ,mind reading not science4--,experience a reconstruction4--,the honest art of education4--,arbitrary readings of the mind4--,human nature appealed to rather than described4--,dialectic in psychology4--,spinoza on the passions4--,a principle of estimation cannot govern events4--,scientific psychology a part of biology4--,confused attempt to detach the psychic element4--,differentia of the psychic4--,approach to irrelevant sentience4--,perception represents things in their practical relation to the body4--,mind the existence in which form becomes actual4--,attempt at idealistic physics4--,association not efficient4--,it describes coincidences4--,understanding is based on instinct and expressed in dialectic4--,suggestion a fancy name for automatism1 and will another4--,double attachment of mind to nature4--,is the subject-matter of psychology absolute being8--,sentience is representable only in fancy4--,the conditions and objects of sentience1 which are not sentience1 are also real4--,mind knowable and important in so far as it represents other things4 ,pages #abf-aff ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,intent ,dialectic better than physics4--,maladjustments to nature render physics conspicuous and unpleasant4--,physics should be largely virtual1 and dialectic explicit4--,intent is vital and indescribable4--,it is analogous to flux in existence4--,it expresses natural life4--,it has a material basis4--,it is necessarily relevant to earth4--,the basis of intent becomes appreciable in language4--,intent starts from a datum1 and is carried by a feeling4--,it demands conventional expression4--,a fable about matter and form4 ,pages #afg-ahf ,,chapter ,,vii ,,dialectic ,dialectic elaborates given forms4--,forms are abstracted from existence by intent4--,confusion comes of imperfect abstraction1 or ambiguous intent4--,the fact that mathematics applies to existence is empirical4--,its moral value is therefore contingent4--,quantity submits easily to dialectical treatment--,constancy and progress in intent4--,intent determines the functional essence of objects4--,also the scope of ideals4--,double status of mathematics4--,practical rle of dialectic4--,hegel's satire on dialectic4--,dialectic expresses a given intent4--,its empire is ideal and autonomous4 ,pages #ahg-bji ,,chapter ,,viii ,,prerational ,,morality ,empirical alloy in dialectic4--,arrested rationality in morals4--,its emotional and practical power4--,moral science is an application of dialectic1 not a part of anthropology4--,estimation the soul of philosophy4--,moral discriminations are natural and inevitable4--,a choice of proverbs4--,their various representative value4--,conflict of partial moralities4--,the ,greek ideal4--,imaginative exuberance and political discipline4--,sterility of ,greek example4--,prerational morality among the ,jews4--,the development of conscience4--,need of ,hebraic devotion to ,greek aims4--,prerational morality marks an acquisition but offers no programme4 ,pages #baj-bcb ,,chapter ,,ix ,,rational ,,ethics ,moral passions represent private interests4--,common ideal interests may supervene4--,to this extent there is rational society4--,a rational morality not attainable1 but its principle clear4--,it is the logic of an autonomous will4--,socrates' science4--,its opposition to sophistry and moral anarchy4--,its vitality4--,genuine altruism is natural self-expression4--,reason expresses impulses1 but impulses reduced to harmony4--,self-love artificial4--,the sanction of reason is happiness4--,moral science impeded by its chaotic data1 and its unrecognised scope4--,fallacy in democratic hedonism4--,sympathy a conditional duty4--,all life1 and hence right life1 finite and particular4 ,pages #bcc-bfa ,,chapter ,x ,,post-,,rational ,,morality ,socratic ethics retrospective4--,rise of disillusioned moralities4--,the illusion subsisting in them4--,epicurean refuge in pleasure4--,stoic recourse to conformity4--,conformity the core of ,islam1 enveloped in arbitrary doctrines4--,the latter alone lend it practical force4--,moral ambiguity in pantheism4--,under stress1 it becomes ascetic and requires a mythology4--,a supernatural world made by the ,platonist out of dialectic4--,the ,hebraic cry for redemption4--,the two factors meet in ,christianity4--,consequent eclecticism4--,the negation of naturalism never complete4--,spontaneous values rehabilitated4--,a witness out of ,india4--,dignity of post-rational morality4--,absurdities nevertheless involved4--,the soul of positivism in all ideals4--,moribund dreams and perennial realities4 ,pages #bfb-cjj ,,chapter ,,xi ,,the ,,validity ,,of ,,science ,various modes of revising science4--,science its own best critic4--,obstruction by alien traditions4--,needless anxiety for moral interests4--,science an imaginative and practical art4--,arrire-pense in transcendentalism4--,its romantic sincerity4--,its constructive impotence4--,its dependence on common-sense4--,its futility4--,ideal science is self-justified4--,physical science is presupposed in scepticism4--,it recurs in all understanding of perception4--,science contains all trustworthy knowledge4--,it suffices for the ,life of ,reason4 ,pages #cja-cbj ,,reason ,,in ,,science ,,chapter ,i ,,types ,,and ,,aims ,,of ,,science ,sidenote3 ,science still young4 ,science is so new a thing and so far from final1 it seems to the layman so hopelessly accurate and extensive1 that a moralist may well feel some diffidence in trying to estimate its achievements and promises at their human worth4 ,the morrow may bring some great revolution in science1 and is sure to bring many a correction and many a surprise4 ,religion and art have had their day2 indeed a part of the faith they usually inspire is to believe that they have long ago revealed their secret4 ,a critic may safely form a judgment concerning them2 for even if he dissents from the orthodox opinion and ventures to hope that religion and art may assume in the future forms far nobler and more rational than any they have hitherto worn1 still he must confess that art and religion have had several turns at the wheel2 they have run their course through in various ages and climes with results which anybody is free to estimate if he has an open mind and sufficient interest in the subject4 ,science1 on the contrary1 which apparently cannot exist where intellectual freedom is denied1 has flourished only twice in recorded times3 once for some three hundred years in ancient ,greece1 and again for about the same period in modern ,christendom4 ,its fruits have scarcely begun to appear2 the lands it is discovering have not yet been circumnavigated1 and there is no telling what its ultimate influence will be on human practice and feeling4 ,sidenote3 ,its miscarriage in ,greece4 ,the first period in the life of science was brilliant but ineffectual4 ,the ,greeks' energy and liberty were too soon spent1 and the very exuberance of their genius made its expression chaotic4 ,where every mind was so fresh and every tongue so clever no scientific tradition could arise1 and no laborious applications could be made to test the value of rival notions and decide between them4 ,men of science were mere philosophers4 ,each began1 not where his predecessor had ended1 but at the very beginning4 ,another circumstance that impeded the growth of science was the forensic and rhetorical turn proper to ,greek intelligence4 ,this mental habit gave a tremendous advantage in philosophy to the moralist and poet over the naturalist or mathematician4 ,hence what survived in ,greece after the heyday of theoretic achievement was chiefly philosophies of life1 and these--at the death of liberty--grew daily more personal and ascetic4 ,authority in scientific matters clung chiefly to ,plato and ,aristotle1 and this not for the sake of their incomparable moral philosophy--for in ethics that decadent age preferred the ,stoics and ,epicureans--but just for those rhetorical expedients which in the ,socratic school took the place of natural science4 ,worse influences in this field could hardly be imagined1 since ,plato's physics ends in myth and apologue1 while ,aristotle's ends in nomenclature and teleology4 ,all that remained of ,greek physics1 therefore1 was the conception of what physics should be--a great achievement due to the earlier thinkers--and certain hints and guesses in that field4 ,the elements of geometry had also been formulated1 while the ,socratic school bequeathed to posterity a well-developed group of moral sciences1 rational in principle1 but destined to be soon overlaid with metaphysical and religious accretions1 so that the dialectical nerve and reasonableness of them were obliterated1 and there survived only miscellaneous conclusions1 fragments of wisdom built topsy-turvy into the new mythical edifice4 ,it is the sad task reserved for historical criticism to detach those sculptured stones from the rough mass in which they have been embedded and to rearrange them in their pristine order1 thus rediscovering the inner ,socratic principle of moral philosophy1 which is nothing but self-knowledge--a circumspect1 systematic utterance of the speaker's mind1 disclosing his implicit meaning and his ultimate preferences4 ,sidenote3 ,its timid reappearance in modern times4 ,at its second birth science took a very different form4 ,it left cosmic theories to pantheistic enthusiasts like ,giordano ,bruno1 while in sober laborious circles it confined itself to specific discoveries--the earth's roundness and motion about the sun1 the laws of mechanics1 the development and application of algebra1 the invention of the calculus1 and a hundred other steps forward in various disciplines4 ,it was a patient siege laid to the truth1 which was approached blindly and without a general1 as by an army of ants2 it was not stormed imaginatively as by the ancient ,ionians1 who had reached at once the notion of nature's dynamic unity1 but had neglected to take possession in detail of the intervening tracts1 whence resources might be drawn in order to maintain the main position4 ,nevertheless1 as discoveries accumulated1 they fell insensibly into a system1 and philosophers like ,descartes and ,newton arrived at a general physics4 ,this physics1 however1 was not yet meant to cover the whole existent world1 or to be the genetic account of all things in their system4 ,descartes excluded from his physics the whole mental and moral world1 which became1 so far as his science went1 an inexplicable addendum4 ,similarly ,newton's mechanical principles1 broad as they were1 were conceived by him merely as a parenthesis in theology4 ,not until the nineteenth century were the observations that had been accumulated given their full value or in fact understood2 for ,spinoza's system1 though naturalistic in spirit1 was still dialectical in form1 and had no influence on science and for a long time little even on speculation4 ,indeed the conception of a natural order1 like the ,greek cosmos1 which shall include all existences--gods no less than men1 if gods actually exist--is one not yet current1 although it is implied in every scientific explanation and is favoured by two powerful contemporary movements which1 coming from different quarters1 are leading men's minds back to the same ancient and obvious naturalism4 ,one of these movements is the philosophy of evolution1 to which ,darwin gave such an irresistible impetus4 ,the other is theology itself1 where it has been emancipated from authority and has set to work to square men's conscience with history and experience4 ,this theology has generally passed into speculative idealism1 which under another name recognises the universal empire of law and conceives man's life as an incident in a prodigious natural process1 by which his mind and his interests are produced and devoured4 ,this 8idealism0 is in truth a system of immaterial physics1 like that of ,pythagoras or ,heraclitus4 ,while it works with fantastic and shifting categories1 which no plain naturalist would care to use1 it has nothing to apply those categories to except what the naturalist or historian may already have discovered and expressed in the categories of common prose4 ,german idealism is a translation of physical evolution into mythical language1 which presents the facts now in the guise of a dialectical progression1 now in that of a romantic drama4 ,in either case the facts are the same1 and just those which positive knowledge has come upon4 ,thus many who are not brought to naturalism by science are brought to it1 quite unwillingly and unawares1 by their religious speculations4 ,sidenote3 ,distinction between science and myth4 ,the gulf that yawns between such idealistic cosmogonies and a true physics may serve to make clear the divergence in principle which everywhere divides natural science from arbitrary conceptions of things4 ,this divergence is as far as possible from lying in the merit of the two sorts of theory4 ,their merit1 and the genius and observation required to frame them1 may well be equal1 or an imaginative system may have the advantage in these respects4 ,it may even be more serviceable for a while and have greater pragmatic value1 so long as knowledge is at best fragmentary1 and no consecutive or total view of things is attempted by either party4 ,thus in social life a psychology expressed in terms of abstract faculties and personified passions may well carry a man farther than a physiological psychology would4 ,or1 again1 we may say that there was more experience and love of nature enshrined in ancient mythology than in ancient physics2 the observant poet might then have fared better in the world than the pert and ignorant materialist4 ,nor does the difference between science and myth lie in the fact that the one is essentially less speculative than the other4 ,they are differently speculative1 it is true1 since myth terminates in unverifiable notions that might by chance represent actual existences2 while science terminates in concepts or laws1 themselves not possibly existent1 but verified by recurring particular facts1 belonging to the same experience as those from which the theory started4 ,sidenote3 ,platonic status of hypothesis4 ,the laws formulated by science--the transitive figments describing the relation between fact and fact--possess only a ,platonic sort of reality4 ,they are more real1 if you will1 than the facts themselves1 because they are more permanent1 trustworthy1 and pervasive2 but at the same time they are1 if you will1 not real at all1 because they are incompatible with immediacy and alien to brute existence4 ,in declaring what is true of existences they altogether renounce existence on their own behalf4 ,this situation has made no end of trouble in ill-balanced minds1 not docile to the diversities and free complexity of things1 but bent on treating everything by a single method4 ,they have asked themselves persistently the confusing question whether the matter or the form of things is the reality2 whereas1 of course1 both elements are needed1 each with its incommensurable kind of being4 ,the material element alone is existent1 while the ideal element is the sum of all those propositions which are true of what exists materially4 ,anybody's knowledge of the truth1 being a complex and fleeting feeling1 is of course but a moment of existence or material being1 which whether found in ,god or man is as far as possible from being that truth itself which it may succeed in knowing4 ,sidenote3 ,meaning of verification4 ,the true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification4 ,some ambiguity1 however1 lurks in this phrase1 since verification comes to a method only vicariously1 when the particulars it prophesies are realised in sense4 ,to verify a theory as if it were not a method but a divination of occult existences would be to turn the theory into a myth and then to discover that what the myth pictured had1 by a miracle1 an actual existence also4 ,there is accordingly a sense in which myth admits substantiation of a kind that science excludes4 ,the ,olympic hierarchy might conceivably exist bodily2 but gravitation and natural selection1 being schemes of relation1 can never exist substantially and on their own behoof4 ,nevertheless1 the ,olympic hierarchy1 even if it happened to exist1 could not be proved to do so unless it were a part of the natural world open to sense2 while gravitation and natural selection1 without being existences1 can be verified at every moment by concrete events occurring as those principles require4 ,a hypothesis1 being a discursive device1 gains its utmost possible validity when its discursive value is established4 ,it is not1 it merely applies2 and every situation in which it is found to apply is a proof of its truth4 ,the case would not be different with fables1 were their basis and meaning remembered4 ,but fables1 when hypostatised1 forget that they1 too1 were transitive symbols and boast to reveal an undiscoverable reality4 ,a dogmatic myth is in this sorry plight3 that the more evidence it can find to support it the more it abrogates its metaphysical pretensions1 while the more it insists on its absolute truth the less relevance it has to experience and the less meaning4 ,to try to support fabulous dogmas by evidence is tantamount to acknowledging that they are merely scientific hypotheses1 instruments of discourse1 and methods of expression4 ,but in that case their truth would no longer be supposed to lie in the fact that somewhere beyond the range of human observation they descended bodily to the plane of flying existence1 and were actually enacted there4 ,they would have ceased to resemble the society of ,olympus1 which to prove itself real would need to verify itself1 since only the gods and those mortals admitted to their conclave could know for a fact that that celestial gathering existed4 ,on the contrary1 a speculation that could be supported by evidence would be one that might be made good without itself descending to the plane of immediacy1 but would be sufficiently verified when diffuse facts fall out as it had led us to expect4 ,the myth in such a case would have become transparent again and relevant to experience1 which could continually serve to support or to correct it4 ,even if somewhat overloaded and poetical1 it would be in essence a scientific theory4 ,it would no longer terminate in itself2 it would point forward1 leading the thinker that used it to eventual facts of experience1 facts which his poetic wisdom would have prepared him to meet and to use4 ,sidenote3 ,possible validity of myths4 ,if ,i say1 for instance1 that ,punishment1 limping in one leg1 patiently follows every criminal1 the myth is obvious and innocent enough4 ,it reveals nothing1 but1 what is far better1 it means something4 ,i have expressed a truth of experience and pointed vaguely to the course which events may be expected to take under given circumstances4 ,the expression1 though mythical in form1 is scientific in effect1 because it tends to surround a given phenomenon 7the crime7 with objects on its own plane--other passions and sensations to follow upon it4 ,what would be truly mythical would be to stop at the figure of speech and maintain1 by way of revealed dogma1 that a lame goddess of vindictive mind actually follows every wicked man1 her sword poised in mid-air4 ,sinking into that reverie1 and trembling at its painted truth1 ,i should be passing to the undiscoverable and forgetting the hard blows actually awaiting me in the world4 ,fable1 detaining the mind too long in the mesh of expression1 would have become metaphysical dogma4 ,i should have connected the given fact with imagined facts1 which even if by chance real--for such a goddess may1 for all we know1 actually float in the fourth dimension--are quite supernumerary in my world1 and never1 by any possibility1 can become parts or extensions of the experience they are thought to explain4 ,the gods are demonstrable only as hypotheses1 but as hypotheses they are not gods4 ,sidenote3 ,any dreamed-of thing might be experienced4 ,the same distinction is sometimes expressed by saying that science deals only with objects of possible experience4 ,but this expression is unfortunate1 because everything thinkable1 no matter how mythical and supernatural or how far beyond the range of mortal senses1 is an object of possible experience4 ,tritons and sea-horses might observe one another and might feel themselves live4 ,the thoughts and decrees said to occupy the divine mind from all eternity would certainly be phenomena there2 they would be experienced things4 ,were fables really as metaphysical and visionary as they pretend to be1 were they not all the while and in essence mere symbols for natural situations1 they would be nothing but reports about other alleged parts of experience4 ,a real ,triton1 a real ,creator1 a real heaven would obviously be objects open to properly equipped senses and seats of much vivid experience4 ,but a ,triton after all has something to do with the gean and other earthly waters2 a ,creator has something to do with the origin of man and of his habitat2 heaven has something to do with the motives and rewards of moral action4 ,this relevance to given experience and its objects is what cuts those myths off from their blameless and gratuitous rle of reporting experiences that might be going on merrily enough somewhere else in the universe4 ,in calling them myths and denying that what they describe falls within the purview of science1 we do not assert that1 absolutely taken1 they could not be objects of a possible experience4 ,what we mean is rather that no matter how long we searched the sea waves1 in which it is the essence of our ,tritons to disport themselves1 we should never find ,tritons there2 and that if we traced back the history of man and nature we should find them always passing by natural generation out of slightly different earlier forms and never appearing suddenly1 at the fiat of a vehement ,jehovah swimming about in a chaos2 and finally that if we considered critically our motives and our ideals1 we should find them springing from and directed upon a natural life and its functions1 and not at all on a disembodied and timeless ecstasy4 ,those myths1 then1 while they intrinsically refer to facts in the given world1 describe those facts in incongruous terms4 ,they are symbols1 not extensions1 for the experience we know4 ,sidenote3 ,but science follows the movement of its subject-matter4 ,a chief characteristic of science1 then1 is that in supplementing given facts it supplements them by adding other facts belonging to the same sphere1 and eventually discoverable by tracing the given object in its own plane through its continuous transformations4 ,science expands speculatively1 by the aid of merely instrumental hypotheses1 objects given in perception until they compose a congruous1 self-supporting world1 all parts of which might be observed consecutively4 ,what a scientific hypothesis interpolates among the given facts--the atomic structure of things1 for instance--might come in time under the direct fire of attention1 fixed more scrupulously1 longer1 or with better instruments upon those facts themselves4 ,otherwise the hypothesis that assumed that structure would be simply false1 just as a hypothesis that the interior of the earth is full of molten fire would be false if on inspection nothing were found there but solid rock4 ,science does not merely prolong a habit of inference2 it verifies and solves the inference by reaching the fact inferred4 ,the contrast with myth at this point is very interesting2 for in myth the facts are themselves made vehicles1 and knowledge is felt to terminate in an independent existence on a higher or deeper level than any immediate fact2 and this circumstance is what makes myth impossible to verify and1 except by laughter1 to disprove4 ,if ,i attributed the stars' shining to the diligence of angels who lighted their lamps at sunset1 lest the upper reaches of the world should grow dangerous for travellers1 and if ,i made my romance elaborate and ingenious enough1 ,i might possibly find that the stars' appearance and disappearance could continue to be interpreted in that way4 ,my myth might always suggest itself afresh and might be perennially appropriate4 ,but it would never descend1 with its charming figures1 into the company of its evidences4 ,it would never prove that what it terminated in was a fact1 as in my metaphysical faith ,i had deputed and asserted it to be4 ,the angels would remain notional1 while my intent was to have them exist2 so that the more earnestly ,i held to my fable the more grievously should ,i be deceived4 ,for even if seraphic choirs existed in plenty on their own emotional or musical plane of being1 it would not have been their hands--if they had hands--that would have lighted the stars ,i saw2 and this1 after all1 was the gist and starting-point of my whole fable and its sole witness in my world4 ,a myth might by chance be a revelation1 did what it talks of have an actual existence somewhere else in the universe2 but it would need to be a revelation in order to be true at all1 and would then be true only in an undeserved and spurious fashion4 ,any representative and provable validity which it might possess would assimulate it to science and reduce it to a mere vehicle and instrument for human discourse4 ,it would evaporate as soon as the prophecies it made were fulfilled1 and it would claim no being and no worship on its own account4 ,science might accordingly be called a myth conscious of its essential ideality1 reduced to its fighting weight and valued only for its significance4 ,sidenote3 ,moral value of science4 ,a symptom of the divergence between myth and science may be found in the contrary emotions which they involve4 ,since in myth we interpret experience in order to interpret it1 in order to delight ourselves by turning it poetically into the language and prosody of our own life1 the emotion we feel when we succeed is artistic2 myth has a dramatic charm4 ,since in science1 on the contrary1 we employ notional machinery1 in itself perhaps indifferent enough1 in order to arrive at eventual facts and to conceive the aspect which given things would actually wear from a different point of view in space or time1 the emotion we feel when we succeed is that of security and intellectual dominion2 science has a rational value4 ,to see better what we now see1 to see by anticipation what we should see actually under other conditions1 is wonderfully to satisfy curiosity and to enlighten conduct4 ,at the same time1 scientific thinking involves no less inward excitement than dramatic fiction does4 ,it summons before us an even larger number of objects in their fatal direction upon our interests4 ,were science adequate it would indeed absorb those passions which now1 since they must be satisfied somehow1 have to be satisfied by dramatic myths4 ,to imagine how things might have been would be neither interesting nor possible if we knew fully how things are4 ,all pertinent dramatic emotion1 joyous or tragic1 would then inhere in practical knowledge4 ,as it is1 however1 science abstracts from the more musical overtones of things in order to trace the gross and basal processes within them2 so that the pursuit of science seems comparatively dry and laborious1 except where at moments the vista opens through to the ultimate or leads back to the immediate4 ,then1 perhaps1 we recognise that in science we are surveying all it concerns us to know1 and in so doing are becoming all that it profits us to be4 ,mere amusement in thought as in sportive action is tedious and illiberal3 it marks a temperament so imperfectly educated that it prefers idle to significant play and a flimsy to a solid idea4 ,sidenote3 ,its continuity with common knowledge4 ,the fact that science follows the subject-matter in its own movement involves a further consequence3 science differs from common knowledge in scope only1 not in nature4 ,when intelligence arises1 when the flux of things begins to be mitigated by representation of it and objects are at last fixed and recognisable1 there is science4 ,for even here1 in the presence of a datum something virtual and potential is called up1 namely1 what the given thing was a moment ago1 what it is growing into1 or what it is contrasted with in character4 ,as ,i walk round a tree1 ,i learn that the parts still visible1 those that have just disappeared and those now coming into view1 are continuous and belong to the same tree4 ,this declaration1 though dialectic might find many a mare's nest in its language1 is a safe and obvious enough expression of knowledge4 ,it involves terms1 however1 which are in the act of becoming potential4 ,what is just past1 what is just coming1 though sensibly continuous with what is present1 are partially infected with nonentity4 ,after a while human apprehension can reach them only by inference1 and to count upon them is frankly to rely on theory4 ,the other side of the tree1 which common sense affirms to exist unconditionally1 will have to be represented in memory or fancy2 and it may never actually be observed by any mortal4 ,yet1 if ,i continued my round1 ,i should actually observe it and know it by experience2 and ,i should find that it had the same status as the parts now seen1 and was continuous with them4 ,my assertion that it exists1 while certainly theoretical and perhaps false1 is accordingly scientific in type4 ,science1 when it has no more scope than this1 is indistinguishable from common sense4 ,the two become distinct only when the facts inferred cannot be easily verified or have not yet been merged with the notion representing the given object in most men's minds4 ,where science remains consciously theoretical 7being as yet contrasted with ordinary apperception and current thought71 it is1 ideally considered1 a pis aller1 an expedient to which a mind must have recourse when it lacks power and scope to hold all experience in hand and to view the wide world in its genuine immediacy4 ,as oblivescence is a gradual death1 proper to a being not ideally master of the universal flux1 but swamped within it1 so science is an artificial life1 in which what cannot be perceived directly 7because personal limitations forbid7 may be regarded abstractly1 yet efficaciously1 in what we think and do4 ,with better faculties the field of possible experience could be better dominated1 and fewer of its parts1 being hidden from sight1 would need to be mapped out symbolically on that sort of projection which we call scientific inference4 ,the real relations between the parts of nature would then be given in intuition1 from which hypothesis1 after all1 has borrowed its schemata4 ,sidenote3 ,its intellectual essence4 ,science is a half-way house between private sensation and universal vision4 ,we should not forget to add1 however1 that the universal vision in question1 if it were to be something better than private sensation or passive feeling in greater bulk1 would have to be intellectual1 just as science is2 that is1 it would have to be practical and to survey the flux from a given standpoint1 in a perspective determined by special and local interests4 ,otherwise the whole world1 when known1 would merely be re-enacted in its blind immediacy without being understood or subjected to any purpose4 ,the critics of science1 when endowed with any speculative power1 have always seen that what is hypothetical and abstract in scientific method is somehow servile and provisional2 science being a sort of telegraphic wire through which a meagre report reaches us of things we would fain observe and live through in their full reality4 ,this report may suffice for approximately fit action2 it does not suffice for ideal knowledge of the truth nor for adequate sympathy with the reality4 ,what commonly escapes speculative critics of science1 however1 is that in transcending hypothesis and reaching immediacy again we should run a great risk of abandoning knowledge and sympathy altogether2 for if we became what we now represent so imperfectly1 we should evidently no longer represent it at all4 ,we should not1 at the end of our labours1 have at all enriched our own minds by adequate knowledge of what surrounds us1 nor made our wills just in view of alien but well-considered interests4 ,we should have lost our own essence and substituted for it1 not something higher than indiscriminate being1 but only indiscriminate being in its flat1 blind1 and selfish infinity4 ,the ideality1 the representative faculty1 would have gone out in our souls1 and our perfected humanity would have brought us back to protoplasm4 ,in transcending science1 therefore1 we must not hope to transcend knowledge1 nor in transcending selfishness to abolish finitude4 ,finitude is the indispensable condition of unselfishness as well as of selfishness1 and of speculative vision no less than of hypothetical knowledge4 ,the defect of science is that it is inadequate or abstract1 that the account it gives of things is not full and sensuous enough2 but its merit is that1 like sense1 it makes external being present to a creature that is concerned in adjusting itself to its environment1 and informs that creature about things other than itself4 ,science1 if brought to perfection1 would not lose its representative or ideal essence4 ,it would still survey and inform1 but it would survey everything at once and inform the being it enlightened about all that could affect its interests4 ,it would thus remain practical in effect and speculative in character4 ,in losing its accidental limitations it would not lose its initial bias1 its vital function4 ,it would continue to be a rational activity1 guiding and perfecting a natural being4 ,perfect knowledge of things would be as far as possible from identifying the knower with them1 seeing that for the most part--even when we call them human--they have no knowledge of themselves4 ,science1 accordingly1 even when imperfect1 is a tremendous advance on absorption in sense and a dull immediacy4 ,it begins to enrich the mind and gives it some inkling1 at least1 of that ideal dominion which each centre of experience might have if it had learned to regard all others1 and the relation connecting it with them1 both in thought and in action4 ,ideal knowledge would be an inward state corresponding to a perfect adjustment of the body to all forces affecting it4 ,if the adjustment was perfect the inward state would regard every detail in the objects envisaged1 but it would see those details in a perspective of its own1 adding to sympathetic reproduction of them a consciousness of their relation to its own existence and perfection4 ,sidenote3 ,unity of science4 ,the fact that science expresses the character and relation of objects in their own terms has a further important consequence1 which serves again to distinguish science from metaphorical thinking4 ,if a man tries to illustrate the nature of a thing by assimilating it to something else which he happens to have in mind at the same time1 it is obvious that a second man1 whose mind is differently furnished1 may assimilate the same object to a quite different idea3 so myths are centrifugal1 and the more elaborate and delicate they are the more they diverge1 like well-developed languages4 ,the rude beginnings of myth in every age and country bear a certain resemblance1 because the facts interpreted are similar and the minds reading them have not yet developed their special grammar of representation4 ,but two highly developed mythical systems--two theologies1 for instance1 like the ,greek and the ,indian--will grow every day farther and farther apart4 ,science1 on the contrary1 whatever it may start with1 runs back into the same circle of facts1 because it follows the lead of the subject-matter1 and is attentive to its inherent transformations4 ,if men's fund of initial perceptions1 then1 is alike1 their science is sure to be so2 while the embroideries they make upon perception out of their own resources will differ as much as do the men themselves4 ,men asleep1 said ,heraclitus1 live each in his own world1 but awake they live in the same world together4 ,to be awake is nothing but to be dreaming under control of the object2 it is to be pursuing science to the comparative exclusion of mere mental vegetation and spontaneous myth4 ,thus if our objects are the same1 our science and our waking lives will coincide2 or if there is a natural diversity in our discoveries1 because we occupy different points in space and time and have a varying range of experience1 these diversities will nevertheless supplement one another2 the discovery that each has made will be a possible discovery for the others also4 ,so a geographer in ,china and one in ,babylonia may at first make wholly unlike maps2 but in time both will take note of the ,himalayas1 and the side each approaches will slope up to the very crest approached by the other4 ,so science is self-confirming1 and its most disparate branches are mutually illuminating2 while in the realm of myth1 until it is surveyed scientifically1 there can be nothing but mutual repulsion and incapacity to understand4 ,languages and religions are necessarily rivals1 but sciences are necessarily allies4 ,sidenote3 ,in existence1 judged by reflection1 there is a margin of waste4 ,the unity of science can reach no farther than does coherent experience2 and though coherence be a condition of experience in the more pregnant sense of the word--in the sense in which the child or the fool has no experience--existence is absolutely free to bloom as it likes1 and no logic can set limits or prescribe times for its irresponsible presence4 ,a great deal may accordingly exist which cannot be known by science1 or be reached from the outside at all4 ,this fact perhaps explains why science has as yet taken so little root in human life3 for even within the limits of human existence1 which are tolerably narrow1 there is probably no little incoherence1 no little lapsing into what1 from any other point of view1 is inconceivable and undiscoverable4 ,science1 for instance1 can hardly reach the catastrophes and delights1 often so vivid1 which occur in dreams2 for even if a physiological psychology should some day be able to find the causes of these phenomena1 and so to predict them1 it would never enter the dream-world persuasively1 in a way that the dreamer could appreciate and understand1 while he continued to dream4 ,this is because that dream-world and the waking world present two disjointed landscapes1 and the figures they contain belong to quite different genealogies--like the families of ,zeus and of ,abraham4 ,science is a great disciplinarian1 and misses much of the sport which the absolute is free to indulge in4 ,if there is no inner congruity and communion between two fields1 science cannot survey them both2 at best in tracing the structure of things presented in one of them1 it may come upon some detail which may offer a basis or lodgment for the entire fabric of the other1 which will thus be explained ab extra2 as the children of ,abraham might give an explanation for ,zeus and his progeny1 treating them as a phenomenon in the benighted minds of some of ,japhet's children4 ,this brings the ,olympian world within the purview of science1 but does so with a very bad grace4 ,for suppose the ,olympian gods really existed--and there is nothing impossible in that supposition--they would not be allowed to have any science of their own2 or if they did1 it would threaten the children of ,abraham with the same imputed unreality with which the latter boast to have extinguished ,olympus4 ,in order1 then1 that two regions of existence should be amenable to a science common to both and establishing a mutual rational representation between them1 it is requisite that the two regions should be congruous in texture and continuous inwardly3 the objects present in each must be transformations of the objects present in the other4 ,as this condition is not always fulfilled1 even within a man's personal fortunes1 it is impossible that all he goes through should be mastered by science or should accrue to him ideally and become part of his funded experience4 ,much must be lost1 left to itself1 and resigned to the unprofitable flux that produced it4 ,sidenote3 ,sciences converge from different points of origin4 ,a consequence of this incoherence in experience is that science is not absolutely single but springs up in various places at once1 as a certain consistency or method becomes visible in this or that direction4 ,these independent sciences might1 conceivably1 never meet at all2 each might work out an entirely different aspect of things and cross the other1 as it were1 at a different level4 ,this actually happens1 for instance1 in mathematics as compared with history or psychology1 and in morals as compared with physics4 ,nevertheless1 the fact that these various sciences are all human1 and that here1 for instance1 we are able to mention them in one breath and to compare their natures1 is proof that their spheres touch somehow1 even if only peripherally4 ,since common knowledge1 which knows of them all1 is itself an incipient science1 we may be sure that some continuity and some congruity obtains between their provinces4 ,some aspect of each must coincide with some aspect of some other1 else nobody who pursued any one science would so much as suspect the existence of the rest4 ,great as may be the aversion of learned men to one another1 and comprehensive as may be their ignorance1 they are not positively compelled to live in solitary confinement1 and the key of their prison cells is at least in their own pocket4 ,sidenote3 ,two chief kinds of science1 physics and dialectic4 ,some sciences1 like chemistry and biology1 or biology and anthropology1 are parted only1 we presume1 by accidental gaps in human knowledge2 a more minute and better directed study of these fields would doubtless disclose their continuity with the fields adjoining4 ,but there is one general division in science which cuts almost to the roots of human experience4 ,human understanding has used from the beginning a double method of surveying and arresting ideally the irreparable flux of being4 ,one expedient has been to notice and identify similarities of character1 recurrent types1 in the phenomena that pass before it or in its own operations2 the other expedient has been to note and combine in one complex object characters which occur and reappear together4 ,the latter feat which is made easy by the fact that when various senses are stimulated at once the inward instinctive reaction--which is felt by a primitive mind more powerfully than any external image--is one and not consciously divisible4 ,the first expedient imposes on the flux what we call ideas1 which are concretions in discourse1 terms employed in thought and language4 ,the second expedient separates the same flux into what we call things1 which are concretions in existence1 complexes of qualities subsisting in space and time1 having definable dynamic relations there and a traceable history4 ,carrying out this primitive diversity in reflection science has moved in two different directions4 ,by refining concretions in discourse it has attained to mathematics1 logic1 and the dialectical developments of ethics2 by tracing concretions in existence it has reached the various natural and historical sciences4 ,following ancient usage1 ,i shall take the liberty of calling the whole group of sciences which elaborates ideas dialectic1 and the whole group that describes existences physics4 ,the contrast between ideal science or dialectic and natural science or physics is as great as the understanding of a single experience could well afford2 yet the two kinds of science are far from independent4 ,they touch at their basis and they co-operate in their results4 ,were dialectic made clearer or physics deeper than it commonly is1 these points of contact would doubtless be multiplied2 but even as they stand they furnish a sufficient illustration of the principle that all science develops objects in their own category and gives the mind dominion over the flux of matter by discovering its form4 ,sidenote3 ,their mutual implication4 ,that physics and dialectic touch at their basis may be shown by a double analysis4 ,in the first place1 it is clear that the science of existence1 like all science1 is itself discourse1 and that before concretions in existence can be discovered1 and groups of coexistent qualities can be recognised1 these qualities themselves must be arrested by the mind1 noted1 and identified in their recurrences4 ,but these terms1 bandied about in scientific discourse1 are so many essences and pure ideas3 so that the inmost texture of natural science is logical1 and the whole force of any observation made upon the outer world lies in the constancy and mutual relations of the terms it is made in4 ,if down did not mean down and motion motion1 ,newton could never have taken note of the fall of his apple4 ,now the constancy and relation of meanings is something meant1 it is something created by insight and intent and is altogether dialectical2 so that the science of existence is a portion of the art of discourse4 ,on the other hand discourse1 in its operation1 is a part of existence4 ,that truth or logical cogency is not itself an existence can be proved dialectically1,a and is obvious to any one who sees for a moment what truth means1 especially if he remembers at the same time that all existence is mutable1 which it is the essence of truth not to be4 ,but the knowledge or discovery of truth is an event in time1 an incident in the flux of existence1 and therefore a matter for natural science to study4 ,furthermore1 every term which dialectic uses is originally given embodied2 in other words1 it is given as an element in the actual flux1 it conies by illustration4 ,though meaning is the object of an ideal function1 and signification is inwardly appreciable only in terms of signification1 yet the ideal leap is made from a material datum3 that in which signification is seen is a fact4 ,or to state the matter somewhat differently1 truth is not self-generating2 if it were it would be a falsehood4 ,its eternity1 and the infinitude of propositions it contains1 remain potential and unapproachable until their incidence is found in existence4 ,form cannot of itself decide which of all possible forms shall be real2 in their ideality1 and without reference to their illustration in things1 all consistent propositions would be equally valid and equally trivial4 ,important truth is truth about something1 not truth about truth2 and although a single datum might suffice to give foothold and pertinence to an infinity of truths1 as one atom would posit all geometry1 geometry1 if there were no space1 would be1 if ,i may say so1 all of the fourth dimension1 and arithmetic1 if there were no pulses or chasms in being1 would be all algebra4 ,truth depends upon facts for its perspective1 since facts select truths and decide which truths shall be mere possibilities and which shall be the eternal forms of actual things4 ,the dialectical world would be a trackless desert if the existent world had no arbitrary constitution4 ,living dialectic comes to clarify existence2 it turns into meanings the actual forms of things by reflecting upon them1 and by making them intended subjects of discourse4 ,sidenote3 ,their co-operation4 ,dialectic and physics1 thus united at their basis1 meet again in their results4 ,in mechanical science1 which is the best part of physics1 mathematics1 which is the best part of dialectic1 plays a predominant rle2 it furnishes the whole method of understanding wherever there is any real understanding at all4 ,in psychology and history1 too1 although dialectic is soon choked by the cross-currents of nature1 it furnishes the little perspicuousness which there is4 ,we understand actions and mental developments when the purposes or ideas contained in any stage are carried out logically in the sequel2 it is when conduct and growth are rational1 that is1 when they are dialectical1 that we think we have found the true secret and significance of them4 ,it is the evident ideal of physics1 in every department1 to attain such an insight into causes that the effects actually given may be thence deduced2 and deduction is another name for dialectic4 ,to be sure1 the dialectic applicable to material processes and to human life is one in which the terms and the categories needed are still exceedingly numerous and vague3 a little logic is all that can be read into the cataract of events4 ,but the hope of science1 a hope which is supported by every success it scores1 is that a simpler law than has yet been discovered will be found to connect units subtler than those yet known2 and that in these finer terms the universal mechanism may be exhaustively rendered4 ,mechanism is the ideal of physics1 because it is the infusion of a maximum of mathematical necessity into the flux of real things4 ,it is the aspiration of natural science to be as dialectical as possible1 and thus1 in their ideal1 both branches of science are brought together4 ,that the ideal of dialectic is to apply to existence and thereby to coincide with physics is in a sense no less true1 although dialecticians may be little inclined to confess it4 ,the direct purpose of deduction is to elucidate an idea1 to develop an import1 and nothing can be more irrelevant in this science than whether the conclusion is verified in nature or not4 ,but the direct purpose of dialectic is not its ultimate justification4 ,dialectic is a human pursuit and has1 at bottom1 a moral function2 otherwise1 at bottom1 it would have no value4 ,and the moral function and ultimate justification of dialectic is to further the ,life of ,reason1 in which human thought has the maximum practical validity1 and may enjoy in consequence the richest ideal development4 ,if dialectic takes a turn which makes it inapplicable in physics1 which makes it worthless for mastering experience1 it loses all its dignity3 for abstract cogency has no dignity if the subject-matter into which it is introduced is trivial4 ,in fact1 were dialectic a game in which the counters were not actual data and the conclusions were not possible principles for understanding existence1 it would not be a science at all4 ,it would resemble a counterfeit paper currency1 without intrinsic value and without commercial convenience4 ,just as a fact without implications is not a part of science1 so a method without application would not be4 ,the free excursions of dialectic into non-natural regions may be wisely encouraged when they satisfy an interest which is at bottom healthy and may1 at least indirectly1 bring with it excellent fruits4 ,as musicians are an honour to society1 so are dialecticians that have a single heart and an exquisite patience4 ,but somehow the benefit must redound to society and to practical knowledge1 or these abstracted hermits will seem at first useless and at last mad4 ,the logic of nonsense has a subtle charm only because it can so easily be turned into the logic of common sense4 ,empty dialectic is1 as it were1 the ballet of science3 it runs most neatly after nothing at all4 ,sidenote3 ,no science a priori4 ,both physics and dialectic are contained in common knowledge1 and when carried further than men carry them daily life these sciences remain essentially inevitable and essentially fallible4 ,if science deserves respect1 it is not for being oracular but for being useful and delightful1 as seeing is4 ,understanding is nothing but seeing under and seeing far4 ,there is indeed a great mystery in knowledge1 but this mystery is present in the simplest memory or presumption4 ,the sciences have nothing to supply more fundamental than vulgar thinking or1 as it were1 preliminary to it4 ,they are simply elaborations of it2 they accept its pre-suppositions and carry on its ordinary processes4 ,a pretence on the philosopher's part that he could get behind or below human thinking1 that he could underpin1 so to speak1 his own childhood and the inherent conventions of daily thought1 would be pure imposture4 ,a philosopher can of course investigate the history of knowledge1 he can analyse its method and point out its assumptions2 but he cannot know by other authority than that which the vulgar know by1 nor can his knowledge begin with other unheard-of objects or deploy itself in advance over an esoteric field4 ,every deeper investigation presupposes ordinary perception and uses some at least of its data4 ,every possible discovery extends human knowledge4 ,none can base human knowledge anew on a deeper foundation or prefix an ante-experimental episode to experience4 ,we may construct a theory as disintegrating as we please about the dialectical or empirical conditions of the experience given2 we may disclose its logical stratification or physical antecedents2 but every idea and principle used in such a theory must be borrowed from current knowledge as it happens to lie in the philosopher's mind4 ,sidenote3 ,role of criticism4 ,if these speculative adventures do not turn out well1 the scientific man is free to turn about and become the critic and satirist of his foiled ambitions4 ,he may exhaust scepticism and withdraw into the citadel of immediate feeling1 yielding bastion after bastion to the assaults of doubt4 ,when he is at last perfectly safe from error and reduced to speechless sensibility1 he will perceive1 however1 that he is also washed clean of every practical belief3 he would declare himself universally ignorant but for a doubt whether there be really anything to know4 ,this metaphysical exercise is simply one of those 8fallings from us1 vanishings1 blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised0 which may visit any child4 ,so long as the suspension of judgment lasts1 knowledge is surely not increased2 but when we remember that the enemy to whom we have surrendered is but a ghost of our own evoking1 we easily reoccupy the lost ground and fall back into an ordinary posture of belief and expectation4 ,this recovered faith has no new evidences to rest on4 ,we simply stand where we stood before we began to philosophise1 only with a better knowledge of the lines we are holding and perhaps with less inclination to give them up again for no better reason than the undoubted fact that1 in a speculative sense1 it is always possible to renounce them4 ,science1 then1 is the attentive consideration of common experience2 it is common knowledge extended and refined4 ,its validity is of the same order as that of ordinary perception1 memory1 and understanding4 ,its test is found1 like theirs1 in actual intuition1 which sometimes consists in perception and sometimes in intent4 ,the flight of science is merely longer from perception to perception1 and its deduction more accurate of meaning from meaning and purpose from purpose4 ,it generates in the mind1 for each vulgar observation1 a whole brood of suggestions1 hypotheses1 and inferences4 ,the sciences bestow1 as is right and fitting1 infinite pains upon that experience which in their absence would drift by unchallenged or misunderstood4 ,they take note1 infer1 and prophesy4 ,they compare prophecy with event2 and altogether they supply--so intent are they on reality--every imaginable background and extension for the present dream4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,a3 ,for instance1 in ,plato's 8,parmenides10 where it is shown that the ideas are not in the mind4 ,we may gather from what is there said that the ideas cannot be identified with any embodiment of them1 however perfect1 since an idea means a nature common to all its possible embodiments and remains always outside of them4 ,this is what ,plato meant by saying that the ideas lay apart from phenomena and were what they were in and for themselves4 ,they were mere forms and not1 as a materialised ,platonism afterward fancied1 images in the mind of some psychological deity4 ,the gods doubtless know the ideas1 as ,plato tells us in the same place3 these are the common object of their thought and of ours2 hence they are not anybody's thinking process1 which of course would be in flux and phenomenal4 ,only by being ideal 7i4e41 by being a goal of intellectual energy and no part of sensuous existence7 can a term be common to various minds and serve to make their deliverances pertinent to one another4 ,that truth is no existence might also be proved as follows3 ,suppose that nothing existed or 7if critics carp at that phrase71 that a universe did not exist4 ,it would then be true that all existences were wanting1 yet this truth itself would endure2 therefore truth is not an existence4 ,an attempt might be made to reverse this argument by saying that since it would still 8be0 true that nothing existed1 the supposition is self-contradictory1 for the truth would 8be0 or exist in any case4 ,truth would thus be turned into an opinion1 supposed to subsist eternally in the ether4 ,the argument1 however1 is a bad sophism1 because it falsifies the intent of the terms used4 ,somebody's opinion is not what is meant by the truth1 since every opinion1 however long-lived1 may be false4 ,furthermore1 the notion that it might have been true that nothing existed is a perfectly clear notion4 ,the nature of dialectic is entirely corrupted when sincerity is lost4 ,no intent can be self-contradictory1 since it fixes its own object1 but a man may easily contradict himself by wavering between one intent and another4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,history ,sidenote3 ,history an artificial memory4 ,the least artificial extension of common knowledge is history4 ,personal recollection supplies many an anecdote1 anecdotes collected and freely commented upon make up memoirs1 and memoirs happily combined make not the least interesting sort of history4 ,when a man recalls any episode in his career1 describes the men that flourished in his youth1 or laments the changes that have since taken place1 he is an informal historian4 ,he would become one in a formal and technical sense if he supplemented and controlled his memory by ransacking papers1 and taking elaborate pains to gather evidence on the events he wished to relate4 ,this systematic investigation1 especially when it goes back to first sources1 widens the basis for imaginative reconstruction4 ,it buttresses somewhat the frail body of casual facts that in the first instance may have engaged an individual's attention4 ,history is nothing but assisted and recorded memory4 ,it might almost be said to be no science at all1 if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rests on4 ,in order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness1 and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it4 ,the line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support that knowledge is impossible to draw4 ,memory itself is an internal rumour2 and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others1 we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon4 ,the picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe4 ,sidenote3 ,second sight requires control4 ,it is true that memory sometimes1 as in a vision1 seems to raise the curtain upon the past and restore it to us in its pristine reality4 ,we may imagine at such moments experience can never really perish1 but1 though hidden by chance from the roving eye1 endures eternally in some spiritual sphere4 ,such bodily recovery of the past1 however1 like other telepathic visions1 can never prove its own truth4 ,a lapse into by-gone perception1 a sense of living the past over with all its vivid minuti and trivial concomitants1 might involve no true repetition of anything that had previously existed4 ,it might be a fresh experience altogether4 ,the sense of knowing constitutes only a working presumption for experiment to start with2 until corroboration comes that presumption can claim no respect from the outsider4 ,sidenote3 ,nature the theme common to various memories4 ,while memory remains a private presumption1 therefore1 it can be compared with nothing else that might test its veracity4 ,only when memory is expressed and1 in the common field of expression1 finds itself corroborated by another memory1 does it rise somewhat in dignity and approach scientific knowledge4 ,two presumptions1 when they coincide1 make a double assurance4 ,while memory1 then1 is the basis of all historical knowledge1 it is not called history until it enters a field where it can be supported or corrected by evidence4 ,this field is that natural world which all experiences1 in so far as they are rational1 envisage together4 ,assertions relating to events in that world can corroborate or contradict one another--something that would be impossible if each memory1 like the plot of a novel1 moved in a sphere of its own4 ,for memory to meet memory1 the two must present objects which are similar or continuous3 then they can corroborate or correct each other and help to fix the order of events as they really happened--that is1 as they happened independently of what either memory may chance to represent4 ,thus even the most miraculous and direct recovery of the past needs corroboration if it is to be systematically credited2 but to receive corroboration it must refer to some event in nature1 in that common world in space and time to which other memories and perceptions may refer also4 ,in becoming history1 therefore1 memory becomes a portion of natural science4 ,its assertions are such that any natural science may conceivably support or contradict them4 ,sidenote3 ,growth of legend4 ,nature and its transformations1 however1 form too serried and complicated a system for our wayward minds to dominate if left to their spontaneous workings4 ,whatever is remembered or conceived is at first vaguely believed to have its place in the natural order1 all myth and fable being originally localised within the confines of the material world and made to pass for a part of early history4 ,the method by which knowledge of the past is preserved is so subject to imaginative influence that it cannot avail to exclude from history anything that the imagination may supply4 ,in the growth of legend a dramatic rhythm becomes more and more marked4 ,what falls in with this rhythm is reproduced and accentuated whenever the train of memory is started anew4 ,the absence of such cadences would leave a sensible gap--a gap which the momentum of ideation is quick to fill up with some appropriate image4 ,whatever1 on the other hand1 cannot be incorporated into the dominant round of fancies is consigned more and more to oblivion4 ,this consolidation of legend is not intentional4 ,it is ingenuous and for the most part inevitable4 ,when we muse about our own past we are conscious of no effort to give it dramatic unity2 on the contrary1 the excitement and interest of the process consist in seeming to discover the hidden eloquence and meaning of the events themselves4 ,when a man of experience narrates the wonders he has seen1 we listen with a certain awe1 and believe in him for his miracles as we believe in our own memory for its arts4 ,a bard's mechanical and ritualistic habits usually put all judgment on his own part to sleep2 while the sanctity attributed to the tale1 as it becomes automatically more impressive1 precludes tinkering with it intentionally4 ,especially the allegories and marvels with which early history is adorned are not ordinarily invented with malice prepense4 ,they are rather discovered in the mind1 like a foundling1 between night and morning4 ,they are divinely vouchsafed4 ,each time the tale is retold it suffers a variation which is not challenged1 since it is memory itself that has varied4 ,the change is discoverable only if some record of the narrative in its former guise1 or some physical memorial of the event related1 survives to be confronted with the modified version4 ,the modified version itself can make no comparisons4 ,it merely inherits the name and authority of its ancestor4 ,the innocent poet believes his own lies4 ,legends consequently acquire a considerable eloquence and dramatic force4 ,these beauties accrue spontaneously1 because rhythm and ideal pertinence1 in which poetic merit largely lies1 are natural formative principles for speech and memory4 ,as symmetry in material structures is a ground for strength1 and hills by erosion are worn to pyramids1 so it is in thoughts4 ,yet the stability attained is not absolute1 but only such stability as the circumstances require4 ,dramatic effect is not everywhere achieved1 nor is it missed by the narrator where it is wanting1 so that even the oldest and best-pruned legends are full of irrelevant survivals1 contradictions1 and scraps of nonsense4 ,these literary blemishes are like embedded fossils and tell of facts which the mechanism of reproduction1 for some casual reason1 has not obliterated4 ,the recorder of verbal tradition religiously sets down its inconsistencies and leaves in the transfigured chronicle many tell-tale incidents and remarks which1 like atrophied organs in an animal body1 reveal its gradual formation4 ,art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or beauty would have thrown over this baggage4 ,the automatic and pious minstrel carries it with him to the end4 ,sidenote3 ,no history without documents4 ,for these reasons there can be no serious history until there are archives and preserved records1 although sometimes a man in a privileged position may compose interesting essays on the events and persons of his own time1 as his personal experience has presented them to him4 ,archives and records1 moreover1 do not absolve a speculative historian from paying the same toll to the dramatic unities and making the same concessions to the laws of perspective which1 in the absence of documents1 turn tradition so soon into epic poetry4 ,the principle that elicits histories out of records is the same that breeds legends out of remembered events4 ,in both cases the facts are automatically foreshortened and made to cluster1 as it were providentially1 about a chosen interest4 ,the historian's politics1 philosophy1 or romantic imagination furnishes a vital nucleus for reflection4 ,all that falls within that particular vortex is included in the mental picture1 the rest is passed over and tends to drop out of sight4 ,it is not possible to say1 nor to think1 everything at once2 and the private interest which guides a man in selecting his materials imposes itself inevitably on the events he relates and especially on their grouping and significance4 ,history is always written wrong1 and so always needs to be rewritten4 ,the conditions of expression and even of memory dragoon the facts and put a false front on diffuse experience4 ,what is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events1 and harmonies are turned into causes4 ,kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions2 plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements1 while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion4 ,such falsification is inevitable1 and an honest historian is guilty of it only against his will4 ,he would wish1 as he loves the truth1 to see and to render it entire4 ,but the limits of his book and of his knowledge force him to be partial4 ,it is only a very great mind1 seasoned by large wisdom1 that can lend such an accent and such a carrying-power to a few facts as to make them representative of all reality4 ,sidenote3 ,the aim is truth4 ,some historians1 indeed1 are so frankly partisan or cynical that they avowedly write history with a view to effect1 either political or literary4 ,moralising historians belong to this school1 as well as those philosophers who worship evolution4 ,they sketch every situation with malice and twist it1 as if it were an argument1 to bring out a point1 much as fashionable portrait-painters sometimes surcharge the characteristic1 in order to make a bold effect at a minimum expense of time and devotion4 ,and yet the truly memorable aspect of a man is that which he wears in the sunlight of common day1 with all his generic humanity upon him4 ,his most interesting phase is not that which he might assume under the lime-light of satirical or literary comparisons4 ,the characteristic is after all the inessential4 ,it marks a peripheral variation in the honest and sturdy lump4 ,to catch only the heartless shimmer of individuality is to paint a costume without the body that supports it4 ,therefore a broad and noble historian sets down all within his apperception4 ,his literary interests are forgotten2 he is wholly devoted to expressing the passions of the dead4 ,his ideal1 emanating from his function and chosen for no extraneous reason1 is to make his heroes think and act as they really thought and acted in the world4 ,nevertheless the opposite happens1 sometimes to a marked and even scandalous degree4 ,as legend becomes in a few generations preposterous myth1 so history1 after a few rehandlings and condensations1 becomes unblushing theory4 ,now theory--when we use the word for a schema of things' relations and not for contemplation of them in their detail and fulness--is an expedient to cover ignorance and remedy confusion4 ,the function of history1 if it could be thoroughly fulfilled1 would be to render theory unnecessary4 ,did we possess a record of all geological changes since the creation we should need no geological theory to suggest to us what those changes must have been4 ,hypothesis is like the rule of three3 it comes into play only when one of the terms is unknown and needs to be inferred from those which are given4 ,the ideal historian1 since he would know all the facts1 would need no hypotheses1 and since he would imagine and hold all events together in their actual juxtapositions he would need no classifications4 ,the intentions1 acts1 and antecedents of every mortal would be seen in their precise places1 with no imputed qualities or scope2 and when those intentions had been in fact fulfilled1 the fulfilments too would occupy their modest position in the rank and file of marching existence4 ,to omniscience the idea of cause and effect would be unthinkable4 ,if all things were perceived together and co-existed for thought1 as they actually flow through being1 on one flat phenomenal level1 what sense would there be in saying that one element had compelled another to appear8 ,the relation of cause is an instrument necessary to thought only when thought is guided by presumption4 ,we say1 8,if this thing had happened1 that other thing would have followed0--a hypothesis which would lapse and become unmeaning had we always known all the facts4 ,for no supposition contrary to fact would then have entered discourse4 ,sidenote3 ,indirect methods of attaining it4 ,this ideal of direct omniscience is1 however1 impossible to attain2 not merely accidental frailties1 but the very nature of things stands in the way4 ,experience cannot be suspended or sustained in being1 because its very nucleus is mobile and in shifting cannot retain its past phases bodily1 but only at best some trace or representation of them4 ,memory itself is an expedient by which what is hopelessly lost in its totality may at least be partly kept in its beauty or significance2 and experience can be enlarged in no other way than by carrying into the moving present the lesson and transmitted habit of much that is past4 ,history is naturally reduced to similar indirect methods of recovering what has lapsed4 ,the historian's object may be to bring the past again before the mind in all its living reality1 but in pursuing that object he is obliged to appeal to inference1 to generalisation1 and to dramatic fancy4 ,we may conveniently distinguish in history1 as it is perforce written by men1 three distinct elements1 which we may call historical investigation1 historical theory1 and historical romance4 ,sidenote3 ,historical research a part of physics4 ,historical investigation is the natural science of the past4 ,the circumstance that its documents are usually literary may somewhat disguise the physical character and the physical principles of this science2 but when a man wishes to discover what really happened at a given moment1 even if the event were somebody's thought2 he has to read his sources1 not for what they say1 but for what they imply4 ,in other words1 the witnesses cannot be allowed merely to speak for themselves1 after the gossiping fashion familiar in ,herodotus2 their testimony has to be interpreted according to the laws of evidence4 ,the past needs to be reconstructed out of reports1 as in geology or archology it needs to be reconstructed out of stratifications and ruins4 ,a man's memory or the report in a newspaper is a fact justifying certain inferences about its probable causes according to laws which such phenomena betray in the present when they are closely scrutinised4 ,this reconstruction is often very difficult1 and sometimes all that can be established in the end is merely that the tradition before us is certainly false2 somewhat as a perplexed geologist might venture on no conclusion except that the state of the earth's crust was once very different from what it is now4 ,sidenote3 ,verification here indirect4 ,a natural science dealing with the past labours under the disadvantage of not being able to appeal to experiment4 ,the facts it terminates upon cannot be recovered1 so that they may verify in sense the hypothesis that had inferred them4 ,the hypothesis can be tested only by current events2 it is then turned back upon the past1 to give assurance of facts which themselves are hypothetical and remain hanging1 as it were1 to the loose end of the hypothesis itself4 ,a hypothetical fact is a most dangerous creature1 since it lives on the credit of a theory which in turn would be bankrupt if the fact should fail4 ,inferred past facts are more deceptive than facts prophesied1 because while the risk of error in the inference is the same1 there is no possibility of discovering that error2 and the historian1 while really as speculative as the prophet1 can never be found out4 ,most facts known to man1 however1 are reached by inference1 and their reality may be wisely assumed so long as the principle by which they are inferred1 when it is applied in the present1 finds complete and constant verification4 ,presumptions involved in memory and tradition give the first hypothetical facts we count upon2 the relations which these first facts betray supply the laws by which facts are to be concatenated2 and these laws may then be used to pass from the first hypothetical facts to hypothetical facts of a second order1 forming a background and congruous extension to those originally assumed4 ,this expansion of discursive science can go on for ever1 unless indeed the principles of inference employed in it involve some present existence1 such as a skeleton in a given tomb1 which direct experience fails to verify4 ,then the theory itself is disproved and the whole galaxy of hypothetical facts which clustered about it forfeit their credibility4 ,sidenote3 ,futile ideal to survey all facts4 ,historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time in all places4 ,the task is frankly superhuman1 because no block of real existence1 with its infinitesimal detail1 can be recorded1 nor if somehow recorded could it be dominated by the mind2 and to carry on a survey of this social continuum ad infinitum would multiply the difficulty4 ,the task might also be called infrahuman1 because the sort of omniscience which such complete historical science would achieve would merely furnish materials for intelligence3 it would be inferior to intelligence itself4 ,there are many things which1 as ,aristotle says1 it is better not to know than to know--namely1 those things which do not count in controlling the mind's fortunes nor enter into its ideal expression4 ,such is the whole flux of immediate experience in other minds or in one's own past2 and just as it is better to forget than to remember a nightmare or the by-gone sensations of sea-sickness1 so it is better not to conceive the sensuous pulp of alien experience1 something infinite in amount and insignificant in character4 ,an attempt to rehearse the inner life of everybody that has ever lived would be no rational endeavour4 ,instead of lifting the historian above the world and making him the most consummate of creatures1 it would flatten his mind out into a passive after-image of diffuse existence1 with all its horrible blindness1 strain1 and monotony4 ,reason is not come to repeat the universe but to fulfil it4 ,besides1 a complete survey of events would perforce register all changes that have taken place in matter since time began1 the fields of geology1 astronomy1 palontology1 and archology being all1 in a sense1 included in history4 ,such learning would dissolve thought in a vertigo1 if it had not already perished of boredom4 ,historical research is accordingly a servile science which may enter the ,life of ,reason to perform there some incidental service1 but which ought to lapse as soon as that service is performed4 ,sidenote3 ,historical theory4 ,the profit of studying history lies in something else than in a dead knowledge of what happens to have happened4 ,a seductive alternative might be to say that the profit of it lies in understanding what has happened1 in perceiving the principles and laws that govern social evolution1 or the meaning which events have4 ,we are hereby launched upon a region of physico-ethical speculation where any man with a genius for quick generalisation can swim at ease4 ,to find the one great cause why ,borne fell1 especially if no one has ever thought of it before1 or to expound the true import of the ,french ,revolution1 or to formulate in limpid sentences the essence of ,greek culture--what could be more tempting or more purely literary8 ,it would ill become the author of this book to decry allegorical expressions1 or a cavalierlike fashion of dismissing whole periods and tendencies with a verbal antithesis4 ,we must have exercises in apperception1 a work of imagination must be taken imaginatively1 and a landscape painter must be suffered to be1 at his own risk1 as impressionistic as he will4 ,if ,raphael1 when he was designing the ,school of ,athens1 had said to himself that ,aristotle should point down to a fact and ,plato up to a meaning1 or when designing the ,disputa had conceived that the proudest of intellects1 weary of argument and learning1 should throw down his books and turn to revelation for guidance1 there would have been much historical pertinence in those conceptions2 yet the figures would have been allegorical1 contracting into a decorative design events that had been dispersed through centuries and emotions that had only cropped up here and there1 with all manner of variations and alloys1 when the particular natural situation had made them inevitable4 ,so the ,renaissance might be spoken of as a person and the ,reformation as her step-sister1 and something might be added about the troubles of their home life2 but would it be needful in that case to enter a warning that these units were verbal merely1 and that the phenomena and the forces really at work had been multitudinous and infinitesimal8 ,sidenote3 ,it is arbitrary4 ,in fine1 historical terms mark merely rhetorical unities1 which have no dynamic cohesion1 and there are no historical laws which are not at bottom physical1 like the laws of habit--those expressions of ,newton's first law of motion4 ,an essayist may play with historical apperception as long as he will and always find something new to say1 discovering the ideal nerve and issue of a movement in a different aspect of the facts4 ,the truly proportionate1 constant1 efficacious relations between things will remain material4 ,physical causes traverse the moral units at which history stops1 determining their force and duration1 and the order1 so irrelevant to intent1 in which they succeed one another4 ,even the single man's life and character have subterranean sources2 how should the outer expression and influence of that character have sources more superficial than its own8 ,yet we cannot trace mechanical necessity down to the more stable units composing a personal mechanism1 and much less1 therefore1 to those composing a complex social evolution4 ,we accordingly translate the necessity1 obviously lurking under life's commonplace yet unaccountable shocks1 into verbal principles1 names for general impressive results1 that play some rle in our ideal philosophy4 ,each of these idols of the theatre is visible only on a single stage and to duly predisposed spectators4 ,the next passion affected will throw a differently coloured calcium light on the same pageant1 and there will be no end of rival evolutions and incompatible ideal principles crossing one another at every interesting event4 ,such a manipulation of history1 when made by persons who underestimate their imaginative powers1 ends in asserting that events have directed themselves prophetically upon the interests which they arouse4 ,apart from the magic involved and the mockery of all science1 there is a difficulty here which even a dramatic idealist ought to feel4 ,the interests affected are themselves many and contrary4 ,if history is to be understood teleologically1 which of all the possible ends it might be pursuing shall we think really endowed with regressive influence and responsible for the movement that is going to realise it8 ,did ,columbus1 for instance1 discover ,america so that ,george ,washington might exist and that some day football and the ,church of ,england may prevail throughout the world8 ,or was it 7as has been seriously maintained7 in order that the converted ,indians of ,south ,america might console ,saint ,peter for the defection of the ,british and ,germans8 ,or was ,america1 as ,hegel believed1 ideally superfluous1 the absolute having become self-conscious enough already in ,prussia8 ,or shall we say that the real goal is at an infinite distance and unimaginable by us1 and useless1 therefore1 for understanding anything8 ,in truth1 whatever plausibility the providential view of a given occurrence may have is dependent on the curious limitation and selfishness of the observer's estimations4 ,sheep are providentially designed for men2 but why not also for wolves1 and men for worms and microbes8 ,if the historian is willing to accept such a suggestion1 and to become a blind worshipper of success1 applauding every issue1 however lamentable for humanity1 and calling it admirable tragedy1 he may seem for a while to save his theory by making it mystical2 yet presently this last illusion will be dissipated when he loses his way in the maze and finds that all victors perish in their turn and everything1 if you look far enough1 falls back into the inexorable vortex4 ,this is the sort of observation that the ,indian sages made long ago2 it is what renders their philosophy1 for all its practical impotence1 such an irrefragable record of experience1 such a superior1 definitive perception of the flux4 ,beside it1 our progresses of two centuries and our philosophies of history1 embracing one-quarter of the earth for three thousand years1 seem puerile vistas indeed4 ,shall all eternity and all existence be for the sake of what is happening here to-day1 and to me8 ,shall we strive manfully to the top of this particular wave1 on the ground that its foam is the culmination of all things for ever8 ,there is a sense1 of course1 in which definite political plans and moral aspirations may well be fulfilled by events4 ,our ancestors1 sharing and anticipating our natures1 may have had in many respects our actual interests in view1 as we may have those of posterity4 ,such ideal co-operation extends far1 where primary interests are concerned2 it is rarer and more qualified where a fine and fragile organisation is required to support the common spiritual life4 ,even in these cases1 the aim pursued and attained is not the force that operates1 since the result achieved had many other conditions besides the worker's intent1 and that intent itself had causes which it knew nothing of4 ,every 8historical force0 pompously appealed to breaks up on inspection into a cataract of miscellaneous natural processes and minute particular causes4 ,it breaks into its mechanical constituents and proves to have been nothing but an effet d'ensemble produced on a mind whose habits and categories are essentially rhetorical4 ,sidenote3 ,a moral critique of the past is possible4 ,this sort of false history or philosophy of history might be purified1 like so many other things1 by self-knowledge4 ,if the philosopher in reviewing events confessed that he was scrutinising them in order to abstract from them whatever tended to illustrate his own ideals1 as he might look over a crowd to find his friends1 the operation would become a perfectly legitimate one4 ,the events themselves would be left for scientific inference to discover1 where credible reports did not testify to them directly2 and the causes of events would be left to some theory of natural evolution1 to be stated1 according to the degree of knowledge attained1 in terms more and more exact and mechanical4 ,in the presence of the past so defined imagination and will1 however1 would not abdicate their rights1 and a sort of retrospective politics1 an estimate of events in reference to the moral ideal which they embodied or betrayed1 might supervene upon positive history4 ,this estimate of evolution might well be called a philosophy of history1 since it would be a higher operation performed on the results of natural science1 to give a needful basis and illustration to the ideal4 ,the present work is an essay in that direction4 ,sidenote3 ,how it might be just4 ,the ideal which in such a review would serve as the touchstone for estimation1 if it were an enlightened ideal1 would recognise its own natural basis1 and therefore would also recognise that under other conditions other ideals1 no less legitimate1 may have arisen and may have been made the standard for a different judgment on the world4 ,historical investigation1 were its resources adequate1 would reveal to us what these various ideals have been4 ,every animal has his own1 and whenever individuals or nations have become reflective they have known how to give articulate expression to theirs4 ,that all these ideals could not have been realised in turn or together is an immense misfortune1 the irremediable half-tragedy of life1 by which we also suffer4 ,in estimating the measure of success achieved anywhere a liberal historian1 who does not wish to be bluntly irrational1 will of course estimate it from all these points of view1 considering all real interests affected1 in so far as he can appreciate them4 ,this is what is meant by putting the standard of value1 not in some arbitrary personal dogma but in a variegated omnipresent happiness4 ,it is by no means requisite1 therefore1 in disentangling the ,life of ,reason1 to foresee what ultimate form the good might some day take1 much less to make the purposes of the philosopher himself1 his time1 or his nation the test of all excellence4 ,this test is the perpetual concomitant ideal of the life it is applied to4 ,as all could not be well in the world if my own purposes were defeated1 so the general excellence of things would be heightened if other men's purposes also had been fulfilled4 ,each will is a true centre for universal estimation4 ,as each will1 therefore1 comes to expression1 real and irreversible values are introduced into the world1 and the historian1 in estimating what has been hitherto achieved1 needs to make himself the spokesman for all past aspirations4 ,if the ,egyptian poets sang well1 though that conduces not at all to our advantage1 and though all those songs are now dumb1 the ,life of ,reason was thereby increased once for all in pith and volume4 ,brief erratic experiments made in living1 if they were somewhat successful in their day1 remain successes always3 and this is the only kind of success that in the end can be achieved at all4 ,the philosopher that looks for what is good in history and measures the past by the scale of reason need be no impertinent dogmatist on that account4 ,reason would not be reason but passion if it did not make all passions in all creatures constituents of its own authority4 ,the judgments it passes on existence are only the judgments which existence1 so far1 has passed on itself1 and these are indelible and have their proportionate weight though others of many different types may surround or succeed them4 ,sidenote3 ,transition to historical romance4 ,to inquire what everybody has thought about the world1 and into what strange shapes every passionate dream would fain have transformed existence1 might be merely a part of historical investigation4 ,these facts of preference and estimation might be made to stand side by side with all other facts in that absolute physical order which the universe must somehow possess4 ,in the reference book of science they would all find their page and line4 ,but it is not for the sake of making vain knowledge complete that historians are apt to linger over heroic episodes and commanding characters in the world's annals4 ,it is not even in the hope of discovering just to what extent and in how many directions experience has been a tragedy4 ,the mathematical balance of failure and success1 even if it could be drawn with accuracy1 would not be a truth of moral importance1 since whatever that balance might be for the world at large1 success and benefit here1 from the living point of view1 would be equally valid and delightful2 and however good or however bad the universe may be it is always worth while to make it better4 ,what engages the historian in the reconstruction of moral life1 such as the past contained1 is that he finds in that life many an illustration of his own ideals1 or even a necessary stimulus in defining what his ideals are4 ,where his admiration and his sympathy are awakened1 he sees noble aims and great achievements1 worthy of being minutely studied and brought vividly before later generations4 ,very probably he will be led by moral affinities with certain phases of the past to attribute to those phases1 in their abstraction and by virtue of their moral dignity1 a material efficacy which they did not really have2 and his interest in history's moral will make him turn history itself into a fable4 ,this abuse may be abated1 however1 by having recourse to impartial historical investigation1 that will restore to the hero all his circumstantial impotence1 and to the glorious event all its insignificant causes4 ,certain men and certain episodes will retain1 notwithstanding1 their intrinsic nobility2 and the historian1 who is often a politician and a poet rather than a man of science1 will dwell on those noble things so as to quicken his own sense for greatness and to burnish in his soul ideals that may have remained obscure for want of scrutiny or may have been tarnished by too much contact with a sordid world4 ,sidenote3 ,possibility of genuine epics4 ,history so conceived has the function of epic or dramatic poetry4 ,the moral life represented may actually have been lived through2 but that circumstance is incidental merely and what makes the story worth telling is its pertinence to the political or emotional life of the present4 ,to revive past moral experience is indeed wellnigh impossible unless the living will can still covet or dread the same issues2 historical romance cannot be truthful or interesting when profound changes have taken place in human nature4 ,the reported acts and sentiments of early peoples lose their tragic dignity in our eyes when they lose their pertinence to our own aims4 ,so that a recital of history with an eye to its dramatic values is possible only when that history is1 so to speak1 our own1 or when we assimilate it to ours by poetic license4 ,the various functions of history have been generally carried on simultaneously and with little consciousness of their profound diversity4 ,since historical criticism made its appearance1 the romantic interest in the past1 far from abating1 has fed eagerly on all the material incidents and private gossip of remote times4 ,this sort of petty historical drama has reflected contemporary interests1 which have centred so largely in material possessions and personal careers2 while at the same time it has kept pace with the knowledge of minuti attained by archology4 ,when historical investigation has reached its limits a period of ideal reconstruction may very likely set in4 ,indeed were it possible to collect in archives exhaustive accounts of everything that has ever happened1 so that the curious man might always be informed on any point of fact that interested him1 historical imagination might grow free again in its movements4 ,not being suspected of wishing to distort facts which could so easily be pointed to1 it might become more conscious of its own moral function1 and it might turn unblushingly to what was important and inspiring in order to put it with dramatic force before the mind4 ,such a treatment of history would reinstate that epic and tragic poetry which has become obsolete2 it might well be written in verse1 and would at any rate be frankly imaginative2 it might furnish a sort of ritual1 with scientific and political sanctions1 for public feasts4 ,tragedies and epics are such only in name if they do not deal with the highest interests and destinies of a people2 and they could hardly deal with such ideals in an authoritative and definite way1 unless they found them illustrated in that people's traditions4 ,sidenote3 ,literal truth abandoned4 ,historic romance is a work of art1 not of science1 and its fidelity to past fact is only an expedient1 often an excellent and easy one1 for striking the key-note of present ideals4 ,the insight attained1 even when it is true insight into what some one else felt in some other age1 draws its force and sublimity from current passions1 passions potential in the auditor's soul4 ,mary ,queen of ,scots1 for instance1 doubtless repeated1 in many a fancied dialogue with ,queen ,elizabeth1 the very words that ,schiller puts into her mouth in the central scene of his play1 8,denn ich bin ,euer ,knig60 ,yet the dramatic force of that expression1 its audacious substitution of ideals for facts1 depends entirely on the scope which we lend it4 ,different actors and different readers would interpret it differently4 ,some might see in it nothing but a sally in a woman's quarrel1 reading it with the accent of mere spite and irritation4 ,then the tragedy1 not perhaps without historic truth1 would be reduced to a loud comedy4 ,other interpreters might find in the phrase the whole feudal system1 all the chivalry1 legality1 and foolishness of the ,middle ,ages4 ,then the drama would become more interesting1 and the poor queen's cry1 while that of a mind sophisticated and fanatical1 would have great pathos and keenness4 ,to reach sublimity1 however1 that moment would have to epitomise ideals which we deeply respected4 ,we should have to believe in the sanctity of canon law and in the divine right of primogeniture4 ,that a woman may have been very unhappy or that a state may have been held together by personal allegiance does not raise the fate of either to the tragic plane1 unless 8laws that are not of to-day nor yesterday10 aspirations native to the heart1 shine through those legendary misfortunes4 ,it would matter nothing to the excellence of ,schiller's drama which of these interpretations might have been made by ,mary ,stuart herself at any given moment2 doubtless her attitude toward her rival was coloured on different occasions by varying degrees of political insight and moral fervour4 ,the successful historical poet would be he who caught the most significant attitude which a person in that position could possibly have assumed1 and his ,mary ,stuart1 whether accidentally resembling the real woman or not1 would be essentially a mythical person4 ,so ,electra and ,antigone and ,helen of ,troy are tragic figures absolved from historical accuracy1 although possibly if the personages of heroic times were known to us we might find that our highest imagination had been anticipated in their consciousness4 ,sidenote3 ,history exists to be transcended4 ,of the three parts into which the pursuit of history may be divided--investigation1 theory1 and story-telling--not one attains ideal finality4 ,investigation is merely useful1 because its intrinsic ideal--to know every detail of everything--is not rational1 and its acceptable function can only be to offer accurate information upon such points as are worth knowing for some ulterior reason4 ,historical theory1 in turn1 is a falsification of causes1 since no causes are other than mechanical2 it is an arbitrary foreshortening of physics1 and it dissolves in the presence either of adequate knowledge or of clear ideals4 ,finally1 historical romance passes1 as it grows mature1 into epics and tragedies1 where the moral imagination disengages itself from all allegiance to particular past facts4 ,thus history proves to be an imperfect field for the exercise of reason2 it is a provisional discipline2 its values1 with the mind's progress1 would empty into higher activities4 ,the function of history is to lend materials to politics and to poetry4 ,these arts need to dominate past events1 the better to dominate the present situation and the ideal one4 ,a good book of history is one that helps the statesman to formulate and to carry out his plans1 or that helps the tragic poet to conceive what is most glorious in human destiny4 ,such a book1 as knowledge and ignorance are now mingled1 will have to borrow something from each of the methods by which history is commonly pursued4 ,investigation will be necessary1 since the needful facts are not all indubitably known2 theory will be necessary too1 so that those facts may be conceived in their pertinence to public interests1 and the latter may thereby be clarified2 and romance will not be wholly excluded1 because the various activities of the mind about the same matter cannot be divided altogether1 and a dramatic treatment is often useful in summarising a situation1 when all the elements of it cannot be summoned up in detail before the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,its great rle4 ,fragmentary1 arbitrary1 and insecure as historical conceptions must remain1 they are nevertheless highly important4 ,in human consciousness the indispensable is in inverse ratio to the demonstrable4 ,sense is the foundation of everything4 ,without sense memory would be both false and useless4 ,yet memory rather than sense is knowledge in the pregnant acceptation of the word2 for in sense object and process are hardly distinguished1 whereas in memory significance inheres in the datum1 and the present vouches for the absent4 ,similarly history1 which is derived from memory1 is superior to it2 for while it merely extends memory artificially it shows a higher logical development than memory has and is riper for ideal uses4 ,trivial and useless matter has dropped out4 ,inference has gone a step farther1 thought is more largely representative1 and testimony conveyed by the reports of others or found in monuments leads the speculative mind to infer events that must have filled the remotest ages4 ,this information is not passive or idle knowledge2 it truly informs or shapes the mind1 giving it new aptitudes4 ,as an efficacious memory modifies instinct1 by levelling it with a wider survey of the situation1 so a memory of what human experience has been1 a sense of what it is likely to be under specific circumstances1 gives the will a new basis4 ,what politics or any large drama deals with is a will cast into historic moulds1 an imagination busy with what we call great interests4 ,great interests are a gift which history makes to the heart4 ,a barbarian is no less subject to the past than is the civic man who knows what his past is and means to be loyal to it2 but the barbarian1 for want of a trans-personal memory1 crawls among superstitions which he cannot understand or revoke and among persons whom he may hate or love1 but whom he can never think of raising to a higher plane1 to the level of a purer happiness4 ,the whole dignity of human endeavour is thus bound up with historic issues2 and as conscience needs to be controlled by experience if it is to become rational1 so personal experience itself needs to be enlarged ideally if the failures and successes it reports are to touch impersonal interests4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,mechanism ,sidenote3 ,recurrent forms in nature4 ,a retrospect over human experience1 if a little extended1 can hardly fail to come upon many interesting recurrences4 ,the seasons make their round and the generations of men1 like the forest leaves1 repeat their career4 ,in this its finer texture history undoubtedly repeats itself4 ,a study of it1 in registering so many recurrences1 leads to a description of habit1 or to natural history4 ,to observe a recurrence is to divine a mechanism4 ,it is to analyse a phenomenon1 distinguishing its form1 which alone recurs1 from its existence1 which is irrevocable2 and that the flux of phenomena should turn out1 on closer inspection1 to be composed of a multitude of recurring forms1 regularly interwoven1 is the ideal of mechanism4 ,the forms1 taken ideally and in themselves1 are what reflection first rescues from the flux and makes a science of2 they constitute that world of eternal relations with which dialectic is conversant4 ,to note here and there some passing illustration of these forms is one way of studying experience4 ,the observer1 the poet1 the historian merely define what they see4 ,but these incidental illustrations of form 7called by ,plato phenomena7 may have a method in their comings and goings1 and this method may in turn be definable4 ,it will be a new sort of constant illustrated in the flux2 and this we call a law4 ,if events could be reduced to a number of constant forms moving in a constant medium according to a constant law1 a maximum of constancy would be introduced into the flux1 which would thereby be proved to be mechanical4 ,the form of events1 abstracted from their material presence1 becomes a general mould to which we tend to assimilate new observations4 ,whatever in particular instances may contravene the accredited rule1 we attribute without a qualm to unknown variations in the circumstances1 thus saving our faith in order at all hazards and appealing to investigation to justify the same4 ,only when another rule suggests itself which leaves a smaller margin unaccounted for in the phenomena do we give up our first generalisation4 ,not even the rudest superstition can be criticised or dislodged scientifically save by another general rule1 more exact and trustworthy than the superstition4 ,the scepticism which comes from distrust of abstraction and disgust with reckoning of any sort is not a scientific force2 it is an intellectual weakness4 ,generalities are indeed essential to understanding1 which is apt to impose them hastily upon particulars4 ,confirmation is not needed to create prejudice4 ,it suffices that a vivid impression should once have cut its way into the mind and settled there in a fertile soil2 it will entwine itself at once with its chance neighbours and these adventitious relations will pass henceforth for a part of the fact4 ,repetition1 however1 is a good means of making or keeping impressions vivid and almost the only means of keeping them unchanged4 ,prejudices1 however refractory to new evidence1 evolve inwardly of themselves4 ,the mental soil in which they lie is in a continual ferment and their very vitality will extend their scope and change their application4 ,generalisations1 therefore1 when based on a single instance1 will soon forget it and shift their ground1 as unchecked words shift their meaning4 ,but when a phenomenon actually recurs the generalisations founded on it are reinforced and kept identical1 and prejudices so sustained by events make man's knowledge of nature4 ,sidenote3 ,their discovery makes the flux calculable4 ,natural science consists of general ideas which look for verification in events1 and which find it4 ,the particular instance1 once noted1 is thrown aside like a squeezed orange1 its significance in establishing some law having once been extracted4 ,science1 by this flight into the general1 lends immediate experience an interest and scope which its parts1 taken blindly1 could never possess2 since if we remained sunk in the moments of existence and never abstracted their character from their presence1 we should never know that they had any relation to one another4 ,we should feel their incubus without being able to distinguish their dignities or to give them names4 ,by analysing what we find and abstracting what recurs from its many vain incidents we can discover a sustained structure within1 which enables us to foretell what we may find in future4 ,science thus articulates experience and reveals its skeleton4 ,skeletons are not things particularly congenial to poets1 unless it be for the sake of having something truly horrible to shudder at and to frighten children with3 and so a certain school of philosophers exhaust their rhetoric in convincing us that the objects known to science are artificial and dead1 while the living reality is infinitely rich and absolutely unutterable4 ,this is merely an ungracious way of describing the office of thought and bearing witness to its necessity4 ,a body is none the worse for having some bones in it1 even if they are not all visible on the surface4 ,they are certainly not the whole man1 who nevertheless runs and leaps by their leverage and smooth turning in their sockets2 and a surgeon's studies in dead anatomy help him excellently to set a living joint4 ,the abstractions of science are extractions of truths4 ,truths cannot of themselves constitute existence with its irrational concentration in time1 place1 and person1 its hopeless flux1 and its vital exuberance2 but they can be true of existence2 they can disclose that structure by which its parts cohere materially and become ideally inferable from one another4 ,sidenote3 ,looser principles tried first4 ,science becomes demonstrable in proportion as it becomes abstract4 ,it becomes in the same measure applicable and useful1 as mathematics witnesses1 whenever the abstraction is judiciously made and has seized the profounder structural features in the phenomenon4 ,these features are often hard for human eyes to discern1 buried as they may be in the internal infinitesimal texture of things4 ,things accordingly seem to move on the world's stage in an unaccountable fashion1 and to betray magic affinities to what is separated from them by apparent chasms4 ,the types of relation which the mind may observe are multifarious4 ,any chance conjunction1 any incidental harmony1 will start a hypothesis about the nature of the universe and be the parent image of a whole system of philosophy4 ,in self-indulgent minds most of these standard images are dramatic1 and the cue men follow in unravelling experience is that offered by some success or failure of their own4 ,the sanguine1 having once found a pearl in a dunghill1 feel a glorious assurance that the world's true secret is that everything in the end is ordered for everybody's benefit--and that is optimism4 ,the atrabilious1 being ill at ease with themselves1 see the workings everywhere of insidious sin1 and conceive that the world is a dangerous place of trial4 ,a somewhat more observant intellect may decide that what exists is a certain number of definite natures1 each striving to preserve and express itself2 and in such language we still commonly read political events and our friend's actions4 ,at the dawn of science a ,thales1 observing the ways and the conditions of things somewhat more subtly1 will notice that rain1 something quite adventitious to the fields1 is what covers them with verdure1 that the slime breeds life1 that a liquid will freeze to stone and melt to air2 and his shrewd conclusion will be that everything is water in one disguise or another4 ,it is only after long accumulated observation that we can reach any exact law of nature2 and this law we hardly think of applying to living things4 ,these have not yet revealed the secret of their structure1 and clear insight is vouchsafed us only in such regions as that of mathematical physics1 where cogency in the ideal system is combined with adequacy to explain the phenomena4 ,sidenote3 ,mechanism for the most part hidden4 ,these exact sciences cover in the gross the field in which human life appears1 the antecedents of this life1 and its instruments4 ,to a speculative mind1 that had retained an ingenuous sense of nature's inexhaustible resources and of man's essential continuity with other natural things1 there could be no ground for doubting that similar principles 7could they be traced in detail7 would be seen to preside over all man's action and passion4 ,a thousand indications1 drawn from introspection and from history1 would be found to confirm this speculative presumption4 ,it is not only earthquakes and floods1 summer and winter1 that bring human musings sharply to book4 ,love and ambition are unmistakable blossomings of material forces1 and the more intense and poetical a man's sense is of his spiritual condition the more loudly will he proclaim his utter dependence on nature and the identity of the moving principle in him and in her4 ,mankind and all its works are undeniably subject to gravity and to the law of projectiles2 yet what is true of these phenomena in bulk seems to a superficial observation not to be true of them in detail1 and a person may imagine that he subverts all the laws of physics whenever he wags his tongue4 ,only in inorganic matter is the ruling mechanism open to human inspection3 here changes may be seen to be proportionate to the elements and situation in which they occur4 ,habit here seems perfectly steady and is called necessity1 since the observer is able to deduce it unequivocally from given properties in the body and in the external bodies acting upon it4 ,in the parts of nature which we call living and to which we impute consciousness1 habit1 though it be fatal enough1 is not so exactly measurable and perspicuous4 ,physics cannot account for that minute motion and pullulation in the earth's crust of which human affairs are a portion4 ,human affairs have to be surveyed under categories lying closer to those employed in memory and legend4 ,these looser categories are of every sort--grammatical1 moral1 magical--and there is no knowing when any of them will apply or in what measure4 ,between the matters covered by the exact sciences and vulgar experience there remains1 accordingly1 a wide and nebulous gulf4 ,where we cannot see the mechanism involved in what happens we have to be satisfied with an empirical description of appearances as they first fall together in our apprehension2 and this want of understanding in the observer is what popular philosophy calls intelligence in the world4 ,sidenote3 ,yet presumably pervasive4 ,that this gulf is apparent only1 being due to inadequacy and confusion in human perception rather than to incoherence in things1 is a speculative conviction altogether trustworthy4 ,any one who can at all catch the drift of experience--moral no less than physical--must feel that mechanism rules the whole world4 ,there are doubleness and diversity enough in things to satiate the greatest lover of chaos2 but that a cosmos nevertheless underlies the superficial play of sense and opinion is what all practical reason must assume and what all comprehended experience bears witness to4 ,a cosmos does not mean a disorder with which somebody happens to be well pleased2 it means a necessity from which every one must draw his happiness4 ,if a principle is efficacious it is to that extent mechanical4 ,for to be efficacious a principle must apply necessarily and proportionately2 it must assure us that where the factors are the same as on a previous occasion the quotient will be the same also4 ,now1 in order that the flux of things should contain a repetition1 elements must be identified within it2 these identical elements may then find themselves in an identical situation1 on which the same result may ensue which ensued before4 ,if the elements were not constant and recognisable1 or if their relations did not suffice to determine the succeeding event1 no observation could be transferred with safety from the past to the future4 ,thus art and comprehension would be defeated together4 ,novelties in the world are not lacking1 because the elements entering at any moment into a given combination have never before entered into a combination exactly similar4 ,mechanism applies to the matter and minute texture of things2 but its applying there will create1 at each moment1 fresh ideal wholes1 formal unities which mind emanates from and represents4 ,the result will accordingly always be unprecedented in the total impression it produces1 in exact proportion to the singularity of the situation in hand4 ,mechanical processes are not like mathematical relations1 because they happen4 ,what they express the form of is a flux1 not a truth or an ideal necessity4 ,the situation may therefore always be new1 though produced from the preceding situation by rules which are invariable1 since the preceding situation was itself novel4 ,mechanism might be called the dialectic of the irrational4 ,it is such a measure of intelligibility as is compatible with flux and with existence4 ,existence itself being irrational and change unintelligible1 the only necessity they are susceptible of is a natural or empirical necessity1 impinging at both ends upon brute matters of fact4 ,the existential elements1 their situation1 number1 affinities1 and mutual influence all have to be begged before calculation can begin4 ,when these surds have been accepted at their face value1 inference may set to work among them2 yet the inference that mechanism will continue to reign will not amount to certain knowledge until the event inferred has come to give it proof4 ,calculation in physics differs from pure dialectic in that the ultimate object it looks to is not ideal4 ,theory here must revert to the immediate flux for its sanction1 whereas dialectic is a centrifugal emanation from existence and never returns to its point of origin4 ,it remains suspended in the ether of those eternal relations which forms have1 even when found embedded in matter4 ,sidenote3 ,inadequacy of consciousness4 ,if the total flux is continuous and naturally intelligible1 why is the part felt by man so disjointed and opaque8 ,an answer to this question may perhaps be drawn from the fact that consciousness apparently arises to express the functions only of extremely complicated organisms4 ,the basis of thought is vastly more elaborate than its deliverance4 ,it takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas4 ,the mind starts1 therefore1 with a tremendous handicap4 ,in order to attain adequate practical knowledge it would have to represent clearly its own conditions2 for the purpose of mind is its own furtherance and perfection1 and before that purpose could be fulfilled the mind's interests would have to become parallel to the body's fortunes4 ,this means that the body's actual relations in nature would have to become the mind's favourite themes in discourse4 ,had this harmony been attained1 the more accurately and intensely thought was exercised the more stable its status would become and the more prosperous its undertakings1 since lively thought would then be a symptom of health in the body and of mechanical equilibrium with the environment4 ,the body's actual relations1 however1 on which health depends1 are infinitely complex and immensely extended4 ,they sweep the whole material universe and are intertwined most closely with all social and passionate forces1 with their incalculable mechanical springs4 ,meantime the mind begins by being a feeble and inconsequent ghost4 ,its existence is intermittent and its visions unmeaning4 ,it fails to conceive its own interests or the situations that might support or defeat those interests4 ,if it pictures anything clearly1 it is only some phantastic image which in no way represents its own complex basis4 ,thus the parasitical human mind1 finding what clear knowledge it has laughably insufficient to interpret its destiny1 takes to neglecting knowledge altogether and to hugging instead various irrational ideas4 ,on the one hand it lapses into dreams which1 while obviously irrelevant to practice1 express the mind's vegetative instincts2 hence art and mythology1 which substitute play-worlds for the real one on correlation with which human prosperity and dignity depend4 ,on the other hand1 the mind becomes wedded to conventional objects which mark1 perhaps1 the turning-points of practical life and plot the curve of it in a schematic and disjointed fashion1 but which are themselves entirely opaque and1 as we say1 material4 ,now as matter is commonly a name for things not understood1 men materially minded are those whose ideas1 while practical1 are meagre and blind1 so that their knowledge of nature1 if not invalid1 is exceedingly fragmentary4 ,this grossness in common sense1 like irrelevance in imagination1 springs from the fact that the mind's representative powers are out of focus with its controlling conditions4 ,sidenote3 ,its articulation inferior to that of its objects4 ,in other words1 sense ought to correspond in articulation with the object to be represented--otherwise the object's structure1 with the fate it imports2 cannot be transferred into analogous ideas4 ,now the human senses are not at all fitted to represent an organism on the scale of the human body4 ,they catch its idle gestures but not the inner processes which control its action4 ,the senses are immeasurably too gross4 ,what to them is a minimum visibile1 a just perceptible atom1 is in the body's structure1 very likely1 a system of worlds1 the inner cataclysms of which count in producing that so-called atom's behaviour and endowing it with affinities apparently miraculous4 ,what must the seed of animals contain1 for instance1 to be the ground1 as it notoriously is1 for every physical and moral property of the offspring8 ,or what must the system of signals and the reproductive habit in a brain be1 for it to co-ordinate instinctive movements1 learn tricks1 and remember8 ,our senses can represent at all adequately only such objects as the solar system or a work of human architecture1 where the unit's inner structure and fermentation may be provisionally neglected in mastering the total4 ,the architect may reckon in bricks and the astronomer in planets and yet foresee accurately enough the practical result4 ,in a word1 only what is extraordinarily simple is intelligible to man1 while only what is extraordinarily complex can support intelligence4 ,consciousness is essentially incompetent to understand what most concerns it1 its own vicissitudes1 and sense is altogether out of scale with the objects of practical interest in life4 ,sidenote3 ,science consequently retarded4 ,one consequence of this profound maladjustment is that science is hard to attain and is at first paradoxical4 ,the change of scale required is violent and frustrates all the mind's rhetorical habits4 ,there is a constant feeling of strain and much flying back to the mother-tongue of myth and social symbol4 ,every wrong hypothesis is seized upon and is tried before any one will entertain the right one4 ,enthusiasm for knowledge is chilled by repeated failures and a great confusion cannot but reign in philosophy4 ,a man with an eye for characteristic features in various provinces of experience is encouraged to deal with each upon a different principle2 and where these provinces touch or actually fuse1 he is at a loss what method of comprehension to apply4 ,there sets in1 accordingly1 a tendency to use various methods at once or a different one on each occasion1 as language1 custom1 or presumption seems to demand4 ,science is reduced by philosophers to plausible discourse1 and the more plausible the discourse is1 by leaning on all the heterogeneous prejudices of the hour1 the more does it foster the same and discourage radical investigation4 ,thus even ,aristotle felt that good judgment and the dramatic habit of things altogether excluded the simple physics of ,democritus4 ,indeed1 as things then stood1 ,democritus had no right to his simplicity1 except that divine right which comes of inspiration4 ,his was an indefensible faith in a single radical insight1 which happened nevertheless to be true4 ,to justify that insight forensically it would have been necessary to change the range of human vision1 making it telescopic in one region and microscopic in another2 whereby the objects so transfigured would have lost their familiar aspect and their habitual context in discourse4 ,without such a startling change of focus nature can never seem everywhere mechanical4 ,hence1 even to this day1 people with broad human interests are apt to discredit a mechanical philosophy4 ,seldom can penetration and courage in thinking hold their own against the miscellaneous habits of discourse2 and nobody remembers that moral values must remain captious1 and imaginative life ignoble and dark1 so long as the whole basis and application of them is falsely conceived4 ,discoveries in science are made only by near-sighted specialists1 while the influence of public sentiment and policy still works systematically against enlightenment4 ,sidenote3 and speculation rendered necessary4 ,the maladaptation of sense to its objects has a second consequence3 that speculation is in a way nobler for man than direct perception4 ,for direct perception is wholly inadequate to render the force1 the reality1 the subtle relations of the object perceived1 unless this object be a shell only1 like a work of fine art1 where nothing counts but the surface4 ,since the function of perception is properly to give understanding and dominion1 direct perception is a defeat and1 as it were1 an insult to the mind1 thus forced to busy itself about so unintelligible and dense an apparition4 sthetic enthusiasm cares nothing about what the object inwardly is1 what is its efficacious movement and real life4 ,it revels selfishly in the harmonies of perception itself1 harmonies which perhaps it attributes to the object through want of consideration4 ,these sthetic objects1 which have no intrinsic unity or cohesion1 lapse in the most melancholy and inexplicable fashion before our eyes4 ,then we cry that beauty wanes1 that life is brief1 and that its prizes are deceptive4 ,our minds have fed on casual aspects of nature1 like tints in sunset clouds4 ,imaginative fervour has poured itself out exclusively on these apparitions1 which are without relevant backing in the world2 and long1 perhaps1 before this life is over1 which we called too brief1 we begin to pine for another1 where just those images which here played so deceptively on the surface of the flux may be turned into fixed and efficacious realities4 ,meantime speculation amuses us with prophecies about what such realities might be4 ,we look for them1 very likely1 in the wrong place1 namely1 in human poetry and eloquence1 or at best in dialectic2 yet even when stated in these mythical terms the hidden world divined in meditation seems nobler and1 as we say1 more real than the objects of sense4 ,for we hope1 in those speculative visions1 to reach the permanent1 the efficacious1 the stanch principles of experience1 something to rely on in prospect and appeal to in perplexity4 ,science1 in its prosaic but trustworthy fashion1 passes likewise beyond the dreamlike unities and cadences which sense discloses2 only1 as science aims at controlling its speculation by experiment1 the hidden reality it discloses is exactly like what sense perceives1 though on a different scale1 and not observable1 perhaps1 without a magic carpet of hypothesis1 to carry the observer to the ends of the universe or1 changing his dimensions1 to introduce him into those infinitesimal abysses where nature has her workshop4 ,in this region1 were it sufficiently explored1 we might find just those solid supports and faithful warnings which we were looking for with such ill success in our rhetorical speculations4 ,the machinery disclosed would not be human2 it would be machinery4 ,but it would for that very reason serve the purpose which made us look for it instead of remaining1 like the lower animals1 placidly gazing on the pageants of sense1 till some unaccountable pang forced us to spasmodic movement4 ,it is doubtless better to find material engines--not necessarily inanimate1 either--which may really serve to bring order1 security1 and progress into our lives1 than to find impassioned or ideal spirits1 that can do nothing for us except1 at best1 assure us that they are perfectly happy4 ,sidenote3 ,dissatisfaction with mechanism partly natural4 ,the reigning aversion to mechanism is partly natural and partly artificial4 ,the natural aversion cannot be wholly overcome4 ,like the aversion to death1 to old age1 to labour1 it is called forth by man's natural situation in a world which was not made for him1 but in which he grew4 ,that the efficacious structure of things should not be intentionally spectacular nor poetical1 that its units should not be terms in common discourse1 nor its laws quite like the logic of passion1 is of course a hard lesson to learn4 ,the learning1 however--not to speak of its incidental delights--is so extraordinarily good for people that only with that instruction and the blessed renunciations it brings can clearness1 dignity1 or virility enter their minds4 ,and of course1 if the material basis of human strength could be discovered and better exploited1 the free activity of the mind would be not arrested but enlarged4 ,geology adds something to the interest of landscape1 and botany much to the charm of flowers2 natural history increases the pleasure with which we view society and the justice with which we judge it4 ,an instinctive sympathy1 a solicitude for the perfect working of any delicate thing1 as it makes the ruffian tender to a young child1 is a sentiment inevitable even toward artificial organisms4 ,could we better perceive the fine fruits of order1 the dire consequences of every specific cruelty or jar1 we should grow doubly considerate toward all forms2 for we exist through form1 and the love of form is our whole real inspiration4 ,sidenote3 and partly artificial4 ,the artificial prejudice against mechanism is a fruit of party spirit4 ,when a myth has become the centre or sanction for habits and institutions1 these habits and institutions stand against any conception incompatible with that myth4 ,it matters nothing that the values the myth was designed to express may remain standing without it1 or may be transferred to its successor4 ,social and intellectual inertia is too great to tolerate so simple an evolution4 ,it divides opinions not into false and true but into high and low1 or even more frankly into those which are acceptable and comforting to its ruffled faith and those which are dangerous1 alarming1 and unfortunate4 ,imagine ,socrates 8viewing with alarm0 the implications of an argument6 ,this artificial prejudice is indeed modern and will not be eternal4 ,ancient sages1 when they wished to rebuke the atheist1 pointed to the very heavens which a sentimental religion would nowadays gladly prove to be unreal1 lest the soul should learn something of their method4 ,yet the ,ptolemaic spheres were no more manlike and far less rich in possibilities of life than the ,copernican star-dust4 ,the ancients thought that what was intelligible was divine4 ,order was what they meant by intelligence1 and order productive of excellence was what they meant by reason4 ,when they noticed that the stars moved perpetually and according to law1 they seriously thought they were beholding the gods4 ,the stars as we conceive them are not in that sense perfect4 ,but the order which nature does not cease to manifest is still typical of all order1 and is sublime4 ,it is from these regions of embodied law that intelligibility and power combined come to make their covenant with us1 as with all generations4 ,sidenote3 ,biassed judgments inspired by moral inertia4 ,the emotions and the moral principles that are naturally allied to materialism suffer an eclipse when materialism1 which is properly a primary or dogmatic philosophy1 breathing courage and victory1 appears as a destructive force and in the incongruous rle of a critic4 ,one dogmatism is not fit to criticise another2 their conflict can end only in insults1 sullenness1 and an appeal to that physical drift and irrational selection which may ultimately consign one party to oblivion4 ,but a philosophy does ill to boast of such borrowed triumphs4 ,the next turn of the wheel may crush the victor1 and the opinions hastily buried may rise again to pose as the fashionable and superior insights of a later day4 ,to criticise dogmatism it is necessary to be a genuine sceptic1 an honest transcendentalist1 that falls back on the immediate and observes by what principles of logical architecture the ultimate1 the reality discovered1 has been inferred from it4 ,such criticism is not necessarily destructive2 some construction and some belief being absolutely inevitable1 if reason and life are to operate at all1 criticism merely offers us the opportunity of revising and purifying our dogmas1 so as to make them reasonable and congruous with practice4 ,materialism may thus be reinstated on transcendental grounds1 and the dogma at first uttered in the flush of intelligent perception1 with no scruple or self-consciousness1 may be repeated after a thorough examination of heart1 on the ground that it is the best possible expression of experience1 the inevitable deliverance of thought4 ,so approached1 a dogmatic system will carry its critical justification with it1 and the values it enshrines and secures will not be doubtful4 ,the emotions it arouses will be those aroused by the experience it explains4 ,causes having been found for what is given1 these causes will be proved to have just that beneficent potency and just that distressing inadequacy which the joys and failures of life show that the reality has1 whatever this reality may otherwise be4 ,the theory will add nothing except the success involved in framing it4 ,life being once for all what it is1 no physics can render it worse or better1 save as the knowledge of physics1 with insight into the causes of our varied fortunes1 is itself an achievement and a new resource4 ,sidenote3 ,positive emotions proper to materialism4 ,a theory is not an unemotional thing4 ,if music can be full of passion1 merely by giving form to a single sense1 how much more beauty or terror may not a vision be pregnant with which brings order and method into everything that we know4 ,materialism has its distinct sthetic and emotional colour1 though this may be strangely affected and even reversed by contrast with systems of an incongruous hue1 jostling it accidentally in a confused and amphibious mind4 ,if you are in the habit of believing in special providences1 or of expecting to continue your romantic adventures in a second life1 materialism will dash your hopes most unpleasantly1 and you may think for a year or two that you have nothing left to live for4 ,but a thorough materialist1 one born to the faith and not half plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water1 will be like the superb ,democritus1 a laughing philosopher4 ,his delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous and beautiful shapes1 and can generate so many exciting passions1 should be of the same intellectual quality as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history1 where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases1 the flamingoes and shell-fish1 the mammoths and gorillas4 ,doubtless there were pangs in that incalculable life1 but they were soon over2 and how splendid meantime was the pageant1 how infinitely interesting the universal interplay1 and how foolish and inevitable those absolute little passions4 ,somewhat of that sort might be the sentiment that materialism would arouse in a vigorous mind1 active1 joyful1 impersonal1 and in respect to private illusions not without a touch of scorn4 ,to the genuine sufferings of living creatures the ethics that accompanies materialism has never been insensible2 on the contrary1 like other merciful systems1 it has trembled too much at pain and tended to withdraw the will ascetically1 lest the will should be defeated4 ,contempt for mortal sorrows is reserved for those who drive with hosannas the ,juggernaut car of absolute optimism4 ,but against evils born of pure vanity and self-deception1 against the verbiage by which man persuades himself that he is the goal and acme of the universe1 laughter is the proper defence4 ,laughter also has this subtle advantage1 that it need not remain without an overtone of sympathy and brotherly understanding2 as the laughter that greets ,don ,quixote's absurdities and misadventures does not mock the hero's intent4 ,his ardour was admirable1 but the world must be known before it can be reformed pertinently1 and happiness1 to be attained1 must be placed in reason4 ,sidenote3 ,the material world not dead nor ugly1 ,oblivious of ,democritus1 the unwilling materialists of our day have generally been awkwardly intellectual and quite incapable of laughter4 ,if they have felt anything1 they have felt melancholy4 ,their allegiance and affection were still fixed on those mythical sentimental worlds which they saw to be illusory4 ,the mechanical world they believed in could not please them1 in spite of its extent and fertility4 ,giving rhetorical vent to their spleen and prejudice1 they exaggerated nature's meagreness and mathematical dryness4 ,when their imagination was chilled they spoke of nature1 most unwarrantably1 as dead1 and when their judgment was heated they took the next step and called it unreal4 ,a man is not blind1 however1 because every part of his body is not an eye1 nor every muscle in his eye a nerve sensitive to light4 ,why1 then1 is nature dead1 although it swarms with living organisms1 if every part is not obviously animate8 ,and why is the sun dark and cold1 if it is bright and hot only to animal sensibility8 ,this senseless lamentation is like the sophism of those ,indian preachers who1 to make men abandon the illusions of self-love1 dilated on the shocking contents of the human body4 ,take off the skin1 they cried1 and you will discover nothing but loathsome bleeding and quivering substances4 ,yet the inner organs are well enough in their place and doubtless pleasing to the microbes that inhabit them2 and a man is not hideous because his cross-section would not offer the features of a beautiful countenance4 ,so the structure of the world is not therefore barren or odious because1 if you removed its natural outer aspect and effects1 it would not make an interesting landscape4 ,beauty being an appearance and life an operation1 that is surely beautiful and living which so operates and so appears as to manifest those qualities4 ,sidenote3 nor especially cruel4 ,it is true that materialism prophesies an ultimate extinction for man and all his works4 ,the horror which this prospect inspires in the natural man might be mitigated by reflection2 but1 granting the horror1 is it something introduced by mechanical theories and not present in experience itself8 ,are human things inwardly stable8 ,do they belong to the eternal in any sense in which the operation of material forces can touch their immortality8 ,the panic which seems to seize some minds at the thought of a merely natural existence is something truly hysterical2 and yet one wonders why ultimate peace should seem so intolerable to people who not so many years ago found a stern religious satisfaction in consigning almost the whole human race to perpetual torture1 the ,creator1 as ,saint ,augustine tells us1 having in his infinite wisdom and justice devised a special kind of material fire that might avail to burn resurrected bodies for ever without consuming them4 ,a very real truth might be read into this savage symbol1 if we understood it to express the ultimate defeats and fruitless agonies that pursue human folly2 and so we might find that it gave mythical expression to just that conditioned fortune and inexorable flux which a mechanical philosophy shows us the grounds of4 ,our own vices in another man seem particularly hideous2 and so those actual evils which we take for granted when incorporated in the current system strike us afresh when we see them in a new setting4 ,but it is not mechanical science that introduced mutability into things nor materialism that invented death4 ,sidenote3 ,mechanism to be judged by its fruits4 ,the death of individuals1 as we observe daily in nature1 does not prevent the reappearance of life2 and if we choose to indulge in arbitrary judgments on a subject where data fail us1 we may as reasonably wish that there might be less life as that there might be more4 ,the passion for a large and permanent population in the universe is not obviously rational2 at a great distance a man must view everything1 including himself1 under the form of eternity1 and when life is so viewed its length or its diffusion becomes a point of little importance4 ,what matters then is quality4 ,the reasonable and humane demand to make of the world is that such creatures as exist should not be unhappy and that life1 whatever its quantity1 should have a quality that may justify it in its own eyes4 ,this just demand1 made by conscience and not by an arbitrary fancy1 the world described by mechanism does not fulfil altogether1 for adjustments in it are tentative1 and much friction must precede and follow upon any vital equilibrium attained4 ,this imperfection1 however1 is actual1 and no theory can overcome it except by verbal fallacies and scarcely deceptive euphemisms4 ,what mechanism involves in this respect is exactly what we find3 a tentative appearance of life in many quarters1 its disappearance in some1 and its reinforcement and propagation in others1 where the physical equilibrium attained insures to it a natural stability and a natural prosperity4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,hesitations ,,in ,,method ,sidenote3 ,mechanism restricted to one-half of existence4 ,when ,democritus proclaimed the sovereignty of mechanism1 he did so in the oracular fashion proper to an ancient sage4 ,he found it no harder to apply his atomic theory to the mind and to the gods than to solids and fluids4 ,it sufficed to conceive that such an explanation might be possible1 and to illustrate the theory by a few scattered facts and trenchant hypotheses4 ,when ,descartes1 after twenty centuries of verbal physics1 reintroduced mechanism into philosophy1 he made a striking modification in its claims4 ,he divided existence into two independent regions1 and it was only in one1 in the realm of extended things1 that mechanism was expected to prevail4 ,mental facts1 which he approached from the side of abstracted reflection and ,platonic ideas1 seemed to him obviously non-extended1 even when they represented extension2 and with them mechanism could have nothing to do4 ,descartes had recovered in the science of mechanics a firm nucleus for physical theory1 a stronghold from which it had become impossible to dislodge scientific methods4 ,there1 at any rate1 form1 mass1 distance1 and other mathematical relations governed the transformation of things4 ,yet the very clearness and exhaustiveness of this mechanical method1 as applied to gross masses in motion1 made it seem essentially inapplicable to anything else4 ,descartes was far too radical and incisive a thinker1 however1 not to feel that it must apply throughout nature4 ,imaginative difficulties due to the complexity of animal bodies could not cloud his rational insight4 ,animal bodies1 then1 were mere machines1 cleancut and cold engines like so many anatomical manikins4 ,they explained themselves and all their operations1 talking and building temples being just as truly a matter of physics as the revolution of the sky4 ,but the soul had dropped out1 and ,descartes was the last man to ignore the soul4 ,there had dropped out also the secondary qualities of matter1 all those qualities1 namely1 which are negligible in mechanical calculations4 ,mechanism was in truth far from universal2 all mental facts and half the properties of matter1 as matter is revealed to man1 came into being without asking leave2 they were interlopers in the intelligible universe4 ,indeed1 ,descartes was willing to admit that these inexplicable bystanders might sometimes put their finger in the pie1 and stir the material world judiciously so as to give it a new direction1 although without adding to its substance or to its force4 ,the situation so created gave the literary philosophers an excellent chance to return to the attack and to swallow and digest the new-born mechanism in their facile systems4 ,theologians and metaphysicians in one quarter and psychologists in another found it easy and inevitable to treat the whole mechanical world as a mere idea4 ,in that case1 it is true1 the only existences that remained remained entirely without calculable connections2 everything was a divine trance or a shower of ideas falling by chance through the void4 ,but this result might not be unwelcome4 ,it fell in well enough with that love of emotional issues1 that want of soberness and want of cogency1 which is so characteristic of modern philosophers4 ,christian theology still remained the background and chief point of reference for speculation2 if its eclectic dogmas could be in part supported or in part undermined1 that constituted a sufficient literary success1 and what became of science was of little moment in comparison4 ,sidenote3 ,men of science not speculative4 ,science1 to be sure1 could very well take care of itself and proceeded in its patient course without caring particularly what status the metaphysicians might assign to it4 ,not to be a philosopher is even an advantage for a man of science1 because he is then more willing to adapt his methods to the state of knowledge in his particular subject1 without insisting on ultimate intelligibility2 and he has perhaps more joy of his discoveries than he might have if he had discounted them in his speculations4 ,darwin1 for instance1 did more than any one since ,newton to prove that mechanism is universal1 but without apparently believing that it really was so1 or caring about the question at all4 ,in natural history1 observation has not yet come within range of accurate processes2 it merely registers habits and traces empirical derivations4 ,even in chemistry1 while measure and proportion are better felt1 the ultimate units and the radical laws are still problematical4 ,the recent immense advances in science have been in acquaintance with nature rather than in insight4 ,greater complexity1 greater regularity1 greater naturalness have been discovered everywhere2 the profound analogies in things1 their common evolution1 have appeared unmistakably2 but the inner texture of the process has not been laid bare4 ,this cautious peripheral attack1 which does so much honour to the scientific army and has won it so many useful victories1 is another proof that science is nothing but common knowledge extended4 ,it is willing to reckon in any terms and to study any subject-matter2 where it cannot see necessity it will notice law2 where laws cannot be stated it will describe habits2 where habits fail it will classify types2 and where types even are indiscernible it will not despise statistics4 ,in this way studies which are scientific in spirit1 however loose their results1 may be carried on in social matters1 in political economy1 in anthropology1 in psychology4 ,the historical sciences1 also1 philology and archology1 have reached tentatively very important results2 it is enough that an intelligent man should gather in any quarter a rich fund of information1 for the movement of his subject to pass somehow to his mind3 and if his apprehension follows that movement--not breaking in upon it with extraneous matter--it will be scientific apprehension4 ,sidenote3 ,confusion in semi-moral subjects4 ,what confuses and retards science in these ambiguous regions is the difficulty of getting rid of the foreign element1 or even of deciding what the element native to the object is4 ,in political economy1 for instance1 it is far from clear whether the subject is moral1 and therefore to be studied and expressed dialectically1 or whether it is descriptive1 and so in the end a matter of facts and of mechanics4 ,are you formulating an interest or tracing a sequence of events8 ,and if both simultaneously1 are you studying the world in order to see what acts1 in a given situation1 would serve your purpose and so be right1 or are you taking note of your own intentions1 and of those of other people1 in order to infer from them the probable course of affairs8 ,in the first case you are a moralist observing nature in order to use it2 you are defining a policy1 and that definition is not knowledge of anything except of your own heart4 ,neither you nor any one else may ever take such a single-minded and unchecked course in the world as the one you are excogitating4 ,no one may ever have been guided in the past by any such absolute plan4 ,for this same reason1 if 7to take up the other supposition7 you are a naturalist studying the actual movement of affairs1 you would do well not to rely on the conscious views or intentions of anybody4 ,a natural philosopher is on dangerous ground when he uses psychological or moral terms in his calculation4 ,if you use such terms--and to forbid their use altogether would be pedantic--you should take them for conventional literary expressions1 covering an unsolved problem2 for these views and intentions have a brief and inconsequential tenure of life and their existence is merely a sign for certain conjunctions in nature1 where processes hailing from afar have met in a man1 soon to pass beyond him4 ,if they figure as causes in nature1 it is only because they represent the material processes that have brought them into being4 ,the existential element in mental facts is not so remote from matter as ,descartes imagined4 ,even if we are not prepared to admit with ,democritus that matter is what makes them up 7as it well might if 8matter0 were taken in a logical sense7,b we should agree that their substance is in mechanical flux1 and that their form1 by which they become moral unities1 is only an ideal aspect of that moving substance4 ,moral unities are created by a point of view1 as right and left are1 and for that reason are not efficacious2 though of course the existences they enclose1 like the things lying to the left and to the right1 move in unison with the rest of nature4 ,people doubtless do well to keep an eye open for morals when they study physics1 and vice versa1 since it is only by feeling how the two spheres hang together that the ,life of ,reason can be made to walk on both feet4 ,yet to discriminate between the two is no scholastic subtlety4 ,there is the same practical inconvenience in taking one for the other as in trying to gather grapes from thistles4 ,a hybrid science is sterile4 ,if the reason escapes us1 history should at least convince us of the fact1 when we remember the issue of ,aristotelian physics and of cosmological morals4 ,where the subject-matter is ambiguous and the method double1 you have scarcely reached a result which seems plausible for the moment1 when a rival school springs up1 adopting and bringing forward the submerged element in your view1 and rejecting your achievement altogether4 ,a seesaw and endless controversy thus take the place of a steady1 co-operative advance4 ,this disorder reigns in morals1 metaphysics1 and psychology1 and the conflicting schools of political economy and of history loudly proclaim it to the world4 ,sidenote3 8,physic of metaphysic begs defence40 ,the modesty of men of science1 their aversion 7or incapacity7 to carry their principles over into speculation1 has left the greater part of physics or the theory of existence to the metaphysicians4 ,what they have made of it does not concern us here1 since the result has certainly not been a science2 indeed they have obscured the very notion that there should be a science of all existence and that metaphysics1 if it is more than a name for ultimate physics1 can be nothing but dialectic1 which does not look toward existence at all4 ,but the prevalence of a mythical physics1 purporting to describe the structure of the universe in terms quite other than those which scientific physics could use1 has affected this scientific physics and seriously confused it4 ,its core1 in mechanics1 to be sure1 could not be touched2 and the detail even of natural history and chemistry could not be disfigured3 but the general aspect of natural history could be rendered ambiguous in the doctrine of evolution2 while in psychology1 which attempted to deal with that half of the world which ,descartes had not subjected to mechanism1 confusion could hold undisputed sway4 ,sidenote3 ,evolution by mechanism4 ,there is a sense in which the notion of evolution is involved in any mechanical system4 ,descartes indeed had gone so far as to describe1 in strangely simple terms1 how the world1 with all its detail1 might have been produced by starting any motion anywhere in the midst of a plenum at rest4 ,the idea of evolution could not be more curtly put forth2 so much so that ,descartes had to arm himself against the inevitable charge that he was denying the creation1 by protesting that his doctrine was a supposition contrary to fact1 and that though the world might have been so formed1 it was really created as ,genesis recorded4 ,moreover1 in antiquity1 every ,ionian philosopher had conceived a gradual crystallisation of nature2 while ,empedocles1 in his magnificent oracles1 had anticipated ,darwin's philosophy without ,darwin's knowledge4 ,it is clear that if the forces that hold an organism together are mechanical1 and therefore independent of the ideal unities they subtend1 those forces suffice to explain the origin of the organism1 and can have produced it4 ,darwin's discoveries1 like every other advance in physical insight1 are nothing but filling for that abstract assurance4 ,they show us how the supposed mechanism really works in one particular field1 in one stage of its elaboration4 ,as earlier naturalists had shown us how mechanical causes might produce the miracle of the sunrise and the poetry of the seasons1 so ,darwin showed us how similar causes might secure the adaptation of animals to their habitat4 ,evolution1 so conceived1 is nothing but a detailed account of mechanical origins4 ,sidenote3 ,evolution by ideal attraction4 ,at the same time the word evolution has a certain pomp and glamour about it which fits ill with so prosaic an interpretation4 ,in the unfolding of a bud we are wont to see1 as it were1 the fulfilment of a predetermined and glorious destiny2 for the seed was an epitome or condensation of a full-blown plant and held within it1 in some sort of potential guise1 the very form which now peeps out in the young flower4 ,evolution suggests a prior involution or contraction and the subsequent manifestation of an innate ideal4 ,evolution should move toward a fixed consummation the approaches to which we might observe and measure4 ,yet evolution1 in this prophetic sense of the word1 would be the exact denial of what ,darwin1 for instance1 was trying to prove4 ,it would be a return to ,aristotelian notions of heredity and potential being2 for it was the essence of ,aristotle's physics--of which his theology was an integral part and a logical capping--that the forms which beings approached pre-existed in other beings from which they had been inherited1 and that the intermediate stages during which the butterfly shrank to a grub could not be understood unless we referred them to their origin and their destiny4 ,the physical essence and potency of seeds lay in their ideal relations1 not in any actual organisation they might possess in the day of their eclipse and slumber4 ,an egg evolved into a chicken not by mechanical necessity--for an egg had a comparatively simple structure--but by virtue of an ideal harmony in things2 since it was natural and fitting that what had come from a hen should lead on to a hen again4 ,the ideal nature possessed by the parent1 hovering over the passive seed1 magically induced it to grow into the parent's semblance2 and growth was the gradual approach to the perfection which this ancestral essence prescribed4 ,this was why ,aristotle's ,god1 though in character an unmistakable ideal1 had to be at the same time an actual existence2 since the world would not have known which way to move or what was its inner ideal1 unless this ideal1 already embodied somewhere else1 drew it on and infused movement and direction into the world's structureless substance4 ,the underlying ,platonism in this magical physics is obvious1 since the natures that ,aristotle made to rule the world were eternal natures4 ,an individual might fail to be a perfect man or a perfect monkey1 but the specific human or simian ideal1 by which he had been formed in so far as he was formed at all1 was not affected by this accidental resistance in the matter at hand1 as an adamantine seal1 even if at times the wax by defect or impurity failed to receive a perfect impression1 would remain unchanged and ready to be stamped perpetually on new material4 ,sidenote3 ,if species are evolved they cannot guide evolution4 ,the contrast is obvious between this ,platonic physics and a naturalism like that of ,darwin4 ,the point of evolution1 as selection produces it1 is that new species may arise4 ,the very title of ,darwin's book 8,the ,origin of ,species0 is a denial of ,aristotelianism and1 in the pregnant sense1 of evolution4 ,it suggests that the type approached by each generation may differ from that approached by the previous one2 that not merely the degree of perfection1 but the direction of growth1 may vary4 ,the individual is not merely unfolded from an inner potentiality derived from a like ancestor and carrying with it a fixed eternal ideal1 but on the contrary the very ground plan of organisation may gradually change and a new form and a new ideal may appear4 ,spontaneous variations--of course mechanically caused,c--may occur and may modify the hereditary form of animals4 ,these variations1 superposed upon one another1 may in time constitute a nature wholly unlike its first original4 ,this accidental1 cumulative evolution accordingly justifies a declaration of moral liberty4 ,i am not obliged to aspire to the nature my father aspired to1 for the ground of my being is partly new4 ,in me nature is making a novel experiment4 ,i am the adoring creator of a new spiritual good4 ,my duties have shifted with my shifting faculties1 and the ideal which ,i propose to myself1 and alone can honestly propose1 is unprecedented1 the expression of a moving existence and without authority beyond the range of existences congruous with mine4 ,sidenote3 ,intrusion of optimism4 ,all that is scientific or ,darwinian in the theory of evolution is accordingly an application of mechanism1 a proof that mechanism lies at the basis of life and morals4 ,the ,aristotelian notion of development1 however1 was too deeply rooted in tradition for it to disappear at a breath4 ,evolution as conceived by ,hegel1 for instance1 or even by ,spencer1 retained ,aristotelian elements1 though these were disguised and hidden under a cloud of new words4 ,both identify evolution with progress1 with betterment2 a notion which would naturally be prominent in any one with enlightened sympathies living in the nineteenth century1 when a new social and intellectual order was forcing itself on a world that happened largely to welcome the change1 but a notion that has nothing to do with natural science4 ,the fittest to live need not be those with the most harmonious inner life nor the best possibilities4 ,the fitness might be due to numbers1 as in a political election1 or to tough fibre1 as in a tropical climate4 ,of course a form of being that circumstances make impossible or hopelessly laborious had better dive under and cease for the moment to be2 but the circumstances that render it inopportune do not render it essentially inferior4 ,circumstances have no power of that kind2 and perhaps the worst incident in the popular acceptance of evolution has been a certain brutality thereby introduced into moral judgment1 an abdication of human ideals1 a mocking indifference to justice1 under cover of respect for what is bound to be1 and for the rough economy of the world4 ,disloyalty to the good in the guise of philosophy had appeared also among the ancients1 when their political ethics had lost its authority1 just as it appeared among us when the prestige of religion had declined4 ,the ,epicureans sometimes said that one should pursue pleasure because all the animals did so1 and the ,stoics that one should fill one's appointed place in nature1 because such was the practice of clouds and rivers4 ,sidenote3 ,evolution according to ,hegel4 ,hegel possessed a keen scent for instability in men's attitudes and opinions2 he had no need of ,darwin's facts to convince him that in moral life1 at least1 there were no permanent species and that every posture of thought was an untenable half-way station between two others4 ,his early contact with ,protestant theology may have predisposed him to that opinion4 ,at any rate he had no sympathy with that ,platonism that allowed everything to have its eternal ideal1 with which it might ultimately be identified4 ,such ideals would be finite1 they would arrest the flux1 and they would try to break loose from their enveloping conditions4 ,hegel was no moralist in the ,socratic sense1 but a naturalist seeking formulas for the growth of moral experience4 ,instead of questioning the heart1 he somewhat satirically described its history4 ,at the same time he was heir to that mythology which had deified the genetic or physical principle in things1 and though the traditional myths suffered cruel operations at his hands1 and often died of explanation1 the mythical principle itself remained untouched and was the very breath of his nostrils4 ,he never doubted that the formula he might find for the growth of experience would be also the ultimate good4 ,what other purpose could the world have than to express the formula according to which it was being generated8 ,in this honest conviction we see the root1 perhaps1 of that distaste for correct physics that prevails among many who call themselves idealists4 ,if physics were for some reason to be adored1 it would be disconcerting to find in physics nothing but atoms and a void4 ,it is hard to understand1 however1 why a fanciful formula expressing the evolution of this perturbed universe1 and painting it no better than it is1 should be more worshipful than an exact formula meant to perform the same office4 ,a myth that enlarged the world and promised a complete transformation of its character might have its charms2 but the improvement is not obvious that accrues by making the drift of things1 just as it drifts1 its own standard4 ,yet for ,hegel it mattered nothing how unstable all ideals might be1 since the only use of them was to express a principle of transition1 and this principle was being realised1 eternally and unawares1 by the self-devouring and self-transcending purposes rolling in the flux4 ,sidenote3 ,the conservative interpretation4 ,this philosophy might not be much relished if it were more frankly expressed2 yet something of the sort floats vaguely before most minds when they think of evolution4 ,the types of being change1 they say3 in this sense the ,aristotelian notion of a predetermined form unfolding itself in each species has yielded to a more correct and more dynamic physics4 ,but the changes1 so people imagine1 express a predetermined ideal1 no longer1 of course1 the ideal of these specific things1 but one overarching the cosmic movement4 ,the situation might be described by saying that this is ,aristotle's view adapted to a world in which there is only one species or only one individual4 ,the earlier phases of life are an imperfect expression of the same nature which the later phases express more fully4 ,hence the triumphant march of evolution and the assumption that whatever is later is necessarily better than what went before4 ,if a child were simply the partial expression of a man1 his single desire would be to grow up1 and when he was grown up he would embody all he had been striving for and would be happy for ever after4 ,so if man were nothing but a halting reproduction of divinity and destined to become ,god1 his whole destiny would be fulfilled by apotheosis4 ,if this apotheosis1 moreover1 were an actual future event1 something every man and animal was some day to experience1 evolution might really have a final goal1 and might lead to a new and presumably better sort of existence--existence in the eternal4 ,somewhat in this fashion evolution is understood by the party that wish to combine it with a refreshed patristic theology4 ,sidenote3 ,the radical one4 ,there is an esoteric way1 however1 of taking these matters which is more in sympathy both with natural evolution and with transcendental philosophy4 ,if we assert that evolution is infinite1 no substantive goal can be set to it4 ,the goal will be the process itself1 if we could only open our eyes upon its beauty and necessity4 ,the apotheosis will be retroactive1 nay1 it has already taken place4 ,the insight involved is mystical1 yet in a way more just to the facts than any promise of ulterior blisses4 ,for it is not really true that a child has no other ideal than to become a man4 ,childhood has many an ideal of its own1 many a beauty and joy irrelevant to manhood1 and such that manhood is incapable of retaining or containing them4 ,if the ultimate good is really to contain and retain all the others1 it can hardly be anything but their totality--the infinite history of experience viewed under the form of eternity4 ,at that remove1 however1 the least in the kingdom of ,heaven is even as the greatest1 and the idea of evolution1 as of time1 is 8taken up into a higher unity40 ,there could be no real pre-eminence in one man's works over those of another2 and if faith1 or insight into the equal service done by all1 still seemed a substantial privilege reserved for the elect1 this privilege1 too1 must be an illusion1 since those who do not know how useful and necessary they are must be as useful and necessary as those who do4 ,an absolute preference for knowledge or self-consciousness would be an unmistakably human and finite ideal--something to be outgrown4 ,sidenote3 ,megalomania4 ,what practically survives in these systems1 when their mysticism and naturalism have had time to settle1 is a clear enough standard4 ,it is a standard of inclusion and quantity4 ,since all is needful1 and the justifying whole is infinite1 there would seem to be a greater dignity in the larger part4 ,as the best copy of a picture1 other things being equal1 would be one that represented it all1 so the best expression of the world1 next to the world itself1 would be the largest portion of it any one could absorb4 ,progress would then mean annexation4 ,growth would not come by expressing better an innate soul which involved a particular ideal1 but by assimilating more and more external things till the original soul1 by their influence1 was wholly recast and unrecognisable4 ,this moral agility would be true merit2 we should always be 8striving onward40 ,life would be a sort of demonic vortex1 boiling at the centre and omnivorous at the circumference1 till it finally realised the supreme vocation of vortices1 to have 8their centre everywhere and their circumference nowhere40 ,this somewhat troubled situation might seem sublime to us1 transformed as we too should be2 and so we might reach the most remarkable and doubtless the 8highest0 form of optimism--optimism in hell4 ,sidenote3 ,chaos in the theory of mind4 ,confusing as these cross-currents and revulsions may prove in the field where mechanism is more or less at home1 in the field of material operations1 they are nothing to the primeval chaos that still broods over the other hemisphere1 over the mental phase of existence4 ,the difficulty is not merely that no mechanism is discovered or acknowledged here1 but that the phenomena themselves are ambiguous1 and no one seems to know when he speaks of mind whether he means something formal and ideal1 like ,platonic essences and mathematical truths1 or reflection and intelligence1 or sensation possessing external causes and objects1 or finally that ultimate immediacy or brute actuality which is characteristic of any existence4 ,other even vaguer notions are doubtless often designated by the word psychical2 but these may suffice for us to recognise the initial dilemmas in the subject and the futility of trying to build a science of mind1 or defining the relation of mind to matter1 when it is not settled whether mind means the form of matter1 as with the ,platonists1 or the effect of it1 as with the materialists1 or the seat and false knowledge of it1 as with the transcendentalists1 or perhaps after all1 as with the pan-psychists1 mind means exactly matter itself4,d ,sidenote3 ,origin of self-consciousness4 ,to see how equivocal everything is in this region1 and possibly to catch some glimpse of whatever science or sciences might some day define it1 we may revert for a moment to the origin of human notions concerning the mind4 ,if either everything or nothing that men came upon in their primitive day-dream had been continuous in its own category and traceable through the labyrinth of the world1 no mind and no self-consciousness need ever have appeared at all4 ,the world might have been as magical as it pleased2 it would have remained single1 one budding sequence of forms with no transmissible substance beneath them4 ,these forms might have had properties we now call physical and at the same time qualities we now call mental or emotional2 there is nothing originally incongruous in such a mixture1 chaotic and perverse as it may seem from the vantage-ground of subsequent distinctions4 ,existence might as easily have had any other form whatsoever as the one we discover it to have in fact4 ,and primitive men1 not having read ,descartes1 and not having even distinguished their waking from their dreaming life nor their passions from their environment1 might well stand in the presence of facts that seem to us full of inward incongruity and contradiction2 indeed1 it is only because original data were of that chaotic sort that we call ourselves intelligent for having disentangled them and assigned them to distinct sequences and alternative spheres4 ,the ambiguities and hesitations of theory1 down to our own day1 are not all artificial or introduced gratuitously by sophists4 ,even where prejudice obstructs progress1 that prejudice itself has some ancient and ingenuous source4 ,our perplexities are traces of a primitive total confusion2 our doubts are remnants of a quite gaping ignorance4 ,it was impossible to say whether the phantasms that first crossed this earthly scene were merely instinct with passion or were veritable passions stalking through space4 ,material and mental elements1 connections natural and dialectical1 existed mingled in that chaos4 ,light was as yet inseparable from inward vitality and pain drew a visible cloud across the sky4 ,civilised life is that early dream partly clarified2 science is that dense mythology partly challenged and straightened out4 ,the flux1 however1 was meantime full of method1 if only discrimination and enlarged experience could have managed to divine it4 ,its inconstancy1 for one thing1 was not so entire that no objects could be fixed within it1 or marshalled in groups1 like the birds that flock together4 ,animals could be readily distinguished from the things about them1 their rate of mobility being so much quicker2 and one animal in particular would at once be singled out1 a more constant follower than any dog1 and one whose energies were not merely felt but often spontaneously exerted--a phenomenon which appeared in no other part of the world4 ,this singular animal every one called himself4 ,one object was thus discovered to be the vehicle for perceiving and affecting all the others1 a movable seat or tower from which the world might be surveyed4 ,sidenote3 ,the notion of spirit4 ,the external influences to which this body1 with its discoursing mind1 seemed to be subject were by no means all visible and material4 ,just as one's own body was moved by passions and thoughts which no one else could see--and this secrecy was a subject for much wonder and self-congratulation--so evidently other things had a spirit within or above them to endow them with wit and power4 ,it was not so much to contain sensation that this spirit was needed 7for the body could very well feel7 as to contrive plans of action and discharge sudden force into the world on momentous occasions4 ,how deep-drawn1 how far-reaching1 this spirit might be was not easily determined2 but it seemed to have unaccountable ways and to come and go from distant habitations4 ,things past1 for instance1 were still open to its inspection2 the mind was not credited with constructing a fresh image of the past which might more or less resemble that past2 a ray of supernatural light1 rather1 sometimes could pierce to the past itself and revisit its unchangeable depths4 ,the future1 though more rarely1 was open to spirit in exactly the same fashion2 destiny could on occasion be observed4 ,things distant and preternatural were similarly seen in dreams4 ,there could be no doubt that all those objects existed2 the only question was where they might lie and in what manner they might operate4 ,a vision was a visitation and a dream was a journey4 ,the spirit was a great traveller1 and just as it could dart in every direction over both space and time1 so it could come thence into a man's presence or even into his body1 to take possession of it4 ,sense and fancy1 in a word1 had not been distinguished4 ,as to be aware of vision is a great sign of imagination1 so to be aware of imagination is a great sign of understanding4 ,the spirit had other prerogatives1 of a more rational sort4 ,the truth1 the right were also spirits2 for though often invisible and denied by men1 they could emerge at times from their invisible lairs to deal some quick blow and vindicate their divinity4 ,the intermittance proper to phenomena is universal and extreme2 only the familiar conception of nature1 in which the flux becomes continuous1 now blinds us in part to that fact4 ,but before the days of scientific thinking only those things which were found unchanged and which seemed to lie passive were conceived to have had in the interval a material existence4 ,more stirring apparitions1 instead of being referred to their material constituents and continuous basis in nature1 were referred to spirit4 ,we still say1 for instance1 that war comes on4 ,that phrase would once have been understood literally4 ,war1 being something intermittent1 must exist somehow unseen in the interval1 else it would not return2 that rage1 so people would have fancied1 is therefore a spirit1 it is a god4 ,mars and ,ares long survived the phase of thought to which they owed their divinity2 and believers had to rely on habit and the witness of antiquity to support their irrational faith4 ,they little thought how absolutely simple and inevitable had been the grammar by which those figures1 since grown rhetorical1 had been first imposed upon the world4 ,sidenote3 ,the notion of sense4 ,another complication soon came to increase this confusion4 ,when material objects were discovered and it became clear that they had comparatively fixed natures1 it also became clear that with the motions of one's body all other things seemed to vary in ways which did not amount to a permanent or real metamorphosis in them2 for these things might be found again unchanged4 ,objects1 for instance1 seemed to grow smaller when we receded from them1 though really1 as we discovered by approaching and measuring them anew1 they had remained unchanged4 ,these private aspects or views of things were accordingly distinguished from the things themselves1 which were lodged in an intelligible sphere1 raised above anybody's sensibility and existing independently4 ,the variable aspects were due to the body2 they accompanied its variations and depended on its presence and organs4 ,they were conceived vaguely to exist in one's head or1 if they were emotional1 in one's heart2 but anatomy would have had some difficulty in finding them there4 ,they constituted what is properly called the mind--the region of sentience1 emotion1 and soliloquy4 ,the mind was the region where those aspects which real things present to the body might live and congregate4 ,so understood1 it was avowedly and from the beginning a realm of mere appearance and depended entirely on the body4 ,it should be observed1 however1 that the limbo of divine and ideal things1 which is sometimes also called the mind1 is very far from depending obviously on the body and is said to do so only by a late school of psychological sceptics4 ,to primitive apprehension spirit1 with its ideal prerogatives1 was something magical and oracular4 ,its prophetic intuitions were far from being more trivial than material appearances4 ,on the contrary those intuitions were momentous and inspiring4 ,their scope was indefinite and their value incalculable in every sense of the word4 ,the disembodied spirit might well be immortal1 since absent and dead things were familiar to it4 ,it was by nature present wherever truth and reality might be found4 ,it was prophetic2 the dreams it fell into were full of auguries and secret affinities with things to come4 ,myth and legend1 hatched in its womb1 were felt to be divinely inspired1 and genius seemed to be the ,muses' voice heard in a profound abstraction1 when vulgar perception yielded to some kind of clairvoyance having a higher authority than sense4 ,such a spirit might naturally be expected to pass into another world1 since it already dwelt there at intervals1 and brought thence its mysterious reports4 ,its incursions into the physical sphere alone seemed miraculous and sent a thrill of awe through the unaccustomed flesh4 ,sidenote3 ,competition between the two4 ,the ideal element in the world was accordingly regarded at first as something sacred and terrifying4 ,it was no vulgar presence or private product1 and though its destiny might be to pass half the time1 like ,persephone1 under ground1 it could not really be degraded4 ,the human mind1 on the other hand1 the region of sentience and illusion1 was a familiar affair enough4 ,this familiarity1 indeed1 for a long time bred contempt and philosophers did not think the personal equation of individuals1 or the refraction of things in sense1 a very important or edifying subject for study4 ,in time1 however1 sentience had its revenge4 ,as each man's whole experience is bound to his body no less than is the most trivial optical illusion1 the sphere of sense is the transcendental ground or ratio cognoscendi of every other sphere4 ,it suffices1 therefore1 to make philosophy retrospective and to relax the practical and dogmatic stress under which the intellect operates1 for all the discoveries made through experience to collapse into the experience in which they were made4 ,a complete collapse of objects is indeed inconvenient1 because it would leave no starting-point for reasoning and no faith in the significance of reason itself2 but partial collapses1 now in the region of physics1 now in that of logic and morals1 are very easy and exciting feats for criticism to perform4 ,passions when abstracted from their bodily causes and values when removed from their objects will naturally fall into the body's mind1 and be allied with appearances4 ,shrewd people will bethink themselves to attribute almost all the body's acts to some preparatory intention or motive in its mind1 and thus attain what they think knowledge of human nature4 ,they will encourage themselves to live among dramatic fictions1 as when absorbed in a novel2 and having made themselves at home in this upper story of their universe1 they will find it amusing to deny that it has a ground floor4 ,the chance of conceiving1 by these partial reversals of science1 a world composed entirely without troublesome machinery is too tempting not to be taken up1 whatever the ulterior risks2 and accordingly1 when once psychological criticism is put in play1 the sphere of sense will be enlarged at the expense of the two rational worlds1 the material and the ideal4 ,sidenote3 ,the rise of scepticism4 ,consciousness1 thus qualified by all the sensible qualities of things1 will exercise an irresistible attraction over the supernatural and ideal realm1 so that all the gods1 all truths1 and all ideals1 as they have no place among the sufficing causes of experience1 will be identified with decaying sensations4 ,and presently those supposed causes themselves will be retraced and drawn back into the immediate vortex1 until the sceptic has packed away nature1 with all space and time1 into the sphere of sensuous illusion1 the distinguishing characteristic of which was that it changed with the changes in the human body4 ,the personal idealists will declare that all body is a part of some body's mind4 ,thus1 by a curious reversion1 the progress of reflection has led to hopeless contradictions4 ,sense1 which was discovered by observing the refraction and intermittence to which appearances were subject1 in seeming to be quite different from what things were1 now tries to subsist when the things it was essentially contrasted with have been abolished4 ,the intellect becomes a ,penelope1 whose secret pleasure lies in undoing its ostensible work2 and science1 becoming pensive1 loves to relapse into the dumb actuality and nerveless reverie from which it had once extricated a world4 ,the occasion for this sophistication is worth noting2 for if we follow the thread which we have trailed behind us in entering the labyrinth we shall be able at any moment to get out2 especially as the omnivorous monster lurking in its depths is altogether harmless4 ,a moral and truly transcendental critique of science1 as of common sense1 is never out of place1 since all such a critique does is to assign to each conception or discovery its place and importance in the ,life of ,reason4 ,so administered1 the critical cathartic will not prove a poison and will not inhibit the cognitive function it was meant to purge4 ,every belief will subsist that finds an empirical and logical warrant2 while that a belief is a belief and not a sensation will not seem a ground for not entertaining it1 nor for subordinating it to some gratuitous assurance4 ,but a psychological criticism1 if it is not critical of psychology itself1 and thinks to substitute a science of absolute sentience for physics and dialectic1 would rest on sophistry and end wholly in bewilderment4 ,the subject-matter of an absolute psychology would vanish in its hands1 since there is no sentience which is not at once the effect of something physical and the appearance of something ideal4 ,a calculus of feelings1 uninterpreted and referred to nothing ulterior1 would furnish no alternative system to substitute for the positive sciences it was seeking to dislodge4 ,in fact1 those who call ordinary objects unreal do not1 on that account1 find anything else to think about4 ,their exorcism does not lay the ghost1 and they are limited to addressing it in uncivil language4 ,it was not idly that reason in the beginning excogitated a natural and an ideal world1 a labour it might well have avoided if appearance as it stands made a thinkable or a practical universe4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,b3 ,the term 8matter0 7which ought before long to reappear in philosophy7 has two meanings4 ,in popular science and theology it commonly means a group of things in space1 like the atoms of ,democritus or the human body and its members4 ,such matter plainly exists4 ,its particles are concretions in existence like the planets2 and if a given hypothesis describing them turns out to be wrong1 it is wrong only because this matter exists so truly and in such discoverable guise that the hypothesis in question may be shown to misrepresent its constitution4 ,on the other hand1 in ,aristotle and in literary speech1 matter means something good to make other things out of4 ,here it is a concretion in discourse1 a dialectical term2 being only an aspect or constituent of every existence1 it cannot exist by itself4 ,a state of mind1 like everything not purely formal1 has matter of this sort in it4 ,actual love1 for instance1 differs materially from the mere idea or possibility of love1 which is all love would be if the matter or body of it were removed4 ,this matter is what idealists1 bent on giving it a grander name1 call pure feeling1 absolute consciousness1 or metaphysical will4 ,these phrases are all used improperly to stand for the existence or presence of things apart from their character1 or for the mere strain and dead weight of being4 ,matter is a far better term to use in the premises1 for it suggests the method as well as the fact of brute existence4 ,the surd in experience--its non-ideal element--is not an indifferent vehicle for what it brings1 as would be implied by calling it pure feeling or absolute consciousness4 ,nor is it an act accepting or rejecting objects1 as would be implied by calling it will4 ,in truth1 the surd conditions not merely the being of objects but their possible quantity1 the time and place of their appearance1 and their degree of perfection compared with the ideals they suggest4 ,these important factors in whatever exists are covered by the term matter and give it a serious and indispensable rle in describing and feeling the world4 ,aristotle1 it may be added1 did not adhere with perfect consistency to the dialectical use of this word4 ,matter is sometimes used by him for substance or for actual beings having both matter and form4 ,the excuse for this apparent lapse is1 of course1 that what taken by itself is a piece of formed matter or an individual object may be regarded as mere material for something else which it helps to constitute1 as wheat is matter for flour1 and flour for bread4 ,thus the dialectical and non-demonstrative use of the term to indicate one aspect of everything could glide into its vulgar acceptation1 to indicate one class of things4 ,footnote ,c3 ,it has been suggested--what will not party spirit contrive8--that these variations1 called spontaneous by ,darwin because not predetermined by heredity1 might be spontaneous in a metaphysical sense1 free acts with no material basis or cause whatsoever4 ,being free1 these acts might deflect evolution--like ,descartes' soul acting on the pineal gland--into wonderful new courses1 prevent dissolution1 and gradually bring on the kingdom of ,heaven1 all as the necessary implication of the latest science and the most atheistic philosophy4 ,it may not be needless to observe that if the variations were absolutely free1 i4e41 intrusions of pure chance1 they would tend every which way quite as much as if they were mechanically caused2 while if they were kept miraculously in line with some far-off divine event1 they would not be free at all1 but would be due to metaphysical attraction and a magic destiny prepared in the eternal2 and so we should be brought round to ,aristotelian physics again4 ,footnote ,d3 ,the monads of ,leibniz could justly be called minds1 because they had a dramatic destiny1 and the most complex experience imaginable was the state of but one monad1 not an aggregate view or effect of a multitude in fusion4 ,but the recent improvements on that system take the latter turn4 ,mind-stuff1 or the material of mind1 is supposed to be contained in large quantities within any known feeling4 ,mind-stuff1 we are given to understand1 is diffused in a medium corresponding to apparent space 7what else would a real space be872 it forms quantitative aggregates1 its transformations or aggregations are mechanically governed1 it endures when personal consciousness perishes1 it is the substance of bodies and1 when duly organised1 the potentiality of thought4 ,one might go far for a better description of matter4 ,that any material must be material might have been taken for an axiom2 but our idealists1 in their eagerness to show that ,gefuehl ist ,alles1 have thought to do honour to feeling by forgetting that it is an expression and wishing to make it a stuff4 ,there is a further circumstance showing that mind-stuff is but a bashful name for matter4 ,mind-stuff1 like matter1 can be only an element in any actual being4 ,to make a thing or a thought out of mind-stuff you have to rely on the system into which that material has fallen2 the substantive ingredients1 from which an actual being borrows its intensive quality1 do not contain its individuating form4 ,this form depends on ideal relations subsisting between the ingredients1 relations which are not feelings but can be rendered only by propositions4 ,,chapter ,v ,,psychology ,sidenote3 ,mind reading not science4 ,if psychology is a science1 many things that books of psychology contain should be excluded from it4 ,one is social imagination4 ,nature1 besides having a mechanical form and wearing a garment of sensible qualities1 makes a certain inner music in the beholder's mind1 inciting him to enter into other bodies and to fancy the new and profound life which he might lead there4 ,who1 as he watched a cat basking in the sun1 has not passed into that vigilant eye and felt all the leaps potential in that luxurious torpor8 ,who has not attributed some little romance to the passer-by8 ,who has not sometimes exchanged places even with things inanimate1 and drawn some new moral experience from following the movement of stars or of daffodils8 ,all this is idle musing or at best poetry2 yet our ordinary knowledge of what goes on in men's minds is made of no other stuff4 ,true1 we have our own mind to go by1 which presumably might be a fair sample of what men's minds are2 but unfortunately our notion of ourselves is of all notions the most biassed and idealistic4 ,if we attributed to other men only such obvious reasoning1 sound judgment1 just preferences1 honest passions1 and blameless errors as we discover in ourselves1 we should take but an insipid and impractical view of mankind4 ,in fact1 we do far better3 for what we impute to our fellow-men is suggested by their conduct or by an instant imitation of their gesture and expression4 ,these manifestations1 striking us in all their novelty and alien habit1 and affecting our interests in all manner of awkward ways1 create a notion of our friends' natures which is extremely vivid and seldom extremely flattering4 ,such romancing has the cogency proper to dramatic poetry2 it is persuasive only over the third person1 who has never had1 but has always been about to have1 the experience in question4 ,drawn from the potential in one's self1 it describes at best the possible in others4 ,the thoughts of men are incredibly evanescent1 merely the foam of their labouring natures2 and they doubtless vary much more than our trite classifications allow for4 ,this is what makes passions and fashions1 religions and philosophies1 so hard to conceive when once the trick of them is a little antiquated4 ,languages are hardly more foreign to one another than are the thoughts uttered in them4 ,we should give men credit for originality at least in their dreams1 even if they have little of it to show elsewhere2 and as it was discovered but recently that all memories are not furnished with the like material images1 but often have no material images whatever1 so it may have to be acknowledged that the disparity in men's soliloquies is enormous1 and that some races1 perhaps1 live content without soliloquising at all4 ,sidenote3 ,experience a reconstruction4 ,nevertheless1 in describing what happens1 or in enforcing a given view of things1 we constantly refer to universal experience as if everybody was agreed about what universal experience is and had personally gathered it all since the days of ,adam4 ,in fact1 each man has only his own1 the remnant saved from his personal acquisitions4 ,on the basis of this his residual endowment1 he has to conceive all nature1 with whatever experiences may have fallen there to the lot of others4 ,universal experience is a comfortable fiction1 a distinctly ideal construction1 and no fund available for any one to draw from2 which of course is not to deny that tradition and books1 in transmitting materially the work of other generations1 tend to assimilate us also to their mind4 ,the result of their labours1 in language1 learning1 and institutions1 forms a hothouse in which to force our seedling fancy to a rational growth2 but the influence is physical1 the environment is material1 and its ideal background or significance has to be inferred by us anew1 according to our imaginative faculty and habits4 ,past experience1 apart from its monuments1 is fled for ever out of mortal reach4 ,it is now a parcel of the motionless ether1 of the ineffectual truth about what once was4 ,to know it we must evoke it within ourselves1 starting from its inadequate expressions still extant in the world4 ,this reconstruction is highly speculative and1 as ,spinoza noted1 better evidence of what we are than of what other men have been4 ,sidenote3 ,the honest art of education4 ,when we appeal to general experience1 then1 what we really have to deal with is our interlocutor's power of imagining that experience2 for the real experience is dead and ascended into heaven1 where it can neither answer nor hear4 ,our agreements or divergences in this region do not touch science2 they concern only friendship and unanimity4 ,all our proofs are1 as they say in ,spain1 pure conversation2 and as the purpose and best result can be only to kindle intelligence and propagate an ideal art1 the method should be ,socratic1 genial1 literary4 ,in these matters1 the alternative to imagination is not science but sophistry4 ,we may perhaps entangle our friends in their own words1 and force them for the moment to say what they do not mean1 and what it is not in their natures to think2 but the bent bow will spring back1 perhaps somewhat sharply1 and we shall get little thanks for our labour4 ,there would be more profit in taking one another frankly by the hand and walking together along the outskirts of real knowledge1 pointing to the material facts which we all can see1 nature1 the monuments1 the texts1 the actual ways and institutions of men2 and in the presence of such a stimulus1 with the contagion of a common interest1 the plastic mind would respond of itself to the situation1 and we should be helping one another to understand whatever lies within the range of our fancy1 be it in antiquity or in the human heart4 ,that would be a true education2 and while the result could not possibly be a science1 not even a science of people's states of mind1 it would be a deepening of humanity in ourselves and a wholesome knowledge of our ignorance4 ,sidenote3 ,arbitrary readings of the mind4 ,in what is called psychology this loose1 imaginative method is often pursued1 although the field covered may be far narrower4 ,any generic experience of which a writer pretends to give an exact account must be reconstructed ad hoc2 it is not the experience that necessitates the description1 but the description that recalls the experience1 defining it in a novel way4 ,when ,la ,rochefoucauld says1 for instance1 that there is something about our friend's troubles that secretly pleases us1 many circumstances in our own lives1 or in other people's1 may suddenly recur to us to illustrate that aperu2 and we may be tempted to say1 ,there is a truth4 ,but is it a scientific truth8 ,or is it merely a bit of satire1 a ray from a literary flashlight1 giving a partial clearness for a moment to certain jumbled memories8 ,if the next day we open a volume of ,adam ,smith1 and read that man is naturally benevolent1 that he cannot but enact and share the vicissitudes of his fellow-creatures1 and that another man's imminent danger or visible torment will cause in him a distress little inferior to that felt by the unfortunate sufferer1 we shall probably think this a truth also1 and a more normal and a profounder truth than the other4 ,but is it a law8 ,is it a scientific discovery that can lead us to definite inferences about what will happen or help us to decompose a single event1 accurately and without ambiguity1 into its component forces8 ,not only is such a thing impossible1 but the ,scotch philosopher's amiable generalities1 perhaps largely applicable to himself and to his friends of the eighteenth century1 may fail altogether to fit an earlier or a later age2 and every new shade of brute born into the world will ground a new 8theory of the moral sentiments40 ,the whole cogency of such psychology1 therefore1 lies in the ease with which the hearer1 on listening to the analysis1 recasts something in his own past after that fashion4 ,these endless rival apperceptions regard facts that1 until they are referred to their mechanical ground1 show no continuity and no precision in their march4 ,the apperception of them1 consequently1 must be doubly arbitrary and unstable1 for there is no method in the subject-matter and there is less in the treatment of it4 ,the views1 however1 are far from equal in value4 ,some may be more natural1 eloquent1 enlightening1 than others2 they may serve better the essential purpose of reflection1 which is to pick out and bring forward continually out of the past what can have a value for the present4 ,the spiritual life in which this value lies is practical in its associations1 because it understands and dominates what touches action2 yet it is contemplative in essence1 since successful action consists in knowing what you are attempting and in attempting what you can find yourself achieving4 ,plan and performance will alike appeal to imagination and be appreciated through it2 so that what trains imagination refines the very stuff that life is made of4 ,science is instrumental in comparison1 since the chief advantage that comes of knowing accurately is to be able1 with safety1 to imagine freely4 ,but when it is science and accurate knowledge that we pursue1 we should not be satisfied with literature4 ,sidenote3 ,human nature appealed to rather than described4 ,when discourse on any subject would be persuasive1 it appeals to the interlocutor to think in a certain dynamic fashion1 inciting him1 not without leading questions1 to give shape to his own sentiments4 ,knowledge of the soul1 insight into human nature and experience1 are no doubt requisite in such an exercise2 yet this insight is in these cases a vehicle only1 an instinctive method1 while the result aimed at is agreement on some further matter1 conviction and enthusiasm1 rather than psychological information4 ,thus if ,i declare that the storms of winter are not so unkind as benefits forgot1 ,i say something which if true has a certain psychological value1 for it could be inferred from that assertion that resentment is generally not proportionate to the injury received but rather to the surprise caused1 so that it springs from our own foolishness more than from other people's bad conduct4 ,yet my observation was not made in the interest of any such inferences3 it was made to express an emotion of my own1 in hopes of kindling in others a similar emotion4 ,it was a judgment which others were invited to share4 ,there was as little exact science about it as if ,i had turned it into frank poetry and exclaimed1 8,blow1 blow1 thou winter's wind60 ,knowledge of human nature might be drawn even from that apostrophe1 and a very fine shade of human feeling is surely expressed in it1 as ,shakespeare utters it2 but to pray or to converse is not for that reason the same thing as to pursue science4 ,now it constantly happens in philosophic writing that what is supposed to go on in the human mind is described and appealed to in order to support some observation or illustrate some argument--as continually1 for instance1 in the older ,english critics of human nature1 or in these very pages4 ,what is offered in such cases is merely an invitation to think after a certain fashion4 ,a way of grasping or interpreting some fact is suggested1 with a more or less civil challenge to the reader to resist the suasion of his own experience so evoked and represented4 ,such a method of appeal may be called psychological1 in the sense that it relies for success on the total movement of the reader's life and mind1 without forcing a detailed assent through ocular demonstration or pure dialectic2 but the psychology of it is a method and a resource rather than a doctrine4 ,the only doctrine aimed at in such philosophy is a general reasonableness1 a habit of thinking straight from the elements of experience to its ultimate and stable deliverance4 ,this is what in his way a poet or a novelist would do4 ,fiction swarms with such sketches of human nature and such renderings of the human mind as a critical philosopher depends upon for his construction4 ,he need not be interested in the pathology of individuals nor even in the natural history of man2 his effort is wholly directed toward improving the mind's economy and infusing reason into it as one might religion1 not without diligent self-examination and a public confession of sin4 ,the human mind is nobody's mind in particular1 and the science of it is necessarily imaginative4 ,no one can pretend in philosophic discussion any more than in poetry that the experience described is more than typical4 ,it is given out not for a literal fact1 existing in particular moments or persons1 but for an imaginative expression of what nature and life have impressed on the speaker4 ,in so far as others live in the same world they may recognise the experience so expressed by him and adopt his interpretation2 but the aptness of his descriptions and analyses will not constitute a science of mental states1 but rather--what is a far greater thing--the art of stimulating and consolidating reflection in general4 ,sidenote3 ,dialectic in psychology4 ,there is a second constituent of current psychology which is indeed a science1 but not a science of matters of fact--,i mean the dialectic of ideas4 ,the character of father1 for example1 implies a son1 and this relation1 involved in the ideas both of son and of father1 implies further that a transmitted essence or human nature is shared by both4 ,every idea1 if its logical texture is reflected upon1 will open out into a curious world constituted by distinguishing the constituents of that idea more clearly and making explicit its implicit structure and relations4 ,when an idea has practical intent and is a desire1 its dialectic is even more remarkable4 ,if ,i love a man ,i thereby love all those who share whatever makes me love him1 and ,i thereby hate whatever tends to deprive him of this excellence4 ,if it should happen1 however1 that those who resembled him most in amiability--say by flattering me no less than he did--were precisely his mortal enemies1 the logic of my affections would become somewhat involved4 ,i might end either by striving to reconcile the rivals or by discovering that what ,i loved was not the man at all1 but only an office exercised by him in my regard which any one else might also exercise4 ,these inner lucubrations1 however1 while they lengthen the moment's vista and deepen present intent1 give no indication whatever about the order or distribution of actual feelings4 ,they are out of place in a psychology that means to be an account of what happens in the world4 ,for these dialectical implications do not actually work themselves out4 ,they have no historical or dynamic value4 ,the man that by mistake or courtesy ,i call a father may really have no son1 any more than ,herodotus for being the father of history2 or having had a son1 he may have lost him2 or the creature sprung from his loins may be a misshapen idiot1 having nothing ideal in common with his parent4 ,similarly my affection for a friend1 having causes much deeper than discourse1 may cling to him through all transformations in his qualities and in his attitude toward me2 and it may never pass to others for resembling him1 nor take1 in all its days1 a ,platonic direction4 ,the impulse on which that dialectic was based may exhaust its physical energy1 and all its implications may be nipped in the bud and be condemned for ever to the limbo of things unborn4 ,sidenote3 ,spinoza on the passions4 ,spinoza's account of the passions is a beautiful example of dialectical psychology1 beautiful because it shows so clearly the possibilities and impossibilities in such a method4 ,spinoza began with self-preservation1 which was to be the principle of life and the root of all feelings4 ,the violence done to physics appears in this beginning4 ,self-preservation1 taken strictly1 is a principle not illustrated in nature1 where everything is in flux1 and where habits destructive or dangerous to the body are as conspicuous as protective instincts4 ,physical mechanism requires reproduction1 which implies death1 and it admits suicide4 ,spinoza himself1 far too noble a mind to be fixed solely on preserving its own existence1 was compelled to give self-preservation an extravagant meaning in order to identify it with 8intellectual love of ,god0 or the happy contemplation of that natural law which destroyed all individuals4 ,to find the self-preserving man you must take him after he has ceased to grow and before he has begun to love4 ,self-preservation1 being thus no principle of natural history1 the facts or estimations classed under that head need to be referred instead to one of two other principles--either to mechanical equilibrium and habit1 or to dialectical consistency in judgment4 ,self-preservation might express1 perhaps1 the values which conceived events acquire in respect to a given attitude of will1 to an arrested momentary ideal4 ,the actual state of any animal1 his given instincts and tensions1 are undoubtedly the point of origin from which all changes and relations are morally estimated2 and if this attitude is afterward itself subjected to estimation1 that occurs by virtue of its affinity or conflict with the living will of another moment4 ,valuation is dialectical1 not descriptive1 nor contemplative of a natural process4 ,it might accordingly be developed by seeing what is implied in the self-preservation1 or rather expression1 of a will which by that dialectic would discover its ideal scope4 ,such a principle1 however1 could never explain the lapse of that attitude itself4 ,a natural process cannot be governed by the ideal relations which conceived things acquire by being represented in one of its moments4 ,spinoza1 however1 let himself wander into this path and made the semblance of an attempt1 indeed not very deceptive1 to trace the sequence of feelings by their mutual implication4 ,the changes in life were to be explained by what the crystallised posture of life might be at a single instant4 ,the arrow's flight was to be deduced from its instantaneous position4 ,a passion's history was to be the history of what would have been its expression if it had had no history at all4 ,sidenote3 ,a principle of estimation cannot govern events4 ,a man suffered by destiny to maintain for ever a single unchanged emotion might indeed think out its multifarious implications much in ,spinoza's way4 ,it is in that fashion that parties and sects1 when somewhat stable1 come to define their affinities and to know their friends and enemies all over the universe of discourse4 ,suppose1 for instance1 that ,i feel some titillation on reading a proposition concerning the contrast between ,paul's idea of ,peter and ,peter's idea of himself1 a titillation which is accompanied by the idea of ,spinoza1 its external cause4 ,now he who loves an effect must proportionately love its cause1 and titillation accompanied by the idea of its external cause is1 ,spinoza has proved1 what men call love4 ,i therefore find that ,i love ,spinoza4 ,having got so far1 ,i may consider further1 referring to another demonstration in the book1 that if some one gives ,spinoza joy--,hobbes1 for instance--my delight in ,spinoza's increased perfection1 consequent upon his joy and my love of him1 accompanied by the idea of ,hobbes1 its external cause1 constitutes love on my part for the redoubtable ,hobbes as well4 ,thus the periphery of my affections may expand indefinitely1 till it includes the infinite1 the ultimate external cause of all my titillations4 ,but how these interesting discoveries are interrupted before long by a desire for food1 or by an indomitable sense that ,hobbes and the infinite are things ,i do not love1 is something that my dialectic cannot deduce2 for it was the values radiating from a given impulse1 the implications of its instant object1 that were being explicated1 not at all the natural forces that carry a man through that impulse and beyond it to the next phase of his dream1 a phase which if it continues the former episode must continue it spontaneously1 by grace of mechanical forces4 ,when dialectic is thus introduced into psychology1 an intensive knowledge of the heart is given out for distributive knowledge of events4 ,such a study1 when made by a man of genius1 may furnish good spiritual reading1 for it will reveal what our passions mean and what sentiments they would lead to if they could remain fixed and dictate all further action4 ,this insight may make us aware of strange inconsistencies in our souls1 and seeing how contrary some of our ideals are to others and how horrible1 in some cases1 would be their ultimate expression1 we may be shocked into setting our house in order2 and in trying to understand ourselves we may actually develop a self that can be understood4 ,meantime this inner discipline will not enlighten us about the march of affairs4 ,it will not give us a key to evolution1 either in ourselves or in others4 ,even while we refine our aspirations1 the ground they sprang from will be eaten away beneath our feet4 ,instead of developing yesterday's passion1 to-day may breed quite another in its place2 and if1 having grown old and set in our mental posture1 we are incapable of assuming another1 and are condemned to carrying on the dialectic of our early visions into a new-born world1 to be a schoolmaster's measuring-rod for life's infinite exuberance1 we shall find ourselves at once in a foreign country1 speaking a language that nobody understands4 ,no destiny is more melancholy than that of the dialectical prophet1 who makes more rigid and tyrannous every day a message which every day grows less applicable and less significant4 ,sidenote3 ,scientific psychology a part of biology4 ,that remaining portion of psychology which is a science1 and a science of matters of fact1 is physiological2 it belongs to natural history and constitutes the biology of man4 ,soul1 which was not originally distinguished from life1 is there studied in its natural operation in the body and in the world4 ,psychology then remains what it was in ,aristotle's ,de ,anima--an ill-developed branch of natural science1 pieced out with literary terms and perhaps enriched by occasional dramatic interpretations4 ,the specifically mental or psychic element consists in the feeling which accompanies bodily states and natural situations4 ,this feeling is discovered and distributed at the same time that bodies and other material objects are defined2 for when a man begins to decipher permanent and real things1 and to understand that they are merely material1 he thereby sets apart1 in contrast with such external objects1 those images and emotions which can no longer enter into the things' texture4 ,the images and emotions remain1 however1 attached to those things1 for they are refractions of them through bodily organs1 or effects of their presence on the will1 or passions fixed upon them as their object4 ,in parts of biology which do not deal with man observers do not hesitate to refer in the same way to the pain1 the desire1 the intention1 which they may occasionally read in an animal's aspect4 ,darwin1 for instance1 constantly uses psychical language3 his birds love one another's plumage and their sthetic charms are factors in natural selection4 ,such little fables do not detract from the scientific value of ,darwin's observations1 because we see at once what the fables mean4 ,the description keeps close enough to the facts observed for the reader to stop at the latter1 rather than at the language in which they are stated4 ,in the natural history of man such interpretation into mental terms1 such microscopic romance1 is even easier and more legitimate1 because language allows people1 perhaps before their feelings are long past1 to describe them in terms which are understood to refer directly to mental experience4 ,the sign's familiarity1 to be sure1 often hides in these cases a great vagueness and unseizableness in the facts2 yet a beginning in defining distinctly the mental phase of natural situations has been made in those small autobiographies which introspective writers sometimes compose1 or which are taken down in hospitals and laboratories from the lips of 8subjects40 ,what a man under special conditions may say he feels or thinks adds a constituent phase to his natural history2 and were these reports exact and extended enough1 it would become possible to enumerate the precise sensations and ideas which accompany every state of body and every social situation4 ,sidenote3 ,confused attempt to detach the psychic element4 ,this advantage1 however1 is the source of that confusion and sophistry which distinguish the biology of man from the rest of physics4 ,attention is there arrested at the mental term1 in forgetfulness of the situation which gave it warrant1 and an invisible world1 composed of these imagined experiences1 begins to stalk behind nature and may even be thought to exist independently4 ,this metaphysical dream may be said to have two stages3 the systematic one1 which is called idealism1 and an incidental one which pervades ordinary psychology1 in so far as mental facts are uprooted from their basis and deprived of their expressive or spiritual character1 in order to be made elements in a dynamic scheme4 ,this battle of feelings1 whether with atoms or exclusively with their own cohorts1 might be called a primitive materialism1 rather than an idealism1 if idealism were to retain its ,platonic sense2 for forms and realisations are taken in this system for substantial elements1 and are made to figure either as a part or as the whole of the world's matter4 ,sidenote3 ,differentia of the psychic4 ,phenomena specifically mental certainly exist1 since natural phenomena and ideal truths are concentrated and telescoped in apprehension1 besides being weighted with an emotion due to their effect on the person who perceives them4 ,this variation1 which reality suffers in being reported to perception1 turns the report into a mental fact distinguishable from its subject-matter4 ,when the flux is partly understood and the natural world has become a constant presence1 the whole flux itself1 as it flowed originally1 comes to be called a mental flux1 because its elements and method are seen to differ from the elements and method embodied in material objects or in ideal truth4 ,the primitive phenomena are now called mental because they all deviate from the realities to be ultimately conceived4 ,to call the immediate mental is therefore correct and inevitable when once the ultimate is in view2 but if the immediate were all1 to call it mental would be unmeaning4 ,the visual image of a die1 for instance1 has at most three faces1 none of them quite square2 no hired artificer is needed to produce it2 it cannot be found anywhere nor shaken in any box2 it lasts only for an instant2 thereafter it disappears without a trace--unless it flits back unaccountably through the memory--and it leaves no ponderable dust or ashes to attest that it had a substance4 ,the opposite of all this is true of the die itself4 ,but were no material die in existence1 the image itself would be material2 for1 however evanescent1 it would occupy space1 have geometrical shape1 colour1 and magic dynamic destinies4 ,its transformations as it rolled on the idea of a table would be transformations in nature1 however unaccountable by any steady law4 ,such material qualities a mental fact can retain only in the spiritual form of representation4 ,a representation of matter is immaterial1 but a material image1 when no object exists1 is a material fact4 ,if the ,absolute1 to take an ultimate case1 perceived nothing but space and atoms 7perceiving itself1 if you will1 therein71 space and atoms would be its whole nature1 and it would constitute a perfect materialism4 ,the fact that materialism was true would not of itself constitute an idealism worth distinguishing from its opposite4 ,for a vehicle or locus exists only when it makes some difference to the thing it carries1 presenting it in a manner not essential to its own nature4 ,sidenote3 ,approach to irrelevant sentience4 ,the qualification of being by the mental medium may be carried to any length4 ,as the subject-matter recedes the mental datum ceases to have much similarity or inward relevance to what is its cause or its meaning4 ,the report may ultimately become1 like pure pain or pleasure1 almost wholly blind and irrelevant to any world2 yet such emotion is none the less immersed in matter and dependent on natural changes both for its origin and for its function1 since a significant pleasure or pain makes comments on the world and involves ideals about what ought to be happening there4 ,mental facts synchronise with their basis1 for no thought hovers over a dead brain and there is no vision in a dark chamber2 but their tenure of life is independent of that of their objects1 since thought may be prophetic or reminiscent and is intermittent even when its object enjoys a continuous existence4 ,mental facts are similar to their objects1 since things and images have1 intrinsically regarded1 the same constitution2 but images do not move in the same plane with things and their parts are in no proportionate dynamic relation to the parts of the latter4 ,thought's place in nature is exiguous1 however broad the landscape it represents2 it touches the world tangentially only1 in some ferment of the brain4 ,it is probably no atom that supports the soul 7as ,leibnitz imagined71 but rather some cloud of atoms shaping or remodelling an organism4 ,mind in this case would be1 in its physical relation to matter1 what it feels itself to be in its moral attitude toward the same2 a witness to matter's interesting aspects and a realisation of its forms4 ,sidenote3 ,perception represents things in their practical relation to the body4 ,mental facts1 moreover1 are highly selective2 especially does this appear in respect to the dialectical world1 which is in itself infinite1 while the sum of human logic and mathematics1 though too long for most men's patience1 is decidedly brief4 ,if we ask ourselves on what principle this selection and foreshortening of truth takes place in the mind1 we may perhaps come upon the real bond and the deepest contrast between mind and its environment4 ,the infinity of formal truth is disregarded in human thought when it is irrelevant to practice and to happiness2 the infinity of nature is represented there in violent perspective1 centring about the body and its interests4 ,the seat and starting-point of every mental survey is a brief animal life4 ,a mind seems1 then1 to be a consciousness of the body's interests1 expressed in terms of what affects that body1 as if in the ,babel of nature a man heard only the voices that pronounced his name4 ,a mind is a private view2 it is gathered together in proportion as physical sensibility extends its range and makes one stretch of being after another tributary to the animal's life1 and in proportion also as this sensibility is integrated1 so that every organ in its reaction enlists the resources of every other organ as well4 ,a personal will and intelligence thus arise2 and they direct action from within with a force and freedom which are exactly proportionate to the material forces1 within and without the body1 which the soul has come to represent4 ,in other words1 mind raises to an actual existence that form in material processes which1 had the processes remained wholly material1 would have had only ideal or imputed being--as the stars would not have been divided into the signs of the ,zodiac but for the fanciful eye of astrologers4 ,automata might arise and be destroyed without any value coming or going2 only a form-loving observer could say that anything fortunate or tragic had occurred1 as poets might at the budding or withering of a flower4 ,some of nature's automata1 however1 love themselves1 and comment on the form they achieve or abandon2 these constellations of atoms are genuine beasts4 ,their consciousness and their interest in their own individuality rescues that individuality from the realm of discourse and from having merely imputed limits4 ,sidenote3 ,mind the existence in which form becomes actual4 ,that the basis of mind lies in the body's interests rather than in its atoms may seem a doctrine somewhat too poetical for psychology2 yet may not poetry1 superposed on material existence and supported by it1 be perhaps the key to mind8 ,such a view hangs well together with the practical and prospective character of consciousness1 with its total dependence on the body1 its cognitive relevance to the world1 and its formal disparity from material being4 ,mind does not accompany body like a useless and persistent shadow2 it is significant and it is intermittent4 ,much less can it be a link in physiological processes1 processes irrelevant to its intent and incompatible with its immaterial essence4 ,consciousness seems to arise when the body assumes an attitude which1 being an attitude1 supervenes upon the body's elements and cannot be contained within them4 ,this attitude belongs to the whole body in its significant operation1 and the report of this attitude1 its expression1 requires survey1 synthesis1 appreciation--things which constitute what we call mentality4 ,this remains1 of course1 the mentality of that material situation2 it is the voice of that particular body in that particular pass4 ,the mind therefore represents its basis1 but this basis 7being a form of material existence and not matter itself7 is neither vainly reduplicated by representation nor used up materially in the process4 ,representation is far from idle1 since it brings to focus those mechanical unities which otherwise would have existed only potentially and at the option of a roving eye4 ,in evoking consciousness nature makes this delimination real and unambiguous2 there are henceforth actual centres and actual interests in the mechanical flux4 ,the flux continues to be mechanical1 but the representation of it supervening has created values which1 being due to imputation1 could not exist without being imputed1 while at the same time they could not have been imputed without being attached to one object or event rather than to another4 ,material dramas are thus made moral and raised to an existence of their own by being expressed in what we call the souls of animals and men2 a mind is the entelechy of an organic body4,e ,it is a region where form breeds an existence to express it1 and destiny becomes important by being felt4 ,mind adds to being a new and needful witness so soon as the constitution of being gives foothold to apperception of its movement1 and offers something in which it is possible to ground an interest4 ,that ,aristotle has not been generally followed in views essentially so natural and pregnant as these is due no doubt to want of thoroughness in conceiving them1 not only on the part of his readers but even on his own part2 for he treated the soul1 which should be on his own theory only an expression and an unmoved mover1 as a power and an efficient cause4 ,analysis had not gone far enough in his day to make evident that all dynamic principles are mechanical and that mechanism can obtain only among objects2 but by this time it should no longer seem doubtful that mental facts can have no connection except through their material basis and no mutual relevance except through their objects4 ,sidenote3 ,attempt at idealistic physics4 ,there is indeed a strange half-assumption afloat1 a sort of reserved faith which every one seems to respect but nobody utters1 to the effect that the mental world has a mechanism of its own1 and that ideas intelligently produce and sustain one another4 ,systematic idealists1 to be sure1 have generally given a dialectical or moral texture to the cosmos1 so that the passage from idea to idea in experience need not be due1 in their physics1 to any intrinsic or proportionate efficacy in these ideas themselves4 ,the march of experience is not explained at all by such high cosmogonies4 ,they abandon that practical calculation to some science of illusion that has to be tolerated in this provisional life4 ,their own understanding is of things merely in the gross1 because they fall in with some divine plan and produce1 unaccountably enough1 some interesting harmony4 ,empirical idealists1 on the contrary1 in making a metaphysics out of psychology1 hardly know what they do4 ,the laws of experience which they refer to are all laws of physics4 ,it is only the 8possibilities0 of sensation that stand and change according to law2 the sensations themselves1 if not referred to those permanent possibilities1 would be a chaos worse than any dream4 ,correct and scrupulous as empiricism may be when it turns its face backward and looks for the seat1 the criterion1 and the elements of knowledge1 it is altogether incoherent and self-inhibited when it looks forward4 ,it can believe in nothing but in what it conceives1 if it would rise at all above a stupid immersion in the immediate2 yet the relations which attach the moments of feeling together are material relations1 implying the whole frame of nature4 ,psychology can accordingly conceive nothing but the natural world1 with its diffuse animation1 since this is the only background that the facts suggest or that1 in practice1 anybody can think of4 ,if empiricism trusted the intellect1 and consented to immerse flying experience in experience understood1 it would become ordinary science and ordinary common sense4 ,deprecating this result1 for no very obvious reason1 it has to balance itself on the thin edge of an unwilling materialism1 with a continual protestation that it does not believe in anything that it thinks4 ,it is wholly entangled in the prevalent sophism that a man must renounce a belief when he discovers how he has formed it1 and that our ancestors--at least the remoter ones--begin to exist when we discover them4 ,when ,descartes1 having composed a mechanical system of the world1 was asked by admiring ladies to say something about the passions1 what came into his mind was characteristically simple and dialectical4 ,life1 he thought1 was a perpetual conflict between reason and the emotions4 ,the soul had its own natural principle to live by1 but was diverted from that rational path by the waves of passion that beat against it and sometimes flooded it over4 ,that was all his psychology4 ,ideal entities in dramatic relations1 in a theatre which had to be borrowed1 of course1 from the other half of the world2 because while a material mechanism might be conceived without minds in it1 minds in action could not be conceived without a material mechanism--at least a represented one--lying beneath and between4 ,spinoza made a great improvement in the system by attaching the mind more systematically to the body1 and studying the parts which organ and object played in qualifying knowledge2 but his conception of mental unities and mental processes remained literary1 or at best1 as we have seen1 dialectical4 ,no shadow of a principle at once psychic and genetic appeared in his philosophy4 ,all mind was still a transcript of material facts or a deepening of moral relations4 ,sidenote3 ,association not efficient ,the idea of explaining the flow of ideas without reference to bodies appeared1 however1 in the principle of association4 ,this is the nearest approach that has yet been made to a physics of disembodied mind--something which idealism sadly needs to develop4 ,a terrible incapacity1 however1 appears at once in the principle of association2 for even if we suppose that it could account for the flow of ideas1 it does not pretend to supply any basis for sensations4 ,and as the more efficient part of association--association by contiguity--is only a repetition in ideas of the order once present in impressions1 the whole question about the march of mental experience goes back to what association does not touch1 namely1 the origin of sensations4 ,what everybody assumed1 of course1 was that the order and quality of sensations were due to the body2 but their derivation was not studied4 ,hume ignored it as much as possible1 and ,berkeley did not sacrifice a great deal when he frankly suggested that the production of sensation must be the direct work of ,god4 ,this tendency not to recognise the material conditions of mind showed itself more boldly in the treatment of ideation4 ,we are not plainly aware 7in spite of headaches1 fatigue1 sleep1 love1 intoxication1 and madness7 that the course of our thoughts is as directly dependent on the body as is their inception4 ,it was therefore possible1 without glaring paradox1 to speak as if ideas caused one another4 ,they followed1 in recurring1 the order they had first had in experience1 as when we learn something by heart4 ,why1 a previous verse being given1 we should sometimes be unable to repeat the one that had often followed it before1 there was no attempt to explain3 it sufficed that reverie often seemed to retrace events in their temporal order4 ,even less dependent on material causes seemed to be the other sort of association1 association by similarity4 ,this was a feat for the wit and the poet1 to jump from ,china to ,peru1 by virtue of some spark of likeness that might flash out between them4 ,sidenote3 ,it describes coincidences4 ,much natural history has been written and studied with the idea of finding curious facts4 ,the demand has not been for constant laws or intelligibility1 but for any circumstance that could arrest attention or divert the fancy4 ,in this spirit1 doubtless1 instances of association were gathered and classified4 ,it was the young ladies' botany of mind4 ,under association could be gathered a thousand interesting anecdotes1 a thousand choice patterns of thought4 ,talk of the wars1 says ,hobbes1 once led a man to ask what was the value of a ,roman penny4 ,but why only once8 ,the wars must have been often mentioned when the delivering up of ,king ,charles did not enter any mind2 and when it did1 this would not have led any one to think of ,judas and the thirty pence1 unless he had been a good royalist and a good ,christian--and then only by a curious accident4 ,it was not these ideas1 then1 in their natural capacity that suggested one another2 but some medium in which they worked1 once in the world1 opened those particular avenues between them4 ,nevertheless1 no one cared to observe that each fact had had many others1 never recalled1 associated with it as closely as those which were remembered4 ,nor was the matter taken so seriously that one needed to ask how1 among all similar things1 similarity could decide which should be chosen2 nor how among a thousand contiguous facts one rather than another should be recalled for contiguity's sake4 ,sidenote3 ,understanding is based on instinct and expressed in dialectic4 ,the best instance1 perhaps1 of regular association might be found in language and its meaning2 for understanding implies that each word habitually calls up its former associates4 ,yet in what1 psychologically considered1 does understanding a word consist8 ,what concomitants does the word 8horse0 involve in actual sentience8 ,hardly a clear image such as a man might paint2 for the name is not confined to recalling one view of one animal obtained at one moment4 ,perhaps all that recurs is a vague sense of the environment1 in nature and in discourse1 in which that object lies4 ,the word 8kite0 would immediately make a different region warm in the world through which the mind was groping4 ,one would turn in idea to the sky rather than to the ground1 and feel suggestions of a more buoyant sort of locomotion4 ,understanding has to be described in terms of its potential outcome1 since the incandescent process itself1 as it exists in transit1 will not suffer stable terms to define it4 ,potentiality is something which each half of reality reproaches the other with2 things are potential to feeling because they are not life1 and feelings are potential to science because they elude definition4 ,to understand1 therefore1 is to know what to do and what to say in the sign's presence2 and this practical knowledge is far deeper than any echo casually awakened in fancy at the same time4 ,instinctive recognition has those echoes for the most superficial part of its effect4 ,because ,i understand what 8horse0 means1 the word can make me recall some episode in which a horse once figured4 ,this understanding is instinctive and practical and1 if the phrase may be pardoned1 it is the body that understands4 ,it is the body1 namely1 that contains the habit and readiness on which understanding hangs2 and the sense of understanding1 the instant rejection of whatever clashes and makes nonsense in that context1 is but a transcript of the body's education4 ,actual mind is all above board2 it is all speculative1 vibrant1 the fruit and gift of those menial subterranean processes4 ,some generative processes may be called psychic in that they minister to mind and lend it what little continuity it can boast of2 but they are not processes in consciousness4 ,processes in consciousness are sthetic or dialectical processes1 focussing a form rather than ushering in an existence4 ,mental activity has a character altogether alien to association3 it is spiritual1 not mechanical2 an entelechy1 not a genesis4 ,sidenote3 ,suggestion a fancy name for automatism1 ,for these and other reasons association has fallen into some disrepute2 but it is not easy to say what1 in absolute psychology1 has come to take its place4 ,if we speak of suggestion1 a certain dynamic turn seems to be given to the matter2 yet in what sense a perception suggests its future development remains a mystery4 ,that a certain ripening and expansion of consciousness goes on in man1 not guided by former collocations of ideas1 is very true2 for we do not fall in love for the first time because this person loved and these ardent emotions have been habitually associated in past experience4 ,and any impassioned discourse1 opening at every turn into new vistas1 shows the same sort of vegetation4 ,yet to observe that consciousness is automatic is not to disclose the mechanism by which it evolves4 ,the theory of spontaneous growth offers less explanation of events1 if that be possible1 than the theory of association4 ,it is perhaps a better description of the facts1 since at least it makes no attempt to deduce them from one another4 ,sidenote3 and will another4 ,if1 on the contrary1 a relation implied in the burden or will of the moment be invoked1 the connection established1 so far as it goes1 is dialectical4 ,where a dialectical correspondence is not found1 a material cause would have to be appealed to1 ,such a half-dialectical psychology would be like ,schopenhauer's1 quite metaphysical4 ,it might be a great improvement on an absolute psychology1 because it would restore1 even if in mythical terms1 a background and meaning to life4 ,the unconscious ,absolute ,will1 the avid ,genius of the ,species1 the all-attracting ,platonic ,ideas are fabulous2 but beneath them it is not hard to divine the forces of nature4 ,this volitional school supplies a good stepping-stone from metaphysics back to scientific psychology4 ,it remains merely to substitute instinct for will1 and to explain that instinct--or even will1 if the term be thought more consoling--is merely a word covering that operative organisation in the body which controls action1 determines affinities1 dictates preferences1 and sustains ideation4 ,sidenote3 ,double attachment of mind to nature4 ,what scientific psychology has to attempt--for little has been accomplished--may be reduced to this3 ,to develop physiology and anthropology until the mechanism of life becomes clear1 at least in its general method1 and then to determine1 by experiment and by well-sifted testimony1 what conscious sublimation each of those material situations attains1 if indeed it attains any4 ,there will always remain1 no doubt1 many a region where the machinery of nature is too fine for us to trace or eludes us by involving agencies that we lack senses to perceive4 ,in these regions where science is denied we shall have to be satisfied with landscape-painting4 ,the more obvious results and superficial harmonies perceived in those regions will receive names and physics will be arrested at natural history4 ,where these unexplained facts are mental it will not be hard to do more systematically what common sense has done already1 and to attach them1 as we attach love or patriotism1 to the natural crises that subtend them4 ,this placing of mental facts is made easy by the mental facts themselves1 since the connection of mind with nature is double1 and even when the derivation of a feeling is obscure we have but to study its meaning1 allowing it to tell us what it is interested in1 for a roundabout path to lead us safely back to its natural basis4 ,it is superfluous to ask a third person what circumstances produce hunger3 hunger will lead you unmistakably enough to its point of origin1 and its extreme interest in food will not suffer you long to believe that want of nourishment has nothing to do with its cause4 ,and it is not otherwise with higher emotions and ideas4 ,nothing but sophistry can put us in doubt about what conscience represents2 for conscience does not say1 square the circle1 extinguish mankind so as to stop its sufferings1 or steal so as to benefit your heirs4 ,it says1 ,thou shalt not kill1 and it also says1 ,thou shalt worship the ,lord thy ,god who brought thee out of the land of ,egypt4 ,so that conscience1 by its import and incidence1 clearly enough declares what it springs from--a social tradition2 and what it represents--the interests1 real or imaginary1 of the community in which you were reared4 ,where psychology depends on literature1 where both its units and its method are poetical1 there can be no talk of science4 ,we may as justly1 or as absurdly1 speak of the spirit of an age or of a religion as of a man's character or a river's god4 ,particulars in illustration may have good historic warrant1 but the unities superimposed are ideal4 ,such metaphors may be very useful1 for a man may ordinarily be trusted to continue his practices and a river its beneficent or disastrous floods2 and since those rhetorical forms have no existence in nature we may continue to frame them as may be most convenient for discourse4 ,sidenote3 ,is the subject-matter of psychology absolute being8 ,when psychology is a science1 then1 it describes the flying consciousness that accompanies bodily life4 ,it is the science of feeling or absolute appearance1 taken exactly as it seems or feels4 ,does such a psychology1 we may be tempted to ask1 constitute scientific knowledge of reality8 ,is it at last the true metaphysics8 ,this question would have to be answered in the negative1 yet not without some previous discriminations4 ,there is honesty in the conviction that sentience is a sort of absolute2 it is something which certainly exists4 ,the first ,cartesian axiom applies to it1 and to feel1 even doubtfully1 that feeling existed would be to posit its existence4 ,the science that describes sentience describes at least a part of existence4 ,yet this self-grounding of consciousness is a suspicious circumstance3 it renders it in one sense the typical reality and in another sense perhaps the sorriest illusion4 ,sidenote3 ,sentience is representable only in fancy 8,reality0 is an ambiguous term4 ,if we mean by it the immediate1 then sentience would be a part if not the whole of reality2 for what we mean by sentience or consciousness is the immediate in so far as we contain it1 and whatever self-grounded existence there may be elsewhere can be conceived by us only mythically and on that analogy1 as if it were an extension or variation of sentience4 ,psychology would then be knowledge of reality1 for even when consciousness contains elaborate thoughts that might be full of illusions1 psychology takes them only as so much feeling1 and in that capacity they are real enough4 ,at the same time1 while our science terminates upon mere feeling1 it can neither discover nor describe that feeling except in terms of something quite different2 and the only part of psychology that perhaps penetrates to brute sentience is the part that is not scientific4 ,the knowledge that science reaches about absolute states of mind is relative knowledge2 these states of mind are approached from without and are defined by their surrounding conditions and by their ideal objects4 ,they are known by being enveloped in processes of which they themselves are not aware4 ,apart from this setting1 the only feeling known is that which is endured4 ,after the fact1 or before1 or from any other point of vantage1 it cannot be directly revealed2 at best it may be divined and re-enacted4 ,even this possible repetition would not constitute knowledge unless the imaginative reproduction were identified with or attributed to some natural fact2 so that an adventitious element would always attach to any recognised feeling1 to any feeling reported to another mind4 ,it could not be known at all unless something were known about it1 so that it might not pass1 as otherwise it would1 for a mere ingredient of present sentience4 ,it is precisely by virtue of this adventitious element that the re-enacted feeling takes its place in nature and becomes an object of knowledge4 ,science furnishes this setting2 the jewel--precious or false--must be supplied by imagination4 ,romance1 dramatic myth1 is the only instrument for knowing this sort of 8reality40 ,a flying moment1 if at all understood or underpinned1 or if seen in its context1 would be not known absolutely as it had been felt1 but would be known scientifically and as it lay in nature4 ,but dramatic insight1 striving to pierce through the machinery of the world and to attain and repeat what dreams may be going on at its core1 is no science2 and the very notion that the dreams are internal1 that they make the interior or substance of bodies1 is a crude materialistic fancy4 ,body1 on the contrary1 is the substance or instrument of mind1 and has to be looked for beneath it4 ,the mind is itself ethereal and plays about the body as music about a violin1 or rather as the sense of a page about the print and paper4 ,to look for it within is not to understand what we are looking for4 ,knowledge of the immediate elsewhere is accordingly visionary in its method1 and furthermore1 if1 by a fortunate chance1 it be true in fact1 it is true only of what in itself is but appearance2 for the immediate1 while absolutely real in its stress or presence1 is indefinitely ignorant and false in its deliverance4 ,it knows itself1 but in the worst sense of the word knowledge2 for it knows nothing of what is true about it1 nothing of its relations and conditions4 ,to pierce to this blind 8reality0 or psychic flux1 which is nothing but flying appearance1 we must rely on fortune1 or an accidental harmony between imitative fancy in us now and original sentience elsewhere4 ,it is accordingly at least misleading to give the name of 8reality0 to this appearance1 which is entirely lost and inconsequential in its being1 without trace of its own status1 and consequently approachable or knowable only by divination1 as a dream might call to another dream4 ,sidenote3 ,the conditions and objects of sentience1 which are not sentience1 are also real4 ,it is preferable to give a more ,platonic meaning to the word and to let 8reality0 designate not what is merely felt diffusely but what is true about those feelings4 ,then dramatic fancy1 psychology of the sympathetic sort1 would not be able to reach reality at all4 ,on the other hand scientific psychology1 together with all other sciences1 would have reality for its object2 for it would disclose what really was true about sentient moments1 without stopping particularly to sink abstractedly into their inner quality or private semblance4 ,it would approach and describe the immediate as a sentient factor in a natural situation1 and show us to what extent that situation was represented in that feeling4 ,this representation1 by which the dignity and interest of pure sentience would be measured1 might be either pictorial or virtual2 that is1 a conscious moment might represent the environing world either scientifically1 by understanding its structure1 or practically1 by instinctive readiness to meet it4 ,sidenote3 ,mind knowable and important in so far as it represents other things4 ,what1 for instance1 is the reality of ,napoleon8 ,is it what a telepathic poet1 a complete ,browning1 might reconstruct8 ,is it ,napoleon's life-long soliloquy8 ,or to get at the reality should we have to add1 as scientific psychology would1 the conditions under which he lived1 and their relation to his casual feelings8 ,obviously if ,napoleon's thoughts had had no reference to the world we should not be able to recover them2 or if by chance such thoughts fell some day to our share1 we should attribute them to our own mental luxuriance1 without suspecting that they had ever visited another genius4 ,our knowledge of his life1 even where it is imaginative1 depends upon scientific knowledge for its projection2 and his fame and immortality depend on the degree to which his thoughts1 being rooted in the structure of the world and pertinent to it1 can be rationally reproduced in others and attributed to him4 ,napoleon's consciousness might perhaps be more justly identified with the truth or reality of him than could that of most people1 because he seems to have been unusually cognisant of his environment and master of the forces at work in it and in himself4 ,he understood his causes and function1 and knew that he had arisen1 like all the rest of history1 and that he stood for the transmissible force and authority of greater things4 ,such a consciousness can be known in proportion as we1 too1 possess knowledge1 and is worth the pains2 something which could not be said of the absolute sentience of ,dick or ,harry1 which has only material being1 brute existence1 without relevance to anything nor understanding of itself4 ,the circumstances1 open to science1 which surround consciousness are thus real attributes of a man by which he is truly known and distinguished4 ,appearances are the qualities of reality1 else realities would be without place1 time1 character1 or interrelation4 ,in knowing that ,napoleon was a ,corsican1 a short man with a fine countenance1 we know appearances only2 but these appearances are true of the reality4 ,and if the presumable inner appearances1 ,napoleon's long soliloquy1 were separated from the others1 those inner appearances would not belong to ,napoleon nor have any home in the knowable world4 ,that which physics1 with its concomitant psychology1 might discover in a man is the sum of what is true about him1 seeing that a man is a concretion in existence1 the fragment of a world1 and not a definition4 ,appearances define the constituent elements of his reality1 which could not be better known than through their means4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,e3 ,aristotle called the soul the first entelechy of such a body4 ,this first entelechy is what we should call life1 since it is possessed by a man asleep4 ,the ,french ,i know but do not use is in its first entelechy2 the ,french ,i am actually speaking is in its second4 ,consciousness is therefore the second or actualised entelechy of its body4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,intent ,sidenote3 ,dialectic better than physics4 ,common knowledge passes from memory to history and from history to mechanism2 and having reached that point it may stop to look back1 not without misgivings1 over the course it has traversed1 and thus become psychology4 ,these investigations1 taken together1 constitute physics1 or the science of existence4 ,but this is only half of science and on the whole the less interesting and less fundamental half4 ,no existence is of moment to a man1 not even his own1 unless it touches his will and fulfils or thwarts his intent4 ,unless he is concerned that existences should be of specific kinds1 unless he is interested in form1 he can hardly be interested in being4 ,at the very least in terms of pleasure versus pain1 light versus darkness1 comfort versus terror1 the flying moment must be loaded with obloquy or excellence if its passage is not to remain a dead fact1 and to sink from the sphere of actuality altogether into that droning limbo of potentialities which we call matter4 ,being which is indifferent to form is only the material of being4 ,to exist is nothing if you have nothing to do1 if there is nothing to choose or to distinguish1 or if those things which belong to a chosen form are not gathered into it before your eyes1 to express what we call a truth or an excellence4 ,existence naturally precedes any idealisation of it which men can contrive 7since they1 at least1 must exist first71 yet in the order of values knowledge of existence is subsidiary to knowledge of ideals4 ,if it be true that a good physics is as yet the predominant need in science1 and that man is still most troubled by his ignorance of matters of fact1 this circumstance marks his illiberal condition4 ,without knowledge of existence nothing can be done2 but nothing is really done until something else is known also1 the use or excellence that existence may have4 ,it is a great pity that those finer temperaments that are naturally addressed to the ideal should have turned their energies to producing bad physics1 or to preventing others from establishing natural truths2 for if physics were established on a firm basis the idealists would for the first time have a free field4 ,they might then recover their proper function of expressing the mind honestly1 and disdain the sorry attempt to prolong confusion and to fish in troubled waters4 ,sidenote3 ,maladjustments to nature render physics conspicuous and unpleasant4 ,perhaps if physical truth had not been so hugely misrepresented in men's faith and conduct1 it would not need to be minutely revealed or particularly emphasised4 ,when the conditions surrounding life are not rightly faced by instinct they are inevitably forced upon reflection through painful shocks2 and for a long time the new habit thus forced upon men brings to consciousness not so much the movement of consciousness itself as the points at which its movement impinges on the external world and feels checks and frictions4 ,physics thus becomes inordinately conspicuous 7as when philology submerges the love of letters7 for lack of a good disposition that should allow us to take physics for granted4 ,much in nature is delightful to know and to keep in mind1 but much also 7the whole infinite remainder7 is obscure and uninteresting2 and were we practically well adjusted to its issue we might gladly absolve ourselves from studying its processes4 ,in a world that in extent and complexity so far outruns human energies1 physical knowledge ought to be largely virtual2 that is1 nature ought to be represented by a suitable attitude toward it1 by the attitude which reason would dictate were knowledge complete1 and not by explicit ideas4 ,sidenote3 ,physics should be largely virtual4 ,the ancients were happily inspired when they imagined that beyond the gods and the fixed stars the cosmos came to an end1 for the empyrean beyond was nothing in particular1 nothing to trouble one's self about4 ,many existences are either out of relation to man altogether or have so infinitesimal an influence on his experience that they may be sufficiently represented there by an atom of star-dust2 and it is probable that if1 out of pure curiosity1 we wished to consider very remote beings and had the means of doing so1 we should find the detail of existence in them wholly incommensurable with anything we can conceive4 ,such beings could be known virtually only1 in that we might speak of them in the right key1 representing them in appropriate symbols1 and might move in their company with the right degree of respectful indifference4 ,sidenote3 and dialectic explicit4 ,the present situation of science1 however1 reverses the ideal one4 ,physics1 in so far as it exists1 is explicit1 and at variance with our acquired attitude toward things2 so that we may justly infer1 by the shock our little knowledge gives us1 that our presumptions and assumptions have been so egregious that more knowledge would give us still greater shocks4 ,meantime dialectic1 or knowledge of ideal things1 remains merely virtual4 ,the ideal usually comes before us only in revulsions which we cannot help feeling against some scandalous situation or some intolerable muddle4 ,we have no time or genius left1 after our agitated soundings and balings1 to think of navigation as a fine art1 or to consider freely the sea and sky or the land we are seeking4 ,the proper occupation of the mind is gone1 or rather not initiated4 ,a further bad consequence of this illiberal state is that1 among many who have1 in spite of the times1 adoration in their souls1 to adore physics1 to worship ,being1 seems a philosophical religion1 whereas1 of course1 it is the essence of idolatry4 ,the true ,god is an object of intent1 an ideal of excellence and knowledge1 not a term belonging to sense or to probable hypothesis or to the prudent management of affairs4 ,after we have squared our accounts with nature and taken sufficient thought for our bodily necessities1 the eyes can be lifted for the first time to the eternal4 ,the rest was superstition and the quaking use of a false physics4 ,that appeal to the supernatural which while the danger threatens is but forlorn medicine1 after the blow has fallen may turn to sublime wisdom4 ,this wisdom has cast out the fear of material evils1 and dreads only that the divine should not come down and be worthily entertained among us4 ,in art1 in politics1 in that form of religion which is superior1 and not inferior1 to politics and art1 we define and embody intent2 and the intent embodied dignifies the work and lends interest to its conditions4 ,so1 in science1 it is dialectic that makes physics speculative and worthy of a free mind4 ,the baser utilities of material knowledge would leave life itself perfectly vain1 if they did not help it to take on an ideal shape4 ,ideal life1 in so far as it constitutes science1 is dialectical4 ,it consists in seeing how things hang together perspicuously and how the later phases of any process fill out--as in good music--the tendency and promise of what went before4 ,this derivation may be mathematical or it may be moral2 but in either case the data and problem define the result1 dialectic being insight into their inherent correspondence4 ,sidenote3 ,intent is vital and indescribable4 ,intent is one of many evidences that the intellect's essence is practical4 ,intent is action in the sphere of thought2 it corresponds to transition and derivation in the natural world4 ,analytic psychology is obliged to ignore intent1 for it is obliged to regard it merely as a feeling2 but while the feeling of intent is a fact like any other1 intent itself is an aspiration1 a passage1 the recognition of an object which not only is not a part of the feeling given but is often incapable of being a feeling or a fact at all4 ,what happened to motion under the ,eleatic analysis happens to intent under an anatomising reflection4 ,the parts do not contain the movement of transition which makes them a whole4 ,moral experience is not expressible in physical categories1 because while you may give place and date for every feeling that something is important or is absurd1 you cannot so express what these feelings have discovered and have wished to confide to you4 ,the importance and the absurdity have disappeared4 ,yet it is this pronouncement concerning what things are absurd or important that makes the intent of those judgments4 ,to touch it you have to enter the moral world2 that is1 you have to bring some sympathetic or hostile judgment to bear on those you are considering and to meet intent1 not by noting its existence1 but by estimating its value1 by collating it with your own intent4 ,if some one says two and two are five1 you are no counter-mathematician when you conscientiously put it down that he said so4 ,your science is not relevant to his intent until you run some risk yourself in that arena and say1 ,no3 two and two are four4 ,sidenote3 ,it is analogous to flux in existence ,feelings and ideas1 when plucked and separately considered1 do not retain the intent that made them cognitive or living2 yet in their native medium they certainly lived and knew4 ,if this ideality or transcendence seems a mystery1 it is such only in the sense in which every initial or typical fact is mysterious4 ,every category would be unthinkable if it were not actually used4 ,the mystery in this instance has1 however1 all that can best serve to make a mystery homely and amiable4 ,it is supported by a strong analogy to other familiar mysteries4 ,the fact that intellect has intent1 and does not constitute or contain what it envisages1 is like the fact that time flows1 that bodies gravitate1 that experience is gathered1 or that existence is suspended between being and not being4 ,propagation in animals is mysterious and familiar in the same fashion4 ,cognition1 too1 is an expedient for vanquishing instability4 ,as reproduction circumvents mortality and preserves a semblance of permanence in the midst of change1 so intent regards what is not yet1 or not here1 or what exists no longer4 ,thus the pulverisation proper to existence is vanquished by thought1 which in a moment announces or commemorates other moments1 together with the manner of their approach or recession4 ,the mere image of what is absent constitutes no knowledge of it2 a dream is not knowledge of a world like it existing elsewhere2 it is simply another more fragile world4 ,what renders the image cognitive is the intent that projects it and deputes it to be representative4 ,it is cognitive only in use1 when it is the vehicle of an assurance which may be right or wrong1 because it takes something ulterior for its standard4 ,sidenote3 ,it expresses natural life4 ,we may give intent a somewhat more congenial aspect if we remember that thought comes to animals in proportion to their docility in the world and to their practical competence4 ,the more plastic a being is to experience1 so long as he retains vital continuity and a cumulative structure1 the more intelligent he becomes4 ,intelligence is an expression of adaptation1 of impressionable and prophetic structure4 ,what wonder1 then1 that intelligence should speak of the things that inspire it and that lend it its oracular and practical character1 namely1 of things at that moment absent and merely potential1 in other words1 of the surrounding world8 ,mere feeling might suffice to translate into consciousness each particle of protoplasm in its isolation2 but to translate the relations of that particle to what is not itself and to express its response to those environing presences1 intent and conscious signification are required4 ,intellect transcends the given and means the absent because life1 of which intellect is the fulfilment or entelechy1 is itself absorbed from without and radiated outward4 ,as life depends on an equilibrium of material processes which reach far beyond the individual they sustain in being1 so intent is a recognition of outlying existences which sustain in being that very sympathy by which they are recognised4 ,intent and life are more than analogous4 ,if we use the word life in an ideal sense1 the two are coincident1 for1 as ,aristotle says1 the act proper to intellect is life4,f ,the flux is so pervasive1 so subtle in its persistency1 that even those miracles which suspend it must somehow share its destiny4 ,intent bridges many a chasm1 but only by leaping across4 ,the life that is sustained for years1 the political or moral purpose that may bind whole races together1 is condemned to be partly a memory and partly a plan and wholly an ideal4 ,its scope is nothing but the range to which it can continually extend its sympathies and its power of representation4 ,its moments have nothing in common except their loyalties and a conspiring interest in what is not themselves4 ,sidenote3 ,it has a material basis4 ,this moral energy1 so closely analogous to physical interplay1 is of course not without a material basis4 ,spiritual sublimation does not consist in not using matter but in using it up1 in making it all useful4 ,when life becomes rational it continues to be mechanical and to take up room and energy in the natural world4 ,that new direction of attention upon form which finds in facts instances of ideas1 does not occur without a certain heat and labour in the brain4 ,in its most intimate and supernatural functions intellect has natural conditions4 ,in dreams and madness intent is confused and wayward1 in idiocy it is suspended altogether2 nor has discourse any other pledge that it is addressing kindred interlocutors except that which it receives from the disposition and habit of bodies4 ,people who have not yet been born into the world have not yet begun to think about it4 ,there is1 of course1 an inner dialectical relevance among all propositions that have the same ideal theme1 no matter how remote or unknown to one another those who utter the propositions may be2 but the medium in which this infinite dialectical network is woven is motionless1 and indifferent to the direction in which thought might traverse it2 in other words1 it is not discourse or intelligence but eternal truth4 ,from the point of view of experience this prior dialectical relation of form to form is merely potential2 for the thoughts between which it would obtain need never exist or be enacted4 ,there is society only among incarnate ideas2 and it is only by expressing some material situation that an idea is selected out of the infinity of not impossible ideas and promoted to the temporal dignity of actual thought4 ,sidenote3 ,it is necessarily relevant to earth4 ,moreover1 even if the faculty of intelligence were disembodied and could exist in a vacuum1 it would still be a vain possession if no data were given for it to operate upon and if no particular natural structure1 animal1 social1 or artistic1 were at hand for intelligence to ally itself to and defend4 ,reason would in that case die of inanition2 it would have no subject-matter and no sanction1 as well as no seat4 ,intelligence is not a substance2 it is a principle of order and of art2 it requires a given situation and some particular natural interest to bring it into play4 ,in fact1 it is nothing but a name for the empire which conscious1 but at bottom irrational1 interests attain over the field in which they operate2 it is the fruition of life1 the token of successful operation4 ,every theme or motive in the ,life of ,reason expresses some instinct rooted in the body and incidental to natural organisation4 ,the intent by which memory refers to past or absent experience1 or the intent by which perception becomes recognition1 is a transcript of relations in which events actually stand to one another4 ,such intent represents modifications of structure and action important to life1 modifications that have responded to forces on which life is dependent4 ,both desire and meaning translate into cognitive or ideal energy1 into intent1 mechanical relations subsisting in nature4 ,these mechanical relations give practical force to the thought that expresses them1 and the thought in turn gives significance and value to the forces that subserve it4 ,fulfilment is mutual1 in one direction bringing material potentialities to the light and making them actual and conscious1 and in the other direction embodying intent in the actual forms of things and manifesting reason4 ,nothing could be more ill-considered than the desire to disembody reason4 ,reason cries aloud for reunion with the material world which she needs not only for a basis but1 what concerns her even more1 for a theme4 ,in private and silent discourse1 when words and grammar are swathed in reverie1 the material basis and reference of thought may be forgotten4 ,desire and intent may then seem to disport themselves in a purely ideal realm2 moral or logical tensions alone may seem to determine the whole process4 ,meditative persons are even inclined to regard the disembodied life which they think they enjoy at such times as the true and native form of experience2 all organs1 applications1 and expressions of thought they deprecate and call accidental4 ,as some pious souls reject dogma to reach pure faith and suspend prayer to enjoy union1 so some mystical logicians drop the world in order to grasp reality4 ,it is an exquisite suicide2 but the energy and ideal that sustain such a flight are annihilated by its issue1 and the soul drops like a paper balloon consumed by the very flame that wafted it4 ,no thought is found without an organ2 none is conceivable without an expression which is that organ's visible emanation2 and none would be significant without a subject-matter lying in the world of which that organ is a part4 ,sidenote3 ,the basis of intent becomes appreciable in language4 ,the natural structure underlying intent is latent in silent thought1 and its existence might be denied by a sceptical thinker over whose mind the analogies and spirit of physics exercised little influence4 ,this hypothetical structure is not1 however1 without obvious extensions which imply its existence even where we do not perceive it directly4 ,a smile or a blush makes visible to the observer movements which must have been at work in the body while thought occupied the mind--even if1 as more often happens1 the blush or smile did not precede and introduce the feeling they suggest1 the feeling which in our verbal mythology is said to cause them4 ,no one would be so simple as to suppose that such involuntary signs of feeling spring directly and by miracle out of feeling4 ,they surely continue some previous bodily commotion which determines their material character1 so that laughter1 for instance1 becomes a sign of amusement rather than of rage1 which it might just as well have represented1 so far as the abstract feeling itself is concerned4 ,in the same way a sigh1 a breath1 a word are but the last stage and superficial explosion of nervous tensions1 tensions which from the point of view of their other eventual expressions we might call interplaying impulses or potential memories4 ,as these material seethings underlay the budding thought1 so the uttered word1 when it comes1 underlies the perfect conception4 ,the word1 in so far as it is material1 undeniably continues an internal material process1 for aphasia and garrulity have known physical causes4 ,in the vibrations which we call words the hidden complexities of cerebral action fly out1 so to speak1 into the air2 they become recognisable sounds emitted by lips and tongue and received by the ear4 ,the uttered word produces an obvious commotion in nature2 through it thought1 being expressed in that its material basis is extended outward1 becomes at the same moment rational and practical2 for its expression enters into the chain of its future conditions and becomes an omen of that thought's continuance1 repetition1 and improvement4 ,thought's rational function consists1 as we then perceive1 in expressing a natural situation and improving that situation by expressing it1 until such expression becomes a perfect and adequate state of knowledge1 which justifies both itself and its conditions4 ,expression makes thought a power in the very world from which thought drew its being1 and renders it in some measure self-sustaining and self-assured4 ,a thirsty man1 let us say1 begs for drink4 ,had his petition been a wordless desire it might have been supposed1 though falsely1 to be a disembodied and quite immaterial event1 a transcendental attitude of will1 without conditions or consequences1 but somehow with an absolute moral dignity4 ,but when the petition became articulate and audible to a fellow-mortal1 who thereupon proceeded to fetch a cup of water1 the desire1 through the cry that expressed it1 obviously asserted itself in the mechanical world1 to which it already secretly belonged by virtue of its cause1 a parched body4 ,this material background for moral energy1 which even an inarticulate yearning would not have lacked1 becomes in language an overt phenomenon1 linked observably with all other objects and processes4 ,language is accordingly an overflow of the physical basis of thought4 ,it is an audible gesture1 more refined than the visible1 but in the same sense an automatic extension of nervous and muscular processes4 ,words underlie the thought they are said to express--in truth it is the thought that is the flower and expression of the language--much as the body underlies the mind4 ,sidenote3 ,intent starts from a datum4 ,language contains1 side by side two distinct elements4 ,one is the meaning or sense of the words--a logical projection given to sensuous terms4 ,the other is the sensuous vehicle of that meaning--the sound1 sign1 or gesture4 ,this sensuous term is a fulcrum for the lever of signification1 a point d'appui which may be indefinitely attenuated in rapid discourse1 but not altogether discarded4 ,intent though it vaults high must have something to spring from1 or it would lend meaning to nothing4 ,the minimal sensuous term that subsists serves as a clue to a whole system of possible assertions radiating from it4 ,it becomes the sign for an essence or idea1 a logical hypostasis corresponding in discourse to that material hypostasis of perceptions which is called an external thing4 ,the hypostasised total of rational and just discourse is the truth4 ,like the physical world1 the truth is external and in the main potential4 ,its ideal consistency and permanence serve to make it a standard and background for fleeting assertions1 just as the material hypostasis called nature is the standard and background for all momentary perceptions4 ,what exists of truth in direct experience is at any moment infinitesimal1 as what exists of nature is1 but all that either contains might be represented in experience at one time or another4,g ,sidenote3 and is carried by a feeling4 ,the tensions and relations of words which make grammar or make poetry are immediate in essence1 the force of language being just as empirical as the reality of things4 ,to ask a thinker what he means by meaning is as futile as to ask a carpenter what he means by wood2 to discover it you must emulate them and repeat their experience--which indeed you will hardly be able to do if some sophist has so entangled your reason that you can neither understand what you see nor assert what you mean4 ,but as the carpenter's acquaintance with wood might be considerably refined if he became a naturalist or liberalised if he became a carver1 so a casual speaker's sense of what he means might be better focussed by dialectic and more delicately shaded by literary training4 ,meantime the vital act called intent1 by which consciousness becomes cognitive and practical1 would remain at heart an indescribable experience1 a sense of spiritual life as radical and specific as the sense of heat4 ,sidenote3 ,it demands conventional expression4 ,significant language forms a great system of ideal tensions1 contained in the mutual relations of parts of speech1 and of clauses in propositions4 ,of these tensions the intent in a man's mind at any moment is a living specimen4 ,experience at that moment may have a significance1 a transitive force1 that asks to be enshrined in some permanent expression2 the more acute and irrevocable the crisis is1 the more urgent the need of transmitting to other moments some cognisance of what was once so great4 ,but were this experience to exhale its spirit in a vacuum1 using no conventional and transmissible medium of expression1 it would be foiled in its intent4 ,it would leave no monument and achieve no immortality in the world of representation2 for the experience and its expression would remain identical and perish together1 just as a perception and its object would remain identical and perish together if there were no intelligence to discover the material world1 to which the perplexing shifts of sensation may be habitually referred4 ,spontaneous expression1 if it is to be recognisable and therefore in effect expressive1 labours under the necessity of subordinating itself to an ideal system of expressions1 a permanent language in which its spontaneous utterances may be embedded4 ,by virtue of such adoption into a common medium expression becomes interpretable2 a later moment may then reconstruct the past out of its surviving memorial4 ,intent1 beside the form it has in language1 where it makes the soul of grammar1 has many other modes of expression1 in mathematical and logical reasoning1 in action1 and in those contemplated and suspended acts which we call estimation1 policy1 or morals4 ,moral philosophy1 the wisdom of ,socrates1 is merely a consideration of intent4 ,in intent we pass over from existence to ideality1 the nexus lying in the propulsive nature of life which could not have been capped by any form of knowledge which was not itself in some way transitive and ambitious4 ,intent1 though it looks away from existence and the actual1 is the most natural and pervasive of things4 ,physics and dialectic meet in this3 that the second brings to fruition what the first describes1 namely1 existence1 and that both have their transcendental root in the flux of being4 ,matter cannot exist without some form1 much as by shedding every form in succession it may proclaim its aversion to fixity and its radical formlessness or infinitude4 ,nor can form1 without the treacherous aid of matter1 pass from its ideal potentiality into selected and instant being4 ,sidenote3 ,a fable about matter and form4 ,in order to live--if such a myth may be allowed--the ,titan ,matter was eager to disguise his incorrigible vagueness and pretend to be something4 ,he accordingly addressed himself to the beautiful company of ,forms1 sisters whom he thought all equally beautiful1 though their number was endless1 and equally fit to satisfy his heart4 ,he wooed them hypocritically1 with no intention of wedding them2 yet he uttered their names in such seductive accents 7called by mortals intelligence and toil7 that the virgin goddesses offered no resistance--at least such of them as happened to be near or of a facile disposition4 ,they were presently deserted by their unworthy lover2 yet they1 too1 in that moment's union1 had tasted the sweetness of life4 ,the heaven to which they returned was no longer an infinite mathematical paradise4 ,it was crossed by memories of earth1 and a warmer breath lingered in some of its lanes and grottoes4 ,henceforth its nymphs could not forget that they had awakened a passion1 and that1 unmoved themselves1 they had moved a strange indomitable giant to art and love4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,f3 ,cf4 the motto on the title-page4 ,footnote ,g3 ,not1 of course1 in human experience1 which is incapable of containing the heart of a flea1 much less what may be endured in remoter spheres4 ,but if an intelligence were constructed ad hoc there is nothing real that might not fall within the scope of experience4 ,the difference between existence and truth on the one side and knowledge or representation on the other may be reduced to this3 that knowledge brings what exists or what is true under apperception1 while being diffuses what is understood into an impartial subsistence4 ,as truth is indistinguishable from an absolute motionless intellect1 which should no longer be a function of life but merely a static order1 so existence is indistinguishable from an absolute motionless experience1 which should no longer be a foreshortening or representation of anything4 ,this existence would be motionless in the sense that it would 8mark time10 for of course every fact in it might be a fact of transition4 ,the whole system1 however1 would have a static ideal constitution1 since the fact that things change in a certain way or stand in a certain order is as much a fact as any other2 and it is not a logical necessity1 either1 but a brute matter of fact that might well have been otherwise4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,dialectic ,sidenote3 ,dialectic elaborates given forms4 ,the advantage which the mechanical sciences have over history is drawn from their mathematical form4 ,mathematics has somewhat the same place in physics that conscience has in action2 it seems to be a directive principle in natural operations where it is only a formal harmony4 ,the formalistic school1 which treats grammar in all departments as if it were the ground of import rather than a means of expressing it1 takes mathematics also for an oracular deliverance1 springing full-armed out of the brain1 and setting up a canon which all concrete things must conform to4 ,thus mathematical science has become a mystery which a myth must be constructed to solve4 ,for how can it happen1 people ask1 that pure intuition1 retreating into its cell1 can evolve there a prodigious system of relations which it carries like a measuring-rod into the world and lo6 everything in experience submits to be measured by it8 ,what pre-established harmony is this between the spinning cerebral silkworm and nature's satins and brocades8 ,if we but knew1 so the myth runs1 that experience can show no patterns but those which the prolific ,mind has woven1 we should not wonder at this necessary correspondence4 ,the ,mind having decreed of its own motion1 while it sat alone before the creation of the world1 that it would take to dreaming mathematically1 it evoked out of nothing all formal necessities2 and later1 when it felt some solicitation to play with things1 it imposed those forms upon all its toys1 admitting none of any other sort into the nursery4 ,in other words1 perception perfected its grammar before perceiving any of its objects1 and having imputed that grammar to the materials of sense1 it was able to perceive objects for the first time and to legislate further about their relations4 ,the most obvious artifices of language are often the most deceptive and bring on epidemic prejudices4 ,what is this ,mind1 this machine existing prior to existence8 ,the mind that exists is only a particular department or focus of existence2 its principles cannot be its own source1 much less the source of anything in other beings4 ,mathematical principles in particular are not imposed on existence or on nature ab extra1 but are found in and abstracted from the subject-matter and march of experience4 ,to exist things have to wear some form1 and the form they happen to wear is largely mathematical4 ,this being the case1 the mind in shaping its barbarous prosody somewhat more closely to the nature of things1 learns to note and to abstract the form that so strikingly defines them4 ,once abstracted and focussed in the mind1 these forms1 like all forms1 reveal their dialectic2 but that things conform to that dialectic 7when they do7 is not wonderful1 seeing that it is the obvious form of things that the mind has singled out1 not without practical shrewdness1 for more intensive study4 ,sidenote3 ,forms are abstracted from existence by intent4 ,the difference between ideal and material knowledge does not lie in the ungenerated oracular character of one of them in opposition to the other2 in both the data are inexplicable and irrational1 and in both investigation is tentative1 observant1 and subject to control by the subject-matter4 ,the difference lies1 rather1 in the direction of speculation4 ,in physics1 which is at bottom historical1 we study what happens2 we make inventories and records of events1 of phenomena1 of juxtapositions4 ,in dialectic1 which is wholly intensive1 we study what is2 we strive to clarify and develop the essence of what we find1 bringing into focus the inner harmonies and implications of forms--forms which our attention or purpose has defined initially4 ,the intuitions from which mathematical deduction starts are highly generic notions drawn from observation4 ,the lines and angles of geometers are ideals1 and their ideal context is entirely independent of what may be their context in the world2 but they are found in the world1 and their ideals are suggested by very common sensations4 ,had they been invented1 by some inexplicable parthenogenesis in thought1 it would indeed have been a marvel had they found application4 ,philosophy has enough notions of this inapplicable sort--usually1 however1 not very recondite in their origin--to show that dialectic1 when it seems to control existence1 must have taken more than one hint from the subject world1 and that in the realm of logic1 too1 nothing submits to be governed without representation4 ,sidenote3 ,confusion comes of imperfect abstraction1 or ambiguous intent4 ,when dialectic is employed1 as in ethics and metaphysics1 upon highly complex ideas--concretions in discourse which cover large blocks of existence--the dialectician in defining and in deducing often reaches notions which cease to apply in some important respect to the object originally intended4 ,thus ,socrates1 taking 8courage0 for his theme1 treats it dialectically and expresses the intent of the word by saying that courage must be good1 and then develops the meaning of good1 showing that it means the choice #ja the greater benefit2 and finally turns about and ends by saying that courage is consequently the choice of the greater benefit and identical with wisdom4 ,here we have a process of thought ending in a paradox which1 frankly1 misrepresents the original meaning4 ,for 8courage0 meant not merely something desirable but something having a certain animal and psychological aspect4 ,the emotion and gesture of it had not been excluded from the idea4 ,so that while the argument proves to perfection that unwise courage is a bad thing1 it does not end with an affirmation really true of the original concept4 ,the instinct which we call courage1 with an eye to its psychic and bodily quality1 is not always virtuous or wise4 ,dialectic1 when it starts with confused and deep-dyed feelings1 like those which ethical and metaphysical terms generally stand for1 is thus in great danger of proving unsatisfactory and being or seeming sophistical4 ,the mathematical dialectician has no such serious dangers to face4 ,when1 having observed the sun and sundry other objects1 he frames the idea of a circle and tracing out its intent shows that the circle meant cannot be squared1 there is no difficulty in reverting to nature and saying that the sun's circle cannot be squared4 ,for there is no difference in intent between the circularity noted in the sun and that which is the subject of the demonstration4 ,the geometer has made in his first reflection so clear and violent an abstraction from the sun's actual bulk and qualities that he will never imagine himself to be speaking of anything but a concretion in discourse4 ,the concretion in nature is never legislated about nor so much as thought of except possibly when1 under warrant of sense1 it is chosen to illustrate the concept investigated dialectically4 ,it does not even occur to a man to ask if the sun's circle can be squared1 for every one understands that the sun is circular only in so far as it conforms to the circle's ideal nature2 which is as if ,socrates and his interlocutors had clearly understood that the virtue of courage in an intemperate villain meant only whatever in his mood or action was rational and truly desirable1 and had then said that courage1 so understood1 was identical with wisdom or with the truly rational and desirable rule of life4 ,sidenote3 ,the fact that mathematics applies to existence is empirical4 ,the applicability of mathematics is not vouched for by mathematics but by sense1 and its application in some distant part of nature is not vouched for by mathematics but by inductive arguments about nature's uniformity1 or by the character which the notion1 8a distant part of nature10 already possesses4 ,inapplicable mathematics1 we are told1 is perfectly thinkable1 and systematic deductions1 in themselves valid1 may be made from concepts which contravene the facts of perception4 ,we may suspect1 perhaps1 that even these concepts are framed by analogy out of suggestions found in sense1 so that some symbolic relevance or proportion is kept1 even in these dislocated speculations1 to the matter of experience4 ,it is like a new mythology2 the purely fictitious idea has a certain parallelism and affinity to nature and moves in a human and familiar way4 ,both data and method are drawn from applicable science1 elements of which even myth1 whether poetic or mathematical1 may illustrate by a sort of variant or fantastic reduplication4 ,the great glory of mathematics1 like that of virtue1 is to be useful while remaining free4 ,number and measure furnish an inexhaustible subject-matter which the mind can dominate and develop dialectically as it is the mind's inherent office to develop ideas4 ,at the same time number and measure are the grammar of sense2 and the more this inner logic is cultivated and refined the greater subtlety and sweep can be given to human perception4 ,astronomy on the one hand and mechanical arts on the other are fruits of mathematics by which its worth is made known even to the layman1 although the born mathematician would not need the sanction of such an extraneous utility to attach him to a subject that has an inherent cogency and charm4 ,ideas1 like other things1 have pleasure in propagation1 and even when allowance is made for birth-pangs and an occasional miscarriage1 their native fertility will always continue to assert itself4 ,the more ideal and frictionless the movement of thought is1 the more perfect must be the physiological engine that sustains it4 ,the momentum of that silent and secluded growth carries the mind1 with a sense of pure disembodied vision1 through the logical labyrinth2 but the momentum is vital1 for the truth itself does not move4 ,sidenote3 ,its moral value is therefore contingent4 ,whether the airy phantoms thus brought into being are valued and preserved by the world is an ulterior point of policy which the pregnant mathematician does not need to consider in bringing to light the legitimate burden of his thoughts4 ,but were mathematics incapable of application1 did nature and experience1 for instance1 illustrate nothing but ,parmenides' ,being or ,hegel's ,logic1 the dialectical cogency which mathematics would of course retain would not give this science a very high place in the ,life of ,reason4 ,mathematics would be an amusement1 and though apparently innocent1 like a game of patience1 it might even turn out to be a wasteful and foolish exercise for the mind2 because to deepen habits and cultivate pleasures irrelevant to other interests is a way of alienating ourselves from our general happiness4 ,distinction and a curious charm there may well be in such a pursuit1 but this quality is perhaps traceable to affinities and associations with other more substantial interests1 or is due to the ingenious temper it denotes1 which touches that of the wit or magician4 ,mathematics1 if it were nothing more than a pleasure1 might conceivably become a vice4 ,those addicted to it might be indulging an atavistic taste at the expense of their humanity4 ,it would then be in the position now occupied by mythology and mysticism4 ,even as it is1 mathematicians share with musicians a certain partiality in their characters and mental development4 ,masters in one abstract subject1 they may remain children in the world2 exquisite manipulators of the ideal1 they may be erratic and clumsy in their earthly ways4 ,immense as are the uses and wide the applications of mathematics1 its texture is too thin and inhuman to employ the whole mind or render it harmonious4 ,it is a science which ,socrates rejected for its supposed want of utility2 but perhaps he had another ground in reserve to justify his humorous prejudice4 ,he may have felt that such a science1 if admitted1 would endanger his thesis about the identity of virtue and knowledge4 ,sidenote3 ,quantity submits easily to dialectical treatment4 ,mathematical method has been the envy of philosophers1 perplexed and encumbered as they are with the whole mystery of existence1 and they have attempted at times to emulate mathematical cogency4 ,now the lucidity and certainty found in mathematics are not inherent in its specific character as the science of number or dimension2 they belong to dialectic as a whole which is essentially elucidation4 ,the effort to explain meanings is in most cases abortive because these meanings melt in our hands--a defeat which ,hegel would fain have consecrated1 together with all other evils1 into necessity and law4 ,but the merit of mathematics is that it is so much less ,hegelian than life2 that it holds its own while it advances1 and never allows itself to misrepresent its original intent4 ,in all it finds to say about the triangle it never comes to maintain that the triangle is really a square4 ,the privilege of mathematics is simply to have offered the mind1 for dialectical treatment1 a material to which dialectical treatment could be honestly applied4 ,this material consists in certain general aspects of sensation--its extensity1 its pulsation1 its distribution into related parts4 ,the wakefulness that originally makes these abstractions is able to keep them clear1 and to elaborate them infinitely without contradicting their essence4 ,for this reason it is always a false step in mathematical science1 a step over its brink into the abyss beyond1 when we try to reduce its elements to anything not essentially sensible4 ,intuition must continue to furnish the subject of discourse1 the axioms1 and the ultimate criteria and sanctions4 ,calculation and transmutation can never make their own counters or the medium in which they move4 ,so that space1 number1 continuity1 and every other elementary intuition remains at bottom opaque--opaque1 that is1 to mathematical science2 for it is no paradox1 but an obvious necessity1 that the data of a logical operation should not be producible by its workings4 ,reason would have nothing to do if it had no irrational materials4 ,saint ,augustine's rhetoric accordingly covered--as so often with him--a profound truth when he said of time that he knew what it was when no one asked him1 but if any one asked him he did not know2 which may be restated by saying that time is an intuition1 an aspect of crude experience1 which science may work with but which it can never arrive at4 ,sidenote3 ,constancy and progress in intent4 ,when a concretion is formed in discourse and an intent is attained in consciousness1 predicates accrue to the subject in a way which is perfectly empirical4 ,dialectic is not retrospective2 it does not consist in recovering ground previously surveyed4 ,the accretion of new predicates comes in answer to chance questions1 questions raised1 to be sure1 about a given theme4 ,the subject is fixed by the mind's intent and it suffices to compare any tentative assertion made about it with that intent itself to see whether the expression suggested for it is truly dialectical and thoroughly honest4 ,dialectic verifies by reconsideration1 by equation of tentative results with fixed intentions4 ,it does not verify1 like the sciences of existence1 by comparing a hypothesis with a new perception4 ,in dialectic no new perception is wanted2 the goal is to understand the old fact1 to give it an aureole and not a progeny4 ,it is a transubstantiation of matter1 a passage from existence to eternity4 ,in this sense dialectic is 8synthetic a priori02 it analyses an intent which demanded further elucidation and had fixed the direction and principle of its expansion4 ,if this intent is abandoned and a new subject is introduced surreptitiously1 a fallacy is committed2 yet the correct elucidation of ideas is a true progress1 nor could there be any progress unless the original idea were better expressed and elicited as we proceeded2 so that constancy in intent and advance in explication are the two requisites of a cogent deduction4 ,the question in dialectic is always what is true1 what can be said1 about this2 and the demonstrative pronoun1 indicating an act of selective attention1 raises the object it selects to a concretion in discourse1 the relations of which in the universe of discourse it then proceeds to formulate4 ,at the same time this dialectical investigation may be full of surprises4 ,knowledge may be so truly enriched by it that knowledge1 in an ideal sense1 only begins when dialectic has given some articulation to being4 ,without dialectic an animal might follow instinct1 he might have vivid emotions1 expectations1 and dreams1 but he could hardly be said to know anything or to guide his life with conscious intent4 ,the accretions that might come empirically into any field of vision would not be new predicates to be added to a known thing1 unless the logical and functional mantle of that thing fell upon them and covered them4 ,while the right of particulars to existence is their own1 granted them by the free grace of heaven1 their ability to enlarge our knowledge on any particular subject--their relevance or incidence in discourse--hangs on their fulfilling the requirements which that subject's dialectical nature imposes on all its expressions4 ,sidenote3 ,intent determines the functional essence of objects4 ,it is on this ground1 for instance1 that the image of a loaf of bread is so far from being the loaf of bread itself4 ,external resemblance is nothing2 even psychological derivation or superposition is nothing2 the intent1 rather1 which picks out what that object's function and meaning shall be1 alone defines its idea2 and this function involves a locus and a status which the image does not possess4 ,such admirable iridescence as the image might occasionally put on--in the fine arts1 for instance--would not constitute any iridescence or transformation in the thing2 nor would identity of aspect preserve the thing if its soul1 if its utility1 had disappeared4 ,herein lies the ground for the essential or functional distinction between primary and secondary qualities in things1 a distinction which a psychological scepticism has so hastily declared to be untenable4 ,if it was discovered1 said these logicians1 that space was perceived through reading muscular sensations1 space1 and the muscles too1 were thereby proved to be unreal4 ,this remarkable sophism passed muster in the philosophical world for want of attention to dialectic1 which might so easily have shown that what a thing means is spatial distinction and mechanical efficacy1 and that the origin of our perceptions1 which are all equally bodily and dependent on material stimulation1 has nothing to do with their respective claims to hypostasis4 ,it is intent that makes objects objects2 and the same intent1 defining the function of things1 defines the scope of those qualities which are essential to them4 ,in the flux substances and shadows drift down together2 it is reason that discerns the difference4 ,sidenote3 ,also the scope of ideals4 ,purposes need dialectical articulation as much as essences do1 and without an articulate and fixed purpose1 without an ideal1 action would collapse into mere motion or conscious change4 ,it is notably in this region that elucidation constitutes progress2 for to understand the properties of number may be less important than empirically to count2 but to see and feel the values of things in all their distinction and fulness is the ultimate fruit of efficiency2 it is mastery in that art of life for which all the rest is apprenticeship4 ,dialectic of this sort is practised intuitively by spiritual minds2 and even when it has to be carried on argumentatively it may prove very enlightening4 ,that the excellence of courage is identical with that of wisdom still needs to be driven home2 and that the excellence of poetry is identical with that of all other things probably sounds like a blind paradox4 ,yet did not all excellences conspire to one end and meet in one ,life of ,reason1 how could their relative value be estimated1 or any reflective sanction be found for them at all8 ,the miscellaneous1 captious fancies of the will1 the menagerie of moral prejudices1 still call for many a ,socrates to tame them4 ,so long as courage means a grimace of mind or body1 the love of it is another grimace4 ,but if it meant the value1 recognisable by reason and diffused through all life1 which that casual attitude or feeling might have1 then we should be launched upon the quest for wisdom4 ,the want of integration in moral views is like what want of integration would be in arithmetic if we declared that it was the part of a man and a ,christian to maintain that my two equals four or that a green fifteen is a hundred4 ,these propositions might have incidental lights and shades in people's lives to make them plausible and precious2 but they could not be maintained by one who had clarified his intent in naming and adding4 ,for then the arithmetical relations would be abstracted1 and their incidental associates would drop out of the account4 ,so a man who is in pursuit of things for the good that is in them must recognise and 7if reason avails7 must pursue what is good in them all4 ,strange customs and unheard-of thoughts may then find their appropriate warrant2 just as in higher mathematical calculations very wonderful and unforeseen results may be arrived at1 which a man will not accept without careful reconsideration of the terms and problem before him2 but if he finds the unexpected conclusion flowing from those premises1 he will have enlarged his knowledge of his art and discovered a congenial good4 ,he will have made progress in the ,socratic science of knowing his own intent4 ,sidenote3 ,double status of mathematics4 ,mathematics1 for all its applications in nature1 is a part of ideal philosophy4 ,it is logic applied to certain simple intuitions4 ,these intuitions and many of their developments happen to appear in that efficacious and self-sustaining moiety of being which we call material2 so that mathematics is per accidens the dialectical study of nature's efficacious form4 ,its use and application in the world rather hide its dialectical principle4 ,mathematics owes its public success to the happy choice of a simple and widely diffused subject-matter2 it owes its inner cogency1 however1 to its ideality and the merely adventitious application it has to existence4 ,mathematics has come to seem the type of good logic because it is an illustration of logic in a sphere so highly abstract in idea and so pervasive in sense as to be at once manageable and useful4 ,the delights and triumphs of mathematics ought1 therefore1 to be a great encouragement to ideal philosophy4 ,if in a comparatively uninteresting field attention can find so many treasures of harmony and order1 what beauties might it not discover in interpreting faithfully ideas nobler than extension and number1 concretions closer to man's spiritual life8 ,but unfortunately the logic of values is subject to voluntary and involuntary confusions of so discouraging a nature that the flight of dialectic in that direction has never been long and1 even when short1 often disastrous4 ,what is needed1 as the example of mathematics shows1 is a steadfast intent and an adventurous inquiry4 ,it would not occur to a geometer to ask with trepidation what difference it would make to the ,pythagorean proposition if the hypothenuse were said to be wise and good4 ,yet metaphysicians1 confounding dialectic with physics and thereby corrupting both1 will discuss for ever the difference it makes to substance whether you call it matter or ,god4 ,nevertheless1 no decorative epithets can give substance any other attributes than those which it has2 that is1 other than the actual appearances that substance is needed to support4 ,similarly1 neither mathematicians nor astronomers are exercised by the question whether ,greek3 pi created the ring of ,saturn2 yet naturalists and logicians have not rejected the analogous problem whether the good did or did not create the animals4 ,sidenote3 ,practical rle of dialectic4 ,so long as in using terms there is no fixed intent1 no concretion in discourse with discernible predicates1 controversy will rage as conceptions waver and will reach no valid result4 ,but when the force of intellect1 once having arrested an idea amid the flux of perceptions1 avails to hold and examine that idea with perseverance1 not only does a flash of light immediately cross the mind1 but deeper and deeper vistas are opened there into ideal truth4 ,the principle of dialectic is intelligence itself2 and as no part of man's economy is more vital than intelligence 7since intelligence is what makes life aware of its destiny71 so no part has a more delightful or exhilarating movement4 ,to understand is pre-eminently to live1 moving not by stimulation and external compulsion1 but by inner direction and control4 ,dialectic is related to observation as art is to industry2 it uses what the other furnishes2 it is the fruition of experience4 ,it is not an alternative to empirical pursuits but their perfection2 for dialectic1 like art1 has no special or private subject-matter1 nor any obligation to be useless4 ,its subject-matter is all things1 and its function is to compare them in form and worth1 giving the mind speculative dominion over them4 ,it profits by the flux to fix its signification4 ,this is precisely what mathematics does for the abstract form and multitude of sensible things2 it is what dialectic might do everywhere1 with the same incidental utility1 if it could settle its own attitude and learn to make the passions steadfast and calm in the consciousness of their ultimate objects4 ,sidenote3 ,hegel's satire on dialectic4 ,the nature of dialectic might be curiously illustrated by reference to ,hegel's ,logic2 and though to approach the subject from ,hegel's satirical angle is not1 perhaps1 quite honest or fair1 the method has a certain spice4 ,hegel1 who despised mathematics1 saw that in other departments the instability of men's meanings defeated their desire to understand themselves4 ,this insecurity in intent he found to be closely connected with change of situation1 with the natural mutability of events and opinions in the world4 ,instead of showing1 however1 what inroads passion1 oblivion1 sophistry1 and frivolity may make into dialectic1 he bethought himself to represent all these incoherences1 which are indeed significant of natural changes1 as the march of dialectic itself1 thus identified with the process of evolution and with natural law4 ,the romance of an unstable and groping theology1 full of warm intentions and impossible ideas1 he took to be typical of all experience and of all science4 ,in that impressionable age any effect of chiaro-oscuro caught in the moonlight of history could find a philosopher to exalt it into the darkly luminous secret of the world4 ,hegel accordingly decreed that men's habit of self-contradiction constituted their providential function1 both in thought and in morals2 and he devoted his ,logic to showing how every idea they embraced 7for he never treated an idea otherwise than as a creed71 when pressed a little1 turned into its opposite4 ,this opposite after a while would fall back into something like the original illusion2 whereupon a new change of insight would occur and a new thought would be accepted until1 the landscape changing1 attention would be attracted to a fresh aspect of the matter and conviction would wander into a new labyrinth of false steps and half-meanings4 ,the sum total of these wanderings1 when viewed from above1 formed an interesting picture4 ,a half-mystical1 half-cynical reflection might take a certain pleasure in contemplating it2 especially if1 in memory of ,calvin and the ,stoics1 this situation were called the expression of ,absolute ,reason and ,divine ,will4 ,we may think for a moment that we have grasped the elusive secret of this philosophy and that it is simply a ,calvinism without ,christianity1 in which ,god's glory consists in the damnation of quite all his creatures4 ,presently1 however1 the scene changes again1 and we recognise that ,creator and creation1 ideal and process1 are identical1 so that the glory belongs to the very multitude that suffers4 ,but finally1 as we rub our eyes1 the whole revelation collapses into a platitude1 and we discover that this glory and this damnation were nothing but unctuous phrases for the vulgar flux of existence4 ,that nothing is what we mean by it is perfectly true when we in no case know what we mean4 ,thus a man who is a mystic by nature may very well become one by reflection also4 ,not knowing what he wants nor what he is1 he may believe that every shift carries him nearer to perfection4 ,a temperamental and quasi-religious thirst for inconclusiveness and room to move on lent a certain triumphant note to ,hegel's satire2 he was sure it all culminated in something1 and was not sure it did not culminate in himself4 ,the system1 however1 as it might strike a less egotistical reader1 is a long demonstration of man's ineptitude and of nature's contemptuous march over a path paved with good intentions4 ,it is an idealism without respect for ideals2 a system of dialectic in which a psychological flux 7not1 of course1 psychological science1 which would involve terms dialectically fixed and determinate7 is made systematically to obliterate intended meanings4 ,sidenote3 ,dialectic expresses a given intent4 ,this spirited travesty of logic has enough historical truth in it to show that dialectic must always stand1 so to speak1 on its apex2 for life is changeful1 and the vision and interest of one moment are not understood in the next4 ,theological dialectic rings hollow when once faith is dead2 grammar looks artificial when a language is foreign2 mathematics itself seems shallow when1 like ,hegel1 we have no love for nature's intelligible mechanism nor for the clear structure and constancy of eternal things4 ,ideal philosophy is a flower of the spirit and varies with the soil4 ,if mathematics suffers so little contradiction1 it is only because the primary aspects of sensation which it elaborates could not lapse from the world without an utter break in its continuity4 ,otherwise though mathematics might not be refuted it might well be despised1 like an obsolete ontology4 ,its boasted necessity and universality would not help it at all if experience should change so much as to present no further mathematical aspect4 ,those who expect to pass at death into a non-spatial and super-temporal world1 where there will be no detestable extended and unthinking substances1 and nothing that need be counted1 will find their hard-learned mathematics sadly superfluous there4 ,the memory of earthly geometry and arithmetic will grow pale amid that floating incense and music1 where dialectic1 if it survives at all1 will have to busy itself on new intuitions4 ,so1 too1 when the landscape changes in the moral world1 when new passions or arts make their appearance1 moral philosophy must start afresh on a new foundation and try to express the ideals involved in the new pursuits4 ,to this extent experience lends colour to ,hegel's dialectical physics2 but he betrayed1 like the sincere pantheist he was1 the finite interests that give actual values to the world1 and he wished to bestow instead a groundless adoration on the law that connected and defeated every ideal4 ,such a genius1 in spite of incisive wit and a certain histrionic sympathy with all experience1 could not be truly free2 it could not throw off its professional priestcraft1 its habit of ceremonious fraud on the surface1 nor1 at heart1 its inhuman religion4 ,sidenote3 ,its empire is ideal and autonomous4 ,the sincere dialectician1 the genuine moralist1 must stand upon human1 ,socratic ground4 ,though art be long1 it must take a short life for its basis and an actual interest for its guide4 ,the liberal dialectician has the gift of conversation2 he does not pretend to legislate from the throne of ,jehovah about the course of affairs1 but asks the ingenuous heart to speak for itself1 guiding and checking it only in its own interest4 ,the result is to express a given nature and to cultivate it2 so that whenever any one possessing such a nature is born into the world he may use this calculation1 and more easily understand and justify his mind4 ,of course1 if experience were no longer the same1 and faculties had entirely varied1 the former interpretation could no longer serve4 ,where nature shows a new principle of growth the mind must find a new method of expression1 and move toward other goals4 ,ideals are not forces stealthily undermining the will2 they are possible forms of being that would frankly express it4 ,these forms are invulnerable1 eternal1 and free2 and he who finds them divine and congenial and is able to embody them at least in part and for a season1 has to that extent transfigured life1 turning it from a fatal process into a liberal art4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,prerational ,,morality ,sidenote3 ,empirical alloy in dialectic4 ,when a polyglot person is speaking1 foreign words sometimes occur to him1 which he at once translates into the language he happens to be using4 ,somewhat in the same way1 when dialectic develops an idea1 suggestions for this development may come from the empirical field2 yet these suggestions soon shed their externality and their place is taken by some genuine development of the original notion4 ,in constructing1 for instance1 the essence of a circle1 ,i may have started from a hoop4 ,i may have observed that as the hoop meanders down the path the roundness of it disappears to the eye1 being gradually flattened into a straight line1 such as the hoop presents when it is rolling directly away from me4 ,i may now frame the idea of a mathematical circle1 in which all diameters are precisely equal1 in express contrast to the series of ellipses1 with very unequal diameters1 which the floundering hoop has illustrated in its career4 ,when once1 however1 the definition of the circle is attained1 no watching of hoops is any longer requisite4 ,the ellipse can be generated ideally out of the definition1 and would have been generated1 like asymptotes and hyperbolas1 even if never illustrated in nature at all4 ,lemmas from a foreign tongue have only served to disclose a great fecundity in the native one1 and the legitimate word that the context required has supplanted the casual stranger that may first have ushered it into the mind4 ,when the idea which dialectic is to elaborate is a moral idea1 a purpose touching something in the concrete world1 lemmas from experience often play a very large part in the process4 ,their multitude1 with the small shifts in aspiration and esteem which they may suggest to the mind1 often obscures the dialectical process altogether4 ,in this case the foreign term is never translated into the native medium2 we never make out what ideal connection our conclusion has with our premises1 nor in what way the conduct we finally decide upon is to fulfil the purpose with which we began4 ,reflection merely beats about the bush1 and when a sufficient number of prejudices and impulses have been driven from cover1 we go home satisfied with our day's ranging1 and feeling that we have left no duty unconsidered2 and our last bird is our final resolution4 ,sidenote3 ,arrested rationality in morals4 ,when morality is in this way non-dialectical1 casual1 impulsive1 polyglot1 it is what we may call prerational morality4 ,there is indeed reason in it1 since every deliberate precept expresses some reflection by which impulses have been compared and modified4 ,but such chance reflection amounts to moral perception1 not to moral science4 ,reason has not begun to educate her children4 ,this morality is like knowing chairs from tables and things near from distant things1 which is hardly what we mean by natural science4 ,on this stage1 in the moral world1 are the judgments of ,mrs4 ,grundy1 the aims of political parties and their maxims1 the principles of war1 the appreciation of art1 the commandments of religious authorities1 special revelations of duty to individuals1 and all systems of intuitive ethics4 ,sidenote3 ,its emotional and practical power4 ,prerational morality is vigorous because it is sincere4 ,actual interests1 rooted habits1 appreciations the opposite of which is inconceivable and contrary to the current use of language1 are embodied in special precepts2 or they flare up of themselves in impassioned judgments4 ,it is hardly too much to say1 indeed1 that prerational morality is morality proper4 ,rational ethics1 in comparison1 seems a kind of politics or wisdom1 while post-rational systems are essentially religions4 ,if we thus identify morality with prerational standards1 we may agree also that morality is no science in itself1 though it may become1 with other matters1 a subject for the science of anthropology2 and ,hume1 who had never come to close quarters with any rational or post-rational ideal1 could say with perfect truth that morality was not founded on reason4 ,instinct is of course not founded on reason1 but vice versa2 and the maxims enforced by tradition or conscience are unmistakably founded on instinct4 ,they might1 it is true1 become materials for reason1 if they were intelligently accepted1 compared1 and controlled2 but such a possibility reverses the partisan and spasmodic methods which ,hume and most other professed moralists associate with ethics4 ,hume's own treatises on morals1 it need hardly be said1 are pure psychology4 ,it would have seemed to him conceited1 perhaps1 to inquire what ought really to be done4 ,he limited himself to asking what men tended to think about their doings4 ,the chief expression of rational ethics which a man in ,hume's world would have come upon lay in the ,platonic and ,aristotelian writings2 but these were not then particularly studied nor vitally understood4 ,the chief illustration of post-rational morality that could have fallen under his eyes1 the ,catholic religion1 he would never have thought of as a philosophy of life1 but merely as a combination of superstition and policy1 well adapted to the lying and lascivious habits of ,mediterranean peoples4 ,under such circumstances ethics could not be thought of as a science2 and whatever gradual definition of the ideal1 whatever prescription of what ought to be and to be done1 found a place in the thoughts of such philosophers formed a part of their politics or religion and not of their reasoned knowledge4 ,sidenote3 ,moral science is an application of dialectic1 not a part of anthropology4 ,there is1 however1 a dialectic of the will2 and that is the science which1 for want of a better name1 we must call ethics or moral philosophy4 ,the interweaving of this logic of practice with various natural sciences that have man or society for their theme1 leads to much confusion in terminology and in point of view4 ,is the good1 we may ask1 what anybody calls good at any moment1 or what anybody calls good on reflection1 or what all men agree to call good1 or what ,god calls good1 no matter what all mankind may think about it8 ,or is true good something that perhaps nobody calls good nor knows of1 something with no other characteristic or relation except that it is simply good8 ,various questions are involved in such perplexing alternatives2 some are physical questions and others dialectical4 ,why any one values anything at all1 or anything in particular1 is a question of physics2 it asks for the causes of interest1 judgment1 and desire4 ,to esteem a thing good is to express certain affinities between that thing and the speaker2 and if this is done with self-knowledge and with knowledge of the thing1 so that the felt affinity is a real one1 the judgment is invulnerable and cannot be asked to rescind itself4 ,thus if a man said hemlock was good to drink1 we might say he was mistaken2 but if he explained that he meant good to drink in committing suicide1 there would be nothing pertinent left to say3 for to adduce that to commit suicide is not good would be impertinent4 ,to establish that1 we should have to go back and ask him if he valued anything--life1 parents1 country1 knowledge1 reputation2 and if he said no1 and was sincere1 our mouths would be effectually stopped--that is1 unless we took to declamation4 ,but we might very well turn to the bystanders and explain what sort of blood and training this man possessed1 and what had happened among the cells and fibres of his brain to make him reason after that fashion4 ,the causes of morality1 good or bad1 are physical1 seeing that they are causes4 ,the science of ethics1 however1 has nothing to do with causes1 not in that it need deny or ignore them but in that it is their fruit and begins where they end4 ,incense rises from burning coals1 but it is itself no conflagration1 and will produce none4 ,what ethics asks is not why a thing is called good1 but whether it is good or not1 whether it is right or not so to esteem it4 ,goodness1 in this ideal sense1 is not a matter of opinion1 but of nature4 ,for intent is at work1 life is in active operation1 and the question is whether the thing or the situation responds to that intent4 ,so if ,i ask1 ,is four really twice two8 the answer is not that most people say so1 but that1 in saying so1 ,i am not misunderstanding myself4 ,to judge whether things are really good1 intent must be made to speak2 and if this intent may itself be judged later1 that happens by virtue of other intents comparing the first with their own direction4 ,hence good1 when once the moral or dialectical attitude has been assumed1 means not what is called good but what is so2 that is1 what ought to be called good4 ,for intent1 beneath which there is no moral judgment1 sets up its own standard1 and ideal science begins on that basis1 and cannot go back of it to ask why the obvious good is good at all4 ,naturally1 there is a reason1 but not a moral one2 for it lies in the physical habit and necessity of things4 ,the reason is simply the propulsive essence of animals and of the universal flux1 which renders forms possible but unstable1 and either helpful or hurtful to one another4 ,that nature should have this constitution1 or intent this direction1 is not a good in itself4 ,it is esteemed good or bad as the intent that speaks finds in that situation a support or an obstacle to its ideal4 ,as a matter of fact1 nature and the very existence of life cannot be thought wholly evil1 since no intent is wholly at war with these its conditions2 nor can nature and life be sincerely regarded as wholly good1 since no moral intent stops at the facts2 nor does the universal flux1 which infinitely overflows any actual synthesis1 altogether support any intent it may generate4 ,sidenote3 ,estimation the soul of philosophy4 ,philosophers would do a great discourtesy to estimation if they sought to justify it4 ,it is all other acts that need justification by this one4 ,the good greets us initially in every experience and in every object4 ,remove from anything its share of excellence and you have made it utterly insignificant1 irrelevant to human discourse1 and unworthy of even theoretic consideration4 ,value is the principle of perspective in science1 no less than of rightness in life4 ,the hierarchy of goods1 the architecture of values1 is the subject that concerns man most4 ,wisdom is the first philosophy1 both in time and in authority2 and to collect facts or to chop logic would be idle and would add no dignity to the mind1 unless that mind possessed a clear humanity and could discern what facts and logic are good for and what not4 ,the facts would remain facts and the truths truths2 for of course values1 accruing on account of animal souls and their affections1 cannot possibly create the universe those animals inhabit4 ,but both facts and truths would remain trivial1 fit to awaken no pang1 no interest1 and no rapture4 ,the first philosophers were accordingly sages4 ,they were statesmen and poets who knew the world and cast a speculative glance at the heavens1 the better to understand the conditions and limits of human happiness4 ,before their day1 too1 wisdom had spoken in proverbs4 ,it is better every adage began3 ,better this than that4 ,images or symbols1 mythical or homely events1 of course furnished subjects and provocations for these judgments2 but the residuum of all observation was a settled estimation of things1 a direction chosen in thought and life because it was better4 ,such was philosophy in the beginning and such is philosophy still4 ,sidenote3 ,moral discriminations are natural and inevitable4 ,to one brought up in a sophisticated society1 or in particular under an ethical religion morality seems at first an external command1 a chilling and arbitrary set of requirements and prohibitions which the young heart1 if it trusted itself1 would not reckon at a penny's worth4 ,yet while this rebellion is brewing in the secret conclave of the passions1 the passions themselves are prescribing a code4 ,they are inventing gallantry and kindness and honour2 they are discovering friendship and paternity4 ,with maturity comes the recognition that the authorised precepts of morality were essentially not arbitrary2 that they expressed the genuine aims and interests of a practised will2 that their alleged alien and supernatural basis 7which if real would have deprived them of all moral authority7 was but a mythical cover for their forgotten natural springs4 ,virtue is then seen to be admirable essentially1 and not merely by conventional imputation4 ,if traditional morality has much in it that is out of proportion1 much that is unintelligent and inert1 nevertheless it represents on the whole the verdict of reason4 ,it speaks for a typical human will chastened by a typical human experience4 ,sidenote3 ,a choice of proverbs4 ,gnomic wisdom1 however1 is notoriously polychrome1 and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to4 ,almost every wise saying has an opposite one1 no less wise1 to balance it2 so that a man rich in such lore1 like ,sancho ,panza1 can always find a venerable maxim to fortify the view he happens to be taking4 ,in respect to foresight1 for instance1 we are told1 ,make hay while the sun shines1 ,a stitch in time saves nine1 ,honesty is the best policy1 ,murder will out1 ,woe unto you1 ye hypocrites1 ,watch and pray1 ,seek salvation with fear and trembling1 and ,respice finem4 ,but on the same authorities exactly we have opposite maxims1 inspired by a feeling that mortal prudence is fallible1 that life is shorter than policy1 and that only the present is real2 for we hear1 ,a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush1 ,carpe diem1 ,ars longa1 vita brevis4 ,be not righteous overmuch1 ,enough for the day is the evil thereof1 ,behold the lilies of the field1 ,judge not1 that ye be not judged1 ,mind your own business1 and ,it takes all sorts of men to make a world4 ,so when some particularly shocking thing happens one man says1 ,cherchez la femme1 and another says1 ,great is ,allah4 ,that these maxims should be so various and partial is quite intelligible when we consider how they spring up4 ,every man1 in moral reflection1 is animated by his own intent2 he has something in view which he prizes1 he knows not why1 and which wears to him the essential and unquestionable character of a good4 ,with this standard before his eyes1 he observes easily--for love and hope are extraordinarily keen-sighted--what in action or in circumstances forwards his purpose and what thwarts it2 and at once the maxim comes1 very likely in the language of the particular instance before him4 ,now the interests that speak in a man are different at different times2 and the outer facts or measures which in one case promote that interest may1 where other less obvious conditions have changed1 altogether defeat it4 ,hence all sorts of precepts looking to all sorts of results4 ,sidenote3 ,their various representative value4 ,prescriptions of this nature differ enormously in value2 for they differ enormously in scope4 ,by chance1 or through the insensible operation of experience leading up to some outburst of genius1 intuitive maxims may be so central1 so expressive of ultimate aims1 so representative1 ,i mean1 of all aims in fusion1 that they merely anticipate what moral science would have come to if it had existed4 ,this happens much as in physics ultimate truths may be divined by poets long before they are discovered by investigators2 the vivida vis animi taking the place of much recorded experience1 because much unrecorded experience has secretly fed it4 ,such1 for instance1 is the central maxim of ,christianity1 ,love thy neighbour as thyself4 ,on the other hand1 what is usual in intuitive codes is a mixture of some elementary precepts1 necessary to any society1 with others representing local traditions or ancient rites3 so ,thou shalt not kill1 and ,thou shalt keep holy the ,sabbath day1 figure side by side in the ,decalogue4 ,when ,antigone1 in her sublimest exaltation1 defies human enactments and appeals to laws which are not of to-day nor yesterday1 no man knowing whence they have arisen1 she mixes various types of obligation in a most instructive fashion2 for a superstitious horror at leaving a body unburied--something decidedly of yesterday--gives poignancy in her mind to natural affection for a brother--something indeed universal1 yet having a well-known origin4 ,the passionate assertion of right is here1 in consequence1 more dramatic than spiritual2 and even its dramatic force has suffered somewhat by the change in ruling ideals4 ,sidenote3 ,conflict of partial moralities4 ,the disarray of intuitive ethics is made painfully clear in the conflicts which it involves when it has fostered two incompatible growths in two centres which lie near enough to each other to come into physical collision4 ,such ethics has nothing to offer in the presence of discord except an appeal to force and to ultimate physical sanctions4 ,it can instigate1 but cannot resolve1 the battle of nations and the battle of religions4 ,precisely the same zeal1 the same patriotism1 the same readiness for martyrdom fires adherents to rival societies1 and fires them especially in view of the fact that the adversary is no less uncompromising and fierce4 ,it might seem idle1 if not cruel and malicious1 to wish to substitute one historical allegiance for another1 when both are equally arbitrary1 and the existing one is the more congenial to those born under it2 but to feel this aggression to be criminal demands some degree of imagination and justice1 and sectaries would not be sectaries if they possessed it4 ,truly religious minds1 while eager perhaps to extirpate every religion but their own1 often rise above national jealousies2 for spirituality is universal1 whatever churches may be4 ,similarly politicians often understand very well the religious situation2 and of late it has become again the general practice among prudent governments to do as the ,romans did in their conquests1 and to leave people free to exercise what religion they have1 without pestering them with a foreign one4 ,on the other hand the same politicians are the avowed agents of a quite patent iniquity2 for what is their ideal8 ,to substitute their own language1 commerce1 soldiers1 and tax-gatherers for the tax-gatherers1 soldiers1 commerce1 and language of their neighbours2 and no means is thought illegitimate1 be it fraud in policy or bloodshed in war1 to secure this absolutely nugatory end4 ,is not one country as much a country as another8 ,is it not as dear to its inhabitants8 ,what then is gained by oppressing its genius or by seeking to destroy it altogether8 ,here are two flagrant instances where prerational morality defeats the ends of morality4 ,viewed from within1 each religious or national fanaticism stands for a good2 but in its outward operation it produces and becomes an evil4 ,it is possible1 no doubt1 that its agents are really so far apart in nature and ideals that1 like men and mosquitoes1 they can stand in physical relations only1 and if they meet can meet only to poison or to crush one another4 ,more probably1 however1 humanity in them is no merely nominal essence2 it is definable ideally1 as essences are defined1 by a partially identical function and intent4 ,in that case1 by studying their own nature1 they could rise above their mutual opposition1 and feel that in their fanaticism they were taking too contracted a view of their own souls and were hardly doing justice to themselves when they did such great injustice to others4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,greek ideal4 ,how prerational morality may approach the goal1 and miss it1 is well illustrated in the history of ,hellenism4 ,greek morals may be said to have been inspired by two prerational sentiments1 a naturalistic religion and a local patriotism4 ,could ,plato have succeeded in making that religion moral1 or ,alexander in universalising that patriotism1 perhaps ,greece might have been saved and we might all be now at a very different level of civilisation4 ,both ,plato and ,alexander failed1 in spite of the immense and lasting influence of their work2 for in both cases the after-effects were spurious1 and the new spirit was smothered in the dull substances it strove to vivify4 ,greek myth was an exuberant assertion of the rights of life in the universe4 ,existence could not but be joyful and immortal1 if it had once found1 in land1 sea1 or air1 a form congruous with that element4 ,such congruity would render a being stable1 efficient1 beautiful4 ,he would achieve a perfection grounded in skilful practice and in a thorough rejection of whatever was irrelevant4 ,these things the ,greeks called virtue4 ,the gods were perfect models of this kind of excellence2 for of course the amours of ,zeus and ,hermes' trickery were1 in their hearty fashion1 splendid manifestations of energy4 ,this natural divine virtue carried no sense of responsibility with it1 but it could not fail to diffuse benefit because it radiated happiness and beauty4 ,the worshipper1 by invoking those braver inhabitants of the cosmos1 felt he might more easily attain a corresponding beauty and happiness in his paternal city4 ,sidenote3 ,imaginative exuberance and political discipline4 ,the source of myth had been a genial sympathy with nature4 ,the observer1 at ease himself1 multiplied ideally the potentialities of his being2 but he went farther in imagining what life might yield abroad1 freed from every trammel and necessity1 than in deepening his sense of what life was in himself1 and of what it ought to be4 ,this moral reflection1 absent from mythology1 was supplied by politics4 ,the family and the state had a soberer antique religion of their own2 this hereditary piety1 together with the laws1 prescribed education1 customs1 and duties4 ,the city drew its walls close about the heart1 and while it fostered friendship and reason within1 without it looked to little but war4 ,a splendid physical and moral discipline was established to serve a suicidal egoism4 ,the city committed its crimes1 and the individual indulged his vices of conduct and estimation1 hardly rebuked by philosophy and quite unrebuked by religion4 ,nevertheless1 religion and philosophy existed1 together with an incomparable literature and art1 and an unrivalled measure and simplicity in living4 ,a liberal fancy and a strict civic regimen1 starting with different partial motives and blind purposes1 combined by good fortune into an almost rational life4 ,it was inevitable1 however1 when only an irrational tradition supported the state1 and kept it so weak amid a world of enemies1 that this state should succumb2 not to speak of the mean animosities1 the license in life1 and the spirit of mockery that inwardly infested it4 ,the myths1 too1 faded2 they had expressed a fleeting moment of poetic insight1 as patriotism had expressed a fleeting moment of unanimous effort2 but what force could sustain such accidental harmonies8 ,the patriotism soon lost its power to inspire sacrifice1 and the myth its power to inspire wonder2 so that the relics of that singular civilisation were scattered almost at once in the general flood of the world4 ,sidenote3 ,sterility of ,greek example4 ,the ,greek ideal has fascinated many men in all ages1 who have sometimes been in a position to set a fashion1 so that the world in general has pretended also to admire4 ,but the truth is ,hellas1 in leaving so many heirlooms to mankind1 has left no constitutional benefit2 it has taught the conscience no lesson4 ,we possess a great heritage from ,greece1 but it is no natural endowment4 ,an artistic renaissance in the fifteenth century and a historical one in the nineteenth have only affected the trappings of society4 ,the movement has come from above4 ,it has not found any response in the people4 ,while ,greek morality1 in its contents or in the type of life it prescribes1 comes nearer than any other prerational experiment to what reason might propose1 yet it has been less useful than many other influences in bringing the ,life of ,reason about4 ,the ,christian and the ,moslem1 in refining their more violent inspiration1 have brought us nearer to genuine goodness than the ,greek could by his idle example4 ,classic perfection is a seedless flower1 imitable only by artifice1 not reproducible by generation4 ,it is capable of influencing character only through the intellect1 the means by which character can be influenced least4 ,it is a detached ideal1 responding to no crying and actual demand in the world at large4 ,it never passed1 to win the right of addressing mankind1 through a sufficient novitiate of sorrow4 ,sidenote3 ,prerational morality among the ,jews4 ,the ,hebrews1 on the contrary1 who in comparison with the ,greeks had a barbarous idea of happiness1 showed far greater moral cohesion under the pressure of adversity4 ,they integrated their purposes into a fanaticism1 but they integrated them2 and the integrity that resulted became a mighty example4 ,it constituted an ideal of character not the less awe-inspiring for being merely formal4 ,we need not marvel that abstract commandments should have impressed the world more than concrete ideals4 ,to appreciate an ideal1 to love and serve it in the full light of science and reason1 would require a high intelligence1 and1 what is rarer still1 noble affinities and renunciations which are not to be looked for in an undisciplined people4 ,but to feel the truth and authority of an abstract maxim 7as1 for instance1 ,do right and shame the devil71 a maxim applicable to experience on any plane1 nothing is needed but a sound wit and common honesty4 ,men know better what is right and wrong than what is ultimately good or evil2 their conscience is more vividly present to them than the fruits which obedience to conscience might bear2 so that the logical relation of means to ends1 of methods to activities1 eludes them altogether4 ,what is a necessary connection between the given end1 happiness1 and the normal life naturally possessing it1 appears to them as a miraculous connection between obedience to ,god's commands and enjoyment of his favour4 ,the evidence of this miracle astonishes them and fills them with zeal4 ,they are strengthened to persevere in righteousness under any stress of misfortune1 in the assurance that they are being put to a temporary test and that the reward promised to virtue will eventually be theirs4 ,sidenote3 ,the development of conscience4 ,thus a habit of faithfulness1 a trust in general principles1 is fostered and ingrained in generation after generation--a rare and precious heritage for a race so imperfectly rational as the human4 ,reason would of course justify the same constancy in well-doing1 since a course of conduct would not be right1 but wrong1 if its ultimate issue were human misery4 ,but as the happiness secured by virtue may be remote and may demand more virtue to make it appreciable1 the mere rationality of a habit gives it no currency in the world and but little moral glow in the conscience4 ,we should not1 therefore1 be too much offended at the illusions which play a part in moral integration4 ,imagination is often more efficacious in reaching the gist and meaning of experience than intelligence can be1 just because imagination is less scrupulous and more instinctive4 ,even physical discoveries1 when they come1 are the fruit of divination1 and ,columbus had to believe he might sail westward to ,india before he could actually hit upon ,america4 ,reason cannot create itself1 and nature1 in producing reason1 has to feel her way experimentally4 ,habits and chance systems of education have to arise first and exercise upon individuals an irrational suasion favourable to rational ends4 ,men long live in substantial harmony with reality before they recognise its nature4 ,organs long exist before they reach their perfect function4 ,the fortunate instincts of a race destined to long life and rationality express themselves in significant poetry before they express themselves in science4 ,the service which ,hebraism has rendered to mankind has been instrumental1 as that rendered by ,hellenism has been imaginative4 ,hebraism has put earnestness and urgency into morality1 making it a matter of duty1 at once private and universal1 rather than what paganism had left it1 a mass of local allegiances and legal practices4 ,the ,jewish system has1 in consequence1 a tendency to propaganda and intolerance2 a tendency which would not have proved nefarious had this religion always remained true to its moral principle2 for morality is coercive and no man1 being autonomous1 has a right to do wrong4 ,conscience1 thus reinforced by religious passion1 has been able to focus a general abhorrence on certain great scandals--slavery and sodomy could be practically suppressed among ,christians1 and drunkenness among ,moslems4 ,the ,christian principle of charity also owed a part of its force to ,hebraic tradition4 ,for the law and the prophets were full of mercy and loving kindness toward the faithful4 ,what ,moses had taught his people ,christ and his ,hellenising disciples had the beautiful courage to preach to all mankind4 ,yet this virtue of charity1 on its subtler and more metaphysical side1 belongs to the spirit of redemption1 to that ascetic and quasi-,buddhistic element in ,christianity to which we shall presently revert4 ,the pure ,jews can have no part in such insight1 because it contradicts the positivism of their religion and character and their ideal of worldly happiness4 ,sidenote3 ,need of ,hebraic devotion to ,greek aims4 ,as the human body is said to change all its substance every seven years1 and yet is the same body1 so the ,hebraic conscience might change all its tenets in seven generations and be the same conscience still4 ,could this abstract moral habit1 this transferable earnestness1 be enlisted in rational causes1 the ,life of ,reason would have gained a valuable instrument4 ,men would possess the 8single eye10 and the art1 so difficult to an ape-like creature with loose moral feelings1 of acting on principle4 ,could the vision of an adequate natural ideal fall into the ,hebraising mind1 already aching for action and nerved to practical enthusiasm1 that ideal vision might become efficacious and be largely realised in practice4 ,the abstract power of self-direction1 if enlightened by a larger experience and a more fertile genius1 might give the ,life of ,reason a public embodiment such as it has not had since the best days of classic antiquity4 ,thus the two prerational moralities out of which ,european civilisation has grown1 could they be happily superposed1 would make a rational polity4 ,sidenote3 ,prerational morality marks an acquisition but offers no programme4 ,the objects of human desire1 then1 until reason has compared and experience has tested them1 are a miscellaneous assortment of goods1 unstable in themselves and incompatible with one another4 ,it is a happy chance if a tolerable mixture of them recommends itself to a prophet or finds an adventitious acceptance among a group of men4 ,intuitive morality is adequate while it simply enforces those obvious and universal laws which are indispensable to any society1 and which impose themselves everywhere on men under pain of quick extinction--a penalty which many an individual and many a nation continually prefers to pay4 ,but when intuitive morality ventures upon speculative ground and tries to guide progress1 its magic fails4 ,ideals are tentative and have to be critically viewed4 ,a moralist who rests in his intuitions may be a good preacher1 but hardly deserves the name of philosopher4 ,he cannot find any authority for his maxims which opposite maxims may not equally invoke4 ,to settle the relative merits of rival authorities and of hostile consciences it is necessary to appeal to the only real authority1 to experience1 reason1 and human nature in the living man4 ,no other test is conceivable and no other would be valid2 for no good man would ever consent to regard an authority as divine or binding which essentially contradicted his own conscience4 ,yet a conscience which is irreflective and incorrigible is too hastily satisfied with itself1 and not conscientious enough3 it needs cultivation by dialectic4 ,it neglects to extend to all human interests that principle of synthesis and justice by which conscience itself has arisen4 ,and so soon as the conscience summons its own dicta for revision in the light of experience and of universal sympathy1 it is no longer called conscience1 but reason4 ,so1 too1 when the spirit summons its traditional faiths1 to subject them to a similar examination1 that exercise is not called religion1 but philosophy4 ,it is true1 in a sense1 that philosophy is the purest religion and reason the ultimate conscience2 but so to name them would be misleading4 ,the things commonly called by those names have seldom consented to live at peace with sincere reflection4 ,it has been felt vaguely that reason could not have produced them1 and that they might suffer sad changes by submitting to it2 as if reason could be the ground of anything1 or as if everything might not find its consummation in becoming rational4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,rational ,,ethics ,sidenote3 ,moral passions represent private interests4 ,in moral reprobation there is often a fanatical element1 ,i mean that hatred which an animal may sometimes feel for other animals on account of their strange aspect1 or because their habits put him to serious inconvenience1 or because these habits1 if he himself adopted them1 might be vicious in him4 ,such aversion1 however1 is not a rational sentiment4 ,no fault can be justly found with a creature merely for not resembling another1 or for nourishing in a different physical or moral environment4 ,it has been an unfortunate consequence of mythical philosophies that moral emotions have been stretched to objects with which a man has only physical relations1 so that the universe has been filled with monsters more or less horrible1 according as the forces they represented were more or less formidable to human life4 ,in the same spirit1 every experiment in civilisation has passed for a crime among those engaged in some other experiment4 ,the foreigner has seemed an insidious rascal1 the heretic a pestilent sinner1 and any material obstacle a literal devil2 while to possess some unusual passion1 however innocent1 has brought obloquy on every one unfortunate enough not to be constituted like the average of his neighbours4 ,ethics1 if it is to be a science and not a piece of arbitrary legislation1 cannot pronounce it sinful in a serpent to be a serpent2 it cannot even accuse a barbarian of loving a wrong life1 except in so far as the barbarian is supposed capable of accusing himself of barbarism4 ,if he is a perfect barbarian he will be inwardly1 and therefore morally1 justified4 ,the notion of a barbarian will then be accepted by him as that of a true man1 and will form the basis of whatever rational judgments or policy he attains4 ,it may still seem dreadful to him to be a serpent1 as to be a barbarian might seem dreadful to a man imbued with liberal interests4 ,but the degree to which moral science1 or the dialectic of will1 can condemn any type of life depends on the amount of disruptive contradiction which1 at any reflective moment1 that life brings under the unity of apperception4 ,the discordant impulses therein confronted will challenge and condemn one another2 and the court of reason in which their quarrel is ventilated will have authority to pronounce between them4 ,the physical repulsion1 however1 which everybody feels to habits and interests which he is incapable of sharing is no part of rational estimation1 large as its share may be in the fierce prejudices and superstitions which prerational morality abounds in4 ,the strongest feelings assigned to the conscience are not moral feelings at all2 they express merely physical antipathies4 ,toward alien powers a man's true weapon is not invective1 but skill and strength4 ,an obstacle is an obstacle1 not a devil2 and even a moral life1 when it actually exists in a being with hostile activities1 is merely a hostile power4 ,it is not hostile1 however1 in so far as it is moral1 but only in so far as its morality represents a material organism1 physically incompatible with what the thinker has at heart4 ,sidenote3 ,common ideal interests may supervene4 ,material conflicts cannot be abolished by reason1 because reason is powerful only where they have been removed4 ,yet where opposing forces are able mutually to comprehend and respect one another1 common ideal interests at once supervene1 and though the material conflict may remain irrepressible1 it will be overlaid by an intellectual life1 partly common and unanimous4 ,in this lies the chivalry of war1 that we acknowledge the right of others to pursue ends contrary to our own4 ,competitors who are able to feel this ideal comity1 and who leading different lives in the flesh lead the same life in imagination1 are incited by their mutual understanding to rise above that material ambition1 perhaps gratuitous1 that has made them enemies4 ,they may ultimately wish to renounce that temporal good which deprives them of spiritual goods in truth infinitely greater and more appealing to the soul--innocence1 justice1 and intelligence4 ,they may prefer an enlarged mind to enlarged frontiers1 and the comprehension of things foreign to the destruction of them4 ,they may even aspire to detachment from those private interests which1 as ,plato said1,h do not deserve to be taken too seriously2 the fact that we must take them seriously being the ignoble part of our condition4 ,of course such renunciations1 to be rational1 must not extend to the whole material basis of life1 since some physical particularity and efficiency are requisite for bringing into being that very rationality which is to turn enemies into friends4 ,the need of a material basis for spirit is what renders partial war with parts of the world the inevitable background of charity and justice4 ,the frontiers at which this warfare is waged may1 however1 be pushed back indefinitely4 ,within the sphere organised about a firm and generous life a ,roman peace can be established4 ,it is not what is assimilated that saps a creative will1 but what remains outside that ultimately invades and disrupts it4 ,in exact proportion to its vigour1 it wins over former enemies1 civilises the barbarian1 and even tames the viper1 when the eye is masterful and sympathetic enough to dispel hatred and fear4 ,the more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others2 for these concessions1 being just1 propagate its essence4 ,the ideal commonwealth can extend to the limit at which such concessions cease to be just and are thereby detrimental4 ,beyond or below that limit strife must continue for physical ascendancy1 so that the power and the will to be reasonable may not be undermined4 ,reason is an operation in nature1 and has its root there4 ,saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors1 nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths4 ,sidenote3 ,to this extent there is rational society4 ,perhaps the art of politics1 if it were practised scientifically1 might obviate open war1 religious enmities1 industrial competition1 and human slavery2 but it would certainly not leave a free field for all animals nor for all monstrosities in men4 ,even while admitting the claims of monsters to be treated humanely1 reason could not suffer them to absorb those material resources which might be needed to maintain rational society at its highest efficiency4 ,we cannot1 at this immense distance from a rational social order1 judge what concessions individual genius would be called upon to make in a system of education and government in which all attainable goods should be pursued scientifically4 ,concessions would certainly be demanded1 if not from well-trained wills1 still from inevitable instincts1 reacting on inevitable accidents4 ,there is tragedy in perfection1 because the universe in which perfection arises is itself imperfect4 ,accidents will always continue to harass the most consummate organism2 they will flow in both from the outer world and from the interstices1 so to speak1 of its own machinery2 for a rational life touches the irrational at its core as well as at its periphery4 ,in both directions it meets physical force and can subsist only by exercising physical force in return4 ,the range of rational ethics is limited to the intermediate political zone1 in which existences have attained some degree of natural unanimity4 ,it should be added1 perhaps1 that the frontiers between moral and physical action are purely notional4 ,real existences do not lie wholly on one or the other side of them4 ,every man1 every material object1 has moral affinities enveloping an indomitable vital nucleus or brute personal kernel2 this moral essence is enveloped in turn by untraceable relations1 radiating to infinity over the natural world4 ,the stars enter society by the light and knowledge they afford1 the time they keep1 and the ornament they lavish2 but they are mere dead weights in their substance and cosmological puzzles in their destiny4 ,you and ,i possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share2 but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable1 incommunicable dreams4 ,beyond the little span of his foresight and love1 each is merely a physical agency1 preparing the way quite irresponsibly for undreamt-of revolutions and alien lives4 ,sidenote3 ,a rational morality not attainable1 ,a truly rational morality1 or social regimen1 has never existed in the world and is hardly to be looked for4 ,what guides men and nations in their practice is always some partial interest or some partial disillusion4 ,a rational morality would imply perfect self-knowledge1 so that no congenial good should be needlessly missed--least of all practical reason or justice itself2 so that no good congenial to other creatures would be needlessly taken from them4 ,the total value which everything had from the agent's point of view would need to be determined and felt efficaciously2 and1 among other things1 the total value which this point of view1 with the conduct it justified1 would have for every foreign interest which it affected4 ,such knowledge1 such definition of purpose1 and such perfection of sympathy are clearly beyond man's reach4 ,all that can be hoped for is that the advance of science and commerce1 by fostering peace and a rational development of character1 may bring some part of mankind nearer to that goal2 but the goal lies1 as every ultimate ideal should1 at the limit of what is possible1 and must serve rather to measure achievements than to prophesy them4 ,sidenote3 but its principle clear4 ,in lieu of a rational morality1 however1 we have rational ethics2 and this mere idea of a rational morality is something valuable4 ,while we wait for the sentiments1 customs1 and laws which should embody perfect humanity and perfect justice1 we may observe the germinal principle of these ideal things2 we may sketch the ground-plan of a true commonwealth4 ,this sketch constitutes rational ethics1 as founded by ,socrates1 glorified by ,plato1 and sobered and solidified by ,aristotle4 ,it sets forth the method of judgment and estimation which a rational morality would apply universally and express in practice4 ,the method1 being very simple1 can be discovered and largely illustrated in advance1 while the complete self-knowledge and sympathy are still wanting which might avail to embody that method in the concrete and to discover unequivocally where absolute duty and ultimate happiness may lie4 ,sidenote3 ,it is the logic of an autonomous will4 ,this method1 the ,socratic method1 consists in accepting any estimation which any man may sincerely make1 and in applying dialectic to it1 so as to let the man see what he really esteems4 ,what he really esteems is what ought to guide his conduct2 for to suggest that a rational being ought to do what he feels to be wrong1 or ought to pursue what he genuinely thinks is worthless1 would be to impugn that man's rationality and to discredit one's own4 ,with what face could any man or god say to another3 ,your duty is to do what you cannot know you ought to do2 your function is to suffer what you cannot recognise to be worth suffering8 ,such an attitude amounts to imposture and excludes society2 it is the attitude of a detestable tyrant1 and any one who mistakes it for moral authority has not yet felt the first heart-throb of philosophy4 ,sidenote3 ,socrates' science4 ,more even than natural philosophy1 moral philosophy is something ,greek3 it is the appanage of freemen4 ,the ,socratic method is the soul of liberal conversation2 it is compacted in equal measure of sincerity and courtesy4 ,each man is autonomous and all are respected2 and nothing is brought forward except to be submitted to reason and accepted or rejected by the self-questioning heart4 ,indeed1 when ,socrates appeared in ,athens mutual respect had passed into democracy and liberty into license2 but the stalwart virtue of ,socrates saved him from being a sophist1 much as his method1 when not honestly and sincerely used1 might seem to countenance that moral anarchy which the sophists had expressed in their irresponsible doctrines4 ,their sophistry did not consist in the private seat which they assigned to judgment2 for what judgment is there that is not somebody's judgment at some moment8 ,the sophism consisted in ignoring the living moment's intent1 and in suggesting that no judgment could refer to anything ulterior1 and therefore that no judgment could be wrong3 in other words that each man at each moment was the theme and standard1 as well as the seat1 of his judgment4 ,socrates escaped this folly by force of honesty1 which is what saves from folly in dialectic4 ,he built his whole science precisely on that intent which the sophists ignored2 he insisted that people should declare sincerely what they meant and what they wanted2 and on that living rock he founded the persuasive and ideal sciences of logic and ethics1 the necessity of which lies all in free insight and in actual will4 ,this will and insight they render deliberate1 profound1 unshakable1 and consistent4 ,socrates1 by his genial midwifery1 helped men to discover the truth and excellence to which they were naturally addressed4 ,this circumstance rendered his doctrine at once moral and scientific2 scientific because dialectical1 moral because expressive of personal and living aspirations4 ,his ethics was not like what has since passed under that name--a spurious physics1 accompanied by commandments and threats4 ,it was a pliant and liberal expression of ideals1 inwardly grounded and spontaneously pursued4 ,it was an exercise in self-knowledge4 ,sidenote3 ,its opposition to sophistry and moral anarchy4 ,socrates' liberality was that of a free man ready to maintain his will and conscience1 if need be1 against the whole world4 ,the sophists1 on the contrary1 were sycophants in their scepticism1 and having inwardly abandoned the ideals of their race and nation--which ,socrates defended with his homely irony--they dealt out their miscellaneous knowledge1 or their talent in exposition1 at the beck and for the convenience of others4 ,their theory was that each man having a right to pursue his own aims1 skilful thinkers might1 for money1 furnish any fellow-mortal with instruments fitted to his purpose4 ,socrates1 on the contrary1 conceived that each man1 to achieve his aims must first learn to distinguish them clearly2 he demanded that rationality1 in the form of an examination and clarification of purposes1 should precede any selection of external instruments4 ,for how should a man recognise anything useful unless he first had established the end to be subserved and thereby recognised the good8 ,true science1 then1 was that which enabled a man to disentangle and attain his natural good2 and such a science is also the art of life and the whole of virtue4 ,the autonomous moralist differs from the sophist or ethical sceptic in this3 that he retains his integrity4 ,in vindicating his ideal he does not recant his human nature4 ,in asserting the initial right of every impulse in others1 he remains the spokesman of his own4 ,knowledge of the world1 courtesy1 and fairness do not neutralise his positive life4 ,he is thoroughly sincere1 as the sophist is not2 for every man1 while he lives1 embodies and enacts some special interest2 and this truth1 which those who confound psychology with ethics may think destructive of all authority in morals1 is in fact what alone renders moral judgment possible and respectable4 ,if the sophist declares that what his nature attaches him to is not 8really0 a good1 because it would not be a good1 perhaps1 for a different creature1 he is a false interpreter of his own heart1 and rather discreditably stultifies his honest feelings and actions by those theoretical valuations which1 in guise of a mystical ethics1 he gives out to the world4 ,socratic liberality1 on the contrary1 is consistent with itself1 as ,spinozistic naturalism is also2 for it exercises that right of private judgment which it concedes to others1 and avowedly builds up the idea of the good on that natural inner foundation on which everybody who has it at all must inevitably build it4 ,this functional good is accordingly always relative and good for something2 it is the ideal which a vital and energising soul carries with it as it moves4 ,it is identical1 as ,socrates constantly taught1 with the useful1 the helpful1 the beneficent4 ,it is the complement needed to perfect every art and every activity after its own kind4 ,sidenote3 ,its vitality ,rational ethics is an embodiment of volition1 not a description of it4 ,it is the expression of living interest1 preference1 and categorical choice4 ,it leaves to psychology and history a free field for the description of moral phenomena4 ,it has no interest in slipping far-fetched and incredible myths beneath the facts of nature1 so as to lend a non-natural origin to human aspirations4 ,it even recognises1 as an emanation of its own force1 that uncompromising truthfulness with which science assigns all forms of moral life to their place in the mechanical system of nature4 ,but the rational moralist is not on that account reduced to a mere spectator1 a physicist acknowledging no interest except the interest in facts and in the laws of change4 ,his own spirit1 small by the material forces which it may stand for and express1 is great by its prerogative of surveying and judging the universe2 surveying it1 of course1 from a mortal point of view1 and judging it only by its kindliness or cruelty to some actual interest1 yet1 even so1 determining unequivocally a part of its constitution and excellence4 ,the rational moralist represents a force energising in the world1 discovering its affinities there and clinging to them to the exclusion of their hateful opposites4 ,he represents1 over against the chance facts1 an ideal embodying the particular demands1 possibilities1 and satisfactions of a specific being4 ,this dogmatic position of reason is not uncritically dogmatic2 on the contrary1 it is the sophistical position that is uncritically neutral4 ,all criticism needs a dogmatic background1 else it would lack objects and criteria for criticism4 ,the sophist himself1 without confessing it1 enacts a special interest4 ,he bubbles over with convictions about the pathological and fatal origin of human beliefs1 as if that could prevent some of them from being more trustworthy and truer than others4 ,he is doubtless right in his psychology2 his own ideas have their natural causes and their chance of signifying something real4 ,his scepticism may represent a wider experience than do the fanaticisms it opposes4 ,but this sceptic also lives4 ,nature has sent her saps abundantly into him1 and he cannot but nod dogmatically on that philosophical tree on which he is so pungent a berry4 ,his imagination is unmistakably fascinated by the pictures it happens to put together4 ,his judgment falls unabashed1 and his discourse splashes on in its dialectical march1 every stepping-stone an unquestioned idea1 every stride a categorical assertion4 ,does he deny this8 ,then his very denial1 in its promptness and heat1 audibly contradicts him and makes him ridiculous4 ,honest criticism consists in being consciously dogmatic1 and conscientiously so1 like ,descartes when he said1 8,i am40 ,it is to sift and harmonise all assertions so as to make them a faithful expression of actual experience and inevitable thought4 ,sidenote3 ,genuine altruism is natural self-expression4 ,now will1 no less than that reason which avails to render will consistent and far-reaching1 animates natural bodies and expresses their functions4 ,it has a radical bias1 a foregone1 determinate direction1 else it could not be a will nor a principle of preference4 ,the knowledge of what other people desire does not abolish a man's own aims4 ,sympathy and justice are simply an expansion of the soul's interests1 arising when we consider other men's lives so intently that something in us imitates and re-enacts their experience1 so that we move partly in unison with their movement1 recognise the reality and initial legitimacy of their interests1 and consequently regard their aims in our action1 in so far as our own status and purposes have become identical with theirs4 ,we are not less ourselves1 nor less autonomous1 for this assimilation1 since we assimilate only what is in itself intelligible and congruous with our mind and obey only that authority which can impose itself on our reason4 ,the case is parallel to that of knowledge4 ,to know all men's experience and to comprehend their beliefs would constitute the most cogent and settled of philosophies4 ,thought would then be reasonably adjusted to all the facts of history1 and judgment would grow more authoritative and precise by virtue of that enlightenment4 ,so1 too1 to understand all the goods that any man1 nay1 that any beast or angel1 may ever have pursued1 would leave man still necessitous of food1 drink1 sleep1 and shelter2 he would still love2 the comic1 the loathsome1 the beautiful would still affect him with unmistakable direct emotions4 ,his taste might no doubt gain in elasticity by those sympathetic excursions into the polyglot world2 the plastic or dramatic quality which had enabled him to feel other creatures' joys would grow by exercise and new overtones would be added to his gamut4 ,but the foundations of his nature would stand2 and his possible happiness1 though some new and precious threads might be woven into it1 would not have a texture fundamentally different4 ,the radical impulses at work in any animal must continue to speak while he lives1 for they are his essence4 ,a true morality does not have to be adopted2 the parts of it best practised are those which are never preached4 ,to be 8converted0 would be to pass from one self-betrayal to another4 ,it would be to found a new morality on a new artifice4 ,the morality which has genuine authority exists inevitably and speaks autonomously in every common judgment1 self-congratulation1 ambition1 or passion that fills the vulgar day4 ,the pursuit of those goods which are the only possible or fitting crown of a man's life is predetermined by his nature2 he cannot choose a law-giver1 nor accept one1 for none who spoke to the purpose could teach him anything but to know himself4 ,rational life is an art1 not a slavery2 and terrible as may be the errors and the apathy that impede its successful exercise1 the standard and goal of it are given intrinsically4 ,any task imposed externally on a man is imposed by force only1 a force he has the right to defy so soon as he can do so without creating some greater impediment to his natural vocation4 ,sidenote3 ,reason expresses impulses4 ,rational ethics1 then1 resembles prerational precepts and half-systems in being founded on impulse4 ,it formulates a natural morality4 ,it is a settled method of achieving ends to which man is drawn by virtue of his physical and rational constitution4 ,by this circumstance rational ethics is removed from the bad company of all artificial1 verbal1 and unjust systems of morality1 which in absolving themselves from relevance to man's endowment and experience merely show how completely irrelevant they are to life4 ,once1 no doubt1 each of these arbitrary systems expressed 7like the observance of the ,sabbath7 some practical interest or some not unnatural rite2 but so narrow a basis of course has to be disowned when the precepts so originating have been swollen into universal tyrannical laws4 ,a rational ethics reduces them at once to their slender representative rle2 and it surrounds and buttresses them on every side with all other natural ideals4 ,sidenote3 but impulses reduced to harmony4 ,rational ethics thus differs from the prerational in being complete4 ,there is one impulse which intuitive moralists ignore3 the impulse to reflect4 ,human instincts are ignorant1 multitudinous1 and contradictory4 ,to satisfy them as they come is often impossible1 and often disastrous1 in that such satisfaction prevents the satisfaction of other instincts inherently no less fecund and legitimate4 ,when we apply reason to life we immediately demand that life be consistent1 complete1 and satisfactory when reflected upon and viewed as a whole4 ,this view1 as it presents each moment in its relations1 extends to all moments affected by the action or maxim under discussion2 it has no more ground for stopping at the limits of what is called a single life than at the limits of a single adventure4 ,to stop at selfishness is not particularly rational4 ,the same principle that creates the ideal of a self creates the ideal of a family or an institution4 ,sidenote3 ,self-love artificial4 ,the conflict between selfishness and altruism is like that between any two ideal passions that in some particular may chance to be opposed2 but such a conflict has no obstinate existence for reason4 ,for reason the person itself has no obstinate existence4 ,the character which a man achieves at the best moment of his life is indeed something ideal and significant2 it justifies and consecrates all his coherent actions and preferences4 ,but the man's life1 the circle drawn by biographers around the career of a particular body1 from the womb to the charnel-house1 and around the mental flux that accompanies that career1 is no significant unity4 ,all the substances and efficient processes that figure within it come from elsewhere and continue beyond2 while all the rational objects and interests to which it refers have a trans-personal status4 ,self-love itself is concerned with public opinion2 and if a man concentrates his view on private pleasures1 these may qualify the fleeting moments of his life with an intrinsic value1 but they leave the life itself shapeless and infinite1 as if sparks should play over a piece of burnt paper4 ,the limits assigned to the mass of sentience attributed to each man are assigned conventionally2 his prenatal feelings1 his forgotten dreams1 and his unappropriated sensations belong to his body and for that reason only are said to belong to him4 ,each impulse included within these limits may be as directly compared with the represented impulses of other people as with the represented impulses expected to arise later in the same body4 ,reason lives among these represented values1 all of which have their cerebral seat and present efficacy over the passing thought2 and reason teaches this passing thought to believe in and to respect them equally4 ,their right is not less clear1 nor their influence less natural1 because they may range over the whole universe and may await their realisation at the farthest boundaries of time4 ,all that is physically requisite to their operation is that they should be vividly represented2 while all that is requisite rationally1 to justify them in qualifying actual life by their influence1 is that the present act should have some tendency to bring the represented values about4 ,in other words1 a rational mind would consider1 in its judgment and action1 every interest which that judgment or action at all affected2 and it would conspire with each represented good in proportion1 not to that good's intrinsic importance1 but to the power which the present act might have of helping to realise that good4 ,sidenote3 ,the sanction of reason is happiness4 ,if pleasure1 because it is commonly a result of satisfied instinct1 may by a figure of speech be called the aim of impulse1 happiness1 by a like figure1 may be called the aim of reason4 ,the direct aim of reason is harmony2 yet harmony1 when made to rule in life1 gives reason a noble satisfaction which we call happiness4 ,happiness is impossible and even inconceivable to a mind without scope and without pause1 a mind driven by craving1 pleasure1 and fear4 ,the moralists who speak disparagingly of happiness are less sublime than they think4 ,in truth their philosophy is too lightly ballasted1 too much fed on prejudice and quibbles1 for happiness to fall within its range4 ,happiness implies resource and security2 it can be achieved only by discipline4 ,your intuitive moralist rejects discipline1 at least discipline of the conscience2 and he is punished by having no lien on wisdom4 ,he trusts to the clash of blind forces in collision1 being one of them himself4 ,he demands that virtue should be partisan and unjust2 and he dreams of crushing the adversary in some physical cataclysm4 ,such groping enthusiasm is often innocent and romantic2 it captivates us with its youthful spell4 ,but it has no structure with which to resist the shocks of fortune1 which it goes out so jauntily to meet4 ,it turns only too often into vulgarity and worldliness4 ,a snow-flake is soon a smudge1 and there is a deeper purity in the diamond4 ,happiness is hidden from a free and casual will2 it belongs rather to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions4 ,it is discipline that renders men rational and capable of happiness1 by suppressing without hatred what needs to be suppressed to attain a beautiful naturalness4 ,discipline discredits the random pleasures of illusion1 hope1 and triumph1 and substitutes those which are self-reproductive1 perennial1 and serene1 because they express an equilibrium maintained with reality4 ,so long as the result of endeavour is partly unforeseen and unintentional1 so long as the will is partly blind1 the ,life of ,reason is still swaddled in ignominy and the animal barks in the midst of human discourse4 ,wisdom and happiness consist in having recast natural energies in the furnace of experience4 ,nor is this experience merely a repressive force4 ,it enshrines the successful expressions of spirit as well as the shocks and vetoes of circumstance2 it enables a man to know himself in knowing the world and to discover his ideal by the very ring1 true or false1 of fortune's coin4 ,sidenote3 ,moral science impeded by its chaotic data4 ,with this brief account we may leave the subject of rational ethics4 ,its development is impossible save in the concrete1 when a legislator1 starting from extant interests1 considers what practices serve to render those interests vital and genuine1 and what external alliances might lend them support and a more glorious expression4 ,the difficulty in carrying rational policy very far comes partly from the refractory materials at hand1 and partly from the narrow range within which moral science is usually confined4 ,the materials are individual wills naturally far from unanimous1 lost for the most part in frivolous pleasures1 rivalries1 and superstitions1 and little inclined to listen to a law-giver that1 like a new ,lycurgus1 should speak to them of unanimity1 simplicity1 discipline1 and perfection4 ,devotion and singlemindedness1 perhaps possible in the cloister1 are hard to establish in the world2 yet a rational morality requires that all lay activities1 all sweet temptations1 should have their voice in the conclave4 ,morality becomes rational precisely by refusing either to accept human nature1 as it sprouts1 altogether without harmony1 or to mutilate it in the haste to make it harmonious4 ,the condition1 therefore1 of making a beginning in good politics is to find a set of men with well-knit character and cogent traditions1 so that there may be a firm soil to cultivate and that labour may not be wasted in ploughing the quicksands4 ,sidenote3 and its unrecognised scope4 ,when such a starting-point is given1 moral values radiate from it to the very ends of the universe2 and a failure to appreciate the range over which rational estimation spreads is a second obstacle to sound ethics4 ,because of this failure the earnest soul is too often intent on escaping to heaven1 while the gross politician is suffered to declaim about the national honour1 and to promise this client an office1 this district a favour1 and this class an iniquitous advantage4 ,politics is expected to be sophistical2 and in the soberest parliaments hardly an argument is used or an ideal invoked which is not an insult to reason4 ,majorities work by a system of bribes offered to the more barren interests of men and to their more blatant prejudices4 ,the higher direction of their lives is relegated to religion1 which1 unhappily1 is apt to suffer from hereditary blindness to natural needs and to possible progress4 ,the idea that religion1 as well as art1 industry1 nationality1 and science1 should exist only for human life's sake and in order that men may live better in this world1 is an idea not even mooted in politics and perhaps opposed by an official philosophy4 ,the enterprise of individuals or of small aristocratic bodies has meantime sown the world which we call civilised with some seeds and nuclei of order4 ,there are scattered about a variety of churches1 industries1 academies1 and governments4 ,but the universal order once dreamt of and nominally almost established1 the empire of universal peace1 all-permeating rational art1 and philosophical worship1 is mentioned no more4 ,an unformulated conception1 the prerational ethics of private privilege and national unity1 fills the background of men's minds4 ,it represents feudal traditions rather than the tendency really involved in contemporary industry1 science1 or philanthropy4 ,those dark ages1 from which our political practice is derived1 had a political theory which we should do well to study2 for their theory about a universal empire and a catholic church was in turn the echo of a former age of reason1 when a few men conscious of ruling the world had for a moment sought to survey it as a whole and to rule it justly4 ,modern rational ethics1 however1 or what approaches most nearly to such a thing1 has one advantage over the ancient and medival2 it has profited by ,christian discipline and by the greater gentleness of modern manners4 ,it has recognised the rights of the dumb majority2 it has revolted against cruelty and preventable suffering and has bent itself on diffusing well-being--the well-being that people want1 and not the so-called virtues which a supercilious aristocracy may find it convenient to prescribe for them4 ,it has based ethics on the foundation on which actual morality rests2 on nature1 on the necessities of social life1 on the human instincts of sympathy and justice4 ,sidenote3 ,fallacy in democratic hedonism4 ,it is all the more to be regretted that the only modern school of ethics which is humane and honestly interested in progress should have given a bad technical expression to its generous principles and should have substituted a dubious psychology for ,socratic dialectic4 ,the mere fact that somebody somewhere enjoys or dislikes a thing cannot give direction to a rational will4 ,that fact indicates a moral situation but does not prescribe a definite action4 ,a partial harmony or maladjustment is thereby proved to exist1 but the method is not revealed by which the harmony should be sustained or the maladjustment removed4 ,a given harmony can be sustained by leaving things as they are or by changing them together4 ,a maladjustment can be removed by altering the environment or by altering the man4 ,pleasures may be attached to anything1 and to pursue them in the abstract does not help to define any particular line of conduct4 ,the particular ideal pre-exists in the observer2 the mathematics of pleasure and pain cannot oblige him1 for instance1 to prefer a hundred units of mindless pleasure enjoyed in dreams to fifty units diffused over labour and discourse4 ,he need not limit his efforts to spreading needless comforts and silly pleasures among the million2 he need not accept for a goal a child's caprices multiplied by infinity4 ,even these caprices1 pleasures1 and comforts doubtless have their claims2 but these claims have to be adjudicated by the agent's autonomous conscience1 and he will give them the place they fill in his honest ideal of what it would be best to have in the world1 not the place which they might pretend to usurp there by a sort of physical pressure4 ,a conscience is a living function1 expressing a particular nature2 it is not a passive medium where heterogeneous values can find their balance by virtue of their dead weight and number4 ,a moralist is called upon1 first of all1 to decide in what things pleasure ought to be found4 ,of course his decision1 if he is rational1 will not be arbitrary2 it will conscientiously express his own nature--on which alone honest ideals can rest--without attempting to speak for the deafening and inconstant convocation of the whole sentient universe4 ,duty is a matter of self-knowledge1 not of statistics4 ,a living and particular will therein discovers its affinities1 broadens its basis1 acknowledges its obligations1 and co-operates with everything that will co-operate with it2 but it continues throughout to unfold a particular life1 finding its supports and extensions in the state1 the arts1 and the universe4 ,it cannot for a moment renounce its autonomy without renouncing reason and perhaps decreeing the extinction both of its own bodily basis and of its ideal method and policy4 ,sidenote3 ,sympathy a conditional duty4 ,utilitarianism needs to be transferred to ,socratic and dialectical ground1 so that interest in absent interests may take its place in a concrete ideal4 ,it is a noble thing to be sensitive to others' hardships1 and happy in their happiness2 but it is noble because it refines the natural will without enfeebling it1 offering it rather a new and congenial development1 one entirely predetermined by the fundamental structure of human nature4 ,were man not gregarious1 were he not made to be child1 friend1 husband1 and father by turns1 his morality would not be social1 but1 like that of some silk-worm or some seraph1 wholly industrious or wholly contemplative4 ,parental and sexual instincts1 social life and the gift of co-operation carry sympathy implicitly with them1 as they carry the very faculty to recognise a fellow-being4 ,to make this sympathy explicit and to find one's happiness in exercising it is to lay one's foundations deeper in nature and to expand the range of one's being4 ,its limits1 however1 would be broken down and moral dissolution would set in if1 forgetting his humanity1 a man should bid all living creatures lapse with him into a delicious torpor1 or run into a cycle of pleasant dreams1 so intense that death would be sure to precede any awakening out of them4 ,great as may be the advance in charity since the days of ,socrates1 therefore1 the advance is within the lines of his method2 to trespass beyond them would be to recede4 ,this situation is repeated on a broader stage4 ,a statesman entrusted with power should regard nothing but his country's interests2 to regard anything else would be treason4 ,he cannot allow foreign sentiment or private hobbies to make him misapply the resources of his fellow-countrymen to their own injury4 ,but he may well have an enlightened view of the interests which he serves2 he might indeed be expected to take a more profound and enlightened view of them than his countrymen were commonly capable of1 else he would have no right to his eminent station4 ,he should be the first to feel that to inflict injury or foster hatred among other populations should not be a portion of a people's happiness4 ,a nation1 like a man1 is something ideal4 ,indestructible mountains and valleys1 crawled over by any sort of race1 do not constitute its identity4 ,its essence is a certain spirit1 and only what enters into this spirit can bind it morally1 or preserve it4 ,sidenote3 ,all life1 and hence right life1 finite and particular4 ,if a drop of water contains a million worlds which ,i1 in swallowing1 may ruin or transform1 that is ,allah's business2 mine is to clarify my own intent1 to cling to what ideals may lie within the circle of my experience and practical imagination1 so that ,i may have a natural ground for my loyalties1 and may be constant in them4 ,it would not be a rational ambition to wish to multiply the population of ,china by two1 or that of ,america by twenty1 after ascertaining that life there contained an overplus of pleasure4 ,to weed a garden1 however1 would be rational1 though the weeds and their interests would have to be sacrificed in the process4 ,utilitarianism took up false ground when it made right conduct terminate in miscellaneous pleasures and pains1 as if in their isolation they constituted all that morality had to consider1 and as if respect offered to them1 somehow in proportion to their quantity1 were the true conscience4 ,the true conscience is rather an integrated natural will1 chastened by clear knowledge of what it pursues and may attain4 ,what morality has to consider is the form of life1 not its quantity4 ,in a world that is perhaps infinite1 moral life can spring only from definite centres and is neither called upon nor able to estimate the whole1 nor to redress its balance4 ,it is the free spirit of a part1 finding its affinities and equilibrium in the material whole which it reacts on1 and which it is in that measure enabled to understand4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote ,h3 ,laws4 ,,vii4 #hjc4 ,b4 ,,chapter ,x ,,post-,,rational ,,morality ,sidenote3 ,socratic ethics retrospective4 ,when ,socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind4 ,one by his irony1 another by his frank idealism1 and the third by his preponderating interest in history and analysis1 showed clearly enough how little they dared to hope4 ,they were merely writing an eloquent epitaph on their country4 ,they were publishing the principles of what had been its life1 gathering piously its broken ideals1 and interpreting its momentary achievement4 ,the spirit of liberty and co-operation was already dead4 ,the private citizen1 debauched by the largesses and petty quarrels of his city1 had become indolent and mean-spirited4 ,he had begun to question the utility of religion1 of patriotism1 and of justice4 ,having allowed the organ for the ideal to atrophy in his soul1 he could dream of finding some sullen sort of happiness in unreason4 ,he felt that the austere glories of his country1 as a ,spartan regimen might have preserved them1 would not benefit that baser part of him which alone remained4 ,political virtue seemed a useless tax on his material profit and freedom4 ,the tedium and distrust proper to a disintegrated society began to drive him to artificial excitements and superstitions4 ,democracy had learned to regard as enemies the few in whom public interest was still represented1 the few whose nobler temper and traditions still coincided with the general good4 ,these last patriots were gradually banished or exterminated1 and with them died the spirit that rational ethics had expressed4 ,philosophers were no longer suffered to have illusions about the state4 ,human activity on the public stage had shaken off all allegiance to art or reason4 ,sidenote3 ,rise of disillusioned moralities4 ,the biographer of reason might well be tempted to ignore the subsequent attitudes into which moral life fell in the ,west1 since they all embodied a more or less complete despair1 and1 having abandoned the effort to express the will honestly and dialectically1 they could support no moral science4 ,the point was merely to console or deceive the soul with some substitute for happiness4 ,life is older and more persistent than reason1 and the failure of a first experiment in rationality does not deprive mankind of that mental and moral vegetation which they possessed for ages in a wild state before the advent of civilisation4 ,they merely revert to their uncivil condition and espouse whatever imaginative ideal comes to hand1 by which some semblance of meaning and beauty may be given to existence without the labour of building this meaning and beauty systematically out of its positive elements4 ,not to study these imaginative ideals1 partial and arbitrary as they are1 would be to miss one of the most instructive points of view from which the ,life of ,reason may be surveyed3 the point of view of its satirists4 ,for moral ideals may follow upon philosophy1 just as they may precede it4 ,when they follow1 at least so long as they are consciously embraced in view of reason's failure1 they have a quite particular value4 ,aversion to rational ideals does not then come1 as the intuitionist's aversion does1 from moral incoherence or religious prejudice4 ,it does not come from lack of speculative power4 ,on the contrary1 it may come from undue haste in speculation1 from a too ready apprehension of the visible march of things4 ,the obvious irrationality of nature as a whole1 too painfully brought home to a musing mind1 may make it forget or abdicate its own rationality4 ,in a decadent age1 the philosopher who surveys the world and sees that the end of it is even as the beginning1 may not feel that the intervening episode1 in which he and all he values after all figure1 is worth consideration2 and he may cry1 in his contemplative spleen1 that all is vanity4 ,if you should still confront him with a theory of the ideal1 he would not be reduced1 like the pre-rational moralists in a similar case1 to mere inattention and bluster4 ,if you told him that every art and every activity involves a congruous good1 and that the endeavour to realise the ideal in every direction is an effort of which reason necessarily approves1 since reason is nothing but the method of that endeavour1 he would not need to deny your statements in order to justify himself4 ,he might admit the naturalness1 the spontaneity1 the ideal sufficiency of your conceptions2 but he might add1 with the smile of the elder and the sadder man1 that he had experience of their futility4 8,you ,hellenisers10 he might say1 8are but children2 you have not pondered the little history you know4 ,if thought were conversant with reality1 if virtue were stable and fruitful1 if pains and policy were ultimately justified by a greater good arising out of them--then1 indeed1 a life according to reason might tempt a philosopher4 ,but unfortunately not one of those fond assumptions is true4 ,human thought is a meaningless phantasmagoria4 ,virtue is a splendid and laborious folly1 when it is not a pompous garment that only looks respectable in the dark1 being in truth full of spots and ridiculous patches4 ,men's best laid plans become1 in the casual cross-currents of being1 the occasion of their bitterest calamities4 ,how1 then1 live8 ,how justify in our eyes1 let us not say the ways of ,god1 but our own ways80 ,sidenote3 ,the illusion subsisting in them4 ,such a position may be turned dialectically by invoking whatever positive hopes or convictions the critic may retain1 who while he lives cannot be wholly without them4 ,but the position is specious and does not collapse1 like that of the intuitionist1 at the first breath of criticism4 ,pessimism1 and all the moralities founded on despair1 are not pre-rational but post-rational4 ,they are the work of men who more or less explicitly have conceived the ,life of ,reason1 tried it at least imaginatively1 and found it wanting4 ,these systems are a refuge from an intolerable situation3 they are experiments in redemption4 ,as a matter of fact1 animal instincts and natural standards of excellence are never eluded in them1 for no moral experience has other terms2 but the part of the natural ideal which remains active appears in opposition to all the rest and1 by an intelligible illusion1 seems to be no part of that natural ideal because1 compared with the commoner passions on which it reacts1 it represents some simpler or more attenuated hope--the appeal to some very humble or very much chastened satisfaction1 or to an utter change in the conditions of life4 ,post-rational morality thus constitutes1 in intention if not in fact1 a criticism of all experience4 ,it thinks it is not1 like pre-rational morality1 an arbitrary selection from among co-ordinate precepts4 ,it is an effort to subordinate all precepts to one1 that points to some single eventual good4 ,for it occurs to the founders of these systems that by estranging oneself from the world1 or resting in the moment's pleasure1 or mortifying the passions1 or enduring all sufferings in patience1 or studying a perfect conformity with the course of affairs1 one may gain admission to some sort of residual mystical paradise2 and this thought1 once conceived1 is published as a revelation and accepted as a panacea4 ,it becomes in consequence 7for such is the force of nature7 the foundation of elaborate institutions and elaborate philosophies1 into which the contents of the worldly life are gradually reintroduced4 ,when human life is in an acute crisis1 the sick dreams that visit the soul are the only evidence of her continued existence4 ,through them she still envisages a good2 and when the delirium passes and the normal world gradually re-establishes itself in her regard1 she attributes her regeneration to the ministry of those phantoms1 a regeneration due1 in truth1 to the restored nutrition and circulation within her4 ,in this way post-rational systems1 though founded originally on despair1 in a later age that has forgotten its disillusions may come to pose as the only possible basis of morality4 ,the philosophers addicted to each sect1 and brought up under its influence1 may exhaust criticism and sophistry to show that all faith and effort would be vain unless their particular nostrum was accepted2 and so a curious party philosophy arises in which1 after discrediting nature and reason in general1 the sectary puts forward some mythical echo of reason and nature as the one saving and necessary truth4 ,the positive substance of such a doctrine is accordingly pre-rational and perhaps crudely superstitious2 but it is introduced and nominally supported by a formidable indictment of physical and moral science1 so that the wretched idol ultimately offered to our worship acquires a spurious halo and an imputed majesty by being raised on a pedestal of infinite despair4 ,sidenote3 ,epicurean refuge in pleasure4 ,socrates was still living when a school of post-rational morality arose among the ,sophists1 which after passing quickly through various phases1 settled down into ,epicureanism and has remained the source of a certain consolation to mankind1 which if somewhat cheap1 is none the less genuine4 ,the pursuit of pleasure may seem simple selfishness1 with a tendency to debauchery2 and in this case the pre-rational and instinctive character of the maxim retained would be very obvious4 ,pleasure1 to be sure1 is not the direct object of an unspoiled will2 but after some experience and discrimination1 a man may actually guide himself by a foretaste of the pleasures he has found in certain objects and situations4 ,the criticism required to distinguish what pays from what does not pay may not often be carried very far2 but it may sometimes be carried to the length of suppressing every natural instinct and natural hope1 and of turning the philosopher1 as it turned ,hegesias the ,cyrenaic1 into a eulogist of death4 ,the post-rational principle in the system then comes to the fore1 and we see clearly that to sit down and reflect upon human life1 picking out its pleasant moments and condemning all the rest1 is to initiate a course of moral retrenchment4 ,it is to judge what is worth doing1 not by the innate ambition of the soul1 but by experience of incidental feelings1 which to a mind without creative ideas may seem the only objects worthy of pursuit4 ,that life ought to be accompanied by pleasure and exempt from pain is certain2 for this means that what is agreeable to the whole process of nature would have become agreeable also to the various partial impulses involved--another way of describing organic harmony and physical perfection4 ,but such a desirable harmony cannot be defined or obtained by picking out and isolating from the rest those occasions and functions in which it may already have been reached4 ,these partial harmonies may be actual arrests or impediments in the whole which is to be made harmonious2 and even when they are innocent or helpful they cannot serve to determine the form which the general harmony might take on4 ,they merely illustrate its principle4 ,the organism in which this principle of harmony might find pervasive expression is still potential1 and the ideal is something of which1 in its concrete form1 no man has had experience4 ,it involves a propitious material environment1 perfect health1 perfect arts1 perfect government1 a mind enlarged to the knowledge and enjoyment of all its external conditions and internal functions4 ,such an ideal is lost sight of when a man cultivates his garden-plot of private pleasures1 leaving it to chance and barbarian fury to govern the state and quicken the world's passions4 ,even ,aristippus1 the first and most delightful of hedonists1 who really enjoyed the pleasures he advocated and was not afraid of the incidental pains--even ,aristippus betrayed the post-rational character of his philosophy by abandoning politics1 mocking science1 making his peace with all abuses that fostered his comfort1 and venting his wit on all ambitions that exceeded his hopes4 ,a great temperament can carry off a rough philosophy4 ,rebellion and license may distinguish honourable souls in an age of polite corruption1 and a grain of sincerity is better1 in moral philosophy1 than a whole harvest of conventionalities4 ,the violence and shamelessness of ,aristippus were corrected by ,epicurus2 and a balance was found between utter despair and utter irresponsibility4 ,epicureanism retrenched much3 it cut off politics1 religion1 enterprise1 and passion4 ,these things it convicted of vanity1 without stopping to distinguish in them what might be inordinate from what might be rational4 ,at the same time it retained friendship1 freedom of soul1 and intellectual light4 ,it cultivated unworldliness without superstition and happiness without illusion4 ,it was tender toward simple and honest things1 scornful and bitter only against pretence and usurpation4 ,it thus marked a first halting-place in the retreat of reason1 a stage where the soul had thrown off only the higher and more entangling part of her burden and was willing to live1 in somewhat reduced circumstances1 on the remainder4 ,such a philosophy expresses well the genuine sentiment of persons1 at once mild and emancipated1 who find themselves floating on the ebb-tide of some civilisation1 and enjoying its fruits1 without any longer representing the forces that brought that civilisation about4 ,sidenote3 ,stoic recourse to conformity4 ,the same emancipation1 without its mildness1 appeared in the ,cynics1 whose secret it was to throw off all allegiance and all dependence on circumstance1 and to live entirely on inner strength of mind1 on pride and inflexible humour4 ,the renunciation was far more sweeping than that of ,epicurus1 and indeed wellnigh complete2 yet the ,stoics1 in underpinning the ,cynical self-sufficiency with a system of physics1 introduced into the life of the sect a contemplative element which very much enlarged and ennobled its sympathies4 ,nature became a sacred system1 the laws of nature being eulogistically called rational laws1 and the necessity of things1 because it might be foretold in auguries1 being called providence4 ,there was some intellectual confusion in all this2 but contemplation1 even if somewhat idolatrous1 has a purifying effect1 and the sad and solemn review of the cosmos to which the ,stoic daily invited his soul1 to make it ready to face its destiny1 doubtless liberated it from many an unworthy passion4 ,the impressive spectacle of things was used to remind the soul of her special and appropriate function1 which was to be rational4 ,this rationality consisted partly in insight1 to perceive the necessary order of things1 and partly in conformity1 to perceive that this order1 whatever it might be1 could serve the soul to exercise itself upon1 and to face with equanimity4 ,despair1 in this system1 flooded a much larger area of human life2 everything1 in fact1 was surrendered except the will to endure whatever might come4 ,the concentration was much more marked1 since only a formal power of perception and defiance was retained and made the sphere of moral life2 this rational power1 at least in theory1 was the one peak that remained visible above the deluge4 ,but in practice much more was retained4 ,some distinction was drawn1 however unwarrantably1 between external calamities and human turpitude1 so that absolute conformity and acceptance might not be demanded by the latter2 although the chief occasion which a ,stoic could find to practise fortitude and recognise the omnipresence of law was in noting the universal corruption of the state and divining its ruin4 ,the obligation to conform to nature 7which1 strictly speaking1 could not be disregarded in any case7 was interpreted to signify that every one should perform the offices conventionally attached to his station4 ,in this way a perfunctory citizenship and humanity were restored to the philosopher4 ,but the restored life was merely histrionic3 the ,stoic was a recluse parading the market-place and a monk disguised in armour4 ,his interest and faith were centred altogether on his private spiritual condition4 ,he cultivated the society of those persons who1 he thought1 might teach him some virtue4 ,he attended to the affairs of state so as to exercise his patience4 ,he might even lead an army to battle1 if he wished to test his endurance and make sure that philosophy had rendered him indifferent to the issue4 ,sidenote3 ,conformity the core of ,islam4 ,the strain and artifice of such a discipline1 with merely formal goals and no hope on earth or in heaven1 could not long maintain itself2 and doubtless it existed1 at a particular juncture1 only in a few souls4 ,resignation to the will of ,god1 says ,bishop ,butler1 is the whole of piety2 yet mere resignation would make a sorry religion and the negation of all morality1 unless the will of ,god was understood to be quite different from his operation in nature4 ,to turn ,stoicism into a workable religion we need to qualify it with some pre-rational maxims4 ,islam1 for instance1 which boasts that in its essence it is nothing but the primitive and natural religion of mankind1 consists in abandoning oneself to the will of ,god or1 in other words1 in accepting the inevitable4 ,this will of ,god is learned for the most part by observing the course of nature and history1 and remembering the fate meted out habitually to various sorts of men4 ,were this all1 ,islam would be a pure ,stoicism1 and ,hebraic religion1 in its ultimate phase1 would be simply the eloquence of physics4 ,it would not1 in that case1 be a moral inspiration at all1 except as contemplation and the sense of one's nothingness might occasionally silence the passions and for a moment bewilder the mind4 ,on recovering from this impression1 however1 men would find themselves enriched with no self-knowledge1 armed with no precepts1 and stimulated by no ideal4 ,they would be reduced to enacting their incidental impulses1 as the animals are1 quite as if they had never perceived that in doing so they were fulfilling a divine decree4 ,enlightened ,moslems1 accordingly1 have often been more ,epicurean than ,stoical2 and if they have felt themselves 7not without some reason7 superior to ,christians in delicacy1 in savoir vivre1 in kinship with all natural powers1 this sense of superiority has been quite rationalistic and purely human4 ,their religion contributed to it only because it was simpler1 freer from superstition1 nearer to a clean and pleasant regimen in life4 ,resignation to the will of ,god being granted1 expression of the will of man might more freely begin4 ,sidenote3 enveloped in arbitrary doctrines4 ,what made ,islam1 however1 a positive and contagious novelty was the assumption that ,god's will might be incidentally revealed to prophets before the event1 so that past experience was not the only source from which its total operation might be gathered4 ,in its opposition to grosser idolatries ,islam might appeal to experience and challenge those who trusted in special deities to justify their worship in face of the facts4 ,the most decisive facts against idolaters1 however1 were not yet patent1 but were destined to burst upon mankind at the last day--and most unpleasantly for the majority4 ,where ,mohammed speaks in the name of the universal natural power he is abundantly scornful toward that fond paganism which consists in imagining distinct patrons for various regions of nature or for sundry human activities4 ,in turning to such patrons the pagan regards something purely ideal or1 as the ,koran shrewdly observes1 worships his own passions4 ,allah1 on the contrary1 is overwhelmingly external and as far as possible from being ideal4 ,he is indeed the giver of all good things1 as of all evil1 and while his mercies are celebrated on every page of the ,koran1 these mercies consist in the indulgence he is expected to show to his favourites1 and the exceeding reward reserved for them after their earthly trials4 ,allah's mercy does not exclude all those senseless and unredeemed cruelties of which nature is daily guilty2 nay1 it shines all the more conspicuously by contrast with his essential irresponsibility and wanton wrath1 a part of his express purpose being to keep hell full of men and demons4 ,the tendency toward enlightenment which ,islam represents1 and the limits of that enlightenment1 may be illustrated by the precept about unclean animals4 ,allah1 we are told1 being merciful and gracious1 made the world for man's use1 with all the animals in it4 ,we may therefore justly slaughter and devour them1 in so far as comports with health2 but1 of course1 we may not eat animals that have died a natural death1 nor those offered in sacrifice to false gods1 nor swine2 for to do so would be an abomination4 ,sidenote3 ,the latter alone lend it practical force4 ,unfortunately religious reformers triumph not so much by their rational insight as by their halting1 traditional maxims4 ,mohammed felt the unity of ,god like a philosopher2 but people listened to him because he preached it like a sectary4 ,god1 as he often reminds us1 did not make the world for a plaything2 he made it in order to establish distinctions and separate by an immense interval the fate of those who conform to the truth from the fate of those who ignore it4 ,human life is indeed beset with enough imminent evils to justify this urgent tone in the ,semitic moralist and to lend his precepts a stern practical ring1 absent from merely ,platonic idealisms4 ,but this stringency1 which is called positivism when the conditions of welfare are understood1 becomes fanaticism when they are misrepresented4 ,had ,mohammed spoken only of the dynamic unity in things1 the omnipresence of destiny1 and the actual conditions of success and failure in the world1 he would not have been called a prophet or have had more than a dozen intelligent followers1 scattered over as many centuries2 but the weakness of his intellect1 and his ignorance of nature1 made the success of his mission4 ,it is easier to kindle righteous indignation against abuses when1 by abating them1 we further our personal interests2 and ,mohammed might have been less zealous in denouncing false gods had his own ,god been altogether the true one4 ,but1 in the heat of his militancy1 he descends so far as to speak of ,god's interests which the faithful embrace1 and of fighting in ,god's cause4 ,by these notions1 so crudely pre-rational1 we are allowed to interpret and discount the pantheistic sublimities with which in most places we are regaled2 and in order that a morality1 too weak to be human1 may not wither altogether in the fierce light of the ,absolute1 we are led to humanise the ,absolute into a finite force1 needing our support against independent enemies4 ,so complete is the bankruptcy of that ,stoic morality which thinks to live on the worship of ,that which ,is4 ,sidenote3 ,moral ambiguity in pantheism4 ,as extremes are said to meet1 so we may say that a radical position is often the point of departure for opposite systems4 ,pantheism1 or religion and morality abdicating in favour of physics1 may1 in practice1 be interpreted in contrary ways4 ,to be in sympathy with the ,whole may seem to require us to outgrow and discard every part2 yet1 on the other hand1 there is no obvious reason why ,being should love its essence in a fashion that involves hating every possible form of ,being4 ,the worshipper of ,being accordingly assumes now one1 now the other1 of two opposite attitudes1 according as the society in which he lives is in a prerational or a post-rational state of culture4 ,pantheism is interpreted pre-rationally1 as by the early ,mohammedans1 or by the ,hegelians1 when people are not yet acquainted1 or not yet disgusted1 with worldliness2 the ,absolute then seems to lend a mystical sanction to whatever existences or tendencies happen to be afoot4 ,morality is reduced to sanctioning reigning conventions1 or reigning passions1 on the authority of the universe4 ,thus the ,moslems1 by way of serving ,allah1 could extend their conquests and cultivate the arts and pleasures congenial to a self-sufficing soul1 at once indolent and fierce2 while the transcendentalists of our times1 by way of accepting their part in the divine business1 have merely added a certain speculative loftiness to the maxims of some sect or the chauvinism of some nation4 ,sidenote3 ,under stress1 it becomes ascetic and requires a mythology4 ,to accept everything1 however1 is not an easy nor a tolerable thing1 unless you are naturally well pleased with what falls to your share4 ,however the ,absolute may feel1 a moral creature has to hate some forms of being2 and if the age has thrust these forms before a man's eyes1 and imposed them upon him1 not being suffered by his pantheism to blame the ,absolute he will 7by an inconsistency7 take to blaming himself4 ,it will be his finitude1 his inordinate claims1 his enormous effrontery in having any will or any preference in particular1 that will seem to him the source of all evil and the single blot on the infinite lucidity of things4 ,pantheism1 under these circumstances1 will issue in a post-rational morality4 ,it will practise asceticism and look for a mystical deliverance from finite existence4 ,under these circumstances myth is inevitably reintroduced4 ,without it1 no consolation could be found except in the prospect of death and1 awaiting that1 in incidental natural satisfactions2 whereby absorption in the ,absolute might come to look not only impossible but distinctly undesirable4 ,to make retreat out of human nature seem a possible vocation1 this nature itself must1 in some myth1 be represented as unnatural2 the soul that this life stifles must be said to come from elsewhere and to be fitted to breathe some element far rarer and finer than this sublunary fog4 ,sidenote3 ,a supernatural world made by the ,platonist out of dialectic4 ,a curious foothold for such a myth was furnished by the ,socratic philosophy4 ,plato1 wafted by his poetic vision too far1 perhaps1 from the utilitarianism of his master1 had eulogised concretions in discourse at the expense of existences and had even played with cosmological myths1 meant to express the values of things1 by speaking as if these values had brought things into being4 ,the dialectical terms thus contrasted with natural objects1 and pictured as natural powers1 furnished the dogmas needed at this juncture by a post-rational religion4 ,the spell which dialectic can exercise over an abstracted mind is itself great2 and it may grow into a sacred influence and a positive revelation when it offers a sanctuary from a weary life in the world4 ,out of the play of notions carried on in a prayerful dream wonderful mysteries can be constructed1 to be presently announced to the people and made the core of sacramental injunctions4 ,when the tide of vulgar superstition is at the flood and every form of quackery is welcome1 we need not wonder that a theosophy having so respectable a core--something1 indeed1 like a true logic misunderstood--should gain many adherents4 ,out of the names of things and of virtues a mystic ladder could be constructed by which to leave the things and the virtues themselves behind2 but the sagacity and exigencies of the school would not fail to arrange the steps in this progress--the end of which was unattainable except1 perhaps1 in a momentary ecstasy--so that the obvious duties of men would continue1 for the nonce1 to be imposed upon them4 ,the chief difference made in morals would be only this3 that the positive occasions and sanctions of good conduct would no longer be mentioned with respect1 but the imagination would be invited to dwell instead on mystical issues4 ,sidenote3 ,the ,herbraic cry for redemption4 ,neo-,platonic morality1 through a thousand learned and vulgar channels1 permeated ,christianity and entirely transformed it4 ,original ,christianity was1 though in another sense1 a religion of redemption4 ,the ,jews1 without dreaming of original sin or of any inherent curse in being finite1 had found themselves often in the sorest material straits4 ,they hoped1 like all primitive peoples1 that relief might come by propitiating the deity4 ,they knew that the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation4 ,they had accepted this idea of joint responsibility and vicarious atonement1 turning in their unphilosophical way this law of nature into a principle of justice4 ,meantime the failure of all their cherished ambitions had plunged them into a penitential mood4 ,though in fact pious and virtuous to a fault1 they still looked for repentance--their own or the world's--to save them4 ,this redemption was to be accomplished in the ,hebrew spirit1 through long-suffering and devotion to the ,law1 with the ,hebrew solidarity1 by vicarious attribution of merits and demerits within the household of the faith4 ,such a way of conceiving redemption was far more dramatic1 poignant1 and individual than the ,neo-,platonic2 hence it was far more popular and better fitted to be a nucleus for religious devotion4 ,however much1 therefore1 ,christianity may have insisted on renouncing the world1 the flesh1 and the devil1 it always kept in the background this perfectly ,jewish and pre-rational craving for a delectable promised land4 ,the journey might be long and through a desert1 but milk and honey were to flow in the oasis beyond4 ,had renunciation been fundamental or revulsion from nature complete1 there would have been no much-trumpeted last judgment and no material kingdom of heaven4 ,the renunciation was only temporary and partial2 the revulsion was only against incidental evils4 ,despair touched nothing but the present order of the world1 though at first it took the extreme form of calling for its immediate destruction4 ,this was the sort of despair and renunciation that lay at the bottom of ,christian repentance2 while hope in a new order of this world1 or of one very like it1 lay at the bottom of ,christian joy4 ,a temporary sacrifice1 it was thought1 and a partial mutilation would bring the spirit miraculously into a fresh paradise4 ,the pleasures nature had grudged or punished1 grace was to offer as a reward for faith and patience4 ,the earthly life which was vain as an experience was to be profitable as a trial4 ,normal experience1 appropriate exercise for the spirit1 would thereafter begin4 ,sidenote3 ,the two factors meet in ,christianity4 ,christianity is thus a system of postponed rationalism1 a rationalism intercepted by a supernatural version of the conditions of happiness4 ,its moral principle is reason--the only moral principle there is2 its motive power is the impulse and natural hope to be and to be happy4 ,christianity merely renews and reinstates these universal principles after a first disappointment and a first assault of despair1 by opening up new vistas of accomplishment1 new qualities and measures of success4 ,the ,christian field of action being a world of grace enveloping the world of nature1 many transitory reversals of acknowledged values may take place in its code4 ,poverty1 chastity1 humility1 obedience1 self-sacrifice1 ignorance1 sickness1 and dirt may all acquire a religious worth which reason1 in its direct application1 might scarcely have found in them2 yet these reversed appreciations are merely incidental to a secret rationality1 and are justified on the ground that human nature1 as now found1 is corrupt and needs to be purged and transformed before it can safely manifest its congenital instincts and become again an authoritative criterion of values4 ,in the kingdom of ,god men would no longer need to do penance1 for life there would be truly natural and there the soul would be at last in her native sphere4 ,this submerged optimism exists in ,christianity1 being a heritage from the ,jews2 and those ,protestant communities that have rejected the pagan and ,platonic elements that overlaid it have little difficulty in restoring it to prominence4 ,not1 however1 without abandoning the soul of the gospel2 for the soul of the gospel1 though expressed in the language of ,messianic hopes1 is really post-rational4 ,it was not to marry and be given in marriage1 or to sit on thrones1 or to unravel metaphysical mysteries1 or to enjoy any of the natural delights renounced in this life1 that ,christ summoned his disciples to abandon all they had and to follow him4 ,there was surely a deeper peace in his self-surrender4 ,it was not a new thing even among the ,jews to use the worldly promises of their exoteric religion as symbols for inner spiritual revolutions2 and the change of heart involved in genuine ,christianity was not a fresh excitation of gaudy hopes1 nor a new sort of utilitarian1 temporary austerity4 ,it was an emptying of the will1 in respect to all human desires1 so that a perfect charity and contemplative justice1 falling like the ,father's gifts ungrudgingly on the whole creation1 might take the place of ambition1 petty morality1 and earthly desires4 ,it was a renunciation which1 at least in ,christ himself and in his more spiritual disciples1 did not spring from disappointed illusion or lead to other unregenerate illusions even more sure to be dispelled by events4 ,it sprang rather from a native speculative depth1 a natural affinity to the divine fecundity1 serenity1 and sadness of the world4 ,it was the spirit of prayer1 the kindliness and insight which a pure soul can fetch from contemplation4 ,sidenote3 ,consequent eclecticism4 ,this mystical detachment1 supervening on the dogged old ,jewish optimism1 gave ,christianity a double aspect1 and had some curious consequence in later times4 ,those who were inwardly convinced--as most religious minds were under the ,roman ,empire--that all earthly things were vanity1 and that they plunged the soul into an abyss of nothingness if not of torment1 could1 in view of brighter possibilities in another world1 carry their asceticism and their cult of suffering farther than a purely negative system1 like the ,buddhistic1 would have allowed4 ,for a discipline that is looked upon as merely temporary can contradict nature more boldly than one intended to take nature's place4 ,the hope of unimaginable benefits to ensue could drive religion to greater frenzies than it could have fallen into if its object had been merely to silence the will4 ,christianity persecuted1 tortured1 and burned4 ,like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy4 ,it kindled wars1 and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions4 ,it sanctified1 quite like ,mohammedanism1 extermination and tyranny4 ,all this would have been impossible if1 like ,buddhism1 it had looked only to peace and the liberation of souls4 ,it looked beyond2 it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding ,god4 ,these were rival baits to those which the world fishes with1 and were snapped at1 when seen1 with no less avidity4 ,man1 far from being freed from his natural passions1 was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing4 ,buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with ansthetics2 ,christianity sought to purge it with fire4 ,another consequence of combining1 in the ,christian life1 post-rational with pre-rational motives1 a sense of exile and renunciation with hopes of a promised land1 was that esoteric piety could choose between the two factors1 even while it gave a verbal assent to the dogmas that included both4 ,mystics honoured the post-rational motive and despised the pre-rational2 positivists clung to the second and hated the first4 ,to the spiritually minded1 whose religion was founded on actual insight and disillusion1 the joys of heaven could never be more than a symbol for the intrinsic worth of sanctity4 ,to the worldling those heavenly joys were nothing but a continuation of the pleasures and excitements of this life1 serving to choke any reflections which1 in spite of himself1 might occasionally visit him about the vanity of human wishes4 ,so that ,christianity1 even in its orthodox forms1 covers various kinds of morality1 and its philosophical incoherence betrays itself in disruptive movements1 profound schisms1 and total alienation on the part of one ,christian from the inward faith of another4 ,trappist or ,calvinist may be practising a heroic and metaphysical self-surrender while the busy-bodies of their respective creeds are fostering1 in ,god's name1 all their hot and miscellaneous passions4 ,sidenote3 ,the negation of naturalism never complete4 ,this contradiction1 present in the overt morality of ,christendom1 cannot be avoided1 however1 by taking refuge again in pure asceticism4 ,every post-rational system is necessarily self-contradictory4 ,its despair cannot be universal nor its nihilism complete so long as it remains a coherent method of action1 with particular goals and a steady faith that their attainment is possible4 ,the renunciation of the will must stop at the point where the will to be saved makes its appearance3 and as this desire may be no less troublesome and insistent than any other1 as it may even become a tormenting obsession1 the mystic is far from the end of his illusions when he sets about to dispel them4 ,there is one rational method to which1 in post-rational systems1 the world is still thought to be docile1 one rational endeavour which nature is sure to crown with success4 ,this is the method of deliverance from existence1 the effort after salvation4 ,there is1 let us say1 a law of ,karma1 by which merit and demerit accruing in one incarnation pass on to the next and enable the soul to rise continuously through a series of stages4 ,thus the world1 though called illusory1 is not wholly intractable4 ,it provides systematically for an exit out of its illusions4 ,on this rational ordinance of phenomena1 which is left standing by an imperfect nihilism1 ,buddhist morality is built4 ,rational endeavour remains possible because experience is calculable and fruitful in this one respect1 that it dissolves in the presence of goodness and knowledge4 ,similarly in ,christian ethics1 the way of the cross has definite stations and a definite end4 ,however negative this end may be thought to be1 the assurance that it may be attained is a remnant of natural hope in the bosom of pessimism4 ,a complete disillusion would have involved the neglect of such an assurance1 the denial that it was possible or at least that it was to be realised under specific conditions4 ,that conversion and good works lead to something worth attaining is a new sort of positivistic hope4 ,a complete scepticism would involve a doubt1 not only concerning the existence of such a method of salvation1 but also 7what is more significant7 concerning the importance of applying it if it were found4 ,for to assert that salvation is not only possible but urgently necessary1 that every soul is now in an intolerable condition and should search for an ultimate solution to all its troubles1 a restoration to a normal and somehow blessed state--what is this but to assert that the nature of things has a permanent constitution1 by conformity with which man may secure his happiness8 ,moreover1 we assert in such a faith that this natural constitution of things is discoverable in a sufficient measure to guide our action to a successful issue4 ,belief in ,karma1 in prayer1 in sacraments1 in salvation is a remnant of a natural belief in the possibility of living successfully4 ,the remnant may be small and 8expressed in fancy40 ,transmigration or an atonement may be chimerical ideas4 ,yet the mere fact of reliance upon something1 the assumption that the world is steady and capable of rational exploitation1 even if in a supernatural interest and by semi-magical means1 amounts to an essential loyalty to postulates of practical reason1 an essential adherence to natural morality4 ,the pretension to have reached a point of view from which all impulse may be criticised is accordingly an untenable pretension4 ,it is abandoned in the very systems in which it was to be most thoroughly applied4 ,the instrument of criticism must itself be one impulse surviving the wreck of all the others2 the vision of salvation and of the way thither must be one dream among the rest4 ,a single suggestion of experience is thus accepted while all others are denied2 and although a certain purification and revision of morality may hence ensue1 there is no real penetration to a deeper principle than spontaneous reason1 no revelation of a higher end than the best possible happiness4 ,one sporadic growth of human nature may be substituted for its whole luxuriant vegetation2 one negative or formal element of happiness may be preferred to the full entelechy of life4 ,we may see the ,life of ,reason reduced to straits1 made to express itself in a niggardly and fantastic environment2 but we have1 in principle and essence1 the ,life of ,reason still1 empirical in its basis and rational in its method1 its substance impulse and its end happiness4 ,sidenote3 ,spontaneous values rehabilitated4 ,so much for the umbilical cord that unites every living post-rational system to the matrix of human hopes4 ,there remains a second point of contact between these systems and rational morality3 the reinstated natural duties which all religions and philosophies1 in order to subsist among civilised peoples1 are at once obliged to sanction and somehow to deduce from their peculiar principles4 ,the most plausible evidence which a supernatural doctrine can give of its truth is the beauty and rationality of its moral corollaries4 ,it is instructive to observe that a gospel's congruity with natural reason and common humanity is regarded as the decisive mark of its supernatural origin4 ,indeed1 were inspiration not the faithful echo of plain conscience and vulgar experience there would be no means of distinguishing it from madness4 ,whatever poetic idea a prophet starts with1 in whatever intuition or analogy he finds a hint of salvation1 it is altogether necessary that he should hasten to interpret his oracle in such a manner that it may sanction without disturbing the system of indispensable natural duties1 although these natural duties1 by being attached artificially to supernatural dogmas1 may take on a different tone1 justify themselves by a different rhetoric1 and possibly suffer real transformation in some minor particulars4 ,systems of post-rational morality are not original works3 they are versions of natural morality translated into different metaphysical languages1 each of which adds its peculiar flavour1 its own genius and poetry1 to the plain sense of the common original4 ,sidenote3 ,a witness out of ,india4 ,in the doctrine of ,karma1 for instance1 experience of retribution is ideally extended and made precise4 ,acts1 daily experience teaches us1 form habits2 habits constitute character1 and each man's character1 as ,heraclitus said1 is his guardian deity1 the artisan of his fate4 ,we need but raise this particular observation to a solitary eminence1 after the manner of post-rational thinking2 we need but imagine it to underlie and explain all other empirical observations1 so that character may come to figure as an absolute cause1 of which experience itself is an attendant result4 ,such arbitrary emphasis laid on some term of experience is the source of each metaphysical system in turn4 ,in this case the surviving dogma will have yielded an explanation of our environment no less than of our state of heart by instituting a deeper spiritual law1 a certain balance of merit and demerit in the soul1 accruing to it through a series of previous incarnations4 ,this fabulous starting-point was gained by an imaginary extension of the law of moral continuity and natural retribution2 but when1 accepting this starting-point1 the believer went on to inquire what he should do to be saved and to cancel the heavy debts he inherited from his mythical past1 he would merely enumerate the natural duties of man1 giving them1 however1 a new sanction and conceiving them as if they emanated from his new-born metaphysical theory4 ,this theory1 apart from a natural conscience and traditional code1 would have been perfectly barren4 ,the notion that every sin must be expiated does not carry with it any information about what acts are sins4 ,this indispensable information must still be furnished by common opinion4 ,those acts which bring suffering after them1 those acts which arouse the enmity of our fellows and1 by a premonition of that enmity1 arouse our own shame--those are assumed and deputed to be sinful2 and the current code of morality being thus borrowed without begging leave1 the law of absolute retribution can be brought in to paint the picture of moral responsibility in more glaring colours and to extend the vista of rewards and punishments into a rhetorical infinite4 ,buddhistic morality was natural morality intensified by this forced sense of minute and boundless responsibility4 ,it was coloured also by the negative1 pessimistic justification which this dogma gives to moral endeavour4 ,every virtue was to be viewed as merely removing guilt and alleviating suffering1 knowledge itself being precious only as a means to that end4 ,the ultimate inspiration of right living was to be hope of perfect peace--a hope generously bestowed by nature on every spirit which1 being linked to the flux of things1 is conscious of change and susceptible of weariness1 but a hope which the irresponsible ,oriental imagination had disturbed with bad dreams4 ,a pathetic feminine quality was thereby imparted to moral feeling2 we were to be good for pity's sake1 for the sake of a great distant deliverance from profound sorrows4 ,sidenote3 ,dignity of post-rational morality4 ,the pathetic idiosyncrasy of this religion has probably enabled it to touch many a heart and to lift into speculation many a life otherwise doomed to be quite instinctive animal4 ,it has kept morality pure--free from that admixture of worldly and partisan precepts with which less pessimistic systems are encumbered4 ,restraint can be rationally imposed on a given will only by virtue of evils which would be involved in its satisfaction1 by virtue1 in other words1 of some actual demand whose disappointment would ensue upon inconsiderate action4 ,to save1 to cure1 to nourish are duties far less conditional than would be a supposed duty to acquire or to create4 ,there is no harm in merely not being1 and privation is an evil only when1 after we exist1 it deprives us of something naturally requisite1 the absence of which would defeat interests already launched into the world4 ,if there is something in a purely remedial system of morality which seems one-sided and extreme1 we must call to mind the far less excusable one-sidedness of those moralities of prejudice to which we are accustomed in the ,occident--the ethics of irrational acquisitiveness1 irrational faith1 and irrational honour4 ,buddhistic morality1 so reasonable and beautifully persuasive1 rising so willingly to the ideal of sanctity1 merits in comparison the profoundest respect4 ,it is lifted as far above the crudities of intuitionism as the whisperings of an angel are above a schoolboy's code4 ,a certain bias and deviation from strict reason seems1 indeed1 inseparable from any moral reform1 from any doctrine that is to be practically and immediately influential4 ,socratic ethics was too perfect an expression to be much of a force4 ,philosophers whose hearts are set on justice and pure truth often hear reproaches addressed to them by the fanatic1 who contrasts the conspicuous change in this or that direction accomplished by his preaching with the apparent impotence of reason and thought4 ,reason's resources are in fact so limited that it is usually reduced to guerilla warfare3 a general plan of campaign is useless when only insignificant forces obey our commands4 ,moral progress is for that reason often greatest when some nobler passion or more fortunate prejudice takes the lead and subdues its meaner companions without needing to rely on the consciousness of ultimate benefits hence accruing to the whole life4 ,so a pessimistic and merely remedial morality may accomplish reforms which reason1 with its broader and milder suasion1 might have failed in4 ,if certain rare and precious virtues can thus be inaugurated1 under the influence of a zeal exaggerating its own justification1 there will be time later to insist on the complementary truths and to tack in the other direction after having been carried forward a certain distance by this oblique advance4 ,sidenote3 ,absurdities nevertheless involved4 ,at the same time neglect of reason is never without its dangers and its waste4 ,the ,buddhistic system itself suffers from a fundamental contradiction1 because its framers did not acknowledge the actual limits of retribution nor the empirical machinery by which benefits and injuries are really propagated4 ,it is an onerous condition which religions must fulfil1 if they would prevail in the world1 that they must have their roots in the past4 ,buddhism had its mission of salvation2 but to express this mission to its proselytes it was obliged to borrow the language of the fantastic metaphysics which had preceded it in ,india4 ,the machinery of transmigration had to serve as a scaffolding to raise the monument of mercy1 purity1 and spirituality4 ,but this fabulous background given to life was really inconsistent with what was best in the new morality2 just as in ,christianity the post-rational evangelical ideals of redemption and regeneration1 of the human will mystically reversed1 were radically incompatible with the pre-rational myths about a creation and a political providence4 ,the doctrine of ,karma was a hypostasis of moral responsibility2 but in making responsibility dynamic and all-explaining1 the theory discountenanced in advance the charitable efforts of ,buddhism--the desire to instruct and save every fellow-creature4 ,for if all my fortunes depend upon my former conduct1 ,i am the sole artificer of my destiny4 ,the love1 the pity1 the science1 or the prayers of others can have no real influence over my salvation4 ,they cannot diminish by one tittle my necessary sufferings1 nor accelerate by one instant the period which my own action appoints for my deliverance4 ,perhaps another's influence might1 in the false world of time and space1 change the order or accidental vesture of my moral experiences2 but their quantity and value1 being the exact counterpart of my free merits and demerits1 could not be affected at all by those extraneous doings4 ,therefore the empirical fact that we can help one another remains in ,buddhism 7as in any retributive scheme7 only by a serious inconsistency2 and since this fact is the sanction of whatever moral efficacy can be attributed to ,buddhism1 in sobering1 teaching1 and saving mankind1 anything inconsistent with it is fundamentally repugnant to the whole system4 ,yet on that repugnant and destructive dogma of ,karma ,buddhism was condemned to base its instruction4 ,this is the heavy price paid for mythical consolations1 that they invalidate the moral values they are intended to emphasise4 ,nature has allowed the innocent to suffer for the guilty1 and the guilty1 perhaps1 to die in some measure unpunished4 ,to correct this imperfection we feign a closed circle of personal retributions1 exactly proportionate to personal deserts4 ,but thereby1 without perceiving it1 we have invalidated all political and social responsibility1 and denied that any man can be benefited or injured by any other4 ,our moral ambition has overleaped itself and carried us into a non-natural world where morality is impotent and unmeaning4 ,sidenote3 ,the soul of positivism in all ideals4 ,post-rational systems accordingly mark no real advance and offer no genuine solution to spiritual enigmas4 ,the saving force each of them invokes is merely some remnant of that natural energy which animates the human animal4 ,faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes2 it is as far as possible from being the source of that normal vitality which subsequently1 if his fortunes mend1 he may gradually recover4 ,under the same religion1 with the same posthumous alternatives and mystic harmonies hanging about them1 different races1 or the same race at different periods1 will manifest the most opposite moral characteristics4 ,belief in a thousand hells and heavens will not lift the apathetic out of apathy or hold back the passionate from passion2 while a newly planted and ungalled community1 in blessed forgetfulness of rewards or punishments1 of cosmic needs or celestial sanctions1 will know how to live cheerily and virtuously for life's own sake1 putting to shame those thin vaticinations4 ,to hope for a second life1 to be had gratis1 merely because this life has lost its savour1 or to dream of a different world1 because nature seems too intricate and unfriendly1 is in the end merely to play with words2 since the supernatural has no permanent aspect or charm except in so far as it expresses man's natural situation and points to the satisfaction of his earthly interests4 ,what keeps supernatural morality1 in its better forms1 within the limits of sanity is the fact that it reinstates in practice1 under novel associations and for motives ostensibly different1 the very natural virtues and hopes which1 when seen to be merely natural1 it had thrown over with contempt4 ,the new dispensation itself1 if treated in the same spirit1 would be no less contemptible2 and what makes it genuinely esteemed is the restored authority of those human ideals which it expresses in a fable4 ,the extent of this moral restoration1 the measure in which nature is suffered to bloom in the sanctuary1 determines the value of post-rational moralities4 ,they may preside over a good life1 personal or communal1 when their symbolism1 though cumbrous1 is not deceptive2 when the supernatural machinery brings man back to nature through mystical circumlocutions1 and becomes itself a poetic echo of experience and a dramatic impersonation of reason4 ,the peculiar accent and emphasis which it will not cease to impose on the obvious lessons of life need not then repel the wisest intelligence4 ,true sages and true civilisations can accordingly flourish under a dispensation nominally supernatural2 for that supernaturalism may have become a mere form in which imagination clothes a rational and humane wisdom4 ,sidenote3 ,moribund dreams and perennial realities4 ,people who speak only one language have some difficulty in conceiving that things should be expressed just as well in some other2 a prejudice which does not necessarily involve their mistaking words for things or being practically misled by their inflexible vocabulary4 ,so it constantly happens that supernatural systems1 when they have long prevailed1 are defended by persons who have only natural interests at heart2 because these persons lack that speculative freedom and dramatic imagination which would allow them to conceive other moulds for morality and happiness than those to which a respectable tradition has accustomed them4 ,sceptical statesmen and academic scholars sometimes suffer from this kind of numbness2 it is intelligible that they should mistake the forms of culture for its principle1 especially when their genius is not original and their chosen function is to defend and propagate the local traditions in which their whole training has immersed them4 ,indeed1 in the political field1 such concern for decaying myths may have a pathetic justification2 for however little the life of or dignity of man may he jeopardised by changes in language1 languages themselves are not indifferent things4 ,they may be closely bound up with the peculiar history and spirit of nations1 and their disappearance1 however necessary and on the whole propitious1 may mark the end of some stirring chapter in the world's history4 ,those whose vocation is not philosophy and whose country is not the world may be pardoned for wishing to retard the migrations of spirit1 and for looking forward with apprehension to a future in which their private enthusiasms will not be understood4 ,the value of post-rational morality1 then1 depends on a double conformity on its part with the ,life of ,reason4 ,in the first place some natural impulse must be retained1 some partial ideal must still be trusted and pursued by the prophet of redemption4 ,in the second place the intuition thus gained and exclusively put forward must be made the starting-point for a restored natural morality4 ,otherwise the faith appealed to would be worthless in its operation1 as well as fanciful in its basis1 and it could never become a mould for thought or action in a civilised society4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,the ,,validity ,,of ,,science ,the same despair or confusion which1 when it overtakes human purposes1 seeks relief in arbitrary schemes of salvation1 when it overtakes human knowledge1 may breed arbitrary substitutes for science4 ,there are post-rational systems of nature as well as of duty4 ,most of these are myths hardly worth separating from the post-rational moralities they adorn1 and have been sufficiently noticed in the last chapter2 but a few aspire to be critical revisions of science1 themselves scientific4 ,it may be well1 in bringing this book to a close1 to review these proposed revisions4 ,the validity of science is at stake1 and with it the validity of that whole ,life of ,reason which science crowns1 and justifies to reflection4 ,sidenote3 ,various modes of revising science4 ,there are many degrees and kinds of this critical retractation4 ,science may be accepted bodily1 while its present results are modified by suggesting speculatively what its ultimate results might be4 ,this is natural philosophy or legitimate metaphysics4 ,or science may be accepted in part1 and in part subjected to control by some other alleged vehicle of knowledge4 ,this is traditional or intuitive theology4 ,or science may be retracted and withdrawn altogether1 on the ground that it is but methodological fiction1 its facts appearances merely1 and its principles tendencies to feign4 ,this is transcendentalism2 whereupon a dilemma presents itself4 ,we may be invited to abstain from all hypostasis or hearty belief in anything1 and to dwell only on the consciousness of imaginative activity in a vacuum--which is radical idealism4 ,or we may be assured that1 science being a dream1 we may awake from it into another cosmos1 built upon principles quite alien to those illustrated in nature or applicable in practice--which is idealism of the mythical sort4 ,finally it may occur to us that the criticism of science is an integral part of science itself1 and that a transcendental method of survey1 which marshals all things in the order of their discovery1 far from invalidating knowledge can only serve to separate it from incidental errors and to disclose the relative importance of truths4 ,science would then be rehabilitated by criticism4 ,the primary movement of the intellect would not be condemned by that subsequent reflection which it makes possible1 and which collates its results4 ,science1 purged of all needless realism and seen in its relation to human life1 would continue to offer the only conception of reality which is pertinent or possible to the practical mind4 ,we may now proceed to discuss these various attitudes in turn4 ,sidenote3 ,science its own best critic4 ,a first and quite blameless way of criticising science is to point out that science is incomplete4 ,that it grows fast is indeed its commonest boast2 and no man of science is so pessimistic as to suppose that its growth is over4 ,to wish to supplement science and to regard its conclusions as largely provisional is therefore more than legitimate4 ,it is actually to share the spirit of inquiry and to feel the impulse toward investigation4 ,when new truths come into view1 old truths are thereby reinterpreted and put in a new light2 so that the acquisitions of science not only admit of revision but loudly call for it1 not wishing for any other authority or vindication than that which they might find in the context of universal truth4 ,to revise science in this spirit would be merely to extend it4 ,no new method1 no transverse philosophy1 would be requisite or fitted for the task4 ,knowledge would be transformed by more similar knowledge1 not by some verbal manipulation4 ,yet while waiting for experience to grow and accumulate its lessons1 a man of genius1 who had drunk deep of experience himself1 might imagine some ultimate synthesis4 ,he might venture to carry out the suggestions of science and anticipate the conclusions it would reach when completed4 ,the game is certainly dangerous1 especially if the prophecy is uttered with any air of authority2 yet with good luck and a fine instinct1 such speculation may actually open the way to discovery and may diffuse in advance that virtual knowledge of physics which is enough for moral and poetic purposes4 ,verification in detail is needed1 not so much for its own sake as to check speculative errors2 but when speculation is by chance well directed and hits upon the substantial truth1 it does all that a completed science would do for mankind2 since science1 if ever completed1 would immediately have to be summed up again and reduced to generalities4 ,under the circumstances of human life1 ultimate truth must forego detailed verification and must remain speculative4 ,the curse of modern philosophy is only that it has not drawn its inspiration from science2 as the misfortune of science is that it has not yet saturated the mind of philosophers and recast the moral world4 ,the ,greek physicists1 puerile as was their notion of natural mechanism1 had a more integral view of things4 ,they understood nature's uses and man's conditions in an honest and noble way4 ,if no single phenomenon had been explained correctly by any philosopher from ,thales to ,lucretius1 yet by their frank and studious contemplation of nature they would have liberated the human soul4 ,sidenote3 ,obstruction by alien traditions4 ,unfortunately the supplements to science which most philosophers supply in our day are not conceived in a scientific spirit4 ,instead of anticipating the physics of the future they cling to the physics of the past4 ,they do not stimulate us by a picture1 however fanciful1 of what the analogies of nature and politics actually point to2 they seek rather to patch and dislocate current physics with some ancient myth1 once the best physics obtainable1 from which they have not learned to extricate their affections4 ,sometimes these survivals are intended to modify scientific conceptions but slightly1 and merely to soften a little the outlines of a cosmic picture to which religion and literature are not yet accustomed4 ,there is a school of political conservatives who1 with no specific interest in metaphysics1 cannot or dare not break with traditional modes of expression1 with the customs of their nation1 or with the clerical classes4 ,they accordingly append to current knowledge certain sentimental postulates1 alleging that what is established by tradition and what appeals to the heart must somehow correspond to something which is needful and true4 ,but their conventional attachment to a religion which in its original essence was perhaps mystical and revolutionary1 scarcely modifies1 in their eyes1 the sum of practical assurances or the aim of human life4 ,as language exercises some functions which science can hardly assume 7as1 for instance1 in poetry and communication7 so theology and metaphysics1 which to such men are nothing but languages1 might provide for inarticulate interests1 and unite us to much that lies in the dim penumbra of our workaday world4 ,ancient revelations and mysteries1 however incredible if taken literally1 might therefore be suffered to nourish undisturbed1 so long as they did not clash with any clear fact or natural duty4 ,they might continue to decorate with a mystical aureole the too prosaic kernel of known truth4 ,sidenote3 ,needless anxiety for moral interests4 ,mythology and ritual1 with the sundry divinations of poets1 might in fact be kept suspended with advantage over human passion and ignorance1 to furnish them with decent expression4 ,but once indulged1 divination is apt to grow arrogant and dogmatic4 ,when its oracles have become traditional they are almost inevitably mistaken for sober truths4 ,hence the second kind of supplement offered to science1 so that revelations with which moral life has been intertwined may find a place beside or beyond science4 ,the effort is honest1 but extraordinarily short-sighted4 ,whatever value those revelations may have they draw from actual experience or inevitable ideals4 ,when the ground of that experience and those ideals is disclosed by science1 nothing of any value is lost2 it only remains to accustom ourselves to a new vocabulary and to shift somewhat the associations of those values which life contains or pursues4 ,revelations are necessarily mythical and subrational2 they express natural forces and human interests in a groping way1 before the advent of science4 ,to stick in them1 when something more honest and explicit is available1 is inconsistent with caring for attainable welfare or understanding the situation4 ,it is to be stubborn and negligent under the cloak of religion4 ,these prejudices are a drag on progress1 moral no less than material2 and the sensitive conservatism that fears they may be indispensable is entangled in a pathetic delusion4 ,it is conservatism in a ship-wreck4 ,it has not the insight to embrace the fertile principles of life1 which are always ready to renew life after no matter what natural catastrophe4 ,the good laggards have no courage to strip for the race4 ,rather than live otherwise1 and live better1 they prefer to nurse the memories of youth and to die with a retrospective smile upon their countenance4 ,sidenote3 ,science an imaginative and practical art4 ,far graver than the criticism which shows science to be incomplete is that which shows it to be relative4 ,the fact is undeniable1 though the inferences made from it are often rash and gratuitous4 ,we have seen that science is nothing but developed perception1 interpreted intent1 common-sense rounded out and minutely articulated4 ,it is therefore as much an instinctive product1 as much a stepping forth of human courage in the dark1 as is any inevitable dream or impulsive action4 ,like life itself1 like any form of determinate existence1 it is altogether autonomous and unjustifiable from the outside4 ,it must lean on its own vitality2 to sanction reason there is only reason1 and to corroborate sense there is nothing but sense4 ,inferential thought is a venture not to be approved of1 save by a thought no less venturesome and inferential4 ,this is once for all the fate of a living being--it is the very essence of spirit--to be ever on the wing1 borne by inner forces toward goals of its own imagining1 confined to a passing apprehension of a represented world4 ,mind1 which calls itself the organ of truth1 is a permanent possibility of error4 ,the encouragement and corroboration which science is alleged to receive from moment to moment may1 for aught it knows1 be simply a more ingenious self-deception1 a form of that cumulative illusion by which madness can confirm itself1 creating a whole world1 with an endless series of martyrs1 to bear witness to its sanity4 ,to insist on this situation may seem idle1 since no positive doctrine can gain thereby in plausibility1 and no particular line of action in reasonableness4 ,yet this transcendental exercise1 this reversion to the immediate1 may be recommended by way of a cathartic1 to free the mind from ancient obstructions and make it hungrier and more agile in its rational faith4 ,scepticism is harmless when it is honest and universal2 it clears the air and is a means of reorganising belief on its natural foundations4 ,belief is an inevitable accompaniment of practice and intent1 both of which it will cling to all the more closely after a thorough criticism4 ,when all beliefs are challenged together1 the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and to re-establish themselves alone4 ,the doubt cast on science1 when it is an ingenuous and impartial doubt1 will accordingly serve to show what sort of thing science is1 and to establish it on a sure foundation4 ,science will then be seen to be tentative1 genial1 practical1 and humane1 full of ideality and pathos1 like every great human undertaking4 ,sidenote3 ,arrire-pense in transcendentalism4 ,unfortunately a searching disintegration of dogma1 a conscientious reversion to the immediate1 is seldom practised for its own sake4 ,so violent a disturbance of mental habits needs some great social upheaval or some revolutionary ambition to bring it about4 ,the transcendental philosophy might never have been put forward at all1 had its authors valued it for what it can really accomplish4 ,the effort would have seemed too great and the result too nugatory4 ,their criticism of knowledge was not freely undertaken1 with the pure speculative motive of understanding and purifying human science4 ,they were driven on by the malicious psychology of their predecessors1 by the perplexities of a sophistical scepticism1 and by the imminent collapse of traditional metaphysics4 ,they were enticed at the same time by the hope of finding a new basis for the religious myths associated with that metaphysics4 ,in consequence their transcendentalism was not a rehearsal of the ,life of ,reason1 a retrospect criticising and justifying the phases of human progress4 ,it was rather a post-rational system of theology1 the dangerous cure to a harmless disease1 inducing a panic to introduce a fable4 ,the panic came from the assumption 7a wholly gratuitous one7 that a spontaneous constructive intellect cannot be a trustworthy instrument1 that appearances cannot be the properties of reality1 and that things cannot be what science finds that they are4 ,we were forbidden to believe in anything we might discover or to trust in anything we could see4 ,the artificial vacuum thus produced in the mind ached to be filled with something1 and of course a flood of rhetorical commonplaces was at hand1 which might rush in to fill it4 ,sidenote3 ,its romantic sincerity4 ,the most heroic transcendentalists were but men1 and having imagined that logic obliged them to abstain from every sort of hypostasis1 they could not long remain true to their logic4 ,for a time1 being of a buoyant disposition1 they might feel that nothing could be more exhilarating than to swim in the void1 altogether free from settled conditions1 altogether the ignorant creators of each moment's vision4 ,such a career evidently affords all sorts of possibilities1 except perhaps the possibility of being a career4 ,but when a man has strained every nerve to maintain an absolute fluidity and a painful fidelity to the immediate1 he can hardly be blamed if he lapses at last into some flattering myth1 and if having satisfied himself that all science is fiction he proclaims some fairy-tale to be the truth4 ,the episodes of experience1 not being due to any conceivable machinery beneath1 might come of mere willing1 or at the waving of a dialectical wand4 ,yet apart from this ulterior inconsistency and backsliding into credulity1 transcendentalism would hear nothing of causes or grounds4 ,all phenomena existed for it on one flat level4 ,we were released from all dogma and reinstated in the primordial assurance that we were all there was1 but without understanding what we were1 and without any means of controlling our destiny1 though cheered by the magnificent feeling that that destiny was great4 ,sidenote3 ,its constructive importance4 ,it is intelligible that a pure transcendentalism of this sort should not be either stable or popular4 ,it may be admired for its analytic depth and its persistency in tracing all supposed existences back to the experience that vouches for them4 ,yet a spirit that finds its only exercise in gloating on the consciousness that it is a spirit1 one that has so little skill in expression that it feels all its embodiments to be betrayals and all its symbols to be misrepresentations1 is a spirit evidently impotent and confused4 ,it is self-inhibited1 and cannot fulfil its essential vocation by reaching an embodiment at once definitive and ideal1 philosophical and true4 ,we may excuse a school that has done one original task so thoroughly as transcendentalism has thing could be said of it1 would be simply an integral term in the discourse that described it4 ,and this discourse1 this sad residuum of reality1 would remain an absolute datum without a ground1 without a subject-matter1 without a past1 and without a future4 ,sidenote3 ,its futility4 ,it suffices1 therefore1 to take the supposed negative implication in transcendentalism a little seriously to see that it leaves nothing standing but negation and imbecility2 so that we may safely conclude that such a negative implication is gratuitous1 and also that in taking the transcendental method for an instrument of reconstruction its professors were radically false to it4 ,they took the starting-point of experience1 on which they had fallen back1 for its ultimate deliverance1 and in reverting to protoplasm they thought they were rising to ,god4 ,the transcendental method is merely retrospective2 its use is to recover more systematically conceptions already extant and inevitable4 ,it invalidates nothing in science2 much less does it carry with it any rival doctrine of its own4 ,every philosophy1 even materialism1 may find a transcendental justification1 if experience as it develops will yield no other terms4 ,what has reason to tremble at a demand for its credentials is surely not natural science2 it is rather those mystical theologies or romantic philosophies of history which aspire to take its place4 ,such lucubrations1 even if reputed certain1 can scarcely be really credited or regarded in practice2 while scientific tenets are necessarily respected1 even when they are declared to be fictions4 ,this nemesis is inevitable2 for the mind must be inhabited1 and the ideas with which science peoples it are simply its involuntary perceptions somewhat more clearly arranged4 ,sidenote3 ,ideal science is self-justified4 ,that the relativity of science--its being an emanation of human life--is nothing against its truth appears best1 perhaps1 in the case of dialectic4 ,dialectic is valid by virtue of an intended meaning and felt congruity in its terms2 but these terms1 which intent fixes1 are external and independent in their ideal nature1 and the congruity between them is not created by being felt but1 whether incidentally felt or not1 is inherent in their essence4 ,mathematical thinking is the closest and most intimate of mental operations1 nothing external being called in to aid2 yet mathematical truth is as remote as possible from being personal or psychic4 ,it is absolutely self-justified and is necessary before it is discovered to be so4 ,here1 then1 is a conspicuous region of truth1 disclosed to the human intellect by its own internal exercise1 which is nevertheless altogether independent1 being eternal and indefeasible1 while the thought that utters it is ephemeral4 ,sidenote3 ,physical science is presupposed in scepticism4 ,the validity of material science1 not being warranted by pure insight1 cannot be so quickly made out2 nevertheless it cannot be denied systematically1 and the misunderstood transcendentalism which belittles physics contradicts its own basis4 ,for how are we supposed to know that what call facts are mere appearances and what we call objects mere creations of thought8 ,we know this by physics4 ,it is physiology1 a part of physics1 that assures us that our senses and brains are conditions of our experience4 ,were it not for what we know of the outer world and of our place in it1 we should be incapable of attaching any meaning to subjectivity4 ,the flux of things would then go on in their own medium1 not in our minds2 and no suspicion of illusion or of qualification by mind would attach to any event in nature4 ,so it is in a dream2 and it is our knowledge of physics1 our reliance on the world's material coherence1 that marks our awakening1 and that constitutes our discovery that we exist as minds and are subject to dreaming4 ,it is quite true that the flux1 as it exists in men1 is largely psychic2 but only because the events it contains are effects of material causes and the images in it are flying shadows cast by solid external things4 ,this is the meaning of psychic existence1 and its differentia4 ,mind is an expression1 weighted with emotion1 of mechanical relations among bodies4 ,suppose the bodies all removed3 at once the images formerly contrasted with those bodies would resume their inherent characteristics and mutual relation2 they would become existences in their own category1 large1 moving1 coloured1 distributed to right and left2 that is1 save for their values1 they would become material things4 ,sidenote3 ,it recurs in all understanding of perception4 ,physics is accordingly a science which1 though hypothetical and only verifiable by experiment1 is involved in history and psychology and therefore in any criticism of knowledge4 ,the contradiction would be curious if a man should declare that his ideas were worthless1 being due to his organs of sense1 and that therefore these organs 7since he had an idea of them7 did not exist4 ,yet on this brave argument idealism chiefly rests4 ,it asserts that bodies are mere ideas1 because it is through our bodies that we perceive them4 ,when physics has discovered the conditions under which knowledge of physics has arisen1 physics is supposed to be spirited away2 whereas1 of course1 it has only closed its circle and justified its sovereignty4 ,were all science retracted and reduced to symbolic calculation nothing would remain for this calculation to symbolise4 ,the whole force of calling a theory merely a vehicle or method of thought1 leading us to something different from itself1 lies in having a literal knowledge of this other thing4 ,but such literal knowledge is the first stage of science1 which the other stages merely extend4 ,so that when1 under special circumstances1 we really appeal to algebraic methods of expression and think in symbols1 we do so in the hope of transcribing our terms1 when the reckoning is over1 into the language of familiar facts4 ,were these facts not forthcoming1 the symbolic machinery would itself become the genuine reality--since it is really given--and we should have to rest in it1 as in the ultimate truth4 ,this is what happens in mythology1 when the natural phenomena expressed by it are forgotten4 ,but natural phenomena themselves are symbols of nothing1 because they are primary data4 ,they are the constitutive elements of the reality they disclose4 ,sidenote3 ,science contains all trustworthy knowledge4 ,the validity of science in general is accordingly established merely by establishing the truth of its particular propositions1 in dialectic on the authority of intent and in physics on that of experiment4 ,it is impossible to base science on a deeper foundation or to override it by a higher knowledge4 ,what is called metaphysics1 if not an anticipation of natural science1 is a confusion of it with dialectic or a mixture of it with myths4 ,if we have the faculty of being utterly sincere and of disintegrating the conventions of language and religion1 we must confess that knowledge is only a claim we put forth1 a part of that unfathomable compulsion by force of which we live and hold our painted world together for a moment4 ,if we have any insight into mind1 or any eye for human history1 we must confess at the same time that the oracular substitutes for knowledge to which1 in our perplexities1 we might be tempted to fly1 are pathetic popular fables1 having no other sanctity than that which they borrow from the natural impulses they play upon4 ,to live by science requires intelligence and faith1 but not to live by it is folly4 ,sidenote3 ,it suffices for the ,life of ,reason4 ,if science thus contains the sum total of our rational convictions and gives us the only picture of reality on which we should care to dwell1 we have but to consult the sciences in detail to ascertain1 as far as that is possible1 what sort of a universe we live in4 ,the result is as yet far from satisfactory4 ,the sciences have not joined hands and made their results coherent1 showing nature to be1 as it doubtless is1 all of one piece4 ,the moral sciences especially are a mass of confusion4 ,negative1 ,i think1 must be the attitude of reason1 in the present state of science1 upon any hypothesis far outrunning the recorded history and the visible habitat of the human race4 ,yet exactly the same habits and principles that have secured our present knowledge are still active within us1 and promise further discoveries4 ,it is more desirable to clarify our knowledge within these bounds than to extend it beyond them4 ,for while the reward of action is contemplation or1 in more modern phrase1 experience and consciousness1 there is nothing stable or interesting to contemplate except objects relevant to action--the natural world and the mind's ideals4 ,both the conditions and the standards of action lie well within the territory which science1 after a fashion1 already dominates4 ,but there remain unexplored jungles and monster-breeding lairs within our nominal jurisdiction which it is the immediate task of science to clear4 ,the darkest spots are in man himself1 in his fitful1 irrational disposition4 ,could a better system prevail in our lives a better order would establish itself in our thinking4 ,it has not been for want of keen senses1 or personal genius1 or a constant order in the outer world1 that mankind have fallen back repeatedly into barbarism and superstition4 ,it has been for want of good character1 good example1 and good government4 ,there is a pathetic capacity in men to live nobly1 if only they would give one another the chance4 ,the ideal of political perfection1 vague and remote as it yet seems1 is certainly approachable1 for it is as definite and constant as human nature4 ,the knowledge of all relevant truth would be involved in that ideal1 and no intellectual dissatisfaction would be felt with a system of ideas that should express and illumine a perfect life4