,,winds ,,of ,,doctrine ,,studies ,,in ,,contemporary ,,opinion ,,by ,g4 ,,santayana ,,late ,,professor ,,of ,,philosophy ,,in ,,harvard ,,university ,,new ,,york3 ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons ,,first ,,printed ,,in #aiac ,,contents ,i4 ,,the ,,intellectual ,,temper ,,of ,,the ,,age ,,ii4 ,,modernism ,,and ,,christianity ,,iii4 ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,m4 ,,henri ,,bergson ,,iv4 ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,,mr4 ,,bertrand ,,russell-- i4 ,a ,,new ,,scholasticism ii4 ,,the ,,study ,,of ,,essence iii4 ,,the ,,critique ,,of ,,pragmatism iv4 ,,hypostatic ,,ethics ,v4 ,,shelley3 ,,or ,,the ,,poetic ,,value ,,of ,,revolutionary ,,principles ,,vi4 ,,the ,,genteel ,,tradition ,,in ,,american ,,philosophy ,,winds ,,of ,,doctrine ,i ,,the ,,intellectual ,,temper ,,of ,,the ,,age ,the present age is a critical one and interesting to live in4 ,the civilisation characteristic of ,christendom has not disappeared1 yet another civilisation has begun to take its place4 ,we still understand the value of religious faith2 we still appreciate the pompous arts of our forefathers2 we are brought up on academic architecture1 sculpture1 painting1 poetry1 and music4 ,we still love monarchy and aristocracy1 together with that picturesque and dutiful order which rested on local institutions1 class privileges1 and the authority of the family4 ,we may even feel an organic need for all these things1 cling to them tenaciously1 and dream of rejuvenating them4 ,on the other hand the shell of ,christendom is broken4 ,the unconquerable mind of the ,east1 the pagan past1 the industrial socialistic future confront it with their equal authority4 ,our whole life and mind is saturated with the slow upward filtration of a new spirit--that of an emancipated1 atheistic1 international democracy4 ,these epithets may make us shudder2 but what they describe is something positive and self-justified1 something deeply rooted in our animal nature and inspiring to our hearts1 something which1 like every vital impulse1 is pregnant with a morality of its own4 ,in vain do we deprecate it2 it has possession of us already through our propensities1 fashions1 and language4 ,our very plutocrats and monarchs are at ease only when they are vulgar4 ,even prelates and missionaries are hardly sincere or conscious of an honest function1 save as they devote themselves to social work2 for willy-nilly the new spirit has hold of our consciences as well4 ,this spirit is amiable as well as disquieting1 liberating as well as barbaric2 and a philosopher in our day1 conscious both of the old life and of the new1 might repeat what ,goethe said of his successive love affairs--that it is sweet to see the moon rise while the sun is still mildly shining4 ,meantime our bodies in this generation are generally safe1 and often comfortable2 and for those who can suspend their irrational labours long enough to look about them1 the spectacle of the world1 if not particularly beautiful or touching1 presents a rapid and crowded drama and 7what here concerns me most7 one unusually intelligible4 ,the nations1 parties1 and movements that divide the scene have a known history4 ,we are not condemned1 as most generations have been1 to fight and believe without an inkling of the cause4 ,the past lies before us2 the history of everything is published4 ,every one records his opinion1 and loudly proclaims what he wants4 ,in this ,babel of ideals few demands are ever literally satisfied2 but many evaporate1 merge together1 and reach an unintended issue1 with which they are content4 ,the whole drift of things presents a huge1 good-natured comedy to the observer4 ,it stirs not unpleasantly a certain sturdy animality and hearty self-trust which lie at the base of human nature4 ,a chief characteristic of the situation is that moral confusion is not limited to the world at large1 always the scene of profound conflicts1 but that it has penetrated to the mind and heart of the average individual4 ,never perhaps were men so like one another and so divided within themselves4 ,in other ages1 even more than at present1 different classes of men have stood at different levels of culture1 with a magnificent readiness to persecute and to be martyred for their respective principles4 ,these militant believers have been keenly conscious that they had enemies2 but their enemies were strangers to them1 whom they could think of merely as such1 regarding them as blank negative forces1 hateful black devils1 whose existence might make life difficult but could not confuse the ideal of life4 ,no one sought to understand these enemies of his1 nor even to conciliate them1 unless under compulsion or out of insidious policy1 to convert them against their will2 he merely pelted them with blind refutations and clumsy blows4 ,every one sincerely felt that the right was entirely on his side1 a proof that such intelligence as he had moved freely and exclusively within the lines of his faith4 ,the result of this was that his faith was intelligent1 ,i mean1 that he understood it1 and had a clear1 almost instinctive perception of what was compatible or incompatible with it4 ,he defended his walls and he cultivated his garden4 ,his position and his possessions were unmistakable4 ,when men and minds were so distinct it was possible to describe and to count them4 ,during the ,reformation1 when external confusion was at its height1 you might have ascertained almost statistically what persons and what regions each side snatched from the other2 it was not doubtful which was which4 ,the history of their respective victories and defeats could consequently be written4 ,so in the eighteenth century it was easy to perceive how many people ,voltaire and ,rousseau might be alienating from ,bossuet and ,fnelon4 ,but how shall we satisfy ourselves now whether1 for instance1 ,christianity is holding its own8 ,who can tell what vagary or what compromise may not be calling itself ,christianity8 ,a bishop may be a modernist1 a chemist may be a mystical theologian1 a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts4 ,for science1 too1 which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation for philosophy1 has allowed philosophy rather to undermine its foundation1 and is seen eating its own words1 through the mouths of some of its accredited spokesmen1 and reducing itself to something utterly conventional and insecure4 ,it is characteristic of human nature to be as impatient of ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in acquiring such knowledge as is at hand2 and even those who have not been lazy sometimes take it into their heads to disparage their science and to outdo the professional philosophers in psychological scepticism1 in order to plunge with them into the most vapid speculation4 ,nor is this insecurity about first principles limited to abstract subjects4 ,it reigns in politics as well4 ,liberalism had been supposed to advocate liberty2 but what the advanced parties that still call themselves liberal now advocate is control1 control over property1 trade1 wages1 hours of work1 meat and drink1 amusements1 and in a truly advanced country like ,france control over education and religion2 and it is only on the subject of marriage 7if we ignore eugenics7 that liberalism is growing more and more liberal4 ,those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality2 how many people read and write1 or how many people there are1 or what is the annual value of their trade2 whereas true progress would rather lie in reading or writing fewer and better things1 and being fewer and better men1 and enjoying life more4 ,but the philanthropists are now preparing an absolute subjection of the individual1 in soul and body1 to the instincts of the majority--the most cruel and unprogressive of masters2 and ,i am not sure that the liberal maxim1 the greatest happiness of the greatest number1 has not lost whatever was just or generous in its intent and come to mean the greatest idleness of the largest possible population4 ,nationality offers another occasion for strange moral confusion4 ,it had seemed that an age that was levelling and connecting all nations1 an age whose real achievements were of international application1 was destined to establish the solidarity of mankind as a sort of axiom4 ,the idea of solidarity is indeed often invoked in speeches1 and there is an extreme socialistic party that--when a wave of national passion does not carry it the other way--believes in international brotherhood4 ,but even here1 black men and yellow men are generally excluded2 and in higher circles1 where history1 literature1 and political ambition dominate men's minds1 nationalism has become of late an omnivorous all-permeating passion4 ,local parliaments must be everywhere established1 extinct or provincial dialects must be galvanised into national languages1 philosophy must be made racial1 religion must be fostered where it emphasises nationality and denounced where it transcends it4 ,man is certainly an animal that1 when he lives at all1 lives for ideals4 ,something must be found to occupy his imagination1 to raise pleasure and pain into love and hatred1 and change the prosaic alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow4 ,now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull1 when religion for the most part is so vague and accommodating1 when even war is a vast impersonal business1 nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honour4 ,it has become the one eloquent1 public1 intrepid illusion4 ,illusion1 ,i mean1 when it is taken for an ultimate good or a mystical essence1 for of course nationality is a fact4 ,people speak some particular language and are very uncomfortable where another is spoken or where their own is spoken differently4 ,they have habits1 judgments1 assumptions to which they are wedded1 and a society where all this is unheard of shocks them and puts them at a galling disadvantage4 ,to ignorant people the foreigner as such is ridiculous1 unless he is superior to them in numbers or prestige1 when he becomes hateful4 ,it is natural for a man to like to live at home1 and to live long elsewhere without a sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity4 ,it is right to feel a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to oneself4 ,but this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental2 like age or sex it is a physical fatality which can be made the basis of specific and comely virtues2 but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities4 ,yet of this distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol1 perhaps because it is the only distinction they feel they have left4 ,anomalies of this sort will never be properly understood until people accustom themselves to a theory to which they have always turned a deaf ear1 because1 though simple and true1 it is materialistic3 namely1 that mind is not the cause of our actions but an effect1 collateral with our actions1 of bodily growth and organisation4 ,it may therefore easily come about that the thoughts of men1 tested by the principles that seem to rule their conduct1 may be belated1 or irrelevant1 or premonitory2 for the living organism has many strata1 on any of which1 at a given moment1 activities may exist perfect enough to involve consciousness1 yet too weak and isolated to control the organs of outer expression2 so that 7to speak geologically7 our practice may be historic1 our manners glacial1 and our religion palozoic4 ,the ideals of the nineteenth century may be said to have been all belated2 the age still yearned with ,rousseau or speculated with ,kant1 while it moved with ,darwin1 ,bismarck1 and ,nietzsche3 and to-day1 in the half-educated classes1 among the religious or revolutionary sects1 we may observe quite modern methods of work allied with a somewhat antiquated mentality4 ,the whole nineteenth century might well cry with ,faust3 ,two souls1 alas1 dwell in my bosom6 ,the revolutions it witnessed filled it with horror and made it fall in love romantically with the past and dote on ruins1 because they were ruins2 and the best learning and fiction of the time were historical1 inspired by an unprecedented effort to understand remote forms of life and feeling1 to appreciate exotic arts and religions1 and to rethink the blameless thoughts of savages and criminals4 ,this sympathetic labour and retrospect1 however1 was far from being merely sentimental2 for the other half of this divided soul was looking ahead4 ,those same revolutions1 often so destructive1 stupid1 and bloody1 filled it with pride1 and prompted it to invent several incompatible theories concerning a steady and inevitable progress in the world4 ,in the study of the past1 side by side with romantic sympathy1 there was a sort of realistic1 scholarly intelligence and an adventurous love of truth2 kindness too was often mingled with dramatic curiosity4 ,the pathologists were usually healers1 the philosophers of evolution were inventors or humanitarians or at least idealists3 the historians of art 7though optimism was impossible here7 were also guides to taste1 quickeners of moral sensibility1 like ,ruskin1 or enthusiasts for the irresponsibly beautiful1 like ,pater and ,oscar ,wilde4 ,everywhere in the nineteenth century we find a double preoccupation with the past and with the future1 a longing to know what all experience might have been hitherto1 and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly different experience1 to be contrived immediately with a beating heart and with flying banners4 ,the imagination of the age was intent on history2 its conscience was intent on reform4 ,reform6 ,this magic word itself covers a great equivocation4 ,to reform means to shatter one form and to create another2 but the two sides of the act are not always equally intended nor equally successful4 ,usually the movement starts from the mere sense of oppression1 and people break down some established form1 without any qualms about the capacity of their freed instincts to generate the new forms that may be needed4 ,so the ,reformation1 in destroying the traditional order1 intended to secure truth1 spontaneity1 and profuseness of religious forms2 the danger of course being that each form might become meagre and the sum of them chaotic4 ,if the accent1 however1 could only be laid on the second phase of the transformation1 reform might mean the creation of order where it did not sufficiently appear1 so that diffuse life should be concentrated into a congenial form that should render it strong and self-conscious4 ,in this sense1 if we may trust ,mr4 ,gilbert ,murray1 it was a great wave of reform that created ,greece1 or at least all that was characteristic and admirable in it--an effort to organise1 train1 simplify1 purify1 and make beautiful the chaos of barbaric customs and passions that had preceded4 ,the clanger here1 a danger to which ,greece actually succumbed1 is that so refined an organism may be too fragile1 not inclusive enough within1 and not buttressed strongly enough without against the flux of the uncivilised world4 ,christianity also1 in the first formative centuries of its existence1 was an integrating reform of the same sort1 on a different scale and in a different sphere2 but here too an enslaved rabble within the soul claiming the suffrage1 and better equipped intellectual empires rising round about1 seem to prove that the harmony which the ,christian system made for a moment out of nature and life was partial and insecure4 ,it is a terrible dilemma in the life of reason whether it will sacrifice natural abundance to moral order1 or moral order to natural abundance4 ,whatever compromise we choose proves unstable1 and forces us to a new experiment4 ,perhaps in the century that has elapsed since the ,french ,revolution the pendulum has had time to swing as far as it will in the direction of negative reform1 and may now begin to move towards that sort of reform which is integrating and creative4 ,the veering of the advanced political parties from liberalism to socialism would seem to be a clear indication of this new tendency4 ,it is manifest also in the love of nature1 in athletics1 in the new woman1 and in a friendly medical attitude towards all the passions4 ,in the fine arts1 however1 and in religion and philosophy1 we are still in full career towards disintegration4 ,it might have been thought that a germ of rational order would by this time have penetrated into fine art and speculation from the prosperous constructive arts that touch the one1 and the prosperous natural and mathematical sciences that touch the other4 ,but as yet there is little sign of it4 ,since the beginning of the nineteenth century painting and sculpture have passed through several phases1 representatives of each naturally surviving after the next had appeared4 ,romanticism1 half lurid1 half effeminate1 yielded to a brutal pursuit of material truth1 and a pious preference for modern and humble sentiment4 ,this realism had a romantic vein in it1 and studied vice and crime1 tedium and despair1 with a very genuine horrified sympathy4 ,some went in for a display of archaeological lore or for exotic motifs2 others gave all their attention to rediscovering and emphasising abstract problems of execution1 the highway of technical tradition having long been abandoned4 ,beginners are still supposed to study their art1 but they have no masters from whom to learn it4 ,thus1 when there seemed to be some danger that art should be drowned in science and history1 the artists deftly eluded it by becoming amateurs4 ,one gave himself to religious archaism1 another to ,japanese composition1 a third to barbaric symphonies of colour2 sculptors tried to express dramatic climaxes1 or inarticulate lyrical passion1 such as music might better convey2 and the latest whims are apparently to abandon painful observation altogether1 to be merely decorative or frankly mystical1 and to be satisfied with the childishness of hieroglyphics or the crudity of caricature4 ,the arts are like truant children who think their life will be glorious if they only run away and play for ever2 no need is felt of a dominant ideal passion and theme1 nor of any moral interest in the interpretation of nature4 ,artists have no less talent than ever2 their taste1 their vision1 their sentiment are often interesting2 they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works4 ,in philosophy there are always the professors1 as in art there are always the portrait painters and the makers of official sculpture2 and both sorts of academicians are often very expert and well-educated4 ,yet in philosophy1 besides the survival of all the official and endowed systems1 there has been of late a very interesting fresh movement1 largely among the professors themselves1 which in its various hues may be called irrationalism1 vitalism1 pragmatism1 or pure empiricism4 ,but this movement1 far from being a reawakening of any organising instinct1 is simply an extreme expression of romantic anarchy4 ,it is in essence but a franker confession of the principle upon which modern philosophy has been building--or unbuilding--for these three hundred years1 ,i mean the principle of subjectivity4 ,berkeley and ,hume1 the first prophets of the school1 taught that experience is not a partial discovery of other things but is itself the only possible object of experience4 ,therefore1 said ,kant and the second generation of prophets1 any world we may seem to live in1 even those worlds of theology or of history which ,berkeley or ,hume had inadvertently left standing1 must be an idea which our present experience suggests to us and which we frame as the principles of our mind allow and dictate that we should4 ,but then1 say the latest prophets--,avenarius1 ,william ,james1 ,m4 ,bergson--these mental principles are no antecedent necessities or duties imposed on our imagination2 they are simply parts of flying experience itself1 and the ideas--say of ,god or of matter--which they lead us to frame have nothing compulsory or fixed about them4 ,their sole authority lies in the fact that they may be more or less congenial or convenient1 by enriching the flying moment sthetically1 or helping it to slip prosperously into the next moment4 ,immediate feeling1 pure experience1 is the only reality1 the only fact3 if notions which do not reproduce it fully as it flows are still called true 7and they evidently ought not to be7 it is only in a pragmatic sense of the word1 in that while they present a false and heterogeneous image of reality they are not practically misleading2 as1 for instance1 the letters on this page are no true image of the sounds they call up1 nor the sounds of the thoughts1 yet both may be correct enough if they lead the reader in the end to the things they symbolise4 ,it is ,m4 ,bergson1 the most circumspect and best equipped thinker of this often scatter-brained school1 who has put this view in a frank and tenable form1 avoiding the bungling it has sometimes led to about the meaning of truth4 ,truth1 according to ,m4 ,bergson1 is given only in intuitions which prolong experience just as it occurs1 in its full immediacy2 on the other hand1 all representation1 thought1 theory1 calculation1 or discourse is so much mutilation of the truth1 excusable only because imposed upon us by practical exigences4 ,the world1 being a feeling1 must be felt to be known1 and then the world and the knowledge of it are identical2 but if it is talked about or thought about it is denaturalised1 although convention and utility may compel the poor human being to talk and to think1 exiled as he is from reality in his ,babylon of abstractions4 ,life1 like the porcupine when not ruffled by practical alarms1 can let its fretful quills subside4 ,the mystic can live happy in the droning consciousness of his own heart-beats and those of the universe4 ,with this we seem to have reached the extreme of self-concentration and self-expansion1 the perfect identity and involution of everything in oneself4 ,and such indeed is the inevitable goal of the malicious theory of knowledge1 to which this school is committed1 remote as that goal may be from the boyish naturalism and innocent intent of many of its pupils4 ,if all knowledge is of experience and experience cannot be knowledge of anything else1 knowledge proper is evidently impossible4 ,there can be only feeling2 and the least self-transcendence1 even in memory1 must be an illusion4 ,you may have the most complex images you will2 but nothing pictured there can exist outside1 not even past or alien experience1 if you picture it4#a ,solipsism has always been the evident implication of idealism2 but the idealists1 when confronted with this consequence1 which is dialectically inconvenient1 have never been troubled at heart by it1 for at heart they accept it4 ,to the uninitiated they have merely murmured1 with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand3 ,what6 are you still troubled by that8 ,or if compelled to be so scholastic as to labour the point they have explained1 as usual1 that oneself cannot be the absolute because the idea of oneself1 to arise1 must be contrasted with other ideas4 ,therefore1 you cannot well have the idea of a world in which nothing appears but the idea of yourself4 ,footnote #a3 ,perhaps some unsophisticated reader may wonder if ,i am not trying to mislead him1 or if any mortal ever really maintained anything so absurd4 ,strictly the idealistic principle does not justify a denial that independent things1 by chance resembling my ideas1 may actually exist2 but it justifies the denial that these things1 if they existed1 could be those ,i know4 ,my past would not be my past if ,i did not appropriate it2 my ideas would not refer to their objects unless both were ideas identified in my mind4 ,in practice1 therefore1 idealists feel free to ignore the gratuitous possibility of existences lying outside the circle of objects knowable to the thinker1 which1 according to them1 is the circle of his ideas4 ,in this way they turn a human method of approach into a charter for existence and non-existence1 and their point of view becomes the creative power4 ,when the idealist studies astronomy1 does he learn anything about the stars that ,god made8 ,far from him so naive a thought6 ,his astronomy consists of two activities of his own 7and he is very fond of activity73 star-gazing and calculation4 ,when he has become quite proficient he knows all about star-gazing and calculation2 but he knows nothing of any stars that ,god made2 for there are no stars except his visual images of stars1 and there is no ,god but himself4 ,it is true that to soften this hard saying a little he would correct me and say his higher self2 but as his lower self is only the idea of himself which he may have framed1 it is his higher self that is himself simply3 although whether he or his idea of himself is really the higher might seem doubtful to an outsider4 ,this explanation1 in pretending to refute solipsism1 of course assumes and confirms it2 for all these cans and musts touch only your idea of yourself1 not your actual being1 and there is no thinkable world that is not within you1 as you exist really4 ,thus idealists are wedded to solipsism irrevocably2 and it is a happy marriage1 only the name of the lady has to be changed4 ,nevertheless1 lest peace should come 7and peace nowadays is neither possible nor desired71 a counter-current at once overtakes the philosophy of the immediate and carries it violently to the opposite pole of speculation--from mystic intuition to a commercial cult of action and a materialisation of the mind such as no materialist had ever dreamt of4 ,the tenderness which the pragmatists feel for life in general1 and especially for an accelerated modern life1 has doubtless contributed to this revulsion1 but the speculative consideration of the immediate might have led to it independently4 ,for in the immediate there is marked expectancy1 craving1 prayer2 nothing absorbs consciousness so much as what is not quite given4 ,therefore it is a good reading of the immediate1 as well as a congenial thing to say to the contemporary world1 that reality is change1 growth1 action1 creation4 ,similarly the sudden materialisation of mind1 the unlooked-for assertion that consciousness does not exist1 has its justification in the same quarter4 ,in the immediate what appears is the thing1 not the mind to which the thing appears4 ,even in the passions1 when closely scanned introspectively1 you will find a new sensitiveness or ebullition of the body1 or a rush of images and words2 you will hardly find a separate object called anger or love4 ,the passions1 therefore1 when their moral essence is forgotten1 may be said to be literally nothing but a movement of their organs and their objects1 just as ideas may be said to be nothing but fragments or cross-threads of the material world4 ,thus the mind and the object are rolled into one moving mass2 motions are identified with passions1 things are perceptions extended1 perceptions are things cut down4 ,and1 by a curious revolution in sentiment1 it is things and motions that are reputed to have the fuller and the nobler reality4 ,under cover of a fusion or neutrality between idealism and realism1 moral materialism1 the reverence for mere existence and power1 takes possession of the heart1 and ethics becomes idolatrous4 ,idolatry1 however1 is hardly possible if you have a cold and clear idea of blocks and stones1 attributing to them only the motions they are capable of2 and accordingly idealism1 by way of compensation1 has to take possession of physics4 ,the idol begins to wink and drop tears under the wistful gaze of the worshipper4 ,matter is felt to yearn1 and evolution is held to be more divinely inspired than policy or reason could ever be4 ,extremes meet1 and the tendency to practical materialism was never wholly absent from the idealism of the moderns4 ,certainly1 the tumid respectability of ,anglo-,german philosophy had somehow to be left behind2 and ,darwinian ,england and ,bismarckian ,germany had another inspiration as well to guide them1 if it could only come to consciousness in the professors4 ,the worship of power is an old religion1 and ,hegel1 to go no farther back1 is full of it2 but like traditional religion his system qualified its veneration for success by attributing success1 in the future at least1 to what could really inspire veneration2 and such a master in equivocation could have no difficulty in convincing himself that the good must conquer in the end if whatever conquers in the end is the good4 ,among the pragmatists the worship of power is also optimistic1 but it is not to logic that power is attributed4 ,science1 they say1 is good as a help to industry1 and philosophy is good for correcting whatever in science might disturb religious faith1 which in turn is helpful in living4 ,what industry or life are good for it would be unsympathetic to inquire3 the stream is mighty1 and we must swim with the stream4 ,concern for survival1 however1 which seems to be the pragmatic principle in morals1 does not afford a remedy for moral anarchy4 ,to take firm hold on life1 according to ,nietzsche1 we should be imperious1 poetical1 atheistic2 but according to ,william ,james we should be democratic1 concrete1 and credulous4 ,it is hard to say whether pragmatism is come to emancipate the individual spirit and make it lord over things1 or on the contrary to declare the spirit a mere instrument for the survival of the flesh4 ,in ,italy1 the mind seems to be raised deliriously into an absolute creator1 evoking at will1 at each moment1 a new past1 a new future1 a new earth1 and a new ,god4 ,in ,america1 however1 the mind is recommended rather as an unpatented device for oiling the engine of the body and making it do double work4 ,trustful faith in evolution and a longing for intense life are characteristic of contemporary sentiment2 but they do not appear to be consistent with that contempt for the intellect which is no less characteristic of it4 ,human intelligence is certainly a product1 and a late and highly organised product1 of evolution2 it ought apparently to be as much admired as the eyes of molluscs or the antennae of ants4 ,and if life is better the more intense and concentrated it is1 intelligence would seem to be the best form of life4 ,but the degree of intelligence which this age possesses makes it so very uncomfortable that1 in this instance1 it asks for something less vital1 and sighs for what evolution has left behind4 ,in the presence of such cruelly distinct things as astronomy or such cruelly confused things as theology it feels la nostalgie de la boue4 ,it was only1 ,m4 ,bergson tells us1 where dead matter oppressed life that life was forced to become intelligence2 for this reason intelligence kills whatever it touches2 it is the tribute that life pays to death4 ,life would find it sweet to throw off that painful subjection to circumstance and bloom in some more congenial direction4 ,m4 ,bergson's own philosophy is an effort to realise this revulsion1 to disintegrate intelligence and stimulate sympathetic experience4 ,its charm lies in the relief which it brings to a stale imagination1 an imagination from which religion has vanished and which is kept stretched on the machinery of business and society1 or on small half-borrowed passions which we clothe in a mean rhetoric and dot with vulgar pleasures4 ,finding their intelligence enslaved1 our contemporaries suppose that intelligence is essentially servile2 instead of freeing it1 they try to elude it4 ,not free enough themselves morally1 but bound to the world partly by piety and partly by industrialism1 they cannot think of rising to a detached contemplation of earthly things1 and of life itself and evolution2 they revert rather to sensibility1 and seek some by-path of instinct or dramatic sympathy in which to wander4 ,having no stomach for the ultimate1 they burrow downwards towards the primitive4 ,but the longing to be primitive is a disease of culture2 it is archaism in morals4 ,to be so preoccupied with vitality is a symptom of anaemia4 ,when life was really vigorous and young1 in ,homeric times for instance1 no one seemed to fear that it might be squeezed out of existence either by the incubus of matter or by the petrifying blight of intelligence4 ,life was like the light of day1 something to use1 or to waste1 or to enjoy4 ,it was not a thing to worship2 and often the chief luxury of living consisted in dealing death about vigorously4 ,life indeed was loved1 and the beauty and pathos of it were felt exquisitely2 but its beauty and pathos lay in the divineness of its model and in its own fragility4 ,no one paid it the equivocal compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force4 ,nobility was not then impossible in sentiment1 because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself1 which life might illustrate and to which it might fitly be sacrificed4 ,nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on1 to live on anyhow and in any shape2 a spirit with any honour is not willing to live except in its own way1 and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all4 ,in those days men recognised immortal gods and resigned themselves to being mortal4 ,yet those were the truly vital and instinctive days of the human spirit4 ,only when vitality is low do people find material things oppressive and ideal things unsubstantial4 ,now there is more motion than life1 and more haste than force2 we are driven to distraction by the ticking of the tiresome clocks1 material and social1 by which we are obliged to regulate our existence4 ,we need ministering angels to fly to us from somewhere1 even if it be from the depths of protoplasm4 ,we must bathe in the currents of some non-human vital flood1 like consumptives in their last extremity who must bask in the sunshine and breathe the mountain air2 and our disease is not without its sophistry to convince us that we were never so well before1 or so mightily conscious of being alive4 ,when chaos has penetrated so far into the moral being of nations they can hardly be expected to produce great men4 ,a great man need not be virtuous1 nor his opinions right1 but he must have a firm mind1 a distinctive1 luminous character2 if he is to dominate things1 something must be dominant in him4 ,we feel him to be great in that he clarifies and brings to expression something which was potential in the rest of us1 but which with our burden of flesh and circumstance we were too torpid to utter4 ,the great man is a spontaneous variation in humanity2 but not in any direction4 ,a spontaneous variation might be a mere madness or mutilation or monstrosity2 in finding the variation admirable we evidently invoke some principle of order to which it conforms4 ,perhaps it makes explicit what was preformed in us also2 as when a poet finds the absolutely right phrase for a feeling1 or when nature suddenly astonishes us with a form of absolute beauty4 ,or perhaps it makes an unprecedented harmony out of things existing before1 but jangled and detached4 ,the first man was a great man for this latter reason2 having been an ape perplexed and corrupted by his multiplying instincts1 he suddenly found a new way of being decent1 by harnessing all those instincts together1 through memory and imagination1 and giving each in turn a measure of its due2 which is what we call being rational4 ,it is a new road to happiness1 if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn4 ,why then is the martyr1 who sacrifices everything to one attraction1 distinguished from the criminal or the fool1 who do the same thing8 ,evidently because the spirit that in the martyr destroys the body is the very spirit which the body is stifling in the rest of us2 and although his private inspiration may be irrational1 the tendency of it is not1 but reduces the public conscience to act before any one else has had the courage to do so4 ,greatness is spontaneous2 simplicity1 trust in some one clear instinct1 are essential to it2 but the spontaneous variation must be in the direction of some possible sort of order2 it must exclude and leave behind what is incapable of being moralised4 ,how1 then1 should there be any great heroes1 saints1 artists1 philosophers1 or legislators in an age when nobody trusts himself1 or feels any confidence in reason1 in an age when the word dogmatic is a term of reproach8 ,greatness has character and severity1 it is deep and sane1 it is distinct and perfect4 ,for this reason there is none of it to-day4 ,there is indeed another kind of greatness1 or rather largeness of mind1 which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current phases1 even if without prophetic emphasis or direction3 the breadth of a ,goethe1 rather than the fineness of a ,shelley or a ,leopardi4 ,but such largeness of mind1 not to be vulgar1 must be impartial1 comprehensive1 ,olympian2 it would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted1 exalted1 and by no means confused4 ,nor does this presume omniscience on his part4 ,it is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of everything in order to know what to make of it4 ,stones do not disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are chemically2 and so the unsolved problems of life and nature1 and the ,babel of society1 need not disturb the genial observer1 though he may be incapable of unravelling them4 ,he may set these dark spots down in their places1 like so many caves or wells in a landscape1 without feeling bound to scrutinise their depths simply because their depths are obscure4 ,unexplored they may have a sort of lustre1 explored they might merely make him blind1 and it may be a sufficient understanding of them to know that they are not worth investigating4 ,in this way the most chaotic age and the most motley horrors might be mirrored limpidly in a great mind1 as the ,renaissance was mirrored in the works of ,raphael and ,shakespeare2 but the master's eye itself must be single1 his style unmistakable1 his visionary interest in what he depicts frank and supreme4 ,hence this comprehensive sort of greatness too is impossible in an age when moral confusion is pervasive1 when characters are complex1 undecided1 troubled by the mere existence of what is not congenial to them1 eager to be not themselves2 when1 in a word1 thought is weak and the flux of things overwhelms it4 ,without great men and without clear convictions this age is nevertheless very active intellectually2 it is studious1 empirical1 inventive1 sympathetic4 ,its wisdom consists in a certain contrite openness of mind2 it flounders1 but at least in floundering it has gained a sense of possible depths in all directions4 ,under these circumstances1 some triviality and great confusion in its positive achievements are not unpromising things1 nor even unamiable4 ,these are the ,wanderjahre of faith2 it looks smilingly at every new face1 which might perhaps be that of a predestined friend2 it chases after any engaging stranger2 it even turns up again from time to time at home1 full of a new tenderness for all it had abandoned there4 ,but to settle down would be impossible now4 ,the intellect1 the judgment are in abeyance4 ,life is running turbid and full2 and it is no marvel that reason1 after vainly supposing that it ruled the world1 should abdicate as gracefully as possible1 when the world is so obviously the sport of cruder powers--vested interests1 tribal passions1 stock sentiments1 and chance majorities4 ,having no responsibility laid upon it1 reason has become irresponsible4 ,many critics and philosophers seem to conceive that thinking aloud is itself literature4 ,sometimes reason tries to lend some moral authority to its present masters1 by proving how superior they are to itself2 it worships evolution1 instinct1 novelty1 action1 as it does in modernism1 pragmatism1 and the philosophy of ,m4 ,bergson4 ,at other times it retires into the freehold of those temperaments whom this world has ostracised1 the region of the non-existent1 and comforts itself with its indubitable conquests there4 ,this happened earlier to the romanticists 7in a way which ,i have tried to describe in the subjoined paper on ,shelley7 although their poetic and political illusions did not suffer them to perceive it4 ,it is happening now1 after disillusion1 to some radicals and mathematicians like ,mr4 ,bertrand ,russell1 and to others of us who1 perhaps without being mathematicians or even radicals1 feel that the sphere of what happens to exist is too alien and accidental to absorb all the play of a free mind1 whose function1 after it has come to clearness and made its peace with things1 is to touch them with its own moral and intellectual light1 and to exist for its own sake4 ,these are but gusts of doctrine2 yet they prove that the spirit is not dead in the lull between its seasons of steady blowing4 ,who knows which of them may not gather force presently and carry the mind of the coming age steadily before it8 ,,ii ,,modernism ,,and ,,christianity ,prevalent winds of doctrine must needs penetrate at last into the cloister4 ,social instability and moral confusion1 reconstructions of history and efforts after reform1 are things characteristic of the present age2 and under the name of modernism they have made their appearance even in that institution which is constitutionally the most stable1 of most explicit mind1 least inclined to revise its collective memory or established usages--,i mean the ,catholic church4 ,even after this church was constituted by the fusion of many influences and by the gradual exclusion of those heresies--some of them older than explicit orthodoxy--which seemed to misrepresent its implications or spirit1 there still remained an inevitable propensity among ,catholics to share the moods of their respective ages and countries1 and to reconcile them if possible with their professed faith4 ,often these cross influences were so strong that the profession of faith was changed frankly to suit them1 and ,catholicism was openly abandoned2 but even where this did not occur we may detect in the ,catholic minds of each age some strange conjunctions and compromises with the ,zeitgeist4 ,thus the morality of chivalry and war1 the ideals of foppishness and honour1 have been long maintained side by side with the maxims of the gospel1 which they entirely contradict4 ,later the system of ,copernicus1 incompatible at heart with the anthropocentric and moralistic view of the world which ,christianity implies1 was accepted by the church with some lame attempt to render it innocuous2 but it remains an alien and hostile element1 like a spent bullet lodged in the flesh4 ,in more recent times we have heard of liberal ,catholicism1 the attitude assumed by some generous but divided minds1 too much attached to their traditional religion to abandon it1 but too weak and too hopeful not to glow also with enthusiasm for modern liberty and progress4 ,had those minds been1 ,i will not say intelligently ,catholic but radically ,christian1 they would have felt that this liberty was simply liberty to be damned1 and this progress not an advance towards the true good of man1 but a lapse into endless and heathen wanderings4 ,for ,christianity1 in its essence and origin1 was an urgent summons to repent and come out of just such a worldly life as modern liberty and progress hold up as an ideal to the nations4 ,in the ,roman empire1 as in the promised land of liberalism1 each man sought to get and to enjoy as much as he could1 and supported a ponderous government neutral as to religion and moral traditions1 but favourable to the accumulation of riches2 so that a certain enlightenment and cosmopolitanism were made possible1 and private passions and tastes could be gratified without encountering persecution or public obloquy1 though not without a general relaxation of society and a vulgarising of arts and manners4 ,that something so self-indulgent and worldly as this ideal of liberalism could have been thought compatible with ,christianity1 the first initiation into which1 in baptism1 involves renouncing the world1 might well astonish us1 had we not been rendered deaf to moral discords by the very din which from our birth they have been making in our ears4 ,but this is not all4 ,primitive ,christianity was not only a summons to turn one's heart and mind away from a corrupt world2 it was a summons to do so under pain of instant and terrible punishment4 ,it was the conviction of pious ,jews since the days of the ,prophets that mercilessness1 avarice1 and disobedience to revealed law were the direct path to ruin2 a world so wicked as the liberal world against which ,st4 ,john the ,baptist thundered was necessarily on the verge of destruction4 ,sin1 although we moderns may not think so1 seemed to the ancient ,jews a fearful imprudence4 ,the hand of the ,lord would descend on it heavily1 and very soon4 ,the whole ,roman civilisation was to be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye4 ,those who hoped to be of the remnant and to be saved1 so as to lead a clarified and heavenly life in the ,new ,jerusalem1 must hasten to put on sackcloth and ashes1 to fast and to pray1 to watch with girded loins for the coming of the kingdom2 it was superfluous for them to study the dead past or to take thought for the morrow4 ,the cataclysm was at hand2 a new heaven and a new earth--far more worthy of study--would be unrolled before that very generation4 ,there was indeed something terribly levelling1 revolutionary1 serious1 and expectant about that primitive gospel2 and in so far as liberalism possessed similar qualities1 in so far as it was moved by indignation1 pity1 and fervent hope1 it could well preach on early ,christian texts4 ,but the liberal ,catholics were liberals of the polite and governmental sort2 they were shocked at suffering rather than at sin1 and they feared not the ,lord but the movement of public opinion4 ,some of them were vaguely pious men1 whose conservativism in social and moral matters forbade them to acquiesce in the disappearance of the church altogether1 and they thought it might be preserved1 as the ,english church is1 by making opportune concessions4 ,others were simply aristocrats1 desirous that the pacifying influence of religion should remain strong over the masses4 ,the clergy was not1 in any considerable measure1 tossed by these opposing currents2 the few priests who were liberals were themselves men of the world1 patriots1 and orators4 ,such persons could not look forward to a fierce sifting of the wheat from the tares1 or to any burning of whole bundles of nations1 for they were nothing if not romantic nationalists1 and the idea of faggots of any sort was most painful to their minds4 ,they longed rather for a sweet cohabitation with everybody1 and a mild tolerance of almost everything4 ,a war for religion seemed to them a crime1 but a war for nationality glorious and holy4 ,no wonder that their work in nation-building has endured1 while their sentiments in religion are scattered to the winds4 ,the liberalism for the sake of which they were willing to eviscerate their ,christianity has already lost its vitality2 it survives as a pale parliamentary tradition1 impotent before the tide of socialism rising behind its back4 ,the ,catholicism which they wished to see gently lingering is being driven out of national life by official spoliations and popular mockeries4 ,it is fast becoming what it was in the beginning1 a sect with more or less power to alienate the few who genuinely adhere to it from the pagan society in which they are forced to live4 ,the question what is true or essential ,christianity is a thorny one1 because each party gives the name of genuine ,christianity to what it happens to believe4 ,thus ,professor ,harnack1 not to mention less distinguished historians1 makes the original essence of ,christianity coincide--what a miracle6--with his own ,lutheran and ,kantian sentiments4 ,but the essence of ,christianity1 as of everything else1 is the whole of it2 and the genuine nature of a seed is at least as well expressed by what it becomes in contact with the earth and air as by what it seems in its primitive minuteness4 ,it is quite true1 as the modernists tell us1 that in the beginning ,christian faith was not a matter of scholastic definitions1 nor even of intellectual dogmas4 ,religions seldom begin in that form1 and paganism was even less intellectual and less dogmatic than early ,christianity4 ,the most primitive ,christian faith consisted in a conversion of the whole man--intellect1 habits1 and affections--from the life of the world to a new mystical life1 in answer to a moral summons and a prophecy about destiny4 ,the moral summons was to renounce home1 kindred1 possessions1 the respect of men1 the hypocrisies of the synagogue1 and to devote oneself to a wandering and begging life1 healing1 praying1 and preaching4 ,and preaching what8 ,preaching the prophecy about destiny which justified that conversion and renunciation2 preaching that the world1 in its present constitution1 was about to be destroyed on account of its wickedness1 and that the ignorant1 the poor1 and the down-trodden1 if they trusted this prophecy1 and turned their backs at once on all the world pursues1 would be saved in the new deluge1 and would form a new society1 of a more or less supernatural kind1 to be raised on the ruins of all present institutions4 ,the poor were called1 but the rich were called also1 and perhaps even the heathen2 for there was in all men1 even in all nature 7this is the one touch of speculative feeling in the gospel71 a precious potentiality of goodness4 ,all were essentially amiable1 though accidentally wretched and depraved2 and by the magic of a new faith and hope this soul of goodness in all living things might be freed from the hideous incubus of circumstance that now oppresses it1 and might come to bloom openly as the penetrating eye of the lover1 even now1 sees that it could bloom4 ,love1 then1 and sympathy1 particularly towards the sinful and diseased1 a love relieved of sentimentality by the deliberate practice of healing1 warning1 and comforting2 a complete aversion from all the interests of political society1 and a confident expectation of a cataclysm that should suddenly transfigure the world--such was ,christian religion in its origin4 ,the primitive ,christian was filled with the sense of a special election and responsibility1 and of a special hope4 ,he was serene1 abstracted1 incorruptible1 his inward eye fixed on a wonderful revelation4 ,he was as incapable of attacking as of serving the state2 he despised or ignored everything for which the state exists1 labour1 wealth1 power1 felicity1 splendour1 and learning4 ,with ,christ the natural man in him had been crucified1 and in ,christ he had risen again a spiritual man1 to walk the earth1 as a messenger from heaven1 for a few more years4 ,his whole life was an experience of perpetual graces and miracles4 ,the prophecy about the speedy end of this wicked world was not fulfilled as the early ,christians expected2 but this fact is less disconcerting to the ,christian than one would suppose4 ,the spontaneous or instinctive ,christian--and there is such a type of mind1 quite apart from any affiliation to historic ,christianity--takes a personal and dramatic view of the world2 its values and even its reality are the values and reality which it may have for him4 ,it would profit him nothing to win it1 if he lost his own soul4 ,that prophecy about the destruction of nature springs from this attitude2 nature must be subservient to the human conscience2 it must satisfy the hopes of the prophet and vindicate the saints4 ,that the years should pass and nothing should seem to happen need not shatter the force of this prophecy for those whose imagination it excites4 ,this world must actually vanish very soon for each of us2 and this is the point of view that counts with the ,christian mind4 ,even if we consider posterity1 the kingdoms and arts and philosophies of this world are short lived2 they shift their aims continually and shift their substance4 ,the prophecy of their destruction is therefore being fulfilled continually2 the need of repentance1 if one would be saved1 is truly urgent2 and the means of that salvation cannot be an operation upon this world1 but faith in another world that1 in the experience of each soul1 is to follow upon it4 ,thus the summons to repent and the prophecy about destiny which were the root of ,christianity1 can fully retain their spirit when for this wicked world we read this transitory life and for the coming of the ,kingdom we read life everlasting4 ,the change is important1 but it affects the application rather than the nature of the gospel4 ,morally there is a loss1 because men will never take so hotly what concerns another life as what affects this one2 speculatively1 on the other hand1 there is a gain1 for the expectation of total transformations and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion1 while the relation of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy1 and there will always be a great loftiness and poetic sincerity in the feeling that the soul is a stranger in this world and has other destinies in store4 ,what would make the preaching of the gospel utterly impossible would be the admission that it had no authority to proclaim what has happened or what is going to happen1 either in this world or in another4 ,a prophecy about destiny is an account1 however vague1 of events to be actually experienced1 and of their causes4 ,the whole inspiration of ,hebraic religion lies in that4 ,it was not metaphorically that ,sodom and ,gomorrah were destroyed4 ,the promised land was a piece of earth4 ,the kingdom was an historical fact4 ,it was not symbolically that ,israel was led into captivity1 or that it returned and restored the ,temple4 ,it was not ideally that a ,messiah was to come4 ,memory of such events is in the same field as history2 prophecy is in the same field as natural science4 ,natural science too is an account of what will happen1 and under what conditions4 ,it too is a prophecy about destiny4 ,accordingly1 while it is quite true that speculations about nature and history are not contained explicitly in the religion of the gospel1 yet the message of this religion is one which speculations about nature and reconstructions of history may extend congruously1 or may contradict and totally annul4 ,if physical science should remove those threats of destruction to follow upon sin which ,christian prophecy contains1 or if it should prove that what brings destruction is just that unworldly1 prayerful1 all-forgiving1 idle1 and revolutionary attitude which the gospel enjoins1 then physical science would be incompatible with ,christianity2 not with this or that text of the ,bible merely1 about the sun standing still or the dead rising again1 but with the whole foundation of what ,christ himself1 with ,john the ,baptist1 ,st4 ,paul1 ,st4 ,james1 and ,st4 ,john1 preached to the world4 ,even the pagan poets1 when they devised a myth1 half believed in it for a fact4 ,what really lent some truth--moral truth only--to their imaginations was indeed the beauty of nature1 the comedy of life1 or the groans of mankind1 crushed between the upper and the nether millstones2 but being scientifically ignorant they allowed their pictorial wisdom to pass for a revealed science1 for a physics of the unseen4 ,if even among the pagans the poetic expression of human experience could be mistaken in this way for knowledge of occult existences1 how much more must this have been the case among a more ignorant and a more intense nation like the ,jews8 ,indeed1 events are what the ,jews have always remembered and hoped for2 if their religion was not a guide to events1 an assured means towards a positive and experimental salvation1 it was nothing4 ,their theology was meagre in the description of the ,lord's nature1 but rich in the description of his ways4 ,indeed1 their belief in the existence and power of the ,lord1 if we take it pragmatically and not imaginatively1 was simply the belief in certain moral harmonies in destiny1 in the sufficiency of conduct of a certain sort to secure success and good fortune1 both national and personal4 ,this faith was partly an experience and partly a demand2 it turned on history and prophecy4 ,history was interpreted by a prophetic insight into the moral principle1 believed to govern it2 and prophecy was a passionate demonstration of the same principles1 at work in the catastrophes of the day or of the morrow4 ,there is no doubt a ,platonic sort of religion1 a worship of the ideal apart from its power to realise itself1 which has entered largely into the life of ,christians2 and the more mystical and disinterested they were1 the more it has tended to take the place of ,hebraism4 ,but the ,platonists1 too1 when left to their instincts1 follow their master in attributing power and existence1 by a sort of cumulative worship and imaginative hyperbole1 to what in the first place they worship because it is good4 ,to divorce1 then1 as the modernists do1 the history of the world from the story of salvation1 and ,god's government and the sanctions of religion from the operation of matter1 is a fundamental apostasy from ,christianity4 ,christianity1 being a practical and living faith in a possible eventual redemption from sin1 from the punishment for sin1 from the thousand circumstances that make the most brilliant worldly life a sham and a failure1 essentially involves a faith in a supernatural physics1 in such an economy of forces1 behind1 within1 and around the discoverable forces of nature1 that the destiny which nature seems to prepare for us may be reversed1 that failures may be turned into successes1 ignominy into glory1 and humble faith into triumphant vision3 and this not merely by a change in our point of view or estimation of things1 but by an actual historical1 physical transformation in the things themselves4 ,to believe this in our day may require courage1 even a certain childish simplicity2 but were not courage and a certain childish simplicity always requisite for ,christian faith8 ,it never was a religion for the rationalist and the worldling2 it was based on alienation from the world1 from the intellectual world no less than from the economic and political4 ,it flourished in the ,oriental imagination that is able to treat all existence with disdain and to hold it superbly at arm's length1 and at the same time is subject to visions and false memories1 is swayed by the eloquence of private passion1 and raises confidently to heaven the cry of the poor1 the bereaved1 and the distressed4 ,its daily bread1 from the beginning1 was hope for a miraculous change of scene1 for prison-walls falling to the ground about it1 for a heart inwardly comforted1 and a shower of good things from the sky4 ,it is clear that a supernaturalistic faith of this sort1 which might wholly inspire some revolutionary sect1 can never wholly inspire human society4 ,whenever a nation is converted to ,christianity1 its ,christianity1 in practice1 must be largely converted into paganism4 ,the true ,christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger2 not his kinsmen1 but whoever does the will of his ,father who is in heaven is his brother and sister and mother and his real compatriot4 ,in a nation that calls itself ,christian every child may be pledged1 at baptism1 to renounce the world1 the flesh1 and the devil2 but the flesh will assert itself notwithstanding1 the devil will have his due1 and the nominal ,christian1 become a man of business and the head of a family1 will form an integral part of that very world which he will pledge his children to renounce in turn as he holds them over the font4 ,the lips1 even the intellect1 may continue to profess the ,christian ideal2 but public and social life will be guided by quite another4 ,the ages of faith1 the ages of ,christian unity1 were such only superficially4 ,when all men are ,christians only a small element can be ,christian in the average man4 ,the thirteenth century1 for instance1 is supposed to be the golden age of ,catholicism2 but what seems to have filled it1 if we may judge by the witness of ,dante8 ,little but bitter conflicts1 racial and religious2 faithless rebellions1 both in states and in individuals1 against the ,christian regimen2 worldliness in the church1 barbarism in the people1 and a dawning of all sorts of scientific and sthetic passions1 in themselves quite pagan and contrary to the spirit of the gospel4 ,christendom at that time was by no means a kingdom of ,god on earth2 it was a conglomeration of incorrigible rascals1 intellectually more or less ,christian4 ,we may see the same thing under different circumstances in the ,spain of ,philip ,,ii4 ,here was a government consciously labouring in the service of the church1 to resist ,turks1 convert pagans1 banish ,moslems1 and crush ,protestants4 ,yet the very forces engaged in defending the church1 the army and the ,inquisition1 were alien to the ,christian life2 they were fit embodiments rather of chivalry and greed1 or of policy and jealous dominion4 ,the ecclesiastical forces also1 theology1 ritual1 and hierarchy1 employed in spreading the gospel were themselves alien to the gospel4 ,an anti-worldly religion finds itself in fact in this dilemma3 if it remains merely spiritual1 developing no material organs1 it cannot affect the world2 while if it develops organs with which to operate on the world1 these organs become a part of the world from which it is trying to wean the individual spirit1 so that the moment it is armed for conflict such a religion has two enemies on its hands4 ,it is stifled by its necessary armour1 and adds treason in its members to hostility in its foes4 ,the passions and arts it uses against its opponents are as fatal to itself as those which its opponents array against it4 ,in every age in which a supernaturalistic system is preached we must accordingly expect to find the world standing up stubbornly against it1 essentially unconverted and hostile1 whatever name it may have been christened with2 and we may expect the spirit of the world to find expression1 not only in overt opposition to the supernaturalistic system1 but also in the surviving or supervening worldliness of the faithful4 ,such an insidious revulsion of the natural man against a religion he does not openly discard is what1 in modern ,christendom1 we call the ,renaissance4 ,no less than the ,revolution 7which is the later open rebellion against the same traditions7 the ,renaissance is radically inimical to ,christianity4 ,to say that ,christianity survives1 even if weakened or disestablished1 is to say that the ,renaissance and the ,revolution are still incomplete1 ,far from being past events they are living programmes4 ,the ideal of the ,renaissance is to restore pagan standards in polite learning1 in philosophy1 in sentiment1 and in morals4 ,it is to abandon and exactly reverse one's baptismal vows4 ,instead of forsaking this wicked world1 the men of the ,renaissance accept1 love1 and cultivate the world1 with all its pomp and vanities2 they believe in the blamelessness of natural life and in its perfectibility2 or they cling at least to a noble ambition to perfect it and a glorious ability to enjoy it4 ,instead of renouncing the flesh1 they feed1 refine1 and adorn it2 their arts glorify its beauty and its passions4 ,and far from renouncing the devil--if we understand by the devil the proud assertion on the part of the finite of its autonomy1 autonomy of the intellect in science1 autonomy of the heart and will in morals--the men of the ,renaissance are possessed by the devil altogether4 ,they worship nothing and acknowledge authority in nothing save in their own spirit4 ,no opposition could be more radical and complete than that between the ,renaissance and the anti-worldly religion of the gospel4 ,i see a vision1 ,nietzsche says somewhere1 so full of meaning1 yet so wonderfully strange--,csar ,borgia become pope6 ,do you understand8 ,ah1 that would verily have been the triumph for which ,i am longing to-day4 ,then ,christianity would have been done for4 ,and ,nietzsche goes on to accuse ,luther of having spoiled this lovely possibility1 which was about to be realised1 by frightening the papacy out of its mellow paganism into something like a restoration of the old acrid ,christianity4 ,a dream of this sort1 even if less melodramatic than ,nietzsche's1 has visited the mind of many a neo-,catholic or neo-pagan4 ,if the humanistic tendencies of the ,renaissance could have worked on unimpeded1 might not a revolution from above1 a gradual rationalisation1 have transformed the church8 ,its dogma might have been insensibly understood to be nothing but myth1 its miracles nothing but legend1 its sacraments mere symbols1 its ,bible pure literature1 its liturgy just poetry1 its hierarchy an administrative convenience1 its ethics an historical accident1 and its whole function simply to lend a warm mystical aureole to human culture and ignorance4 ,the ,reformation prevented this euthanasia of ,christianity4 ,it re-expressed the unenlightened absolutism of the old religion2 it insisted that dogma was scientifically true1 that salvation was urgent and fearfully doubtful1 that the world1 and the worldly paganised church1 were as ,sodom and ,gomorrah1 and that sin1 though natural to man1 was to ,god an abomination4 ,in fighting this movement1 which soon became heretical1 the ,catholic church had to fight it with its own weapons1 and thereby reawakened in its own bosom the same sinister convictions4 ,it did not have to dig deep to find them4 ,even without ,luther1 convinced ,catholics would have appeared in plenty to prevent ,csar ,borgia1 had he secured the tiara1 from being pope in any novel fashion or with any revolutionary result4 ,the supernaturalism1 the literal realism1 the other-worldliness of the ,catholic church are too much the soul of it to depart without causing its dissolution4 ,while the church lives at all1 it must live on the strength which these principles can lend it4 ,and they are not altogether weak4 ,persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world--and what noble mind1 from ,empedocles down1 has not had that feeling8--are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another4 ,there will always be spontaneous1 instinctive ,christians2 and when1 under the oppression of sin1 salvation is looked for and miracles are expected1 the supernatural scheme of salvation which historical ,christianity offers will not always be despised4 ,the modernists think the church is doomed if it turns a deaf ear to the higher criticism or ignores the philosophy of ,m4 ,bergson4 ,but it has outlived greater storms4 ,a moment when any exotic superstition can find excitable minds to welcome it1 when new and grotesque forms of faith can spread among the people1 when the ultimate impotence of science is the theme of every cheap philosopher1 when constructive philology is reefing its sails1 when the judicious grieve at the portentous metaphysical shams of yesterday and smile at those of to-day--such a moment is rather ill chosen for prophesying the extinction of a deep-rooted system of religion because your own studies make it seem to you incredible2 especially if you hold a theory of knowledge that regards all opinions as arbitrary postulates1 which it may become convenient to abandon at any moment4 ,modernism is the infiltration into minds that begin by being ,catholic and wish to remain so of two contemporary influences3 one the rationalistic study of the ,bible and of church history1 the other modern philosophy1 especially in its mystical and idealistic forms4 ,the sensitiveness of the modernists to these two influences is creditable to them as men1 however perturbing it may be to them as ,catholics2 for what makes them adopt the views of rationalistic historians is simply the fact that those views seem1 in substance1 convincingly true2 and what makes them wander into transcendental speculations is the warmth of their souls1 needing to express their faith anew1 and to follow their inmost inspiration1 wherever it may lead them4 ,a scrupulous honesty in admitting the probable facts of history1 and a fresh upwelling of mystical experience1 these are the motives1 creditable to any spiritual man1 that have made modernists of so many4 ,but these excellent things appear in the modernists under rather unfortunate circumstances4 ,for the modernists to begin with are ,catholics1 and usually priests2 they are pledged to a fixed creed1 touching matters both of history and of philosophy2 and it would be a marvel if rationalistic criticism of the ,bible and rationalistic church history confirmed that creed on its historical side1 or if irresponsible personal speculations1 in the manner of ,ritschl or of ,m4 ,bergson1 confirmed its metaphysics4 ,i am far from wishing to suggest that an orthodox ,christian cannot be scrupulously honest in admitting the probable facts1 or cannot have a fresh spiritual experience1 or frame an original philosophy4 ,but what we think probable hangs on our standard of probability and of evidence2 the spiritual experiences that come to us are according to our disposition and affections2 and any new philosophy we frame will be an answer to the particular problems that beset us1 and an expression of the solutions we hope for4 ,now this standard of probability1 this disposition1 and these problems and hopes may be those of a ,christian or they may not4 ,the true ,christian1 for instance1 will begin by regarding miracles as probable2 he will either believe he has experienced them in his own person1 or hope for them earnestly2 nothing will seem to him more natural1 more in consonance with the actual texture of life1 than that they should have occurred abundantly and continuously in the past4 ,when he finds the record of one he will not inquire1 like the rationalist1 how that false record could have been concocted2 but rather he will ask how the rationalist1 in spite of so many witnesses to the contrary1 has acquired his fixed assurance of the universality of the commonplace4 ,an answer perhaps could be offered of which the rationalist need not be ashamed4 ,we might say that faith in the universality of the commonplace 7in its origin1 no doubt1 simply an imaginative presumption7 is justified by our systematic mastery of matter in the arts4 ,the rejection of miracles a priori expresses a conviction that the laws by which we can always control or predict the movement of matter govern that movement universally2 and evidently1 if the material course of history is fixed mechanically1 the mental and moral course of it is thereby fixed on the same plan2 for a mind not expressed somehow in matter cannot be revealed to the historian4 ,this may be good philosophy1 but we could not think so if we were good ,christians4 ,we should then expect to move matter by prayer4 ,rationalistic history and criticism are therefore based1 as ,pius ,x4 most accurately observed in his ,encyclical on modernism1 on rationalistic philosophy2 and we might add that rationalistic philosophy is based on practical art1 and that practical art1 by which we help ourselves1 like ,prometheus1 and make instruments of what religion worships1 when this art is carried beyond the narrowest bounds1 is the essence of pride and irreligion4 ,miners1 machinists1 and artisans are irreligious by trade4 ,religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence4 ,similarly1 the spontaneous insight of ,christians and their new philosophies will express a ,christian disposition4 ,the chief problems in them will be sin and redemption2 the conclusion will be some fresh intuition of divine love and heavenly beatitude4 ,it would be no sign of originality in a ,christian to begin discoursing on love like ,ovid or on heaven like ,mohammed1 or stop discoursing on them at all2 it would be a sign of apostasy4 ,now the modernists' criterion of probability in history or of worthiness in philosophy is not the ,christian criterion4 ,it is that of their contemporaries outside the church1 who are rationalists in history and egotists or voluntarists in philosophy4 ,the biblical criticism and mystical speculations of the modernists call for no special remark2 they are such as any studious or spiritual person1 with no inherited religion1 might compose in our day4 ,but what is remarkable and well-nigh incredible is that even for a moment they should have supposed this non-,christian criterion in history and this non-,christian direction in metaphysics compatible with adherence to the ,catholic church4 ,that seems to presuppose1 in men who in fact are particularly thoughtful and learned1 an inexplicable ignorance of history1 of theology1 and of the world4 ,everything1 however1 has its explanation4 ,in a ,catholic seminary1 as the modernists bitterly complain1 very little is heard of the views held in the learned world outside4 ,it is not taught there that the ,christian religion is only one of many1 some of them older and superior to it in certain respects2 that it itself is eclectic and contains inward contradictions2 that it is and always has been divided into rancorous sects2 that its position in the world is precarious and its future hopeless4 ,on the contrary1 everything is so presented as to persuade the innocent student that all that is good or true anywhere is founded on the faith he is preparing to preach1 that the historical evidences of its truth are irrefragable1 that it is logically perfect and spiritually all-sufficing4 ,these convictions1 which no breath from the outside is allowed to ruffle1 are deepened in the case of pensive and studious minds1 like those of the leading modernists1 by their own religious experience4 ,they understand in what they are taught more1 perhaps1 than their teachers intend4 ,they understand how those ideas originated1 they can trace a similar revelation in their own lives4 ,this 7which a cynic might expect would be the beginning of disillusion7 only deepens their religious faith and gives it a wider basis2 report and experience seem to conspire4 ,but trouble is brewing here2 for a report that can be confirmed by experience can also be enlarged by it1 and it is easy to see in traditional revelation itself many diverse sources2 different temperaments and different types of thought have left their impress upon it4 ,yet other temperaments and other types of thought might continue the task4 ,revelation seems to be progressive2 a part may fall to us also to furnish4 ,this insight1 for a ,christian1 has its dangers4 ,no doubt it gives him a key to the understanding and therefore1 in one sense1 to the acceptance of many a dogma4 ,christian dogmas were not pieces of wanton information fallen from heaven2 they were imaginative views1 expressing now some primordial instinct in all men1 now the national hopes and struggles of ,israel1 now the moral or dialectical philosophy of the later ,jews and ,greeks4 ,such a derivation does not1 of itself1 render these dogmas necessarily mythical4 ,they might be ideal expressions of human experience and yet be literally true as well1 provided we assume 7what is assumed throughout in ,christianity7 that the world is made for man1 and that even ,god is just such a ,god as man would have wished him to be1 the existent ideal of human nature and the foregone solution to all human problems4 ,nevertheless1 ,christian dogmas are definite1#b while human inspirations are potentially limitless2 and if the object of the two is identical either the dogmas must be stretched and ultimately abandoned1 or inspiration which does not conform to them must be denounced as illusory or diabolical4 ,footnote #b3 ,at least in their devotional and moral import4 ,i suggest this qualification in deference to ,m4 ,le ,roy's interesting theory of dogma1 viz41 that the verbal or intellectual definition of a dogma may be changed without changing the dogma itself 7as a sentence might be translated into a new language without altering the meaning7 provided the suggested conduct and feeling in the presence of the mystery remained the same4 ,thus the definition of transubstantiation might be modified to suit an idealistic philosophy1 but the new definition would be no less orthodox than the old if it did not discourage the worship of the consecrated elements or the sense of mystical union with ,christ in the sacrament4 ,at this point the modernist first chooses the path which must lead him away1 steadily and for ever1 from the church which he did not think to desert4 ,he chooses a personal1 psychological1 variable standard of inspiration2 he becomes1 in principle1 a ,protestant4 ,why does he not become one in name also8 ,because1 as one of the most distinguished modernists has said1 the age of partial heresy is past4 ,it is suicidal to make one part of an organic system the instrument for attacking another part2 and it is also comic4 ,what you appeal to and stand firmly rooted in is no more credible1 no more authoritative1 than what you challenge in its name4 ,in vain will you pit the church against the pope2 at once you will have to pit the ,bible against the church1 and then the ,new ,testament against the ,old1 or the genuine ,jesus against the ,new ,testament1 or ,god revealed in nature against ,god revealed in the ,bible1 or ,god revealed in your own conscience or transcendental self against ,god revealed in nature2 and you will be lucky if your conscience and transcendental self can long hold their own against the flux of immediate experience4 ,religion1 the modernists feel1 must be taken broadly and sympathetically1 as a great human historical symbol for the truth4 ,at least in ,christianity you should aspire to embrace and express the whole2 to seize it in its deep inward sources and follow it on all sides in its vital development4 ,but if the age of partial heresy is past1 has not the age of total heresy succeeded8 ,what is this whole phenomenon of religion but human experience interpreted by human imagination8 ,and what is the modernist1 who would embrace it all1 but a freethinker1 with a sympathetic interest in religious illusions8 ,of course1 that is just what he is2 but it takes him a strangely long time to discover it4 ,he fondly supposes 7such is the prejudice imbibed by him in the cradle and in the seminary7 that all human inspirations are necessarily similar and concurrent1 that by trusting an inward light he cannot be led away from his particular religion1 but on the contrary can only find confirmation for it1 together with fresh spiritual energies4 ,he has been reared in profound ignorance of other religions1 which were presented to him1 if at all1 only in grotesque caricature2 or if anything good had to be admitted in them1 it was set down to a premonition of his own system or a derivation from it--a curious conceit1 which seems somehow not to have wholly disappeared from the minds of ,protestants1 or even of professors of philosophy4 ,i need not observe how completely the secret of each alien religion is thereby missed and its native accent outraged3 the most serious consequence1 for the modernist1 of this unconsciousness of whatever is not ,christian is an unconsciousness of what1 in contrast to other religions1 ,christianity itself is4 ,he feels himself full of love--except for the pope--of mysticism1 and of a sort of archaeological piety4 ,he is learned and eloquent and wistful4 ,why should he not remain in the church8 ,why should he not bring all its cold and recalcitrant members up to his own level of insight8 ,the modernist1 like the ,protestants before him1 is certainly justified in contrasting a certain essence or true life of religion with the formulas and practices1 not all equally well-chosen1 which have crystallised round it4 ,in the routine of ,catholic teaching and worship there is notoriously a deal of mummery3 phrases and ceremonies abound that have lost their meaning1 and that people run through without even that general devout attitude and unction which1 after all1 is all that can be asked for in the presence of mysteries4 ,not only is all sense of the historical or moral basis of dogma wanting1 but the dogma itself is hardly conceived explicitly2 all is despatched with a stock phrase1 or a quotation from some theological compendium4 ,ecclesiastical authority acts as if it felt that more profundity would be confusing and that more play of mind might be dangerous4 ,this is that ,scholasticism and ,medivalism against which the modernists inveigh or under which they groan2 and to this intellectual barrenness may be added the offences against taste1 verisimilitude1 and justice which their more critical minds may discern in many an act and pronouncement of their official superiors4 ,thus both their sense for historical truth and their spontaneous mysticism drive the modernists to contrast with the official religion what was pure and vital in the religion of their fathers4 ,like the early ,protestants1 they wish to revert to a more genuine ,christianity2 but while their historical imagination is much more accurate and well-fed than that of any one in the sixteenth century could be1 they have no hold on the ,protestant principle of faith4 ,the ,protestants1 taking the ,bible as an oracle which personal inspiration was to interpret1 could reform tradition in any way and to any extent which their reason or feeling happened to prompt4 ,but so long as their ,christianity was a positive faith1 the residue1 when all the dross had been criticised and burned away1 was of divine authority4 ,the ,bible never became for them merely an ancient ,jewish encyclopdia1 often eloquent1 often curious1 and often barbarous4 ,god never became a literary symbol1 covering some problematical cosmic force1 or some ideal of the conscience4 ,but for the modernist this total transformation takes place at once4 ,he keeps the whole ,catholic system1 but he believes in no part of it as it demands to be believed4 ,he understands and shares the moral experience that it enshrines2 but the bubble has been pricked1 the painted world has been discovered to be but painted4 ,he has ceased to be a ,christian to become an amateur1 or if you will a connoisseur1 of ,christianity4 ,he believes--and this unquestioningly1 for he is a child of his age--in history1 in philology1 in evolution1 perhaps in ,german idealism2 he does not believe in sin1 nor in salvation1 nor in revelation4 ,his study of history has disclosed ,christianity to him in its evolution and in its character of a myth2 he wishes to keep it in its entirety precisely because he regards it as a convention1 like a language or a school of art2 whereas the ,protestants wished1 on the contrary1 to reduce it to its original substance1 because they fondly supposed that that original substance was so much literal truth4 ,modernism is accordingly an ambiguous and unstable thing4 ,it is the love of all ,christianity in those who perceive that it is all a fable4 ,it is the historic attachment to his church of a ,catholic who has discovered that he is a pagan4 ,when the modernists are pressed to explain their apparently double allegiance1 they end by saying that what historical and philological criticism conjectures to be the facts must be accepted as such2 while the ,christian dogmas touching these things--the incarnation and resurrection of ,christ1 for instance--must be taken in a purely symbolic or moral sense4 ,in saying this they may be entirely right2 it seems to many of us that ,christianity is indeed a fable1 yet full of meaning if you take it as such2 for what scraps of historical truth there may be in the ,bible or of metaphysical truth in theology are of little importance2 whilst the true greatness and beauty of this1 as of all religions1 is to be found in its moral idealism1 ,i mean1 in the expression it gives1 under cover of legends1 prophecies1 or mysteries1 of the effort1 the tragedy1 and the consolations of human life4 ,such a moral fable is what ,christianity is in fact2 but it is far from what it is in intention4 ,the modernist view1 the view of a sympathetic rationalism1 revokes the whole ,jewish tradition on which ,christianity is grafted2 it takes the seriousness out of religion2 it sweetens the pang of sin1 which becomes misfortune2 it removes the urgency of salvation2 it steals empirical reality away from the last judgment1 from hell1 and from heaven2 it steals historical reality away from the ,christ of religious tradition and personal devotion4 ,the moral summons and the prophecy about destiny which were the soul of the gospel have lost all force for it and become fables4 ,the modernist1 then1 starts with the orthodox but untenable persuasion that ,catholicism comprehends all that is good2 he adds the heterodox though amiable sentiment that any well-meaning ambition of the mind1 any hope1 any illumination1 any science1 must be good1 and therefore compatible with ,catholicism4 ,he bathes himself in idealistic philosophy1 he dabbles in liberal politics1 he accepts and emulates rationalistic exegesis and anti-clerical church history4 ,soon he finds himself1 on every particular point1 out of sympathy with the acts and tendencies of the church to which he belongs2 and then he yields to the most pathetic of his many illusions--he sets about to purge this church1 so as not to be compelled to abandon it2 to purge it of its first principles1 of its whole history1 and of its sublime if chimerical ideal4 ,the modernist wishes to reconcile the church and the world4 ,therein he forgets what ,christianity came into the world to announce and why its message was believed4 ,it came to announce salvation from the world2 there should be no more need of just those things which the modernist so deeply loves and respects and blushes that his church should not be adorned with--emancipated science1 free poetic religion1 optimistic politics1 and dissolute art4 ,these things1 according to the ,christian conscience1 were all vanity and vexation of spirit1 and the pagan world itself almost confessed as much4 ,they were vexatious and vain because they were bred out of sin1 out of ignoring the inward and the revealed law of ,god2 and they would lead surely and quickly to destruction4 ,the needful salvation from these follies1 ,christianity went on to announce1 had come through the cross of ,christ2 whose grace1 together with admission to his future heavenly kingdom1 was offered freely to such as believed in him1 separated themselves from the world1 and lived in charity1 humility1 and innocence1 waiting lamp in hand for the celestial bridegroom4 ,these abstracted and elected spirits were the true disciples of ,christ and the church itself4 ,having no ears for this essential message of ,christianity1 the modernist also has no eyes for its history4 ,the church converted the world only partially and inessentially2 yet ,christianity was outwardly established as the traditional religion of many nations4 ,and why8 ,because1 although the prophecies it relied on were strained and its miracles dubious1 it furnished a needful sanctuary from the shames1 sorrows1 injustices1 violence1 and gathering darkness of earth2 and not only a sanctuary one might fly to1 but a holy precinct where one might live1 where there was sacred learning1 based on revelation and tradition1 to occupy the inquisitive1 and sacred philosophy to occupy the speculative2 where there might be religious art1 ministering to the faith1 and a new life in the family or in the cloister1 transformed by a permeating spirit of charity1 sacrifice1 soberness1 and prayer4 ,these principles by their very nature could not become those of the world1 but they could remain in it as a leaven and an ideal4 ,as such they remain to this day1 and very efficaciously1 in the ,catholic church4 ,the modernists talk a great deal of development1 and they do not see that what they detest in the church is a perfect development of its original essence2 that monachism1 scholasticism1 ,jesuitism1 ultramontanism1 and ,vaticanism are all thoroughly apostolic2 beneath the overtones imposed by a series of ages they give out the full and exact note of the ,new ,testament4 ,much has been added1 but nothing has been lost4 ,development 7though those who talk most of it seem to forget it7 is not the same as flux and dissolution4 ,it is not a continuity through changes of any sort1 but the evolution of something latent and preformed1 or else the creation of new instruments of defence for the same original life4 ,in this sense there was an immense development of ,christianity during the first three centuries1 and this development has continued1 more slowly1 ever since1 but only in the ,roman church2 for the ,eastern churches have refused themselves all new expressions1 while the ,protestant churches have eaten more and more into the core4 ,it is a striking proof of the preservative power of readjustment that the ,roman church1 in the midst of so many external transformations as it has undergone1 still demands the same kind of faith that ,john the ,baptist demanded1 ,i mean faith in another world4 ,the mise-en-scne has changed immensely4 ,the gospel has been encased in theology1 in ritual1 in ecclesiastical authority1 in conventional forms of charity1 like some small bone of a saint in a gilded reliquary2 but the relic for once is genuine1 and the gospel has been preserved by those thick incrustations4 ,many an isolated fanatic or evangelical missionary in the slums shows a greater resemblance to the apostles in his outer situation than the pope does2 but what mind-healer or revivalist nowadays preaches the doom of the natural world and its vanity1 or the reversal of animal values1 or the blessedness of poverty and chastity1 or the inferiority of natural human bonds1 or a contempt for lay philosophy8 ,yet in his palace full of pagan marbles the pope actually preaches all this4 ,it is here1 and certainly not among the modernists1 that the gospel is still believed4 ,of course1 it is open to any one to say that there is a nobler religion possible without these trammels and this officialdom1 that there is a deeper philosophy than this supernaturalistic rationalism1 that there is a sweeter life than this legal piety4 ,perhaps3 ,i think the pagan ,greeks1 the ,buddhists1 the ,mohammedans would have much to say for themselves before the impartial tribunal of human nature and reason4 ,but they are not ,christians and do not wish to be4 ,no more1 in their hearts1 are the modernists1 and they should feel it beneath their dignity to pose as such2 indeed the more sensitive of them already feel it4 ,to say they are not ,christians at heart1 but diametrically opposed to the fundamental faith and purpose of ,christianity1 is not to say they may not be profound mystics 7as many ,hindus1 ,jews1 and pagan ,greeks have been71 or excellent scholars1 or generous philanthropists4 ,but the very motive that attaches them to ,christianity is worldly and un-,christian4 ,they wish to preserve the continuity of moral traditions2 they wish the poetry of life to flow down to them uninterruptedly and copiously from all the ages4 ,it is an amiable and wise desire2 but it shows that they are men of the ,renaissance1 pagan and pantheistic in their profounder sentiment1 to whom the hard and narrow realism of official ,christianity is offensive just because it presupposes that ,christianity is true4 ,yet even in this historical and poetical allegiance to ,christianity ,i suspect the modernists suffer from a serious illusion4 ,they think the weakness of the church lies in its not following the inspirations of the age4 ,but when this age is past1 might not that weakness be a source of strength again8 ,for an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous1 since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned4 ,no doubt it would be dishonest in any of us now1 who see clearly that ,noah surely did not lead all the animals two by two into the ,ark1 to say that we believe he did so1 on the ground that stories of that kind are rather favourable to the spread of religion4 ,no doubt such a story1 and even the fables essential to ,christian theology1 are now incredible to most of us4 ,but on the other hand it would be stupid to assume that what is incredible to you or me now must always be incredible to mankind4 ,what was foolishness to the ,greeks of ,st4 ,paul's day spread mightily among them one or two hundred years later2 and what is foolishness to the modernist of to-day may edify future generations4 ,the imagination is suggestible and there is nothing men will not believe in matters of religion4 ,these rational persuasions by which we are swayed1 the conventions of unbelieving science and unbelieving history1 are superficial growths2 yesterday they did not exist1 to-morrow they may have disappeared4 ,this is a doctrine which the modernist philosophers themselves emphasise1 as does ,m4 ,bergson1 whom some of them follow1 and say the ,catholic church itself ought to follow in order to be saved--for prophets are constitutionally without a sense of humour4 ,these philosophers maintain that intelligence is merely a convenient method of picking one's way through the world of matter1 that it is a falsification of life1 and wholly unfit to grasp the roots of it4 ,we may well be of another opinion1 if we think the roots of life are not in consciousness but in nature1 which intelligence alone can reveal2 but we must agree that in life itself intelligence is a superficial growth1 and easily blighted1 and that the experience of the vanity of the world1 of sin1 of salvation1 of miracles1 of strange revelations1 and of mystic loves is a far deeper1 more primitive1 and therefore probably more lasting human possession than is that of clear historical or scientific ideas4 ,now religious experience1 as ,i have said1 may take other forms than the ,christian1 and within ,christianity it may take other forms than the ,catholic2 but the ,catholic form is as good as any intrinsically for the devotee himself1 and it has immense advantages over its probable rivals in charm1 in comprehensiveness1 in maturity1 in internal rationality1 in external adaptability2 so much so that a strong anti-clerical government1 like the ,french1 cannot safely leave the church to be overwhelmed by the forces of science1 good sense1 ridicule1 frivolity1 and avarice 7all strong forces in ,france71 but must use violence as well to do it4 ,in the ,english church1 too1 it is not those who accept the deluge1 the resurrection1 and the sacraments only as symbols that are the vital party1 but those who accept them literally2 for only these have anything to say to the poor1 or to the rich1 that can refresh them4 ,in a frank supernaturalism1 in a tight clericalism1 not in a pleasant secularisation1 lies the sole hope of the church4 ,its sole dignity also lies there4 ,it will not convert the world2 it never did and it never could4 ,it will remain a voice crying in the wilderness2 but it will believe what it cries1 and there will be some to listen to it in the future1 as there have been many in the past4 ,as to modernism1 it is suicide4 ,it is the last of those concessions to the spirit of the world which half-believers and double-minded prophets have always been found making2 but it is a mortal concession4 ,it concedes everything2 for it concedes that everything in ,christianity1 as ,christians hold it1 is an illusion4 ,,iii ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,m4 ,,henri ,,bergson ,the most representative and remarkable of living philosophers is ,m4 ,henri ,bergson4 ,both the form and the substance of his works attract universal attention4 ,his ideas are pleasing and bold1 and at least in form wonderfully original2 he is persuasive without argument and mystical without conventionality2 he moves in the atmosphere of science and free thought1 yet seems to transcend them and to be secretly religious4 ,an undercurrent of zeal and even of prophecy seems to animate his subtle analyses and his surprising fancies4 ,he is eloquent1 and to a public rather sick of the half-education it has received and eager for some inspiriting novelty he seems more eloquent than he is4 ,he uses the ,french language 7and little else is ,french about him7 in the manner of the more recent artists in words1 retaining the precision of phrase and the measured judgments which are traditional in ,french literature1 yet managing to envelop everything in a penumbra of emotional suggestion4 ,each expression of an idea is complete in itself2 yet these expressions are often varied and constantly metaphorical1 so that we are led to feel that much in that idea has remained unexpressed and is indeed inexpressible4 ,studied and insinuating as ,m4 ,bergson is in his style1 he is no less elaborate in his learning4 ,in the history of philosophy1 in mathematics and physics1 and especially in natural history he has taken great pains to survey the ground and to assimilate the views and spirit of the most recent scholars4 ,he might be called outright an expert in all these subjects1 were it not for a certain externality and want of radical sympathy in his way of conceiving them4 ,a genuine historian of philosophy1 for instance1 would love to rehearse the views of great thinkers1 would feel their eternal plausibility1 and in interpreting them would think of himself as little as they ever thought of him4 ,but ,m4 ,bergson evidently regards ,plato or ,kant as persons who did or did not prepare the way for some ,bergsonian insight4 ,the theory of evolution1 taken enthusiastically1 is apt to exercise an evil influence on the moral estimation of things4 ,first the evolutionist asserts that later things grow out of earlier1 which is true of things in their causes and basis1 but not in their values2 as modern ,greece proceeds out of ancient ,greece materially but does not exactly crown it4 ,the evolutionist1 however1 proceeds to assume that later things are necessarily better than what they have grown out of3 and this is false altogether4 ,this fallacy reinforces very unfortunately that inevitable esteem which people have for their own opinions1 and which must always vitiate the history of philosophy when it is a philosopher that writes it4 ,a false subordination comes to be established among systems1 as if they moved in single file and all had the last1 the author's system1 for their secret goal4 ,in ,hegel1 for instance1 this conceit is conspicuous1 in spite of his mastery in the dramatic presentation of points of view1 for his way of reconstructing history was1 on the surface1 very sympathetic4 ,he too1 like ,m4 ,bergson1 proceeded from learning to intuition1 and feigned at every turn to identify himself with what he was describing1 especially if this was a philosophical attitude or temper4 ,yet in reality his historical judgments were forced and brutal3 ,greece was but a stepping-stone to ,prussia1 ,plato and ,spinoza found their higher synthesis in himself1 and 7though he may not say so frankly7 ,jesus ,christ and ,st4 ,francis realised their better selves in ,luther4 ,actual spiritual life1 the thoughts1 affections1 and pleasures of individuals1 passed with ,hegel for so much moonshine2 the true spirit was objective1 it was simply the movement of those circumstances in which actual spirit arose4 ,he was accordingly contemptuous of everything intrinsically good1 and his idealism consisted in forcing the natural world into a formula of evolution and then worshipping it as the embodiment of the living ,god4 ,but under the guise of optimism and belief in a cosmic reason this is mere idolatry of success--a malign superstition1 by which all moral independence is crushed out and conscience enslaved to chronology2 and it is no marvel if1 somewhat to relieve this subjection1 history in turn was expurgated1 marshalled1 and distorted1 that it might pass muster for the work of the ,holy ,ghost4 ,in truth the value of spiritual life is intrinsic and centred at every point4 ,it is never wholly recoverable4 ,to recover it at all1 an historian must have a certain detachment and ingenuousness2 knowing the dignity and simplicity of his own mind1 he must courteously attribute the same dignity and simplicity to others1 unless their avowed attitude prevents2 this is to be an intelligent critic and to write history like a gentleman4 ,the truth1 which all philosophers alike are seeking1 is eternal4 ,it lies as near to one age as to another2 the means of discovery alone change1 and not always for the better4 ,the course of evolution is no test of what is true or good2 else nothing could be good intrinsically nor true simply and ultimately2 on the contrary1 it is the approach to truth and excellence anywhere1 like the approach of tree tops to the sky1 that tests the value of evolution1 and determines whether it is moving upward or downward or in a circle4 ,m4 ,bergson accordingly misses fire when1 for instance1 in order utterly to damn a view which he has been criticising1 and which may be open to objection on other grounds1 he cries that those who hold it retardent sur ,kant2 as if a clock were the compass of the mind1 and he who was one minute late was one point off the course4 ,kant was a hard honest thinker1 more sinned against than sinning1 from whom a great many people in the nineteenth century have taken their point of departure1 departing as far as they chose2 but if a straight line of progress could be traced at all through the labyrinth of philosophy1 ,kant would not lie in that line4 ,his thought is essentially excentric and sophisticated1 being largely based on two inherited blunders1 which a truly progressive philosophy would have to begin by avoiding1 thus leaving ,kant on one side1 and weathering his philosophy1 as one might ,scylla or ,charybdis4 ,the one blunder was that of the ,english malicious psychology which had maintained since the time of ,locke that the ideas in the mind are the only objects of knowledge1 instead of being the knowledge of objects4 ,the other blunder was that of ,protestantism that1 in groping after that moral freedom which is so ineradicable a need of a pure spirit1 thought to find it in a revision of revelation1 tradition1 and prejudice1 so as to be able to cling to these a little longer4 ,how should a system so local1 so accidental1 and so unstable as ,kant's be prescribed as a sort of catechism for all humanity8 ,the tree of knowledge has many branches1 and all its fruits are not condemned to hang for ever from that one gnarled and contorted bough4 ,m4 ,bergson himself lags behind ,kant on those points on which his better insight requires it1 as1 for instance1 on the reality of time2 but with regard to his own philosophy ,i am afraid he thinks that all previous systems empty into it1 which is hardly true1 and that all future systems must flow out of it1 which is hardly necessary4 ,the embarrassment that qualifies ,m4 ,bergson's attainments in mathematics and physics has another and more personal source4 ,he understands1 but he trembles4 ,non-human immensities frighten him1 as they did ,pascal4 ,he suffers from cosmic agoraphobia4 ,we might think empty space an innocent harmless thing1 a mere opportunity to move1 which ought to be highly prized by all devotees of motion4 ,but ,m4 ,bergson is instinctively a mystic1 and his philosophy deliberately discredits the existence of anything except in immediacy1 that is1 as an experience of the heart4 ,what he dreads in space is that the heart should be possessed by it1 and transformed into it4 ,he dreads that the imagination should be fascinated by the homogeneous and static1 hypnotised by geometry1 and actually lost in ,auseinandersein4 ,this would be a real death and petrifaction of consciousness1 frozen into contemplation of a monotonous infinite void4 ,what is warm and desirable is rather the sense of variety and succession1 as if all visions radiated from the occupied focus or hearth of the self4 ,the more concentration at this habitable point1 with the more mental perspectives opening backwards and forwards through time1 in a word1 the more personal and historical the apparition1 the better it would be4 ,things must be reduced again to what they seem2 it is vain and terrible to take them for what we find they are4 ,m4 ,bergson is at bottom an apologist for very old human prejudices1 an apologist for animal illusion4 ,his whole labour is a plea for some vague but comfortable faith which he dreads to have stolen from him by the progress of art and knowledge4 ,there is a certain trepidation1 a certain suppressed instinct to snap at and sting the hated oppressor1 as if some desperate small being were at bay before a horrible monster4 ,m4 ,bergson is afraid of space1 of mathematics1 of necessity1 and of eternity2 he is afraid of the intellect and the possible discoveries of science2 he is afraid of nothingness and death4 ,these fears may prevent him from being a philosopher in the old and noble sense of the word2 but they sharpen his sense for many a psychological problem1 and make him the spokesman of many an inarticulate soul4 ,animal timidity and animal illusion are deep in the heart of all of us4 ,practice may compel us to bow to the conventions of the intellect1 as to those of polite society2 but secretly1 in our moments of immersion in ourselves1 we may find them a great nuisance1 even a vain nightmare4 ,could we only listen undisturbed to the beat of protoplasm in our hearts1 would not that oracle solve all the riddles of the universe1 or at least avoid them8 ,to protect this inner conviction1 however1 it is necessary for the mystic to sally forth and attack the enemy on his own ground4 ,if he refuted physics and mathematics simply out of his own faith1 he might be accused of ignorance of the subject4 ,he will therefore study it conscientiously1 yet with a certain irritation and haste to be done with it1 somewhat as a ,jesuit might study ,protestant theology4 ,such a student1 however1 is apt to lose his pains2 for in retracing a free inquiry in his servile spirit1 he remains deeply ignorant1 not indeed of its form1 but of its nature and value4 ,why1 for instance1 has ,m4 ,bergson such a horror of mechanical physics8 ,he seems to think it a black art1 dealing in unholy abstractions1 and rather dangerous to salvation1 and he keeps his metaphysical exorcisms and antidotes always at hand1 to render it innocuous1 at least to his own soul4 ,but physical science never solicited of anybody that he should be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of atoms1 and worship them2 that we must worship and lose ourselves in reality1 whatever reality may be1 is a mystic aberration1 which physical science does nothing to foster4 ,nor does any critical physicist suppose that what he describes is the whole of the object2 he merely notes the occasions on which its sensible qualities appear1 and calculates events4 ,because the calculable side of nature is his province1 he does not deny that events have other aspects--the psychic and the moral1 for instance--no less real in their way1 in terms of which calculation would indeed be impossible4 ,if he chances to call the calculable elements of nature her substance1 as it is proper to do1 that name is given without passion2 he may perfectly well proclaim with ,goethe that it is in the accidents1 in the farbiger ,abglanz1 that we have our life4 ,and if it be for his freedom that the mystic trembles1 ,i imagine any man of science would be content with ,m4 ,bergson's assertion that true freedom is the sense of freedom1 and that in any intelligible statement of the situation1 even the most indeterministic1 this freedom disappears2 for it is an immediate experience1 not any scheme of relation between events4 ,the horror of mechanical physics arises1 then1 from attributing to that science pretensions and extensions which it does not have2 it arises from the habits of theology and metaphysics being imported inopportunely into science4 ,similarly when ,m4 ,bergson mentions mathematics1 he seems to be thinking of the supposed authority it exercises--one of ,kant's confusions--over the empirical world1 and trying to limit and subordinate that authority1 lest movement should somehow be removed from nature1 and vagueness from human thought4 ,but nature and human thought are what they are2 they have enough affinity to mathematics1 as it happens1 to suggest that study to our minds1 and to give those who go deep into it a great1 though partial1 mastery over things4 ,nevertheless a true mathematician is satisfied with the hypothetical and ideal cogency of his science1 and puts its dignity in that4 ,moreover1 ,m4 ,bergson has the too pragmatic notion that the use of mathematics is to keep our accounts straight in this business world2 whereas its inherent use is emancipating and ,platonic1 in that it shows us the possibility of other worlds1 less contingent and perturbed than this one4 ,if he allows himself any excursus from his beloved immediacy1 it is only in the interests of practice2 he little knows the pleasures of a liberal mind1 ranging over the congenial realm of internal accuracy and ideal truth1 where it can possess itself of what treasures it likes in perfect security and freedom4 ,an artist in his workmanship1 ,m4 ,bergson is not an artist in his allegiance2 he has no respect for what is merely ideal4 ,for this very reason1 perhaps1 he is more at home in natural history than in the exact sciences4 ,he has the gift of observation1 and can suggest vividly the actual appearance of natural processes1 in contrast to the verbal paraphrase of these processes which is sometimes taken to explain them4 ,he is content to stop at habit without formulating laws2 he refuses to assume that the large obvious cycles of change in things can be reduced to mechanism1 that is1 to minute included cycles repeated ad libitum4 ,he may sometimes defend this refusal by sophistical arguments1 as when he says that mechanism would require the last stage of the universe to be simultaneous with the first1 forgetting that the unit of mechanism is not a mathematical equation but some observed typical event4 ,the refusal itself1 however1 would be honest scepticism enough were it made with no arrire pense1 but simply in view of the immense complexity of the facts and the extreme simplicity of the mechanical hypothesis4 ,in such a situation1 to halt at appearances might seem the mark of a true naturalist and a true empiricist not misled by speculative haste and the human passion for system and simplification4 ,at the first reading1 ,m4 ,bergson's ,evolution ,cratrice may well dazzle the professional naturalist and seem to him an illuminating confession of the nature and limits of his science2 yet a second reading1 ,i have good authority for saying1 may as easily reverse that impression4 ,m4 ,bergson never reviews his facts in order to understand them1 but only if possible to discredit others who may have fancied they understood4 ,he raises difficulties1 he marks the problems that confront the naturalist1 and the inadequacy of explanations that may have been suggested4 ,such criticism would be a valuable beginning if it were followed by the suggestion of some new solution2 but the suggestion only is that no solution is possible1 that the phenomena of life are simply miraculous1 and that it is in the tendency or vocation of the animal1 not in its body or its past1 that we must see the ground of what goes on before us4 ,with such a philosophy of science1 it is evident that all progress in the understanding of nature would cease1 as it ceased after ,aristotle4 ,the attempt would again be abandoned to reduce gross and obvious cycles of change1 such as generation1 growth1 and death1 to minute latent cycles1 so that natural history should offer a picturesque approach to universal physics4 ,if for the magic power of types1 invoked by ,aristotle1 we substituted with ,m4 ,bergson the magic power of the lan vital1 that is1 of evolution in general1 we should be referring events not to finer1 more familiar1 more pervasive processes1 but to one all-embracing process1 unique and always incomplete4 ,our understanding would end in something far vaguer and looser than what our observation began with4 ,aristotle at least could refer particulars to their specific types1 as medicine and social science are still glad enough to do1 to help them in guessing and in making a learned show before the public4 ,but if divination and eloquence--for science is out of the question--were to invoke nothing but a fluid tendency to grow1 we should be left with a flat history of phenomena and no means of prediction or even classification4 ,all knowledge would be reduced to gossip1 infinitely diffuse1 perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings1 but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience1 no practical competence1 and no moral lesson4 ,the world would be a serial novel1 to be continued for ever1 and all men mere novel-readers4 ,nothing is more familiar to philosophers nowadays than that criticism of knowledge by which we are thrown back upon the appearances from which science starts1 upon what is known to children and savages1 whilst all that which long experience and reason may infer from those appearances is set down as so much hypothesis2 and indeed it is through hypothesis that latent being1 if such there be1 comes before the mind at all4 ,now such criticism of knowledge might have been straightforward and ingenuous4 ,it might have simply disclosed the fact1 very salutary to meditate upon1 that the whole frame of nature1 with the minds that animate it1 is disclosed to us by intelligence2 that if we were not intelligent our sensations would exist for us without meaning anything1 as they exist for idiots4 ,the criticism of knowledge1 however1 has usually been taken maliciously1 in the sense that it is the idiots only that are not deceived2 for any interpretation of sensation is a mental figment1 and while experience may have any extent it will it cannot possibly1 they say1 have expressive value2 it cannot reveal anything going on beneath4 ,intelligence and science are accordingly declared to have no penetration1 no power to disclose what is latent1 for nothing latent exists2 they can at best furnish symbols for past or future sensations and the order in which they arise2 they can be seven-league boots for striding over the surface of sentience4 ,this negative dogmatism as to knowledge was rendered harmless and futile by the ,english philosophers1 in that they maintained at the same time that everything happens exactly as if the intellect were a true instrument of discovery1 and as if a material world underlay our experience and furnished all its occasions4 ,hume1 ,mill1 and ,huxley were scientific at heart1 and full of the intelligence they dissected2 they seemed to cry to nature3 ,though thou dost not exist1 yet will ,i trust in thee4 ,their idealism was a theoretical scruple rather than a passionate superstition4 ,not so ,m4 ,bergson2 he is not so simple as to invoke the malicious criticism of knowledge in order to go on thinking rationalistically4 ,reason and science make him deeply uncomfortable4 ,his point accordingly is not merely that mechanism is a hypothesis1 but that it is a wrong hypothesis4 ,events do not come as if mechanism brought them about2 they come1 at least in the organic world1 as if a magic destiny1 and inscrutable ungovernable effort1 were driving them on4 ,thus ,m4 ,bergson introduces metaphysics into natural history2 he invokes1 in what is supposed to be science1 the agency of a power1 called the lan vital1 on a level with the ,will of ,schopenhauer or the ,unknowable ,force of ,herbert ,spencer4 ,but there is a scientific vitalism also1 which it is well to distinguish from the metaphysical sort4 ,the point at issue between vitalism and mechanism in biology is whether the living processes in nature can be resolved into a combination of the material4 ,the material processes will always remain vital1 if we take this word in a descriptive and poetic sense2 for they will contain a movement having a certain idiosyncrasy and taking a certain time1 like the fall of an apple4 ,the movement of nature is never dialectical2 the first part of any event does not logically imply the last part of it4 ,physics is descriptive1 historical1 reporting after the fact what are found to be the habits of matter4 ,but if these habits are constant and calculable we call the vitality of them mechanical4 ,thus the larger processes of nature1 no matter how vital they may be and whatever consciousness may accompany them1 will always be mechanical if they can be calculated and predicted1 being a combination of the more minute and widespread processes which they contain4 ,the only question therefore is3 ,do processes such as nutrition and reproduction arise by a combination of such events as the fall of apples8 ,or are they irreducible events1 and units of mechanism by themselves8 ,that is the dilemma as it appears in science4 ,both possibilities will always remain open1 because however far mechanical analysis may go1 many phenomena1 as human apprehension presents them1 will always remain irreducible to any common denominator with the rest2 and on the other hand1 wherever the actual reduction of the habits of animals to those of matter may have stopped1 we can never know that a further reduction is impossible4 ,the balance of reasonable presumption1 however1 is not even4 ,the most inclusive movements known to us in nature1 the astronomical1 are calculable1 and so are the most minute and pervasive processes1 the chemical4 ,these are also1 if evolution is to be accepted1 the earliest processes upon which all others have supervened and out of which1 as it were1 they have grown4 ,apart from miraculous intervention1 therefore1 the assumption seems to be inevitable that the intermediate processes are calculable too1 and compounded out of the others4 ,the appearance to the contrary presented in animal and social life is easily explicable on psychological grounds4 ,we read inevitably in terms of our passions those things which affect them or are analogous to what involves passion in ourselves2 and when the mechanism of them is hidden from us1 as is that of our bodies1 we suppose that these passions which we find on the surface in ourselves1 or read into other creatures1 are the substantial and only forces that carry on our part of the world4 ,penetrating this illusion1 dispassionate observers in all ages have received the general impression that nature is one and mechanical4 ,this was1 and still remains1 a general impression only2 but ,i suspect no one who walks the earth with his eyes open would be concerned to resist it1 were it not for certain fond human conceits which such a view would rebuke and1 if accepted1 would tend to obliterate4 ,the psychological illusion that our ideas and purposes are original facts and forces 7instead of expressions in consciousness of facts and forces which are material7 and the practical and optical illusion that everything wheels about us in this world--these are the primitive persuasions which the enemies of naturalism have always been concerned to protect4 ,one might indeed be a vitalist in biology1 out of pure caution and conscientiousness1 without sharing those prejudices2 and many a speculative philosopher has been free from them who has been a vitalist in metaphysics4 ,schopenhauer1 for instance1 observed that the cannon-ball which1 if self-conscious1 would think it moved freely1 would be quite right in thinking so4 ,the ,will was as evident to him in mechanism as in animal life4 ,m4 ,bergson1 in the more hidden reaches of his thought1 seems to be a universal vitalist2 apparently an lan vital must have existed once to deposit in inorganic matter the energy stored there1 and to set mechanism going4 ,but he relies on biology alone to prove the present existence of an independent effort to live2 this is needed to do what mechanism1 as he thinks1 could never do2 it is not needed to do1 as in ,schopenhauer1 what mechanism does4 ,m4 ,bergson thus introduces his metaphysical force as a peculiar requirement of biology2 he breaks the continuity of nature2 he loses the poetic justification of a metaphysical vitalism2 he asks us to believe that life is not a natural expression of material being1 but an alien and ghostly madness descending into it--,i say a ghostly madness1 for why should disembodied life wish that the body should live8 ,this vitalism is not a kind of biology more prudent and literal than the mechanical kind 7as a scientific vitalism would be71 but far less legitimately speculative4 ,nor is it a frank and thorough mythology1 such as the total spectacle of the universe might suggest to an imaginative genius4 ,it is rather a popular animism1 insisting on a sympathetic interpretation of nature where human sympathy is quick and easy1 and turning this sympathy into a revelation of the absolute1 but leaving the rest of nature cold1 because to sympathise with its movement there is harder for anxious1 self-centred mortals1 and requires a disinterested mind4 ,m4 ,bergson would have us believe that mankind is what nature has set her heart on and the best she can do1 for whose sake she has been long making very special efforts4 ,we are fortunate that at least her darling is all mankind and not merely ,israel4 ,in spite1 then1 of ,m4 ,bergson's learning as a naturalist and his eye for the facts--things ,aristotle also possessed--he is like ,aristotle profoundly out of sympathy with nature4 ,aristotle was alienated from nature and any penetrating study of it by the fact that he was a disciple of ,socrates1 and therefore essentially a moralist and a logician4 ,m4 ,bergson is alienated from nature by something quite different2 he is the adept of a very modern1 very subtle1 and very arbitrary art1 that of literary psychology4 ,in this art the imagination is invited to conceive things as if they were all centres of passion and sensation4 ,literary psychology is not a science2 it is practised by novelists and poets2 yet if it is to be brilliantly executed it demands a minute and extended observation of life4 ,unless your psychological novelist had crammed his memory with pictures of the ways and aspects of men he would have no starting-point for his psychological fictions2 he would not be able to render them circumstantial and convincing4 ,just so ,m4 ,bergson's achievements in psychological fiction1 to be so brilliantly executed as they are1 required all his learning4 ,the history of philosophy1 mathematics1 and physics1 and above all natural history1 had to supply him first with suggestions2 and if he is not really a master in any of those fields1 that is not to be wondered at4 ,his heart is elsewhere4 ,to write a universal biological romance1 such as he has sketched for us in his system1 he would ideally have required all scientific knowledge1 but only as ,homer required the knowledge of seamanship1 generalship1 statecraft1 augury1 and charioteering1 in order to turn the aspects of them into poetry1 and not with that technical solidity which ,plato unjustly blames him for not possessing4 ,just so ,m4 ,bergson's proper achievement begins where his science ends1 and his philosophy lies entirely beyond the horizon of possible discoveries or empirical probabilities4 ,in essence1 it is myth or fable2 but in the texture and degree of its fabulousness it differs notably from the performances of previous metaphysicians4 ,primitive poets1 even ancient philosophers1 were not psychologists2 their fables were compacted out of elements found in practical life1 and they reckoned in the units in which language and passion reckon--wooing1 feasting1 fighting1 vice1 virtue1 happiness1 justice4 ,above all1 they talked about persons or about ideals2 this man1 this woman1 this typical thought or sentiment was what fixed their attention and seemed to them the ultimate thing4 ,not so ,m4 ,bergson3 he is a microscopic psychologist1 and even in man what he studies by preference is not some integrated passion or idea1 but something far more recondite2 the minute texture of sensation1 memory1 or impulse4 ,sharp analysis is required to distinguish or arrest these elements1 yet these are the predestined elements of his fable2 and so his anthropomorphism is far less obvious than that of most poets and theologians1 though no less real4 ,this peculiarity in the terms of the myth carries with it a notable extension in its propriety4 ,the social and moral phenomena of human life cannot be used in interpreting life elsewhere without a certain conscious humour4 ,this makes the charm of avowed writers of fable2 their playful travesty and dislocation of things human1 which would be puerile if they meant to be naturalists1 render them piquant moralists2 for they are not really interpreting animals1 but under the mask of animals maliciously painting men4 ,such fables are morally interesting and plausible just because they are psychologically false4 ,if sop could have reported what lions and lambs1 ants and donkeys1 really feel and think1 his poems would have been perfect riddles to the public2 and they would have had no human value except that of illustrating1 to the truly speculative philosopher1 the irresponsible variety of animal consciousness and its incommensurable types4 ,now ,m4 ,bergson's psychological fictions1 being drawn from what is rudimentary in man1 have a better chance of being literally true beyond man4 ,indeed what he asks us to do1 and wishes to do himself1 is simply to absorb so completely the aspect and habit of things that the soul of them may take possession of us3 that we may know by intuition the lan vital which the world expresses1 just as ,paolo1 in ,dante1 knew by intuition the lan vital that the smile of ,francesca expressed4 ,the correctness of such an intuition1 however1 rests on a circumstance which ,m4 ,bergson does not notice1 because his psychology is literary and not scientific4 ,it rests on the possibility of imitation4 ,when the organism observed and that of the observer have a similar structure and can imitate one another1 the idea produced in the observer by intent contemplation is like the experience present to the person contemplated4 ,but where this contagion of attitude1 and therefore of feeling1 is impossible1 our intuition of our neighbours' souls remains subjective and has no value as a revelation4 ,psychological novelists1 when they describe people such as they themselves are or might have been1 may describe them truly2 but beyond that limit their personages are merely plausible1 that is1 such as might be conceived by an equally ignorant reader in the presence of the same external indications4 ,so1 for instance1 the judgment which a superficial traveller passes on foreign manners or religions is plausible to him and to his compatriots just because it represents the feeling that such manifestations awaken in strangers and does not attempt to convey the very different feeling really involved for the natives2 had the latter been discovered and expressed the traveller's book would have found little understanding and no sale in his own country4 ,this plausibility to the ignorant is present in all spontaneous myth4 ,nothing more need be demanded of irresponsible fiction1 which makes no pretensions to be a human document1 but is merely a human entertainment4 ,now1 a human psychology1 even of the finest grain1 when it is applied to the interpretation of the soul of matter1 or of the soul of the whole universe1 obviously yields a view of the irresponsible and subjective sort2 for it is not based on any close similarity between the observed and the observer3 man and the ether1 man and cosmic evolution1 cannot mimic one another1 to discover mutually how they feel4 ,but just because merely human1 such an interpretation may remain always plausible to man2 and it would be an admirable entertainment if there were no danger that it should be taken seriously4 ,the idea ,paul has of ,peter1 ,spinoza observes1 expresses the nature of ,peter less than it betrays that of ,paul2 and so an idea framed by a man of the consciousness of things in general reveals the mind of that man rather than the mind of the universe2 but the mind of the man too may be worth knowing1 and the illusive hope of discovering everything may lead him truly to disclose himself4 ,such a disclosure of the lower depths of man by himself is ,m4 ,bergson's psychology2 and the psychological romance1 purporting to describe the inward nature of the universe1 which he has built out of that introspection1 is his metaphysics4 ,many a point in this metaphysics may seem strange1 fantastic1 and obscure2 and so it really is1 when dislocated and projected metaphysically2 but not one will be found to be arbitrary2 not one but is based on attentive introspection and perception of the immediate4 ,take1 for example1 what is ,m4 ,bergson's starting-point1 his somewhat dazzling doctrine that to be is to last1 or rather to feel oneself endure4 ,this is a hypostasis of true 7i4e4 immediately felt7 duration4 ,in a sensuous day-dream past feelings survive in the present1 images of the long ago are shuffled together with present sensations1 the roving imagination leaves a bright wake behind it like a comet1 and pushes a rising wave before it1 like the bow of a ship2 all is fluidity1 continuity without identity1 novelty without surprise4 ,hence1 too1 the doctrine of freedom3 the images that appear in such a day-dream are often congruous in character with those that preceded1 and mere prolongations of them2 but this prolongation itself modifies them1 and what develops is in no way deducible or predictable out of what exists4 ,this situation is perfectly explicable scientifically4 ,the movement of consciousness will be self-congruous and sustained when it rests on continuous processes in the same tissues1 and yet quite unpredictable from within1 because the direct sensuous report of bodily processes 7in nausea1 for instance1 or in hunger7 contains no picture of their actual mechanism4 ,even wholly new features1 due to little crises in bodily life1 may appear in a dream to flow out of what already exists1 yet freely develop it2 because in dreams comparison1 the attempt to be consistent1 is wholly in abeyance1 and also because the new feature will come imbedded in others which are not new1 but have dramatic relevance in the story4 ,so immediate consciousness yields the two factors of ,bergsonian freedom1 continuity and indetermination4 ,again1 take the somewhat disconcerting assertion that movement exists when there is nothing that moves1 and no space that it moves through4 ,in vision1 perhaps1 it is not easy to imagine a consciousness of motion without some presentation of a field1 and of a distinguishable something in it2 but if we descend to somatic feelings 7and the more we descend1 with ,m4 ,bergson1 the closer we are to reality71 in shooting pains or the sense of intestinal movements1 the feeling of a change and of a motion is certainly given in the absence of all idea of a mobile or of distinct points 7or even of a separate field7 through which it moves2 consciousness begins with the sense of change1 and the terms of the felt process are only qualitative limits1 bred out of the felt process itself4 ,even a more paradoxical tenet of our philosopher's finds it justification here4 ,he says that the units of motion are indivisible1 that they are acts2 so that to solve the riddle about ,achilles and the tortoise we need no mathematics of the infinitesimal1 but only to ask ,achilles how he accomplishes the feat4 ,achilles would reply that in so many strides he would do it2 and we may be surprised to learn that these strides are indivisible1 so that1 apparently1 ,achilles could not have stumbled in the middle of one1 and taken only half of it4 ,of course1 in nature1 in what non-,bergsonians call reality1 he could3 but not in his immediate feeling1 for if he had stumbled1 the real stride1 that which he was aware of taking1 would have been complete at the stumbling-point4 ,it is certain that consciousness comes in stretches1 in breaths3 all its data are sthetic wholes1 like visions or snatches of melody2 and we should never be aware of anything were we not aware of something all at once4 ,when a man has taught himself--and it is a difficult art--to revert in this way to rudimentary consciousness and to watch himself live1 he will be able1 if he likes1 to add a plausible chapter to speculative psychology4 ,he has unearthed in himself the animal sensibility which has thickened1 budded1 and crystallised into his present somewhat intellectual image of the world4 ,he has touched again the vegetative stupor1 the multiple disconnected landscapes1 the blooming buzzing confusion which his reason has partly set in order4 ,may he not have in all this a key to the consciousness of other creatures8 ,animal psychology1 and sympathy with the general life of nature1 are vitiated both for naturalists and for poets by the human terms they must use1 terms which presuppose distinctions which non-human beings probably have not made4 ,these distinctions correct the illusions of immediate appearance in ways which only a long and special experience has imposed upon us1 and they should not be imported into other souls4 ,we are old men trying to sing the loves of children2 we are wingless bipeds trying to understand the gods4 ,but the data of the immediate are hardly human2 it is probable that at that level all sentience is much alike4 ,from that common ground our imagination can perhaps start safely1 and follow such hints as observation furnishes1 until we learn to live and feel as other living things do1 or as nature may live and feel as a whole4 ,instinct1 for instance1 need not be1 as our human prejudice suggests1 a rudimentary intelligence2 it may be a parallel sort of sensibility1 an imageless awareness of the presence and character of other things1 with a superhuman ability to change oneself so as to meet them4 ,do we not feel something of this sort ourselves in love1 in art1 in religion8 ,m4 ,bergson is a most delicate and charming poet on this theme1 and a plausible psychologist2 his method of accumulating and varying his metaphors1 and leaving our intuition to itself under that artful stimulus1 is the only judicious and persuasive method he could have employed1 and his knack at it is wonderful4 ,we recover1 as we read1 the innocence of the mind4 ,it seems no longer impossible that we might1 like the wise men in the story-books1 learn the language of birds2 we share for the moment the siestas of plants2 and we catch the quick consciousness of the waves of light1 vibrating at inconceivable rates1 each throb forgotten as the next follows upon it2 and we may be tempted to play on ,shakespeare and say3 ,like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore1 ,so do their spirits hasten to their end4 ,some reader of ,m4 ,bergson might say to himself3 ,all this is ingenious introspection and divination2 grant that it is true1 and how does that lead to a new theory of the universe8 ,you have been studying surface appearances and the texture of primitive consciousness2 that is a part of the internal rumble of this great engine of the world4 ,how should it loosen or dissolve that engine1 as your philosophy evidently professes that it must8 ,that nature exists we perceive whenever we resume our intellectual and practical life1 interrupted for a moment by this interesting reversion to the immediate4 ,the consciousness which in introspection we treat as an object is1 in operation1 a cognitive activity3 it demonstrates the world4 ,you would never yourself have conceived the minds of ethereal vibrations1 or of birds1 or of ants1 or of men suspending their intelligence1 if you had known of no men1 ants1 birds1 or ether4 ,it is the material objects that suggest to you their souls1 and teach you how to conceive them4 ,how then should the souls be substituted for the bodies1 and abolish them8 ,poor guileless reader6 ,if philosophers were straightforward men of science1 adding each his mite to the general store of knowledge1 they would all substantially agree1 and while they might make interesting discoveries1 they would not herald each his new transformation of the whole universe4 ,but philosophers are either revolutionists or apologists1 and some of them1 like ,m4 ,bergson1 are revolutionists in the interests of apologetics4 ,their art is to create some surprising inversion of things1 some system of the universe contrary to common apprehension1 or to defend some such inverted system1 propounded by poets long ago1 and perhaps consecrated by religion4 ,it would not require a great man to say calmly3 ,men1 birds1 even ether-waves1 if you will1 feel after this and this fashion4 ,the greatness and the excitement begin when he says3 ,your common sense1 your practical intellect1 your boasted science have entirely deceived you2 see what the real truth is instead6 ,so ,m4 ,bergson is bent on telling us that the immediate1 as he describes it1 is the sole reality2 all else is unreal1 artificial1 and a more or less convenient symbol in discourse--discourse itself being taken1 of course1 for a movement in immediate sensibility1 which is what it is existentially1 but never for an excursion into an independent logical realm1 which is what it is spiritually and in intent4 ,so we must revise all our psychological observations1 and turn them into metaphysical dogmas4 ,it would be nothing to say simply3 ,for immediate feeling the past is contained in the present1 movement is prior to that which moves1 spaces are many1 disconnected1 and incommensurable1 events are indivisible wholes1 perception is in its object and identical with it1 the future is unpredictable1 the complex is bred out of the simple1 and evolution is creative1 its course being obedient to a general tendency or groping impulse1 not to any exact law4 ,no1 we must say instead3 ,in the universe at large the whole past is preserved bodily in the present2 duration is real and space is only imagined2 all is motion1 and there is nothing substantial that moves2 times are incommensurable2 men1 birds1 and waves are nothing but the images of them 7our perceptions1 like their spirits1 being some compendium of these images72 chance intervenes in the flux1 but evolution is due to an absolute ,effort which exists in vacuo and is simplicity itself2 and this ,effort1 without having an idea of what it pursues1 nevertheless produces it out of nothing4 ,the accuracy or the hollowness of ,m4 ,bergson's doctrine1 according as we take it for literary psychology or for natural philosophy1 will appear clearly in the following instance4 ,any one1 he writes1#c who has ever practised literary composition knows very well that1 after he has devoted long study to the subject1 collected all the documents1 and taken all his notes1 one thing more is needful before he can actually embark on the work of composition2 namely1 an effort1 often a very painful one1 to plant himself all at once in the very heart of the subject1 and to fetch from as profound a depth as possible the momentum by which he need simply let himself be borne along in the sequel4 ,this momentum1 as soon as it is acquired1 carries the mind forward along a path where it recovers all the facts it had gathered together1 and a thousand other details besides4 ,the momentum develops and breaks up of itself into particulars that might be retailed ad infinitum4 ,the more he advances the more he finds2 he will never have exhausted the subject2 and nevertheless if he turns round suddenly to face the momentum he feels at his back and see what it is1 it eludes him2 for it is not a thing but a direction of movement1 and though capable of being extended indefinitely1 it is simplicity itself4 ,footnote #c3 ,introduction a la ,mtaphysique4 ,revue de ,mtaphysique et de ,morale1 ,janvier1 #aijc4 ,this is evidently well observed3 heighten the tone a little1 and you might have a poem on those joyful pangs of gestation and parturition which are not denied to a male animal4 ,it is a description of the sensation of literary composition1 of the immediate experience of a writer as words and images rise into his mind4 ,he cannot summon his memories explicitly1 for he would first have to remember them to do so2 his consciousness of inspiration1 of literary creation1 is nothing but a consciousness of pregnancy and of a certain direction of movement1 as if he were being wafted in a balloon2 and just in its moments of highest tension his mind is filled with mere expectancy and mere excitement1 without images1 plans1 or motives2 and what guides it is inwardly1 as ,m4 ,bergson says1 simplicity itself4 ,yet excellent as such a description is psychologically1 it is a literary confession rather than a piece of science2 for scientific psychology is a part of natural history1 and when in nature we come upon such a notable phenomenon as this1 that some men write and write eloquently1 we should at once study the antecedents and the conditions under which this occurs2 we should try1 by experiment if possible1 to see what variations in the result follow upon variations in the situation4 ,at once we should begin to perceive how casual and superficial are those data of introspection which ,m4 ,bergson's account reproduces4 ,does that painful effort1 for instance1 occur always8 ,is it the moral source1 as he seems to suggest1 of the good and miraculous fruits that follow8 ,not at all3 such an effort is required only when the writer is overworked1 or driven to express himself under pressure2 in the spontaneous talker or singer1 in the orator surpassing himself and overflowing with eloquence1 there is no effort at all2 only facility1 and joyous undirected abundance4 ,we should further ask whether all the facts previously gathered are recovered1 and all correctly1 and what relation the thousand other details have to them2 and we should find that everything was controlled and supplied by the sensuous endowment of the literary man1 his moral complexion1 and his general circumstances4 ,and we should perceive at the same time that the momentum which to introspection was so mysterious was in fact the discharge of many automatisms long imprinted on the system1 a system 7as growth and disease show7 that has its internal vegetation and crises of maturity1 to which facility and error in the recovery of the past1 and creation also1 are closely attached4 ,thus we should utterly refuse to say that this momentum was capable of being extended indefinitely or was simplicity itself4 ,it may be a good piece of literary psychology to say that simplicity precedes complexity1 for it precedes complexity in consciousness4 ,consciousness dwindles and flares up most irresponsibly1 so long as its own flow alone is regarded1 and it continually arises out of nothing1 which indeed is simplicity itself4 ,but it does not arise without real conditions outside1 which cannot be discovered by introspection1 nor divined by that literary psychology which proceeds by imagining what introspection might yield in others4 ,there is a deeper mystification still in this passage1 where a writer is said to plant himself in the very heart of the subject4 ,the general tenor of ,m4 ,bergson's philosophy warrants us in taking this quite literally to mean that the field from which inspiration draws its materials is not the man's present memory nor even his past experience1 but the subject itself which that experience and this memory regard3 in other words1 what we write about and our latent knowledge are the same thing4 ,when ,shakespeare was composing his ,antony and ,cleopatra1 for instance1 he planted himself in the very heart of ,rome and of ,egypt1 and in the very heart of the ,queen of ,egypt herself2 what he had gathered from ,plutarch and from elsewhere was1 according to ,m4 ,bergson's view1 a sort of glimpse of the remote reality itself1 as if by telepathy he had been made to witness some part of it2 or rather as if the scope of his consciousness had been suddenly extended in one direction1 so as to embrace and contain bodily a bit of that outlying experience4 ,thus when the poet sifts his facts and sets his imagination to work at unifying and completing them1 what he does is to pierce to ,egypt1 ,rome1 and the inner consciousness of ,cleopatra1 to fetch thence the profound momentum which is to guide him in composition2 and it is there1 not in the adventitious later parts of his own mind1 that he should find the thousand other details which he may add to the picture4 ,here again1 in an exaggerated form1 we have a transcript of the immediate1 a piece of really wonderful introspection1 spoiled by being projected into a theory of nature1 which it spoils in its turn4 ,doubtless ,shakespeare1 in the heat of dramatic vision1 lived his characters1 transported himself to their environment1 and felt the passion of each1 as we do in a dream1 dictating their unpremeditated words4 ,but all this is in imagination2 it is true only within the framework of our dream4 ,in reality1 of course1 ,shakespeare never pierced to ,rome nor to ,egypt2 his elaborations of his data are drawn from his own feelings and circumstances1 not from those of ,cleopatra4 ,this transporting oneself into the heart of a subject is a loose metaphor3 the best one can do is to transplant the subject into one's own heart and draw from oneself impulses as profound as possible with which to vivify tradition and make it over in one's own image4 ,yet ,i fear that to speak so is rationalism1 and would be found to involve1 to the horror of our philosopher1 that life is cognitive and spiritual1 but dependent1 discontinuous1 and unsubstantial4 ,what he conceives instead is that consciousness is a stuff out of which things are made1 and has all the attributes1 even the most material1 of its several objects2 and that there is no possibility of knowing1 save by becoming what one is trying to know4 ,so perception1 for him1 lies where its object does1 and is some part of it2 memory is the past experience itself1 somehow shining through into the present2 and ,shakespeare's ,cleopatra1 ,i should infer1 would have to be some part of ,cleopatra herself--in those moments when she spoke ,english4 ,it is hard to be a just critic of mysticism because mysticism can never do itself justice in words4 ,to conceive of an external actual ,cleopatra and an external actual mind of ,shakespeare is to betray the cause of pure immediacy2 and ,i suspect that if ,m4 ,bergson heard of such criticisms as ,i am making1 he would brush them aside as utterly blind and scholastic4 ,as the mystics have always said that ,god was not far from them1 but dwelt in their hearts1 meaning this pretty literally3 so this mystical philosophy of the immediate1 which talks sometimes so scientifically of things and with such intimacy of knowledge1 feels that these things are not far from it1 but dwell literally in its heart4 ,the revelation and the sentiment of them1 if it be thorough1 is just what the things are4 ,the total aspects to be discerned in a body are that body2 and the movement of those aspects1 when you enact it1 is the spirit of that body1 and at the same time a part of your own spirit4 ,to suppose that a man's consciousness 7either one's own or other people's7 is a separate fact over and above the shuffling of the things he feels1 or that these things are anything over and above the feeling of them which exists more or less everywhere in diffusion--that1 for the mystic1 is to be once for all hopelessly intellectual1 dualistic1 and diabolical4 ,if you cannot shed the husk of those dead categories--space1 matter1 mind1 truth1 person--life is shut out of your heart4 ,and the mystic1 who always speaks out of experience1 is certainly right in this1 that a certain sort of life is shut out by reason1 the sort that reason calls dreaming or madness2 but he forgets that reason too is a kind of life1 and that of all the kinds--mystical1 passionate1 practical1 sthetic1 intellectual--with their various degrees of light and heat1 the life of reason is that which some people may prefer4 ,i confess ,i am one of these1 and ,i am not inclined1 even if ,i were able1 to reproduce ,m4 ,bergson's sentiments as he feels them4 ,he is his own perfect expositor4 ,all a critic can aim at is to understand these sentiments as existing facts1 and to give them the place that belongs to them in the moral world4 ,to understand1 in most cases1 is intimacy enough4 ,herbert ,spencer says somewhere that the yolk of an egg is homogeneous1 the highly heterogeneous bird being differentiated in it by the law of evolution4 ,i cannot think what assured ,spencer of this homogeneity in the egg1 except the fact that perhaps it all tasted alike1 which might seem good proof to a pure empiricist4 ,leibnitz1 on the contrary1 maintained that the organisation of nature was infinitely deep1 every part consisting of an endless number of discrete elements4 ,here we may observe the difference between good philosophy and bad4 ,the idea of ,leibnitz is speculative and far outruns the evidence1 but it is speculative in a well-advised1 penetrating1 humble1 and noble fashion2 while the idea of ,spencer is foolishly dogmatic1 it is a piece of ignorant self-sufficiency1 like that insular empiricism that would deny that ,chinamen were real until it had actually seen them4 ,nature is richer than experience and wider than divination2 and it is far rasher and more arrogant to declare that any part of nature is simple than to suggest the sort of complexity that perhaps it might have4 ,m4 ,bergson1 however1 is on the side of ,spencer4 ,after studiously examining the egg on every side--for he would do more than taste it--and considering the source and destiny of it1 he would summon his intuition to penetrate to the very heart of it1 to its spirit1 and then he would declare that this spirit was a vital momentum without parts and without ideas1 and was simplicity itself4 ,he would add that it was the free and original creator of the bird1 because it is of the essence of spirit to bestow more than it possesses and to build better than it knows4 ,undoubtedly actual spirit is simple and does not know how it builds2 but for that very reason actual spirit does not really create or build anything1 but merely watches1 now with sympathetic1 now with shocked attention1 what is being created and built for it4 ,doubtless new things are always arising1 new islands1 new persons1 new philosophies2 but that the real cause of them should be simpler than they1 that their ,creator1 if ,i may use this language1 should be ignorant and give more than he has1 who can stomach that8 ,let us grant1 however1 since the thing is not abstractly inconceivable1 that eggs really have no structure4 ,to what1 then1 shall we attribute the formation of birds8 ,will it follow that evolution1 or differentiation1 or the law of the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous1 or the dialectic of the concept of pure being1 or the impulse towards life1 or the vocation of spirit is what actually hatches them8 ,alas1 these words are but pedantic and rhetorical cloaks for our ignorance1 and to project them behind the facts and regard them as presiding from thence over the course of nature is a piece of the most deplorable scholasticism4 ,if eggs are really without structure1 the true causes of the formation of birds are the last conditions1 whatever they may be1 that introduce that phenomenon and determine its character--the type of the parents1 the act of fertilisation1 the temperature1 or whatever else observation might find regularly to precede and qualify that new birth in nature4 ,these facts1 if they were the ultimate and deepest facts in the case1 would be the ultimate and only possible terms in which to explain it4 ,they would constitute the mechanism of reproduction2 and if nature were no finer than that in its structure1 science could not go deeper than that in its discoveries4 ,and although it is frivolous to suppose that nature ends in this way at the limits of our casual apprehension1 and has no hidden roots1 yet philosophically that would be as good a stopping place as any other4 ,ultimately we should have to be satisfied with some factual conjunction and method in events4 ,if atoms and their collisions1 by any chance1 were the ultimate and inmost facts discoverable1 they would supply the explanation of everything1 in the only sense in which anything existent can be explained at all4 ,if somebody then came to us enthusiastically and added that the ,will of the atoms so to be and move was the true cause1 or the ,will of ,god that they should move so1 he would not be reputed1 ,i suppose1 to have thrown a bright light on the subject4 ,yet this is what ,m4 ,bergson does in his whole defence of metaphysical vitalism1 and especially in the instance of the evolution of eyes by two different methods1 which is his palmary argument4 ,since in some molluscs and in vertebrates organs that coincide in being organs of vision are reached by distinct paths1 it cannot have been the propulsion of mechanism in each case1 he says1 that guided the developments1 which1 being divergent1 would never have led to coincident results1 but the double development must have been guided by a common tendency towards vision4 ,suppose 7what some young man in a laboratory may by this time have shown to be false7 that ,m4 ,bergson's observations have sounded the facts to the bottom2 it would then be of the ultimate nature of things that1 given light and the other conditions1 the two methods of development will end in eyes2 just as1 for a peasant1 it is of the ultimate nature of things that puddles can be formed in two quite opposite ways1 by rain falling from heaven and by springs issuing from the earth2 but as the peasant would not have reached a profound insight into nature if he had proclaimed the presence in her of a tendency to puddles1 to be formed in inexplicably different ways2 so the philosopher attains to no profound insight when he proclaims in her a tendency to vision4 ,if those words express more than ignorance1 they express the love of it4 ,even if the vitalists were right in despairing of further scientific discoveries1 they would be wrong in offering their verbiage as a substitute4 ,nature may possibly have only a very loose hazy constitution1 to be watched and understood as sailors watch and understand the weather2 but ,neptune and olus are not thereby proved to be the authors of storms4 ,yet ,m4 ,bergson thinks if life could only be safely shown to arise unaccountably1 that would prove the invisible efficacy of a mighty tendency to life4 ,but would the ultimate contexture and miracle of things be made less arbitrary1 and less a matter of brute fact1 by the presence behind them of an actual and arbitrary effort that such should be their nature8 ,if this word effort is not a mere figure of rhetoric1 a name for a movement in things of which the end happens to interest us more than the beginning1 if it is meant to be an effort actually and consciously existing1 then we must proceed to ask3 ,why did this effort exist8 ,why did it choose that particular end to strive for8 ,how did it reach the conception of that end1 which had never been realised before1 and which no existent nature demanded for its fulfilment8 ,how did the effort1 once made specific1 select the particular matter it was to transform8 ,why did this matter respond to the disembodied effort that it should change its habits8 ,not one of these questions is easier to answer than the question why nature is living or animals have eyes4 ,yet without seeking to solve the only real problem1 namely1 how nature is actually constituted1 this introduction of metaphysical powers raises all the others1 artificially and without occasion4 ,this side of ,m4 ,bergson's philosophy illustrates the worst and most familiar vices of metaphysics4 ,it marvels at some appearance1 not to investigate it1 but to give it an unctuous name4 ,then it turns this name into a power1 that by its operation creates the appearance4 ,this is simply verbal mythology or the hypostasis of words1 and there would be some excuse for a rude person who should call it rubbish4 ,the metaphysical abuse of psychology is as extraordinary in modern ,europe as that of fancy ever was in ,india or of rhetoric in ,greece4 ,we find1 for instance1 ,mr4 ,bradley murmuring1 as a matter almost too obvious to mention1 that the existence of anything not sentience is unmeaning to him2 or1 if ,i may put this evident principle in other words1 that nothing is able to exist unless something else is able to discover it4 ,yet even if discovered the poor candidate for existence would be foiled1 for it would turn out to be nothing but a modification of the mind falsely said to discover it4 ,existence and discovery are conceptions which the malicious criticism of knowledge 7which is the psychology of knowledge abused7 pretends to have discarded and outgrown altogether2 the conception of immediacy has taken their place4 ,this malicious criticism of knowledge is based on the silent assumption that knowledge is impossible4 ,whenever you mention anything1 it baffles you by talking instead about your idea of what you mention2 and if ever you describe the origin of anything it substitutes1 as a counter-theory1 its theory of the origin of your description4 ,this1 however1 would not be a counter-theory at all if the criticism of knowledge had not been corrupted into a negative dogma1 maintaining that ideas of things are the only things possible and that therefore only ideas and not things can have an origin4 ,nothing could better illustrate how deep this cognitive impotence has got into people's bones than the manner in which1 in the latest schools of philosophy1 it is being disavowed2 for unblushing idealism is distinctly out of fashion4 ,m4 ,bergson tells us he has solved a difficulty that seemed hopeless by avoiding a fallacy common to idealism and realism4 ,the difficulty was that if you started with self-existent matter you could never arrive at mind1 and if you started with self-existent mind you could never arrive at matter4 ,the fallacy was that both schools innocently supposed there was an existing world to discover1 and each thought it possible that its view should describe that world as it really was4 ,what now is ,m4 ,bergson's solution8 ,that no articulated world1 either material or psychical1 exists at all1 but only a tendency or enduring effort to evolve images of both sorts2 or rather to evolve images which in their finer texture and vibration are images of matter1 but which grouped and foreshortened in various ways are images of minds4 ,the idea of nature and the idea of consciousness are two apperceptions or syntheses of the same stuff of experience4 ,the two worlds thus become substantially identical1 continuous1 and superposable2 each can merge insensibly into the other4 ,to perceive all the influences of all the points of all bodies would be to sink to the condition of a material object4#d ,to perceive some of these influences1 by having created organs that shut out the others1 is to be a mind4 ,footnote #d3 ,matire et ,mmoire1 p4 #ch4 ,this solution is obtained by substituting1 as usual1 the ideas of things for the things themselves and cheating the honest man who was talking about objects by answering him as if he were talking about himself4 ,certainly1 if we could limit ourselves to feeling life flow and the whole world vibrate1 we should not raise the question debated between realists and idealists2 but not to raise a question is one thing and to have solved it is another4 ,what has really been done is to offer us a history1 on the assumption of idealism1 of the idea of mind and the idea of matter4 ,this history may be correct enough psychologically1 and such as a student of the life of reason might possibly come to2 but it is a mere evasion of the original question concerning the relation of this mental evolution to the world it occurs in4 ,in truth1 an enveloping world is assumed by these hereditary idealists not to exist2 they rule it out a priori1 and the life of reason is supposed by them to constitute the whole universe4 ,to be sure1 they say they transcend idealism no less than realism1 because they mark the point where1 by contrast or selection from other objects1 the mind has come to be distinguished3 but the subterfuge is vain1 because by mind they mean simply the idea of mind1 and they give no name1 except perhaps experience1 to the mind that forms that idea4 ,matter and mind1 for these transcendentalists posing as realists1 merge and flow so easily together only because both are images or groups of images in an original mind presupposed but never honestly posited4 ,it is in this forgotten mind1 also1 as the professed idealists urge1 that the relations of proximity and simultaneity between various lives can alone subsist1 if to subsist is to be experienced4 ,there is1 however1 one point of real difference1 at least initially1 between the idealism of ,m4 ,bergson and that of his predecessors4 ,the universal mind1 for ,m4 ,bergson1 is in process of actual transformation4 ,it is not an omniscient ,god but a cosmic sensibility4 ,in this sensibility matter1 with all its vibrations felt in detail1 forms one moving panorama together with all minds1 which are patterns visible at will from various points of view in that same woof of matter2 and so the great experiment crawls and shoots on1 the dream of a giant without a body1 mindful of the past1 uncertain of the future1 shuffling his images1 and threading his painful way through a labyrinth of cross-purposes4 ,such at least is the notion which the reader gathers from the prevailing character of ,m4 ,bergson's words2 but ,i am not sure that it would be his ultimate conclusion4 ,perhaps it is to be out of sympathy with his spirit to speak of an ultimate conclusion at all2 nothing comes to a conclusion and nothing is ultimate4 ,many dilemmas1 however1 are inevitable1 and if the master does not make a choice himself1 his pupils will divide and trace the alternative consequences for themselves in each direction4 ,if they care most for a real fluidity1 as ,william ,james did1 they will stick to something like what ,i have just described2 but if they care most for immediacy1 as we may suspect that ,m4 ,bergson does1 they will transform that view into something far more orthodox4 ,for a real fluidity and an absolute immediacy are not compatible4 ,to believe in real change you must put some trust in representation1 and if you posit a real past and a real future you posit independent objects4 ,in absolute immediacy1 on the contrary1 instead of change taken realistically1 you can have only a feeling of change4 ,the flux becomes an idea in the absolute1 like the image of a moving spiral1 always flowing outwards or inwards1 but with its centre and its circumference always immovable4 ,duration1 we must remember1 is simply the sense of lasting2 no time is real that is not lived through4 ,therefore various lives cannot be dated in a common time1 but have no temporal relations to one another4 ,thus1 if we insist on immediacy1 the vaunted novelty of the future and the inestimable freedom of life threaten to become 7like all else7 the given feeling of novelty or freedom1 in passing from a given image of the past to a given image of the future--all these terms being contained in the present2 and we have reverted to the familiar conception of absolute immutability in absolute life4 ,m4 ,bergson has studied ,plotinus and ,spinoza2 ,i suspect he has not studied them in vain4 ,nor is this the only point at which this philosophy1 when we live a while with it1 suddenly drops its mask of novelty and shows us a familiar face4 ,it would seem1 for instance1 that beneath the drama of creative evolution there was a deeper nature of things4 ,for apparently creative evolution 7apart from the obstacle of matter1 which may be explained away idealistically7 has to submit to the following conditions3 first1 to create in sequence1 not all at once2 second1 to create some particular sequence only1 not all possible sequences side by side2 and third1 to continue the one sequence chosen1 since if the additions of every new moment were irrelevant to the past1 no sequence1 no vital persistence or progress would be secured1 and all effort would be wasted4 ,these are compulsions2 but it may also1 ,i suppose1 be thought a duty on the part of the vital impulse to be true to its initial direction and not to halt1 as it well might1 like the self-reversing ,will of ,schopenhauer1 on perceiving the result of its spontaneous efforts4 ,necessity would thus appear behind liberty and duty before it4 ,this summons to life to go on1 and these conditions imposed upon it1 might then very plausibly be attributed to a ,deity existing beyond the world1 as is done in religious tradition2 and such a doctrine1 if ,m4 ,bergson should happen to be holding it in reserve1 would perhaps help to explain some obscurities in his system1 such1 for instance1 as the power of potentiality to actualise itself1 of equipoise to become suddenly emphasis on one particular part1 and of spirit to pursue an end chosen before it is conceived1 and when there is no nature to predetermine it4 ,it has been said that ,m4 ,bergson's system precludes ethics3 ,i cannot think that observation just4 ,apart from the moral inspiration which appears throughout his philosophy1 which is indeed a passionate attempt to exalt 7or debase7 values into powers1 it offers1 ,i should say1 two starting-points for ethics4 ,in the first place1 the lan vital ought not to falter1 although it can do so3 therefore to persevere1 labour1 experiment1 propagate1 must be duties1 and the opposite must be sins4 ,in the second place1 freedom1 in adding uncaused increments to life1 ought to do so in continuation of the whole past1 though it might do so frivolously3 therefore it is a duty to be studious1 consecutive1 loyal2 you may move in any direction but you must carry the whole past with you4 ,i will not say this suggests a sound system of ethics1 because it would be extracted from dogmas which are physical and incidentally incredible2 nor would it represent a mature and disillusioned morality1 because it would look to the future and not to the eternal2 nevertheless it would be deeply ethical1 expressing the feelings that have always inspired ,hebraic morality4 ,a good way of testing the calibre of a philosophy is to ask what it thinks of death4 ,philosophy1 said ,plato1 is a meditation on death1 or rather1 if we would do justice to his thought1 an aspiration to live disembodied2 and ,schopenhauer said that the spectacle of death was the first provocation to philosophy4 ,m4 ,bergson has not yet treated of this subject2 but we may perhaps perceive for ourselves the place that it might occupy in his system4#e ,life1 according to him1 is the original and absolute force4 ,in the beginning1 however1 it was only a potentiality or tendency4 ,to become specific lives1 life had to emphasise and bring exclusively to consciousness1 here and there1 special possibilities of living2 and where these special lives have their chosen boundary 7if this way of putting it is not too ,fichtean7 they posit or create a material environment4 ,matter is the view each life takes of what for it are rejected or abandoned possibilities of living4 ,this might show how the absolute will to live1 if it was to be carried out1 would have to begin by evoking a sense of dead or material things about it2 it would not show how death could ever overtake the will itself4 ,if matter were merely the periphery which life has to draw round itself1 in order to be a definite life1 matter could never abolish any life2 as the ring of a circus or the sand of the arena can never abolish the show for which they have been prepared4 ,life would then be fed and defined by matter1 as an artist is served by the matter he needs to carry on his art4 ,footnote #e3 ,m4 ,bergson has shown at considerable length that the idea of non-existence is more complex1 psychologically1 than the idea of existence1 and posterior to it4 ,he evidently thinks this disposes of the reality of non-existence also3 for it is the reality that he wishes to exorcise by his words4 ,if1 however1 non-existence and the idea of non-existence were identical1 it would have been impossible for me not to exist before ,i was born3 my non-existence then would be more complex than my existence now1 and posterior to it4 ,the initiated would not recoil from this consequence1 but it might open the eyes of some catechumens4 ,it is a good test of the malicious theory of knowledge4 ,yet in actual life there is undeniably such a thing as danger and failure4 ,m4 ,bergson even thinks that the facing of increased dangers is one proof that vital force is an absolute thing2 for if life were an equilibrium1 it would not displace itself and run new risks of death1 by making itself more complex and ticklish1 as it does in the higher organisms and the finer arts4#f ,yet if life is the only substance1 how is such a risk of death possible at all8 ,i suppose the special life that arises about a given nucleus of feeling1 by emphasising some of the relations which that feeling has in the world1 might be abolished if a greater emphasis were laid on another set of its relations1 starting from some other nucleus4 ,we must remember that these selections1 according to ,m4 ,bergson1 are not apperceptions merely4 ,they are creative efforts4 ,the future constitution of the flux will vary in response to them4 ,each mind sucks the world1 so far as it can1 into its own vortex4 ,a cross apperception will then amount to a contrary force4 ,two souls will not be able to dominate the same matter in peace and friendship4 ,being forces1 they will pull that matter in different ways4 ,each soul will tend to devour and to direct exclusively the movement influenced by the other soul4 ,the one that succeeds in ruling that movement will live on2 the other1 ,i suppose1 will die1 although ,m4 ,bergson may not like that painful word4 ,he says the lower organisms store energy for the higher organisms to use2 but when a sheep appropriates the energy stored up in grass1 or a man that stored up in mutton1 it looks as if the grass and the sheep had perished4 ,their lan vital is no longer theirs1 for in this rough world to live is to kill4 ,nothing arises in nature1 ,lucretius says1 save helped by the death of some other thing4 ,of course1 this is no defeat for the lan vital in general2 for according to our philosopher the whole universe from the beginning has been making for just that supreme sort of consciousness which man1 who eats the mutton1 now possesses4 ,the sheep and the grass were only things by the way and scaffolding for our precious humanity4 ,but would it not be better if some being should arise nobler than man1 not requiring abstract intellect nor artificial weapons1 but endowed with instinct and intuition and1 let us say1 the power of killing by radiating electricity8 ,and might not men then turn out to have been mere explosives1 in which energy was stored for convenient digestion by that superior creature8 ,a shocking thought1 no doubt1 like the thought of death1 and more distressing to our vital feelings than is the pleasing assimilation of grass and mutton in our bellies4 ,yet ,i can see no ground1 except a desire to flatter oneself1 for not crediting the lan vital with some such digestive intention4 ,m4 ,bergson's system would hardly be more speculative if it entertained this possibility1 and it would seem more honest4 ,footnote #f3 ,this argument against mechanism is a good instance of the difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily into science4 ,an equilibrium would not displace itself6 ,but an equilibrium is a natural result1 not a magical entity4 ,it is continually displaced1 as its constituents are modified by internal movements or external agencies2 and while many a time the equilibrium is thereby destroyed altogether1 sometimes it is replaced by a more elaborate and perilous equilibrium2 as glaciers carry many rocks down1 but leave some1 here and there1 piled in the most unlikely pinnacles and pagodas4 ,the vital impulse is certainly immortal2 for if we take it in the naturalistic exoteric sense1 for a force discovered in biology1 it is an independent agent coming down into matter1 organising it against its will1 and stirring it like the angel the pool of ,bethesda4 ,though the ripples die down1 the angel is not affected4 ,he has merely flown away4 ,and if we take the vital impulse mystically and esoterically1 as the only primal force1 creating matter in order to play with it1 the immortality of life is even more obvious2 for there is then nothing else in being that could possibly abolish it4 ,but when we come to immortality for the individual1 all grows obscure and ambiguous4 ,the original tendency of life was certainly cosmic and not distinguished into persons3 we are told it was like a wireless message sent at the creation which is being read off at last by the humanity of to-day4 ,in the naturalistic view1 the diversity of persons would seem to be due to the different material conditions under which one and the same spiritual purpose must fight its way towards realisation in different times and places4 ,it is quite conceivable1 however1 that in the mystical view the very sense of the original message should comport this variety of interpretations1 and that the purpose should always have been to produce diverse individuals4 ,the first view1 as usual1 is the one which ,m4 ,bergson has prevailingly in mind1 and communicates most plausibly2 while he holds to it he is still talking about the natural world1 and so we still know what he is talking about4 ,on this view1 however1 personal immortality would be impossible2 it would be1 if it were aimed at1 a self-contradiction in the aim of life2 for the diversity of persons would be due to impediments only1 and souls would differ simply in so far as they mutilated the message which they were all alike trying to repeat4 ,they would necessarily1 when the spirit was victorious1 be reabsorbed and identified in the universal spirit4 ,this view also seems most consonant with ,m4 ,bergson's theory of primitive reality1 as a flux of fused images1 or a mind lost in matter2 to this view1 too1 is attributable his hostility to intelligence1 in that it arrests the flux1 divides the fused images1 and thereby murders and devitalises reality4 ,of course the destiny of spirit would not be to revert to that diffused materiality2 for the original mind lost in matter had a very short memory2 it was a sort of cosmic trepidation only1 whereas the ultimate mind would remember all that1 in its efforts after freedom1 it had ever super added to that trepidation or made it turn into4 ,even the abstract views of things taken by the practical intellect would1 ,i fear1 have to burden the universal memory to the end4 ,we should be remembered1 even if we could no longer exist4 ,on the other more profound view1 however1 might not personal immortality be secured8 ,suppose the original message said3 ,translate me into a thousand tongues6 ,in fulfilling its duty1 the universe would then continue to divide its dream into phantom individuals2 as it had to insulate its parts in the beginning in order to dominate and transform them freely1 so it would always continue to insulate them1 so as not to lose its cross-vistas and its mobility4 ,there is no reason1 then1 why individuals should not live for ever4 ,but a condition seems to be involved which may well make belief stagger4 ,it would be impossible for the universe to divide its images into particular minds unless it preserved the images of their particular bodies also4 ,particular minds arise1 according to this philosophy1 in the interests of practice3 which means1 biologically1 to secure a better adjustment of the body to its environment1 so that it may survive4 ,mystically1 too1 the fundamental force is a half-conscious purpose that practice1 or freedom1 should come to be2 or rather1 that an apparition or experience of practice and freedom should arise2 for in this philosophy appearance is all4 ,to secure this desirable apparition of practice special tasks are set to various nuclei in felt space 7such1 for instance1 as the task to see71 and the image of a body 7in this case that of an eye7 is gradually formed1 in order to execute that task2 for evidently the ,absolute can see only if it looks1 and to look it must first choose a point of view and an optical method4 ,this point of view and this method posit the individual2 they fix him in time and space1 and determine the quality and range of his passive experience3 they are his body4 ,if the ,absolute1 then1 wishes to retain the individual not merely as one of its memories but as one of its organs of practical life1 it must begin by retaining the image of his body4 ,his body must continue to figure in that landscape of nature which the absolute life1 as it pulses1 keeps always composing and recomposing4 ,otherwise a personal mind1 a sketch of things made from the point of view and in the interests of that body1 cannot be preserved4 ,m4 ,bergson1 accordingly1 should either tell us that our bodies are going to rise again1 or he should not tell us1 or give us to understand1 that our minds are going to endure4 ,i suppose he cannot venture to preach the resurrection of the body to this weak-kneed generation2 he is too modern and plausible for that4 ,yet he is too amiable to deny to our dilated nostrils some voluptuous whiffs of immortality4 ,he asks if we are not led to suppose that consciousness passes through matter to be tempered like steel1 to constitute distinct personalities1 and prepare them for a higher existence4 ,other animal minds are but human minds arrested2 men at last 7what men1 ,i wonder87 are capable of remembering all and willing all and controlling their past and their future1 so that we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man1 though perhaps in man alone1 consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life4 ,elsewhere he says1 in a phrase already much quoted and perhaps destined to be famous1 that in man the spirit can spurn every kind of resistance and break through many an obstacle1 perhaps even death4 ,here the tenor has ended on the inevitable high note1 and the gallery is delighted4 ,but was that the note set down for him in the music8 ,and has he not sung it in falsetto8 ,the immediate knows nothing about death2 it takes intelligence to conceive it2 and that perhaps is why ,m4 ,bergson says so little about it1 and that little so far from serious4 ,but he talks a great deal about life1 he feels he has penetrated deeply into its nature2 and yet death1 together with birth1 is the natural analysis of what life is4 ,what is this creative purpose1 that must wait for sun and rain to set it in motion8 ,what is this life1 that in any individual can be suddenly extinguished by a bullet8 ,what is this elan-vital1 that a little fall in temperature would banish altogether from the universe8 ,the study of death may be out of fashion1 but it is never out of season4 ,the omission of this1 which is almost the omission of wisdom from philosophy1 warns us that in ,m4 ,bergson's thought we have something occasional and partial1 the work of an astute apologist1 a party man1 driven to desperate speculation by a timid attachment to prejudice4 ,like other terrified idealisms1 the system of ,m4 ,bergson has neither good sense1 nor rigour1 nor candour1 nor solidity4 ,it is a brilliant attempt to confuse the lessons of experience by refining upon its texture1 an attempt to make us halt1 for the love of primitive illusions1 in the path of discipline and reason4 ,it is likely to prove a successful attempt1 because it flatters the weaknesses of the moment1 expresses them with emotion1 and covers them with a feint at scientific speculation4 ,it is not1 however1 a powerful system1 like that of ,hegel1 capable of bewildering and obsessing many who have no natural love for shams4 ,m4 ,bergson will hardly bewilder2 his style is too clear1 the field where his just observations lie--the immediate--is too well defined1 and the mythology which results from projecting the terms of the immediate into the absolute1 and turning them into powers1 is too obviously verbal4 ,he will not long impose on any save those who enjoy being imposed upon2 but for a long time he may increase their number4 ,his doctrine is indeed alluring4 ,instead of telling us1 as a stern and contrite philosophy would1 that the truth is remote1 difficult1 and almost undiscoverable by human efforts1 that the universe is vast and unfathomable1 yet that the knowledge of its ways is precious to our better selves1 if we would not live befooled1 this philosophy rather tells us that nothing is truer or more precious than our rudimentary consciousness1 with its vague instincts and premonitions1 that everything ideal is fictitious1 and that the universe1 at heart1 is as palpitating and irrational as ourselves4 ,why then strain the inquiry8 ,why seek to dominate passion by understanding it8 ,rather live on2 work1 it matters little at what1 and grow1 it matters nothing in what direction4 ,exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion2 let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux1 the roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell1 a momentary posture of your living soul1 not a stark adoration of things reputed eternal4 ,so the intellectual faithlessness and the material servility of the age are flattered together and taught to justify themselves theoretically4 ,they cry joyfully1 non peccavi1 which is the modern formula for confession4 ,m4 ,bergson's philosophy itself is a confession of a certain mystical rebellion and atavism in the contemporary mind4 ,it will remain a beautiful monument to the passing moment1 a capital film for the cinematography of history1 full of psychological truth and of a kind of restrained sentimental piety4 ,his thought has all the charm that can go without strength and all the competence that can go without mastery4 ,this is not an age of mastery2 it is confused with too much business2 it has no brave simplicity4 ,the mind has forgotten its proper function1 which is to crown life by quickening it into intelligence1 and thinks if it could only prove that it accelerated life1 that might perhaps justify its existence2 like a philosopher at sea who1 to make himself useful1 should blow into the sail4 ,,iv ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,,mr4 ,,bertrand ,,russell ,i4 ,a ,,new ,,scholasticism ,in its chase after idols this age has not wholly forgotten the gods1 and reason and faith in reason are not left without advocates4 ,some years ago1 at ,trinity ,college1 ,cambridge1 ,mr4 ,g4,e4 ,moore began to produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his powerful and luminous dialectic4 ,like ,socrates1 he used all the sharp arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost archaic dogmatism4 ,those who heard him felt how superior his position was1 both in rigour and in force1 to the prevailing inversions and idealisms4 ,the abuse of psychology1 rampant for two hundred years1 seemed at last to be detected and challenged2 and the impressionistic rhetoric that philosophy was saturated with began to be squeezed out by clear questions1 and by a disconcerting demand for literal sincerity4 ,german idealism1 when we study it as a product of its own age and country1 is a most engaging phenomenon2 it is full of afflatus1 sweep1 and deep searchings of heart2 but it is essentially romantic and egotistical1 and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere system-making and sophistry4 ,therefore when it is taught by unromantic people ex cathedra1 in stentorian tones1 and represented as the rational foundation of science and religion1 with neither of which it has any honest sympathy1 it becomes positively odious--one of the worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be subjected4 ,it is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster that ,mr4 ,moore dared to lift up his eyes2 and many a less courageous or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it4 ,but a man with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of mind2 he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same notes4 ,we need not wonder if ,mr4 ,moore has written rather meagerly1 and with a certain vehemence and want of imagination4 ,all this1 however1 was more than made up by the powerful ally who soon came to his aid4 ,mr4 ,bertrand ,russell began by adopting ,mr4 ,moore's metaphysics1 but he has given as much as he has received4 ,apart from his well-known mathematical attainments1 he possesses by inheritance the political and historical mind1 and an intrepid determination to pierce convention and look to ultimate things4 ,he has written abundantly and1 where the subject permits1 with a singular lucidity1 candour1 and charm4 ,especially his ,philosophical ,essays and his little book on ,the ,problems of ,philosophy can be read with pleasure by any intelligent person1 and give a tolerably rounded picture of the tenets of the school4 ,yet it must be remembered that ,mr4 ,russell1 like ,mr4 ,moore1 is still young and his thoughts have not assumed their ultimate form4 ,moreover1 he lives in an atmosphere of academic disputation which makes one technical point after another acquire a preponderating influence in his thoughts4 ,his book on ,the ,problems of ,philosophy is admirable in style1 temper1 and insight1 but it hardly deserves its title2 it treats principally1 in a somewhat personal and partial way1 of the relation of knowledge to its objects1 and it might rather have been called ,the problems which ,moore and ,i have been agitating lately4 ,indeed1 his philosophy is so little settled as yet that every new article and every fresh conversation revokes some of his former opinions1 and places the crux of philosophical controversy at a new point4 ,we are soon made aware that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous1 but that one exact thought1 in the same mind1 may be the exact opposite of the next4 ,this inconstancy1 which after all does not go very deep1 is a sign of sincerity and pure love of truth2 it marks the freshness1 the vivacity1 the self-forgetfulness1 the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer4 ,it may seem a paradox1 but at bottom it is not1 that the vitalists should be oppressed1 womanish1 and mystical1 and only the intellectualists keen1 argumentative1 fearless1 and full of life4 ,i mention this casualness and inconstancy in ,mr4 ,russell's utterances not to deride them1 but to show the reader how impossible it is1 at this juncture1 to give a comprehensive account of his philosophy1 much less a final judgment upon it4 ,the principles most fundamental and dominant in his thought are perhaps the following3 ,that the objects the mind deals with1 whether material or ideal1 are what and where the mind says they are1 and independent of it2 that some general principles and ideas have to be assumed to be valid not merely for thought but for things2 that relations may subsist1 arise1 and disappear between things without at all affecting these things internally2 and that the nature of everything is just what it is1 and not to be confused either with its origin or with any opinion about it4 ,these principles1 joined with an obvious predilection for ,plato and ,leibnitz among philosophers1 lead to the following doctrines1 among others3 that the mind or soul is an entity separate from its thoughts and pre-existent2 that a material world exists in space and time2 that its substantial elements may be infinite in number1 having position and quality1 but no extension1 so that each mind or soul might well be one of them2 that both the existent and the ideal worlds may be infinite1 while the ideal world contains an infinity of things not realised in the actual world2 and that this ideal world is knowable by a separate mental consideration1 a consideration which is1 however1 empirical in spirit1 since the ideal world of ethics1 logic1 and mathematics has a special and surprising constitution1 which we do not make but must attentively discover4 ,the reader will perceive1 perhaps1 that if the function of philosophy is really1 as the saying goes1 to give us assurance of ,god1 freedom1 and immortality1 ,mr4 ,russell's philosophy is a dire failure4 ,in fact1 its author sometimes gives vent to a rather emphatic pessimism about this world2 he has a keen sense for the manifold absurdities of existence4 ,but the sense for absurdities is not without its delights1 and ,mr4 ,russell's satirical wit is more constant and better grounded than his despair4 ,i should be inclined to say of his philosophy what he himself has said of that of ,leibnitz1 that it is at its best in those subjects which are most remote from human life4 ,it needs to be very largely supplemented and much ripened and humanised before it can be called satisfactory or wise2 but time may bring these fulfilments1 and meantime ,i cannot help thinking it auspicious in the highest degree that1 in a time of such impressionistic haste and plebeian looseness of thought1 scholastic rigour should suddenly raise its head again1 aspiring to seriousness1 solidity1 and perfection of doctrine3 and this not in the interests of religious orthodoxy1 but precisely in the most emancipated and unflinchingly radical quarter4 ,it is refreshing and reassuring1 after the confused1 melodramatic ways of philosophising to which the idealists and the pragmatists have accustomed us1 to breathe again the crisp air of scholastic common sense4 ,it is good for us to be held down1 as the ,platonic ,socrates would have held us1 to saying what we really believe1 and sticking to what we say4 ,we seem to regain our intellectual birthright when we are allowed to declare our genuine intent1 even in philosophy1 instead of begging some kind psychologist to investigate our meaning for us1 or even waiting for the flux of events to endow us with what meaning it will4 ,it is also instructive to have the ethical attitude purified of all that is not ethical and turned explicitly into what1 in its moral capacity1 it essentially is3 a groundless pronouncement upon the better and the worse4 ,here a certain one-sidedness begins to make itself felt in ,mr4 ,russell's views4 ,the ethical attitude doubtless has no ethical ground1 but that fact does not prevent it from having a natural ground2 and the observer of the animate creation need not have much difficulty in seeing what that natural ground is4 ,mr4 ,russell1 however1 refuses to look also in that direction4 ,he insists1 rightly enough1 that good is predicated categorically by the conscience2 he will not remember that all life is not moral bias merely1 and that1 in the very act of recognising excellence and pursuing it1 we may glance back over our shoulder and perceive how our moral bias is conditioned1 and what basis it has in the physical order of things4 ,this backward look1 when the hand is on the plough1 may indeed confuse our ethical self-expression1 both in theory and in practice2 and ,i am the last to deny the need of insisting1 in ethics1 on ethical judgments in all their purity and dogmatic sincerity4 ,such insistence1 if we had heard more of it in our youth1 might have saved many of us from chronic entanglements2 and there is nothing1 next to ,plato1 which ought to be more recommended to the young philosopher than the teachings of ,messrs4 ,russell and ,moore1 if he wishes to be a moralist and a logician1 and not merely to seem one4 ,yet this salutary doctrine1 though correct1 is inadequate4 ,it is a monocular philosophy1 seeing outlines clear1 but missing the solid bulk and perspective of things4 ,we need binocular vision to quicken the whole mind and yield a full image of reality4 ,ethics should be controlled by a physics that perceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is moral4 ,otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow1 strident1 and fanatical2 as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism1 or1 for the matter of that1 in ,mr4 ,moore's uncivilised leaning towards the doctrine of retributive punishment1 or in ,mr4 ,russell's intolerance of selfishness and patriotism1 and in his refusal to entertain any pious reverence for the nature of things4 ,the quality of wisdom1 like that of mercy1 is not strained4 ,to choose1 to love and hate1 to have a moral life1 is inevitable and legitimate in the part2 but it is the function of the part as part1 and we must keep it in its place if we wish to view the whole in its true proportions4 ,even to express justly the aim of our own life we need to retain a constant sympathy with what is animal and fundamental in it1 else we shall give a false place1 and too loud an emphasis1 to our definitions of the ideal4 ,however1 it would be much worse not to reach the ideal at all1 or to confuse it for want of courage and sincerity in uttering our true mind2 and it is in uttering our true mind that ,mr4 ,russell can help us1 even if our true mind should not always coincide with his4 ,in the following pages ,i do not attempt to cover all ,mr4 ,russell's doctrine 7the deeper mathematical purls of it being beyond my comprehension71 and the reader will find some speculations of my own interspersed in what ,i report of his4 ,i merely traverse after him three subjects that seem of imaginative interest1 to indicate the inspiration and the imprudence1 as ,i think them1 of this young philosophy4 ,,ii4 ,,the ,,study ,,of ,,essence ,the solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably1 says ,mr4 ,russell1 the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast4444 ,it was assumed as self-evident1 until ,cantor and ,dedekind established the opposite1 that if1 from any collection of things1 some were taken away1 the number of things left must always be less than the original number of things4 ,this assumption1 as a matter of fact1 holds only of finite collections2 and the rejection of it1 where the infinite is concerned1 has been shown to remove all the difficulties that hitherto baffled human reason in this matter4 ,and he adds in another place3 ,to reconcile us1 by the exhibition of its awful beauty1 to the reign of ,fate 444 is the task of tragedy4 ,but mathematics takes us still further from what is human1 into the region of absolute necessity1 to which not only the actual world1 but every possible world1 must conform2 and even here it builds a habitation1 or rather finds a habitation eternally standing1 where our ideals are fully satisfied and our best hopes are not thwarted4 ,it is only when we thoroughly understand the entire independence of ourselves1 which belongs to this world that reason finds1 that we can adequately realise the profound importance of its beauty4 ,mathematics seems to have a value for ,mr4 ,russell akin to that of religion4 ,it affords a sanctuary to which to flee from the world1 a heaven suffused with a serene radiance and full of a peculiar sweetness and consolation4 ,real life1 he writes1 is to most men a long second-best1 a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible2 but the world of pure reason knows no compromise1 no practical limitations1 no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs4 ,remote from human passions1 remote even from the pitiful laws of nature1 the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home1 and where one1 at least1 of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world4 ,this study is one of those elements in human life which merit a place in heaven4 ,the true spirit of delight1 the exaltation1 the sense of being more than man1 which is the touchstone of the highest excellence1 is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry4 ,this enthusiastic language might have1 ,i should think1 an opposite effect upon some readers to that which ,mr4 ,russell desires4 ,it might make them suspect that the claim to know an absolute ideal necessity1 so satisfying to one of our passionate impulses1 might be prompted by the same conceit1 and subject to the same illusion1 as the claim to know absolute truth in religion4 ,beauty1 when attributed to necessary relations between logical entities1 casts a net of subjectivity over them2 and at this net the omnivorous empiricist might be tempted to haul1 until he fancied he had landed the whole miraculous draught of fishes4 ,the fish1 however1 would have slipped through the meshes2 and it would be only his own vital emotion1 projected for a moment into the mathematical world1 that he would be able to draw back and hug to his bosom4 ,eternal truth is as disconsolate as it is consoling1 and as dreary as it is interesting3 these moral values are1 in fact1 values which the activity of contemplating that sort of truth has for different minds2 and it is no congruous homage offered to ideal necessity1 but merely a private endearment1 to call it beautiful or good4 ,the case is not such as if we were dealing with existence4 ,existence is arbitrary2 it is a questionable thing needing justification2 and we1 at least1 cannot justify it otherwise than by taking note of some affinity which it may show to human aspirations4 ,therefore our private endearments1 when we call some existing thing good or beautiful1 are not impertinent2 they assign to this chance thing its only assignable excuse for being1 namely1 the service it may chance to render to the spirit4 ,but ideal necessity or1 what is the same thing1 essential possibility has its excuse for being in itself1 since it is not contingent or questionable at all4 ,the affinity which the human mind may develop to certain provinces of essence is adventitious to those essences1 and hardly to be mentioned in their presence4 ,it is something the mind has acquired1 and may lose4 ,it is an incident in the life of reason1 and no inherent characteristic of eternal necessity4 ,the realm of essence contains the infinite multitude of ,leibnitz's possible worlds1 many of these worlds being very small and simple1 and consisting merely of what might be presented in some isolated moment of feeling4 ,if any such feeling1 however1 or its object1 never in fact occurs1 the essence that it would have presented if it had occurred remains possible merely2 so that nothing can ever exist in nature or for consciousness which has not a prior and independent locus in the realm of essence4 ,when a man lights upon a thought or is interested in tracing a relation1 he does not introduce those objects into the realm of essence1 but merely selects them from the plenitude of what lies there eternally4 ,the ground of this selection lies1 of course1 in his human nature and circumstances2 and the satisfaction he may find in so exercising his mind will be a consequence of his mental disposition and of the animal instincts beneath4 ,two and two would still make four if ,i were incapable of counting1 or if ,i found it extremely painful to do so1 or if ,i thought it naive and pre-,kantian of these numbers not to combine in a more vital fashion1 and make five4 ,so also1 if ,i happen to enjoy counting1 or to find the constancy of numbers sublime1 and the reversibility of the processes connecting them consoling1 in contrast to the irrevocable flux of living things1 all this is due to my idiosyncrasy4 ,it is no part of the essence of numbers to be congenial to me2 but it has perhaps become a part of my genius to have affinity to them4 ,and how1 may ,i ask1 has it become a part of my genius8 ,simply because nature1 of which ,i am a part1 and to which all my ideas must refer if they are to be relevant to my destiny1 happens to have mathematical form4 ,nature had to have some form or other1 if it was to exist at all2 and whatever form it had happened to take would have had its prior place in the realm of essence1 and its essential and logical relations there4 ,that particular part of the realm of essence which nature chances to exemplify or to suggest is the part that may be revealed to me1 and that is the predestined focus of all my admirations4 ,essence as such has no power to reveal itself1 or to take on existence2 and the human mind has no power or interest to trace all essence4 ,even the few essences which it has come to know1 it cannot undertake to examine exhaustively2 for there are many features nestling in them1 and many relations radiating from them1 which no one needs or cares to attend to4 ,the implications which logicians and mathematicians actually observe in the terms they use are a small selection from all those that really obtain1 even in their chosen field2 so that1 for instance1 as ,mr4 ,russell was telling us1 it was only the other day that ,cantor and ,dedekind observed that although time continually eats up the days and years1 the possible future always remains as long as it was before4 ,this happens to be a fact interesting to mankind4 ,apart from the mathematical puzzles it may help to solve1 it opens before existence a vista of perpetual youth1 and the vital stress in us leaps up in recognition of its inmost ambition4 ,many other things are doubtless implied in infinity which1 if we noticed them1 would leave us quite cold2 and still others1 no doubt1 are inapprehensible with our sort and degree of intellect4 ,there is of course nothing in essence which an intellect postulated ad hoc would not be able to apprehend2 but the kind of intellect we know of and possess is an expression of vital adjustments1 and is tethered to nature4 ,that a few eternal essences1 then1 with a few of their necessary relations to one another1 do actually appear to us1 and do fascinate our attention and excite our wonder1 is nothing paradoxical4 ,this is merely what was bound to happen1 if we became aware of anything at all2 for the essence embodied in anything is eternal and has necessary relations to some other essences4 ,the air of presumption which there might seem to be in proclaiming that mathematics reveals what has to be true always and everywhere1 vanishes when we remember that everything that is true of any essence is true of it always and everywhere4 ,the most trivial truths of logic are as necessary and eternal as the most important2 so that it is less of an achievement than it sounds when we say we have grasped a truth that is eternal and necessary4 ,this fact will be more clearly recognised1 perhaps1 if we remember that the cogency of our ideal knowledge follows upon our intent in fixing its object4 ,it hangs on a virtual definition1 and explicates it4 ,we cannot oblige anybody or anything to reproduce the idea which we have chosen2 but that idea will remain the idea it is whether forgotten or remembered1 exemplified or not exemplified in things4 ,to penetrate to the foundation of being is possible for us only because the foundation of being is distinguishable quality2 were there no set of differing characteristics1 one or more of which an existing thing might appropriate1 existence would be altogether impossible4 ,the realm of essence is merely the system or chaos of these fundamental possibilities1 the catalogue of all exemplifiable natures2 so that any experience whatsoever must tap the realm of essence1 and throw the light of attention on one of its constituent forms4 ,this is1 if you will1 a trivial achievement2 what would be really a surprising feat1 and hardly to be credited1 would be that the human mind should grasp the constitution of nature2 that is1 should discover which is the particular essence1 or the particular system of essences1 which actual existence illustrates4 ,in the matter of physics1 truly1 we are reduced to skimming the surface1 since we have to start from our casual experiences1 which form the most superficial stratum of nature1 and the most unstable4 ,yet these casual experiences1 while they leave us so much in the dark as to their natural basis and environment1 necessarily reveal each its ideal object1 its specific essence2 and we need only arrest our attention upon it1 and define it to ourselves1 for an eternal possibility1 and some of its intrinsic characters1 to have been revealed to our thought4 ,whatever1 then1 a man's mental and moral habit might be1 it would perforce have affinity to some essence or other2 his life would revolve about some congenial ideal object2 he would find some sorts of form1 some types of relation1 more visible1 beautiful1 and satisfying than others4 ,mr4 ,russell happens to have a mathematical genius1 and to find comfort in laying up his treasures in the mathematical heaven4 ,it would be highly desirable that this temperament should be more common2 but even if it were universal it would not reduce mathematical essence to a product of human attention1 nor raise the beauty of mathematics to part of its essence4 ,i do not mean to suggest that ,mr4 ,russell attempts to do the latter2 he speaks explicitly of the value of mathematical study1 a point in ethics and not directly in logic2 yet his moral philosophy is itself so much assimilated to logic that the distinction between the two becomes somewhat dubious2 and as ,mr4 ,russell will never succeed in convincing us that moral values are independent of life1 he may1 quite against his will1 lead us to question the independence of essence1 with that blind gregarious drift of all ideas1 in this direction or in that1 which is characteristic of human philosophising4 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,critique ,,of ,,pragmatism ,the time has not yet come when a just and synthetic account of what is called pragmatism can be expected of any man4 ,the movement is still in a nebulous state1 a state from which1 perhaps1 it is never destined to issue4 ,the various tendencies that compose it may soon cease to appear together2 each may detach itself and be lost in the earlier system with which it has most affinity4 ,a good critic has enumerated ,thirteen ,pragmatisms2 and besides such distinguishable tenets1 there are in pragmatism echoes of various popular moral forces1 like democracy1 impressionism1 love of the concrete1 respect for success1 trust in will and action1 and the habit of relying on the future1 rather than on the past1 to justify one's methods and opinions4 ,most of these things are characteristically ,american2 and ,mr4 ,russell touches on some of them with more wit than sympathy4 ,thus he writes3 ,the influence of democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost every page of ,william ,james's writing4 ,there is an impatience of authority1 an unwillingness to condemn widespread prejudices1 a tendency to decide philosophical questions by putting them to a vote1 which contrast curiously with the usual dictatorial tone of philosophic writings4444 ,a thing which simply is true1 whether you like it or not1 is to him as hateful as a ,russian autocracy2 he feels that he is escaping from a prison1 made not by stone walls but by 'hard facts1' when he has humanised truth1 and made it1 like the police force in a democracy1 the servant of the people instead of their master4 ,the democratic temper pervades even the religion of the pragmatists2 they have the religion they have chosen1 and the traditional reverence is changed into satisfaction with their own handiwork4 ',the prince of darkness1' ,james says1 'may be a gentleman1 as we are told he is1 but whatever the ,god of earth and heaven is1 he can surely be no gentleman1' ,he is rather1 we should say1 conceived by pragmatists as an elected president1 to whom we give a respect which is really a tribute to the wisdom of our own choice4 ,a government in which we have no voice is repugnant to the democratic temper4 ,william ,james carries up to heaven the revolt of his ,new ,england ancestors3 the ,power to which we can yield respect must be a ,george ,washington rather than a ,george ,,iii4 ,a point of fundamental importance1 about which pragmatists have been far from clear1 and perhaps not in agreement with one another1 is the sense in which their psychology is to be taken4 ,the facts that fill the imaginations of pragmatists1 ,mr4 ,russell writes1 are psychical facts2 where others might think of the starry heavens1 pragmatists think of the perception of the starry heavens2 where others think of ,god1 pragmatists think of the belief in ,god1 and so on4 ,in discussing the sciences1 they never think1 like scientific specialists1 about the facts upon which scientific theories are based2 they think about the theories themselves4 ,thus their initial question and their habitual imaginative background are both psychological4 ,this is so true that unless we make the substitution into psychic terms instinctively1 the whole pragmatic view of things will seem paradoxical1 if not actually unthinkable4 ,for instance1 pragmatists might protest against the accusation that they never think about the facts upon which scientific theories are based1 for they lay a great emphasis on facts4 ,facts are the cash which the credit of theories hangs upon4 ,yet this protest1 though sincere1 would be inconclusive1 and in the end it would illustrate ,mr4 ,russell's observation1 rather than refute it4 ,for we should presently learn that these facts can be made by thinking1 that our faith in them may contribute to their reality1 and may modify their nature2 in other words1 these facts are our immediate apprehensions of fact1 which it is indeed conceivable that our temperaments1 expectations1 and opinions should modify4 ,thus the pragmatist's reliance on facts does not carry him beyond the psychic sphere2 his facts are only his personal experiences4 ,personal experiences may well be the basis for no less personal myths2 but the effort of intelligence and of science is rather to find the basis of the personal experiences themselves2 and this non-psychic basis of experience is what common sense calls the facts1 and what practice is concerned with4 ,yet these are not the pragmata of the pragmatist1 for it is only the despicable intellectualist that can arrive at them2 and the bed-rock of facts that the pragmatist builds upon is avowedly drifting sand4 ,hence the odd expressions1 new to literature and even to grammar1 which bubble up continually in pragmatist writings4 ,for illustration take the former fact that the earth is flat1 says one1 quite innocently2 and another observes that two centuries later1 nominalism was evidently true1 because it alone would legitimise the local independence of cities4 ,lest we should suppose that the historical sequence of these truths or illusions is1 at least1 fixed and irreversible1 we are soon informed that the past is always changing1 too2 that is 7if ,i may rationalise this mystical dictum71 that history is always being rewritten1 and that the growing present adds new relations to the past1 which lead us to conceive or to describe it in some new fashion4 ,even if the ultimate inference is not drawn1 and we are not told that this changing idea of the past is the only past that exists--the real past being unattainable and therefore1 for personal idealism1 non-existent--it is abundantly clear that the effort to distinguish fact from theory cannot be successful1 so long as the psychological way of thinking prevails2 for a theory1 psychologically considered1 is a bare fact in the experience of the theorist1 and the other facts of his experience are so many other momentary views1 so many scant theories1 to be immediately superseded by other truths in the plural4 ,sensations and ideas are really distinguishable only by reference to what is assumed to lie without2 of which external reality experience is always an effect 7and in that capacity is called sensation7 and often at the same time an apprehension 7and in that capacity is called idea74 ,it is a crucial question1 then1 in the interpretation of pragmatism1 whether the psychological point of view1 undoubtedly prevalent in that school1 is the only or the ultimate point of view which it admits4 ,the habit of studying ideas rather than their objects might be simply a matter of emphasis or predilection4 ,it might merely indicate a special interest in the life of reason1 and be an effort1 legitimate under any system of philosophy1 to recount the stages by which human thought1 developing in the bosom of nature1 may have reached its present degree of articulation4 ,i myself1 for instance1 like to look at things from this angle3 not that ,i have ever doubted the reality of the natural world1 or been able to take very seriously any philosophy that denied it1 but precisely because1 when we take the natural world for granted1 it becomes a possible and enlightening inquiry to ask how the human animal has come to discover his real environment1 in so far as he has done so1 and what dreams have intervened or supervened in the course of his rational awakening4 ,on the other hand1 a psychological point of view might be equivalent to the idealistic doctrine that the articulation of human thought constitutes the only structure of the universe1 and its whole history4 ,according to this view1 pragmatism would seem to be a revised version of the transcendental logic1 leaving logic still transcendental1 that is1 still concerned with the evolution of the categories4 ,the revision would consist chiefly in this1 that empirical verification1 utility1 and survival would take the place of dialectical irony as the force governing the evolution4 ,it would still remain possible for other methods of approach than this transcendental pragmatism1 for instinct1 perhaps1 or for revelation1 to bring us into contact with things-in-themselves4 ,a junction might thus be effected with the system of ,m4 ,bergson1 which would lead to this curious result3 that pragmatic logic would be the method of intelligence1 because intelligence is merely a method1 useful in practice1 for the symbolic and improper representation of reality2 while another non-pragmatic method--sympathy and dream--would alone be able to put us in possession of direct knowledge and genuine truth4 ,so that1 after all1 the pragmatic truth of working ideas would turn out to be what it has seemed hitherto to mankind1 namely1 no real truth1 but rather a convenient sort of fiction1 which ceases to deceive when once its merely pragmatic value is discounted by criticism4 ,i remember once putting a question on this subject to ,professor ,james2 and his answer was one which ,i am glad to be able to record4 ,in relation to his having said that as far as the past facts go1 there is no difference 444 be the atoms or be the ,god their cause1#g ,i asked whether1 if ,god had been the cause1 apart from the value of the idea of him in our calculations1 his existence would not have made a difference to him1 as he would be presumably self-conscious4 ,of course1 said ,professor ,james1 but ,i wasn't considering that side of the matter2 ,i was thinking of our idea4 ,the choice of the subjective point of view1 then1 was deliberate here1 and frankly arbitrary2 it was not intended to exclude the possibility or legitimacy of the objective attitude4 ,and the original reason for deliberately ignoring1 in this way1 the realistic way of thinking1 even while admitting that it represents the real state of affairs1 would have been1 ,i suppose1 that what could be verified was always some further effect of the real objects1 and never those real objects themselves2 so that for interpreting and predicting our personal experience only the hypothesis of objects was pertinent1 while the objects themselves1 except as so represented1 were useless and unattainable4 ,the case1 if ,i may adapt a comparison of ,mr4 ,russell's1 was as if we possessed a catalogue of the library at ,alexandria1 all the books being lost for ever2 it would be only in the catalogue that we could practically verify their existence or character1 though doubtless1 by some idle flight of imagination1 we might continue to think of the books1 as well as of those titles in the catalogue which alone could appear to us in experience4 ,pragmatism1 approached from this side1 would then seem to express an acute critical conscience1 a sort of will not to believe2 not to believe1 ,i mean1 more than is absolutely necessary for solipsistic practice4 ,footnote #g3 ,pragmatism1 p4 #aja4 ,such economical faith1 enabling one to dissolve the hard materialistic world into a work of mind1 which mind might outflank1 was traditional in the radical ,emersonian circles in which pragmatism sprang up4 ,it is one of the approaches to the movement2 yet we may safely regard the ancestral transcendentalism of the pragmatists as something which they have turned their back upon1 and mean to disown4 ,it is destined to play no part in the ultimate result of pragmatism4 ,this ultimate result promises to be1 on the contrary1 a direct materialistic sort of realism4 ,this alone is congruous with the scientific affinities of the school and its young-,american temper4 ,nor is the transformation very hard to effect4 ,the world of solipsistic practice1 if you remove the romantic self that was supposed to evoke it1 becomes at once the sensible world2 and the problem is only to find a place in the mosaic of objects of sensation for those cognitive and moral functions which the soul was once supposed to exercise in the presence of an independent reality4 ,but this problem is precisely the one that pragmatists boast they have already solved2 for they have declared that consciousness does not exist1 and that objects of sensation 7which at first were called feelings1 experiences1 or truths7 know or mean one another when they lead to one another1 when they are poles1 so to speak1 in the same vital circuit4 ,the spiritual act which was supposed to take things for its object is to be turned into objective spirit1 that is1 into dynamic relations between things4 ,the philosopher will deny that he has any other sort of mind himself1 lest he should be shut up in it again1 like a sceptical and disconsolate child2 while if there threatens to be any covert or superfluous reality in the self-consciousness of ,god1 nothing will be easier than to deny that ,god is self-conscious2 for indeed1 if there is no consciousness on earth1 why should we imagine that there is any in heaven8 ,the psychologism with which the pragmatists started seems to be passing in this way1 in the very effort to formulate it pragmatically1 into something which1 whatever it may be1 is certainly not psychologism4 ,but the bewildered public may well ask whether it is pragmatism either4 ,there is another crucial point in pragmatism which the defenders of the system are apt to pass over lightly1 but which ,mr4 ,russell regards 7justly1 ,i think7 as of decisive importance4 ,is1 namely1 the pragmatic account of truth intended to cover all knowledge1 or one kind of knowledge only8 ,apparently the most authoritative pragmatists admit that it covers one kind only2 for there are two sorts of self-evidence in which1 they say1 it is not concerned3 first1 the dialectical relation between essences2 and second1 the known occurrence or experience of facts4 ,there are obvious reasons why these two kinds of cognitions1 so interesting to ,mr4 ,russell1 are not felt by pragmatists to constitute exceptions worth considering4 ,dialectical relations1 they will say1 are verbal only2 that is1 they define ideal objects1 and certainty in these cases does not coerce existence1 or touch contingent fact at all4 ,on the other hand1 such apprehension as seizes on some matter of fact1 as1 for instance1 ,i feel pain1 or ,i expected to feel this pain1 and it is now verifying my expectation1 though often true propositions1 are not theoretical truths2 they are not1 it is supposed1 questionable beliefs but rather immediate observations4 ,yet many of these apprehensions of fact 7or all1 perhaps1 if we examine them scrupulously7 involve the veracity of memory1 surely a highly questionable sort of truth2 and1 moreover1 verification1 the pragmatic test of truth1 would be obviously impossible to apply1 if the prophecy supposed to be verified were not assumed to be truly remembered4 ,how shall we know that our expectation is fulfilled1 if we do not know directly that we had such an expectation8 ,but if we know our past experience directly--not merely knew it when present1 but know now what it was1 and how it has led down to the present--this amounts to enough knowledge to make up a tolerable system of the universe1 without invoking pragmatic verification or truth at all4 ,i have never been able to discover whether1 by that perception of fact which is not truth but fact itself1 pragmatists meant each human apprehension taken singly1 or the whole series of these apprehensions4 ,in the latter case1 as in the philosophy of ,m4 ,bergson1 all past reality might constantly lie open to retentive intuition1 a form of knowledge soaring quite over the head of any pragmatic method or pragmatic truth4 ,it looks1 indeed1 as if the history of at least personal experience were commonly taken for granted by pragmatists1 as a basis on which to rear their method4 ,their readiness to make so capital an assumption is a part of their heritage from romantic idealism4 ,to the romantic idealist science and theology are tales which ought to be reduced to an empirical equivalent in his personal experience2 but the tale of his personal experience itself is a sacred figment1 the one precious conviction of the romantic heart1 which it would be heartless to question4 ,yet here is a kind of assumed truth which cannot be reduced to its pragmatic meaning1 because it must be true literally in order that the pragmatic meaning of other beliefs may be conceived or tested at all4 ,now1 if it be admitted that the pragmatic theory of truth does not touch our knowledge either of matters of fact or of the necessary implications of ideas1 the question arises3 ,what sort of knowledge remains for pragmatic theory to apply to8 ,simply1 ,mr4 ,russell answers1 those working hypotheses to which prudent people give only a low degree of belief4 ,for we hold different beliefs with very different degrees of conviction4 ,some--such as the belief that ,i am sitting in a chair1 or that #bbd--;can be doubted by few except those who have had a long training in philosophy4 ,such beliefs are held so firmly that non-philosophers who deny them are put into lunatic asylums4 ,other beliefs1 such as the facts of history1 are held rather less firmly4444 ,beliefs about the future1 as that the sun will rise to-morrow and that the trains will run approximately as in ,bradshaw1 may be held with almost as great conviction as beliefs about the past4 ,scientific laws are generally believed less firmly4444 ,philosophical beliefs1 finally1 will1 with most people1 take a still lower place1 since the opposite beliefs of others can hardly fail to induce doubt4 ,belief1 therefore1 is a matter of degree4 ,to speak of belief1 disbelief1 doubt1 and suspense of judgment as the only possibilities is as if1 from the writing on the thermometer1 we were to suppose that blood heat1 summer heat1 temperate1 and freezing were the only temperatures4 ,beliefs which require to be confirmed by future experience1 or which actually refer to it1 are evidently only presumptions2 it is merely the truth of presumptions that empirical logic applies to1 and only so long as they remain presumptions4 ,presumptions may be held with very different degrees of assurance1 and yet be acted upon1 in the absence of any strong counter-suggestion2 as the confidence of lovers or of religious enthusiasts may be at blood heat at one moment and freezing at the next1 without a change in anything save in the will to believe4 ,the truth of such presumptions1 whatever may be the ground of them1 depends in fact on whether they are to lead 7or1 rather1 whether the general course of events is to lead7 to the further things presumed2 for these things are what presumptions refer to explicitly4 ,it sometimes happens1 however1 that presumptions 7being based on voluminous blind instinct rather than on distinct repeated observations7 are expressed in consciousness by some symbol or myth1 as when a man says he believes in his luck2 the presumption really regards particular future chances and throws of the dice1 but the emotional and verbal mist in which the presumption is wrapped1 veils the pragmatic burden of it2 and a metaphysical entity arises1 called luck1 in which a man may think he believes rather than in a particular career that may be awaiting him4 ,now since this entity1 luck1 is a mere word1 confidence in it1 to be justified at all1 must be transferred to the concrete facts it stands for4 ,faith in one's luck must be pragmatic1 but simply because faith in such an entity is not needful nor philosophical at all4 ,the case is the same with working hypotheses1 when that is all they are2 for on this point there is some confusion4 ,whether an idea is a working hypothesis merely or an anticipation of matters open to eventual inspection may not always be clear4 ,thus the atomic theory1 in the sense in which most philosophers entertain it to-day1 seems to be a working hypothesis only2 for they do not seriously believe that there are atoms1 but in their ignorance of the precise composition of matter1 they find it convenient to speak of it as if it were composed of indestructible particles4 ,but for ,democritus and for many modern men of science the atomic theory is not a working hypothesis merely2 they do not regard it as a provisional makeshift2 they regard it as a probable1 if not a certain1 anticipation of what inspection would discover to be the fact1 could inspection be carried so far2 in other words1 they believe the atomic theory is true4 ,if they are right1 the validity of this theory would not be that of pragmatic truth but of pragmatic fact2 for it would be a view1 such as memory or intuition or sensation might give us1 of experienced objects in their experienced relations2 it would be the communication to us1 in a momentary dream1 of what would be the experience of a universal observer4 ,it would be knowledge of reality in ,m4 ,bergson's sense4 ,pragmatic truth1 on the contrary1 is the relative and provisional justification of fiction2 and pragmatism is not a theory of truth at all1 but a theory of theory1 when theory is instrumental4 ,for theory too has more than one signification4 ,it may mean such a symbolic or foreshortened view1 such a working hypothesis1 as true and full knowledge might supersede2 or it may mean this true and full knowledge itself1 a synthetic survey of objects of experience in their experimental character4 ,algebra and language are theoretical in the first sense1 as when a man believes in his luck2 historical and scientific imagination are theoretical in the second sense1 when they gather objects of experience together without distorting them4 ,but it is only to the first sort of theory that pragmatism can be reasonably applied2 to apply it also to the second would be to retire into that extreme subjectivism which the leading pragmatists have so hotly disclaimed4 ,we find1 accordingly1 that it is only when a theory is avowedly unreal1 and does not ask to be believed1 that the value of it is pragmatic2 since in that case belief passes consciously from the symbols used to the eventual facts in which the symbolism terminates1 and for which it stands4 ,it may seem strange that a definition of truth should have been based on the consideration of those ideas exclusively for which truth is not claimed by any critical person1 such ideas1 namely1 as religious myths or the graphic and verbal machinery of science4 ,yet the fact is patent1 and if we considered the matter historically it might not prove inexplicable4 ,theology has long applied the name truth pre-eminently to fiction4 ,when the conviction first dawned upon pragmatists that there was no absolute or eternal truth1 what they evidently were thinking of was that it is folly1 in this changing world1 to pledge oneself to any final and inflexible creed4 ,the pursuit of truth1 since nothing better was possible1 was to be accepted instead of the possession of it4 ,but it is characteristic of ,protestantism that1 when it gives up anything1 it transfers to what remains the unction1 and often the name1 proper to what it has abandoned4 ,so1 if truth was no longer to be claimed or even hoped for1 the value and the name of truth could be instinctively transferred to what was to take its place--spontaneous1 honest1 variable conviction4 ,and the sanctions of this conviction were to be looked for1 not in the objective reality1 since it was an idle illusion to fancy we could get at that1 but in the growth of this conviction itself1 and in the prosperous adventure of the whole soul1 so courageous in its self-trust1 and so modest in its dogmas4 ,science1 too1 has often been identified1 not with the knowledge men of science possess1 but with the language they use4 ,if science meant knowledge1 the science of ,darwin1 for instance1 would lie in his observations of plants and animals1 and in his thoughts about the probable ancestors of the human race--all knowledge of actual or possible facts4 ,it would not be knowledge of selection or of spontaneous variation1 terms which are mere verbal bridges over the gaps in that knowledge1 and mark the lacunae and unsolved problems of the science4 ,yet it is just such terms that seem to clothe ,science in its pontifical garb2 the cowl is taken for the monk2 and when a penetrating critic1 like ,m4 ,henri ,poincar1 turned his subtle irony upon them1 the public cried that he had announced the bankruptcy of science1 whereas it is merely the language of science that he had reduced to its pragmatic value--to convenience and economy in the registering of facts--and had by no means questioned that positive and cumulative knowledge of facts which science is attaining4 ,it is an incident in the same general confusion that a critical epistemology1 like pragmatism1 analysing these figments of scientific or theological theory1 should innocently suppose that it was analysing truth2 while the only view to which it really attributes truth is its view of the system of facts open to possible experience1 a system which those figments presuppose and which they may help us in part to divine1 where it is accidentally hidden from human inspection4 ,,iv4 ,,hypostatic ,,ethics ,if ,mr4 ,russell1 in his essay on ,the ,elements of ,ethics1 had wished to propitiate the unregenerate naturalist1 before trying to convert him1 he could not have chosen a more skilful procedure2 for he begins by telling us that what is called good conduct is conduct which is a means to other things which are good on their own account2 and hence 444 the study of what is good or bad on its own account must be included in ethics4 ,two consequences are involved in this3 first1 that ethics is concerned with the economy of all values1 and not with moral goods only1 or with duty2 and second1 that values may and do inhere in a great variety of things and relations1 all of which it is the part of wisdom to respect1 and if possible to establish4 ,in this matter1 according to our author1 the general philosopher is prone to one error and the professed moralist to another4 ,the philosopher1 bent on the construction of a system1 is inclined to simplify the facts unduly 444 and to twist them into a form in which they can all be deduced from one or two general principles4 ,the moralist1 on the other hand1 being primarily concerned with conduct1 tends to become absorbed in means1 to value the actions men ought to perform more than the ends which such actions serve4444 ,hence most of what they value in this world would have to be omitted by many moralists from any imagined heaven1 because there such things as self-denial and effort and courage and pity could find no place4444 ,kant has the bad eminence of combining both errors in the highest possible degree1 since he holds that there is nothing good except the virtuous will--a view which simplifies the good as much as any philosopher could wish1 and mistakes means for ends as completely as any moralist could enjoin4 ,those of us who are what ,mr4 ,russell would call ethical sceptics will be delighted at this way of clearing the ground2 it opens before us the prospect of a moral philosophy that should estimate the various values of things known and of things imaginable1 showing what combinations of goods are possible in any one rational system1 and 7if fancy could stretch so far7 what different rational systems would be possible in places and times remote enough from one another not to come into physical conflict4 ,such ethics1 since it would express in reflection the dumb but actual interests of men1 might have both influence and authority over them2 two things which an alien and dogmatic ethics necessarily lacks4 ,the joy of the ethical sceptic in ,mr4 ,russell is destined1 however1 to be short-lived4 ,before proceeding to the expression of concrete ideals1 he thinks it necessary to ask a preliminary and quite abstract question1 to which his essay is chiefly devoted2 namely1 what is the right definition of the predicate good1 which we hope to apply in the sequel to such a variety of things8 ,and he answers at once3 ,the predicate good is indefinable4 ,this answer he shows to be unavoidable1 and so evidently unavoidable that we might perhaps have been absolved from asking the question2 for1 as he says1 the so-called definitions of good--that it is pleasure1 the desired1 and so forth--are not definitions of the predicate good1 but designations of the things to which this predicate is applied by different persons4 ,pleasure1 and its rivals1 are not synonyms for the abstract quality good1 but names for classes of concrete facts that are supposed to possess that quality4 ,from this correct1 if somewhat trifling1 observation1 however1 ,mr4 ,russell1 like ,mr4 ,moore before him1 evokes a portentous dogma4 ,not being able to define good1 he hypostasises it4 ,good and bad1 he says1 are qualities which belong to objects independently of our opinions1 just as much as round and square do2 and when two people differ as to whether a thing is good1 only one of them can be right1 though it may be very hard to know which is right4 ,we cannot maintain that for me a thing ought to exist on its own account1 while for you it ought not2 that would merely mean that one of us is mistaken1 since in fact everything either ought to exist1 or ought not4 ,thus we are asked to believe that good attaches to things for no reason or cause1 and according to no principles of distribution2 that it must be found there by a sort of receptive exploration in each separate case2 in other words1 that it is an absolute1 not a relative thing1 a primary and not a secondary quality4 ,that the quality good is indefinable is one assertion1 and obvious2 but that the presence of this quality is unconditioned is another1 and astonishing4 ,my logic1 ,i am well aware1 is not very accurate or subtle2 and ,i wish ,mr4 ,russell had not left it to me to discover the connection between these two propositions4 ,green is an indefinable predicate1 and the specific quality of it can be given only in intuition2 but it is a quality that things acquire under certain conditions1 so much so that the same bit of grass1 at the same moment1 may have it from one point of view and not from another4 ,right and left are indefinable2 the difference could not be explained without being invoked in the explanation2 yet everything that is to the right is not to the right on no condition1 but obviously on the condition that some one is looking in a certain direction2 and if some one else at the same time is looking in the opposite direction1 what is truly to the right will be truly to the left also4 ,if ,mr4 ,russell thinks this is a contradiction1 ,i understand why the universe does not please him4 ,the contradiction would be real1 undoubtedly1 if we suggested that the idea of good was at any time or in any relation the idea of evil1 or the intuition of right that of left1 or the quality of green that of yellow2 these disembodied essences are fixed by the intent that selects them1 and in that ideal realm they can never have any relations except the dialectical ones implied in their nature1 and these relations they must always retain4 ,but the contradiction disappears when1 instead of considering the qualities in themselves1 we consider the things of which those qualities are aspects2 for the qualities of things are not compacted by implication1 but are conjoined irrationally by nature1 as she will2 and the same thing may be1 and is1 at once yellow and green1 to the left and to the right1 good and evil1 many and one1 large and small2 and whatever verbal paradox there may be in this way of speaking 7for from the point of view of nature it is natural enough7 had been thoroughly explained and talked out by the time of ,plato1 who complained that people should still raise a difficulty so trite and exploded4#h ,indeed1 while square is always square1 and round round1 a thing that is round may actually be square also1 if we allow it to have a little body1 and to be a cylinder4 ,footnote #h3 ,plato1 ,philebus1 #ad1 ,d4 ,the dialectical element in this dialogue is evidently the basis of ,mr4 ,russell's1 as of ,mr4 ,moore's1 ethics2 but they have not adopted the other elements in it1 ,i mean the political and the theological4 ,as to the political element1 ,plato everywhere conceives the good as the eligible in life1 and refers it to human nature and to the pursuit of happiness--that happiness which ,mr4 ,russell1 in a rash moment1 says is but a name which some people prefer to give to pleasure4 ,thus in the ,philebus 7#aa1 ,d7 the good looked for is declared to be some state and disposition of the soul which has the property of making all men happy2 and later 7#ff1 ,d7 the conclusion is that insight is better than pleasure as an element in human life4 ,as to the theological element1 ,plato1 in hypostasising the good1 does not hypostasise it as good1 but as cause or power1 which is1 it seems to me1 the sole category that justifies hypostasis1 and logically involves it2 for if things have a ground at all1 that ground must exist before them and beyond them4 ,hence the whole ,platonic and ,christian scheme1 in making the good independent of private will and opinion1 by no means makes it independent of the direction of nature in general and of human nature in particular2 for all things have been created with an innate predisposition towards the creative good1 and are capable of finding happiness in nothing else4 ,obligation1 in this system1 remains internal and vital4 ,plato attributes a single vital direction and a single moral source to the cosmos4 ,this is what determines and narrows the scope of the true good2 for the true good is that relevant to nature4 ,plato would not have been a dogmatic moralist1 had he not been a theist4 ,but perhaps what suggests this hypostasis of good is rather the fact that what others find good1 or what we ourselves have found good in moods with which we retain no sympathy1 is sometimes pronounced by us to be bad2 and far from inferring from this diversity of experience that the present good1 like the others1 corresponds to a particular attitude or interest of ours1 and is dependent upon it1 ,mr4 ,russell and ,mr4 ,moore infer instead that the presence of the good must be independent of all interests1 attitudes1 and opinions4 ,they imagine that the truth of a proposition attributing a certain relative quality to an object contradicts the truth of another proposition1 attributing to the same object an opposite relative quality4 ,thus if a man here and another man at the antipodes call opposite directions up1 only one of them can be right1 though it may be very hard to know which is right4 ,to protect the belated innocence of this state of mind1 ,mr4 ,russell1 so far as ,i can see1 has only one argument1 and one analogy4 ,the argument is that if this were not the case1 we could not reason with a man as to what is right4 ,we do in fact hold that when one man approves of a certain act1 while another disapproves1 one of them is mistaken1 which would not be the case with a mere emotion4 ,if one man likes oysters and another dislikes them1 we do not say that either of them is mistaken4 ,in other words1 we are to maintain our prejudices1 however absurd1 lest it should become unnecessary to quarrel about them6 ,truly the debating society has its idols1 no less than the cave and the theatre4 ,the analogy that comes to buttress somewhat this singular argument is the analogy between ethical propriety and physical or logical truth4 ,an ethical proposition may be correct or incorrect1 in a sense justifying argument1 when it touches what is good as a means1 that is1 when it is not intrinsically ethical1 but deals with causes and effects1 or with matters of fact or necessity4 ,but to speak of the truth of an ultimate good would be a false collocation of terms2 an ultimate good is chosen1 found1 or aimed at2 it is not opined4 ,the ultimate intuitions on which ethics rests are not debatable1 for they are not opinions we hazard but preferences we feel2 and it can be neither correct nor incorrect to feel them4 ,we may assert these preferences fiercely or with sweet reasonableness1 and we may be more or less incapable of sympathising with the different preferences of others2 about oysters we may be tolerant1 like ,mr4 ,russell1 and about character intolerant2 but that is already a great advance in enlightenment1 since the majority of mankind have regarded as hateful in the highest degree any one who indulged in pork1 or beans1 or frogs' legs1 or who had a weakness for anything called unnatural2 for it is the things that offend their animal instincts that intense natures have always found to be1 intrinsically and par excellence1 abominations4 ,i am not sure whether ,mr4 ,russell thinks he has disposed of this view where he discusses the proposition that the good is the desired and refutes it on the ground that it is commonly admitted that there are bad desires2 and when people speak of bad desires1 they seem to mean desires for what is bad4 ,most people undoubtedly call desires bad when they are generically contrary to their own desires1 and call objects that disgust them bad1 even when other people covet them4 ,this human weakness is not1 however1 a very high authority for a logician to appeal to1 being too like the attitude of the ,german lady who said that ,englishmen called a certain object bread1 and ,frenchmen called it pain1 but that it really was ,brod4 ,scholastic philosophy is inclined to this way of asserting itself2 and ,mr4 ,russell1 though he candidly admits that there are ultimate differences of opinion about good and evil1 would gladly minimise these differences1 and thinks he triumphs when he feels that the prejudices of his readers will agree with his own2 as if the constitutional unanimity of all human animals1 supposing it existed1 could tend to show that the good they agreed to recognise was independent of their constitution4 ,in a somewhat worthier sense1 however1 we may admit that there are desires for what is bad1 since desire and will1 in the proper psychological sense of these words1 are incidental phases of consciousness1 expressing but not constituting those natural relations that make one thing good for another4 ,at the same time the words desire and will are often used1 in a mythical or transcendental sense1 for those material dispositions and instincts by which vital and moral units are constituted4 ,it is in reference to such constitutional interests that things are really good or bad2 interests which may not be fairly represented by any incidental conscious desire4 ,no doubt any desire1 however capricious1 represents some momentary and partial interest1 which lends to its objects a certain real and inalienable value2 yet when we consider1 as we do in human society1 the interests of men1 whom reflection and settled purposes have raised more or less to the ideal dignity of individuals1 then passing fancies and passions may indeed have bad objects1 and be bad themselves1 in that they thwart the more comprehensive interests of the soul that entertains them4 ,food and poison are such only relatively1 and in view of particular bodies1 and the same material thing may be food and poison at once2 the child1 and even the doctor1 may easily mistake one for the other4 ,for the human system whiskey is truly more intoxicating than coffee1 and the contrary opinion would be an error2 but what a strange way of vindicating this real1 though relative1 distinction1 to insist that whiskey is more intoxicating in itself1 without reference to any animal2 that it is pervaded1 as it were1 by an inherent intoxication1 and stands dead drunk in its bottle6 ,yet just in this way ,mr4 ,russell and ,mr4 ,moore conceive things to be dead good and dead bad4 ,it is such a view1 rather than the naturalistic one1 that renders reasoning and self-criticism impossible in morals2 for wrong desires1 and false opinions as to value1 are conceivable only because a point of reference or criterion is available to prove them such4 ,if no point of reference and no criterion were admitted to be relevant1 nothing but physical stress could give to one assertion of value greater force than to another4 ,the shouting moralist no doubt has his place1 but not in philosophy4 ,that good is not an intrinsic or primary quality1 but relative and adventitious1 is clearly betrayed by ,mr4 ,russell's own way of arguing1 whenever he approaches some concrete ethical question4 ,for instance1 to show that the good is not pleasure1 he can avowedly do nothing but appeal to ethical judgments with which almost every one would agree4 ,he repeats1 in effect1 ,plato's argument about the life of the oyster1 having pleasure with no knowledge4 ,imagine such mindless pleasure1 as intense and prolonged as you please1 and would you choose it8 ,is it your good8 ,here the ,british reader1 like the blushing ,greek youth1 is expected to answer instinctively1 ,no6 ,it is an argumentum ad hominem 7and there can be no other kind of argument in ethics72 but the man who gives the required answer does so not because the answer is self-evident1 which it is not1 but because he is the required sort of man4 ,he is shocked at the idea of resembling an oyster4 ,yet changeless pleasure1 without memory or reflection1 without the wearisome intermixture of arbitrary images1 is just what the mystic1 the voluptuary1 and perhaps the oyster find to be good4 ,ideas1 in their origin1 are probably signals of alarm2 and the distress which they marked in the beginning always clings to them in some measure1 and causes many a soul1 far more profound than that of the young ,protarchus or of the ,british reader1 to long for them to cease altogether4 ,such a radical hedonism is indeed inhuman2 it undermines all conventional ambitions1 and is not a possible foundation for political or artistic life4 ,but that is all we can say against it4 ,our humanity cannot annul the incommensurable sorts of good that may be pursued in the world1 though it cannot itself pursue them4 ,the impossibility which people labour under of being satisfied with pure pleasure as a goal is due to their want of imagination1 or rather to their being dominated by an imagination which is exclusively human4 ,the author's estrangement from reality reappears in his treatment of egoism1 and most of all in his ,free ,man's ,religion4 ,egoism1 he thinks1 is untenable because if ,i am right in thinking that my good is the only good1 then every one else is mistaken unless he admits that my good1 not his1 is the only good4 ,most people 444 would admit that it is better two people's desires should be satisfied than only one person's4444 ,then what is good is not good for me or for you1 but is simply good4 ,it is1 indeed1 so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for ,a than a lesser good for ,b1 that it is hard to find any still more evident principle by which to prove this4 ,and if ,a happens to be some one else1 and ,b to be myself1 that cannot affect the question1 since it is irrelevant to the general question who ,a and ,b may be4 ,to the question1 as the logician states it after transforming men into letters1 it is certainly irrelevant2 but it is not irrelevant to the case as it arises in nature4 ,if two goods are somehow rightly pronounced to be equally good1 no circumstance can render one better than the other4 ,and if the locus in which the good is to arise is somehow pronounced to be indifferent1 it will certainly be indifferent whether that good arises in me or in you4 ,but how shall these two pronouncements be made8 ,in practice1 values cannot be compared save as represented or enacted in the private imagination of somebody3 for we could not conceive that an alien good was a good 7as ,mr4 ,russell cannot conceive that the life of an ecstatic oyster is a good7 unless we could sympathise with it in some way in our own persons2 and on the warmth which we felt in so representing the alien good would hang our conviction that it was truly valuable1 and had worth in comparison with our own good4 ,the voice of reason1 bidding us prefer the greater good1 no matter who is to enjoy it1 is also nothing but the force of sympathy1 bringing a remote existence before us vividly sub specie boni4 ,capacity for such sympathy measures the capacity to recognise duty and therefore1 in a moral sense1 to have it4 ,doubtless it is conceivable that all wills should become co-operative1 and that nature should be ruled magically by an exact and universal sympathy2 but this situation must be actually attained in part1 before it can be conceived or judged to be an authoritative ideal4 ,the tigers cannot regard it as such1 for it would suppress the tragic good called ferocity1 which makes1 in their eyes1 the chief glory of the universe4 ,therefore the inertia of nature1 the ferocity of beasts1 the optimism of mystics1 and the selfishness of men and nations must all be accepted as conditions for the peculiar goods1 essentially incommensurable1 which they can generate severally4 ,it is misplaced vehemence to call them intrinsically detestable1 because they do not 7as they cannot7 generate or recognise the goods we prize4 ,in the real world1 persons are not abstract egos1 like ,a and ,b1 so that to benefit one is clearly as good as to benefit another4 ,indeed1 abstract egos could not be benefited1 for they could not be modified at all1 even if somehow they could be distinguished4 ,it would be the qualities or objects distributed among them that would carry1 wherever they went1 each its inalienable cargo of value1 like ships sailing from sea to sea4 ,but it is quite vain and artificial to imagine different goods charged with such absolute and comparable weights2 and actual egoism is not the thin and refutable thing that ,mr4 ,russell makes of it4 ,what it really holds is that a given man1 oneself1 and those akin to him1 are qualitatively better than other beings2 that the things they prize are intrinsically better than the things prized by others2 and that therefore there is no injustice in treating these chosen interests as supreme4 ,the injustice1 it is felt1 would lie rather in not treating things so unequal unequally4 ,this feeling may1 in many cases1 amuse the impartial observer1 or make him indignant2 yet it may1 in every case1 according to ,mr4 ,russell1 be absolutely just4 ,the refutation he gives of egoism would not dissuade any fanatic from exterminating all his enemies with a good conscience2 it would merely encourage him to assert that what he was ruthlessly establishing was the absolute good4 ,doubtless such conscientious tyrants would be wretched themselves1 and compelled to make sacrifices which would cost them dear2 but that would only extend1 as it were1 the pernicious egoism of that part of their being which they had allowed to usurp a universal empire4 ,the twang of intolerance and of self-mutilation is not absent from the ethics of ,mr4 ,russell and ,mr4 ,moore1 even as it stands2 and one trembles to think what it may become in the mouths of their disciples4 ,intolerance itself is a form of egoism1 and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it4 ,i cannot help thinking that a consciousness of the relativity of values1 if it became prevalent1 would tend to render people more truly social than would a belief that things have intrinsic and unchangeable values1 no matter what the attitude of any one to them may be4 ,if we said that goods1 including the right distribution of goods1 are relative to specific natures1 moral warfare would continue1 but not with poisoned arrows4 ,our private sense of justice itself would be acknowledged to have but a relative authority1 and while we could not have a higher duty than to follow it1 we should seek to meet those whose aims were incompatible with it as we meet things physically inconvenient1 without insulting them as if they were morally vile or logically contemptible4 ,real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others4 ,beyond the pale of actual unanimity the only possible unselfishness is chivalry--a recognition of the inward right and justification of our enemies fighting against us4 ,this chivalry has long been practised in the battle-field without abolishing the causes of war2 and it might conceivably be extended to all the conflicts of men with one another1 and of the warring elements within each breast4 ,policy1 hypnotisation1 and even surgery may be practised without exorcisms or anathemas4 ,when a man has decided on a course of action1 it is a vain indulgence in expletives to declare that he is sure that course is absolutely right4 ,his moral dogma expresses its natural origin all the more clearly the more hotly it is proclaimed2 and ethical absolutism1 being a mental grimace of passion1 refutes what it says by what it is4 ,sweeter and more profound1 to my sense1 is the philosophy of ,homer1 whose every line seems to breathe the conviction that what is beautiful or precious has not thereby any right to existence2 nothing has such a right2 nor is it given us to condemn absolutely any force--god or man--that destroys what is beautiful or precious1 for it has doubtless something beautiful or precious of its own to achieve4 ,the consequences of a hypostasis of the good are no less interesting than its causes4 ,if the good were independent of nature1 it might still be conceived as relevant to nature1 by being its creator or mover2 but ,mr4 ,russell is not a theist after the manner of ,socrates2 his good is not a power4 ,nor would representing it to be such long help his case2 for an ideal hypostasised into a cause achieves only a mythical independence4 ,the least criticism discloses that it is natural laws1 zoological species1 and human ideals1 that have been projected into the empyrean2 and it is no marvel that the good should attract the world where the good1 by definition1 is whatever the world is aiming at4 ,the hypostasis accomplished by ,mr4 ,russell is more serious1 and therefore more paradoxical4 ,if ,i understand it1 it may be expressed as follows3 ,in the realm of eternal essences1 before anything exists1 there are certain essences that have this remarkable property1 that they ought to exist1 or at least that1 if anything exists1 it ought to conform to them4 ,what exists1 however1 is deaf to this moral emphasis in the eternal2 nature exists for no reason2 and1 indeed1 why should she have subordinated her own arbitrariness to a good that is no less arbitrary8 ,this good1 however1 is somehow good notwithstanding2 so that there is an abysmal wrong in its not being obeyed4 ,the world is1 in principle1 totally depraved2 but as the good is not a power1 there is no one to redeem the world4 ,the saints are those who1 imitating the impotent dogmatism on high1 and despising their sinful natural propensities1 keep asserting that certain things are in themselves good and others bad1 and declaring to be detestable any other saint who dogmatises differently4 ,in this system the ,calvinistic ,god has lost his creative and punitive functions1 but continues to decree groundlessly what is good and what evil1 and to love the one and hate the other with an infinite love or hatred4 ,meanwhile the reprobate need not fear hell in the next world1 but the elect are sure to find it here4 ,what shall we say of this strangely unreal and strangely personal religion8 ,is it a ghost of ,calvinism1 returned with none of its old force but with its old aspect of rigidity8 ,perhaps3 but then1 in losing its force1 in abandoning its myths1 and threats1 and rhetoric1 this religion has lost its deceptive sanctimony and hypocrisy2 and in retaining its rigidity it has kept what made it noble and pathetic2 for it is a clear dramatic expression of that human spirit--in this case a most pure and heroic spirit--which it strives so hard to dethrone4 ,after all1 the hypostasis of the good is only an unfortunate incident in a great accomplishment1 which is the discernment of the good4 ,i have dwelt chiefly on this incident1 because in academic circles it is the abuses incidental to true philosophy that create controversy and form schools4 ,artificial systems1 even when they prevail1 after a while fatigue their adherents1 without ever having convinced or refuted their opponents1 and they fade out of existence not by being refuted in their turn1 but simply by a tacit agreement to ignore their claims3 so that the true insight they were based on is too often buried under them4 ,the hypostasis of philosophical terms is an abuse incidental to the forthright1 unchecked use of the intellect2 it substitutes for things the limits and distinctions that divide them4 ,so physics is corrupted by logic2 but the logic that corrupts physics is perhaps correct1 and when it is moral dialectic1 it is more important than physics itself4 ,mr4 ,russell's ethics is ethics4 ,when we mortals have once assumed the moral attitude1 it is certain that an indefinable value accrues to some things as opposed to others1 that these things are many1 that combinations of them have values not belonging to their parts1 and that these valuable things are far more specific than abstract pleasure1 and far more diffused than one's personal life4 ,what a pity if this pure morality1 in detaching itself impetuously from the earth1 whose bright satellite it might be1 should fly into the abyss at a tangent1 and leave us as much in the dark as before6 ,v ,,shelley3 ,,or ,,the ,,poetic ,,value ,,of ,,revolutionary ,,principles ,it is possible to advocate anarchy in criticism as in politics1 and there is perhaps nothing coercive to urge against a man who maintains that any work of art is good enough1 intrinsically and incommensurably1 if it pleased anybody at any time for any reason4 ,in practice1 however1 the ideal of anarchy is unstable4 ,irrefutable by argument1 it is readily overcome by nature4 ,it melts away before the dogmatic operation of the anarchist's own will1 as soon as he allows himself the least creative endeavour4 ,in spite of the infinite variety of what is merely possible1 human nature and will have a somewhat definite constitution1 and only what is harmonious with their actual constitution can long maintain itself in the moral world4 ,hence it is a safe principle in the criticism of art that technical proficiency1 and brilliancy of fancy or execution1 cannot avail to establish a great reputation4 ,they may dazzle for a moment1 but they cannot absolve an artist from the need of having an important subject-matter and a sane humanity4 ,if this principle is accepted1 however1 it might seem that certain artists1 and perhaps the greatest1 might not fare well at our hands4 ,how would ,shelley1 for instance1 stand such a test8 ,every one knows the judgment passed on ,shelley by ,matthew ,arnold1 a critic who evidently relied on this principle1 even if he preferred to speak only in the name of his personal tact and literary experience4 ,shelley1 ,matthew ,arnold said1 was a beautiful and ineffectual angel1 beating his wings in a luminous void in vain4 ,in consequence he declared that ,shelley was not a classic1 especially as his private circle had had an unsavoury morality1 to be expressed only by the ,french word sale1 and as moreover ,shelley himself occasionally showed a distressing want of the sense of humour1 which could only be called bte4 ,these strictures1 if a bit incoherent1 are separately remarkably just4 ,they unmask essential weaknesses not only in ,shelley1 but in all revolutionary people4 ,the life of reason is a heritage and exists only through tradition4 ,half of it is an art1 an adjustment to an alien reality1 which only a long experience can teach3 and even the other half1 the inward inspiration and ideal of reason1 must be also a common inheritance in the race1 if people are to work together or so much as to understand one another4 ,now the misfortune of revolutionists is that they are disinherited1 and their folly is that they wish to be disinherited even more than they are4 ,hence1 in the midst of their passionate and even heroic idealisms1 there is commonly a strange poverty in their minds1 many an ugly turn in their lives1 and an ostentatious vileness in their manners4 ,they wish to be the leaders of mankind1 but they are wretched representatives of humanity4 ,in the concert of nature it is hard to keep in tune with oneself if one is out of tune with everything4 ,we should not then be yielding to any private bias1 but simply noting the conditions under which art may exist and may be appreciated1 if we accepted the classical principle of criticism and asserted that substance1 sanity1 and even a sort of pervasive wisdom are requisite for supreme works of art4 ,on the other hand--who can honestly doubt it8--the rebels and individualists are the men of direct insight and vital hope4 ,the poetry of ,shelley in particular is typically poetical4 ,it is poetry divinely inspired2 and ,shelley himself is perhaps no more ineffectual or more lacking in humour than an angel properly should be4 ,nor is his greatness all a matter of sthetic abstraction and wild music4 ,it is a fact of capital importance in the development of human genius that the great revolution in ,christendom against ,christianity1 a revolution that began with the ,renaissance and is not yet completed1 should have found angels to herald it1 no less than that other revolution did which began at ,bethlehem2 and that among these new angels there should have been one so winsome1 pure1 and rapturous as ,shelley4 ,how shall we reconcile these conflicting impressions8 ,shall we force ourselves to call the genius of ,shelley second rate because it was revolutionary1 and shall we attribute all enthusiasm for him to literary affectation or political prejudice8 ,or shall we rather abandon the orthodox principle that an important subject-matter and a sane spirit are essential to great works8 ,or shall we look for a different issue out of our perplexity1 by asking if the analysis and comprehension are not perhaps at fault which declare that these things are not present in ,shelley's poetry8 ,this last is the direction in which ,i conceive the truth to lie4 ,a little consideration will show us that ,shelley really has a great subject-matter--what ought to be2 and that he has a real humanity--though it is humanity in the seed1 humanity in its internal principle1 rather than in those deformed expressions of it which can flourish in the world4 ,shelley seems hardly to have been brought up2 he grew up in the nursery among his young sisters1 at school among the rude boys1 without any affectionate guidance1 without imbibing any religious or social tradition4 ,if he received any formal training or correction1 he instantly rejected it inwardly1 set it down as unjust and absurd1 and turned instead to sailing paper boats1 to reading romances or to writing them1 or to watching with delight the magic of chemical experiments4 ,thus the mind of ,shelley was thoroughly disinherited2 but not1 like the minds of most revolutionists1 by accident and through the niggardliness of fortune1 for few revolutionists would be such if they were heirs to a baronetcy4 ,shelley's mind disinherited itself out of allegiance to itself1 because it was too sensitive and too highly endowed for the world into which it had descended4 ,it rejected ordinary education1 because it was incapable of assimilating it4 ,education is suitable to those few animals whose faculties are not completely innate1 animals that1 like most men1 may be perfected by experience because they are born with various imperfect alternative instincts rooted equally in their system4 ,but most animals1 and a few men1 are not of this sort4 ,they cannot be educated1 because they are born complete4 ,full of predeterminate intuitions1 they are without intelligence1 which is the power of seeing things as they are4 ,endowed with a specific1 unshakable faith1 they are impervious to experience3 and as they burst the womb they bring ready-made with them their final and only possible system of philosophy4 ,shelley was one of these spokesmen of the a priori1 one of these nurslings of the womb1 like a bee or a butterfly2 a dogmatic1 inspired1 perfect1 and incorrigible creature4 ,he was innocent and cruel1 swift and wayward1 illuminated and blind4 ,being a finished child of nature1 not a joint product1 like most of us1 of nature1 history1 and society1 he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense1 but was obtuse to the droll1 miscellaneous lessons of fortune4 ,the cannonade of hard1 inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little wisdom we have left ,shelley dazed and sore1 perhaps1 but uninstructed4 ,when the storm was over1 he began chirping again his own natural note4 ,if the world continued to confine and obsess him1 he hated the world1 and gasped for freedom4 ,being incapable of understanding reality1 he revelled in creating world after world in idea4 ,for his nature was not merely predetermined and obdurate1 it was also sensitive1 vehement1 and fertile4 ,with the soul of a bird1 he had the senses of a man-child2 the instinct of the butterfly was united in him with the instinct of the brooding fowl and of the pelican4 ,this winged spirit had a heart4 ,it darted swiftly on its appointed course1 neither expecting nor understanding opposition2 but when it met opposition it did not merely flutter and collapse2 it was inwardly outraged1 it protested proudly against fate1 it cried aloud for liberty and justice4 ,the consequence was that ,shelley1 having a nature preformed but at the same time tender1 passionate1 and moral1 was exposed to early and continual suffering4 ,when the world violated the ideal which lay so clear before his eyes1 that violation filled him with horror4 ,if to the irrepressible gushing of life from within we add the suffering and horror that continually checked it1 we shall have in hand1 ,i think1 the chief elements of his genius4 ,love of the ideal1 passionate apprehension of what ought to be1 has for its necessary counterpart condemnation of the actual1 wherever the actual does not conform to that ideal4 ,the spontaneous soul1 the soul of the child1 is naturally revolutionary2 and when the revolution fails1 the soul of the youth becomes naturally pessimistic4 ,all moral life and moral judgment have this deeply romantic character2 they venture to assert a private ideal in the face of an intractable and omnipotent world4 ,some moralists begin by feeling the attraction of untasted and ideal perfection4 ,these1 like ,plato1 excel in elevation1 and they are apt to despise rather than to reform the world4 ,other moralists begin by a revolt against the actual1 at some point where they find the actual particularly galling4 ,these excel in sincerity2 their purblind conscience is urgent1 and they are reformers in intent and sometimes even in action4 ,but the ideals they frame are fragmentary and shallow1 often mere provisional vague watchwords1 like liberty1 equality1 and fraternity2 they possess no positive visions or plans for moral life as a whole1 like ,plato's ,republic4 ,the ,utopian or visionary moralists are often rather dazed by this wicked world2 being well-intentioned but impotent1 they often take comfort in fancying that the ideal they pine for is already actually embodied on earth1 or is about to be embodied on earth in a decade or two1 or at least is embodied eternally in a sphere immediately above the earth1 to which we shall presently climb1 and be happy for ever4 ,lovers of the ideal who thus hastily believe in its reality are called idealists1 and ,shelley was an idealist in almost every sense of that hard-used word4 ,he early became an idealist after ,berkeley's fashion1 in that he discredited the existence of matter and embraced a psychological or 7as it was called7 intellectual system of the universe4 ,in his drama ,hellas he puts this view with evident approval into the mouth of ,ahasuerus3 ,this whole ,of suns and worlds and men and beasts and flowers1 ,with all the silent or tempestuous workings ,by which they have been1 are1 or cease to be1 ,is but a vision2--all that it inherits ,are motes of a sick eye1 bubbles and dreams4 ,thought is its cradle and its grave2 nor less ,the future and the past are idle shadows ,of thought's eternal flight--they have no being3 ,nought is but that which feels itself to be4 ,but ,shelley was even more deeply and constantly an idealist after the manner of ,plato2 for he regarded the good as a magnet 7inexplicably not working for the moment7 that draws all life and motion after it2 and he looked on the types and ideals of things as on eternal realities that subsist1 beautiful and untarnished1 when the glimmerings that reveal them to our senses have died away4 ,from the infinite potentialities of beauty in the abstract1 articulate mind draws certain bright forms--the ,platonic ideas--the gathered rays which are reality1 as ,shelley called them3 and it is the light of these ideals cast on objects of sense that lends to these objects some degree of reality and value1 making out of them lovely apparitions1 dim at first1 then radiant 444 the progeny immortal of painting1 sculpture1 and rapt poesy4 ,the only kind of idealism that ,shelley had nothing to do with is the kind that prevails in some universities1 that ,hegelian idealism which teaches that perfect good is a vicious abstraction1 and maintains that all the evil that has been1 is1 and ever shall be is indispensable to make the universe as good as it possibly could be4 ,in this form1 idealism is simply contempt for all ideals1 and a hearty adoration of things as they are2 and as such it appeals mightily to the powers that be1 in church and in state2 but in that capacity it would have been as hateful to ,shelley as the powers that be always were1 and as the philosophy was that flattered them4 ,for his moral feeling was based on suffering and horror at what is actual1 no less than on love of a visioned good4 ,his conscience was1 to a most unusual degree1 at once elevated and sincere4 ,it was inspired in equal measure by prophecy and by indignation4 ,he was carried away in turn by enthusiasm for what his ethereal and fertile fancy pictured as possible1 and by detestation of the reality forced upon him instead4 ,hence that extraordinary moral fervour which is the soul of his poetry4 ,his imagination is no playful undirected kaleidoscope2 the images1 often so tenuous and metaphysical1 that crowd upon him1 are all sparks thrown off at white heat1 embodiments of a fervent1 definite1 unswerving inspiration4 ,if we think that the ,cloud or the ,west ,wind or the ,witch of the ,atlas are mere fireworks1 poetic dust1 a sort of bataille des fleurs in which we are pelted by a shower of images--we have not understood the passion that overflows in them1 as any long-nursed passion may1 in any of us1 suddenly overflow in an unwonted profusion of words4 ,this is a point at which ,francis ,thompson's understanding of ,shelley1 generally so perfect1 seems to me to go astray4 ,the universe1 ,thompson tells us1 was ,shelley's box of toys4 ,he gets between the feet of the horses of the sun4 ,he stands in the lap of patient ,nature1 and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions1 to see how she will look nicest in his song4 ,this last is not1 ,i think1 ,shelley's motive2 it is not the truth about the spring of his genius4 ,he undoubtedly shatters the world to bits1 but only to build it nearer to the heart's desire1 only to make out of its coloured fragments some more ,elysian home for love1 or some more dazzling symbol for that infinite beauty which is the need--the profound1 aching1 imperative need--of the human soul4 ,this recreative impulse of the poet's is not wilful1 as ,thompson calls it3 it is moral4 ,like the ,sensitive ,plant ,it loves even like ,love1--its deep heart is full2 ,it desires what it has not1 the beautiful4 ,the question for ,shelley is not at all what will look nicest in his song2 that is the preoccupation of mincing rhymesters1 whose well is soon dry4 ,shelley's abundance has a more generous source2 it springs from his passion for picturing what would be best1 not in the picture1 but in the world4 ,hence1 when he feels he has pictured or divined it1 he can exclaim3 ,the joy1 the triumph1 the delight1 the madness1 ,the boundless1 overflowing1 bursting gladness1 ,the vaporous exultation1 not to be confined6 ,ha6 ,ha6 the animation of delight1 ,which wraps me like an atmosphere of light1 ,and bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind6 ,to match this gift of bodying forth the ideal ,shelley had his vehement sense of wrong2 and as he seized upon and recast all images of beauty1 to make them more perfectly beautiful1 so1 to vent his infinite horror of evil1 he seized on all the worst images of crime or torture that he could find1 and recast them so as to reach the quintessence of distilled badness4 ,his pictures of war1 famine1 lust1 and cruelty are1 or seem1 forced1 although perhaps1 as in the ,cenci1 he might urge that he had historical warrant for his descriptions1 far better historical warrant1 no doubt1 than the beauty and happiness actually to be found in the world could give him for his ,skylark1 his ,epipsychidion1 or his ,prometheus4 ,but to exaggerate good is to vivify1 to enhance our sense of moral coherence and beautiful naturalness2 it is to render things more graceful1 intelligible1 and congenial to the spirit which they ought to serve4 ,to aggravate evil1 on the contrary1 is to darken counsel--already dark enough--and the want of truth to nature in this pessimistic sort of exaggeration is not compensated for by any advantage4 ,the violence and1 to my feeling1 the wantonness of these invectives--for they are invectives in intention and in effect--may have seemed justified to ,shelley by his political purpose4 ,he was thirsting to destroy kings1 priests1 soldiers1 parents1 and heads of colleges--to destroy them1 ,i mean1 in their official capacity2 and the exhibition of their vileness in all its diabolical purity might serve to remove scruples in the half-hearted4 ,we1 whom the nineteenth century has left so tender to historical rights and historical beauties1 may wonder that a poet1 an impassioned lover of the beautiful1 could have been such a leveller1 and such a vandal in his theoretical destructiveness4 ,but here the legacy of the eighteenth century was speaking in ,shelley1 as that of the nineteenth is speaking in us3 and moreover1 in his own person1 the very fertility of imagination could be a cause of blindness to the past and its contingent sanctities4 ,shelley was not left standing aghast1 like a ,philistine1 before the threatened destruction of all traditional order4 ,he had1 and knew he had1 the seeds of a far lovelier order in his own soul2 there he found the plan or memory of a perfect commonwealth of nature ready to rise at once on the ruins of this sad world1 and to make regret for it impossible4 ,so much for what ,i take to be the double foundation of ,shelley's genius1 a vivid love of ideal good on the one hand1 and on the other1 what is complementary to that vivid love1 much suffering and horror at the touch of actual evils4 ,on this double foundation he based an opinion which had the greatest influence on his poetry1 not merely on the subject-matter of it1 but also on the exuberance and urgency of emotion which suffuses it4 ,this opinion was that all that caused suffering and horror in the world could be readily destroyed3 it was the belief in perfectibility4 ,an animal that has rigid instincts and an a priori mind is probably very imperfectly adapted to the world he comes into3 his organs cannot be moulded by experience and use2 unless they are fitted by some miraculous pre-established harmony1 or by natural selection1 to things as they are1 they will never be reconciled with them1 and an eternal war will ensue between what the animal needs1 loves1 and can understand and what the outer reality offers4 ,so long as such a creature lives--and his life will be difficult and short--events will continually disconcert and puzzle him2 everything will seem to him unaccountable1 inexplicable1 unnatural4 ,he will not be able to conceive the real order and connection of things sympathetically1 by assimilating his habits of thought to their habits of evolution4 ,his faculties being innate and unadaptable will not allow him to correct his presumptions and axioms2 he will never be able to make nature the standard of naturalness4 ,what contradicts his private impulses will seem to him to contradict reason1 beauty1 and necessity4 ,in this paradoxical situation he will probably take refuge in the conviction that what he finds to exist is an illusion1 or at least not a fair sample of reality4 ,being so perverse1 absurd1 and repugnant1 the given state of things must be1 he will say1 only accidental and temporary4 ,he will be sure that his own a priori imagination is the mirror of all the eternal proprieties1 and that as his mind can move only in one predetermined way1 things cannot be prevented from moving in that same way save by some strange violence done to their nature4 ,it would be easy1 therefore1 to set everything right again3 nay1 everything must be on the point of righting itself spontaneously4 ,wrong1 of its very essence1 must be in unstable equilibrium4 ,the conflict between what such a man feels ought to exist and what he finds actually existing must1 he will feel sure1 end by a speedy revolution in things1 and by the removal of all scandals2 that it should end by the speedy removal of his own person1 or by such a revolution in his demands as might reconcile him to existence1 will never occur to him2 or1 if the thought occurs to him1 it will seem too horrible to be true4 ,such a creature cannot adapt himself to things by education1 and consequently he cannot adapt things to himself by industry4 ,his choice lies absolutely between victory and martyrdom4 ,but at the very moment of martyrdom1 martyrs1 as is well known1 usually feel assured of victory4 ,the a priori spirit will therefore be always a prophet of victory1 so long as it subsists at all4 ,the vision of a better world at hand absorbed the ,israelites in exile1 ,st4 ,john the ,baptist in the desert1 and ,christ on the cross4 ,the martyred spirit always says to the world it leaves1 ,this day thou shall be with me in paradise4 ,in just this way1 ,shelley believed in perfectibility4 ,in his latest poems--in ,hellas1 in ,adonais--he was perhaps a little inclined to remove the scene of perfectibility to a metaphysical region1 as the ,christian church soon removed it to the other world4 ,indeed1 an earth really made perfect is hardly distinguishable from a posthumous heaven3 so profoundly must everything in it be changed1 and so angel-like must every one in it become4 ,shelley's earthly paradise1 as described in ,prometheus and in ,epipsychidion1 is too festival-like too much of a mere culmination1 not to be fugitive3 it cries aloud to be translated into a changeless and metaphysical heaven1 which to ,shelley's mind could be nothing but the realm of ,platonic ideas1 where life1 like a dome of many-coloured glass1 no longer stains the white radiance of eternity4 ,but the age had been an age of revolution and1 in spite of disappointments1 retained its faith in revolution2 and the young ,shelley was not satisfied with a paradise removed to the intangible realms of poetry or of religion2 he hoped1 like the old ,hebrews1 for a paradise on earth4 ,his notion was that eloquence could change the heart of man1 and that love1 kindled there by the force of reason and of example1 would transform society4 ,he believed1 ,mrs4 ,shelley tells us1 that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil1 and there would be none4 ,and she adds3 ,that man could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel evil from his own nature1 and from the greater part of creation1 was the cardinal point of his system4 ,this cosmic extension of the conversion of men reminds one of the cosmic extension of the ,fall conceived by ,st4 ,augustine2 and in the ,prometheus ,shelley has allowed his fancy1 half in symbol1 half in glorious physical hyperbole1 to carry the warm contagion of love into the very bowels of the earth1 and even the moon1 by reflection1 to catch the light of love1 and be alive again4 ,shelley1 we may safely say1 did not understand the real constitution of nature4 ,it was hidden from him by a cloud1 all woven of shifting rainbows and bright tears4 ,only his emotional haste made it possible for him to entertain such1 opinions as he did entertain2 or rather1 it was inevitable that the mechanism of nature1 as it is in its depths1 should remain in his pictures only the shadowiest of backgrounds4 ,his poetry is accordingly a part of the poetry of illusion2 the poetry of truth1 if we have the courage to hope for such a thing1 is reserved for far different and yet unborn poets4 ,but it is only fair to ,shelley to remember that the moral being of mankind is as yet in its childhood2 all poets play with images not understood2 they touch on emotions sharply1 at random1 as in a dream2 they suffer each successive vision1 each poignant sentiment1 to evaporate into nothing1 or to leave behind only a heart vaguely softened and fatigued1 a gentle languor1 or a tearful hope4 ,every modern school of poets1 once out of fashion1 proves itself to have been sadly romantic and sentimental4 ,none has done better than to spangle a confused sensuous pageant with some sparks of truth1 or to give it some symbolic relation to moral experience4 ,and this ,shelley has done as well as anybody3 all other poets also have been poets of illusion4 ,the distinction of ,shelley is that his illusions are so wonderfully fine1 subtle1 and palpitating2 that they betray passions and mental habits so singularly generous and pure4 ,and why8 ,because he did not believe in the necessity of what is vulgar1 and did not pay that demoralising respect to it1 under the title of fact or of custom1 which it exacts from most of us4 ,the past seemed to him no valid precedent1 the present no final instance4 ,as he believed in the imminence of an overturn that should make all things new1 he was not checked by any divided allegiance1 by any sense that he was straying into the vapid or fanciful1 when he created what he justly calls ,beautiful idealisms of moral excellence4 ,that is what his poems are fundamentally--the ,skylark1 and the ,witch of the ,atlas1 and the ,sensitive ,plant no less than the grander pieces4 ,he infused into his gossamer world the strength of his heroic conscience4 ,he felt that what his imagination pictured was a true symbol of what human experience should and might pass into4 ,otherwise he would have been aware of playing with idle images2 his poetry would have been mere millinery and his politics mere business2 he would have been a worldling in art and in morals4 ,the clear fire1 the sustained breath1 the fervent accent of his poetry are due to his faith in his philosophy4 ,as ,mrs4 ,shelley expressed it1 he had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind1 and develop some high and abstruse truth4 ,had his poetry not dealt with what was supreme in his own eyes1 and dearest to his heart1 it could never have been the exquisite and entrancing poetry that it is4 ,it would not have had an adequate subject-matter1 as1 in spite of ,matthew ,arnold1 ,i think it had2 for nothing can be empty that contains such a soul4 ,an angel cannot be ineffectual if the standard of efficiency is moral2 he is what all other things bring about1 when they are effectual4 ,and a void that is alive with the beating of luminous wings1 and of a luminous heart1 is quite sufficiently peopled4 ,shelley's mind was angelic not merely in its purity and fervour1 but also in its moral authority1 in its prophetic strain4 ,what was conscience in his generation was life in him4 ,the mind of man is not merely a sensorium4 ,his intelligence is not merely an instrument for adaptation4 ,there is a germ within1 a nucleus of force and organisation1 which can be unfolded1 under favourable circumstances1 into a perfection inwardly determined4 ,man's constitution is a fountain from which to draw an infinity of gushing music1 not representing anything external1 yet not unmeaning on that account1 since it represents the capacities and passions latent in him from the beginning4 ,these potentialities1 however1 are no oracles of truth4 ,being innate they are arbitrary2 being a priori they are subjective2 but they are good principles for fiction1 for poetry1 for morals1 for religion4 ,they are principles for the true expression of man1 but not for the true description of the universe4 ,when they are taken for the latter1 fiction becomes deception1 poetry illusion1 morals fanaticism1 and religion bad science4 ,the orgy of delusion into which we are then plunged comes from supposing the a priori to be capable of controlling the actual1 and the innate to be a standard for the true4 ,that rich and definite endowment which might have made the distinction of the poet1 then makes the narrowness of the philosopher4 ,so ,shelley1 with a sort of tyranny of which he does not suspect the possible cruelty1 would impose his ideal of love and equality upon all creatures2 he would make enthusiasts of clowns and doves of vultures4 ,in him1 as in many people1 too intense a need of loving excludes the capacity for intelligent sympathy4 ,his feeling cannot accommodate itself to the inequalities of human nature3 his good will is a geyser1 and will not consent to grow cool1 and to water the flat and vulgar reaches of life4 ,shelley is blind to the excellences of what he despises1 as he is blind to the impossibility of realising what he wants4 ,his sympathies are narrow as his politics are visionary1 so that there is a certain moral incompetence in his moral intensity4 ,yet his abstraction from half of life1 or from nine-tenths of it1 was perhaps necessary if silence and space were to be won in his mind for its own upwelling1 ecstatic harmonies4 ,the world we have always with us1 but such spirits we have not always4 ,and the spirit has fire enough within to make a second stellar universe4 ,an instance of ,shelley's moral incompetence in moral intensity is to be found in his view of selfishness and evil4 ,from the point of view of pure spirit1 selfishness is quite absurd4 ,as a contemporary of ours has put it3 ,it is so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for ,a than a lesser good for ,b that it is hard to find any still more evident principle by which to prove this4 ,and if ,a happens to be some one else1 and ,b to be myself1 that cannot affect the question4 ,it is very foolish not to love your neighbour as yourself1 since his good is no less good than yours4 ,convince people of this--and who can resist such perfect logic8--and presto all property in things has disappeared1 all jealousy in love1 and all rivalry in honour4 ,how happy and secure every one will suddenly be1 and how much richer than in our mean1 blind1 competitive society6 ,the single word love--and we have just seen that love is a logical necessity--offers an easy and final solution to all moral and political problems4 ,shelley cannot imagine why this solution is not accepted1 and why logic does not produce love4 ,he can only wonder and grieve that it does not2 and since selfishness and ill-will seem to him quite gratuitous1 his ire is aroused2 he thinks them unnatural and monstrous4 ,he could not in the least understand evil1 even when he did it himself2 all villainy seemed to him wanton1 all lust frigid1 all hatred insane4 ,all was an abomination alike that was not the lovely spirit of love4 ,now this is a very unintelligent view of evil2 and if ,shelley had had time to read ,spinoza--an author with whom he would have found himself largely in sympathy--he might have learned that nothing is evil in itself1 and that what is evil in things is not due to any accident in creation1 nor to groundless malice in man4 ,evil is an inevitable aspect which things put on when they are struggling to preserve themselves in the same habitat1 in which there is not room or matter enough for them to prosper equally side by side4 ,under these circumstances the partial success of any creature--say1 the cancer-microbe--is an evil from the point of view of those other creatures--say1 men--to whom that success is a defeat4 ,shelley sometimes half perceived this inevitable tragedy4 ,so he says of the fair lady in the ,sensitive ,plant3 ,all killing insects and gnawing worms1 ,and things of obscene and unlovely forms1 ,she bore in a basket of ,indian woof1 ,into the rough woods far aloof-- ,in a basket of grasses and wild flowers full1 ,the freshest her gentle hands could pull ,for the poor banished insects1 whose intent1 ,although they did ill1 was innocent4 ,now it is all very well to ask cancer-microbes to be reasonable1 and go feed on oak-leaves1 if the oak-leaves do not object2 oak-leaves might be poison for them1 and in any case cancer-microbes cannot listen to reason2 they must go on propagating where they are1 unless they are quickly and utterly exterminated4 ,and fundamentally men are subject to the same fatality exactly2 they cannot listen to reason unless they are reasonable2 and it is unreasonable to expect that1 being animals1 they should be reasonable exclusively4 ,imagination is indeed at work in them1 and makes them capable of sacrificing themselves for any idea that appeals to them1 for their children1 perhaps1 or for their religion4 ,but they are not more capable of sacrificing themselves to what does not interest them than the cancer-microbes are of sacrificing themselves to men4 ,when ,shelley marvels at the perversity of the world1 he shows his ignorance of the world4 ,the illusion he suffers from is constitutional1 and such as larks and sensitive plants are possibly subject to in their way3 what he is marvelling at is really that anything should exist at all not a creature of his own moral disposition4 ,consequently the more he misunderstands the world and bids it change its nature1 the more he expresses his own nature3 so that all is not vanity in his illusion1 nor night in his blindness4 ,the poet sees most clearly what his ideal is2 he suffers no illusion in the expression of his own soul4 ,his political utopias1 his belief in the power of love1 and his cryingly subjective and inconstant way of judging people are one side of the picture2 the other is his lyrical power1 wealth1 and ecstasy4 ,if he had understood universal nature1 he would not have so glorified in his own4 ,and his own nature was worth glorifying2 it was1 ,i think1 the purest1 tenderest1 richest1 most rational nature ever poured forth in verse4 ,i have not read in any language such a full expression of the unadulterated instincts of the mind4 ,the world of ,shelley is that which the vital monad within many of us--,i will not say within all1 for who shall set bounds to the variations of human nature8--the world which the vital monad within many of us1 ,i say1 would gladly live in if it could have its way4 ,matthew ,arnold said that ,shelley was not quite sane2 and certainly he was not quite sane1 if we place sanity in justness of external perception1 adaptation to matter1 and docility to the facts2 but his lack of sanity was not due to any internal corruption2 it was not even an internal eccentricity4 ,he was like a child1 like a ,platonic soul just fallen from the ,empyrean2 and the child may be dazed1 credulous1 and fanciful2 but he is not mad4 ,on the contrary1 his earnest playfulness1 the constant distraction of his attention from observation to daydreams1 is the sign of an inward order and fecundity appropriate to his age4 ,if children did not see visions1 good men would have nothing to work for4 ,it is the soul of observant persons1 like ,matthew ,arnold1 that is apt not to be quite sane and whole inwardly1 but somewhat warped by familiarity with the perversities of real things1 and forced to misrepresent its true ideal1 like a tree bent by too prevalent a wind4 ,half the fertility of such a soul is lost1 and the other half is denaturalised4 ,no doubt1 in its sturdy deformity1 the practical mind is an instructive and not unpleasing object1 an excellent1 if somewhat pathetic1 expression of the climate in which it is condemned to grow1 and of its dogged clinging to an ingrate soil2 but it is a wretched expression of its innate possibilities4 ,shelley1 on the contrary1 is like a palm-tree in the desert or a star in the sky2 he is perfect in the midst of the void4 ,his obtuseness to things dynamic--to the material order--leaves his whole mind free to develop things sthetic after their own kind2 his abstraction permits purity1 his playfulness makes room for creative freedom1 his ethereal quality is only humanity having its way4 ,we perhaps do ourselves an injustice when we think that the heart of us is sordid2 what is sordid is rather the situation that cramps or stifles the heart4 ,in itself our generative principle is surely no less fertile and generous than the generative principle of crystals or flowers4 ,as it can produce a more complex body1 it is capable of producing a more complex mind2 and the beauty and life of this mind1 like that of the body1 is all predetermined in the seed4 ,circumstances may suffer the organism to develop1 or prevent it from doing so2 they cannot change its plan without making it ugly and deformed4 ,what ,shelley's mind draws from the outside1 its fund of images1 is like what the germ of the body draws from the outside1 its food--a mass of mere materials to transform and reorganise4 ,with these images ,shelley constructs a world determined by his native genius1 as the seed organises out of its food a predetermined system of nerves and muscles4 ,shelley's poetry shows us the perfect but naked body of human happiness4 ,what clothes circumstances may compel most of us to add may be a necessary concession to climate1 to custom1 or to shame2 they can hardly add a new vitality or any beauty comparable to that which they hide4 ,when the soul1 as in ,shelley's case1 is all goodness1 and when the world seems all illegitimacy and obstruction1 we need not wonder that freedom should be regarded as a panacea4 ,even if freedom had not been the idol of ,shelley's times1 he would have made an idol of it for himself4 ,i never could discern in him1 says his friend ,hogg1 any more than two principles4 ,the first was a strong1 irrepressible love of liberty4444 ,the second was an equally ardent love of toleration 444 and 444 an intense abhorrence of persecution4 ,we all fancy nowadays that we believe in liberty and abhor persecution2 but the liberty we approve of is usually only a variation in social compulsions1 to make them less galling to our latest sentiments than the old compulsions would be if we retained them4 ,liberty of the press and liberty to vote do not greatly help us in living after our own mind1 which is1 ,i suppose1 the only positive sort of liberty4 ,from the point of view of a poet1 there can be little essential freedom so long as he is forbidden to live with the people he likes1 and compelled to live with the people he does not like4 ,this1 to ,shelley1 seemed the most galling of tyrannies2 and free love was1 to his feeling1 the essence and test of freedom4 ,love must be spontaneous to be a spiritual bond in the beginning and it must remain spontaneous if it is to remain spiritual4 ,to be bound by one's past is as great a tyranny to pure spirit as to be bound by the sin of ,adam1 or by the laws of ,artaxerxes2 and those of us who do not believe in the possibility of free love ought to declare frankly that we do not1 at bottom1 believe in the possibility of freedom4 ,i never was attached to that great sect ,whose doctrine is that each one should select1 ,out of the crowd1 a mistress or a friend ,and all the rest1 though fair and wise1 commend ,to cold oblivion2 though it is the code ,of modern morals1 and the beaten road ,which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread ,who travel to their home among the dead ,by the broad highway of the world1 and so ,with one chained friend1 perhaps a jealous foe1 ,the dreariest and the longest journey go4 ,true love in this differs from gold and clay1 ,that to divide is not to take away4 ,love is like understanding that grows bright ,gazing on many truths4444 ,narrow ,the heart that loves1 the brain that contemplates1 ,the life that wears1 the spirit that creates ,one object and one form1 and builds thereby ,a sepulchre for its eternity6 ,the difficulties in reducing this charming theory of love to practice are well exemplified in ,shelley's own life4 ,he ran away with his first wife not because she inspired any uncontrollable passion1 but because she declared she was a victim of domestic oppression and threw herself upon him for protection4 ,nevertheless1 when he discovered that his best friend was making love to her1 in spite of his free-love principles1 he was very seriously annoyed4 ,when he presently abandoned her1 feeling a spiritual affinity in another direction1 she drowned herself in the ,serpentine3 and his second wife needed all her natural sweetness and all her inherited philosophy to reconcile her to the waves of ,platonic enthusiasm for other ladies which periodically swept the too sensitive heart of her husband4 ,free love would not1 then1 secure freedom from complications2 it would not remove the present occasion for jealousy1 reproaches1 tragedies1 and the dragging of a lengthening chain4 ,freedom of spirit cannot be translated into freedom of action2 you may amend laws1 and customs1 and social entanglements1 but you will still have them2 for this world is a lumbering mechanism and not1 like love1 a plastic dream4 ,wisdom is very old and therefore often ironical1 and it has long taught that it is well for those who would live in the spirit to keep as clear as possible of the world3 and that marriage1 especially a free-love marriage1 is a snare for poets4 ,let them endure to love freely1 hopelessly1 and infinitely1 after the manner of ,plato and ,dante1 and even of ,goethe1 when ,goethe really loved3 that exquisite sacrifice will improve their verse1 and it will not kill them4 ,let them follow in the traces of ,shelley when he wrote in his youth3 ,i have been most of the night pacing a church-yard4 ,i must now engage in scenes of strong interest4444 ,i expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in poetry4444 ,i slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night1 but did not die1 ,happy man if he had been able to add1 ,and did not marry6 ,last among the elements of ,shelley's thought ,i may perhaps mention his atheism4 ,shelley called himself an atheist in his youth2 his biographers and critics usually say that he was1 or that he became1 a pantheist4 ,he was an atheist in the sense that he denied the orthodox conception of a deity who is a voluntary creator1 a legislator1 and a judge2 but his aversion to ,christianity was not founded on any sympathetic or imaginative knowledge of it2 and a man who preferred the ,paradiso of ,dante to almost any other poem1 and preferred it to the popular ,inferno itself1 could evidently be attracted by ,christian ideas and sentiment the moment they were presented to him as expressions of moral truth rather than as gratuitous dogmas4 ,a pantheist he was in the sense that he felt how fluid and vital this whole world is2 but he seems to have had no tendency to conceive any conscious plan or logical necessity connecting the different parts of the whole2 so that rather than a pantheist he might be called a panpsychist2 especially as he did not subordinate morally the individual to the cosmos4 ,he did not surrender the authority of moral ideals in the face of physical necessity1 which is properly the essence of pantheism4 ,he did the exact opposite2 so much so that the chief characteristic of his philosophy is its ,promethean spirit4 ,he maintained that the basis of moral authority was internal1 diffused among all individuals2 that it was the natural love of the beautiful and the good wherever it might spring1 and however fate might oppose it4 ,to suffer 444 ,to forgive 444 ,to defy ,power 444 ,to love and bear2 to hope1 till hope creates ,from its own wreck the thing it contemplates2 ,neither to change1 nor falter1 nor repent2 ,this 444 is to be ,good1 great and joyous1 beautiful and free4 ,shelley was also removed from any ordinary atheism by his truly speculative sense for eternity4 ,he was a thorough ,platonist ,all metaphysics perhaps is poetry1 but ,platonic metaphysics is good poetry1 and to this class ,shelley's belongs4 ,for instance3 ,the pure spirit shall flow ,back to the burning fountain whence it came1 ,a portion of the eternal1 which must glow ,through time and change1 unquenchably the same4 ,peace1 peace6 he is not dead1 he doth not sleep6 ,he hath awakened from the dream of life4 ',tis we who1 lost in stormy visions1 keep ,with phantoms an unprofitable strife4 ,he is made one with ,nature4 ,there is heard ,his voice in all her music1 from the moan ,of thunder1 to the song of night's sweet bird4 ,he is a portion of the loveliness ,which once he made more lovely4 ,the splendours of the firmament of time ,may be eclipsed1 but are extinguished not3 ,like stars to their appointed height they climb1 ,and death is a low mist which cannot blot ,the brightness it may veil4 ,when lofty thought ,lifts a young heart above its mortal lair1 444 the dead live there4 ,atheism or pantheism of this stamp cannot be taxed with being gross or materialistic2 the trouble is rather that it is too hazy in its sublimity4 ,the poet has not perceived the natural relation between facts and ideals so clearly or correctly as he has felt the moral relation between them4 ,but his allegiance to the intuition which defies1 for the sake of felt excellence1 every form of idolatry or cowardice wearing the mask of religion--this allegiance is itself the purest religion2 and it is capable of inspiring the sweetest and most absolute poetry4 ,in daring to lay bare the truths of fate1 the poet creates for himself the subtlest and most heroic harmonies2 and he is comforted for the illusions he has lost by being made incapable of desiring them4 ,we have seen that ,shelley1 being unteachable1 could never put together any just idea of the world3 he merely collected images and emotions1 and out of them made worlds of his own4 ,his poetry accordingly does not well express history1 nor human character1 nor the constitution of nature4 ,what he unrolls before us instead is1 in a sense1 fantastic2 it is a series of landscapes1 passions1 and cataclysms such as never were on earth1 and never will be4 ,if you are seriously interested only in what belongs to earth you will not be seriously interested in ,shelley4 ,literature1 according to ,matthew ,arnold1 should be criticism of life1 and ,shelley did not criticise life2 so that his poetry had no solidity4 ,but is life1 we may ask1 the same thing as the circumstances of life on earth8 ,is the spirit of life1 that marks and judges those circumstances1 itself nothing8 ,music is surely no description of the circumstances of life2 yet it is relevant to life unmistakably1 for it stimulates by means of a torrent of abstract movements and images the formal and emotional possibilities of living which lie in the spirit4 ,by so doing music becomes a part of life1 a congruous addition1 a parallel life1 as it were1 to the vulgar one4 ,i see no reason1 in the analogies of the natural world1 for supposing that the circumstances of human life are the only circumstances in which the spirit of life can disport itself4 ,even on this planet1 there are sea-animals and air-animals1 ephemeral beings and self-centred beings1 as well as persons who can grow as old as ,matthew ,arnold1 and be as fond as he was of classifying other people4 ,and beyond this planet1 and in the interstices of what our limited senses can perceive1 there are probably many forms of life not criticised in any of the books which ,matthew ,arnold said we should read in order to know the best that has been thought and said in the world4 ,the future1 too1 even among men1 may contain1 as ,shelley puts it1 many arts1 though unimagined1 yet to be4 ,the divination of poets cannot1 of course1 be expected to reveal any of these hidden regions as they actually exist or will exist2 but what would be the advantage of revealing them8 ,it could only be what the advantage of criticising human life would be also1 to improve subsequent life indirectly by turning it towards attainable goods1 and is it not as important a thing to improve life directly and in the present1 if one has the gift1 by enriching rather than criticising it8 ,besides1 there is need of fixing the ideal by which criticism is to be guided4 ,if you have no image of happiness or beauty or perfect goodness before you1 how are you to judge what portions of life are important1 and what rendering of them is appropriate8 ,being a singer inwardly inspired1 ,shelley could picture the ideal goals of life1 the ultimate joys of experience1 better than a discursive critic or observer could have done4 ,the circumstances of life are only the bases or instruments of life3 the fruition of life is not in retrospect1 not in description of the instruments1 but in expression of the spirit itself1 to which those instruments may prove useful2 as music is not a criticism of violins1 but a playing upon them4 ,this expression need not resemble its ground4 ,experience is diversified by colours that are not produced by colours1 sounds that are not conditioned by sounds1 names that are not symbols for other names1 fixed ideal objects that stand for ever-changing material processes4 ,the mind is fundamentally lyrical1 inventive1 redundant4 ,its visions are its own offspring1 hatched in the warmth of some favourable cosmic gale4 ,the ambient weather may vary1 and these visions be scattered2 but the ideal world they pictured may some day be revealed again to some other poet similarly inspired2 the possibility of restoring it1 or something like it1 is perpetual4 ,it is precisely because ,shelley's sense for things is so fluid1 so illusive1 that it opens to us emotionally what is a serious scientific probability2 namely1 that human life is not all life1 nor the landscape of earth the only admired landscape in the universe2 that the ancients who believed in gods and spirits were nearer the virtual truth 7however anthropomorphically they may have expressed themselves7 than any philosophy or religion that makes human affairs the centre and aim of the world4 ,such moral imagination is to be gained by sinking into oneself1 rather than by observing remote happenings1 because it is at its heart1 not at its fingertips1 that the human soul touches matter1 and is akin to whatever other centres of life may people the infinite4 ,for this reason the masters of spontaneity1 the prophets1 the inspired poets1 the saints1 the mystics1 the musicians are welcome and most appealing companions4 ,in their simplicity and abstraction from the world they come very near the heart4 ,they say little and help much4 ,they do not picture life1 but have life1 and give it4 ,so we may say1 ,i think1 of ,shelley's magic universe what he said of ,greece2 if it ,must be ,a wreck1 yet shall its fragments re-assemble1 ,and build themselves again impregnably ,in a diviner clime1 ,to ,amphionic music1 on some cape sublime ,which frowns above the idle foam of time4 ,frowns1 says ,shelley rhetorically1 as if he thought that something timeless1 something merely ideal1 could be formidable1 or could threaten existing things with any but an ideal defeat4 ,tremendous error6 ,eternal possibilities may indeed beckon2 they may attract those who instinctively pursue them as a star may guide those who wish to reach the place over which it happens to shine4 ,but an eternal possibility has no material power4 ,it is only one of an infinity of other things equally possible intrinsically1 yet most of them quite unrealisable in this world of blood and mire4 ,the realm of eternal essences rains down no ,jovian thunderbolts1 but only a ghostly ,uranian calm4 ,there is no frown there2 rather1 a passive and universal welcome to any who may have in them the will and the power to climb4 ,whether any one has the will depends on his material constitution1 and whether he has the power depends on the firm texture of that constitution and on circumstances happening to be favourable to its operation4 ,otherwise what the rebel or the visionary hails as his ideal will be no picture of his destiny or of that of the world4 ,it will be1 and will always remain1 merely a picture of his heart4 ,this picture1 indestructible in its ideal essence1 will mirror also the hearts of those who may share1 or may have shared1 the nature of the poet who drew it4 ,so purely ideal and so deeply human are the visions of ,shelley4 ,so truly does he deserve the epitaph which a clear-sighted friend wrote upon his tomb3 cor cordium1 the heart of hearts4 ,,vi ,,the ,,genteel ,,tradition ,,in ,,american ,,philosophy ,address delivered before the ,philosophical ,union of the ,university of ,california1 ,august #be1 #aiaa4 ,,ladies ,,and ,,gentlemen1--,the privilege of addressing you to-day is very welcome to me1 not merely for the honour of it1 which is great1 nor for the pleasures of travel1 which are many1 when it is ,california that one is visiting for the first time1 but also because there is something ,i have long wanted to say which this occasion seems particularly favourable for saying4 ,america is still a young country1 and this part of it is especially so2 and it would have been nothing extraordinary if1 in this young country1 material preoccupations had altogether absorbed people's minds1 and they had been too much engrossed in living to reflect upon life1 or to have any philosophy4 ,the opposite1 however1 is the case4 ,not only have you already found time to philosophise in ,california1 as your society proves1 but the eastern colonists from the very beginning were a sophisticated race4 ,as much as in clearing the land and fighting the ,indians they were occupied1 as they expressed it1 in wrestling with the ,lord4 ,the country was new1 but the race was tried1 chastened1 and full of solemn memories4 ,it was an old wine in new bottles2 and ,america did not have to wait for its present universities1 with their departments of academic philosophy1 in order to possess a living philosophy--to have a distinct vision of the universe and definite convictions about human destiny4 ,now this situation is a singular and remarkable one1 and has many consequences1 not all of which are equally fortunate4 ,america is a young country with an old mentality3 it has enjoyed the advantages of a child carefully brought up and thoroughly indoctrinated2 it has been a wise child4 ,but a wise child1 an old head on young shoulders1 always has a comic and an unpromising side4 ,the wisdom is a little thin and verbal1 not aware of its full meaning and grounds2 and physical and emotional growth may be stunted by it1 or even deranged4 ,or when the child is too vigorous for that1 he will develop a fresh mentality of his own1 out of his observations and actual instincts2 and this fresh mentality will interfere with the traditional mentality1 and tend to reduce it to something perfunctory1 conventional1 and perhaps secretly despised4 ,a philosophy is not genuine unless it inspires and expresses the life of those who cherish it4 ,i do not think the hereditary philosophy of ,america has done much to atrophy the natural activities of the inhabitants2 the wise child has not missed the joys of youth or of manhood2 but what has happened is that the hereditary philosophy has grown stale1 and that the academic philosophy afterwards developed has caught the stale odour from it4 ,america is not simply1 as ,i said a moment ago1 a young country with an old mentality3 it is a country with two mentalities1 one a survival of the beliefs and standards of the fathers1 the other an expression of the instincts1 practice1 and discoveries of the younger generations4 ,in all the higher things of the mind--in religion1 in literature1 in the moral emotions--it is the hereditary spirit that still prevails1 so much so that ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw finds that ,america is a hundred years behind the times4 ,the truth is that one-half of the ,american mind1 that not occupied intensely in practical affairs1 has remained1 ,i will not say high-and-dry1 but slightly becalmed2 it has floated gently in the back-water1 while1 alongside1 in invention and industry and social organisation1 the other half of the mind was leaping down a sort of ,niagara ,rapids4 ,this division may be found symbolised in ,american architecture3 a neat reproduction of the colonial mansion--with some modern comforts introduced surreptitiously--stands beside the sky-scraper4 ,the ,american ,will inhabits the sky-scraper2 the ,american ,intellect inhabits the colonial mansion4 ,the one is the sphere of the ,american man2 the other1 at least predominantly1 of the ,american woman4 ,the one is all aggressive enterprise2 the other is all genteel tradition4 ,now1 with your permission1 ,i should like to analyse more fully how this interesting situation has arisen1 how it is qualified1 and whither it tends4 ,and in the first place we should remember what1 precisely1 that philosophy was which the first settlers brought with them into the country4 ,in strictness there was more than one2 but we may confine our attention to what ,i will call ,calvinism1 since it is on this that the current academic philosophy has been grafted4 ,i do not mean exactly the ,calvinism of ,calvin1 or even of ,jonathan ,edwards2 for in their systems there was much that was not pure philosophy1 but rather faith in the externals and history of revelation4 ,jewish and ,christian revelation was interpreted by these men1 however1 in the spirit of a particular philosophy1 which might have arisen under any sky1 and been associated with any other religion as well as with ,protestant ,christianity4 ,in fact1 the philosophical principle of ,calvinism appears also in the ,koran1 in ,spinoza1 and in ,cardinal ,newman2 and persons with no very distinctive ,christian belief1 like ,carlyle or like ,professor ,royce1 may be nevertheless1 philosophically1 perfect ,calvinists4 ,calvinism1 taken in this sense1 is an expression of the agonised conscience4 ,it is a view of the world which an agonised conscience readily embraces1 if it takes itself seriously1 as1 being agonised1 of course it must4 ,calvinism1 essentially1 asserts three things3 that sin exists1 that sin is punished1 and that it is beautiful that sin should exist to be punished4 ,the heart of the ,calvinist is therefore divided between tragic concern at his own miserable condition1 and tragic exultation about the universe at large4 ,he oscillates between a profound abasement and a paradoxical elation of the spirit4 ,to be a ,calvinist philosophically is to feel a fierce pleasure in the existence of misery1 especially of one's own1 in that this misery seems to manifest the fact that the ,absolute is irresponsible or infinite or holy4 ,human nature1 it feels1 is totally depraved3 to have the instincts and motives that we necessarily have is a great scandal1 and we must suffer for it2 but that scandal is requisite1 since otherwise the serious importance of being as we ought to be would not have been vindicated4 ,to those of us who have not an agonised conscience this system may seem fantastic and even unintelligible2 yet it is logically and intently thought out from its emotional premises4 ,it can take permanent possession of a deep mind here and there1 and under certain conditions it can become epidemic4 ,imagine1 for instance1 a small nation with an intense vitality1 but on the verge of ruin1 ecstatic and distressful1 having a strict and minute code of laws1 that paints life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro1 all pure righteousness and black abominations1 and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps to infinity4 ,such a people were the ,jews after the exile1 and again the early ,protestants4 ,if such a people is philosophical at all1 it will not improbably be ,calvinistic4 ,even in the early ,american communities many of these conditions were fulfilled4 ,the nation was small and isolated2 it lived under pressure and constant trial2 it was acquainted with but a small range of goods and evils4 ,vigilance over conduct and an absolute demand for personal integrity were not merely traditional things1 but things that practical sages1 like ,franklin and ,washington1 recommended to their countrymen1 because they were virtues that justified themselves visibly by their fruits4 ,but soon these happy results themselves helped to relax the pressure of external circumstances1 and indirectly the pressure of the agonised conscience within4 ,the nation became numerous2 it ceased to be either ecstatic or distressful2 the high social morality which on the whole it preserved took another colour2 people remained honest and helpful out of good sense and good will rather than out of scrupulous adherence to any fixed principles4 ,they retained their instinct for order1 and often created order with surprising quickness2 but the sanctity of law1 to be obeyed for its own sake1 began to escape them2 it seemed too unpractical a notion1 and not quite serious4 ,in fact1 the second and native-born ,american mentality began to take shape4 ,the sense of sin totally evaporated4 ,nature1 in the words of ,emerson1 was all beauty and commodity2 and while operating on it laboriously1 and drawing quick returns1 the ,american began to drink in inspiration from it sthetically4 ,at the same time1 in so broad a continent1 he had elbow-room4 ,his neighbours helped more than they hindered him2 he wished their number to increase4 ,good will became the great ,american virtue2 and a passion arose for counting heads1 and square miles1 and cubic feet1 and minutes saved--as if there had been anything to save them for4 ,how strange to the ,american now that saying of ,jonathan ,edwards1 that men are naturally ,god's enemies6 ,yet that is an axiom to any intelligent ,calvinist1 though the words he uses may be different4 ,if you told the modern ,american that he is totally depraved1 he would think you were joking1 as he himself usually is4 ,he is convinced that he always has been1 and always will be1 victorious and blameless4 ,calvinism thus lost its basis in ,american life4 ,some emotional natures1 indeed1 reverted in their religious revivals or private searchings of heart to the sources of the tradition2 for any of the radical points of view in philosophy may cease to be prevalent1 but none can cease to be possible4 ,other natures1 more sensitive to the moral and literary influences of the world1 preferred to abandon parts of their philosophy1 hoping thus to reduce the distance which should separate the remainder from real life4 ,meantime1 if anybody arose with a special sensibility or a technical genius1 he was in great straits2 not being fed sufficiently by the world1 he was driven in upon his own resources4 ,the three ,american writers whose personal endowment was perhaps the finest--,poe1 ,hawthorne1 and ,emerson--had all a certain starved and abstract quality4 ,they could not retail the genteel tradition2 they were too keen1 too perceptive1 and too independent for that4 ,but life offered them little digestible material1 nor were they naturally voracious4 ,they were fastidious1 and under the circumstances they were starved4 ,emerson1 to be sure1 fed on books4 ,there was a great catholicity in his reading2 and he showed a fine tact in his comments1 and in his way of appropriating what he read4 ,but he read transcendentally1 not historically1 to learn what he himself felt1 not what others might have felt before him4 ,and to feed on books1 for a philosopher or a poet1 is still to starve4 ,books can help him to acquire form1 or to avoid pitfalls2 they cannot supply him with substance1 if he is to have any4 ,therefore the genius of ,poe and ,hawthorne1 and even of ,emerson1 was employed on a sort of inner play1 or digestion of vacancy4 ,it was a refined labour1 but it was in danger of being morbid1 or tinkling1 or self-indulgent4 ,it was a play of intra-mental rhymes4 ,their mind was like an old music-box1 full of tender echoes and quaint fancies4 ,these fancies expressed their personal genius sincerely1 as dreams may2 but they were arbitrary fancies in comparison with what a real observer would have said in the premises4 ,their manner1 in a word1 was subjective4 ,in their own persons they escaped the mediocrity of the genteel tradition1 but they supplied nothing to supplant it in other minds4 ,the churches1 likewise1 although they modified their spirit1 had no philosophy to offer save a new emphasis on parts of what ,calvinism contained4 ,the theology of ,calvin1 we must remember1 had much in it besides philosophical ,calvinism4 ,a ,christian tenderness1 and a hope of grace for the individual1 came to mitigate its sardonic optimism2 and it was these evangelical elements that the ,calvinistic churches now emphasised1 seldom and with blushes referring to hell-fire or infant damnation4 ,yet philosophic ,calvinism1 with a theory of life that would perfectly justify hell-fire and infant damnation if they happened to exist1 still dominates the traditional metaphysics4 ,it is an ingredient1 and the decisive ingredient1 in what calls itself idealism4 ,but in order to see just what part ,calvinism plays in current idealism1 it will be necessary to distinguish the other chief element in that complex system1 namely1 transcendentalism4 ,transcendentalism is the philosophy which the romantic era produced in ,germany1 and independently1 ,i believe1 in ,america also4 ,transcendentalism proper1 like romanticism1 is not any particular set of dogmas about what things exist2 it is not a system of the universe regarded as a fact1 or as a collection of facts4 ,it is a method1 a point of view1 from which any world1 no matter what it might contain1 could be approached by a self-conscious observer4 ,transcendentalism is systematic subjectivism4 ,it studies the perspectives of knowledge as they radiate from the self2 it is a plan of those avenues of inference by which our ideas of things must be reached1 if they are to afford any systematic or distant vistas4 ,in other words1 transcendentalism is the critical logic of science4 ,knowledge1 it says1 has a station1 as in a watch-tower2 it is always seated here and now1 in the self of the moment4 ,the past and the future1 things inferred and things conceived1 lie around it1 painted as upon a panorama4 ,they cannot be lighted up save by some centrifugal ray of attention and present interest1 by some active operation of the mind4 ,this is hardly the occasion for developing or explaining this delicate insight2 suffice it to say1 lest you should think later that ,i disparage transcendentalism1 that as a method ,i regard it as correct and1 when once suggested1 unforgettable4 ,i regard it as the chief contribution made in modern times to speculation4 ,but it is a method only1 an attitude we may always assume if we like and that will always be legitimate4 ,it is no answer1 and involves no particular answer1 to the question3 ,what exists2 in what order is what exists produced2 what is to exist in the future8 ,this question must be answered by observing the object1 and tracing humbly the movement of the object4 ,it cannot be answered at all by harping on the fact that this object1 if discovered1 must be discovered by somebody1 and by somebody who has an interest in discovering it4 ,yet the ,germans who first gained the full transcendental insight were romantic people2 they were more or less frankly poets2 they were colossal egotists1 and wished to make not only their own knowledge but the whole universe centre about themselves4 ,and full as they were of their romantic isolation and romantic liberty1 it occurred to them to imagine that all reality might be a transcendental self and a romantic dreamer like themselves2 nay1 that it might be just their own transcendental self and their own romantic dreams extended indefinitely4 ,transcendental logic1 the method of discovery for the mind1 was to become also the method of evolution in nature and history4 ,transcendental method1 so abused1 produced transcendental myth4 ,a conscientious critique of knowledge was turned into a sham system of nature4 ,we must therefore distinguish sharply the transcendental grammar of the intellect1 which is significant and potentially correct1 from the various transcendental systems of the universe1 which are chimeras4 ,in both its parts1 however1 transcendentalism had much to recommend it to ,american philosophers1 for the transcendental method appealed to the individualistic and revolutionary temper of their youth1 while transcendental myths enabled them to find a new status for their inherited theology1 and to give what parts of it they cared to preserve some semblance of philosophical backing4 ,this last was the use to which the transcendental method was put by ,kant himself1 who first brought it into vogue1 before the terrible weapon had got out of hand1 and become the instrument of pure romanticism4 ,kant came1 he himself said1 to remove knowledge in order to make room for faith1 which in his case meant faith in ,calvinism4 ,in other words1 he applied the transcendental method to matters of fact1 reducing them thereby to human ideas1 in order to give to the ,calvinistic postulates of conscience a metaphysical validity4 ,for ,kant had a genteel tradition of his own1 which he wished to remove to a place of safety1 feeling that the empirical world had become too hot for it2 and this place of safety was the region of transcendental myth4 ,i need hardly say how perfectly this expedient suited the needs of philosophers in ,america1 and it is no accident if the influence of ,kant soon became dominant here4 ,to embrace this philosophy was regarded as a sign of profound metaphysical insight1 although the most mediocre minds found no difficulty in embracing it4 ,in truth it was a sign of having been brought up in the genteel tradition1 of feeling it weak1 and of wishing to save it4 ,but the transcendental method1 in its way1 was also sympathetic to the ,american mind4 ,it embodied1 in a radical form1 the spirit of ,protestantism as distinguished from its inherited doctrines2 it was autonomous1 undismayed1 calmly revolutionary2 it felt that ,will was deeper than ,intellect2 it focussed everything here and now1 and asked all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self1 and to prove their value for this latest born moment4 ,these things are truly ,american2 they would be characteristic of any young society with a keen and discursive intelligence1 and they are strikingly exemplified in the thought and in the person of ,emerson4 ,they constitute what he called self-trust4 ,self-trust1 like other transcendental attitudes1 may be expressed in metaphysical fables4 ,the romantic spirit may imagine itself to be an absolute force1 evoking and moulding the plastic world to express its varying moods4 ,but for a pioneer who is actually a world-builder this metaphysical illusion has a partial warrant in historical fact2 far more warrant than it could boast of in the fixed and articulated society of ,europe1 among the moonstruck rebels and sulking poets of the romantic era4 ,emerson was a shrewd ,yankee1 by instinct on the winning side2 he was a cheery1 child-like soul1 impervious to the evidence of evil1 as of everything that it did not suit his transcendental individuality to appreciate or to notice4 ,more1 perhaps1 than anybody that has ever lived1 he practised the transcendental method in all its purity4 ,he had no system4 ,he opened his eyes on the world every morning with a fresh sincerity1 marking how things seemed to him then1 or what they suggested to his spontaneous fancy4 ,this fancy1 for being spontaneous1 was not always novel2 it was guided by the habits and training of his mind1 which were those of a preacher4 ,yet he never insisted on his notions so as to turn them into settled dogmas2 he felt in his bones that they were myths4 ,sometimes1 indeed1 the bad example of other transcendentalists1 less true than he to their method1 or the pressing questions of unintelligent people1 or the instinct we all have to think our ideas final1 led him to the very verge of system-making2 but he stopped short4 ,had he made a system out of his notion of compensation1 or the over-soul1 or spiritual laws1 the result would have been as thin and forced as it is in other transcendental systems4 ,but he coveted truth2 and he returned to experience1 to history1 to poetry1 to the natural science of his day1 for new starting-points and hints toward fresh transcendental musings4 ,to covet truth is a very distinguished passion4 ,every philosopher says he is pursuing the truth1 but this is seldom the case4 ,as ,mr4 ,bertrand ,russell has observed1 one reason why philosophers often fail to reach the truth is that often they do not desire to reach it4 ,those who are genuinely concerned in discovering what happens to be true are rather the men of science1 the naturalists1 the historians2 and ordinarily they discover it1 according to their lights4 ,the truths they find are never complete1 and are not always important2 but they are integral parts of the truth1 facts and circumstances that help to fill in the picture1 and that no later interpretation can invalidate or afford to contradict4 ,but professional philosophers are usually only apologists3 that is1 they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea4 ,like lawyers or detectives1 they study the case for which they are retained1 to see how much evidence or semblance of evidence they can gather for the defence1 and how much prejudice they can raise against the witnesses for the prosecution2 for they know they are defending prisoners suspected by the world1 and perhaps by their own good sense1 of falsification4 ,they do not covet truth1 but victory and the dispelling of their own doubts4 ,what they defend is some system1 that is1 some view about the totality of things1 of which men are actually ignorant4 ,no system would have ever been framed if people had been simply interested in knowing what is true1 whatever it may be4 ,what produces systems is the interest in maintaining against all comers that some favourite or inherited idea of ours is sufficient and right4 ,a system may contain an account of many things which1 in detail1 are true enough2 but as a system1 covering infinite possibilities that neither our experience nor our logic can prejudge1 it must be a work of imagination and a piece of human soliloquy4 ,it may be expressive of human experience1 it may be poetical2 but how should anyone who really coveted truth suppose that it was true8 ,emerson had no system2 and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence3 he was detached1 unworldly1 contemplative4 ,when he came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting1 or out of the rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room1 he heard ,nature whispering to him3 ,why so hot1 little sir8 ,no doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us1 as the sea is what rises in every little wave2 but it passes through us1 and cry out as we may1 it will move on4 ,our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves4 ,our dignity is not in what we do1 but in what we understand4 ,the whole world is doing things4 ,we are turning in that vortex2 yet within us is silent observation1 the speculative eye before which all passes1 which bridges the distances and compares the combatants4 ,on this side of his genius ,emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented nothing except intelligence itself4 ,there was another element in ,emerson1 curiously combined with transcendentalism1 namely1 his love and respect for ,nature4 ,nature1 for the transcendentalist1 is precious because it is his own work1 a mirror in which he looks at himself and says 7like a poet relishing his own verses71 ,what a genius ,i am6 ,who would have thought there was such stuff in me8 ,and the philosophical egotist finds in his doctrine a ready explanation of whatever beauty and commodity nature actually has4 ,no wonder1 he says to himself1 that nature is sympathetic1 since ,i made it4 ,and such a view1 one-sided and even fatuous as it may be1 undoubtedly sharpens the vision of a poet and a moralist to all that is inspiriting and symbolic in the natural world4 ,emerson was particularly ingenious and clear-sighted in feeling the spiritual uses of fellowship with the elements4 ,this is something in which all ,teutonic poetry is rich and which forms1 ,i think1 the most genuine and spontaneous part of modern taste1 and especially of ,american taste4 ,just as some people are naturally enthralled and refreshed by music1 so others are by landscape4 ,music and landscape make up the spiritual resources of those who cannot or dare not express their unfulfilled ideals in words4 ,serious poetry1 profound religion 7,calvinism1 for instance71 are the joys of an unhappiness that confesses itself2 but when a genteel tradition forbids people to confess that they are unhappy1 serious poetry and profound religion are closed to them by that2 and since human life1 in its depths1 cannot then express itself openly1 imagination is driven for comfort into abstract arts1 where human circumstances are lost sight of1 and human problems dissolve in a purer medium4 ,the pressure of care is thus relieved1 without its quietus being found in intelligence4 ,to understand oneself is the classic form of consolation2 to elude oneself is the romantic4 ,in the presence of music or landscape human experience eludes itself2 and thus romanticism is the bond between transcendental and naturalistic sentiment4 ,the winds and clouds come to minister to the solitary ego4 ,have there been1 we may ask1 any successful efforts to escape from the genteel tradition1 and to express something worth expressing behind its back8 ,this might well not have occurred as yet2 but ,america is so precocious1 it has been trained by the genteel tradition to be so wise for its years1 that some indications of a truly native philosophy and poetry are already to be found4 ,i might mention the humorists1 of whom you here in ,california have had your share4 ,the humorists1 however1 only half escape the genteel tradition2 their humour would lose its savour if they had wholly escaped it4 ,they point to what contradicts it in the facts2 but not in order to abandon the genteel tradition1 for they have nothing solid to put in its place4 ,when they point out how ill many facts fit into it1 they do not clearly conceive that this militates against the standard1 but think it a funny perversity in the facts4 ,of course1 did they earnestly respect the genteel tradition1 such an incongruity would seem to them sad1 rather than ludicrous4 ,perhaps the prevalence of humour in ,america1 in and out of season1 may be taken as one more evidence that the genteel tradition is present pervasively1 but everywhere weak4 ,similarly in ,italy1 during the ,renaissance1 the ,catholic tradition could not be banished from the intellect1 since there was nothing articulate to take its place2 yet its hold on the heart was singularly relaxed4 ,the consequence was that humorists could regale themselves with the foibles of monks and of cardinals1 with the credulity of fools1 and the bogus miracles of the saints2 not intending to deny the theory of the church1 but caring for it so little at heart that they could find it infinitely amusing that it should be contradicted in men's lives and that no harm should come of it4 ,so when ,mark ,twain says1 ,i was born of poor but dishonest parents1 the humour depends on the parody of the genteel ,anglo-,saxon convention that it is disreputable to be poor2 but to hint at the hollowness of it would not be amusing if it did not remain at bottom one's habitual conviction4 ,the one ,american writer who has left the genteel tradition entirely behind is perhaps ,walt ,whitman4 ,for this reason educated ,americans find him rather an unpalatable person1 who they sincerely protest ought not to be taken for a representative of their culture2 and he certainly should not1 because their culture is so genteel and traditional4 ,but the foreigner may sometimes think otherwise1 since he is looking for what may have arisen in ,america to express1 not the polite and conventional ,american mind1 but the spirit and the inarticulate principles that animate the community1 on which its own genteel mentality seems to sit rather lightly4 ,when the foreigner opens the pages of ,walt ,whitman1 he thinks that he has come at last upon something representative and original4 ,in ,walt ,whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals4 ,the various sights1 moods1 and emotions are given each one vote2 they are declared to be all free and equal1 and the innumerable commonplace moments of life are suffered to speak like the others4 ,those moments formerly reputed great are not excluded1 but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions--plain foot-soldiers and servants of the hour4 ,nor does the refusal to discriminate stop there2 we must carry our principle further down1 to the animals1 to inanimate nature1 to the cosmos as a whole4 ,whitman became a pantheist2 but his pantheism1 unlike that of the ,stoics and of ,spinoza1 was unintellectual1 lazy1 and self-indulgent2 for he simply felt jovially that everything real was good enough1 and that he was good enough himself4 ,in him ,bohemia rebelled against the genteel tradition2 but the reconstruction that alone can justify revolution did not ensue4 ,his attitude1 in principle1 was utterly disintegrating2 his poetic genius fell back to the lowest level1 perhaps1 to which it is possible for poetic genius to fall4 ,he reduced his imagination to a passive sensorium for the registering of impressions4 ,no element of construction remained in it1 and therefore no element of penetration4 ,but his scope was wide2 and his lazy1 desultory apprehension was poetical4 ,his work1 for the very reason that it is so rudimentary1 contains a beginning1 or rather many beginnings1 that might possibly grow into a noble moral imagination1 a worthy filling for the human mind4 ,an ,american in the nineteenth century who completely disregarded the genteel tradition could hardly have done more4 ,but there is another distinguished man1 lately lost to this country1 who has given some rude shocks to this tradition and who1 as much as ,whitman1 may be regarded as representing the genuine1 the long silent ,american mind--,i mean ,william ,james4 ,he and his brother ,henry were as tightly swaddled in the genteel tradition as any infant geniuses could be1 for they were born before #ahej1 and in a ,swedenborgian household4 ,yet they burst those bands almost entirely4 ,the ways in which the two brothers freed themselves1 however1 are interestingly different4 ,mr4 ,henry ,james has done it by adopting the point of view of the outer world1 and by turning the genteel ,american tradition1 as he turns everything else1 into a subject-matter for analysis4 ,for him it is a curious habit of mind1 intimately comprehended1 to be compared with other habits of mind1 also well known to him4 ,thus he has overcome the genteel tradition in the classic way1 by understanding it4 ,with ,william ,james too this infusion of worldly insight and ,european sympathies was a potent influence1 especially in his earlier days2 but the chief source of his liberty was another4 ,it was his personal spontaneity1 similar to that of ,emerson1 and his personal vitality1 similar to that of nobody else4 ,convictions and ideas came to him1 so to speak1 from the subsoil4 ,he had a prophetic sympathy with the dawning sentiments of the age1 with the moods of the dumb majority4 ,his scattered words caught fire in many parts of the world4 ,his way of thinking and feeling represented the true ,america1 and represented in a measure the whole ultra-modern1 radical world4 ,thus he eluded the genteel tradition in the romantic way1 by continuing it into its opposite4 ,the romantic mind1 glorified in ,hegel's dialectic 7which is not dialectic at all1 but a sort of tragi-comic history of experience71 is always rendering its thoughts unrecognisable through the infusion of new insights1 and through the insensible transformation of the moral feeling that accompanies them1 till at last it has completely reversed its old judgments under cover of expanding them4 ,thus the genteel tradition was led a merry dance when it fell again into the hands of a genuine and vigorous romanticist like ,william ,james4 ,he restored their revolutionary force to its neutralised elements1 by picking them out afresh1 and emphasising them separately1 according to his personal predilections4 ,for one thing1 ,william ,james kept his mind and heart wide open to all that might seem1 to polite minds1 odd1 personal1 or visionary in religion and philosophy4 ,he gave a sincerely respectful hearing to sentimentalists1 mystics1 spiritualists1 wizards1 cranks1 quacks1 and impostors--for it is hard to draw the line1 and ,james was not willing to draw it prematurely4 ,he thought1 with his usual modesty1 that any of these might have something to teach him4 ,the lame1 the halt1 the blind1 and those speaking with tongues could come to him with the certainty of finding sympathy2 and if they were not healed1 at least they were comforted1 that a famous professor should take them so seriously2 and they began to feel that after all to have only one leg1 or one hand1 or one eye1 or to have three1 might be in itself no less beauteous than to have just two1 like the stolid majority4 ,thus ,william ,james became the friend and helper of those groping1 nervous1 half-educated1 spiritually disinherited1 passionately hungry individuals of which ,america is full4 ,he became1 at the same time1 their spokesman and representative before the learned world2 and he made it a chief part of his vocation to recast what the learned world has to offer1 so that as far as possible it might serve the needs and interests of these people4 ,yet the normal practical masculine ,american1 too1 had a friend in ,william ,james4 ,there is a feeling abroad now1 to which biology and ,darwinism lend some colour1 that theory is simply an instrument for practice1 and intelligence merely a help toward material survival4 ,bears1 it is said1 have fur and claws1 but poor naked man is condemned to be intelligent1 or he will perish4 ,this feeling ,william ,james embodied in that theory of thought and of truth which he called pragmatism4 ,intelligence1 he thought1 is no miraculous1 idle faculty1 by which we mirror passively any or everything that happens to be true1 reduplicating the real world to no purpose4 ,intelligence has its roots and its issue in the context of events2 it is one kind of practical adjustment1 an experimental act1 a form of vital tension4 ,it does not essentially serve to picture other parts of reality1 but to connect them4 ,this view was not worked out by ,william ,james in its psychological and historical details2 unfortunately he developed it chiefly in controversy against its opposite1 which he called intellectualism1 and which he hated with all the hatred of which his kind heart was capable4 ,intellectualism1 as he conceived it1 was pure pedantry2 it impoverished and verbalised everything1 and tied up nature in red tape4 ,ideas and rules that may have been occasionally useful it put in the place of the full-blooded irrational movement of life which had called them into being2 and these abstractions1 so soon obsolete1 it strove to fix and to worship for ever4 ,thus all creeds and theories and all formal precepts sink in the estimation of the pragmatist to a local and temporary grammar of action2 a grammar that must be changed slowly by time1 and may be changed quickly by genius4 ,to know things as a whole1 or as they are eternally1 if there is anything eternal in them1 is not only beyond our powers1 but would prove worthless1 and perhaps even fatal to our lives4 ,ideas are not mirrors1 they are weapons2 their function is to prepare us to meet events1 as future experience may unroll them4 ,those ideas that disappoint us are false ideas2 those to which events are true are true themselves4 ,this may seem a very utilitarian view of the mind2 and ,i confess ,i think it a partial one1 since the logical force of beliefs and ideas1 their truth or falsehood as assertions1 has been overlooked altogether1 or confused with the vital force of the material processes which these ideas express4 ,it is an external view only1 which marks the place and conditions of the mind in nature1 but neglects its specific essence2 as if a jewel were defined as a round hole in a ring4 ,nevertheless1 the more materialistic the pragmatist's theory of the mind is1 the more vitalistic his theory of nature will have to become4 ,if the intellect is a device produced in organic bodies to expedite their processes1 these organic bodies must have interests and a chosen direction in their life2 otherwise their life could not be expedited1 nor could anything be useful to it4 ,in other words--and this is a third point at which the philosophy of ,william ,james has played havoc with the genteel tradition1 while ostensibly defending it--nature must be conceived anthropomorphically and in psychological terms4 ,its purposes are not to be static harmonies1 self-unfolding destinies1 the logic of spirit1 the spirit of logic1 or any other formal method and abstract law2 its purposes are to be concrete endeavours1 finite efforts of souls living in an environment which they transform and by which they1 too1 are affected4 ,a spirit1 the divine spirit as much as the human1 as this new animism conceives it1 is a romantic adventurer4 ,its future is undetermined4 ,its scope1 its duration1 and the quality of its life are all contingent4 ,this spirit grows2 it buds and sends forth feelers1 sounding the depths around for such other centres of force or life as may exist there4 ,it has a vital momentum1 but no predetermined goal4 ,it uses its past as a stepping-stone1 or rather as a diving-board1 but has an absolutely fresh will at each moment to plunge this way or that into the unknown4 ,the universe is an experiment2 it is unfinished4 ,it has no ultimate or total nature1 because it has no end4 ,it embodies no formula or statable law2 any formula is at best a poor abstraction1 describing what1 in some region and for some time1 may be the most striking characteristic of existence2 the law is a description a posteriori of the habit things have chosen to acquire1 and which they may possibly throw off altogether4 ,what a day may bring forth is uncertain2 uncertain even to ,god4 ,omniscience is impossible2 time is real2 what had been omniscience hitherto might discover something more to-day4 ,there shall be news1 ,william ,james was fond of saying with rapture1 quoting from the unpublished poem of an obscure friend1 there shall be news in heaven6 ,there is almost certainly1 he thought1 a ,god now2 there may be several gods1 who might exist together1 or one after the other4 ,we might1 by our conspiring sympathies1 help to make a new one4 ,much in us is doubtless immortal2 we survive death for some time in a recognisable form2 but what our career and transformations may be in the sequel we cannot tell1 although we may help to determine them by our daily choices4 ,observation must be continual if our ideas are to remain true4 ,eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge2 perpetual hazard1 perpetual experiment keep quick the edge of life4 ,this is1 so far as ,i know1 a new philosophical vista2 it is a conception never before presented1 although implied1 perhaps1 in various quarters1 as in ,norse and even ,greek mythology4 ,it is a vision radically empirical and radically romantic2 and as ,william ,james himself used to say1 the visions and not the arguments of a philosopher are the interesting and influential things about him4 ,william ,james1 rather too generously1 attributed this vision to ,m4 ,bergson1 and regarded him in consequence as a philosopher of the first rank1 whose thought was to be one of the turning-points in history4 ,m4 ,bergson had killed intellectualism4 ,it was his book on creative evolution1 said ,james with humorous emphasis1 that had come at last to craser l'infme4 ,we may suspect1 notwithstanding1 that intellectualism1 infamous and crushed1 will survive the blow2 and if the author of the ,book of ,ecclesiastes were now alive1 and heard that there shall be news in heaven1 he would doubtless say that there may possibly be news there1 but that under the sun there is nothing new--not even radical empiricism or radical romanticism1 which from the beginning of the world has been the philosophy of those who as yet had had little experience2 for to the blinking little child it is not merely something in the world that is new daily1 but everything is new all day4 ,i am not concerned with the rights and wrongs of that controversy2 my point is only that ,william ,james1 in this genial evolutionary view of the world1 has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition4 ,what6 ,the world a gradual improvisation8 ,creation unpremeditated8 ,god a sort of young poet or struggling artist8 ,william ,james is an advocate of theism2 pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion2 that is excellent4 ,but is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it asks for8 ,this empirical naturalistic ,god is too crude and positive a force2 he will work miracles1 he will answer prayers1 he may inhabit distinct places1 and have distinct conditions under which alone he can operate2 he is a neighbouring being1 whom we can act upon1 and rely upon for specific aids1 as upon a personal friend1 or a physician1 or an insurance company4 ,how disconcerting6 ,is not this new theology a little like superstition8 ,and yet how interesting1 how exciting1 if it should happen to be true6 ,i am far from wishing to suggest that such a view seems to me more probable than conventional idealism or than ,christian orthodoxy4 ,all three are in the region of dramatic system-making and myth to which probabilities are irrelevant4 ,if one man says the moon is sister to the sun1 and another that she is his daughter1 the question is not which notion is more probable1 but whether either of them is at all expressive4 ,the so-called evidences are devised afterwards1 when faith and imagination have prejudged the issue4 ,the force of ,william ,james's new theology1 or romantic cosmology1 lies only in this3 that it has broken the spell of the genteel tradition1 and enticed faith in a new direction1 which on second thoughts may prove no less alluring than the old4 ,the important fact is not that the new fancy might possibly be true--who shall know that8--but that it has entered the heart of a leading ,american to conceive and to cherish it4 ,the genteel tradition cannot be dislodged by these insurrections2 there are circles to which it is still congenial1 and where it will be preserved4 ,but it has been challenged and 7what is perhaps more insidious7 it has been discovered4 ,no one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it4 ,no one need be afraid1 for instance1 that his fate is sealed because some young prig may call him a dualist2 the pint would call the quart a dualist1 if you tried to pour the quart into him4 ,we need not be afraid of being less profound1 for being direct and sincere4 ,the intellectual world may be traversed in many directions2 the whole has not been surveyed2 there is a great career in it open to talent4 ,that is a sort of knell1 that tolls the passing of the genteel tradition4 ,something else is now in the field2 something else can appeal to the imagination1 and be a thousand times more idealistic than academic idealism1 which is often simply a way of white-washing and adoring things as they are4 ,the illegitimate monopoly which the genteel tradition had established over what ought to be assumed and what ought to be hoped for has been broken down by the first-born of the family1 by the genius of the race4 ,henceforth there can hardly be the same peace and the same pleasure in hugging the old proprieties4 ,hegel will be to the next generation what ,sir ,william ,hamilton was to the last4 ,nothing will have been disproved1 but everything will have been abandoned4 ,an honest man has spoken1 and the cant of the genteel tradition has become harder for young lips to repeat4 ,with this ,i have finished such a sketch as ,i am here able to offer you of the genteel tradition in ,american philosophy4 ,the subject is complex1 and calls for many an excursus and qualifying footnote2 yet ,i think the main outlines are clear enough4 ,the chief fountains of this tradition were ,calvinism and transcendentalism4 ,both were living fountains2 but to keep them alive they required1 one an agonised conscience1 and the other a radical subjective criticism of knowledge4 ,when these rare metaphysical preoccupations disappeared--and the ,american atmosphere is not favourable to either of them--the two systems ceased to be inwardly understood2 they subsisted as sacred mysteries only2 and the combination of the two in some transcendental system of the universe 7a contradiction in principle7 was doubly artificial4 ,besides1 it could hardly be held with a single mind4 ,natural science1 history1 the beliefs implied in labour and invention1 could not be disregarded altogether2 so that the transcendental philosopher was condemned to a double allegiance1 and to not letting his left hand know the bluff that his right hand was making4 ,nevertheless1 the difficulty in bringing practical inarticulate convictions to expression is very great1 and the genteel tradition has subsisted in the academic mind for want of anything equally academic to take its place4 ,the academic mind1 however1 has had its flanks turned4 ,on the one side came the revolt of the ,bohemian temperament1 with its poetry of crude naturalism2 on the other side came an impassioned empiricism1 welcoming popular religious witnesses to the unseen1 reducing science to an instrument of success in action1 and declaring the universe to be wild and young1 and not to be harnessed by the logic of any school4 ,this revolution1 ,i should think1 might well find an echo among you1 who live in a thriving society1 and in the presence of a virgin and prodigious world4 ,when you transform nature to your uses1 when you experiment with her forces1 and reduce them to industrial agents1 you cannot feel that nature was made by you or for you1 for then these adjustments would have been pre-established4 ,much less can you feel it when she destroys your labour of years in a momentary spasm4 ,you must feel1 rather1 that you are an offshoot of her life2 one brave little force among her immense forces4 ,when you escape1 as you love to do1 to your forests and your sierras1 ,i am sure again that you do not feel you made them1 or that they were made for you4 ,they have grown1 as you have grown1 only more massively and more slowly4 ,in their non-human beauty and peace they stir the sub-human depths and the superhuman possibilities of your own spirit4 ,it is no transcendental logic that they teach2 and they give no sign of any deliberate morality seated in the world4 ,it is rather the vanity and superficiality of all logic1 the needlessness of argument1 the relativity of morals1 the strength of time1 the fertility of matter1 the variety1 the unspeakable variety1 of possible life4 ,everything is measurable and conditioned1 indefinitely repeated1 yet1 in repetition1 twisted somewhat from its old form4 ,everywhere is beauty and nowhere permanence1 everywhere an incipient harmony1 nowhere an intention1 nor a responsibility1 nor a plan4 ,it is the irresistible suasion of this daily spectacle1 it is the daily discipline of contact with things1 so different from the verbal discipline of the schools1 that will1 ,i trust1 inspire the philosophy of your children4 ,a ,californian whom ,i had recently the pleasure of meeting observed that1 if the philosophers had lived among your mountains their systems would have been different from what they are4 ,certainly1 ,i should say1 very different from what those systems are which the ,european genteel tradition has handed down since ,socrates2 for these systems are egotistical2 directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric1 and inspired by the conceited notion that man1 or human reason1 or the human distinction between good and evil1 is the centre and pivot of the universe4 ,that is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert4 ,from what1 indeed1 does the society of nature liberate you1 that you find it so sweet8 ,it is hardly 7is it87 that you wish to forget your past1 or your friends1 or that you have any secret contempt for your present ambitions4 ,you respect these1 you respect them perhaps too much2 you are not suffered by the genteel tradition to criticise or to reform them at all radically4 ,no2 it is the yoke of this genteel tradition itself that these primeval solitudes lift from your shoulders4 ,they suspend your forced sense of your own importance not merely as individuals1 but even as men4 ,they allow you1 in one happy moment1 at once to play and to worship1 to take yourselves simply1 humbly1 for what you are1 and to salute the wild1 indifferent1 non-censorious infinity of nature4 ,you are admonished that what you can do avails little materially1 and in the end nothing4 ,at the same time1 through wonder and pleasure1 you are taught speculation4 ,you learn what you are really fitted to do1 and where lie your natural dignity and joy1 namely1 in representing many things1 without being them1 and in letting your imagination1 through sympathy1 celebrate and echo their life4 ,because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things1 which is preserved and suspended in his fancy2 and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape1 rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world1 constitute his proper happiness4 ,by their mind1 its scope1 quality1 and temper1 we estimate men1 for by the mind only do we exist as men1 and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy4 ,let us therefore be frankly human4 ,let us be content to live in the mind4 99 99 99 99 99