,,the ,,will ,,to ,,believe ,,and ,,other ,,essays ,,in ,,popular ,,philosophy ,,by ,,william ,,james ,,new ,,impression ,,longmans1 ,,green1 ,,and ,,co4 ,,fourth ,,avenue #cj,,th ,,street1 ,,new ,,york ,,london1 ,,bombay1 ,,and ,,calcutta #aiab ,copyright1 #ahif ,,by ,,william ,,james ,first ,edition4 ,february1 #ahig1 ,reprinted1 ,may1 #ahig1 ,september1 #ahig1 ,march1 #ahih1 ,august1 #ahii1 ,june1 #aijb1 ,january1 #aijc1 ,may1 #aijd1 ,june1 #aije1 ,march1 #aijg1 ,april1 #aijh1 ,september1 #aiji1 ,december1 #aiaj1 ,november1 #aiaa1 ,november1 #aiab ,to ,my ,old ,friend1 ,,charles ,,sanders ,,peirce1 ,to whose philosophic comradeship in old times and to whose writings in more recent years ,i owe more incitement and help than ,i can express or repay4 vii ,,preface4 ,at most of our ,american ,colleges there are ,clubs formed by the students devoted to particular branches of learning2 and these clubs have the laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar to address them1 the occasion often being made a public one4 ,i have from time to time accepted such invitations1 and afterwards had my discourse printed in one or other of the ,reviews4 ,it has seemed to me that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume1 as they shed explanatory light upon each other1 and taken together express a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way4 ,were ,i obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question1 ,i should call it that of radical empiricism1 in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy4 ,i say 'empiricism1' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience2 and ,i say 'radical1' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis1 and1 viii unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism1 it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square4 ,the difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy4 ,prim facie the world is a pluralism2 as we find it1 its unity seems to be that of any collection2 and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an effort to redeem it from that first crude form4 ,postulating more unity than the first experiences yield1 we also discover more4 ,but absolute unity1 in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction1 still remains undiscovered1 still remains a ,grenzbegriff4 ,ever not quite must be the rationalistic philosopher's last confession concerning it4 ,after all that reason can do has been done1 there still remains the opacity of the finite facts as merely given1 with most of their peculiarities mutually unmediated and unexplained4 ,to the very last1 there are the various 'points of view' which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing the world2 and what is inwardly clear from one point remains a bare externality and datum to the other4 ,the negative1 the alogical1 is never wholly banished4 ,something--call it fate1 chance1 freedom1 spontaneity1 the devil1 what you will--is still wrong and other and outside and unincluded1 from your point of view1 even though you be the greatest of philosophers4 ,something is always mere fact and givenness2 and there may be in the whole universe no one point of view extant from which this would not be found to be the case4 ,reason1 as a gifted writer says1 is ix but one item in the mystery2 and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned1 reason and wonder blushed face to face4 ,the inevitable stales1 while doubt and hope are sisters4 ,not unfortunately the universe is wild1--game-flavored as a hawk's wing4 ,nature is miracle all2 the same returns not save to bring the different4 ,the slow round of the engraver's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair1 but the difference is distributed back over the whole curve1 never an instant true1--ever not quite4#a ,this is pluralism1 somewhat rhapsodically expressed4 ,he who takes for his hypothesis the notion that it is the permanent form of the world is what ,i call a radical empiricist4 ,for him the crudity of experience remains an eternal element thereof4 ,there is no possible point of view from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact4 ,real possibilities1 real indeterminations1 real beginnings1 real ends1 real evil1 real crises1 catastrophes1 and escapes1 a real ,god1 and a real moral life1 just as common-sense conceives these things1 may remain in empiricism as conceptions which that philosophy gives up the attempt either to 'overcome' or to reinterpret in monistic form4 ,many of my professionally trained confrres will smile at the irrationalism of this view1 and at the artlessness of my essays in point of technical form4 ,but they should be taken as illustrations of the radically empiricist attitude rather than as argumentations for its validity4 ,that admits meanwhile of x being argued in as technical a shape as any one can desire1 and possibly ,i may be spared to do later a share of that work4 ,meanwhile these essays seem to light up with a certain dramatic reality the attitude itself1 and make it visible alongside of the higher and lower dogmatisms between which in the pages of philosophic history it has generally remained eclipsed from sight4 ,the first four essays are largely concerned with defending the legitimacy of religious faith4 ,to some rationalizing readers such advocacy will seem a sad misuse of one's professional position4 ,mankind1 they will say1 is only too prone to follow faith unreasoningly1 and needs no preaching nor encouragement in that direction4 ,i quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is criticism and caution1 not faith4 ,its cardinal weakness is to let belief follow recklessly upon lively conception1 especially when the conception has instinctive liking at its back4 ,i admit1 then1 that were ,i addressing the ,salvation ,army or a miscellaneous popular crowd it would be a misuse of opportunity to preach the liberty of believing as ,i have in these pages preached it4 ,what such audiences most need is that their faiths should be broken up and ventilated1 that the northwest wind of science should get into them and blow their sickliness and barbarism away4 ,but academic audiences1 fed already on science1 have a very different need4 ,paralysis of their native capacity for faith and timorous abulia in the religious field are their special forms of mental weakness1 brought about by the notion1 carefully instilled1 that there is something called scientific evidence by xi waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in regard to truth4 ,but there is really no scientific or other method by which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or of believing too much4 ,to face such dangers is apparently our duty1 and to hit the right channel between them is the measure of our wisdom as men4 ,it does not follow1 because recklessness may be a vice in soldiers1 that courage ought never to be preached to them4 ,what should be preached is courage weighted with responsibility1--such courage as the ,nelsons and ,washingtons never failed to show after they had taken everything into account that might tell against their success1 and made every provision to minimize disaster in case they met defeat4 ,i do not think that any one can accuse me of preaching reckless faith4 ,i have preached the right of the individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal risk4 ,i have discussed the kinds of risk2 ,i have contended that none of us escape all of them2 and ,i have only pleaded that it is better to face them open-eyed than to act as if we did not know them to be there4 ,after all1 though1 you will say1 ,why such an ado about a matter concerning which1 however we may theoretically differ1 we all practically agree8 ,in this age of toleration1 no scientist will ever try actively to interfere with our religious faith1 provided we enjoy it quietly with our friends and do not make a public nuisance of it in the market-place4 ,but it is just on this matter of the market-place that ,i think the utility of such essays as mine may turn4 ,if xii religious hypotheses about the universe be in order at all1 then the active faiths of individuals in them1 freely expressing themselves in life1 are the experimental tests by which they are verified1 and the only means by which their truth or falsehood can be wrought out4 ,the truest scientific hypothesis is that which1 as we say1 'works' best2 and it can be no otherwise with religious hypotheses4 ,religious history proves that one hypothesis after another has worked ill1 has crumbled at contact with a widening knowledge of the world1 and has lapsed from the minds of men4 ,some articles of faith1 however1 have maintained themselves through every vicissitude1 and possess even more vitality to-day than ever before3 it is for the 'science of religions' to tell us just which hypotheses these are4 ,meanwhile the freest competition of the various faiths with one another1 and their openest application to life by their several champions1 are the most favorable conditions under which the survival of the fittest can proceed4 ,they ought therefore not to lie hid each under its bushel1 indulged-in quietly with friends4 ,they ought to live in publicity1 vying with each other2 and it seems to me that 7the rgime of tolerance once granted1 and a fair field shown7 the scientist has nothing to fear for his own interests from the liveliest possible state of fermentation in the religious world of his time4 ,those faiths will best stand the test which adopt also his hypotheses1 and make them integral elements of their own4 ,he should welcome therefore every species of religious agitation and discussion1 so long as he is willing to allow that some religious hypothesis may be xiii true4 ,of course there are plenty of scientists who would deny that dogmatically1 maintaining that science has already ruled all possible religious hypotheses out of court4 ,such scientists ought1 ,i agree1 to aim at imposing privacy on religious faiths1 the public manifestation of which could only be a nuisance in their eyes4 ,with all such scientists1 as well as with their allies outside of science1 my quarrel openly lies2 and ,i hope that my book may do something to persuade the reader of their crudity1 and range him on my side4 ,religious fermentation is always a symptom of the intellectual vigor of a society2 and it is only when they forget that they are hypotheses and put on rationalistic and authoritative pretensions1 that our faiths do harm4 ,the most interesting and valuable things about a man are his ideals and over-beliefs4 ,the same is true of nations and historic epochs2 and the excesses of which the particular individuals and epochs are guilty are compensated in the total1 and become profitable to mankind in the long run4 ,the essay ',on some ,hegelisms' doubtless needs an apology for the superficiality with which it treats a serious subject4 ,it was written as a squib1 to be read in a college-seminary in ,hegel's logic1 several of whose members1 mature men1 were devout champions of the dialectical method4 ,my blows therefore were aimed almost entirely at that4 ,i reprint the paper here 7albeit with some misgivings71 partly because ,i believe the dialectical method to be wholly abominable when worked by concepts alone1 and partly because the essay casts some positive light on the pluralist-empiricist point of view4 xiv ,the paper on ,psychical ,research is added to the volume for convenience and utility4 ,attracted to this study some years ago by my love of sportsmanlike fair play in science1 ,i have seen enough to convince me of its great importance1 and ,i wish to gain for it what interest ,i can4 ,the ,american ,branch of the ,society is in need of more support1 and if my article draws some new associates thereto1 it will have served its turn4 ,apology is also needed for the repetition of the same passage in two essays 7pp4 #ei-fa and #if-g1 #ajj-a74 ,my excuse is that one cannot always express the same thought in two ways that seem equally forcible1 so one has to copy one's former words4 ,the ,crillon-quotation on page #fb is due to ,mr4 ,w4 ,m4 ,salter 7who employed it in a similar manner in the ',index' for ,august #bd1 #ahhb71 and the dream-metaphor on p4 #agd is a reminiscence from some novel of ,george ,sand's--,i forget which--read by me thirty years ago4 ,finally1 the revision of the essays has consisted almost entirely in excisions4 ,probably less than a page and a half in all of new matter has been added4 ,,harvard ,,university1 ,,cambridge1 ,,massachusetts1 ,december1 #ahif4 #a ,b4 ,p4 ,blood3 ,the ,flaw in ,supremacy3 ,published by the ,author1 ,amsterdam1 ,n4 ,y41 #ahic4 x ,,contents4 ,,page ,,the ,,will ,,to ,,believe 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #a ,hypotheses and options1 #a4 ,pascal's wager1 #e4 ,clifford's veto1 #h4 ,psychological causes of belief1 #i4 ,thesis of the ,essay1 #aa4 ,empiricism and absolutism1 #ab4 ,objective certitude and its unattainability1 #ac4 ,two different sorts of risks in believing1 #ag4 ,some risk unavoidable1 #ai4 ,faith may bring forth its own verification1 #bb4 ,logical conditions of religious belief1 #be4 ,,is ,,life ,,worth ,,living 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #cb ,temperamental ,optimism and ,pessimism1 #cc4 ,how reconcile with life one bent on suicide8 #ch4 ,religious melancholy and its cure1 #ci4 ,decay of ,natural ,theology1 #dc4 ,instinctive antidotes to pessimism1 #df4 ,religion involves belief in an unseen extension of the world1 #ea4 ,scientific positivism1 #eb4 ,doubt actuates conduct as much as belief does1 #ed4 ,to deny certain faiths is logically absurd1 for they make their objects true1 #ef4 ,conclusion1 #fl4 ,,the ,,sentiment ,,of ,,rationality 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #fc ,rationality means fluent thinking1 #fc4 ,simplification1 #fe4 ,clearness1 #ff4 ,their antagonism1 #ff4 ,inadequacy of the abstract1 #fh4 ,the thought of nonentity1 #ga4 ,mysticism1 #gd4 ,pure theory cannot banish wonder1 #ge4 ,the passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality1 #ge4 ,familiarity and expectancy1 #gf4 ',substance1' #hj4 ,a rational world must appear xvi congruous with our powers1 #hb4 ,but these differ from man to man1 #hh4 ,faith is one of them1 #ij4 ,inseparable from doubt1 #ie4 ,may verify itself1 #if4 ,its rle in ethics1 #ih4 ,optimism and pessimism1 #aja4 ,is this a moral universe8--what does the problem mean8 #ajc4 ,anaesthesia versus energy1 #ajg4 ,active assumption necessary1 #ajg4 ,conclusion1 #aaj4 ,,reflex ,,action ,,and ,,theism 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aaa ,prestige of ,physiology1 #aab4 ,plan of neural action1 #aac4 ,god the mind's adequate object1 #aaf4 ,contrast between world as perceived and as conceived1 #aah4 ,god1 #abj4 ,the mind's three departments1 #abc4 ,science due to a subjective demand1 #abi4 ,theism a mean between two extremes1 #acd4 ,gnosticism1 #acg4 ,no intellection except for practical ends1 #adj4 ,conclusion1 #adb4 ,,the ,,dilemma ,,of ,,determinism 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ade ,philosophies seek a rational world1 #adf4 ,determinism and ,indeterminism defined1 #adi4 ,both are postulates of rationality1 #aeb4 ,objections to chance considered1 #aec4 ,determinism involves pessimism1 #aei4 ,escape via ,subjectivism1 #afd4 ,subjectivism leads to corruption1 #agj4 ,a world with chance in it is morally the less irrational alternative1 #agf4 ,chance not incompatible with an ultimate ,providence1 #ahj4 ,,the ,,moral ,,philosopher ,,and ,,the ,,moral ,,life 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ahd ,the moral philosopher postulates a unified system1 #ahe4 ,origin of moral judgments1 #ahe4 ,goods and ills are created by judgment81 #ahi4 ,obligations are created by demands1 #aib4 ,the conflict of ideals1 #aih4 ,its solution1 #bje4 ,impossibility of an abstract system of ,ethics1 #bjh4 ,the easy-going and the strenuous mood1 #baa4 ,connection between ,ethics and ,religion1 #bab4 ,,great ,,men ,,and ,,their ,,environment 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #baf ,solidarity of causes in the world1 #baf4 ,the human mind abstracts in order to explain1 #bai4 ,different cycles of operation in ,nature1 #bbj4 ,darwin's distinction between causes that produce and causes that preserve a variation1 #bba4 ,physiological causes produce1 the environment only adopts or preserves1 great men1 #bbe4 ,when adopted they become social ferments1 #bbf4 ,messrs4 xvii ,spencer and ,allen criticised1 #bcb4 ,messrs4 ,wallace and ,gryzanowski quoted1 #bci4 ,the laws of history1 #bdd4 ,mental evolution1 #bde4 ,analogy between original ideas and ,darwin's accidental variations1 #bdg4 ,criticism of ,spencer's views1 #bea4 ,,the ,,importance ,,of ,,individuals 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #bee ,small differences may be important1 #bef4 ,individual differences are important because they are the causes of social change1 #bei4 ,hero-worship justified1 #bfa4 ,,on ,,some ,,hegelisms 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #bfc ,the world appears as a pluralism1 #bfd4 ,elements of unity in the pluralism1 #bfh4 ,hegel's excessive claims1 #bgc4 ,he makes of negation a bond of union1 #bgc4 ,the principle of totality1 #bgg4 ,monism and pluralism1 #bgi4 ,the fallacy of accident in ,hegel1 #bhj4 ,the good and the bad infinite1 #bhd4 ,negation1 #bhf4 ,conclusion1 #bib4--,note on the ,anaesthetic revelation1 #bid4 ,,what ,,psychical ,,research ,,has ,,accomplished 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #bii ,the unclassified residuum1 #bii4 ,the ,society for ,psychical ,research and its history1 #cjc4 ,thought-transference1 #cjh4 ,gurney's work1 #cji4 ,the census of hallucinations1 #cab4 ,mediumship1 #cac4 ,the 'subliminal self1' #cae4 ',science' and her counter-presumptions1 #cag4 ,the scientific character of ,mr4 ,myers's work1 #cbj4 ,the mechanical-impersonal view of life versus the personal-romantic view1 #cbd4 ,,index 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #cbi #a ,,essays ,,in ,,popular ,,philosophy4 ,,the ,,will ,,to ,,believe4#a ,in the recently published ,life by ,leslie ,stephen of his brother1 ,fitz-,james1 there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy4 ,the teacher1 a certain ,mr4 ,guest1 used to converse with his pupils in this wise3 ,gurney1 what is the difference between justification and sanctification8--,stephen1 prove the omnipotence of ,god6 etc4 ,in the midst of our ,harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at your good old orthodox ,college conversation continues to be somewhat upon this order2 and to show you that we at ,harvard have not lost all interest in these vital subjects1 ,i have brought with me to-night something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you1--,i mean an essay in justification of faith1 a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters1 in spite of the fact that our merely logical #b intellect may not have been coerced4 ',the ,will to ,believe1' accordingly1 is the title of my paper4 ,i have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith2 but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit1 they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically1 even though in point of fact they were personally all the time chock-full of some faith or other themselves4 ,i am all the while1 however1 so profoundly convinced that my own position is correct1 that your invitation has seemed to me a good occasion to make my statements more clear4 ,perhaps your minds will be more open than those with which ,i have hitherto had to deal4 ,i will be as little technical as ,i can1 though ,i must begin by setting up some technical distinctions that will help us in the end4 ,i4 ,let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief2 and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires1 let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead4 ,a live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed4 ,if ,i ask you to believe in the ,mahdi1 the notion makes no electric connection with your nature1--it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all4 ,as an hypothesis it is completely dead4 ,to an ,arab1 however 7even if he be not one of the ,mahdi's followers71 the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities3 it is alive4 ,this shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties1 but relations to the #c individual thinker4 ,they are measured by his willingness to act4 ,the maximum of liveness in an hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably4 ,practically1 that means belief2 but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all4 ,next1 let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option4 ,options may be of several kinds4 ,they may be--#a1 living or dead2 #b1 forced or avoidable2 #c1 momentous or trivial2 and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced1 living1 and momentous kind4 #a4 ,a living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones4 ,if ,i say to you3 ,be a theosophist or be a ,mohammedan1 it is probably a dead option1 because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive4 ,but if ,i say3 ,be an agnostic or be a ,christian1 it is otherwise3 trained as you are1 each hypothesis makes some appeal1 however small1 to your belief4 #b4 ,next1 if ,i say to you3 ,choose between going out with your umbrella or without it1 ,i do not offer you a genuine option1 for it is not forced4 ,you can easily avoid it by not going out at all4 ,similarly1 if ,i say1 ,either love me or hate me1 ,either call my theory true or call it false1 your option is avoidable4 ,you may remain indifferent to me1 neither loving nor hating1 and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory4 ,but if ,i say1 ,either accept this truth or go without it1 ,i put on you a forced option1 for there is no standing place outside of the alternative4 ,every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction1 with no possibility of not choosing1 is an option of this forced kind4 #d #c4 ,finally1 if ,i were ,dr4 ,nansen and proposed to you to join my ,north ,pole expedition1 your option would be momentous2 for this would probably be your only similar opportunity1 and your choice now would either exclude you from the ,north ,pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands4 ,he who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed4 ,per contra1 the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique1 when the stake is insignificant1 or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise4 ,such trivial options abound in the scientific life4 ,a chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification3 he believes in it to that extent4 ,but if his experiments prove inconclusive either way1 he is quit for his loss of time1 no vital harm being done4 ,it will facilitate our discussion if we keep all these distinctions well in mind4 ,,ii4 ,the next matter to consider is the actual psychology of human opinion4 ,when we look at certain facts1 it seems as if our passional and volitional nature lay at the root of all our convictions4 ,when we look at others1 it seems as if they could do nothing when the intellect had once said its say4 ,let us take the latter facts up first4 ,does it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will8 ,can our will either help or hinder our intellect in its perceptions of truth8 ,can we1 by just willing it1 believe that ,abraham ,lincoln's existence is a myth1 #e and that the portraits of him in ,mc,clure's ,magazine are all of some one else8 ,can we1 by any effort of our will1 or by any strength of wish that it were true1 believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed1 or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars8 ,we can say any of these things1 but we are absolutely impotent to believe them2 and of just such things is the whole fabric of the truths that we do believe in made up1--matters of fact1 immediate or remote1 as ,hume said1 and relations between ideas1 which are either there or not there for us if we see them so1 and which if not there cannot be put there by any action of our own4 ,in ,pascal's ,thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature as ,pascal's wager4 ,in it he tries to force us into ,christianity by reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of chance4 ,translated freely his words are these3 ,you must either believe or not believe that ,god is--which will you do8 ,your human reason cannot say4 ,a game is going on between you and the nature of things which at the day of judgment will bring out either heads or tails4 ,weigh what your gains and your losses would be if you should stake all you have on heads1 or ,god's existence3 if you win in such case1 you gain eternal beatitude2 if you lose1 you lose nothing at all4 ,if there were an infinity of chances1 and only one for ,god in this wager1 still you ought to stake your all on ,god2 for though you surely risk a finite loss by this procedure1 any finite loss is reasonable1 even a certain one is reasonable1 if there is but the possibility of #f infinite gain4 ,go1 then1 and take holy water1 and have masses said2 belief will come and stupefy your scruples1--,cela vous fera croire et vous abtira4 ,why should you not8 ,at bottom1 what have you to lose8 ,you probably feel that when religious faith expresses itself thus1 in the language of the gaming-table1 it is put to its last trumps4 ,surely ,pascal's own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other springs2 and this celebrated page of his is but an argument for others1 a last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart4 ,we feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted wilfully after such a mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faith's reality2 and if we were ourselves in the place of the ,deity1 we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern from their infinite reward4 ,it is evident that unless there be some pre-existing tendency to believe in masses and holy water1 the option offered to the will by ,pascal is not a living option4 ,certainly no ,turk ever took to masses and holy water on its account2 and even to us ,protestants these means of salvation seem such foregone impossibilities that ,pascal's logic1 invoked for them specifically1 leaves us unmoved4 ,as well might the ,mahdi write to us1 saying1 ,i am the ,expected ,one whom ,god has created in his effulgence4 ,you shall be infinitely happy if you confess me2 otherwise you shall be cut off from the light of the sun4 ,weigh1 then1 your infinite gain if ,i am genuine against your finite sacrifice if ,i am not6 ,his logic would be that of ,pascal2 but he would vainly use it on us1 for the hypothesis he offers us is dead4 ,no tendency to act on it exists in us to any degree4 #g ,the talk of believing by our volition seems1 then1 from one point of view1 simply silly4 ,from another point of view it is worse than silly1 it is vile4 ,when one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences1 and sees how it was reared2 what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations2 what patience and postponement1 what choking down of preference1 what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar2 how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness1--then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths1 and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream6 ,can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing such subjectivism out of their mouths8 ,the whole system of loyalties which grow up in the schools of science go dead against its toleration2 so that it is only natural that those who have caught the scientific fever should pass over to the opposite extreme1 and write sometimes as if the incorruptibly truthful intellect ought positively to prefer bitterness and unacceptableness to the heart in its cup4 ,it fortifies my soul to know ,that1 though ,i perish1 ,truth is so-- sings ,clough1 while ,huxley exclaims3 ,my only consolation lies in the reflection that1 however bad our posterity may become1 so far as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe1 because it may be to their advantage so to pretend the word 'pretend' is surely here redundant1 they will not have reached the #h lowest depth of immorality4 ,and that delicious enfant terrible ,clifford writes2 ,belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer1444 ,whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care1 lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object1 and catch a stain which can never be wiped away4444 ,if a belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence even though the belief be true1 as ,clifford on the same page explains the pleasure is a stolen one4444 ,it is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind4 ,that duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town4444 ,it is wrong always1 everywhere1 and for every one1 to believe anything upon insufficient evidence4 ,,iii4 ,all this strikes one as healthy1 even when expressed1 as by ,clifford1 with somewhat too much of robustious pathos in the voice4 ,free-will and simple wishing do seem1 in the matter of our credences1 to be only fifth wheels to the coach4 ,yet if any one should thereupon assume that intellectual insight is what remains after wish and will and sentimental preference have taken wing1 or that pure reason is what then settles our opinions1 he would fly quite as directly in the teeth of the facts4 ,it is only our already dead hypotheses that our willing nature is unable to bring to life again ,but what has made them dead for us is for the most part #i a previous action of our willing nature of an antagonistic kind4 ,when ,i say 'willing nature1' ,i do not mean only such deliberate volitions as may have set up habits of belief that we cannot now escape from1--,i mean all such factors of belief as fear and hope1 prejudice and passion1 imitation and partisanship1 the circumpressure of our caste and set4 ,as a matter of fact we find ourselves believing1 we hardly know how or why4 ,mr4 ,balfour gives the name of 'authority' to all those influences1 born of the intellectual climate1 that make hypotheses possible or impossible for us1 alive or dead4 ,here in this room1 we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy1 in democracy and necessary progress1 in ,protestant ,christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal ,monroe1' all for no reasons worthy of the name4 ,we see into these matters with no more inner clearness1 and probably with much less1 than any disbeliever in them might possess4 ,his unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions2 but for us1 not insight1 but the prestige of the opinions1 is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith4 ,our reason is quite satisfied1 in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us1 if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else4 ,our faith is faith in some one else's faith1 and in the greatest matters this is most the case4 ,our belief in truth itself1 for instance1 that there is a truth1 and that our minds and it are made for each other1--what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire1 in which our social system backs us up8 ,we want to have a truth2 we want to believe that our #aj experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it2 and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives4 ,but if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this1 can our logic find a reply8 ,no6 certainly it cannot4 ,it is just one volition against another1--we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he1 for his part1 does not care to make4#b ,as a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use4 ,clifford's cosmic emotions find no use for ,christian feelings4 ,huxley belabors the bishops because there is no use for sacerdotalism in his scheme of life4 ,newman1 on the contrary1 goes over to ,romanism1 and finds all sorts of reasons good for staying there1 because a priestly system is for him an organic need and delight4 ,why do so few 'scientists' even look at the evidence for telepathy1 so called8 ,because they think1 as a leading biologist1 now dead1 once said to me1 that even if such a thing were true1 scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed4 ,it would undo the uniformity of ,nature and all sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry on their pursuits4 ,but if this very man had been shown something which as a scientist he might do with telepathy1 he might not only have examined the evidence1 but even have found it good enough4 ,this very law which the logicians would impose upon us--if ,i may give the name of logicians to those who would rule out our willing nature here--is based on nothing but their own natural wish to exclude all elements for #aa which they1 in their professional quality of logicians1 can find no use4 ,evidently1 then1 our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions4 ,there are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief1 and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair2 and they are not too late when the previous passional work has been already in their own direction4 ,pascal's argument1 instead of being powerless1 then seems a regular clincher1 and is the last stroke needed to make our faith in masses and holy water complete4 ,the state of things is evidently far from simple2 and pure insight and logic1 whatever they might do ideally1 are not the only things that really do produce our creeds4 ,,iv4 ,our next duty1 having recognized this mixed-up state of affairs1 is to ask whether it be simply reprehensible and pathological1 or whether1 on the contrary1 we must treat it as a normal element in making up our minds4 ,the thesis ,i defend is1 briefly stated1 this3 ,our passional nature not only lawfully may1 but must1 decide an option between propositions1 whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds2 for to say1 under such circumstances1 ,do not decide1 but leave the question open1 is itself a passional decision1--just like deciding yes or no1--and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth4 ,the thesis thus abstractly expressed will1 ,i trust1 soon become quite clear4 ,but ,i must first indulge in a bit more of preliminary work4 #ab ,v4 ,it will be observed that for the purposes of this discussion we are on 'dogmatic' ground1--ground1 ,i mean1 which leaves systematic philosophical scepticism altogether out of account4 ,the postulate that there is truth1 and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it1 we are deliberately resolving to make1 though the sceptic will not make it4 ,we part company with him1 therefore1 absolutely1 at this point4 ,but the faith that truth exists1 and that our minds can find it1 may be held in two ways4 ,we may talk of the empiricist way and of the absolutist way of believing in truth4 ,the absolutists in this matter say that we not only can attain to knowing truth1 but we can know when we have attained to knowing it2 while the empiricists think that although we may attain it1 we cannot infallibly know when4 ,to know is one thing1 and to know for certain that we know is another4 ,one may hold to the first being possible without the second2 hence the empiricists and the absolutists1 although neither of them is a sceptic in the usual philosophic sense of the term1 show very different degrees of dogmatism in their lives4 ,if we look at the history of opinions1 we see that the empiricist tendency has largely prevailed in science1 while in philosophy the absolutist tendency has had everything its own way4 ,the characteristic sort of happiness1 indeed1 which philosophies yield has mainly consisted in the conviction felt by each successive school or system that by it bottom-certitude had been attained4 ,other philosophies are collections of opinions1 mostly false2 my philosophy #ac gives standing-ground forever1--who does not recognize in this the key-note of every system worthy of the name8 ,a system1 to be a system at all1 must come as a closed system1 reversible in this or that detail1 perchance1 but in its essential features never6 ,scholastic orthodoxy1 to which one must always go when one wishes to find perfectly clear statement1 has beautifully elaborated this absolutist conviction in a doctrine which it calls that of 'objective evidence4' ,if1 for example1 ,i am unable to doubt that ,i now exist before you1 that two is less than three1 or that if all men are mortal then ,i am mortal too1 it is because these things illumine my intellect irresistibly4 ,the final ground of this objective evidence possessed by certain propositions is the adaequatio intellects nostri cum r4 ,the certitude it brings involves an aptitudinem ad extorquendum certum assensum on the part of the truth envisaged1 and on the side of the subject a quietem in cognitione1 when once the object is mentally received1 that leaves no possibility of doubt behind2 and in the whole transaction nothing operates but the entitas ipsa of the object and the entitas ipsa of the mind4 ,we slouchy modern thinkers dislike to talk in ,latin1--indeed1 we dislike to talk in set terms at all2 but at bottom our own state of mind is very much like this whenever we uncritically abandon ourselves3 ,you believe in objective evidence1 and ,i do4 ,of some things we feel that we are certain3 we know1 and we know that we do know4 ,there is something that gives a click inside of us1 a bell that strikes twelve1 when the hands of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet over the meridian hour4 ,the greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection3 when #ad left to their instincts1 they dogmatize like infallible popes4 ,when the ,cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be ,christians on such 'insufficient evidence1' insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind4 ,for them the evidence is absolutely sufficient1 only it makes the other way4 ,they believe so completely in an anti-christian order of the universe that there is no living option3 ,christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start4 ,,vi4 ,but now1 since we are all such absolutists by instinct1 what in our quality of students of philosophy ought we to do about the fact8 ,shall we espouse and indorse it8 ,or shall we treat it as a weakness of our nature from which we must free ourselves1 if we can8 ,i sincerely believe that the latter course is the only one we can follow as reflective men4 ,objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with1 but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found8 ,i am1 therefore1 myself a complete empiricist so far as my theory of human knowledge goes4 ,i live1 to be sure1 by the practical faith that we must go on experiencing and thinking over our experience1 for only thus can our opinions grow more true2 but to hold any one of them--,i absolutely do not care which--as if it never could be reinterpretable or corrigible1 ,i believe to be a tremendously mistaken attitude1 and ,i think that the whole history of philosophy will bear me out4 ,there is but one indefectibly certain truth1 and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves #ae standing1--the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists4 ,that1 however1 is the bare starting-point of knowledge1 the mere admission of a stuff to be philosophized about4 ,the various philosophies are but so many attempts at expressing what this stuff really is4 ,and if we repair to our libraries what disagreement do we discover6 ,where is a certainly true answer found8 ,apart from abstract propositions of comparison 7such as two and two are the same as four71 propositions which tell us nothing by themselves about concrete reality1 we find no proposition ever regarded by any one as evidently certain that has not either been called a falsehood1 or at least had its truth sincerely questioned by some one else4 ,the transcending of the axioms of geometry1 not in play but in earnest1 by certain of our contemporaries 7as ,zllner and ,charles ,h4 ,hinton71 and the rejection of the whole ,aristotelian logic by the ,hegelians1 are striking instances in point4 ,no concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon4 ,some make the criterion external to the moment of perception1 putting it either in revelation1 the consensus gentium1 the instincts of the heart1 or the systematized experience of the race4 ,others make the perceptive moment its own test1--,descartes1 for instance1 with his clear and distinct ideas guaranteed by the veracity of ,god2 ,reid with his 'common-sense2' and ,kant with his forms of synthetic judgment a priori4 ,the inconceivability of the opposite2 the capacity to be verified by sense2 the possession of complete organic unity or self-relation1 realized when a thing is its own other1--are standards which1 in turn1 have been used4 ,the much #af lauded objective evidence is never triumphantly there1 it is a mere aspiration or ,grenzbegriff1 marking the infinitely remote ideal of our thinking life4 ,to claim that certain truths now possess it1 is simply to say that when you think them true and they are true1 then their evidence is objective1 otherwise it is not4 ,but practically one's conviction that the evidence one goes by is of the real objective brand1 is only one more subjective opinion added to the lot4 ,for what a contradictory array of opinions have objective evidence and absolute certitude been claimed6 ,the world is rational through and through1--its existence is an ultimate brute fact2 there is a personal ,god1--a personal ,god is inconceivable2 there is an extra-mental physical world immediately known1--the mind can only know its own ideas2 a moral imperative exists1--obligation is only the resultant of desires2 a permanent spiritual principle is in every one1--there are only shifting states of mind2 there is an endless chain of causes1--there is an absolute first cause2 an eternal necessity1--a freedom2 a purpose1--no purpose2 a primal ,one1--a primal ,many2 a universal continuity1--an essential discontinuity in things2 an infinity1--no infinity4 ,there is this1--there is that2 there is indeed nothing which some one has not thought absolutely true1 while his neighbor deemed it absolutely false2 and not an absolutist among them seems ever to have considered that the trouble may all the time be essential1 and that the intellect1 even with truth directly in its grasp1 may have no infallible signal for knowing whether it be truth or no4 ,when1 indeed1 one remembers that the most striking practical application to life of the doctrine of objective certitude has been #ag the conscientious labors of the ,holy ,office of the ,inquisition1 one feels less tempted than ever to lend the doctrine a respectful ear4 ,but please observe1 now1 that when as empiricists we give up the doctrine of objective certitude1 we do not thereby give up the quest or hope of truth itself4 ,we still pin our faith on its existence1 and still believe that we gain an ever better position towards it by systematically continuing to roll up experiences and think4 ,our great difference from the scholastic lies in the way we face4 ,the strength of his system lies in the principles1 the origin1 the terminus a quo of his thought2 for us the strength is in the outcome1 the upshot1 the terminus ad quem4 ,not where it comes from but what it leads to is to decide4 ,it matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may come to him3 he may have acquired it by fair means or by foul2 passion may have whispered or accident suggested it2 but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it1 that is what he means by its being true4 ,,vii4 ,one more point1 small but important1 and our preliminaries are done4 ,there are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion1--ways entirely different1 and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern4 ,we must know the truth2 and we must avoid error1--these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers2 but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment1 they are two separable laws4 ,although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth ,a1 we escape #ah as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood ,b1 it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving ,b we necessarily believe ,a4 ,we may in escaping ,b fall into believing other falsehoods1 ,c or ,d1 just as bad as ,b2 or we may escape ,b by not believing anything at all1 not even ,a4 ,believe truth6 ,shun error6--these1 we see1 are two materially different laws2 and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life4 ,we may regard the chase for truth as paramount1 and the avoidance of error as secondary2 or we may1 on the other hand1 treat the avoidance of error as more imperative1 and let truth take its chance4 ,clifford1 in the instructive passage which ,i have quoted1 exhorts us to the latter course4 ,believe nothing1 he tells us1 keep your mind in suspense forever1 rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies4 ,you1 on the other hand1 may think that the risk of being in error is a very small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge1 and be ready to be duped many times in your investigation rather than postpone indefinitely the chance of guessing true4 ,i myself find it impossible to go with ,clifford4 ,we must remember that these feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our passional life4 ,biologically considered1 our minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity1 and he who says1 ,better go without belief forever than believe a lie6 merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe4 ,he may be critical of many of his desires and fears1 but this fear he slavishly obeys4 ,he cannot imagine any one questioning its binding force4 ,for my own part1 ,i #ai have also a horror of being duped2 but ,i can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world3 so ,clifford's exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound4 ,it is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound4 ,not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained4 ,our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things4 ,in a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution1 a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf4 ,at any rate1 it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher4 ,,viii4 ,and now1 after all this introduction1 let us go straight at our question4 ,i have said1 and now repeat it1 that not only as a matter of fact do we find our passional nature influencing us in our opinions1 but that there are some options between opinions in which this influence must be regarded both as an inevitable and as a lawful determinant of our choice4 ,i fear here that some of you my hearers will begin to scent danger1 and lend an inhospitable ear4 ,two first steps of passion you have indeed had to admit as necessary1--we must think so as to avoid dupery1 and we must think so as to gain truth2 but the surest path to those ideal consummations1 you will probably consider1 is from now onwards to take no further passional step4 ,well1 of course1 ,i agree as far as the facts will allow4 ,wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous1 we can throw the #bj chance of gaining truth away1 and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood1 by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come4 ,in scientific questions1 this is almost always the case2 and even in human affairs in general1 the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all4 ,law courts1 indeed1 have to decide on the best evidence attainable for the moment1 because a judge's duty is to make law as well as to ascertain it1 and 7as a learned judge once said to me7 few cases are worth spending much time over3 the great thing is to have them decided on any acceptable principle1 and got out of the way4 ,but in our dealings with objective nature we obviously are recorders1 not makers1 of the truth2 and decisions for the mere sake of deciding promptly and getting on to the next business would be wholly out of place4 ,throughout the breadth of physical nature facts are what they are quite independently of us1 and seldom is there any such hurry about them that the risks of being duped by believing a premature theory need be faced4 ,the questions here are always trivial options1 the hypotheses are hardly living 7at any rate not living for us spectators71 the choice between believing truth or falsehood is seldom forced4 ,the attitude of sceptical balance is therefore the absolutely wise one if we would escape mistakes4 ,what difference1 indeed1 does it make to most of us whether we have or have not a theory of the ,rntgen rays1 whether we believe or not in mind-stuff1 or have a conviction about the causality of conscious states8 ,it makes no difference4 ,such options are not forced on us4 ,on every account it is better not to make them1 but still keep weighing reasons pro et contra with an indifferent hand4 #ba ,i speak1 of course1 here of the purely judging mind4 ,for purposes of discovery such indifference is to be less highly recommended1 and science would be far less advanced than she is if the passionate desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept out of the game4 ,see for example the sagacity which ,spencer and ,weismann now display4 ,on the other hand1 if you want an absolute duffer in an investigation1 you must1 after all1 take the man who has no interest whatever in its results3 he is the warranted incapable1 the positive fool4 ,the most useful investigator1 because the most sensitive observer1 is always he whose eager interest in one side of the question is balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he become deceived4#c ,science has organized this nervousness into a regular technique1 her so-called method of verification2 and she has fallen so deeply in love with the method that one may even say she has ceased to care for truth by itself at all4 ,it is only truth as technically verified that interests her4 ,the truth of truths might come in merely affirmative form1 and she would decline to touch it4 ,such truth as that1 she might repeat with ,clifford1 would be stolen in defiance of her duty to mankind4 ,human passions1 however1 are stronger than technical rules4 ,le coeur a ses raisons1 as ,pascal says1 que la raison ne connat pas2 and however indifferent to all but the bare rules of the game the umpire1 the abstract intellect1 may be1 the concrete players who furnish him the materials to judge of are usually1 each one of them1 in love with some pet 'live hypothesis' of his own4 ,let us agree1 however1 that wherever there is no forced option1 the #bb dispassionately judicial intellect with no pet hypothesis1 saving us1 as it does1 from dupery at any rate1 ought to be our ideal4 ,the question next arises3 ,are there not somewhere forced options in our speculative questions1 and can we 7as men who may be interested at least as much in positively gaining truth as in merely escaping dupery7 always wait with impunity till the coercive evidence shall have arrived8 ,it seems a priori improbable that the truth should be so nicely adjusted to our needs and powers as that4 ,in the great boarding-house of nature1 the cakes and the butter and the syrup seldom come out so even and leave the plates so clean4 ,indeed1 we should view them with scientific suspicion if they did4 ,,ix4 ,moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof4 ,a moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists1 but of what is good1 or would be good if it did exist4 ,science can tell us what exists2 but to compare the worths1 both of what exists and of what does not exist1 we must consult not science1 but what ,pascal calls our heart4 ,science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man4 ,challenge the statement1 and science can only repeat it oracularly1 or else prove it by showing that such ascertainment and correction bring man all sorts of other goods which man's heart in turn declares4 ,the question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by #bc our will4 ,are our moral preferences true or false1 or are they only odd biological phenomena1 making things good or bad for us1 but in themselves indifferent8 ,how can your pure intellect decide8 ,if your heart does not want a world of moral reality1 your head will assuredly never make you believe in one4 ,mephistophelian scepticism1 indeed1 will satisfy the head's play-instincts much better than any rigorous idealism can4 ,some men 7even at the student age7 are so naturally cool-hearted that the moralistic hypothesis never has for them any pungent life1 and in their supercilious presence the hot young moralist always feels strangely ill at ease4 ,the appearance of knowingness is on their side1 of navet and gullibility on his4 ,yet1 in the inarticulate heart of him1 he clings to it that he is not a dupe1 and that there is a realm in which 7as ,emerson says7 all their wit and intellectual superiority is no better than the cunning of a fox4 ,moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can4 ,when we stick to it that there is truth 7be it of either kind71 we do so with our whole nature1 and resolve to stand or fall by the results4 ,the sceptic with his whole nature adopts the doubting attitude2 but which of us is the wiser1 ,omniscience only knows4 ,turn now from these wide questions of good to a certain class of questions of fact1 questions concerning personal relations1 states of mind between one man and another4 ,do you like me or not8--for example4 ,whether you do or not depends1 in countless instances1 on whether ,i meet you half-way1 am willing to assume that you must like me1 and show you trust and expectation4 ,the previous faith on my part in your liking's existence is in such cases what makes #bd your liking come4 ,but if ,i stand aloof1 and refuse to budge an inch until ,i have objective evidence1 until you shall have done something apt1 as the absolutists say1 ad extorquendum assensum meum1 ten to one your liking never comes4 ,how many women's hearts are vanquished by the mere sanguine insistence of some man that they must love him6 he will not consent to the hypothesis that they cannot4 ,the desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truth's existence2 and so it is in innumerable cases of other sorts4 ,who gains promotions1 boons1 appointments1 but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses1 who discounts them1 sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come1 and takes risks for them in advance8 ,his faith acts on the powers above him as a claim1 and creates its own verification4 ,a social organism of any sort whatever1 large or small1 is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs4 ,wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons1 its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned4 ,a government1 an army1 a commercial system1 a ship1 a college1 an athletic team1 all exist on this condition1 without which not only is nothing achieved1 but nothing is even attempted4 ,a whole train of passengers 7individually brave enough7 will be looted by a few highwaymen1 simply because the latter can count on one another1 while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance1 he will be shot before any one else backs him up4 ,if we believed that the whole car-full would rise #be at once with us1 we should each severally rise1 and train-robbing would never even be attempted4 ,there are1 then1 cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming4 ,and where faith in a fact can help create the fact1 that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the 'lowest kind of immorality' into which a thinking being can fall4 ,yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives6 ,x4 ,in truths dependent on our personal action1 then1 faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing4 ,but now1 it will be said1 these are all childish human cases1 and have nothing to do with great cosmical matters1 like the question of religious faith4 ,let us then pass on to that4 ,religions differ so much in their accidents that in discussing the religious question we must make it very generic and broad4 ,what then do we now mean by the religious hypothesis8 ,science says things are2 morality says some things are better than other things2 and religion says essentially two things4 ,first1 she says that the best things are the more eternal things1 the overlapping things1 the things in the universe that throw the last stone1 so to speak1 and say the final word4 ,perfection is eternal1--this phrase of ,charles ,secrtan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion1 an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all4 #bf ,the second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true4 ,now1 let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true4 7,of course1 we must admit that possibility at the outset4 ,if we are to discuss the question at all1 it must involve a living option4 ,if for any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot1 by any living possibility be true1 then you need go no farther4 ,i speak to the 'saving remnant' alone47 ,so proceeding1 we see1 first1 that religion offers itself as a momentous option4 ,we are supposed to gain1 even now1 by our belief1 and to lose by our non-belief1 a certain vital good4 ,secondly1 religion is a forced option1 so far as that good goes4 ,we cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light1 because1 although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue1 we lose the good1 if it be true1 just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve4 ,it is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home4 ,would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else8 ,scepticism1 then1 is not avoidance of option2 it is option of a certain particular kind of risk4 ,better risk loss of truth than chance of error1--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position4 ,he is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is2 he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis1 just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field4 ,to preach scepticism to us as a duty until #bg 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found1 is tantamount therefore to telling us1 when in presence of the religious hypothesis1 that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true4 ,it is not intellect against all passions1 then2 it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law4 ,and by what1 forsooth1 is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted8 ,dupery for dupery1 what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear8 ,i1 for one1 can see no proof2 and ,i simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option1 in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk4 ,if religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient1 ,i do not wish1 by putting your extinguisher upon my nature 7which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter71 to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side1--that chance depending1 of course1 on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right4 ,all this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and right1 and that1 even to us who are discussing the matter1 religion is a live hypothesis which may be true4 ,now1 to most of us religion comes in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical4 ,the more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form4 ,the universe is no longer a mere ,it to us1 but a ,thou1 if we are religious2 and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible #bh here4 ,for instance1 although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe1 in another we show a curious autonomy1 as if we were small active centres on our own account4 ,we feel1 too1 as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will1 as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way4 ,to take a trivial illustration3 just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances1 asked a warrant for every concession1 and believed no one's word without proof1 would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn1--so here1 one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly1 or not get it at all1 might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance4 ,this feeling1 forced on us we know not whence1 that by obstinately believing that there are gods 7although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life7 we are doing the universe the deepest service we can1 seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis4 ,if the hypothesis were true in all its parts1 including this one1 then pure intellectualism1 with its veto on our making willing advances1 would be an absurdity2 and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required4 ,i1 therefore1 for one cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking1 or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game4 ,i cannot do so for this plain reason1 that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there1 would be an irrational rule4 ,that for me #bi is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation1 no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be4 ,i confess ,i do not see how this logic can be escaped4 ,but sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me1 in abstracto1 that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will4 ,i suspect1 however1 that if this is so1 it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether1 and are thinking 7perhaps without realizing it7 of some particular religious hypothesis which for you is dead4 ,the freedom to 'believe what we will' you apply to the case of some patent superstition2 and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said1 ,faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true4 ,i can only repeat that this is misapprehension4 ,in concreto1 the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve2 and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider4 ,when ,i look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men1 and when ,i think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves1 then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart1 instincts1 and courage1 and wait--acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true#d--till #cj doomsday1 or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough1--this command1 ,i say1 seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave4 ,were we scholastic absolutists1 there might be more excuse4 ,if we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes1 we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively1 in not waiting for its releasing word4 ,but if we are empiricists1 if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp1 then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell4 ,indeed we may wait if we will1--,i hope you do not think that ,i am denying that1--but if we do so1 we do so at our peril as much as if we believed4 ,in either case we act1 taking our life in our hands4 ,no one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other1 nor should we bandy words of abuse4 ,we ought1 on the contrary1 delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom3 then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic2 then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless1 and which is empiricism's glory2 then only shall we live and let live1 in speculative as well as in practical things4 ,i began by a reference to ,fitz ,james ,stephen2 let me end by a quotation from him4 ,what do you think #ca of yourself8 ,what do you think of the world8444 ,these are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them4 ,they are riddles of the ,sphinx1 and in some way or other we must deal with them4444 ,in all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark4444 ,if we decide to leave the riddles unanswered1 that is a choice2 if we waver in our answer1 that1 too1 is a choice3 but whatever choice we make1 we make it at our peril4 ,if a man chooses to turn his back altogether on ,god and the future1 no one can prevent him2 no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken4 ,if a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks1 ,i do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken4 ,each must act as he thinks best2 and if he is wrong1 so much the worse for him4 ,we stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist1 through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive4 ,if we stand still we shall be frozen to death4 ,if we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces4 ,we do not certainly know whether there is any right one4 ,what must we do8 ',be strong and of a good courage4' ,act for the best1 hope for the best1 and take what comes4444 ,if death ends all1 we cannot meet death better4#e #a ,an ,address to the ,philosophical ,clubs of ,yale and ,brown ,universities4 ,published in the ,new ,world1 ,june1 #ahif4 #b ,compare the admirable page #caj in ,s4 ,h4 ,hodgson's ,time and ,space1 ,london1 #ahfe4 #c ,compare ,wilfrid ,ward's ,essay1 ,the ,wish to ,believe1 in his ,witnesses to the ,unseen1 ,macmillan ,co41 #ahic4 #d ,since belief is measured by action1 he who forbids us to believe religion to be true1 necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true4 ,the whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action4 ,if the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis1 then religious faith is a pure superfluity1 better pruned away1 and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling1 unworthy of serious minds4 ,i myself believe1 of course1 that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions1 and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief4 #e ,liberty1 ,equality1 ,fraternity1 p4 #cec1 #b;d edition4 ,london1 #ahgd4 #cb ,,is ,,life ,,worth ,,living8#a ,when ,mr4 ,mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago1 the jocose answer that it depends on the liver had great currency in the newspapers4 ,the answer which ,i propose to give to-night cannot be jocose4 ,in the words of one of ,shakespeare's prologues1-- ,i come no more to make you laugh2 things now1 ,that bear a weighty and a serious brow1 ,sad1 high1 and working1 full of state and woe1-- must be my theme4 ,in the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly2 and ,i know not what such an association as yours intends1 nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you1 unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence1 and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness4 ,without further explanation or apology1 then1 ,i ask you to join me in turning an attention1 commonly too unwilling1 to the profounder bass-note of life4 ,let us search the lonely depths for an hour together1 and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find4 #cc ,i4 ,with many men the question of life's worth is answered by a temperamental optimism which makes them incapable of believing that anything seriously evil can exist4 ,our dear old ,walt ,whitman's works are the standing text-book of this kind of optimism4 ,the mere joy of living is so immense in ,walt ,whitman's veins that it abolishes the possibility of any other kind of feeling3-- ,to breathe the air1 how delicious6 ,to speak1 to walk1 to seize something by the hand6444 ,to be this incredible ,god ,i am6444 ,o amazement of things1 even the least particle6 ,o spirituality of things6 ,i too carol the ,sun1 usher'd or at noon1 or as now1 setting2 ,i too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth4444 ,i sing to the last the equalities1 modern or old1 ,i sing the endless finales of things1 ,i say ,nature continues--glory continues4 ,i praise with electric voice1 ,for ,i do not see one imperfection in the universe1 ,and ,i do not see one cause or result lamentable at last4 ,so ,rousseau1 writing of the nine years he spent at ,annecy1 with nothing but his happiness to tell3-- ,how tell what was neither said nor done nor even thought1 but tasted only and felt1 with no object of my felicity but the emotion of felicity itself6 ,i rose with the sun1 and ,i was happy2 ,i went to walk1 and ,i was happy2 ,i saw ',maman1' and ,i was happy2 ,i left her1 and ,i was happy4 ,i rambled through the woods and over the vine-slopes1 ,i wandered in the valleys1 ,i read1 ,i lounged1 ,i #cd worked in the garden1 ,i gathered the fruits1 ,i helped at the indoor work1 and happiness followed me everywhere4 ,it was in no one assignable thing2 it was all within myself2 it could not leave me for a single instant4 ,if moods like this could be made permanent1 and constitutions like these universal1 there would never be any occasion for such discourses as the present one4 ,no philosopher would seek to prove articulately that life is worth living1 for the fact that it absolutely is so would vouch for itself1 and the problem disappear in the vanishing of the question rather than in the coming of anything like a reply4 ,but we are not magicians to make the optimistic temperament universal2 and alongside of the deliverances of temperamental optimism concerning life1 those of temperamental pessimism always exist1 and oppose to them a standing refutation4 ,in what is called 'circular insanity1' phases of melancholy succeed phases of mania1 with no outward cause that we can discover2 and often enough to one and the same well person life will present incarnate radiance to-day and incarnate dreariness to-morrow1 according to the fluctuations of what the older medical books used to call the concoction of the humors4 ,in the words of the newspaper joke1 it depends on the liver4 ,rousseau's ill-balanced constitution undergoes a change1 and behold him in his latter evil days a prey to melancholy and black delusions of suspicion and fear4 ,some men seem launched upon the world even from their birth with souls as incapable of happiness as ,walt ,whitman's was of gloom1 and they have left us their messages in even more lasting verse than his1--the exquisite ,leopardi1 for example2 or our own contemporary1 #ce ,james ,thomson1 in that pathetic book1 ,the ,city of ,dreadful ,night1 which ,i think is less well-known than it should be for its literary beauty1 simply because men are afraid to quote its words1--they are so gloomy1 and at the same time so sincere4 ,in one place the poet describes a congregation gathered to listen to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral at night4 ,the sermon is too long to quote1 but it ends thus3-- ',o ,brothers of sad lives6 they are so brief2 ,a few short years must bring us all relief3 ,can we not bear these years of laboring breath4 ,but if you would not this poor life fulfil1 ,lo1 you are free to end it when you will1 ,without the fear of waking after death4'-- ,the organ-like vibrations of his voice ,thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away2 ,the yearning of the tones which bade rejoice ,was sad and tender as a requiem lay3 ,our shadowy congregation rested still1 ,as brooding on that ',end it when you will4' 99 99 99 99 99 ,our shadowy congregation rested still1 ,as musing on that message we had heard1 ,and brooding on that ',end it when you will1' ,perchance awaiting yet some other word2 ,when keen as lightning through a muffled sky ,sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry2-- ',the man speaks sooth1 alas6 the man speaks sooth3 ,we have no personal life beyond the grave2 ,there is no ,god2 ,fate knows nor wrath nor ruth3 ,can ,i find here the comfort which ,i crave8 ',in all eternity ,i had one chance1 ,one few years' term of gracious human life1-- ,the splendors of the intellect's advance1 ,the sweetness of the home with babes and wife2 #cf ',the social pleasures with their genial wit2 ,the fascination of the worlds of art2 ,the glories of the worlds of ,nature lit ,by large imagination's glowing heart2 ',the rapture of mere being1 full of health2 ,the careless childhood and the ardent youth2 ,the strenuous manhood winning various wealth1 ,the reverend age serene with life's long truth2 ',all the sublime prerogatives of ,man2 ,the storied memories of the times of old1 ,the patient tracking of the world's great plan ,through sequences and changes myriadfold4 ',this chance was never offered me before2 ,for me the infinite past is blank and dumb2 ,this chance recurreth never1 nevermore2 ,blank1 blank for me the infinite ,to-come4 ',and this sole chance was frustrate from my birth1 ,a mockery1 a delusion2 and my breath ,of noble human life upon this earth ,so racks me that ,i sigh for senseless death4 ',my wine of life is poison mixed with gall1 ,my noonday passes in a nightmare dream1 ,i worse than lose the years which are my all3 ,what can console me for the loss supreme8 ',speak not of comfort where no comfort is1 ,speak not at all3 can words make foul things fair6 ,our life 's a cheat1 our death a black abyss3 ,hush1 and be mute1 envisaging despair4' ,this vehement voice came from the northern aisle1 ,rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close2 ,and none gave answer for a certain while1 ,for words must shrink from these most wordless woes2 ,at last the pulpit speaker simply said1 ,with humid eyes and thoughtful1 drooping head1-- #cg ',my ,brother1 my poor ,brothers1 it is thus3 ,this life holds nothing good for us1 ,but it ends soon and nevermore can be2 ,and we knew nothing of it ere our birth1 ,and shall know nothing when consigned to earth2 ,i ponder these thoughts1 and they comfort me4' ,it ends soon1 and never more can be1 ,lo1 you are free to end it when you will1--these verses flow truthfully from the melancholy ,thomson's pen1 and are in truth a consolation for all to whom1 as to him1 the world is far more like a steady den of fear than a continual fountain of delight4 ,that life is not worth living the whole army of suicides declare1--an army whose roll-call1 like the famous evening gun of the ,british army1 follows the sun round the world and never terminates4 ,we1 too1 as we sit here in our comfort1 must 'ponder these things' also1 for we are of one substance with these suicides1 and their life is the life we share4 ,the plainest intellectual integrity1--nay1 more1 the simplest manliness and honor1 forbid us to forget their case4 ,if suddenly1 says ,mr4 ,ruskin1 in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a ,london dinner-party1 the walls of the chamber were parted1 and through their gap the nearest human beings who were famishing and in misery were borne into the midst of the company feasting and fancy free2 if1 pale from death1 horrible in destitution1 broken by despair1 body by body they were laid upon the soft carpet1 one beside the chair of every guest1--would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them2 would only a passing glance1 a passing thought1 be vouchsafed to them8 ,yet the actual facts1 the real relation of each ,dives and ,lazarus1 are not altered by the #ch intervention of the house-wall between the table and the sick-bed1--by the few feet of ground 7how few67 which are1 indeed1 all that separate the merriment from the misery4 ,,ii4 ,to come immediately to the heart of my theme1 then1 what ,i propose is to imagine ourselves reasoning with a fellow-mortal who is on such terms with life that the only comfort left him is to brood on the assurance1 ,you may end it when you will4 ,what reasons can we plead that may render such a brother 7or sister7 willing to take up the burden again8 ,ordinary ,christians1 reasoning with would-be suicides1 have little to offer them beyond the usual negative1 ,thou shalt not4 ,god alone is master of life and death1 they say1 and it is a blasphemous act to anticipate his absolving hand4 ,but can we find nothing richer or more positive than this1 no reflections to urge whereby the suicide may actually see1 and in all sad seriousness feel1 that in spite of adverse appearances even for him life is still worth living8 ,there are suicides and suicides 7in the ,united ,states about three thousand of them every year71 and ,i must frankly confess that with perhaps the majority of these my suggestions are impotent to deal4 ,where suicide is the result of insanity or sudden frenzied impulse1 reflection is impotent to arrest its headway2 and cases like these belong to the ultimate mystery of evil1 concerning which ,i can only offer considerations tending toward religious patience at the end of this hour4 ,my task1 let me say now1 is practically narrow1 and my words are to deal only with that metaphysical tedium vitae which is peculiar to #ci reflecting men4 ,most of you are devoted1 for good or ill1 to the reflective life4 ,many of you are students of philosophy1 and have already felt in your own persons the scepticism and unreality that too much grubbing in the abstract roots of things will breed4 ,this is1 indeed1 one of the regular fruits of the over-studious career4 ,too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead1 almost as often as too much sensualism does1 to the edge of the slope1 at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life4 ,but to the diseases which reflection breeds1 still further reflection can oppose effective remedies2 and it is of the melancholy and ,weltschmerz bred of reflection that ,i now proceed to speak4 ,let me say1 immediately1 that my final appeal is to nothing more recondite than religious faith4 ,so far as my argument is to be destructive1 it will consist in nothing more than the sweeping away of certain views that often keep the springs of religious faith compressed2 and so far as it is to be constructive1 it will consist in holding up to the light of day certain considerations calculated to let loose these springs in a normal1 natural way4 ,pessimism is essentially a religious disease4 ,in the form of it to which you are most liable1 it consists in nothing but a religious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply4 ,now1 there are two stages of recovery from this disease1 two different levels upon which one may emerge from the midnight view to the daylight view of things1 and ,i must treat of them in turn4 ,the second stage is the more complete and joyous1 and it corresponds to the freer exercise of religious #dj trust and fancy4 ,there are1 as is well known1 persons who are naturally very free in this regard1 others who are not at all so4 ,there are persons1 for instance1 whom we find indulging to their heart's content in prospects of immortality2 and there are others who experience the greatest difficulty in making such a notion seem real to themselves at all4 ,these latter persons are tied to their senses1 restricted to their natural experience2 and many of them1 moreover1 feel a sort of intellectual loyalty to what they call 'hard facts1' which is positively shocked by the easy excursions into the unseen that other people make at the bare call of sentiment4 ,minds of either class may1 however1 be intensely religious4 ,they may equally desire atonement and reconciliation1 and crave acquiescence and communion with the total soul of things4 ,but the craving1 when the mind is pent in to the hard facts1 especially as science now reveals them1 can breed pessimism1 quite as easily as it breeds optimism when it inspires religious trust and fancy to wing their way to another and a better world4 ,that is why ,i call pessimism an essentially religious disease4 ,the nightmare view of life has plenty of organic sources2 but its great reflective source has at all times been the contradiction between the phenomena of nature and the craving of the heart to believe that behind nature there is a spirit whose expression nature is4 ,what philosophers call 'natural theology' has been one way of appeasing this craving2 that poetry of nature in which our ,english literature is so rich has been another way4 ,now1 suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes1 whose imagination is pent in consequently1 and who takes its #da facts 'hard2' suppose it1 moreover1 to feel strongly the craving for communion1 and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically1--and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction8 ,now1 this inner discord 7merely as discord7 can be relieved in either of two ways3 ,the longing to read the facts religiously may cease1 and leave the bare facts by themselves2 or1 supplementary facts may be discovered or believed-in1 which permit the religious reading to go on4 ,these two ways of relief are the two stages of recovery1 the two levels of escape from pessimism1 to which ,i made allusion a moment ago1 and which the sequel will1 ,i trust1 make more clear4 ,,iii4 ,starting then with nature1 we naturally tend1 if we have the religious craving1 to say with ,marcus ,aurelius1 ,o ,universe6 what thou wishest ,i wish4 ,our sacred books and traditions tell us of one ,god who made heaven and earth1 and1 looking on them1 saw that they were good4 ,yet1 on more intimate acquaintance1 the visible surfaces of heaven and earth refuse to be brought by us into any intelligible unity at all4 ,every phenomenon that we would praise there exists cheek by jowl with some contrary phenomenon that cancels all its religious effect upon the mind4 ,beauty and hideousness1 love and cruelty1 life and death keep house together in indissoluble partnership2 and there gradually steals over us1 instead of the old warm notion of a man-loving ,deity1 that of an awful power that neither hates nor loves1 but rolls all things #db together meaninglessly to a common doom4 ,this is an uncanny1 a sinister1 a nightmare view of life1 and its peculiar unheimlichkeit1 or poisonousness1 lies expressly in our holding two things together which cannot possibly agree1--in our clinging1 on the one hand1 to the demand that there shall be a living spirit of the whole2 and1 on the other1 to the belief that the course of nature must be such a spirit's adequate manifestation and expression4 ,it is in the contradiction between the supposed being of a spirit that encompasses and owns us1 and with which we ought to have some communion1 and the character of such a spirit as revealed by the visible world's course1 that this particular death-in-life paradox and this melancholy-breeding puzzle reside1 ,carlyle expresses the result in that chapter of his immortal ',sartor ,resartus' entitled ',the ,everlasting ,no4' ,i lived1 writes poor ,teufelsdrckh1 in a continual1 indefinite1 pining fear2 tremulous1 pusillanimous1 apprehensive of ,i knew not what3 it seemed as if all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me2 as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster1 wherein ,i1 palpitating1 lay waiting to be devoured4 ,this is the first stage of speculative melancholy4 ,no brute can have this sort of melancholy2 no man who is irreligious can become its prey4 ,it is the sick shudder of the frustrated religious demand1 and not the mere necessary outcome of animal experience4 ,teufelsdrckh himself could have made shift to face the general chaos and bedevilment of this world's experiences very well1 were he not the victim of an originally unlimited trust and affection towards them4 ,if he might meet them piecemeal1 with no suspicion #dc of any whole expressing itself in them1 shunning the bitter parts and husbanding the sweet ones1 as the occasion served1 and as the day was foul or fair1 he could have zigzagged toward an easy end1 and felt no obligation to make the air vocal with his lamentations4 ,the mood of levity1 of ',i don't care1' is for this world's ills a sovereign and practical anaesthetic4 ,but1 no6 something deep down in ,teufelsdrckh and in the rest of us tells us that there is a ,spirit in things to which we owe allegiance1 and for whose sake we must keep up the serious mood4 ,and so the inner fever and discord also are kept up2 for nature taken on her visible surface reveals no such ,spirit1 and beyond the facts of nature we are at the present stage of our inquiry not supposing ourselves to look4 ,now1 ,i do not hesitate frankly and sincerely to confess to you that this real and genuine discord seems to me to carry with it the inevitable bankruptcy of natural religion navely and simply taken4 ,there were times when ,leibnitzes with their heads buried in monstrous wigs could compose ,theodicies1 and when stall-fed officials of an established church could prove by the valves in the heart and the round ligament of the hip-joint the existence of a ,moral and ,intelligent ,contriver of the ,world4 ,but those times are past2 and we of the nineteenth century1 with our evolutionary theories and our mechanical philosophies1 already know nature too impartially and too well to worship unreservedly any ,god of whose character she can be an adequate expression4 ,truly1 all we know of good and duty proceeds from nature2 but none the less so all we know of evil4 ,visible nature is all plasticity and indifference1--a moral multiverse1 as one might call it1 and not a moral #dd universe4 ,to such a harlot we owe no allegiance2 with her as a whole we can establish no moral communion2 and we are free in our dealings with her several parts to obey or destroy1 and to follow no law but that of prudence in coming to terms with such other particular features as will help us to our private ends4 ,if there be a divine ,spirit of the universe1 nature1 such as we know her1 cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man4 ,either there is no ,spirit revealed in nature1 or else it is inadequately revealed there2 and 7as all the higher religions have assumed7 what we call visible nature1 or this world1 must be but a veil and surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen or other world4 ,i cannot help1 therefore1 accounting it on the whole a gain 7though it may seem for certain poetic constitutions a very sad loss7 that the naturalistic superstition1 the worship of the ,god of nature1 simply taken as such1 should have begun to loosen its hold upon the educated mind4 ,in fact1 if ,i am to express my personal opinion unreservedly1 ,i should say 7in spite of its sounding blasphemous at first to certain ears7 that the initial step towards getting into healthy ultimate relations with the universe is the act of rebellion against the idea that such a ,god exists4 ,such rebellion essentially is that which in the chapter ,i have quoted from ,carlyle goes on to describe3-- ',wherefore1 like a coward1 dost thou forever pip and whimper1 and go cowering and trembling8 ,despicable biped6444 ,hast thou not a heart2 canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be2 and1 as a ,child of ,freedom1 though outcast1 trample ,tophet itself under thy feet1 while it consumes thee8 ,let it come1 then1 ,i will meet it and defy it6' ,and as ,i so thought1 there rushed like a stream of fire #de over my whole soul2 and ,i shook base ,fear away from me forever4444 ,thus had the ,everlasting ,no pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being1 of my ,me1 and then was it that my whole ,me stood up1 in native ,god-created majesty1 and recorded its ,protest4 ,such a ,protest1 the most important transaction in life1 may that same ,indignation and ,defiance1 in a psychological point of view1 be fitly called4 ,the ,everlasting ,no had said3 ',behold1 thou art fatherless1 outcast1 and the ,universe is mine2' to which my whole ,me now made answer3 ',i am not thine1 but ,free1 and forever hate thee6' ,from that hour1 ,teufelsdrckh-,carlyle adds1 ,i began to be a man4 ,and our poor friend1 ,james ,thomson1 similarly writes3-- ,who is most wretched in this dolorous place8 ,i think myself1 yet ,i would rather be ,my miserable self than ,he1 than ,he ,who formed such creatures to his own disgrace4 ,the vilest thing must be less vile than ,thou ,from whom it had its being1 ,god and ,lord6 ,creator of all woe and sin6 abhorred1 ,malignant and implacable6 ,i vow ,that not for all ,thy power furled and unfurled1 ,for all the temples to ,thy glory built1 ,would ,i assume the ignominious guilt ,of having made such men in such a world4 ,we are familiar enough in this community with the spectacle of persons exulting in their emancipation from belief in the ,god of their ancestral ,calvinism1--him who made the garden and the serpent1 and pre-appointed the eternal fires of hell4 ,some of them have found humaner gods to worship1 others are simply converts from all theology2 but1 both alike1 they #df assure us that to have got rid of the sophistication of thinking they could feel any reverence or duty toward that impossible idol gave a tremendous happiness to their souls4 ,now1 to make an idol of the spirit of nature1 and worship it1 also leads to sophistication2 and in souls that are religious and would also be scientific the sophistication breeds a philosophical melancholy1 from which the first natural step of escape is the denial of the idol2 and with the downfall of the idol1 whatever lack of positive joyousness may remain1 there comes also the downfall of the whimpering and cowering mood4 ,with evil simply taken as such1 men can make short work1 for their relations with it then are only practical4 ,it looms up no longer so spectrally1 it loses all its haunting and perplexing significance1 as soon as the mind attacks the instances of it singly1 and ceases to worry about their derivation from the 'one and only ,power4' ,here1 then1 on this stage of mere emancipation from monistic superstition1 the would-be suicide may already get encouraging answers to his question about the worth of life4 ,there are in most men instinctive springs of vitality that respond healthily when the burden of metaphysical and infinite responsibility rolls off4 ,the certainty that you now may step out of life whenever you please1 and that to do so is not blasphemous or monstrous1 is itself an immense relief4 ,the thought of suicide is now no longer a guilty challenge and obsession4 ,this little life is all we must endure2 ,the grave's most holy peace is ever sure1-- says ,thomson2 adding1 ,i ponder these thoughts1 and they comfort me4 ,meanwhile we can always #dg stand it for twenty-four hours longer1 if only to see what to-morrow's newspaper will contain1 or what the next postman will bring4 ,but far deeper forces than this mere vital curiosity are arousable1 even in the pessimistically-tending mind2 for where the loving and admiring impulses are dead1 the hating and fighting impulses will still respond to fit appeals4 ,this evil which we feel so deeply is something that we can also help to overthrow2 for its sources1 now that no ',substance' or ',spirit' is behind them1 are finite1 and we can deal with each of them in turn4 ,it is1 indeed1 a remarkable fact that sufferings and hardships do not1 as a rule1 abate the love of life2 they seem1 on the contrary1 usually to give it a keener zest4 ,the sovereign source of melancholy is repletion4 ,need and struggle are what excite and inspire us2 our hour of triumph is what brings the void4 ,not the ,jews of the captivity1 but those of the days of ,solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our ,bible come4 ,germany1 when she lay trampled beneath the hoofs of ,bonaparte's troopers1 produced perhaps the most optimistic and idealistic literature that the world has seen2 and not till the ,french 'milliards' were distributed after #ahga did pessimism overrun the country in the shape in which we see it there to-day4 ,the history of our own race is one long commentary on the cheerfulness that comes with fighting ills4 ,or take the ,waldenses1 of whom ,i lately have been reading1 as examples of what strong men will endure4 ,in #adhc a papal bull of ,innocent ,,viii4 enjoined their extermination4 ,it absolved those who should take up the crusade against them from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties1 released them from #dh any oath1 legitimized their title to all property which they might have illegally acquired1 and promised remission of sins to all who should kill the heretics4 ,there is no town in ,piedmont1 says a ,vaudois writer1 where some of our brethren have not been put to death4 ,jordan ,terbano was burnt alive at ,susa2 ,hippolite ,rossiero at ,turin1 ,michael ,goneto1 an octogenarian1 at ,sarcena2 ,vilermin ,ambrosio hanged on the ,col di ,meano2 ,hugo ,chiambs1 of ,fenestrelle1 had his entrails torn from his living body at ,turin2 ,peter ,geymarali of ,bobbio in like manner had his entrails taken out in ,lucerna1 and a fierce cat thrust in their place to torture him further2 ,maria ,romano was buried alive at ,rocca ,patia2 ,magdalena ,fauno underwent the same fate at ,san ,giovanni2 ,susanna ,michelini was bound hand and foot1 and left to perish of cold and hunger on the snow at ,sarcena2 ,bartolomeo ,fache1 gashed with sabres1 had the wounds filled up with quicklime1 and perished thus in agony at ,penile2 ,daniel ,michelini had his tongue torn out at ,bobbo for having praised ,god2 ,james ,baridari perished covered with sulphurous matches which had been forced into his flesh under the nails1 between the fingers1 in the nostrils1 in the lips1 and all over the body1 and then lighted2 ,daniel ,rovelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder1 which1 being lighted1 blew his head to pieces2444 ,sara ,rostignol was slit open from the legs to the bosom1 and left so to perish on the road between ,eyral and ,lucerna2 ,anna ,charbonnier was impaled1 and carried thus on a pike from ,san ,giovanni to ,la ,torre4#b ,und dergleicken mehr6 ,in #afcj the plague swept away one-half of the ,vaudois population1 including fifteen of their seventeen pastors4 ,the places of these were supplied from ,geneva and ,dauphiny1 and #di the whole ,vaudois people learned ,french in order to follow their services4 ,more than once their number fell1 by unremitting persecution1 from the normal standard of twenty-five thousand to about four thousand4 ,in #afhf the ,duke of ,savoy ordered the three thousand that remained to give up their faith or leave the country4 ,refusing1 they fought the ,french and ,piedmontese armies till only eighty of their fighting men remained alive or uncaptured1 when they gave up1 and were sent in a body to ,switzerland4 ,but in #afhi1 encouraged by ,william of ,orange and led by one of their pastor-captains1 between eight hundred and nine hundred of them returned to conquer their old homes again4 ,they fought their way to ,bobi1 reduced to four hundred men in the first half year1 and met every force sent against them1 until at last the ,duke of ,savoy1 giving up his alliance with that abomination of desolation1 ,louis ,,xiv41 restored them to comparative freedom1--since which time they have increased and multiplied in their barren ,alpine valleys to this day4 ,what are our woes and sufferance compared with these8 ,does not the recital of such a fight so obstinately waged against such odds fill us with resolution against our petty powers of darkness1--machine politicians1 spoilsmen1 and the rest8 ,life is worth living1 no matter what it bring1 if only such combats may be carried to successful terminations and one's heel set on the tyrant's throat4 ,to the suicide1 then1 in his supposed world of multifarious and immoral nature1 you can appeal--and appeal in the name of the very evils that make his heart sick there--to wait and see his part of the battle out4 ,and the consent to live on1 which you ask of him under these #ej circumstances1 is not the sophistical 'resignation' which devotees of cowering religions preach3 it is not resignation in the sense of licking a despotic ,deity's hand4 ,it is1 on the contrary1 a resignation based on manliness and pride4 ,so long as your would-be suicide leaves an evil of his own unremedied1 so long he has strictly no concern with evil in the abstract and at large4 ,the submission which you demand of yourself to the general fact of evil in the world1 your apparent acquiescence in it1 is here nothing but the conviction that evil at large is none of your business until your business with your private particular evils is liquidated and settled up4 ,a challenge of this sort1 with proper designation of detail1 is one that need only be made to be accepted by men whose normal instincts are not decayed2 and your reflective would-be suicide may easily be moved by it to face life with a certain interest again4 ,the sentiment of honor is a very penetrating thing4 ,when you and ,i1 for instance1 realize how many innocent beasts have had to suffer in cattle-cars and slaughter-pens and lay down their lives that we might grow up1 all fattened and clad1 to sit together here in comfort and carry on this discourse1 it does1 indeed1 put our relation to the universe in a more solemn light4 ,does not1 as a young ,amherst philosopher 7,xenos ,clark1 now dead7 once wrote1 the acceptance of a happy life upon such terms involve a point of honor8 ,are we not bound to take some suffering upon ourselves1 to do some self-denying service with our lives1 in return for all those lives upon which ours are built8 ,to hear this question is to answer it in but one possible way1 if one have a normally constituted heart4 #ea ,thus1 then1 we see that mere instinctive curiosity1 pugnacity1 and honor may make life on a purely naturalistic basis seem worth living from day to day to men who have cast away all metaphysics in order to get rid of hypochondria1 but who are resolved to owe nothing as yet to religion and its more positive gifts4 ,a poor half-way stage1 some of you may be inclined to say2 but at least you must grant it to be an honest stage2 and no man should dare to speak meanly of these instincts which are our nature's best equipment1 and to which religion herself must in the last resort address her own peculiar appeals4 ,,iv4 ,and now1 in turning to what religion may have to say to the question1 ,i come to what is the soul of my discourse4 ,religion has meant many things in human history2 but when from now onward ,i use the word ,i mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense1 as declaring that the so-called order of nature1 which constitutes this world's experience1 is only one portion of the total universe1 and that there stretches beyond this visible world an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive1 but in its relation to which the true significance of our present mundane life consists4 ,a man's religious faith 7whatever more special items of doctrine it may involve7 means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained4 ,in the more developed religions the natural world has always been regarded as the mere scaffolding or vestibule of a truer1 more eternal world1 and affirmed to be a sphere of #eb education1 trial1 or redemption4 ,in these religions1 one must in some fashion die to the natural life before one can enter into life eternal4 ,the notion that this physical world of wind and water1 where the sun rises and the moon sets1 is absolutely and ultimately the divinely aimed-at and established thing1 is one which we find only in very early religions1 such as that of the most primitive ,jews4 ,it is this natural religion 7primitive still1 in spite of the fact that poets and men of science whose good-will exceeds their perspicacity keep publishing it in new editions tuned to our contemporary ears7 that1 as ,i said a while ago1 has suffered definitive bankruptcy in the opinion of a circle of persons1 among whom ,i must count myself1 and who are growing more numerous every day4 ,for such persons the physical order of nature1 taken simply as science knows it1 cannot be held to reveal any one harmonious spiritual intent4 ,it is mere weather1 as ,chauncey ,wright called it1 doing and undoing without end4 ,now1 ,i wish to make you feel1 if ,i can in the short remainder of this hour1 that we have a right to believe the physical order to be only a partial order2 that we have a right to supplement it by an unseen spiritual order which we assume on trust1 if only thereby life may seem to us better worth living again4 ,but as such a trust will seem to some of you sadly mystical and execrably unscientific1 ,i must first say a word or two to weaken the veto which you may consider that science opposes to our act4 ,there is included in human nature an ingrained naturalism and materialism of mind which can only admit facts that are actually tangible4 ,of this sort of mind the entity called 'science' is the idol4 #ec ,fondness for the word 'scientist' is one of the notes by which you may know its votaries2 and its short way of killing any opinion that it disbelieves in is to call it 'unscientific4' ,it must be granted that there is no slight excuse for this4 ,science has made such glorious leaps in the last three hundred years1 and extended our knowledge of nature so enormously both in general and in detail2 men of science1 moreover1 have as a class displayed such admirable virtues1--that it is no wonder if the worshippers of science lose their head4 ,in this very ,university1 accordingly1 ,i have heard more than one teacher say that all the fundamental conceptions of truth have already been found by science1 and that the future has only the details of the picture to fill in4 ,but the slightest reflection on the real conditions will suffice to show how barbaric such notions are4 ,they show such a lack of scientific imagination1 that it is hard to see how one who is actively advancing any part of science can make a mistake so crude4 ,think how many absolutely new scientific conceptions have arisen in our own generation1 how many new problems have been formulated that were never thought of before1 and then cast an eye upon the brevity of science's career4 ,it began with ,galileo1 not three hundred years ago4 ,four thinkers since ,galileo1 each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved1 might have passed the torch of science into our hands as we sit here in this room4 ,indeed1 for the matter of that1 an audience much smaller than the present one1 an audience of some five or six score people1 if each person in it could speak for his own generation1 would carry us away to the black unknown of the human species1 #ed to days without a document or monument to tell their tale4 ,is it credible that such a mushroom knowledge1 such a growth overnight as this1 can represent more than the minutest glimpse of what the universe will really prove to be when adequately understood8 ,no6 our science is a drop1 our ignorance a sea4 ,whatever else be certain1 this at least is certain1--that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no positive idea4 ,agnostic positivism1 of course1 admits this principle theoretically in the most cordial terms1 but insists that we must not turn it to any practical use4 ,we have no right1 this doctrine tells us1 to dream dreams1 or suppose anything about the unseen part of the universe1 merely because to do so may be for what we are pleased to call our highest interests4 ,we must always wait for sensible evidence for our beliefs2 and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame no hypotheses whatever4 ,of course this is a safe enough position in abstracto4 ,if a thinker had no stake in the unknown1 no vital needs1 to live or languish according to what the unseen world contained1 a philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the other would be his wisest cue4 ,but1 unfortunately1 neutrality is not only inwardly difficult1 it is also outwardly unrealizable1 where our relations to an alternative are practical and vital4 ,this is because1 as the psychologists tell us1 belief and doubt are living attitudes1 and involve conduct on our part4 ,our only way1 for example1 of doubting1 or refusing to believe1 that a certain thing is1 is continuing to act as if it were not4 ,if1 for instance1 #ee ,i refuse to believe that the room is getting cold1 ,i leave the windows open and light no fire just as if it still were warm4 ,if ,i doubt that you are worthy of my confidence1 ,i keep you uninformed of all my secrets just as if you were unworthy of the same4 ,if ,i doubt the need of insuring my house1 ,i leave it uninsured as much as if ,i believed there were no need4 ,and so if ,i must not believe that the world is divine1 ,i can only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if it were so1 which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as if it were not so1 or in an irreligious way4 ,there are1 you see1 inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action1 and must count as action1 and when not to be for is to be practically against2 and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing4 ,and1 after all1 is not this duty of neutrality where only our inner interests would lead us to believe1 the most ridiculous of commands8 ,is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have no real connection with the forces that the hidden world may contain8 ,in other cases divinations based on inner interests have proved prophetic enough4 ,take science itself6 ,without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies1 we should never have attained to proving that such harmonies be hidden between all the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world4 ,hardly a law has been established in science1 hardly a fact ascertained1 which was not first sought after1 often with sweat and blood1 to gratify an inner need4 ,whence such needs come from we do not know2 we find them in us1 and biological psychology so far only classes them with ,darwin's 'accidental variations4' #ef ,but the inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it1 as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head4 ,the toil of many generations has proved the latter need prophetic4 ,why may not the former one be prophetic1 too8 ,and if needs of ours outrun the visible universe1 why may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is there8 ,what1 in short1 has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands8 ,science as such assuredly has no authority1 for she can only say what is1 not what is not2 and the agnostic thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence is simply an expression 7free to any one to make7 of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind4 ,now1 when ,i speak of trusting our religious demands1 just what do ,i mean by 'trusting'8 ,is the word to carry with it license to define in detail an invisible world1 and to anathematize and excommunicate those whose trust is different8 ,certainly not6 ,our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal2 they were given us to live by4 ,and to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them1 and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest were real4 ,it is a fact of human nature1 that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma or definition4 ,the bare assurance that this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vision1 the external staging of a many-storied universe1 in which spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal1--this bare #eg assurance is to such men enough to make life seem worth living in spite of every contrary presumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural plane4 ,destroy this inner assurance1 however1 vague as it is1 and all the light and radiance of existence is extinguished for these persons at a stroke4 ,often enough the wild-eyed look at life--the suicidal mood--will then set in4 ,and now the application comes directly home to you and me4 ,probably to almost every one of us here the most adverse life would seem well worth living1 if we only could be certain that our bravery and patience with it were terminating and eventuating and bearing fruit somewhere in an unseen spiritual world4 ,but granting we are not certain1 does it then follow that a bare trust in such a world is a fool's paradise and lubberland1 or rather that it is a living attitude in which we are free to indulge8 ,well1 we are free to trust at our own risks anything that is not impossible1 and that can bring analogies to bear in its behalf4 ,that the world of physics is probably not absolute1 all the converging multitude of arguments that make in favor of idealism tend to prove2 and that our whole physical life may lie soaking in a spiritual atmosphere1 a dimension of being that we at present have no organ for apprehending1 is vividly suggested to us by the analogy of the life of our domestic animals4 ,our dogs1 for example1 are in our human life but not of it4 ,they witness hourly the outward body of events whose inner meaning cannot1 by any possible operation1 be revealed to their intelligence1--events in which they themselves often play the cardinal part4 ,my terrier bites a teasing boy1 for example1 and the father demands damages4 ,the dog #eh may be present at every step of the negotiations1 and see the money paid1 without an inkling of what it all means1 without a suspicion that it has anything to do with him2 and he never can know in his natural dog's life4 ,or take another case which used greatly to impress me in my medical-student days4 ,consider a poor dog whom they are vivisecting in a laboratory4 ,he lies strapped on a board and shrieking at his executioners1 and to his own dark consciousness is literally in a sort of hell4 ,he cannot see a single redeeming ray in the whole business2 and yet all these diabolical-seeming events are often controlled by human intentions with which1 if his poor benighted mind could only be made to catch a glimpse of them1 all that is heroic in him would religiously acquiesce4 ,healing truth1 relief to future sufferings of beast and man1 are to be bought by them4 ,it may be genuinely a process of redemption4 ,lying on his back on the board there he may be performing a function incalculably higher than any that prosperous canine life admits of2 and yet1 of the whole performance1 this function is the one portion that must remain absolutely beyond his ken4 ,now turn from this to the life of man4 ,in the dog's life we see the world invisible to him because we live in both worlds4 ,in human life1 although we only see our world1 and his within it1 yet encompassing both these worlds a still wider world may be there1 as unseen by us as our world is by him2 and to believe in that world may be the most essential function that our lives in this world have to perform4 ,but may be6 may be6 one now hears the positivist contemptuously exclaim2 what use can a scientific life have for maybes8 ,well1 ,i reply1 the #ei 'scientific' life itself has much to do with maybes1 and human life at large has everything to do with them4 ,so far as man stands for anything1 and is productive or originative at all1 his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes4 ,not a victory is gained1 not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done1 except upon a maybe2 not a service1 not a sally of generosity1 not a scientific exploration or experiment or text-book1 that may not be a mistake4 ,it is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all4 ,and often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true4 ,suppose1 for instance1 that you are climbing a mountain1 and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap4 ,have faith that you can successfully make it1 and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment4 ,but mistrust yourself1 and think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of maybes1 and you will hesitate so long that1 at last1 all unstrung and trembling1 and launching yourself in a moment of despair1 you roll in the abyss4 ,in such a case 7and it belongs to an enormous class71 the part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs1 for only by such belief is the need fulfilled4 ,refuse to believe1 and you shall indeed be right1 for you shall irretrievably perish4 ,but believe1 and again you shall be right1 for you shall save yourself4 ,you make one or the other of two possible universes true by your trust or mistrust1--both universes having been only maybes1 in this particular1 before you contributed your act4 ,now1 it appears to me that the question whether life is worth living is subject to conditions logically #fj much like these4 ,it does1 indeed1 depend on you the liver4 ,if you surrender to the nightmare view and crown the evil edifice by your own suicide1 you have indeed made a picture totally black4 ,pessimism1 completed by your act1 is true beyond a doubt1 so far as your world goes4 ,your mistrust of life has removed whatever worth your own enduring existence might have given to it2 and now1 throughout the whole sphere of possible influence of that existence1 the mistrust has proved itself to have had divining power4 ,but suppose1 on the other hand1 that instead of giving way to the nightmare view you cling to it that this world is not the ultimatum4 ,suppose you find yourself a very well-spring1 as ,wordsworth says1 of-- ,zeal1 and the virtue to exist by faith ,as soldiers live by courage2 as1 by strength ,of heart1 the sailor fights with roaring seas4 ,suppose1 however thickly evils crowd upon you1 that your unconquerable subjectivity proves to be their match1 and that you find a more wonderful joy than any passive pleasure can bring in trusting ever in the larger whole4 ,have you not now made life worth living on these terms8 ,what sort of a thing would life really be1 with your qualities ready for a tussle with it1 if it only brought fair weather and gave these higher faculties of yours no scope8 ,please remember that optimism and pessimism are definitions of the world1 and that our own reactions on the world1 small as they are in bulk1 are integral parts of the whole thing1 and necessarily help to determine the definition4 ,they may even be the decisive elements in determining the definition4 ,a large mass can have its unstable equilibrium overturned by the addition #fa of a feather's weight2 a long phrase may have its sense reversed by the addition of the three letters n-o-t4 ,this life is worth living1 we can say1 since it is what we make it1 from the moral point of view2 and we are determined to make it from that point of view1 so far as we have anything to do with it1 a success4 ,now1 in this description of faiths that verify themselves ,i have assumed that our faith in an invisible order is what inspires those efforts and that patience which make this visible order good for moral men4 ,our faith in the seen world's goodness 7goodness now meaning fitness for successful moral and religious life7 has verified itself by leaning on our faith in the unseen world4 ,but will our faith in the unseen world similarly verify itself8 ,who knows8 ,once more it is a case of maybe2 and once more maybes are the essence of the situation4 ,i confess that ,i do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal4 ,god himself1 in short1 may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity4 ,for my own part1 ,i do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean1 if they mean anything short of this4 ,if this life be not a real fight1 in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success1 it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will4 ,but it feels like a real fight1--as if there were something really wild in the universe which we1 with all our idealities and faithfulnesses1 are needed to redeem2 and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears4 ,for such a half-wild1 half-saved universe our nature is adapted4 ,the deepest thing in our #fb nature is this ,binnenleben 7as a ,german doctor lately has called it71 this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses1 our faiths and fears4 ,as through the cracks and crannies of caverns those waters exude from the earth's bosom which then form the fountain-heads of springs1 so in these crepuscular depths of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise4 ,here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things2 and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments--the veto1 for example1 which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith--sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth4 ,for here possibilities1 not finished facts1 are the realities with which we have actively to deal2 and to quote my friend ,william ,salter1 of the ,philadelphia ,ethical ,society1 as the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility1 so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists4 ,these1 then1 are my last words to you3 ,be not afraid of life4 ,believe that life is worth living1 and your belief will help create the fact4 ,the 'scientific proof' that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment 7or some stage of being which that expression may serve to symbolize7 is reached4 ,but the faithful fighters of this hour1 or the beings that then and there will represent them1 may then turn to the faint-hearted1 who here decline to go on1 with words like those with which ,henry ,,iv4 greeted the tardy ,crillon after a great victory had been gained3 ,hang yourself1 brave ,crillon6 we fought at ,arques1 and you were not there4 #a ,an ,address to the ,harvard ,young ,men's ,christian ,association4 ,published in the ,international ,journal of ,ethics for ,october1 #ahie1 and as a pocket volume by ,s4 ,b4 ,weston1 ,philadelphia1 #ahif4 #b ,quoted by ,george ,e4 ,waring in his book on ,tyrol4 ,compare ,a4 ,brard3 ,les ,vaudois1 ,lyon1 ,storck1 #ahib4 #fc ,,the ,,sentiment ,,of ,,rationality4#a ,i4 ,what is the task which philosophers set themselves to perform2 and why do they philosophize at all8 ,almost every one will immediately reply3 ,they desire to attain a conception of the frame of things which shall on the whole be more rational than that somewhat chaotic view which every one by nature carries about with him under his hat4 ,but suppose this rational conception attained1 how is the philosopher to recognize it for what it is1 and not let it slip through ignorance8 ,the only answer can be that he will recognize its rationality as he recognizes everything else1 by certain subjective marks with which it affects him4 ,when he gets the marks1 he may know that he has got the rationality4 ,what1 then1 are the marks8 ,a strong feeling of ease1 peace1 rest1 is one of them4 ,the transition from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational comprehension is full of lively relief and pleasure4 ,but this relief seems to be a negative rather than a positive character4 ,shall we then say that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence #fd of any feeling of irrationality8 ,i think there are very good grounds for upholding such a view4 ,all feeling whatever1 in the light of certain recent psychological speculations1 seems to depend for its physical condition not on simple discharge of nerve-currents1 but on their discharge under arrest1 impediment1 or resistance4 ,just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely1 but a very intense feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are prevented1--so any unobstructed tendency to action discharges itself without the production of much cogitative accompaniment1 and any perfectly fluent course of thought awakens but little feeling2 but when the movement is inhibited1 or when the thought meets with difficulties1 we experience distress4 ,it is only when the distress is upon us that we can be said to strive1 to crave1 or to aspire4 ,when enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought1 we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with ,walt ,whitman1 if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times1 ,i am sufficient as ,i am4 ,this feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment1 of its absoluteness1--this absence of all need to explain it1 account for it1 or justify it1--is what ,i call the ,sentiment of ,rationality4 ,as soon1 in short1 as we are enabled from any cause whatever to think with perfect fluency1 the thing we think of seems to us pro tanto rational4 ,whatever modes of conceiving the cosmos facilitate this fluency1 produce the sentiment of rationality4 ,conceived in such modes1 being vouches for itself and needs no further philosophic formulation4 ,but this fluency may be obtained in various ways2 and first ,i will take up the theoretic way4 #fe ,the facts of the world in their sensible diversity are always before us1 but our theoretic need is that they should be conceived in a way that reduces their manifoldness to simplicity4 ,our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of a single underlying fact is like the relief of the musician at resolving a confused mass of sound into melodic or harmonic order4 ,the simplified result is handled with far less mental effort than the original data2 and a philosophic conception of nature is thus in no metaphorical sense a labor-saving contrivance4 ,the passion for parsimony1 for economy of means in thought1 is the philosophic passion par excellence2 and any character or aspect of the world's phenomena which gathers up their diversity into monotony will gratify that passion1 and in the philosopher's mind stand for that essence of things compared with which all their other determinations may by him be overlooked4 ,more universality or extensiveness is1 then1 one mark which the philosopher's conceptions must possess4 ,unless they apply to an enormous number of cases they will not bring him relief4 ,the knowledge of things by their causes1 which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge1 is useless to him unless the causes converge to a minimum number1 while still producing the maximum number of effects4 ,the more multiple then are the instances1 the more flowingly does his mind rove from fact to fact4 ,the phenomenal transitions are no real transitions2 each item is the same old friend with a slightly altered dress4 ,who does not feel the charm of thinking that the moon and the apple are1 as far as their relation to the #ff earth goes1 identical2 of knowing respiration and combustion to be one2 of understanding that the balloon rises by the same law whereby the stone sinks2 of feeling that the warmth in one's palm when one rubs one's sleeve is identical with the motion which the friction checks2 of recognizing the difference between beast and fish to be only a higher degree of that between human father and son2 of believing our strength when we climb the mountain or fell the tree to be no other than the strength of the sun's rays which made the corn grow out of which we got our morning meal8 ,but alongside of this passion for simplification there exists a sister passion1 which in some minds--though they perhaps form the minority--is its rival4 ,this is the passion for distinguishing2 it is the impulse to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole4 ,loyalty to clearness and integrity of perception1 dislike of blurred outlines1 of vague identifications1 are its characteristics4 ,it loves to recognize particulars in their full completeness1 and the more of these it can carry the happier it is4 ,it prefers any amount of incoherence1 abruptness1 and fragmentariness 7so long as the literal details of the separate facts are saved7 to an abstract way of conceiving things that1 while it simplifies them1 dissolves away at the same time their concrete fulness4 ,clearness and simplicity thus set up rival claims1 and make a real dilemma for the thinker4 ,a man's philosophic attitude is determined by the balance in him of these two cravings4 ,no system of philosophy can hope to be universally accepted among men which grossly violates either need1 or #fg entirely subordinates the one to the other4 ,the fate of ,spinosa1 with his barren union of all things in one substance1 on the one hand2 that of ,hume1 with his equally barren 'looseness and separateness' of everything1 on the other1--neither philosopher owning any strict and systematic disciples to-day1 each being to posterity a warning as well as a stimulus1--show us that the only possible philosophy must be a compromise between an abstract monotony and a concrete heterogeneity4 ,but the only way to mediate between diversity and unity is to class the diverse items as cases of a common essence which you discover in them4 ,classification of things into extensive 'kinds' is thus the first step2 and classification of their relations and conduct into extensive 'laws' is the last step1 in their philosophic unification4 ,a completed theoretic philosophy can thus never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients2 and its results must always be abstract1 since the basis of every classification is the abstract essence embedded in the living fact1--the rest of the living fact being for the time ignored by the classifier4 ,this means that none of our explanations are complete4 ,they subsume things under heads wider or more familiar2 but the last heads1 whether of things or of their connections1 are mere abstract genera1 data which we just find in things and write down4 ,when1 for example1 we think that we have rationally explained the connection of the facts ,a and ,b by classing both under their common attribute x1 it is obvious that we have really explained only so much of these items as is x4 ,to explain the connection of choke-damp and suffocation by the lack of oxygen is #fh to leave untouched all the other peculiarities both of choke-damp and of suffocation1--such as convulsions and agony on the one hand1 density and explosibility on the other4 ,in a word1 so far as ,a and ,b contain l1 m1 n1 and o1 p1 q1 respectively1 in addition to x1 they are not explained by x4 ,each additional particularity makes its distinct appeal4 ,a single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view4 ,the entire fact is not accounted for until each and all of its characters have been classed with their likes elsewhere4 ,to apply this now to the case of the universe1 we see that the explanation of the world by molecular movements explains it only so far as it actually is such movements4 ,to invoke the ',unknowable' explains only so much as is unknowable1 ',thought' only so much as is thought1 ',god' only so much as is ,god4 ,which thought8 ,which ,god8--are questions that have to be answered by bringing in again the residual data from which the general term was abstracted4 ,all those data that cannot be analytically identified with the attribute invoked as universal principle1 remain as independent kinds or natures1 associated empirically with the said attribute but devoid of rational kinship with it4 ,hence the unsatisfactoriness of all our speculations4 ,on the one hand1 so far as they retain any multiplicity in their terms1 they fail to get us out of the empirical sand-heap world2 on the other1 so far as they eliminate multiplicity the practical man despises their empty barrenness4 ,the most they can say is that the elements of the world are such and such1 and that each is identical with itself wherever found2 but the question ,where is it found8 the practical man is left to answer by his own wit4 ,which1 of all the #fi essences1 shall here and now be held the essence of this concrete thing1 the fundamental philosophy never attempts to decide4 ,we are thus led to the conclusion that the simple classification of things is1 on the one hand1 the best possible theoretic philosophy1 but is1 on the other1 a most miserable and inadequate substitute for the fulness of the truth4 ,it is a monstrous abridgment of life1 which1 like all abridgments is got by the absolute loss and casting out of real matter4 ,this is why so few human beings truly care for philosophy4 ,the particular determinations which she ignores are the real matter exciting needs1 quite as potent and authoritative as hers4 ,what does the moral enthusiast care for philosophical ethics8 ,why does the ,a,esthetik of every ,german philosopher appear to the artist an abomination of desolation8 ,grau1 theurer ,freund1 ist alle ,theorie ,und grn des ,lebens goldner ,baum4 ,the entire man1 who feels all needs by turns1 will take nothing as an equivalent for life but the fulness of living itself4 ,since the essences of things are as a matter of fact disseminated through the whole extent of time and space1 it is in their spread-outness and alternation that he will enjoy them4 ,when weary of the concrete clash and dust and pettiness1 he will refresh himself by a bath in the eternal springs1 or fortify himself by a look at the immutable natures4 ,but he will only be a visitor1 not a dweller in the region2 he will never carry the philosophic yoke upon his shoulders1 and when tired of the gray monotony of her problems and insipid spaciousness of her results1 will always escape gleefully into the teeming and dramatic richness of the concrete world4 #gj ,so our study turns back here to its beginning4 ,every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose4 ,conceptions1 'kinds1' are teleological instruments4 ,no abstract concept can be a valid substitute for a concrete reality except with reference to a particular interest in the conceiver4 ,the interest of theoretic rationality1 the relief of identification1 is but one of a thousand human purposes4 ,when others rear their heads1 it must pack up its little bundle and retire till its turn recurs4 ,the exaggerated dignity and value that philosophers have claimed for their solutions is thus greatly reduced4 ,the only virtue their theoretic conception need have is simplicity1 and a simple conception is an equivalent for the world only so far as the world is simple1--the world meanwhile1 whatever simplicity it may harbor1 being also a mightily complex affair4 ,enough simplicity remains1 however1 and enough urgency in our craving to reach it1 to make the theoretic function one of the most invincible of human impulses4 ,the quest of the fewest elements of things is an ideal that some will follow1 as long as there are men to think at all4 ,but suppose the goal attained4 ,suppose that at last we have a system unified in the sense that has been explained4 ,our world can now be conceived simply1 and our mind enjoys the relief4 ,our universal concept has made the concrete chaos rational4 ,but now ,i ask1 ,can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational8 ,it would seem at first sight that it might4 ,one is tempted at any rate to say that1 since the craving for rationality is appeased by the identification of one #ga thing with another1 a datum which left nothing else outstanding might quench that craving definitively1 or be rational in se4 ,no otherness being left to annoy us1 we should sit down at peace4 ,in other words1 as the theoretic tranquillity of the boor results from his spinning no further considerations about his chaotic universe1 so any datum whatever 7provided it were simple1 clear1 and ultimate7 ought to banish puzzle from the universe of the philosopher and confer peace1 inasmuch as there would then be for him absolutely no further considerations to spin4 ,this in fact is what some persons think4 ,professor ,bain says1-- ,a difficulty is solved1 a mystery unriddled1 when it can be shown to resemble something else2 to be an example of a fact already known4 ,mystery is isolation1 exception1 or it may be apparent contradiction3 the resolution of the mystery is found in assimilation1 identity1 fraternity4 ,when all things are assimilated1 so far as assimilation can go1 so far as likeness holds1 there is an end to explanation2 there is an end to what the mind can do1 or can intelligently desire4444 ,the path of science as exhibited in modern ages is toward generality1 wider and wider1 until we reach the highest1 the widest laws of every department of things2 there explanation is finished1 mystery ends1 perfect vision is gained4 ,but1 unfortunately1 this first answer will not hold4 ,our mind is so wedded to the process of seeing an other beside every item of its experience1 that when the notion of an absolute datum is presented to it1 it goes through its usual procedure and remains pointing at the void beyond1 as if in that lay further matter for contemplation4 ,in short1 it spins for itself the further positive consideration of a nonentity #gb enveloping the being of its datum2 and as that leads nowhere1 back recoils the thought toward its datum again4 ,but there is no natural bridge between nonentity and this particular datum1 and the thought stands oscillating to and fro1 wondering ,why was there anything but nonentity2 why just this universal datum and not another8 and finds no end1 in wandering mazes lost4 ,indeed1 ,bain's words are so untrue that in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful1 when the conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection1 that the craving for further explanation1 the ontological wonder-sickness1 arises in its extremest form4 ,as ,schopenhauer says1 ,the uneasiness which keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion1 is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence4 ,the notion of nonentity may thus be called the parent of the philosophic craving in its subtilest and profoundest sense4 ,absolute existence is absolute mystery1 for its relations with the nothing remain unmediated to our understanding4 ,one philosopher only has pretended to throw a logical bridge over this chasm4 ,hegel1 by trying to show that nonentity and concrete being are linked together by a series of identities of a synthetic kind1 binds everything conceivable into a unity1 with no outlying notion to disturb the free rotary circulation of the mind within its bounds4 ,since such unchecked movement gives the feeling of rationality1 he must be held1 if he has succeeded1 to have eternally and absolutely quenched all rational demands4 ,but for those who deem ,hegel's heroic effort to #gc have failed1 nought remains but to confess that when all things have been unified to the supreme degree1 the notion of a possible other than the actual may still haunt our imagination and prey upon our system4 ,the bottom of being is left logically opaque to us1 as something which we simply come upon and find1 and about which 7if we wish to act7 we should pause and wonder as little as possible4 ,the philosopher's logical tranquillity is thus in essence no other than the boor's4 ,they differ only as to the point at which each refuses to let further considerations upset the absoluteness of the data he assumes4 ,the boor does so immediately1 and is liable at any moment to the ravages of many kinds of doubt4 ,the philosopher does not do so till unity has been reached1 and is warranted against the inroads of those considerations1 but only practically1 not essentially1 secure from the blighting breath of the ultimate ,why8 ,if he cannot exorcise this question1 he must ignore or blink it1 and1 assuming the data of his system as something given1 and the gift as ultimate1 simply proceed to a life of contemplation or of action based on it4 ,there is no doubt that this acting on an opaque necessity is accompanied by a certain pleasure4 ,see the reverence of ,carlyle for brute fact3 ,there is an infinite significance in fact4 ,necessity1 says ,dhring1 and he means not rational but given necessity1 is the last and highest point that we can reach4444 ,it is not only the interest of ultimate and definitive knowledge1 but also that of the feelings1 to find a last repose and an ideal equilibrium in an uttermost datum which can simply not be other than it is4 ,such is the attitude of ordinary men in their theism1 ,god's fiat being in physics and morals such an #gd uttermost datum4 ,such also is the attitude of all hard-minded analysts and ,verstandesmenschen4 ,lotze1 ,renouvier1 and ,hodgson promptly say that of experience as a whole no account can be given1 but neither seek to soften the abruptness of the confession nor to reconcile us with our impotence4 ,but mediating attempts may be made by more mystical minds4 ,the peace of rationality may be sought through ecstasy when logic fails4 ,to religious persons of every shade of doctrine moments come when the world1 as it is1 seems so divinely orderly1 and the acceptance of it by the heart so rapturously complete1 that intellectual questions vanish2 nay1 the intellect itself is hushed to sleep1--as ,wordsworth says1 thought is not2 in enjoyment it expires4 ,ontological emotion so fills the soul that ontological speculation can no longer overlap it and put her girdle of interrogation-marks round existence4 ,even the least religious of men must have felt with ,walt ,whitman1 when loafing on the grass on some transparent summer morning1 that swiftly arose and spread round him the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth4 ,at such moments of energetic living we feel as if there were something diseased and contemptible1 yea vile1 in theoretic grubbing and brooding4 ,in the eye of healthy sense the philosopher is at best a learned fool4 ,since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irrationality which the head ascertains1 the erection of its procedure into a systematized method would be a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance4 ,but as used by mystics hitherto it has lacked universality1 being available for few persons and at few times1 and #ge even in these being apt to be followed by fits of reaction and dryness2 and if men should agree that the mystical method is a subterfuge without logical pertinency1 a plaster but no cure1 and that the idea of non-entity can never be exorcised1 empiricism will be the ultimate philosophy4 ,existence then will be a brute fact to which as a whole the emotion of ontologic wonder shall rightfully cleave1 but remain eternally unsatisfied4 ,then wonderfulness or mysteriousness will be an essential attribute of the nature of things1 and the exhibition and emphasizing of it will continue to be an ingredient in the philosophic industry of the race4 ,every generation will produce its ,job1 its ,hamlet1 its ,faust1 or its ,sartor ,resartus4 ,with this we seem to have considered the possibilities of purely theoretic rationality4 ,but we saw at the outset that rationality meant only unimpeded mental function4 ,impediments that arise in the theoretic sphere might perhaps be avoided if the stream of mental action should leave that sphere betimes and pass into the practical4 ,let us therefore inquire what constitutes the feeling of rationality in its practical aspect4 ,if thought is not to stand forever pointing at the universe in wonder1 if its movement is to be diverted from the issueless channel of purely theoretic contemplation1 let us ask what conception of the universe will awaken active impulses capable of effecting this diversion4 ,a definition of the world which will give back to the mind the free motion which has been blocked in the purely contemplative path may so far make the world seem rational again4 ,well1 of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand1 that one which awakens the active #gf impulses1 or satisfies other aesthetic demands better than the other1 will be accounted the more rational conception1 and will deservedly prevail4 ,there is nothing improbable in the supposition that an analysis of the world may yield a number of formulae1 all consistent with the facts4 ,in physical science different formulae may explain the phenomena equally well1--the one-fluid and the two-fluid theories of electricity1 for example4 ,why may it not be so with the world8 ,why may there not be different points of view for surveying it1 within each of which all data harmonize1 and which the observer may therefore either choose between1 or simply cumulate one upon another8 ,a ,beethoven string-quartet is truly1 as some one has said1 a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels1 and may be exhaustively described in such terms2 but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description4 ,just so a thorough-going interpretation of the world in terms of mechanical sequence is compatible with its being interpreted teleologically1 for the mechanism itself may be designed4 ,if1 then1 there were several systems excogitated1 equally satisfying to our purely logical needs1 they would still have to be passed in review1 and approved or rejected by our aesthetic and practical nature4 ,can we define the tests of rationality which these parts of our nature would use8 ,philosophers long ago observed the remarkable fact that mere familiarity with things is able to produce a feeling of their rationality4 ,the empiricist school has been so much struck by this circumstance #gg as to have laid it down that the feeling of rationality and the feeling of familiarity are one and the same thing1 and that no other kind of rationality than this exists4 ,the daily contemplation of phenomena juxtaposed in a certain order begets an acceptance of their connection1 as absolute as the repose engendered by theoretic insight into their coherence4 ,to explain a thing is to pass easily back to its antecedents2 to know it is easily to foresee its consequents4 ,custom1 which lets us do both1 is thus the source of whatever rationality the thing may gain in our thought4 ,in the broad sense in which rationality was defined at the outset of this essay1 it is perfectly apparent that custom must be one of its factors4 ,we said that any perfectly fluent and easy thought was devoid of the sentiment of irrationality4 ,inasmuch then as custom acquaints us with all the relations of a thing1 it teaches us to pass fluently from that thing to others1 and pro tanto tinges it with the rational character4 ,now1 there is one particular relation of greater practical importance than all the rest1--,i mean the relation of a thing to its future consequences4 ,so long as an object is unusual1 our expectations are baffled2 they are fully determined as soon as it becomes familiar4 ,i therefore propose this as the first practical requisite which a philosophic conception must satisfy3 ,it must1 in a general way at least1 banish uncertainty from the future4 ,the permanent presence of the sense of futurity in the mind has been strangely ignored by most writers1 but the fact is that our consciousness at a given moment is never free from the ingredient of expectancy4 ,every one knows how when a painful thing has to be undergone in the #gh near future1 the vague feeling that it is impending penetrates all our thought with uneasiness and subtly vitiates our mood even when it does not control our attention2 it keeps us from being at rest1 at home in the given present4 ,the same is true when a great happiness awaits us4 ,but when the future is neutral and perfectly certain1 'we do not mind it1' as we say1 but give an undisturbed attention to the actual4 ,let now this haunting sense of futurity be thrown off its bearings or left without an object1 and immediately uneasiness takes possession of the mind4 ,but in every novel or unclassified experience this is just what occurs2 we do not know what will come next2 and novelty per se becomes a mental irritant1 while custom per se is a mental sedative1 merely because the one baffles while the other settles our expectations4 ,every reader must feel the truth of this4 ,what is meant by coming 'to feel at home' in a new place1 or with new people8 ,it is simply that1 at first1 when we take up our quarters in a new room1 we do not know what draughts may blow in upon our back1 what doors may open1 what forms may enter1 what interesting objects may be found in cupboards and corners4 ,when after a few days we have learned the range of all these possibilities1 the feeling of strangeness disappears4 ,and so it does with people1 when we have got past the point of expecting any essentially new manifestations from their character4 ,the utility of this emotional effect of expectation is perfectly obvious2 'natural selection1' in fact1 was bound to bring it about sooner or later4 ,it is of the utmost practical importance to an animal that he should have prevision of the qualities of the objects #gi that surround him1 and especially that he should not come to rest in presence of circumstances that might be fraught either with peril or advantage1--go to sleep1 for example1 on the brink of precipices1 in the dens of enemies1 or view with indifference some new-appearing object that might1 if chased1 prove an important addition to the larder4 ,novelty ought to irritate him4 ,all curiosity has thus a practical genesis4 ,we need only look at the physiognomy of a dog or a horse when a new object comes into his view1 his mingled fascination and fear1 to see that the element of conscious insecurity or perplexed expectation lies at the root of his emotion4 ,a dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of deciding what is going to happen next4 ,that settled1 curiosity is quenched4 ,the dog quoted by ,darwin1 whose behavior in presence of a newspaper moved by the wind seemed to testify to a sense 'of the supernatural1' was merely exhibiting the irritation of an uncertain future4 ,a newspaper which could move spontaneously was in itself so unexpected that the poor brute could not tell what new wonders the next moment might bring forth4 ,to turn back now to philosophy4 ,an ultimate datum1 even though it be logically unrationalized1 will1 if its quality is such as to define expectancy1 be peacefully accepted by the mind2 while if it leave the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future1 it will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not distress4 ,now1 in the ultimate explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has elicited from the human mind1 the demands of expectancy to be satisfied have always played a fundamental part4 #hj ,the term set up by philosophers as primordial has been one which banishes the incalculable4 ',substance1' for example1 means1 as ,kant says1 das ,beharrliche1 which will be as it has been1 because its being is essential and eternal4 ,and although we may not be able to prophesy in detail the future phenomena to which the substance shall give rise1 we may set our minds at rest in a general way1 when we have called the substance ,god1 ,perfection1 ,love1 or ,reason1 by the reflection that whatever is in store for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with the character of this term2 so that our attitude even toward the unexpected is in a general sense defined4 ,take again the notion of immortality1 which for common people seems to be the touchstone of every philosophic or religious creed3 what is this but a way of saying that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of rationality8 ,the wrath of science against miracles1 of certain philosophers against the doctrine of free-will1 has precisely the same root1--dislike to admit any ultimate factor in things which may rout our prevision or upset the stability of our outlook4 ,anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this function in the doctrine of substance2 ,if there be such a substratum1 says ,mill1 suppose it at this instant miraculously annihilated1 and let the sensations continue to occur in the same order1 and how would the substratum be missed8 ,by what signs should we be able to discover that its existence had terminated8 ,should we not have as much reason to believe that it still existed as we now have8 ,and if we should not then be warranted in believing it1 how can we be so now8 ,truly enough1 if we have #ha already securely bagged our facts in a certain order1 we can dispense with any further warrant for that order4 ,but with regard to the facts yet to come the case is far different4 ,it does not follow that if substance may be dropped from our conception of the irrecoverably past1 it need be an equally empty complication to our notions of the future4 ,even if it were true that1 for aught we know to the contrary1 the substance might develop at any moment a wholly new set of attributes1 the mere logical form of referring things to a substance would still 7whether rightly or wrongly7 remain accompanied by a feeling of rest and future confidence4 ,in spite of the acutest nihilistic criticism1 men will therefore always have a liking for any philosophy which explains things per substantiam4 ,a very natural reaction against the theosophizing conceit and hide-bound confidence in the upshot of things1 which vulgarly optimistic minds display1 has formed one factor of the scepticism of empiricists1 who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of possibilities alien to our habitual experience which the cosmos may contain1 and which1 for any warrant we have to the contrary1 may turn it inside out to-morrow4 ,agnostic substantialism like that of ,mr4 ,spencer1 whose ,unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the absolute-irrational1 on which1 if consistently represented in thought1 it is of course impossible to count1 performs the same function of rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the ordinary philistine feels his security4 ,but considered as anything else than as reactions against an opposite excess1 these philosophies of uncertainty cannot be acceptable2 the general mind will fail to #hb come to rest in their presence1 and will seek for solutions of a more reassuring kind4 ,we may then1 ,i think1 with perfect confidence lay down as a first point gained in our inquiry1 that a prime factor in the philosophic craving is the desire to have expectancy defined2 and that no philosophy will definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner denies the possibility of gratifying this need4 ,we pass with this to the next great division of our topic4 ,it is not sufficient for our satisfaction merely to know the future as determined1 for it may be determined in either of many ways1 agreeable or disagreeable4 ,for a philosophy to succeed on a universal scale it must define the future congruously with our spontaneous powers4 ,a philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects1 but either of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance4 ,first1 its ultimate principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our dearest desires and most cherished powers4 ,a pessimistic principle like ,schopenhauer's incurably vicious ,will-substance1 or ,hartmann's wicked jack-of-all-trades the ,unconscious1 will perpetually call forth essays at other philosophies4 ,incompatibility of the future with their desires and active tendencies is1 in fact1 to most men a source of more fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself4 ,witness the attempts to overcome the 'problem of evil1' the 'mystery of pain4' ,there is no 'problem of good4' ,but a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object whatever to press against4 ,a philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all #hc relevancy in universal affairs1 as to annihilate their motives at one blow1 will be even more unpopular than pessimism4 ,better face the enemy than the eternal ,void6 ,this is why materialism will always fail of universal adoption1 however well it may fuse things into an atomistic unity1 however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity4 ,for materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the impulses which we most cherish4 ,the real meaning of the impulses1 it says1 is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever4 ,now1 what is called 'extradition' is quite as characteristic of our emotions as of our senses3 both point to an object as the cause of the present feeling4 ,what an intensely objective reference lies in fear6 ,in like manner an enraptured man and a dreary-feeling man are not simply aware of their subjective states2 if they were1 the force of their feelings would all evaporate4 ,both believe there is outward cause why they should feel as they do3 either1 ,it is a glad world6 how good life is6 or1 ,what a loathsome tedium is existence6 ,any philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by explaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no emotional pertinency1 leaves the mind with little to care or act for4 ,this is the opposite condition from that of nightmare1 but when acutely brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror4 ,in nightmare we have motives to act1 but no power2 here we have powers1 but no motives4 ,a nameless unheimlichkeit comes over us at the thought of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes1 in the objects of those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies4 ,the monstrously lopsided equation of the universe and its #hd knower1 which we postulate as the ideal of cognition1 is perfectly paralleled by the no less lopsided equation of the universe and the doer4 ,we demand in it a character for which our emotions and active propensities shall be a match4 ,small as we are1 minute as is the point by which the cosmos impinges upon each one of us1 each one desires to feel that his reaction at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast whole1--that he balances the latter1 so to speak1 and is able to do what it expects of him4 ,but as his abilities to do lie wholly in the line of his natural propensities2 as he enjoys reacting with such emotions as fortitude1 hope1 rapture1 admiration1 earnestness1 and the like2 and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear1 disgust1 despair1 or doubt1--a philosophy which should only legitimate emotions of the latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving4 ,it is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests4 ,the theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action4 ,cognition1 in this view1 is but a fleeting moment1 a cross-section at a certain point1 of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon4 ,in the lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action4 ,the germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before consciousness is not the theoretic ',what is that8' but the practical ',who goes there8' or rather1 as ,horwicz has admirably put it1 ',what is to be done8'--',was fang' ich an8' ,in all our discussions about the intelligence of lower animals1 the only test we use is that of their acting as if for a purpose4 #he ,cognition1 in short1 is incomplete until discharged in act2 and although it is true that the later mental development1 which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied cerebrum of man1 gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice1 yet the earlier claim is only postponed1 not effaced1 and the active nature asserts its rights to the end4 ,when the cosmos in its totality is the object offered to consciousness1 the relation is in no whit altered4 ,react on it we must in some congenial way4 ,it was a deep instinct in ,schopenhauer which led him to reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of invective against the practical man and his requirements4 ,no hope for pessimism unless he is slain6 ,helmholtz's immortal works on the eye and ear are to a great extent little more than a commentary on the law that practical utility wholly determines which parts of our sensations we shall be aware of1 and which parts we shall ignore4 ,we notice or discriminate an ingredient of sense only so far as we depend upon it to modify our actions4 ,we comprehend a thing when we synthetize it by identity with another thing4 ,but the other great department of our understanding1 acquaintance 7the two departments being recognized in all languages by the antithesis of such words as wissen and kennen2 scire and noscere1 etc471 what is that also but a synthesis1--a synthesis of a passive perception with a certain tendency to reaction8 ,we are acquainted with a thing as soon as we have learned how to behave towards it1 or how to meet the behavior which we expect from it4 ,up to that point it is still 'strange' to us4 #hf ,if there be anything at all in this view1 it follows that however vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum1 he cannot be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude toward it should be of one sort rather than another4 ,he who says life is real1 life is earnest1 however much he may speak of the fundamental mysteriousness of things1 gives a distinct definition to that mysteriousness by ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called seriousness1--which means the willingness to live with energy1 though energy bring pain4 ,the same is true of him who says that all is vanity4 ,for indefinable as the predicate 'vanity' may be in se1 it is clearly something that permits anaesthesia1 mere escape from suffering1 to be our rule of life4 ,there can be no greater incongruity than for a disciple of ,spencer to proclaim with one breath that the substance of things is unknowable1 and with the next that the thought of it should inspire us with awe1 reverence1 and a willingness to add our co-operative push in the direction toward which its manifestations seem to be drifting4 ,the unknowable may be unfathomed1 but if it make such distinct demands upon our activity we surely are not ignorant of its essential quality4 ,if we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great periods of revival1 of expansion of the human mind1 display in common1 we shall find1 ,i think1 simply this3 that each and all of them have said to the human being1 ,the inmost nature of the reality is congenial to powers which you possess4 ,in what did the emancipating message of primitive ,christianity consist but in the announcement that #hg ,god recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked8 ,take repentance3 the man who can do nothing rightly can at least repent of his failures4 ,but for paganism this faculty of repentance was a pure supernumerary1 a straggler too late for the fair4 ,christianity took it1 and made it the one power within us which appealed straight to the heart of ,god4 ,and after the night of the middle ages had so long branded with obloquy even the generous impulses of the flesh1 and defined the reality to be such that only slavish natures could commune with it1 in what did the sursum corda of the platonizing renaissance lie but in the proclamation that the archetype of verity in things laid claim on the widest activity of our whole aesthetic being8 ,what were ,luther's mission and ,wesley's but appeals to powers which even the meanest of men might carry with them1--faith and self-despair1--but which were personal1 requiring no priestly intermediation1 and which brought their owner face to face with ,god8 ,what caused the wildfire influence of ,rousseau but the assurance he gave that man's nature was in harmony with the nature of things1 if only the paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from between8 ,how did ,kant and ,fichte1 ,goethe and ,schiller1 inspire their time with cheer1 except by saying1 ,use all your powers2 that is the only obedience the universe exacts8 ,and ,carlyle with his gospel of work1 of fact1 of veracity1 how does he move us except by saying that the universe imposes no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can perform8 ,emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will be is here in the enveloping now2 that man has but to obey himself1--,he who will rest in what he is1 #hh is a part of destiny1--is in like manner nothing but an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency of one's natural faculties4 ,in a word1 ,son of ,man1 stand upon thy feet and ,i will speak unto thee6 is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs have helped the disciple4 ,but that has been enough to satisfy the greater part of his rational need4 ,in se and per se the universal essence has hardly been more defined by any of these formulas than by the agnostic x2 but the mere assurance that my powers1 such as they are1 are not irrelevant to it1 but pertinent2 that it speaks to them and will in some way recognize their reply2 that ,i can be a match for it if ,i will1 and not a footless waif1--suffices to make it rational to my feeling in the sense given above4 ,nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate1 and to legitimate in an emphatic manner1 the more powerful of our emotional and practical tendencies4 ,fatalism1 whose solving word in all crises of behavior is all striving is vain1 will never reign supreme1 for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race4 ,moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency1 vagueness1 and shadowy determination of expectancy4 ,man needs a rule for his will1 and will invent one if one be not given him4 ,but now observe a most important consequence4 ,men's active impulses are so differently mixed that a philosophy fit in this respect for ,bismarck will almost certainly be unfit for a valetudinarian poet4 ,in other words1 although one can lay down in advance the #hi rule that a philosophy which utterly denies all fundamental ground for seriousness1 for effort1 for hope1 which says the nature of things is radically alien to human nature1 can never succeed1--one cannot in advance say what particular dose of hope1 or of gnosticism of the nature of things1 the definitely successful philosophy shall contain4 ,in short1 it is almost certain that personal temperament will here make itself felt1 and that although all men will insist on being spoken to by the universe in some way1 few will insist on being spoken to in just the same way4 ,we have here1 in short1 the sphere of what ,matthew ,arnold likes to call ,aberglaube1 legitimate1 inexpugnable1 yet doomed to eternal variations and disputes4 ,take idealism and materialism as examples of what ,i mean1 and suppose for a moment that both give a conception of equal theoretic clearness and consistency1 and that both determine our expectations equally well4 ,idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution1 materialism by another4 ,at this very day all sentimental natures1 fond of conciliation and intimacy1 tend to an idealistic faith4 ,why8 ,because idealism gives to the nature of things such kinship with our personal selves4 ,our own thoughts are what we are most at home with1 what we are least afraid of4 ,to say then that the universe essentially is thought1 is to say that ,i myself1 potentially at least1 am all4 ,there is no radically alien corner1 but an all-pervading intimacy4 ,now1 in certain sensitively egotistic minds this conception of reality is sure to put on a narrow1 close1 sick-room air4 ,everything sentimental and priggish will be consecrated by it4 ,that element in reality which every strong man of common-sense willingly feels there because it calls forth #ij powers that he owns--the rough1 harsh1 sea-wave1 north-wind element1 the denier of persons1 the democratizer--is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communion4 ,now1 it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis1 as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme4 ,they sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy4 ,there is an overpowering desire at moments to escape personality1 to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego1 to let the tides flow1 even though they flow over us4 ,the strife of these two kinds of mental temper will1 ,i think1 always be seen in philosophy4 ,some men will keep insisting on the reason1 the atonement1 that lies in the heart of things1 and that we can act with2 others1 on the opacity of brute fact that we must react against4 ,now1 there is one element of our active nature which the ,christian religion has emphatically recognized1 but which philosophers as a rule have with great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their pretension to found systems of absolute certainty4 ,i mean the element of faith4 ,faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible2 and as the test of belief is willingness to act1 one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance4 ,it is in fact the same moral quality which we call courage in practical affairs2 and there will be a very widespread tendency in men of vigorous nature to enjoy a certain amount of uncertainty in their philosophic creed1 just as risk lends a zest to worldly activity4 ,absolutely certified philosophies #ia seeking the inconcussum are fruits of mental natures in which the passion for identity 7which we saw to be but one factor of the rational appetite7 plays an abnormally exclusive part4 ,in the average man1 on the contrary1 the power to trust1 to risk a little beyond the literal evidence1 is an essential function4 ,any mode of conceiving the universe which makes an appeal to this generous power1 and makes the man seem as if he were individually helping to create the actuality of the truth whose metaphysical reality he is willing to assume1 will be sure to be responded to by large numbers4 ,the necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day2 but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition1--the proposition1 namely1 that the course of nature is uniform4 ,that nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is1 they all admit1 a truth which no man can know2 but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it4 ,as ,helmholtz says3 ,hier gilt nur der eine ,rath3 vertraue und handle6 ,and ,professor ,bain urges3 ,our only error is in proposing to give any reason or justification of the postulate1 or to treat it as otherwise than begged at the very outset4 ,with regard to all other possible truths1 however1 a number of our most influential contemporaries think that an attitude of faith is not only illogical but shameful4 ,faith in a religious dogma for which there is no outward proof1 but which we are tempted to postulate for our emotional interests1 just as we #ib postulate the uniformity of nature for our intellectual interests1 is branded by ,professor ,huxley as the lowest depth of immorality4 ,citations of this kind from leaders of the modern ,aufklrung might be multiplied almost indefinitely4 ,take ,professor ,clifford's article on the ',ethics of ,belief4' ,he calls it 'guilt' and 'sin' to believe even the truth without 'scientific evidence4' ,but what is the use of being a genius1 unless with the same scientific evidence as other men1 one can reach more truth than they8 ,why does ,clifford fearlessly proclaim his belief in the conscious-automaton theory1 although the 'proofs' before him are the same which make ,mr4 ,lewes reject it8 ,why does he believe in primordial units of 'mind-stuff' on evidence which would seem quite worthless to ,professor ,bain8 ,simply because1 like every human being of the slightest mental originality1 he is peculiarly sensitive to evidence that bears in some one direction4 ,it is utterly hopeless to try to exorcise such sensitiveness by calling it the disturbing subjective factor1 and branding it as the root of all evil4 ',subjective' be it called6 and 'disturbing' to those whom it foils6 ,but if it helps those who1 as ,cicero says1 vim naturae magis sentiunt1 it is good and not evil4 ,pretend what we may1 the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions4 ,intellect1 will1 taste1 and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs2 and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way4 ,the absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose denominator and numerator alone it is swayed1 is #ic ideally as inept as it is actually impossible4 ,it is almost incredible that men who are themselves working philosophers should pretend that any philosophy can be1 or ever has been1 constructed without the help of personal preference1 belief1 or divination4 ,how have they succeeded in so stultifying their sense for the living facts of human nature as not to perceive that every philosopher1 or man of science either1 whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought1 has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another1 and a sort of preliminary assurance that his notion can be made to work2 and has borne his best fruit in trying to make it work8 ,these mental instincts in different men are the spontaneous variations upon which the intellectual struggle for existence is based4 ,the fittest conceptions survive1 and with them the names of their champions shining to all futurity4 ,the coil is about us1 struggle as we may4 ,the only escape from faith is mental nullity4 ,what we enjoy most in a ,huxley or a ,clifford is not the professor with his learning1 but the human personality ready to go in for what it feels to be right1 in spite of all appearances4 ,the concrete man has but one interest1--to be right4 ,that for him is the art of all arts1 and all means are fair which help him to it4 ,naked he is flung into the world1 and between him and nature there are no rules of civilized warfare4 ,the rules of the scientific game1 burdens of proof1 presumptions1 experimenta crucis1 complete inductions1 and the like1 are only binding on those who enter that game4 ,as a matter of fact we all more or less do enter it1 because it helps us to our end4 ,but if the means presume to frustrate the end and call us cheats for being right in #id advance of their slow aid1 by guesswork or by hook or crook1 what shall we say of them8 ,were all of ,clifford's works1 except the ,ethics of ,belief1 forgotten1 he might well figure in future treatises on psychology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he might buy therewith4 ,in short1 if ,i am born with such a superior general reaction to evidence that ,i can guess right and act accordingly1 and gain all that comes of right action1 while my less gifted neighbor 7paralyzed by his scruples and waiting for more evidence which he dares not anticipate1 much as he longs to7 still stands shivering on the brink1 by what law shall ,i be forbidden to reap the advantages of my superior native sensitiveness8 ,of course ,i yield to my belief in such a case as this or distrust it1 alike at my peril1 just as ,i do in any of the great practical decisions of life4 ,if my inborn faculties are good1 ,i am a prophet2 if poor1 ,i am a failure3 nature spews me out of her mouth1 and there is an end of me4 ,in the total game of life we stake our persons all the while2 and if in its theoretic part our persons will help us to a conclusion1 surely we should also stake them there1 however inarticulate they may be4#b #ie ,but in being myself so very articulate in proving what to all readers with a sense for reality will seem a platitude1 am ,i not wasting words8 ,we cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith4 ,faith is synonymous with working hypothesis4 ,the only difference is that while some hypotheses can be refuted in five minutes1 others may defy ages4 ,a chemist who conjectures that a certain wall-paper contains arsenic1 and has faith enough to lead him to take the trouble to put some of it into a hydrogen bottle1 finds out by the results of his action whether he was right or wrong4 ,but theories like that of ,darwin1 or that of the kinetic constitution of matter1 may exhaust the labors of generations in their corroboration1 each tester of their truth proceeding in this simple way1--that he acts as if it were true1 and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false4 ,the longer disappointment is delayed1 the stronger grows his faith in his theory4 ,now1 in such questions as ,god1 immortality1 absolute morality1 and free-will1 no non-papal believer at the present day pretends his faith to be of an essentially different complexion2 he can always doubt his creed4 ,but his intimate persuasion is that the odds in its favor are strong enough to warrant him in acting all along on the assumption of its truth4 ,his corroboration or repudiation by the nature of things may be deferred until the day of judgment4 ,the #if uttermost he now means is something like this3 ,i expect then to triumph with tenfold glory2 but if it should turn out1 as indeed it may1 that ,i have spent my days in a fool's paradise1 why1 better have been the dupe of such a dreamland than the cunning reader of a world like that which then beyond all doubt unmasks itself to view4 ,in short1 we go in against materialism very much as we should go in1 had we a chance1 against the second ,french empire or the ,church of ,rome1 or any other system of things toward which our repugnance is vast enough to determine energetic action1 but too vague to issue in distinct argumentation4 ,our reasons are ludicrously incommensurate with the volume of our feeling1 yet on the latter we unhesitatingly act4 ,now1 ,i wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed out1 that belief 7as measured by action7 not only does and must continually outstrip scientific evidence1 but that there is a certain class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a confessor2 and that as regards this class of truths faith is not only licit and pertinent1 but essential and indispensable4 ,the truths cannot become true till our faith has made them so4 ,suppose1 for example1 that ,i am climbing in the ,alps1 and have had the ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap4 ,being without similar experience1 ,i have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully2 but hope and confidence in myself make me sure ,i shall not miss my aim1 and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible4 ,but suppose that1 on the contrary1 #ig the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate2 or suppose that1 having just read the ,ethics of ,belief1 ,i feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption unverified by previous experience1--why1 then ,i shall hesitate so long that at last1 exhausted and trembling1 and launching myself in a moment of despair1 ,i miss my foothold and roll into the abyss4 ,in this case 7and it is one of an immense class7 the part of wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires2 for the belief is one of the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its object4 ,there are then cases where faith creates its own verification4 ,believe1 and you shall be right1 for you shall save yourself2 doubt1 and you shall again be right1 for you shall perish4 ,the only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage4 ,the future movements of the stars or the facts of past history are determined now once for all1 whether ,i like them or not4 ,they are given irrespective of my wishes1 and in all that concerns truths like these subjective preference should have no part2 it can only obscure the judgment4 ,but in every fact into which there enters an element of personal contribution on my part1 as soon as this personal contribution demands a certain degree of subjective energy which1 in its turn1 calls for a certain amount of faith in the result1--so that1 after all1 the future fact is conditioned by my present faith in it1--how trebly asinine would it be for me to deny myself the use of the subjective method1 the method of belief based on desire6 ,in every proposition whose bearing is universal 7and such are all the propositions of philosophy71 the acts of the subject and their consequences throughout eternity should be included in the formula4 ,if ,m #ih represent the entire world minus the reaction of the thinker upon it1 and if ,m x represent the absolutely total matter of philosophic propositions 7x standing for the thinker's reaction and its results71--what would be a universal truth if the term x were of one complexion1 might become egregious error if x altered its character4 ,let it not be said that x is too infinitesimal a component to change the character of the immense whole in which it lies imbedded4 ,everything depends on the point of view of the philosophic proposition in question4 ,if we have to define the universe from the point of view of sensibility1 the critical material for our judgment lies in the animal kingdom1 insignificant as that is1 quantitatively considered4 ,the moral definition of the world may depend on phenomena more restricted still in range4 ,in short1 many a long phrase may have its sense reversed by the addition of three letters1 n-o-t2 many a monstrous mass have its unstable equilibrium discharged one way or the other by a feather weight that falls4 ,let us make this clear by a few examples4 ,the philosophy of evolution offers us to-day a new criterion to serve as an ethical test between right and wrong4 ,previous criteria1 it says1 being subjective1 have left us still floundering in variations of opinion and the status belli4 ,here is a criterion which is objective and fixed3 ,that is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive4 ,but we immediately see that this standard can only remain objective by leaving myself and my conduct out4 ,if what prevails and survives does so by my help1 and cannot do so without that help2 if something else will prevail in case ,i alter my conduct1--how can ,i possibly now1 conscious of alternative courses of action open before me1 either of which #ii ,i may suppose capable of altering the path of events1 decide which course to take by asking what path events will follow8 ,if they follow my direction1 evidently my direction cannot wait on them4 ,the only possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his standard is the obsequious method of forecasting the course society would take but for him1 and then putting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies of desire and interest1 and with bated breath and tiptoe tread following as straight as may be at the tail1 and bringing up the rear of everything4 ,some pious creatures may find a pleasure in this2 but not only does it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow 7a wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead aright71 but if it be treated as every ethical principle must be treated1--namely1 as a rule good for all men alike1--its general observance would lead to its practical refutation by bringing about a general deadlock4 ,each good man hanging back and waiting for orders from the rest1 absolute stagnation would ensue4 ,happy1 then1 if a few unrighteous ones contribute an initiative which sets things moving again6 ,all this is no caricature4 ,that the course of destiny may be altered by individuals no wise evolutionist ought to doubt4 ,everything for him has small beginnings1 has a bud which may be 'nipped1' and nipped by a feeble force4 ,human races and tendencies follow the law1 and have also small beginnings4 ,the best1 according to evolution1 is that which has the biggest endings4 ,now1 if a present race of men1 enlightened in the evolutionary philosophy1 and able to forecast the future1 were able to discern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of future supremacy2 were able to see that their own #ajj race would eventually be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these were left unmolested1--these present sages would have two courses open to them1 either perfectly in harmony with the evolutionary test3 ,strangle the new race now1 and ours survives2 help the new race1 and it survives4 ,in both cases the action is right as measured by the evolutionary standard1--it is action for the winning side4 ,thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of events4 ,but for others1 leaders of opinion or potentates1 and in general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching import1 and to the rest of us1 each in his measure1--whenever we espouse a cause we contribute to the determination of the evolutionary standard of right4 ,the truly wise disciple of this school will then admit faith as an ultimate ethical factor4 ,any philosophy which makes such questions as1 ,what is the ideal type of humanity8 ,what shall be reckoned virtues8 ,what conduct is good8 depend on the question1 ,what is going to succeed8--must needs fall back on personal belief as one of the ultimate conditions of the truth4 ,for again and again success depends on energy of act2 energy again depends on faith that we shall not fail2 and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right1--which faith thus verifies itself4 ,take as an example the question of optimism or pessimism1 which makes so much noise just now in ,germany4 ,every human being must sometime decide for himself whether life is worth living4 ,suppose that in looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery1 of old age1 of wickedness and #aja pain1 and how unsafe is his own future1 he yields to the pessimistic conclusion1 cultivates disgust and dread1 ceases striving1 and finally commits suicide4 ,he thus adds to the mass ,m of mundane phenomena1 independent of his subjectivity1 the subjective complement x1 which makes of the whole an utterly black picture illumined by no gleam of good4 ,pessimism completed1 verified by his moral reaction and the deed in which this ends1 is true beyond a doubt4 ,m x expresses a state of things totally bad4 ,the man's belief supplied all that was lacking to make it so1 and now that it is made so the belief was right4 ,but now suppose that with the same evil facts ,m1 the man's reaction x is exactly reversed2 suppose that instead of giving way to the evil he braves it1 and finds a sterner1 more wonderful joy than any passive pleasure can yield in triumphing over pain and defying fear2 suppose he does this successfully1 and however thickly evils crowd upon him proves his dauntless subjectivity to be more than their match1--will not every one confess that the bad character of the ,m is here the conditio sine qua non of the good character of the x8 ,will not every one instantly declare a world fitted only for fair-weather human beings susceptible of every passive enjoyment1 but without independence1 courage1 or fortitude1 to be from a moral point of view incommensurably inferior to a world framed to elicit from the man every form of triumphant endurance and conquering moral energy8 ,as ,james ,hinton says1-- ,little inconveniences1 exertions1 pains4--these are the only things in which we rightly feel our life at all4 ,if these be not there1 existence becomes worthless1 or worse2 #ajb success in putting them all away is fatal4 ,so it is men engage in athletic sports1 spend their holidays in climbing up mountains1 find nothing so enjoyable as that which taxes their endurance and their energy4 ,this is the way we are made1 ,i say4 ,it may or may not be a mystery or a paradox2 it is a fact4 ,now1 this enjoyment in endurance is just according to the intensity of life3 the more physical vigor and balance1 the more endurance can be made an element of satisfaction4 ,a sick man cannot stand it4 ,the line of enjoyable suffering is not a fixed one2 it fluctuates with the perfectness of the life4 ,that our pains are1 as they are1 unendurable1 awful1 overwhelming1 crushing1 not to be borne save in misery and dumb impatience1 which utter exhaustion alone makes patient1--that our pains are thus unendurable1 means not that they are too great1 but that we are sick4 ,we have not got our proper life4 ,so you perceive pain is no more necessarily an evil1 but an essential element of the highest good4#c ,but the highest good can be achieved only by our getting our proper life2 and that can come about only by help of a moral energy born of the faith that in some way or other we shall succeed in getting it if we try pertinaciously enough4 ,this world is good1 we must say1 since it is what we make it1--and we shall make it good4 ,how can we exclude from the cognition of a truth a faith which is involved in the creation of the truth8 ,m has its character indeterminate1 susceptible of forming part of a thorough-going pessimism on the one hand1 or of a meliorism1 a moral 7as distinguished from a sensual7 optimism on the other4 ,all depends on the character of the #ajc personal contribution x4 ,wherever the facts to be formulated contain such a contribution1 we may logically1 legitimately1 and inexpugnably believe what we desire4 ,the belief creates its verification4 ,the thought becomes literally father to the fact1 as the wish was father to the thought4#d ,let us now turn to the radical question of life1--the question whether this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe1--and see whether the method of faith may legitimately have a place there4 ,it is really the question of materialism4 ,is the world a simple brute actuality1 an existence de facto about which the deepest thing that can be said is that it happens so to be2 or is the judgment of better or worse1 of ought1 as intimately pertinent to phenomena as the simple judgment is or is not8 ,the materialistic theorists say that judgments of worth are themselves mere matters of fact2 that the words 'good' and 'bad' have no sense apart from subjective passions and interests which we may1 if we please1 play fast and loose with at will1 so far as any duty of ours to the non-human universe is concerned4 ,thus1 when a materialist says it is better for him to suffer great inconvenience than to break a promise1 he only means that his social interests have become so knit up with #ajd keeping faith that1 those interests once being granted1 it is better for him to keep the promise in spite of everything4 ,but the interests themselves are neither right nor wrong1 except possibly with reference to some ulterior order of interests which themselves again are mere subjective data without character1 either good or bad4 ,for the absolute moralists1 on the contrary1 the interests are not there merely to be felt1--they are to be believed in and obeyed4 ,not only is it best for my social interests to keep my promise1 but best for me to have those interests1 and best for the cosmos to have this me4 ,like the old woman in the story who described the world as resting on a rock1 and then explained that rock to be supported by another rock1 and finally when pushed with questions said it was rocks all the way down1--he who believes this to be a radically moral universe must hold the moral order to rest either on an absolute and ultimate should1 or on a series of shoulds all the way down4#e ,the practical difference between this objective sort of moralist and the other one is enormous4 ,the subjectivist in morals1 when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him1 is always free to seek harmony by toning down the sensitiveness of the feelings4 ,being mere data1 neither good nor evil in themselves1 he may pervert them or lull them to sleep by any means at his command4 ,truckling1 compromise1 time-serving1 capitulations of conscience1 are conventionally opprobrious names for what1 if successfully carried out1 #aje would be on his principles by far the easiest and most praiseworthy mode of bringing about that harmony between inner and outer relations which is all that he means by good4 ,the absolute moralist1 on the other hand1 when his interests clash with the world1 is not free to gain harmony by sacrificing the ideal interests4 ,according to him1 these latter should be as they are and not otherwise4 ,resistance then1 poverty1 martyrdom if need be1 tragedy in a word1--such are the solemn feasts of his inward faith4 ,not that the contradiction between the two men occurs every day2 in commonplace matters all moral schools agree4 ,it is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested3 then routine maxims fail1 and we fall back on our gods4 ,it cannot then be said that the question1 ,is this a moral world8 is a meaningless and unverifiable question because it deals with something non-phenomenal4 ,any question is full of meaning to which1 as here1 contrary answers lead to contrary behavior4 ,and it seems as if in answering such a question as this we might proceed exactly as does the physical philosopher in testing an hypothesis4 ,he deduces from the hypothesis an experimental action1 x2 this he adds to the facts ,m already existing4 ,it fits them if the hypothesis be true2 if not1 there is discord4 ,the results of the action corroborate or refute the idea from which it flowed4 ,so here3 the verification of the theory which you may hold as to the objectively moral character of the world can consist only in this1--that if you proceed to act upon your theory it will be reversed by nothing that later turns up as your action's fruit2 it will harmonize so well with the entire drift of experience that the latter will1 as it were1 adopt it1 or at most give it an ampler #ajf interpretation1 without obliging you in any way to change the essence of its formulation4 ,if this be an objectively moral universe1 all acts that ,i make on that assumption1 all expectations that ,i ground on it1 will tend more and more completely to interdigitate with the phenomena already existing4 ,m x will be in accord2 and the more ,i live1 and the more the fruits of my activity come to light1 the more satisfactory the consensus will grow4 ,while if it be not such a moral universe1 and ,i mistakenly assume that it is1 the course of experience will throw ever new impediments in the way of my belief1 and become more and more difficult to express in its language4 ,epicycle upon epicycle of subsidiary hypothesis will have to be invoked to give to the discrepant terms a temporary appearance of squaring with each other2 but at last even this resource will fail4 ,if1 on the other hand1 ,i rightly assume the universe to be not moral1 in what does my verification consist8 ,it is that by letting moral interests sit lightly1 by disbelieving that there is any duty about them 7since duty obtains only as between them and other phenomena71 and so throwing them over if ,i find it hard to get them satisfied1--it is that by refusing to take up a tragic attitude1 ,i deal in the long-run most satisfactorily with the facts of life4 ,all is vanity is here the last word of wisdom4 ,even though in certain limited series there may be a great appearance of seriousness1 he who in the main treats things with a degree of good-natured scepticism and radical levity will find that the practical fruits of his epicurean hypothesis verify it more and more1 and not only save him from pain but do honor to his sagacity4 ,while1 on the other hand1 he who contrary #ajg to reality stiffens himself in the notion that certain things absolutely should be1 and rejects the truth that at bottom it makes no difference what is1 will find himself evermore thwarted and perplexed and bemuddled by the facts of the world1 and his tragic disappointment will1 as experience accumulates1 seem to drift farther and farther away from that final atonement or reconciliation which certain partial tragedies often get4 ,anaesthesia is the watchword of the moral sceptic brought to bay and put to his trumps4 ,energy is that of the moralist4 ,act on my creed1 cries the latter1 and the results of your action will prove the creed true1 and that the nature of things is earnest infinitely4 ,act on mine1 says the epicurean1 and the results will prove that seriousness is but a superficial glaze upon a world of fundamentally trivial import4 ,you and your acts and the nature of things will be alike enveloped in a single formula1 a universal vanitas vanitatum4 ,for the sake of simplicity ,i have written as if the verification might occur in the life of a single philosopher1--which is manifestly untrue1 since the theories still face each other1 and the facts of the world give countenance to both4 ,rather should we expect1 that1 in a question of this scope1 the experience of the entire human race must make the verification1 and that all the evidence will not be 'in' till the final integration of things1 when the last man has had his say and contributed his share to the still unfinished x4 ,then the proof will be complete2 then it will appear without doubt whether the moralistic x has filled up the gap which alone kept the ,m of the world from forming an even and harmonious unity1 or whether the #ajh non-moralistic x has given the finishing touches which were alone needed to make the ,m appear outwardly as vain as it inwardly was4 ,but if this be so1 is it not clear that the facts ,m1 taken per se1 are inadequate to justify a conclusion either way in advance of my action8 ,my action is the complement which1 by proving congruous or not1 reveals the latent nature of the mass to which it is applied4 ,the world may in fact be likened unto a lock1 whose inward nature1 moral or unmoral1 will never reveal itself to our simply expectant gaze4 ,the positivists1 forbidding us to make any assumptions regarding it1 condemn us to eternal ignorance1 for the 'evidence' which they wait for can never come so long as we are passive4 ,but nature has put into our hands two keys1 by which we may test the lock4 ,if we try the moral key and it fits1 it is a moral lock4 ,if we try the unmoral key and it fits1 it is an unmoral lock4 ,i cannot possibly conceive of any other sort of 'evidence' or 'proof' than this4 ,it is quite true that the co-operation of generations is needed to educe it4 ,but in these matters the solidarity 7so called7 of the human race is a patent fact4 ,the essential thing to notice is that our active preference is a legitimate part of the game1--that it is our plain business as men to try one of the keys1 and the one in which we most confide4 ,if then the proof exist not till ,i have acted1 and ,i must needs in acting run the risk of being wrong1 how can the popular science professors be right in objurgating in me as infamous a 'credulity' which the strict logic of the situation requires8 ,if this really be a moral universe2 if by my acts ,i be a factor of its destinies2 if to believe where ,i may doubt be itself a moral act #aji analogous to voting for a side not yet sure to win1--by what right shall they close in upon me and steadily negate the deepest conceivable function of my being by their preposterous command that ,i shall stir neither hand nor foot1 but remain balancing myself in eternal and insoluble doubt8 ,why1 doubt itself is a decision of the widest practical reach1 if only because we may miss by doubting what goods we might be gaining by espousing the winning side4 ,but more than that6 it is often practically impossible to distinguish doubt from dogmatic negation4 ,if ,i refuse to stop a murder because ,i am in doubt whether it be not justifiable homicide1 ,i am virtually abetting the crime4 ,if ,i refuse to bale out a boat because ,i am in doubt whether my efforts will keep her afloat1 ,i am really helping to sink her4 ,if in the mountain precipice ,i doubt my right to risk a leap1 ,i actively connive at my destruction4 ,he who commands himself not to be credulous of ,god1 of duty1 of freedom1 of immortality1 may again and again be indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies them4 ,scepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality4 ,who is not for is against4 ,the universe will have no neutrals in these questions4 ,in theory as in practice1 dodge or hedge1 or talk as we like about a wise scepticism1 we are really doing volunteer military service for one side or the other4 ,yet obvious as this necessity practically is1 thousands of innocent magazine readers lie paralyzed and terrified in the network of shallow negations which the leaders of opinion have thrown over their souls4 ,all they need to be free and hearty again in the exercise of their birthright is that these fastidious vetoes should be swept away4 ,all that the human #aaj heart wants is its chance4 ,it will willingly forego certainty in universal matters if only it can be allowed to feel that in them it has that same inalienable right to run risks1 which no one dreams of refusing to it in the pettiest practical affairs4 ,and if ,i1 in these last pages1 like the mouse in the fable1 have gnawed a few of the strings of the sophistical net that has been binding down its lion-strength1 ,i shall be more than rewarded for my pains4 ,to sum up3 ,no philosophy will permanently be deemed rational by all men which 7in addition to meeting logical demands7 does not to some degree pretend to determine expectancy1 and in a still greater degree make a direct appeal to all those powers of our nature which we hold in highest esteem4 ,faith1 being one of these powers1 will always remain a factor not to be banished from philosophic constructions1 the more so since in many ways it brings forth its own verification4 ,in these points1 then1 it is hopeless to look for literal agreement among mankind4 ,the ultimate philosophy1 we may therefore conclude1 must not be too strait-laced in form1 must not in all its parts divide heresy from orthodoxy by too sharp a line4 ,there must be left over and above the propositions to be subscribed1 ubique1 semper1 et ab omnibus1 another realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic scruples and indulge its own faith at its own risks2 and all that can here be done will be to mark out distinctly the questions which fall within faith's sphere4 #a ,this essay as far as page #ge consists of extracts from an article printed in ,mind for ,july1 #ahgi4 ,thereafter it is a reprint of an address to the ,harvard ,philosophical ,club1 delivered in #ahhj1 and published in the ,princeton ,review1 ,july1 #ahhb4 #b ,at most1 the command laid upon us by science to believe nothing not yet verified by the senses is a prudential rule intended to maximize our right thinking and minimize our errors in the long run4 ,in the particular instance we must frequently lose truth by obeying it2 but on the whole we are safer if we follow it consistently1 for we are sure to cover our losses with our gains4 ,it is like those gambling and insurance rules based on probability1 in which we secure ourselves against losses in detail by hedging on the total run4 ,but this hedging philosophy requires that long run should be there2 and this makes it inapplicable to the question of religious faith as the latter comes home to the individual man4 ,he plays the game of life not to escape losses1 for he brings nothing with him to lose2 he plays it for gains2 and it is now or never with him1 for the long run which exists indeed for humanity1 is not there for him4 ,let him doubt1 believe1 or deny1 he runs his risk1 and has the natural right to choose which one it shall be4 #c ,life of ,james ,hinton1 pp4 #agb1 #agc4 ,see also the excellent chapter on ,faith and ,sight in the ,mystery of ,matter1 by ,j4 ,allanson ,picton4 ,hinton's ,mystery of ,pain will undoubtedly always remain the classical utterance on this subject4 #d ,observe that in all this not a word has been said of free-will4 ,it all applies as well to a predetermined as to an indeterminate universe4 ,if ,m x is fixed in advance1 the belief which leads to x and the desire which prompts the belief are also fixed4 ,but fixed or not1 these subjective states form a phenomenal condition necessarily preceding the facts2 necessarily constitutive1 therefore1 of the truth ,m x which we seek4 ,if1 however1 free acts be possible1 a faith in their possibility1 by augmenting the moral energy which gives them birth1 will increase their frequency in a given individual4 #e ,in either case1 as a later essay explains 7see p4 #aic71 the should which the moralist regards as binding upon him must be rooted in the feeling of some other thinker1 or collection of thinkers1 to whose demands he individually bows4 #aaa ,,reflex ,,action ,,and ,,theism4#a ,,members ,,of ,,the ,,ministers' ,,institute3 ,let me confess to the diffidence with which ,i find myself standing here to-day4 ,when the invitation of your committee reached me last fall1 the simple truth is that ,i accepted it as most men accept a challenge1--not because they wish to fight1 but because they are ashamed to say no4 ,pretending in my small sphere to be a teacher1 ,i felt it would be cowardly to shrink from the keenest ordeal to which a teacher can be exposed1--the ordeal of teaching other teachers4 ,fortunately1 the trial will last but one short hour2 and ,i have the consolation of remembering ,goethe's verses1-- ,vor den ,wissenden sich stellen1 ,sicher ist 's in allen ,fllen1-- for if experts are the hardest people to satisfy1 they have at any rate the liveliest sense of the difficulties of one's task1 and they know quickest when one hits the mark4 ,since it was as a teacher of physiology that ,i was most unworthily officiating when your committee's #aab invitation reached me1 ,i must suppose it to be for the sake of bringing a puff of the latest winds of doctrine which blow over that somewhat restless sea that my presence is desired4 ,among all the healthy symptoms that characterize this age1 ,i know no sounder one than the eagerness which theologians show to assimilate results of science1 and to hearken to the conclusions of men of science about universal matters4 ,one runs a better chance of being listened to to-day if one can quote ,darwin and ,helmholtz than if one can only quote ,schleiermacher or ,coleridge4 ,i almost feel myself this moment that were ,i to produce a frog and put him through his physiological performances in a masterly manner before your eyes1 ,i should gain more reverential ears for what ,i have to say during the remainder of the hour4 ,i will not ask whether there be not something of mere fashion in this prestige which the words of the physiologists enjoy just now4 ,if it be a fashion1 it is certainly a beneficial one upon the whole2 and to challenge it would come with a poor grace from one who at the moment he speaks is so conspicuously profiting by its favors4 ,i will therefore only say this3 that the latest breeze from the physiological horizon need not necessarily be the most important one4 ,of the immense amount of work which the laboratories of ,europe and ,america1 and one may add of ,asia and ,australia1 are producing every year1 much is destined to speedy refutation2 and of more it may be said that its interest is purely technical1 and not in any degree philosophical or universal4 ,this being the case1 ,i know you will justify me if ,i fall back on a doctrine which is fundamental and well established rather than novel1 and ask you whether #aac by taking counsel together we may not trace some new consequences from it which shall interest us all alike as men4 ,i refer to the doctrine of reflex action1 especially as extended to the brain4 ,this is1 of course1 so familiar to you that ,i hardly need define it4 ,in a general way1 all educated people know what reflex action means4 ,it means that the acts we perform are always the result of outward discharges from the nervous centres1 and that these outward discharges are themselves the result of impressions from the external world1 carried in along one or another of our sensory nerves4 ,applied at first to only a portion of our acts1 this conception has ended by being generalized more and more1 so that now most physiologists tell us that every action whatever1 even the most deliberately weighed and calculated1 does1 so far as its organic conditions go1 follow the reflex type4 ,there is not one which cannot be remotely1 if not immediately1 traced to an origin in some incoming impression of sense4 ,there is no impression of sense which1 unless inhibited by some other stronger one1 does not immediately or remotely express itself in action of some kind4 ,there is no one of those complicated performances in the convolutions of the brain to which our trains of thought correspond1 which is not a mere middle term interposed between an incoming sensation that arouses it and an outgoing discharge of some sort1 inhibitory if not exciting1 to which itself gives rise4 ,the structural unit of the nervous system is in fact a triad1 neither of whose elements has any independent existence4 ,the sensory impression exists only for the sake of awaking the central process of reflection1 and the central process of reflection exists #aad only for the sake of calling forth the final act4 ,all action is thus re-action upon the outer world2 and the middle stage of consideration or contemplation or thinking is only a place of transit1 the bottom of a loop1 both whose ends have their point of application in the outer world4 ,if it should ever have no roots in the outer world1 if it should ever happen that it led to no active measures1 it would fail of its essential function1 and would have to be considered either pathological or abortive4 ,the current of life which runs in at our eyes or ears is meant to run out at our hands1 feet1 or lips4 ,the only use of the thoughts it occasions while inside is to determine its direction to whichever of these organs shall1 on the whole1 under the circumstances actually present1 act in the way most propitious to our welfare4 ,the willing department of our nature1 in short1 dominates both the conceiving department and the feeling department2 or1 in plainer ,english1 perception and thinking are only there for behavior's sake4 ,i am sure ,i am not wrong in stating this result as one of the fundamental conclusions to which the entire drift of modern physiological investigation sweeps us4 ,if asked what great contribution physiology has made to psychology of late years1 ,i am sure every competent authority will reply that her influence has in no way been so weighty as in the copious illustration1 verification1 and consolidation of this broad1 general point of view4 ,i invite you1 then1 to consider what may be the possible speculative consequences involved in this great achievement of our generation4 ,already1 it dominates all the new work done in psychology2 but #aae what ,i wish to ask is whether its influence may not extend far beyond the limits of psychology1 even into those of theology herself4 ,the relations of the doctrine of reflex action with no less a matter than the doctrine of theism is1 in fact1 the topic to which ,i now invite your attention4 ,we are not the first in the field4 ,there have not been wanting writers enough to say that reflex action and all that follows from it give the coup de grce to the superstition of a ,god4 ,if you open1 for instance1 such a book on comparative psychology1 as der ,thierische ,wille of ,g4 ,h4 ,schneider1 you will find1 sandwiched in among the admirable dealings of the author with his proper subject1 and popping out upon us in unexpected places1 the most delightfully naf ,german onslaughts on the degradation of theologians1 and the utter incompatibility of so many reflex adaptations to the environment with the existence of a creative intelligence4 ,there was a time1 remembered by many of us here1 when the existence of reflex action and all the other harmonies between the organism and the world were held to prove a ,god4 ,now1 they are held to disprove him4 ,the next turn of the whirligig may bring back proof of him again4 ,into this debate about his existence1 ,i will not pretend to enter4 ,i must take up humbler ground1 and limit my ambition to showing that a ,god1 whether existent or not1 is at all events the kind of being which1 if he did exist1 would form the most adequate possible object for minds framed like our own to conceive as lying at the root of the universe4 ,my thesis1 in other words1 is this3 that some outward reality of #aaf a nature defined as ,god's nature must be defined1 is the only ultimate object that is at the same time rational and possible for the human mind's contemplation4 ,anything short of ,god is not rational1 anything more than ,god is not possible1 if the human mind be in truth the triadic structure of impression1 reflection1 and reaction which we at the outset allowed4 ,theism1 whatever its objective warrant1 would thus be seen to have a subjective anchorage in its congruity with our nature as thinkers2 and1 however it may fare with its truth1 to derive from this subjective adequacy the strongest possible guaranty of its permanence4 ,it is and will be the classic mean of rational opinion1 the centre of gravity of all attempts to solve the riddle of life1--some falling below it by defect1 some flying above it by excess1 itself alone satisfying every mental need in strictly normal measure4 ,our gain will thus in the first instance be psychological4 ,we shall merely have investigated a chapter in the natural history of the mind1 and found that1 as a matter of such natural history1 ,god may be called the normal object of the mind's belief4 ,whether over and above this he be really the living truth is another question4 ,if he is1 it will show the structure of our mind to be in accordance with the nature of reality4 ,whether it be or not in such accordance is1 it seems to me1 one of those questions that belong to the province of personal faith to decide4 ,i will not touch upon the question here1 for ,i prefer to keep to the strictly natural-history point of view4 ,i will only remind you that each one of us is entitled either to doubt or to believe in the harmony between his faculties and the truth2 and that1 whether he doubt or #aag believe1 he does it alike on his personal responsibility and risk4 ,du musst glauben1 du musst wagen1 ,denn die ,gtter leihn kein ,pfand1 ,nur ein ,wunder kann dich tragen ,in das schne ,wunderland4 ,i will presently define exactly what ,i mean by ,god and by ,theism1 and explain what theories ,i referred to when ,i spoke just now of attempts to fly beyond the one and to outbid the other4 ,but1 first of all1 let me ask you to linger a moment longer over what ,i have called the reflex theory of mind1 so as to be sure that we understand it absolutely before going on to consider those of its consequences of which ,i am more particularly to speak4 ,i am not quite sure that its full scope is grasped even by those who have most zealously promulgated it4 ,i am not sure1 for example1 that all physiologists see that it commits them to regarding the mind as an essentially teleological mechanism4 ,i mean by this that the conceiving or theorizing faculty--the mind's middle department--functions exclusively for the sake of ends that do not exist at all in the world of impressions we receive by way of our senses1 but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether4#b ,it is a transformer of the world of our impressions into a totally different world1--the world of our conception2 and the transformation is effected in the interests of our volitional nature1 and for no other purpose whatsoever4 ,destroy the volitional nature1 the definite subjective purposes1 preferences1 #aah fondnesses for certain effects1 forms1 orders1 and not the slightest motive would remain for the brute order of our experience to be remodelled at all4 ,but1 as we have the elaborate volitional constitution we do have1 the remodelling must be effected2 there is no escape4 ,the world's contents are given to each of us in an order so foreign to our subjective interests that we can hardly by an effort of the imagination picture to ourselves what it is like4 ,we have to break that order altogether1--and by picking out from it the items which concern us1 and connecting them with others far away1 which we say 'belong' with them1 we are able to make out definite threads of sequence and tendency2 to foresee particular liabilities and get ready for them2 and to enjoy simplicity and harmony in place of what was chaos4 ,is not the sum of your actual experience taken at this moment and impartially added together an utter chaos8 ,the strains of my voice1 the lights and shades inside the room and out1 the murmur of the wind1 the ticking of the clock1 the various organic feelings you may happen individually to possess1 do these make a whole at all8 ,is it not the only condition of your mental sanity in the midst of them that most of them should become non-existent for you1 and that a few others--the sounds1 ,i hope1 which ,i am uttering--should evoke from places in your memory that have nothing to do with this scene associates fitted to combine with them in what we call a rational train of thought1--rational1 because it leads to a conclusion which we have some organ to appreciate8 ,we have no organ or faculty to appreciate the simply given order4 ,the real world as it is given objectively at this moment is the sum total of all its beings and #aai events now4 ,but can we think of such a sum8 ,can we realize for an instant what a cross-section of all existence at a definite point of time would be8 ,while ,i talk and the flies buzz1 a sea-gull catches a fish at the mouth of the ,amazon1 a tree falls in the ,adirondack wilderness1 a man sneezes in ,germany1 a horse dies in ,tartary1 and twins are born in ,france4 ,what does that mean8 ,does the contemporaneity of these events with one another and with a million others as disjointed1 form a rational bond between them1 and unite them into anything that means for us a world8 ,yet just such a collateral contemporaneity1 and nothing else1 is the real order of the world4 ,it is an order with which we have nothing to do but to get away from it as fast as possible4 ,as ,i said1 we break it3 we break it into histories1 and we break it into arts1 and we break it into sciences2 and then we begin to feel at home4 ,we make ten thousand separate serial orders of it1 and on any one of these we react as though the others did not exist4 ,we discover among its various parts relations that were never given to sense at all 7mathematical relations1 tangents1 squares1 and roots and logarithmic functions71 and out of an infinite number of these we call certain ones essential and lawgiving1 and ignore the rest4 ,essential these relations are1 but only for our purpose1 the other relations being just as real and present as they2 and our purpose is to conceive simply and to foresee4 ,are not simple conception and prevision subjective ends pure and simple8 ,they are the ends of what we call science2 and the miracle of miracles1 a miracle not yet exhaustively cleared up by any philosophy1 is that the given order lends itself to the remodelling4 ,it shows itself plastic to many of our scientific1 to #abj many of our aesthetic1 to many of our practical purposes and ends4 ,when the man of affairs1 the artist1 or the man of science fails1 he is not rebutted4 ,he tries again4 ,he says the impressions of sense must give way1 must be reduced to the desiderated form4#c ,they all postulate in the interests of their volitional nature a harmony between the latter and the nature of things4 ,the theologian does no more4 ,and the reflex doctrine of the mind's structure1 though all theology should as yet have failed of its endeavor1 could but confess that the endeavor itself at least obeyed in form the mind's most necessary law4#d ,now for the question ,i asked above3 ,what kind of a being would ,god be if he did exist8 ,the word ',god' has come to mean many things in the history #aba of human thought1 from ,venus and ,jupiter to the ',idee' which figures in the pages of ,hegel4 ,even the laws of physical nature have1 in these positivistic times1 been held worthy of divine honor and presented as the only fitting object of our reverence4#e ,of course1 if our discussion is to bear any fruit1 we must mean something more definite than this4 ,we must not call any object of our loyalty a ',god' without more ado1 simply because to awaken our loyalty happens to be one of ,god's functions4 ,he must have some intrinsic characteristics of his own besides2 and theism must mean the faith of that man who believes that the object of his loyalty has those other attributes1 negative or positive1 as the case may be4 ,now1 as regards a great many of the attributes of ,god1 and their amounts and mutual relations1 the world has been delivered over to disputes4 ,all such may for our present purpose be considered as quite inessential4 ,not only such matters as his mode of revealing himself1 the precise extent of his providence and power and their connection with our free-will1 the proportion of his mercy to his justice1 and the amount of his responsibility for evil2 but also his metaphysical relation to the phenomenal world1 whether causal1 substantial1 ideal1 or what not1--are affairs of purely sectarian opinion that need not concern us at all4 ,whoso debates them presupposes the essential features of theism to be granted already2 and it is with these essential features1 the bare poles of the subject1 that our business exclusively lies4 #abb ,now1 what are these essential features8 ,first1 it is essential that ,god be conceived as the deepest power in the universe2 and1 second1 he must be conceived under the form of a mental personality4 ,the personality need not be determined intrinsically any further than is involved in the holding of certain things dear1 and in the recognition of our dispositions toward those things1 the things themselves being all good and righteous things4 ,but1 extrinsically considered1 so to speak1 ,god's personality is to be regarded1 like any other personality1 as something lying outside of my own and other than me1 and whose existence ,i simply come upon and find4 ,a power not ourselves1 then1 which not only makes for righteousness1 but means it1 and which recognizes us1--such is the definition which ,i think nobody will be inclined to dispute4 ,various are the attempts to shadow forth the other lineaments of so supreme a personality to our human imagination2 various the ways of conceiving in what mode the recognition1 the hearkening to our cry1 can come4 ,some are gross and idolatrous2 some are the most sustained efforts man's intellect has ever made to keep still living on that subtile edge of things where speech and thought expire4 ,but1 with all these differences1 the essence remains unchanged4 ,in whatever other respects the divine personality may differ from ours or may resemble it1 the two are consanguineous at least in this1--that both have purposes for which they care1 and each can hear the other's call4 ,meanwhile1 we can already see one consequence and one point of connection with the reflex-action theory of mind4 ,any mind1 constructed on the #abc triadic-reflex pattern1 must first get its impression from the object which it confronts2 then define what that object is1 and decide what active measures its presence demands2 and finally react4 ,the stage of reaction depends on the stage of definition1 and these1 of course1 on the nature of the impressing object4 ,when the objects are concrete1 particular1 and familiar1 our reactions are firm and certain enough1--often instinctive4 ,i see the desk1 and lean on it2 ,i see your quiet faces1 and ,i continue to talk4 ,but the objects will not stay concrete and particular3 they fuse themselves into general essences1 and they sum themselves into a whole1--the universe4 ,and then the object that confronts us1 that knocks on our mental door and asks to be let in1 and fixed and decided upon and actively met1 is just this whole universe itself and its essence4 ,what are they1 and how shall ,i meet them8 ,the whole flood of faiths and systems here rush in4 ,philosophies and denials of philosophy1 religions and atheisms1 scepticisms and mysticisms1 confirmed emotional moods and habitual practical biases1 jostle one another2 for all are alike trials1 hasty1 prolix1 or of seemly length1 to answer this momentous question4 ,and the function of them all1 long or short1 that which the moods and the systems alike subserve and pass into1 is the third stage1--the stage of action4 ,for no one of them itself is final4 ,they form but the middle segment of the mental curve1 and not its termination4 ,as the last theoretic pulse dies away1 it does not leave the mental process complete3 it is but the forerunner of the practical moment1 in which alone the cycle of mentality finds its rhythmic pause4 #abd ,we easily delude ourselves about this middle stage4 ,sometimes we think it final1 and sometimes we fail to see1 amid the monstrous diversity in the length and complication of the cogitations which may fill it1 that it can have but one essential function1 and that the one we have pointed out1--the function of defining the direction which our activity1 immediate or remote1 shall take4 ,if ,i simply say1 ,vanitas vanitatum1 omnia vanitas6 ,i am defining the total nature of things in a way that carries practical consequences with it as decidedly as if ,i write a treatise ,de ,natura ,rerum in twenty volumes4 ,the treatise may trace its consequences more minutely than the saying2 but the only worth of either treatise or saying is that the consequences are there4 ,the long definition can do no more than draw them2 the short definition does no less4 ,indeed1 it may be said that if two apparently different definitions of the reality before us should have identical consequences1 those two definitions would really be identical definitions1 made delusively to appear different merely by the different verbiage in which they are expressed4#f ,my time is unfortunately too short to stay and give to this truth the development it deserves2 but ,i will assume that you grant it without further parley1 and pass to the next step in my argument4 ,and here1 too1 ,i shall have to bespeak your close attention for a moment1 while ,i pass over the subject far more #abe rapidly than it deserves4 ,whether true or false1 any view of the universe which shall completely satisfy the mind must obey conditions of the mind's own imposing1 must at least let the mind be the umpire to decide whether it be fit to be called a rational universe or not4 ,not any nature of things which may seem to be will also seem to be ipso facto rational2 and if it do not seem rational1 it will afflict the mind with a ceaseless uneasiness1 till it be formulated or interpreted in some other and more congenial way4 ,the study of what the mind's criteria of rationality are1 the definition of its exactions in this respect1 form an intensely interesting subject into which ,i cannot enter now with any detail4#g ,but so much ,i think you will grant me without argument1--that all three departments of the mind alike have a vote in the matter1 and that no conception will pass muster which violates any of their essential modes of activity1 or which leaves them without a chance to work4 ,by what title is it that every would-be universal formula1 every system of philosophy which rears its head1 receives the inevitable critical volley from one half of mankind1 and falls to the rear1 to become at the very best the creed of some partial sect8 ,either it has dropped out of its net some of our impressions of sense1--what we call the facts of nature1--or it has left the theoretic and defining department with a lot of inconsistencies and unmediated transitions on its hands2 or else1 finally1 it has left some one or more of our fundamental active and emotional powers with no object outside of themselves to react-on or to live for4 ,any one of these defects is fatal to its complete success4 ,some one #abf will be sure to discover the flaw1 to scout the system1 and to seek another in its stead4 ,i need not go far to collect examples to illustrate to an audience of theologians what ,i mean4 ,nor will you in particular1 as champions of the ,unitarianism of ,new ,england1 be slow to furnish1 from the motives which led to your departure from our orthodox ancestral ,calvinism1 instances enough under the third or practical head4 ,a ,god who gives so little scope to love1 a predestination which takes from endeavor all its zest with all its fruit1 are irrational conceptions1 because they say to our most cherished powers1 ,there is no object for you4 ,well1 just as within the limits of theism some kinds are surviving others by reason of their greater practical rationality1 so theism itself1 by reason of its practical rationality1 is certain to survive all lower creeds4 ,materialism and agnosticism1 even were they true1 could never gain universal and popular acceptance2 for they both1 alike1 give a solution of things which is irrational to the practical third of our nature1 and in which we can never volitionally feel at home4 ,each comes out of the second or theoretic stage of mental functioning1 with its definition of the essential nature of things1 its formula of formulas prepared4 ,the whole array of active forces of our nature stands waiting1 impatient for the word which shall tell them how to discharge themselves most deeply and worthily upon life4 ,well6 cry they1 what shall we do8 ,ignoramus1 ignorabimus6 says agnosticism4 ,react upon atoms and their concussions6 says materialism4 ,what a collapse6 ,the mental train misses fire1 the middle fails to ignite the end1 the cycle breaks down half-way to its conclusion2 and the active #abg powers left alone1 with no proper object on which to vent their energy1 must either atrophy1 sicken1 and die1 or else by their pent-up convulsions and excitement keep the whole machinery in a fever until some less incommensurable solution1 some more practically rational formula1 shall provide a normal issue for the currents of the soul4 ,now1 theism always stands ready with the most practically rational solution it is possible to conceive4 ,not an energy of our active nature to which it does not authoritatively appeal1 not an emotion of which it does not normally and naturally release the springs4 ,at a single stroke1 it changes the dead blank it of the world into a living thou1 with whom the whole man may have dealings4 ,to you1 at any rate1 ,i need waste no words in trying to prove its supreme commensurateness with all the demands that department ,number ,three of the mind has the power to impose on department ,number ,two4 ,our volitional nature must then1 until the end of time1 exert a constant pressure upon the other departments of the mind to induce them to function to theistic conclusions4 ,no contrary formulas can be more than provisionally held4 ,infra-theistic theories must be always in unstable equilibrium2 for department ,number ,three ever lurks in ambush1 ready to assert its rights1 and on the slightest show of justification it makes its fatal spring1 and converts them into the other form in which alone mental peace and order can permanently reign4 ,the question is1 then1 ,can departments ,one and ,two1 can the facts of nature and the theoretic elaboration of them1 always lead to theistic conclusions8 ,the future history of philosophy is the only #abh authority capable of answering that question4 ,i1 at all events1 must not enter into it to-day1 as that would be to abandon the purely natural-history point of view ,i mean to keep4 ,this only is certain1 that the theoretic faculty lives between two fires which never give her rest1 and make her incessantly revise her formulations4 ,if she sink into a premature1 short-sighted1 and idolatrous theism1 in comes department ,number ,one with its battery of facts of sense1 and dislodges her from her dogmatic repose4 ,if she lazily subside into equilibrium with the same facts of sense viewed in their simple mechanical outwardness1 up starts the practical reason with its demands1 and makes that couch a bed of thorns4 ,from generation to generation thus it goes1--now a movement of reception from without1 now one of expansion from within2 department ,number ,two always worked to death1 yet never excused from taking the most responsible part in the arrangements4 ,to-day1 a crop of new facts2 to-morrow1 a flowering of new motives1--the theoretic faculty always having to effect the transition1 and life growing withal so complex and subtle and immense that her powers of conceiving are almost ruptured with the strain4 ,see how1 in ,france1 the mummy-cloths of the academic and official theistic philosophy are rent by the facts of evolution1 and how the young thinkers are at work6 ,see1 in ,great ,britain1 how the dryness of the strict associationist school1 which under the ministration of ,mill1 ,bain1 and ,spencer dominated us but yesterday1 gives way to more generous idealisms1 born of more urgent emotional needs and wrapping the same facts in far more massive intellectual harmonies6 ,these are but tackings to the common #abi port1 to that ultimate ,weltanschauung of maximum subjective as well as objective richness1 which1 whatever its other properties may be1 will at any rate wear the theistic form4 ,here let me say one word about a remark we often hear coming from the anti-theistic wing3 ,it is base1 it is vile1 it is the lowest depth of immorality1 to allow department ,number ,three to interpose its demands1 and have any vote in the question of what is true and what is false2 the mind must be a passive1 reactionless sheet of white paper1 on which reality will simply come and register its own philosophic definition1 as the pen registers the curve on the sheet of a chronograph4 ,of all the cants that are canted in this canting age this has always seemed to me the most wretched1 especially when it comes from professed psychologists4 ,as if the mind could1 consistently with its definition1 be a reactionless sheet at all6 ,as if conception could possibly occur except for a teleological purpose1 except to show us the way from a state of things our senses cognize to another state of things our will desires6 ,as if 'science' itself were anything else than such an end of desire1 and a most peculiar one at that6 ,and as if the 'truths' of bare physics in particular1 which these sticklers for intellectual purity contend to be the only uncontaminated form1 were not as great an alteration and falsification of the simply 'given' order of the world1 into an order conceived solely for the mind's convenience and delight1 as any theistic doctrine possibly can be6 ,physics is but one chapter in the great jugglery which our conceiving faculty is forever playing with #acj the order of being as it presents itself to our reception4 ,it transforms the unutterable dead level and continuum of the 'given' world into an utterly unlike world of sharp differences and hierarchic subordinations for no other reason than to satisfy certain subjective passions we possess4#h ,and1 so far as we can see1 the given world is there only for the sake of the operation4 ,at any rate1 to operate upon it is our only chance of approaching it2 for never can we get a glimpse of it in the unimaginable insipidity of its virgin estate4 ,to bid the man's subjective interests be passive till truth express itself from out the environment1 is to bid the sculptor's chisel be passive till the statue express itself from out the stone4 ,operate we must6 and the only choice left us is that between operating to poor or to rich results4 ,the only possible duty there can be in the matter is the duty of getting the richest results that the material given will allow4 ,the richness lies1 of course1 in the energy of all three departments of the mental cycle4 ,not a sensible 'fact' of department ,one must be left in the cold1 not a faculty of department ,three be paralyzed2 and department ,two must form an indestructible bridge4 ,it is natural that the habitual neglect of department ,one by theologians should arouse indignation2 but it is most unnatural that the indignation should take the form of a wholesale denunciation of department ,three4 ,it is the story of ,kant's dove over again1 denouncing the #aca pressure of the air4 ,certain of our positivists keep chiming to us1 that1 amid the wreck of every other god and idol1 one divinity still stands upright1--that his name is ,scientific ,truth1 and that he has but one commandment1 but that one supreme1 saying1 ,thou shalt not be a theist1 for that would be to satisfy thy subjective propensities1 and the satisfaction of those is intellectual damnation4 ,these most conscientious gentlemen think they have jumped off their own feet1--emancipated their mental operations from the control of their subjective propensities at large and in toto4 ,but they are deluded4 ,they have simply chosen from among the entire set of propensities at their command those that were certain to construct1 out of the materials given1 the leanest1 lowest1 aridest result1--namely1 the bare molecular world1--and they have sacrificed all the rest4#i ,man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities1--his pre-eminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants1 physical1 moral1 aesthetic1 and intellectual4 ,had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous1 he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary4 ,and from the consciousness of this he should draw the lesson that his wants are to be trusted2 that even #acb when their gratification seems farthest off1 the uneasiness they occasion is still the best guide of his life1 and will lead him to issues entirely beyond his present powers of reckoning4 ,prune down his extravagance1 sober him1 and you undo him4 ,the appetite for immediate consistency at any cost1 or what the logicians call the 'law of parsimony1'--which is nothing but the passion for conceiving the universe in the most labor-saving way1--will1 if made the exclusive law of the mind1 end by blighting the development of the intellect itself quite as much as that of the feelings or the will4 ,the scientific conception of the world as an army of molecules gratifies this appetite after its fashion most exquisitely4 ,but if the religion of exclusive scientificism should ever succeed in suffocating all other appetites out of a nation's mind1 and imbuing a whole race with the persuasion that simplicity and consistency demand a tabula rasa to be made of every notion that does not form part of the soi-disant scientific synthesis1 that nation1 that race1 will just as surely go to ruin1 and fall a prey to their more richly constituted neighbors1 as the beasts of the field1 as a whole1 have fallen a prey to man4 ,i have myself little fear for our ,anglo-,saxon race4 ,its moral1 aesthetic1 and practical wants form too dense a stubble to be mown by any scientific ,occam's razor that has yet been forged4 ,the knights of the razor will never form among us more than a sect2 but when ,i see their fraternity increasing in numbers1 and1 what is worse1 when ,i see their negations acquiring almost as much prestige and authority as their affirmations legitimately claim over the minds of the docile public1 ,i feel as if the influences working in the direction of our mental barbarization were #acc beginning to be rather strong1 and needed some positive counteraction4 ,and when ,i ask myself from what quarter the invasion may best be checked1 ,i can find no answer as good as the one suggested by casting my eyes around this room4 ,for this needful task1 no fitter body of men than the ,unitarian clergy exists4 ,who can uphold the rights of department ,three of the mind with better grace than those who long since showed how they could fight and suffer for department ,one8 ,as1 then1 you burst the bonds of a narrow ecclesiastical tradition1 by insisting that no fact of sense or result of science must be left out of account in the religious synthesis1 so may you still be the champions of mental completeness and all-sidedness4 ,may you1 with equal success1 avert the formation of a narrow scientific tradition1 and burst the bonds of any synthesis which would pretend to leave out of account those forms of being1 those relations of reality1 to which at present our active and emotional tendencies are our only avenues of approach4 ,i hear it said that ,unitarianism is not growing in these days4 ,i know nothing of the truth of the statement2 but if it be true1 it is surely because the great ship of ,orthodoxy is nearing the port and the pilot is being taken on board4 ,if you will only lead in a theistic science1 as successfully as you have led in a scientific theology1 your separate name as ,unitarians may perish from the mouths of men2 for your task will have been done1 and your function at an end4 ,until that distant day1 you have work enough in both directions awaiting you4 ,meanwhile1 let me pass to the next division of our subject4 ,i said that we are forced to regard ,god as #acd the normal object of the mind's belief1 inasmuch as any conception that falls short of ,god is irrational1 if the word 'rational' be taken in its fullest sense2 while any conception that goes beyond ,god is impossible1 if the human mind be constructed after the triadic-reflex pattern we have discussed at such length4 ,the first half of the thesis has been disposed of4 ,infra-theistic conceptions1 materialisms and agnosticisms1 are irrational because they are inadequate stimuli to man's practical nature4 ,i have now to justify the latter half of the thesis4 ,i dare say it may for an instant have perplexed some of you that ,i should speak of conceptions that aimed at going beyond ,god1 and of attempts to fly above him or outbid him2 so ,i will now explain exactly what ,i mean4 ,in defining the essential attributes of ,god1 ,i said he was a personality lying outside our own and other than us1--a power not ourselves4 ,now1 the attempts to fly beyond theism1 of which ,i speak1 are attempts to get over this ultimate duality of ,god and his believer1 and to transform it into some sort or other of identity4 ,if infratheistic ways of looking on the world leave it in the third person1 a mere it2 and if theism turns the it into a thou1--so we may say that these other theories try to cover it with the mantle of the first person1 and to make it a part of me4 ,i am well aware that ,i begin here to tread on ground in which trenchant distinctions may easily seem to mutilate the facts4 ,that sense of emotional reconciliation with ,god which characterizes the highest moments of the theistic consciousness may be described as 'oneness' with him1 and so from the very bosom of theism a #ace monistic doctrine seem to arise4 ,but this consciousness of self-surrender1 of absolute practical union between one's self and the divine object of one's contemplation1 is a totally different thing from any sort of substantial identity4 ,still the object ,god and the subject ,i are two4 ,still ,i simply come upon him1 and find his existence given to me2 and the climax of my practical union with what is given1 forms at the same time the climax of my perception that as a numerical fact of existence ,i am something radically other than the ,divinity with whose effulgence ,i am filled4 ,now1 it seems to me that the only sort of union of creature with creator with which theism1 properly so called1 comports1 is of this emotional and practical kind2 and it is based unchangeably on the empirical fact that the thinking subject and the object thought are numerically two4 ,how my mind and will1 which are not ,god1 can yet cognize and leap to meet him1 how ,i ever came to be so separate from him1 and how ,god himself came to be at all1 are problems that for the theist can remain unsolved and insoluble forever4 ,it is sufficient for him to know that he himself simply is1 and needs ,god2 and that behind this universe ,god simply is and will be forever1 and will in some way hear his call4 ,in the practical assurance of these empirical facts1 without ',erkentnisstheorie' or philosophical ontology1 without metaphysics of emanation or creation to justify or make them more intelligible1 in the blessedness of their mere acknowledgment as given1 lie all the peace and power he craves4 ,the floodgates of the religious life are opened1 and the full currents can pour through4 ,it is this empirical and practical side of the theistic position1 its theoretic chastity and modesty1 which ,i #acf wish to accentuate here4 ,the highest flights of theistic mysticism1 far from pretending to penetrate the secrets of the me and the thou in worship1 and to transcend the dualism by an act of intelligence1 simply turn their backs on such attempts4 ,the problem for them has simply vanished1--vanished from the sight of an attitude which refuses to notice such futile theoretic difficulties4 ,get but that peace of ,god which passeth understanding1 and the questions of the understanding will cease from puzzling and pedantic scruples be at rest4 ,in other words1 theistic mysticism1 that form of theism which at first sight seems most to have transcended the fundamental otherness of ,god from man1 has done it least of all in the theoretic way4 ,the pattern of its procedure is precisely that of the simplest man dealing with the simplest fact of his environment4 ,both he and the theist tarry in department ,two of their minds only so long as is necessary to define what is the presence that confronts them4 ,the theist decides that its character is such as to be fitly responded to on his part by a religious reaction2 and into that reaction he forthwith pours his soul4 ,his insight into the what of life leads to results so immediately and intimately rational that the why1 the how1 and the whence of it are questions that lose all urgency4 ',gefhl ist ,alles1' ,faust says4 ,the channels of department ,three have drained those of department ,two of their contents2 and happiness over the fact that being has made itself what it is1 evacuates all speculation as to how it could make itself at all4 ,but now1 although to most human minds such a position as this will be the position of rational equilibrium1 it is not difficult to bring forward certain #acg considerations1 in the light of which so simple and practical a mental movement begins to seem rather short-winded and second-rate and devoid of intellectual style4 ,this easy acceptance of an opaque limit to our speculative insight2 this satisfaction with a ,being whose character we simply apprehend without comprehending anything more about him1 and with whom after a certain point our dealings can be only of a volitional and emotional sort2 above all1 this sitting down contented with a blank unmediated dualism1--are they not the very picture of unfaithfulness to the rights and duties of our theoretic reason8 ,surely1 if the universe is reasonable 7and we must believe that it is so71 it must be susceptible1 potentially at least1 of being reasoned out to the last drop without residuum4 ,is it not rather an insult to the very word 'rational' to say that the rational character of the universe and its creator means no more than that we practically feel at home in their presence1 and that our powers are a match for their demands8 ,do they not in fact demand to be understood by us still more than to be reacted on8 ,is not the unparalleled development of department ,two of the mind in man his crowning glory and his very essence2 and may not the knowing of the truth be his absolute vocation8 ,and if it is1 ought he flatly to acquiesce in a spiritual life of 'reflex type1' whose form is no higher than that of the life that animates his spinal cord1--nay1 indeed1 that animates the writhing segments of any mutilated worm8 ,it is easy to see how such arguments and queries may result in the erection of an ideal of our mental destiny1 far different from the simple and practical religious one we have described4 ,we may well begin #ach to ask whether such things as practical reactions can be the final upshot and purpose of all our cognitive energy4 ,mere outward acts1 changes in the position of parts of matter 7for they are nothing else71 can they possibly be the culmination and consummation of our relations with the nature of things8 ,can they possibly form a result to which our godlike powers of insight shall be judged merely subservient8 ,such an idea1 if we scan it closely1 soon begins to seem rather absurd4 ,whence this piece of matter comes and whither that one goes1 what difference ought that to make to the nature of things1 except so far as with the comings and the goings our wonderful inward conscious harvest may be reaped8 ,and so1 very naturally and gradually1 one may be led from the theistic and practical point of view to what ,i shall call the gnostical one4 ,we may think that department ,three of the mind1 with its doings of right and its doings of wrong1 must be there only to serve department ,two2 and we may suspect that the sphere of our activity exists for no other purpose than to illumine our cognitive consciousness by the experience of its results4 ,are not all sense and all emotion at bottom but turbid and perplexed modes of what in its clarified shape is intelligent cognition8 ,is not all experience just the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil1 and nothing more8 ,these questions fan the fire of an unassuageable gnostic thirst1 which is as far removed from theism in one direction as agnosticism was removed from it in the other2 and which aspires to nothing less than an absolute unity of knowledge with its object1 and refuses to be satisfied short of a fusion and solution and saturation of both impression and action with reason1 and #aci an absorption of all three departments of the mind into one4 ,time would fail us to-day 7even had ,i the learning1 which ,i have not7 to speak of gnostic systems in detail4 ,the aim of all of them is to shadow forth a sort of process by which spirit1 emerging from its beginnings and exhausting the whole circle of finite experience in its sweep1 shall at last return and possess itself as its own object at the climax of its career4 ,this climax is the religious consciousness4 ,at the giddy height of this conception1 whose latest and best known form is the ,hegelian philosophy1 definite words fail to serve their purpose2 and the ultimate goal1--where object and subject1 worshipped and worshipper1 facts and the knowledge of them1 fall into one1 and where no other is left outstanding beyond this one that alone is1 and that we may call indifferently act or fact1 reality or idea1 ,god or creation1--this goal1 ,i say1 has to be adumbrated to our halting and gasping intelligence by coarse physical metaphors1 'positings' and 'self-returnings' and 'removals' and 'settings free1' which hardly help to make the matter clear4 ,but from the midst of the curdling and the circling of it all we seem dimly to catch a glimpse of a state in which the reality to be known and the power of knowing shall have become so mutually adequate that each exhaustively is absorbed by the other and the twain become one flesh1 and in which the light shall somehow have soaked up all the outer darkness into its own ubiquitous beams4 ,like all headlong ideals1 this apotheosis of the bare conceiving faculty has its depth and wildness1 its pang and its charm4 ,to many it sings a truly siren strain2 and so long as it is held only as a postulate1 as a mere vanishing #adj point to give perspective to our intellectual aim1 it is hard to see any empirical title by which we may deny the legitimacy of gnosticism's claims4 ,that we are not as yet near the goal it prefigures can never be a reason why we might not continue indefinitely to approach it2 and to all sceptical arguments1 drawn from our reason's actual finiteness1 gnosticism can still oppose its indomitable faith in the infinite character of its potential destiny4 ,now1 here it is that the physiologist's generalization1 as it seems to me1 may fairly come in1 and by ruling any such extravagant faith out of court help to legitimate our personal mistrust of its pretensions4 ,i confess that ,i myself have always had a great mistrust of the pretensions of the gnostic faith4 ,not only do ,i utterly fail to understand what a cognitive faculty erected into the absolute of being1 with itself as its object1 can mean2 but even if we grant it a being other than itself for object1 ,i cannot reason myself out of the belief that however familiar and at home we might become with the character of that being1 the bare being of it1 the fact that it is there at all1 must always be something blankly given and presupposed in order that conception may begin its work2 must in short lie beyond speculation1 and not be enveloped in its sphere4 ,accordingly1 it is with no small pleasure that as a student of physiology and psychology ,i find the only lesson ,i can learn from these sciences to be one that corroborates these convictions4 ,from its first dawn to its highest actual attainment1 we find that the cognitive faculty1 where it appears to exist at all1 appears but as one element in an organic mental whole1 and as a minister to higher mental powers1--the powers #ada of will4 ,such a thing as its emancipation and absolution from these organic relations receives no faintest color of plausibility from any fact we can discern4 ,arising as a part1 in a mental and objective world which are both larger than itself1 it must1 whatever its powers of growth may be 7and ,i am far from wishing to disparage them71 remain a part to the end4 ,this is the character of the cognitive element in all the mental life we know1 and we have no reason to suppose that that character will ever change4 ,on the contrary1 it is more than probable that to the end of time our power of moral and volitional response to the nature of things will be the deepest organ of communication therewith we shall ever possess4 ,in every being that is real there is something external to1 and sacred from1 the grasp of every other4 ,god's being is sacred from ours4 ,to co-operate with his creation by the best and rightest response seems all he wants of us4 ,in such co-operation with his purposes1 not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him1 not in any theoretic drinking of him up1 must lie the real meaning of our destiny4 ,this is nothing new4 ,all men know it at those rare moments when the soul sobers herself1 and leaves off her chattering and protesting and insisting about this formula or that4 ,in the silence of our theories we then seem to listen1 and to hear something like the pulse of ,being beat2 and it is borne in upon us that the mere turning of the character1 the dumb willingness to suffer and to serve this universe1 is more than all theories about it put together4 ,the most any theory about it can do is to bring us to that4 ,certain it is that the acutest theories1 the greatest intellectual power1 the most elaborate education1 are a #adb sheer mockery when1 as too often happens1 they feed mean motives and a nerveless will4 ,and it is equally certain that a resolute moral energy1 no matter how inarticulate or unequipped with learning its owner may be1 extorts from us a respect we should never pay were we not satisfied that the essential root of human personality lay there4 ,i have sketched my subject in the briefest outlines2 but still ,i hope you will agree that ,i have established my point1 and that the physiological view of mentality1 so far from invalidating1 can but give aid and comfort to the theistic attitude of mind4 ,between agnosticism and gnosticism1 theism stands midway1 and holds to what is true in each4 ,with agnosticism1 it goes so far as to confess that we cannot know how ,being made itself or us4 ,with gnosticism1 it goes so far as to insist that we can know ,being's character when made1 and how it asks us to behave4 ,if any one fear that in insisting so strongly that behavior is the aim and end of every sound philosophy ,i have curtailed the dignity and scope of the speculative function in us1 ,i can only reply that in this ascertainment of the character of ,being lies an almost infinite speculative task4 ,let the voluminous considerations by which all modern thought converges toward idealistic or pan-psychic conclusions speak for me4 ,let the pages of a ,hodgson1 of a ,lotze1 of a ,renouvier1 reply whether within the limits drawn by purely empirical theism the speculative faculty finds not1 and shall not always find1 enough to do4 ,but do it little or much1 its place in a philosophy is always the same1 and is set by the structural form of the mind4 ,philosophies1 whether expressed in sonnets or #adc systems1 all must wear this form4 ,the thinker starts from some experience of the practical world1 and asks its meaning4 ,he launches himself upon the speculative sea1 and makes a voyage long or short4 ,he ascends into the empyrean1 and communes with the eternal essences4 ,but whatever his achievements and discoveries be while gone1 the utmost result they can issue in is some new practical maxim or resolve1 or the denial of some old one1 with which inevitably he is sooner or later washed ashore on the terra firma of concrete life again4 ,whatever thought takes this voyage is a philosophy4 ,we have seen how theism takes it4 ,and in the philosophy of a thinker who1 though long neglected1 is doing much to renovate the spiritual life of his native ,france to-day 7,i mean ,charles ,renouvier1 whose writings ought to be better known among us than they are71 we have an instructive example of the way in which this very empirical element in theism1 its confession of an ultimate opacity in things1 of a dimension of being which escapes our theoretic control1 may suggest a most definite practical conclusion1--this one1 namely1 that 'our wills are free4' ,i will say nothing of ,renouvier's line of reasoning2 it is contained in many volumes which ,i earnestly recommend to your attention4#aj ,but to enforce my doctrine that the number of volumes is not what makes the philosophy1 let me conclude by recalling to you the little poem of ,tennyson1 published last year1 in which the speculative voyage is made1 and the same conclusion reached in a few lines3-- #add ,out of the deep1 my child1 out of the deep1 ,from that great deep before our world begins1 ,whereon the ,spirit of ,god moves as he will1-- ,out of the deep1 my child1 out of the deep1 ,from that true world within the world we see1 ,whereof our world is but the bounding shore1-- ,out of the deep1 ,spirit1 out of the deep1 ,with this ninth moon that sends the hidden sun ,down yon dark sea1 thou comest1 darling boy4 ,for in the world which is not ours1 they said1 ',let us make man1' and that which should be man1 ,from that one light no man can look upon1 ,drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons ,and all the shadows4 ,o dear ,spirit1 half-lost ,in thine own shadow and this fleshly sign ,that thou art thou1--who wailest being born ,and banish'd into mystery1444 444our mortal veil ,and shattered phantom of that ,infinite ,one1 ,who made thee unconceivably thyself ,out of his whole world-self and all in all1-- ,live thou1 and of the grain and husk1 the grape ,and ivyberry1 choose2 and still depart ,from death to death through life and life1 and find ,nearer and ever nearer ,him who wrought ,not matter1 nor the finite-infinite1 ,but this main miracle1 that thou art thou1 ,with power on thine own act and on the world4 #a ,address delivered to the ,unitarian ,ministers' ,institute at ,princeton1 ,mass41 #ahha1 and printed in the ,unitarian ,review for ,october of that year4 #b ,see some ,remarks on ,spencer's ,definition of ,mind1 in the ,journal of ,speculative ,philosophy for ,january1 #ahgh4 #c ,no amount of failure in the attempt to subject the world of sensible experience to a thorough-going system of conceptions1 and to bring all happenings back to cases of immutably valid law1 is able to shake our faith in the rightness of our principles4 ,we hold fast to our demand that even the greatest apparent confusion must sooner or later solve itself in transparent formulas4 ,we begin the work ever afresh2 and1 refusing to believe that nature will permanently withhold the reward of our exertions1 think rather that we have hitherto only failed to push them in the right direction4 ,and all this pertinacity flows from a conviction that we have no right to renounce the fulfilment of our task4 ,what1 in short sustains the courage of investigators is the force of obligation of an ethical idea4 7,sigwart3 ,logik1 bd4 ii41 p4 #bc47 ,this is a true account of the spirit of science4 ,does it essentially differ from the spirit of religion8 ,and is any one entitled to say in advance1 that1 while the one form of faith shall be crowned with success1 the other is certainly doomed to fail8 #d ,concerning the transformation of the given order into the order of conception1 see ,s4 ,h4 ,hodgson1 ,the ,philosophy of ,reflection1 chap4 v42 ,h4 ,lotze1 ,logik1 sects4 #cdb-cea2 ,c4 ,sigwart1 ,logik1 sects4 #fj-fc1 #aje4 #e ,haeckel has recently 7,der ,monismus1 #ahic1 p4 #cg7 proposed the ,cosmic ,ether as a divinity fitted to reconcile science with theistic faith4 #f ,see the admirably original ,illustrations of the ,logic of ,science1 by ,c4 ,s4 ,peirce1 especially the second paper1 ,how to make our ,thoughts clear1 in the ,popular ,science ,monthly for ,january1 #ahgh4 #g ,on this subject1 see the preceding ,essay4 #h ,as soon as it is recognized that our thought1 as logic deals with it1 reposes on our will to think1 the primacy of the will1 even in the theoretical sphere1 must be conceded2 and the last of presuppositions is not merely ,kant's that ',i think' must accompany all my representations1 but also that ',i will' must dominate all my thinking4 7,sigwart2 ,logik1 ll4 #be47 #i ,as our ancestors said1 ,fiat justitia1 pereat mundus1 so we1 who do not believe in justice or any absolute good1 must1 according to these prophets1 be willing to see the world perish1 in order that scientia fiat4 ,was there ever a more exquisite idol of the den1 or rather of the shop8 ,in the clean sweep to be made of superstitions1 let the idol of stern obligation to be scientific go with the rest1 and people will have a fair chance to understand one another4 ,but this blowing of hot and of cold makes nothing but confusion4 #aj ,especially the ,essais de ,critique ,gnrale1 #bme ,edition1 #f vols41 #abmo1 ,paris1 #ahge2 and the ,esquisse d'une ,classification ,systmatique des ,doctrines ,philosophiques1 #b vols41 #hvo1 ,paris1 #ahhe4 #ade ,,the ,,dilemma ,,of ,,determinism4#a ,a common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy1 and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which every one has heard4 ,this is a radical mistake4 ,i know of no subject less worn out1 or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground1--not1 perhaps1 of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent1 but of deepening our sense of what the issue between the two parties really is1 of what the ideas of fate and of free-will imply4 ,at our very side almost1 in the past few years1 we have seen falling in rapid succession from the press works that present the alternative in entirely novel lights4 ,not to speak of the ,english disciples of ,hegel1 such as ,green and ,bradley2 not to speak of ,hinton and ,hodgson1 nor of ,hazard here1--we see in the writings of ,renouvier1 ,fouille1 and ,delboeuf#b how completely changed and refreshed is the form of all the old disputes4 ,i cannot pretend to vie in originality with any of the masters ,i have named1 and my ambition limits itself to just one little point4 ,if ,i can make two of the necessarily implied corollaries #adf of determinism clearer to you than they have been made before1 ,i shall have made it possible for you to decide for or against that doctrine with a better understanding of what you are about4 ,and if you prefer not to decide at all1 but to remain doubters1 you will at least see more plainly what the subject of your hesitation is4 ,i thus disclaim openly on the threshold all pretension to prove to you that the freedom of the will is true4 ,the most ,i hope is to induce some of you to follow my own example in assuming it true1 and acting as if it were true4 ,if it be true1 it seems to me that this is involved in the strict logic of the case4 ,its truth ought not to be forced willy-nilly down our indifferent throats4 ,it ought to be freely espoused by men who can equally well turn their backs upon it4 ,in other words1 our first act of freedom1 if we are free1 ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we are free4 ,this should exclude1 it seems to me1 from the free-will side of the question all hope of a coercive demonstration1--a demonstration which ,i1 for one1 am perfectly contented to go without4 ,with thus much understood at the outset1 we can advance4 ,but not without one more point understood as well4 ,the arguments ,i am about to urge all proceed on two suppositions3 first1 when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another1 we do so in order to attain a conception of things which shall give us subjective satisfaction2 and1 second1 if there be two conceptions1 and the one seems to us1 on the whole1 more rational than the other1 we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two4 ,i hope that you are all willing to make these suppositions with me2 #adg for ,i am afraid that if there be any of you here who are not1 they will find little edification in the rest of what ,i have to say4 ,i cannot stop to argue the point2 but ,i myself believe that all the magnificent achievements of mathematical and physical science--our doctrines of evolution1 of uniformity of law1 and the rest--proceed from our indomitable desire to cast the world into a more rational shape in our minds than the shape into which it is thrown there by the crude order of our experience4 ,the world has shown itself1 to a great extent1 plastic to this demand of ours for rationality4 ,how much farther it will show itself plastic no one can say4 ,our only means of finding out is to try2 and ,i1 for one1 feel as free to try conceptions of moral as of mechanical or of logical rationality4 ,if a certain formula for expressing the nature of the world violates my moral demand1 ,i shall feel as free to throw it overboard1 or at least to doubt it1 as if it disappointed my demand for uniformity of sequence1 for example2 the one demand being1 so far as ,i can see1 quite as subjective and emotional as the other is4 ,the principle of causality1 for example1--what is it but a postulate1 an empty name covering simply a demand that the sequence of events shall some day manifest a deeper kind of belonging of one thing with another than the mere arbitrary juxtaposition which now phenomenally appears8 ,it is as much an altar to an unknown god as the one that ,saint ,paul found at ,athens4 ,all our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods4 ,uniformity is as much so as is free-will4 ,if this be admitted1 we can debate on even terms4 ,but if any one pretends that while freedom and variety are1 in the first instance1 subjective demands1 necessity and uniformity are something #adh altogether different1 ,i do not see how we can debate at all4#c ,to begin1 then1 ,i must suppose you acquainted with all the usual arguments on the subject4 ,i cannot stop to take up the old proofs from causation1 from statistics1 from the certainty with which we can foretell one another's conduct1 from the fixity of character1 and all the rest4 ,but there are two words which usually encumber these classical arguments1 #adi and which we must immediately dispose of if we are to make any progress4 ,one is the eulogistic word freedom1 and the other is the opprobrious word chance4 ,the word 'chance' ,i wish to keep1 but ,i wish to get rid of the word 'freedom4' ,its eulogistic associations have so far overshadowed all the rest of its meaning that both parties claim the sole right to use it1 and determinists to-day insist that they alone are freedom's champions4 ,old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism4 ,it did not shrink from such words as fatality1 bondage of the will1 necessitation1 and the like4 ,nowadays1 we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words1 and1 repudiating fatality1 necessity1 and even predetermination1 says that its real name is freedom2 for freedom is only necessity understood1 and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom4 ,even a writer as little used to making capital out of soft words as ,mr4 ,hodgson hesitates not to call himself a 'free-will determinist4' ,now1 all this is a quagmire of evasion under which the real issue of fact has been entirely smothered4 ,freedom in all these senses presents simply no problem at all4 ,no matter what the soft determinist mean by it1--whether he mean the acting without external constraint2 whether he mean the acting rightly1 or whether he mean the acquiescing in the law of the whole1--who cannot answer him that sometimes we are free and sometimes we are not8 ,but there is a problem1 an issue of fact and not of words1 an issue of the most momentous importance1 which is often decided without discussion in one sentence1--nay1 in one clause of a sentence1--by those very writers who spin out whole chapters in their efforts to show #aej what 'true' freedom is2 and that is the question of determinism1 about which we are to talk to-night4 ,fortunately1 no ambiguities hang about this word or about its opposite1 indeterminism4 ,both designate an outward way in which things may happen1 and their cold and mathematical sound has no sentimental associations that can bribe our partiality either way in advance4 ,now1 evidence of an external kind to decide between determinism and indeterminism is1 as ,i intimated a while back1 strictly impossible to find4 ,let us look at the difference between them and see for ourselves4 ,what does determinism profess8 ,it professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be4 ,the future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb3 the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality4 ,any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible4 ,the whole is in each and every part1 and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity1 an iron block1 in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning4 ,with earth's first clay they did the last man knead1 ,and there of the last harvest sowed the seed4 ,and the first morning of creation wrote ,what the last dawn of reckoning shall read4 ,indeterminism1 on the contrary1 says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another1 so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be4 ,it admits that possibilities may be in excess of actualities1 and that things not yet revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous4 ,of two #aea alternative futures which we conceive1 both may now be really possible2 and the one become impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself4 ,indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending unit of fact4 ,it says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it2 and1 so saying1 it corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of things4 ,to that view1 actualities seem to float in a wider sea of possibilities from out of which they are chosen2 and1 somewhere1 indeterminism says1 such possibilities exist1 and form a part of truth4 ,determinism1 on the contrary1 says they exist nowhere1 and that necessity on the one hand and impossibility on the other are the sole categories of the real4 ,possibilities that fail to get realized are1 for determinism1 pure illusions3 they never were possibilities at all4 ,there is nothing inchoate1 it says1 about this universe of ours1 all that was or is or shall be actual in it having been from eternity virtually there4 ,the cloud of alternatives our minds escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer deceptions1 to which 'impossibilities' is the only name that rightfully belongs4 ,the issue1 it will be seen1 is a perfectly sharp one1 which no eulogistic terminology can smear over or wipe out4 ,the truth must lie with one side or the other1 and its lying with one side makes the other false4 ,the question relates solely to the existence of possibilities1 in the strict sense of the term1 as things that may1 but need not1 be4 ,both sides admit that a volition1 for instance1 has occurred4 ,the indeterminists say another volition might have occurred in its place2 the determinists swear that nothing could possibly #aeb have occurred in its place4 ,now1 can science be called in to tell us which of these two point-blank contradicters of each other is right8 ,science professes to draw no conclusions but such as are based on matters of fact1 things that have actually happened2 but how can any amount of assurance that something actually happened give us the least grain of information as to whether another thing might or might not have happened in its place8 ,only facts can be proved by other facts4 ,with things that are possibilities and not facts1 facts have no concern4 ,if we have no other evidence than the evidence of existing facts1 the possibility-question must remain a mystery never to be cleared up4 ,and the truth is that facts practically have hardly anything to do with making us either determinists or indeterminists4 ,sure enough1 we make a flourish of quoting facts this way or that2 and if we are determinists1 we talk about the infallibility with which we can predict one another's conduct2 while if we are indeterminists1 we lay great stress on the fact that it is just because we cannot foretell one another's conduct1 either in war or statecraft or in any of the great and small intrigues and businesses of men1 that life is so intensely anxious and hazardous a game4 ,but who does not see the wretched insufficiency of this so-called objective testimony on both sides8 ,what fills up the gaps in our minds is something not objective1 not external4 ,what divides us into possibility men and anti-possibility men is different faiths or postulates1--postulates of rationality4 ,to this man the world seems more rational with possibilities in it1--to that man more rational with possibilities excluded2 and talk as we will about having to yield to #aec evidence1 what makes us monists or pluralists1 determinists or indeterminists1 is at bottom always some sentiment like this4 ,the stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is the antipathy to the idea of chance4 ,as soon as we begin to talk indeterminism to our friends1 we find a number of them shaking their heads4 ,this notion of alternative possibility1 they say1 this admission that any one of several things may come to pass1 is1 after all1 only a roundabout name for chance2 and chance is something the notion of which no sane mind can for an instant tolerate in the world4 ,what is it1 they ask1 but barefaced crazy unreason1 the negation of intelligibility and law8 ,and if the slightest particle of it exist anywhere1 what is to prevent the whole fabric from falling together1 the stars from going out1 and chaos from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign8 ,remarks of this sort about chance will put an end to discussion as quickly as anything one can find4 ,i have already told you that 'chance' was a word ,i wished to keep and use4 ,let us then examine exactly what it means1 and see whether it ought to be such a terrible bugbear to us4 ,i fancy that squeezing the thistle boldly will rob it of its sting4 ,the sting of the word 'chance' seems to lie in the assumption that it means something positive1 and that if anything happens by chance1 it must needs be something of an intrinsically irrational and preposterous sort4 ,now1 chance means nothing of the kind4 ,it is a purely negative and relative term1#d giving us #aed no information about that of which it is predicated1 except that it happens to be disconnected with something else1--not controlled1 secured1 or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence4 ,as this point is the most subtile one of the whole lecture1 and at the same time the point on which all the rest hinges1 ,i beg you to pay particular attention to it4 ,what ,i say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be in itself to call it 'chance4' ,it may be a bad thing1 it may be a good thing4 ,it may be lucidity1 transparency1 fitness incarnate1 matching the whole system of other things1 when it has once befallen1 in an unimaginably perfect way4 ,all you mean by calling it 'chance' is that this is not guaranteed1 that it may also fall out otherwise4 ,for the system of other things has no positive hold on the chance-thing4 ,its origin is in a certain fashion negative3 it escapes1 and says1 ,hands off6 coming1 when it comes1 as a free gift1 or not at all4 ,this negativeness1 however1 and this opacity of the chance-thing when thus considered ab4 extra1 or from the point of view of previous things or distant things1 do not preclude its having any amount of positiveness and luminosity from within1 and at its own place and moment4 ,all that its chance-character asserts about it is that there is something in it really of its own1 something that is not the unconditional property of the whole4 ,if the whole wants this property1 the whole must wait till it can get it1 if it be a matter of chance4 ,that the universe may actually be a sort of joint-stock society of this sort1 in which the sharers have both limited liabilities and limited powers1 is of course a simple and conceivable notion4 ,nevertheless1 many persons talk as if the minutest #aee dose of disconnectedness of one part with another1 the smallest modicum of independence1 the faintest tremor of ambiguity about the future1 for example1 would ruin everything1 and turn this goodly universe into a sort of insane sand-heap or nulliverse1 no universe at all4 ,since future human volitions are as a matter of fact the only ambiguous things we are tempted to believe in1 let us stop for a moment to make ourselves sure whether their independent and accidental character need be fraught with such direful consequences to the universe as these4 ,what is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance as far as the present moment is concerned8 ,it means that both ,divinity ,avenue and ,oxford ,street are called2 but that only one1 and that one either one1 shall be chosen4 ,now1 ,i ask you seriously to suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is real2 and then to make the impossible hypothesis that the choice is made twice over1 and each time falls on a different street4 ,in other words1 imagine that ,i first walk through ,divinity ,avenue1 and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate ten minutes of time with all that it contained1 and set me back at the door of this hall just as ,i was before the choice was made4 ,imagine then that1 everything else being the same1 ,i now make a different choice and traverse ,oxford ,street4 ,you1 as passive spectators1 look on and see the two alternative universes1--one of them with me walking through ,divinity ,avenue in it1 the other with the same me walking through ,oxford ,street4 ,now1 if you are determinists you believe one of these universes to have been from eternity impossible3 you believe it to have #aef been impossible because of the intrinsic irrationality or accidentality somewhere involved in it4 ,but looking outwardly at these universes1 can you say which is the impossible and accidental one1 and which the rational and necessary one8 ,i doubt if the most iron-clad determinist among you could have the slightest glimmer of light on this point4 ,in other words1 either universe after the fact and once there would1 to our means of observation and understanding1 appear just as rational as the other4 ,there would be absolutely no criterion by which we might judge one necessary and the other matter of chance4 ,suppose now we relieve the gods of their hypothetical task and assume my choice1 once made1 to be made forever4 ,i go through ,divinity ,avenue for good and all4 ,if1 as good determinists1 you now begin to affirm1 what all good determinists punctually do affirm1 that in the nature of things ,i couldn't have gone through ,oxford ,street1--had ,i done so it would have been chance1 irrationality1 insanity1 a horrid gap in nature1--,i simply call your attention to this1 that your affirmation is what the ,germans call a ,machtspruch1 a mere conception fulminated as a dogma and based on no insight into details4 ,before my choice1 either street seemed as natural to you as to me4 ,had ,i happened to take ,oxford ,street1 ,divinity ,avenue would have figured in your philosophy as the gap in nature2 and you would have so proclaimed it with the best deterministic conscience in the world4 ,but what a hollow outcry1 then1 is this against a chance which1 if it were present to us1 we could by no character whatever distinguish from a rational necessity6 ,i have taken the most trivial of examples1 but no possible example could lead to any different #aeg result4 ,for what are the alternatives which1 in point of fact1 offer themselves to human volition8 ,what are those futures that now seem matters of chance8 ,are they not one and all like the ,divinity ,avenue and ,oxford ,street of our example8 ,are they not all of them kinds of things already here and based in the existing frame of nature8 ,is any one ever tempted to produce an absolute accident1 something utterly irrelevant to the rest of the world8 ,do not all the motives that assail us1 all the futures that offer themselves to our choice1 spring equally from the soil of the past2 and would not either one of them1 whether realized through chance or through necessity1 the moment it was realized1 seem to us to fit that past1 and in the completest and most continuous manner to interdigitate with the phenomena already there8#e ,the more one thinks of the matter1 the more one wonders that so empty and gratuitous a hubbub as this outcry against chance should have found so great an echo in the hearts of men4 ,it is a word which tells us absolutely nothing about what chances1 or about the modus operandi of the chancing2 and the use of it as a war-cry shows only a temper of #aeh intellectual absolutism1 a demand that the world shall be a solid block1 subject to one control1--which temper1 which demand1 the world may not be bound to gratify at all4 ,in every outwardly verifiable and practical respect1 a world in which the alternatives that now actually distract your choice were decided by pure chance would be by me absolutely undistinguished from the world in which ,i now live4 ,i am1 therefore1 entirely willing to call it1 so far as your choices go1 a world of chance for me4 ,to yourselves1 it is true1 those very acts of choice1 which to me are so blind1 opaque1 and external1 are the opposites of this1 for you are within them and effect them4 ,to you they appear as decisions2 and decisions1 for him who makes them1 are altogether peculiar psychic facts4 ,self-luminous and self-justifying at the living moment at which they occur1 they appeal to no outside moment to put its stamp upon them or make them continuous with the rest of nature4 ,themselves it is rather who seem to make nature continuous2 and in their strange and intense function of granting consent to one possibility and withholding it from another1 to transform an equivocal and double future into an inalterable and simple past4 ,but with the psychology of the matter we have no concern this evening4 ,the quarrel which determinism has with chance fortunately has nothing to do with this or that psychological detail4 ,it is a quarrel altogether metaphysical4 ,determinism denies the ambiguity of future volitions1 because it affirms that nothing future can be ambiguous4 ,but we have said enough to meet the issue4 ,indeterminate future volitions do mean chance4 ,let us not fear to shout it from the house-tops if need be2 for we now know that #aei the idea of chance is1 at bottom1 exactly the same thing as the idea of gift1--the one simply being a disparaging1 and the other a eulogistic1 name for anything on which we have no effective claim4 ,and whether the world be the better or the worse for having either chances or gifts in it will depend altogether on what these uncertain and unclaimable things turn out to be4 ,and this at last brings us within sight of our subject4 ,we have seen what determinism means3 we have seen that indeterminism is rightly described as meaning chance2 and we have seen that chance1 the very name of which we are urged to shrink from as from a metaphysical pestilence1 means only the negative fact that no part of the world1 however big1 can claim to control absolutely the destinies of the whole4 ,but although1 in discussing the word 'chance1' ,i may at moments have seemed to be arguing for its real existence1 ,i have not meant to do so yet4 ,we have not yet ascertained whether this be a world of chance or no2 at most1 we have agreed that it seems so4 ,and ,i now repeat what ,i said at the outset1 that1 from any strict theoretical point of view1 the question is insoluble4 ,to deepen our theoretic sense of the difference between a world with chances in it and a deterministic world is the most ,i can hope to do2 and this ,i may now at last begin upon1 after all our tedious clearing of the way4 ,i wish first of all to show you just what the notion that this is a deterministic world implies4 ,the implications ,i call your attention to are all bound up with the fact that it is a world in which we constantly have to make what ,i shall1 with your permission1 call judgments of regret4 ,hardly an hour passes in #afj which we do not wish that something might be otherwise2 and happy indeed are those of us whose hearts have never echoed the wish of ,omar ,khayam-- ,that we might clasp1 ere closed1 the book of fate1 ,and make the writer on a fairer leaf ,inscribe our names1 or quite obliterate4 ,ah6 ,love1 could you and ,i with fate conspire ,to mend this sorry scheme of things entire1 ,would we not shatter it to bits1 and then ,remould it nearer to the heart's desire8 ,now1 it is undeniable that most of these regrets are foolish1 and quite on a par in point of philosophic value with the criticisms on the universe of that friend of our infancy1 the hero of the fable ,the ,atheist and the ,acorn1-- ,fool6 had that bough a pumpkin bore1 ,thy whimsies would have worked no more1 etc4 ,even from the point of view of our own ends1 we should probably make a botch of remodelling the universe4 ,how much more then from the point of view of ends we cannot see6 ,wise men therefore regret as little as they can4 ,but still some regrets are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle1--regrets for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery1 for example1 whether performed by others or by ourselves4 ,hardly any one can remain entirely optimistic after reading the confession of the murderer at ,brockton the other day3 how1 to get rid of the wife whose continued existence bored him1 he inveigled her into a desert spot1 shot her four times1 and then1 as she lay on the ground and said to him1 ,you didn't do it on purpose1 did you1 dear8 replied1 ,no1 ,i #afa didn't do it on purpose1 as he raised a rock and smashed her skull4 ,such an occurrence1 with the mild sentence and self-satisfaction of the prisoner1 is a field for a crop of regrets1 which one need not take up in detail4 ,we feel that1 although a perfect mechanical fit to the rest of the universe1 it is a bad moral fit1 and that something else would really have been better in its place4 ,but for the deterministic philosophy the murder1 the sentence1 and the prisoner's optimism were all necessary from eternity2 and nothing else for a moment had a ghost of a chance of being put into their place4 ,to admit such a chance1 the determinists tell us1 would be to make a suicide of reason2 so we must steel our hearts against the thought4 ,and here our plot thickens1 for we see the first of those difficult implications of determinism and monism which it is my purpose to make you feel4 ,if this ,brockton murder was called for by the rest of the universe1 if it had to come at its preappointed hour1 and if nothing else would have been consistent with the sense of the whole1 what are we to think of the universe8 ,are we stubbornly to stick to our judgment of regret1 and say1 though it couldn't be1 yet it would have been a better universe with something different from this ,brockton murder in it8 ,that1 of course1 seems the natural and spontaneous thing for us to do2 and yet it is nothing short of deliberately espousing a kind of pessimism4 ,the judgment of regret calls the murder bad4 ,calling a thing bad means1 if it mean anything at all1 that the thing ought not to be1 that something else ought to be in its stead4 ,determinism1 in denying that anything else can be in its stead1 virtually defines the universe #afb as a place in which what ought to be is impossible1--in other words1 as an organism whose constitution is afflicted with an incurable taint1 an irremediable flaw4 ,the pessimism of a ,schopenhauer says no more than this1--that the murder is a symptom2 and that it is a vicious symptom because it belongs to a vicious whole1 which can express its nature no otherwise than by bringing forth just such a symptom as that at this particular spot4 ,regret for the murder must transform itself1 if we are determinists and wise1 into a larger regret4 ,it is absurd to regret the murder alone4 ,other things being what they are1 it could not be different4 ,what we should regret is that whole frame of things of which the murder is one member4 ,i see no escape whatever from this pessimistic conclusion1 if1 being determinists1 our judgment of regret is to be allowed to stand at all4 ,the only deterministic escape from pessimism is everywhere to abandon the judgment of regret4 ,that this can be done1 history shows to be not impossible4 ,the devil1 quoad existentiam1 may be good4 ,that is1 although he be a principle of evil1 yet the universe1 with such a principle in it1 may practically be a better universe than it could have been without4 ,on every hand1 in a small way1 we find that a certain amount of evil is a condition by which a higher form of good is bought4 ,there is nothing to prevent anybody from generalizing this view1 and trusting that if we could but see things in the largest of all ways1 even such matters as this ,brockton murder would appear to be paid for by the uses that follow in their train4 ,an optimism quand mme1 a systematic and infatuated optimism like that ridiculed by ,voltaire in his ,candide1 is one of the possible #afc ideal ways in which a man may train himself to look on life4 ,bereft of dogmatic hardness and lit up with the expression of a tender and pathetic hope1 such an optimism has been the grace of some of the most religious characters that ever lived4 ,throb thine with ,nature's throbbing breast1 ,and all is clear from east to west4 ,even cruelty and treachery may be among the absolutely blessed fruits of time1 and to quarrel with any of their details may be blasphemy4 ,the only real blasphemy1 in short1 may be that pessimistic temper of the soul which lets it give way to such things as regrets1 remorse1 and grief4 ,thus1 our deterministic pessimism may become a deterministic optimism at the price of extinguishing our judgments of regret4 ,but does not this immediately bring us into a curious logical predicament8 ,our determinism leads us to call our judgments of regret wrong1 because they are pessimistic in implying that what is impossible yet ought to be4 ,but how then about the judgments of regret themselves8 ,if they are wrong1 other judgments1 judgments of approval presumably1 ought to be in their place4 ,but as they are necessitated1 nothing else can be in their place2 and the universe is just what it was before1--namely1 a place in which what ought to be appears impossible4 ,we have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog1 but the other one sinks all the deeper4 ,we have rescued our actions from the bonds of evil1 but our judgments are now held fast4 ,when murders and treacheries cease to be sins1 regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors4 ,the theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of #afd see-saw with each other on the ground of evil4 ,the rise of either sends the other down4 ,murder and treachery cannot be good without regret being bad3 regret cannot be good without treachery and murder being bad4 ,both1 however1 are supposed to have been foredoomed2 so something must be fatally unreasonable1 absurd1 and wrong in the world4 ,it must be a place of which either sin or error forms a necessary part4 ,from this dilemma there seems at first sight no escape4 ,are we then so soon to fall back into the pessimism from which we thought we had emerged8 ,and is there no possible way by which we may1 with good intellectual consciences1 call the cruelties and the treacheries1 the reluctances and the regrets1 all good together8 ,certainly there is such a way1 and you are probably most of you ready to formulate it yourselves4 ,but1 before doing so1 remark how inevitably the question of determinism and indeterminism slides us into the question of optimism and pessimism1 or1 as our fathers called it1 'the question of evil4' ,the theological form of all these disputes is the simplest and the deepest1 the form from which there is the least escape1--not because1 as some have sarcastically said1 remorse and regret are clung to with a morbid fondness by the theologians as spiritual luxuries1 but because they are existing facts of the world1 and as such must be taken into account in the deterministic interpretation of all that is fated to be4 ,if they are fated to be error1 does not the bat's wing of irrationality still cast its shadow over the world8 ,the refuge from the quandary lies1 as ,i said1 not far off4 ,the necessary acts we erroneously regret #afe may be good1 and yet our error in so regretting them may be also good1 on one simple condition2 and that condition is this3 ,the world must not be regarded as a machine whose final purpose is the making real of any outward good1 but rather as a contrivance for deepening the theoretic consciousness of what goodness and evil in their intrinsic natures are4 ,not the doing either of good or of evil is what nature cares for1 but the knowing of them4 ,life is one long eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge4 ,i am in the habit1 in thinking to myself1 of calling this point of view the gnostical point of view4 ,according to it1 the world is neither an optimism nor a pessimism1 but a gnosticism4 ,but as this term may perhaps lead to some misunderstandings1 ,i will use it as little as possible here1 and speak rather of subjectivism1 and the subjectivistic point of view4 ,subjectivism has three great branches1--we may call them scientificism1 sentimentalism1 and sensualism1 respectively4 ,they all agree essentially about the universe1 in deeming that what happens there is subsidiary to what we think or feel about it4 ,crime justifies its criminality by awakening our intelligence of that criminality1 and eventually our remorses and regrets2 and the error included in remorses and regrets1 the error of supposing that the past could have been different1 justifies itself by its use4 ,its use is to quicken our sense of what the irretrievably lost is4 ,when we think of it as that which might have been 7'the saddest words of tongue or pen'71 the quality of its worth speaks to us with a wilder sweetness2 and1 conversely1 the dissatisfaction wherewith we think of what seems to have driven it from its natural place gives us the severer pang4 ,admirable artifice of #aff nature6 we might be tempted to exclaim1--deceiving us in order the better to enlighten us1 and leaving nothing undone to accentuate to our consciousness the yawning distance of those opposite poles of good and evil between which creation swings4 ,we have thus clearly revealed to our view what may be called the dilemma of determinism1 so far as determinism pretends to think things out at all4 ,a merely mechanical determinism1 it is true1 rather rejoices in not thinking them out4 ,it is very sure that the universe must satisfy its postulate of a physical continuity and coherence1 but it smiles at any one who comes forward with a postulate of moral coherence as well4 ,i may suppose1 however1 that the number of purely mechanical or hard determinists among you this evening is small4 ,the determinism to whose seductions you are most exposed is what ,i have called soft determinism1--the determinism which allows considerations of good and bad to mingle with those of cause and effect in deciding what sort of a universe this may rationally be held to be4 ,the dilemma of this determinism is one whose left horn is pessimism and whose right horn is subjectivism4 ,in other words1 if determinism is to escape pessimism1 it must leave off looking at the goods and ills of life in a simple objective way1 and regard them as materials1 indifferent in themselves1 for the production of consciousness1 scientific and ethical1 in us4 ,to escape pessimism is1 as we all know1 no easy task4 ,your own studies have sufficiently shown you the almost desperate difficulty of making the notion that there is a single principle of things1 and that principle absolute perfection1 rhyme together with #afg our daily vision of the facts of life4 ,if perfection be the principle1 how comes there any imperfection here8 ,if ,god be good1 how came he to create--or1 if he did not create1 how comes he to permit--the devil8 ,the evil facts must be explained as seeming3 the devil must be whitewashed1 the universe must be disinfected1 if neither ,god's goodness nor his unity and power are to remain impugned4 ,and of all the various ways of operating the disinfection1 and making bad seem less bad1 the way of subjectivism appears by far the best4#f ,for1 after all1 is there not something rather absurd in our ordinary notion of external things being good or bad in themselves8 ,can murders and treacheries1 considered as mere outward happenings1 or motions of matter1 be bad without any one to feel their badness8 ,and could paradise properly be good in the absence of a sentient principle by which the goodness was perceived8 ,outward goods and evils seem practically indistinguishable except in so far as they result in getting moral judgments made about them4 ,but then the moral judgments seem the main thing1 and the outward facts mere perishing instruments for their production4 ,this is subjectivism4 ,every one must at some time have wondered at that strange paradox of our moral nature1 that1 though the #afh pursuit of outward good is the breath of its nostrils1 the attainment of outward good would seem to be its suffocation and death4 ,why does the painting of any paradise or ,utopia1 in heaven or on earth1 awaken such yawnings for nirvana and escape8 ,the white-robed harp-playing heaven of our sabbath-schools1 and the ladylike tea-table elysium represented in ,mr4 ,spencer's ,data of ,ethics1 as the final consummation of progress1 are exactly on a par in this respect1--lubberlands1 pure and simple1 one and all4#g ,we look upon them from this delicious mess of insanities and realities1 strivings and deadnesses1 hopes and fears1 agonies and exultations1 which forms our present state1 and tedium vitae is the only sentiment they awaken in our breasts4 ,to our crepuscular natures1 born for the conflict1 the ,rembrandtesque moral chiaroscuro1 the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom1 such pictures of light upon light are vacuous and expressionless1 and neither to be enjoyed nor understood4 ,if this be the whole fruit of the victory1 we say2 if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives2 if prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire1 and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed1 and protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives1--why1 at such a rate1 better lose than win the battle1 or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play1 so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding-up4 #afi ,all this is what ,i should instantly say1 were ,i called on to plead for gnosticism2 and its real friends1 of whom you will presently perceive ,i am not one1 would say without difficulty a great deal more4 ,regarded as a stable finality1 every outward good becomes a mere weariness to the flesh4 ,it must be menaced1 be occasionally lost1 for its goodness to be fully felt as such4 ,nay1 more than occasionally lost4 ,no one knows the worth of innocence till he knows it is gone forever1 and that money cannot buy it back4 ,not the saint1 but the sinner that repenteth1 is he to whom the full length and breadth1 and height and depth1 of life's meaning is revealed4 ,not the absence of vice1 but vice there1 and virtue holding her by the throat1 seems the ideal human state4 ,and there seems no reason to suppose it not a permanent human state4 ,there is a deep truth in what the school of ,schopenhauer insists on1--the illusoriness of the notion of moral progress4 ,the more brutal forms of evil that go are replaced by others more subtle and more poisonous4 ,our moral horizon moves with us as we move1 and never do we draw nearer to the far-off line where the black waves and the azure meet4 ,the final purpose of our creation seems most plausibly to be the greatest possible enrichment of our ethical consciousness1 through the intensest play of contrasts and the widest diversity of characters4 ,this of course obliges some of us to be vessels of wrath1 while it calls others to be vessels of honor4 ,but the subjectivist point of view reduces all these outward distinctions to a common denominator4 ,the wretch languishing in the felon's cell may be drinking draughts of the wine of truth that will never pass the lips of the so-called favorite of fortune4 ,and the peculiar consciousness of #agj each of them is an indispensable note in the great ethical concert which the centuries as they roll are grinding out of the living heart of man4 ,so much for subjectivism6 ,if the dilemma of determinism be to choose between it and pessimism1 ,i see little room for hesitation from the strictly theoretical point of view4 ,subjectivism seems the more rational scheme4 ,and the world may1 possibly1 for aught ,i know1 be nothing else4 ,when the healthy love of life is on one1 and all its forms and its appetites seem so unutterably real2 when the most brutal and the most spiritual things are lit by the same sun1 and each is an integral part of the total richness1--why1 then it seems a grudging and sickly way of meeting so robust a universe to shrink from any of its facts and wish them not to be4 ,rather take the strictly dramatic point of view1 and treat the whole thing as a great unending romance which the spirit of the universe1 striving to realize its own content1 is eternally thinking out and representing to itself4#h ,no one1 ,i hope1 will accuse me1 after ,i have said all this1 of underrating the reasons in favor of subjectivism4 ,and now that ,i proceed to say why those reasons1 strong as they are1 fail to convince my own mind1 ,i trust the presumption may be that my objections are stronger still4 ,i frankly confess that they are of a practical order4 ,if we practically take up subjectivism in a sincere and radical manner and follow its consequences1 we meet with some that make us pause4 ,let a subjectivism #aga begin in never so severe and intellectual a way1 it is forced by the law of its nature to develop another side of itself and end with the corruptest curiosity4 ,once dismiss the notion that certain duties are good in themselves1 and that we are here to do them1 no matter how we feel about them2 once consecrate the opposite notion that our performances and our violations of duty are for a common purpose1 the attainment of subjective knowledge and feeling1 and that the deepening of these is the chief end of our lives1--and at what point on the downward slope are we to stop8 ,in theology1 subjectivism develops as its 'left wing' antinomianism4 ,in literature1 its left wing is romanticism4 ,and in practical life it is either a nerveless sentimentality or a sensualism without bounds4 ,everywhere it fosters the fatalistic mood of mind4 ,it makes those who are already too inert more passive still2 it renders wholly reckless those whose energy is already in excess4 ,all through history we find how subjectivism1 as soon as it has a free career1 exhausts itself in every sort of spiritual1 moral1 and practical license4 ,its optimism turns to an ethical indifference1 which infallibly brings dissolution in its train4 ,it is perfectly safe to say now that if the ,hegelian gnosticism1 which has begun to show itself here and in ,great ,britain1 were to become a popular philosophy1 as it once was in ,germany1 it would certainly develop its left wing here as there1 and produce a reaction of disgust4 ,already ,i have heard a graduate of this very school express in the pulpit his willingness to sin like ,david1 if only he might repent like ,david4 ,you may tell me he was only sowing his wild1 or rather his tame1 oats2 and perhaps he was4 ,but the point is #agb that in the subjectivistic or gnostical philosophy oat-sowing1 wild or tame1 becomes a systematic necessity and the chief function of life4 ,after the pure and classic truths1 the exciting and rancid ones must be experienced2 and if the stupid virtues of the philistine herd do not then come in and save society from the influence of the children of light1 a sort of inward putrefaction becomes its inevitable doom4 ,look at the last runnings of the romantic school1 as we see them in that strange contemporary ,parisian literature1 with which we of the less clever countries are so often driven to rinse out our minds after they have become clogged with the dulness and heaviness of our native pursuits4 ,the romantic school began with the worship of subjective sensibility and the revolt against legality of which ,rousseau was the first great prophet3 and through various fluxes and refluxes1 right wings and left wings1 it stands to-day with two men of genius1 ,m4 ,renan and ,m4 ,zola1 as its principal exponents1--one speaking with its masculine1 and the other with what might be called its feminine1 voice4 ,i prefer not to think now of less noble members of the school1 and the ,renan ,i have in mind is of course the ,renan of latest dates4 ,as ,i have used the term gnostic1 both he and ,zola are gnostics of the most pronounced sort4 ,both are athirst for the facts of life1 and both think the facts of human sensibility to be of all facts the most worthy of attention4 ,both agree1 moreover1 that sensibility seems to be there for no higher purpose1--certainly not1 as the ,philistines say1 for the sake of bringing mere outward rights to pass and frustrating outward wrongs4 ,one dwells on the sensibilities for their energy1 the other for their sweetness2 one speaks with a voice of #agc bronze1 the other with that of an olian harp2 one ruggedly ignores the distinction of good and evil1 the other plays the coquette between the craven unmanliness of his ,philosophic ,dialogues and the butterfly optimism of his ,souvenirs de ,jeunesse4 ,but under the pages of both there sounds incessantly the hoarse bass of vanitas vanitatum1 omnia vanitas1 which the reader may hear1 whenever he will1 between the lines4 ,no writer of this ,french romantic school has a word of rescue from the hour of satiety with the things of life1--the hour in which we say1 ,i take no pleasure in them1--or from the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding1 if perchance such hours should come4 ,for terror and satiety are facts of sensibility like any others2 and at their own hour they reign in their own right4 ,the heart of the romantic utterances1 whether poetical1 critical1 or historical1 is this inward remedilessness1 what ,carlyle calls this far-off whimpering of wail and woe4 ,and from this romantic state of mind there is absolutely no possible theoretic escape4 ,whether1 like ,renan1 we look upon life in a more refined way1 as a romance of the spirit2 or whether1 like the friends of ,m4 ,zola1 we pique ourselves on our 'scientific' and 'analytic' character1 and prefer to be cynical1 and call the world a 'roman experimental' on an infinite scale1--in either case the world appears to us potentially as what the same ,carlyle once called it1 a vast1 gloomy1 solitary ,golgotha and mill of death4 ,the only escape is by the practical way4 ,and since ,i have mentioned the nowadays much-reviled name of ,carlyle1 let me mention it once more1 and say it is the way of his teaching4 ,no matter for ,carlyle's life1 no matter for a great deal of his #agd writing4 ,what was the most important thing he said to us8 ,he said3 ,hang your sensibilities6 ,stop your snivelling complaints1 and your equally snivelling raptures6 ,leave off your general emotional tomfoolery1 and get to ,,work like men6 ,but this means a complete rupture with the subjectivist philosophy of things4 ,it says conduct1 and not sensibility1 is the ultimate fact for our recognition4 ,with the vision of certain works to be done1 of certain outward changes to be wrought or resisted1 it says our intellectual horizon terminates4 ,no matter how we succeed in doing these outward duties1 whether gladly and spontaneously1 or heavily and unwillingly1 do them we somehow must2 for the leaving of them undone is perdition4 ,no matter how we feel2 if we are only faithful in the outward act and refuse to do wrong1 the world will in so far be safe1 and we quit of our debt toward it4 ,take1 then1 the yoke upon our shoulders2 bend our neck beneath the heavy legality of its weight2 regard something else than our feeling as our limit1 our master1 and our law2 be willing to live and die in its service1--and1 at a stroke1 we have passed from the subjective into the objective philosophy of things1 much as one awakens from some feverish dream1 full of bad lights and noises1 to find one's self bathed in the sacred coolness and quiet of the air of the night4 ,but what is the essence of this philosophy of objective conduct1 so old-fashioned and finite1 but so chaste and sane and strong1 when compared with its romantic rival8 ,it is the recognition of limits1 foreign and opaque to our understanding4 ,it is the willingness1 after bringing about some external good1 to feel at peace2 for our responsibility ends with the #age performance of that duty1 and the burden of the rest we may lay on higher powers4#i ,look to thyself1 ,o ,universe1 ,thou art better and not worse1 we may say in that philosophy1 the moment we have done our stroke of conduct1 however small4 ,for in the view of that philosophy the universe belongs to a plurality of semi-independent forces1 each one of which may help or hinder1 and be helped or hindered by1 the operations of the rest4 ,but this brings us right back1 after such a long detour1 to the question of indeterminism and to the conclusion of all ,i came here to say to-night4 ,for the only consistent way of representing a pluralism and a world whose parts may affect one another through their conduct being either good or bad is the indeterministic way4 ,what interest1 zest1 or excitement can there be in achieving the right way1 unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way1--nay1 more1 a menacing and an imminent way8 ,and what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way1 unless we need have done nothing of the sort1 unless the right way was open to us as well8 ,i cannot understand the willingness to act1 no matter how we feel1 without the belief that acts are really good and bad4 ,i cannot understand the belief that an act is bad1 without regret at its happening4 ,i cannot understand regret without the admission of real1 genuine possibilities in the world4 ,only then is it #agf other than a mockery to feel1 after we have failed to do our best1 that an irreparable opportunity is gone from the universe1 the loss of which it must forever after mourn4 ,if you insist that this is all superstition1 that possibility is in the eye of science and reason impossibility1 and that if ,i act badly 'tis that the universe was foredoomed to suffer this defect1 you fall right back into the dilemma1 the labyrinth1 of pessimism and subjectivism1 from out of whose toils we have just wound our way4 ,now1 we are of course free to fall back1 if we please4 ,for my own part1 though1 whatever difficulties may beset the philosophy of objective right and wrong1 and the indeterminism it seems to imply1 determinism1 with its alternative of pessimism or romanticism1 contains difficulties that are greater still4 ,but you will remember that ,i expressly repudiated awhile ago the pretension to offer any arguments which could be coercive in a so-called scientific fashion in this matter4 ,and ,i consequently find myself1 at the end of this long talk1 obliged to state my conclusions in an altogether personal way4 ,this personal method of appeal seems to be among the very conditions of the problem2 and the most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him1 and leave his example to work on others as it may4 ,let me1 then1 without circumlocution say just this4 ,the world is enigmatical enough in all conscience1 whatever theory we may take up toward it4 ,the indeterminism ,i defend1 the free-will theory of popular sense based on the judgment of regret1 represents #agg that world as vulnerable1 and liable to be injured by certain of its parts if they act wrong4 ,and it represents their acting wrong as a matter of possibility or accident1 neither inevitable nor yet to be infallibly warded off4 ,in all this1 it is a theory devoid either of transparency or of stability4 ,it gives us a pluralistic1 restless universe1 in which no single point of view can ever take in the whole scene2 and to a mind possessed of the love of unity at any cost1 it will1 no doubt1 remain forever inacceptable4 ,a friend with such a mind once told me that the thought of my universe made him sick1 like the sight of the horrible motion of a mass of maggots in their carrion bed4 ,but while ,i freely admit that the pluralism and the restlessness are repugnant and irrational in a certain way1 ,i find that every alternative to them is irrational in a deeper way4 ,the indeterminism with its maggots1 if you please to speak so about it1 offends only the native absolutism of my intellect1--an absolutism which1 after all1 perhaps1 deserves to be snubbed and kept in check4 ,but the determinism with its necessary carrion1 to continue the figure of speech1 and with no possible maggots to eat the latter up1 violates my sense of moral reality through and through4 ,when1 for example1 ,i imagine such carrion as the ,brockton murder1 ,i cannot conceive it as an act by which the universe1 as a whole1 logically and necessarily expresses its nature without shrinking from complicity with such a whole4 ,and ,i deliberately refuse to keep on terms of loyalty with the universe by saying blankly that the murder1 since it does flow from the nature of the whole1 is not carrion4 ,there are some instinctive reactions which #agh ,i1 for one1 will not tamper with4 ,the only remaining alternative1 the attitude of gnostical romanticism1 wrenches my personal instincts in quite as violent a way4 ,it falsifies the simple objectivity of their deliverance4 ,it makes the goose-flesh the murder excites in me a sufficient reason for the perpetration of the crime4 ,it transforms life from a tragic reality into an insincere melodramatic exhibition1 as foul or as tawdry as any one's diseased curiosity pleases to carry it out4 ,and with its consecration of the 'roman naturaliste' state of mind1 and its enthronement of the baser crew of ,parisian littrateurs among the eternally indispensable organs by which the infinite spirit of things attains to that subjective illumination which is the task of its life1 it leaves me in presence of a sort of subjective carrion considerably more noisome than the objective carrion ,i called it in to take away4 ,no6 better a thousand times1 than such systematic corruption of our moral sanity1 the plainest pessimism1 so that it be straightforward2 but better far than that the world of chance4 ,make as great an uproar about chance as you please1 ,i know that chance means pluralism and nothing more4 ,if some of the members of the pluralism are bad1 the philosophy of pluralism1 whatever broad views it may deny me1 permits me1 at least1 to turn to the other members with a clean breast of affection and an unsophisticated moral sense4 ,and if ,i still wish to think of the world as a totality1 it lets me feel that a world with a chance in it of being altogether good1 even if the chance never come to pass1 is better than a world with no such chance at all4 ,that 'chance' whose very notion ,i am exhorted and conjured to banish #agi from my view of the future as the suicide of reason concerning it1 that 'chance' is--what8 ,just this1--the chance that in moral respects the future may be other and better than the past has been4 ,this is the only chance we have any motive for supposing to exist4 ,shame1 rather1 on its repudiation and its denial6 ,for its presence is the vital air which lets the world live1 the salt which keeps it sweet4 ,and here ,i might legitimately stop1 having expressed all ,i care to see admitted by others to-night4 ,but ,i know that if ,i do stop here1 misapprehensions will remain in the minds of some of you1 and keep all ,i have said from having its effect2 so ,i judge it best to add a few more words4 ,in the first place1 in spite of all my explanations1 the word 'chance' will still be giving trouble4 ,though you may yourselves be adverse to the deterministic doctrine1 you wish a pleasanter word than 'chance' to name the opposite doctrine by2 and you very likely consider my preference for such a word a perverse sort of a partiality on my part4 ,it certainly is a bad word to make converts with2 and you wish ,i had not thrust it so butt-foremost at you1--you wish to use a milder term4 ,well1 ,i admit there may be just a dash of perversity in its choice4 ,the spectacle of the mere word-grabbing game played by the soft determinists has perhaps driven me too violently the other way2 and1 rather than be found wrangling with them for the good words1 ,i am willing to take the first bad one which comes along1 provided it be unequivocal4 ,the question is of things1 not of eulogistic names for them2 and the best word is the one that enables men to #ahj know the quickest whether they disagree or not about the things4 ,but the word 'chance1' with its singular negativity1 is just the word for this purpose4 ,whoever uses it instead of 'freedom1' squarely and resolutely gives up all pretence to control the things he says are free4 ,for him1 he confesses that they are no better than mere chance would be4 ,it is a word of impotence1 and is therefore the only sincere word we can use1 if1 in granting freedom to certain things1 we grant it honestly1 and really risk the game4 ,who chooses me must give and forfeit all he hath4 ,any other word permits of quibbling1 and lets us1 after the fashion of the soft determinists1 make a pretence of restoring the caged bird to liberty with one hand1 while with the other we anxiously tie a string to its leg to make sure it does not get beyond our sight4 ,but now you will bring up your final doubt4 ,does not the admission of such an unguaranteed chance or freedom preclude utterly the notion of a ,providence governing the world8 ,does it not leave the fate of the universe at the mercy of the chance-possibilities1 and so far insecure8 ,does it not1 in short1 deny the craving of our nature for an ultimate peace behind all tempests1 for a blue zenith above all clouds8 ,to this my answer must be very brief4 ,the belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in ,providence1 provided you do not restrict the ,providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees4 ,if you allow him to provide possibilities as well as actualities to the universe1 and to carry on his own thinking in those two categories just as we do ours1 chances may be there1 uncontrolled even by him1 and the course of the universe be really ambiguous2 #aha and yet the end of all things may be just what he intended it to be from all eternity4 ,an analogy will make the meaning of this clear4 ,suppose two men before a chessboard1--the one a novice1 the other an expert player of the game4 ,the expert intends to beat4 ,but he cannot foresee exactly what any one actual move of his adversary may be4 ,he knows1 however1 all the possible moves of the latter2 and he knows in advance how to meet each of them by a move of his own which leads in the direction of victory4 ,and the victory infallibly arrives1 after no matter how devious a course1 in the one predestined form of check-mate to the novice's king4 ,let now the novice stand for us finite free agents1 and the expert for the infinite mind in which the universe lies4 ,suppose the latter to be thinking out his universe before he actually creates it4 ,suppose him to say1 ,i will lead things to a certain end1 but ,i will not now#aj decide on all the steps thereto4 ,at various points1 ambiguous possibilities shall be left #ahb open1 either of which1 at a given instant1 may become actual4 ,but whichever branch of these bifurcations become real1 ,i know what ,i shall do at the next bifurcation to keep things from drifting away from the final result ,i intend4#aa ,the creator's plan of the universe would thus be left blank as to many of its actual details1 but all possibilities would be marked down4 ,the realization of some of these would be left absolutely to chance2 that is1 would only be determined when the moment of realization came4 ,other possibilities would be contingently determined2 that is1 their decision would have to wait till it was seen how the matters of absolute chance fell out4 ,but the rest of the plan1 including its final upshot1 would be rigorously determined once for all4 ,so the creator himself would not need to know all the details of actuality until they came2 and at any time his own view of the world would be a view partly of facts and partly of possibilities1 exactly as ours is now4 ,of one thing1 however1 he might be certain2 and that is that his world was safe1 and that no matter how much it might zig-zag he could surely bring it home at last4 #ahc ,now1 it is entirely immaterial1 in this scheme1 whether the creator leave the absolute chance-possibilities to be decided by himself1 each when its proper moment arrives1 or whether1 on the contrary1 he alienate this power from himself1 and leave the decision out and out to finite creatures such as we men are4 ,the great point is that the possibilities are really here4 ,whether it be we who solve them1 or he working through us1 at those soul-trying moments when fate's scales seem to quiver1 and good snatches the victory from evil or shrinks nerveless from the fight1 is of small account1 so long as we admit that the issue is decided nowhere else than here and now4 ,that is what gives the palpitating reality to our moral life and makes it tingle1 as ,mr4 ,mallock says1 with so strange and elaborate an excitement4 ,this reality1 this excitement1 are what the determinisms1 hard and soft alike1 suppress by their denial that anything is decided here and now1 and their dogma that all things were foredoomed and settled long ago4 ,if it be so1 may you and ,i then have been foredoomed to the error of continuing to believe in liberty4#ab ,it is fortunate for the winding up of controversy that in every discussion with determinism this argumentum ad hominem can be its adversary's last word4 #a ,an ,address to the ,harvard ,divinity ,students1 published in the ,unitarian ,review for ,september1 #ahhd4 #b ,and ,i may now say ,charles ,s4 ,peirce1--see the ,monist1 for #ahib-ic4 #c ,the whole history of popular beliefs about ,nature refutes the notion that the thought of a universal physical order can possibly have arisen from the purely passive reception and association of particular perceptions4 ,indubitable as it is that men infer from known cases to unknown1 it is equally certain that this procedure1 if restricted to the phenomenal materials that spontaneously offer themselves1 would never have led to the belief in a general uniformity1 but only to the belief that law and lawlessness rule the world in motley alternation4 ,from the point of view of strict experience1 nothing exists but the sum of particular perceptions1 with their coincidences on the one hand1 their contradictions on the other4 ,that there is more order in the world than appears at first sight is not discovered2 till the order is looked for4 ,the first impulse to look for it proceeds from practical needs3 where ends must be attained1 or produce a result4 ,but the practical need is only the first occasion for our reflection on the conditions of true knowledge2 and even were there no such need1 motives would still be present for carrying us beyond the stage of mere association4 ,for not with an equal interest1 or rather with an equal lack of interest1 does man contemplate those natural processes in which a thing is linked with its former mate1 and those in which it is linked to something else4 ,the former processes harmonize with the conditions of his own thinking3 the latter do not4 ,in the former1 his concepts1 general judgments1 and inferences apply to reality3 in the latter1 they have no such application4 ,and thus the intellectual satisfaction which at first comes to him without reflection1 at last excites in him the conscious wish to find realized throughout the entire phenomenal world those rational continuities1 uniformities1 and necessities which are the fundamental element and guiding principle of his own thought4 7,sigwart1 ,logik1 bd4 #c1 s4 #chb47 #d ,speaking technically1 it is a word with a positive denotation1 but a connotation that is negative4 ,other things must be silent about what it is3 it alone can decide that point at the moment in which it reveals itself4 #e ,a favorite argument against free-will is that if it be true1 a man's murderer may as probably be his best friend as his worst enemy1 a mother be as likely to strangle as to suckle her first-born1 and all of us be as ready to jump from fourth-story windows as to go out of front doors1 etc4 ,users of this argument should properly be excluded from debate till they learn what the real question is4 ',free-will' does not say that everything that is physically conceivable is also morally possible4 ,it merely says that of alternatives that really tempt our will more than one is really possible4 ,of course1 the alternatives that do thus tempt our will are vastly fewer than the physical possibilities we can coldly fancy4 ,persons really tempted often do murder their best friends1 mothers do strangle their first-born1 people do jump out of fourth-story windows1 etc4 #f ,to a reader who says he is satisfied with a pessimism1 and has no objection to thinking the whole bad1 ,i have no more to say3 he makes fewer demands on the world than ,i1 who1 making them1 wish to look a little further before ,i give up all hope of having them satisfied4 ,if1 however1 all he means is that the badness of some parts does not prevent his acceptance of a universe whose other parts give him satisfaction1 ,i welcome him as an ally4 ,he has abandoned the notion of the ,whole1 which is the essence of deterministic monism1 and views things as a pluralism1 just as ,i do in this paper4 #g ,compare ,sir ,james ,stephen's ,essays by a ,barrister1 ,london1 #ahfb1 pp4 #ach1 #cah4 #h ,cet univers est un spectacle que ,dieu se donne lui-mme4 ,servons les intentions du grand chorge en contribuant rendre le spectacle aussi brillant1 aussi vari que possible4--,,renan4 #i ,the burden1 for example1 of seeing to it that the end of all our righteousness be some positive universal gain4 #aj ,this of course leaves the creative mind subject to the law of time4 ,and to any one who insists on the timelessness of that mind ,i have no reply to make4 ,a mind to whom all time is simultaneously present must see all things under the form of actuality1 or under some form to us unknown4 ,if he thinks certain moments as ambiguous in their content while future1 he must simultaneously know how the ambiguity will have been decided when they are past4 ,so that none of his mental judgments can possibly be called hypothetical1 and his world is one from which chance is excluded4 ,is not1 however1 the timeless mind rather a gratuitous fiction8 ,and is not the notion of eternity being given at a stroke to omniscience only just another way of whacking upon us the block-universe1 and of denying that possibilities exist8--just the point to be proved4 ,to say that time is an illusory appearance is only a roundabout manner of saying there is no real plurality1 and that the frame of things is an absolute unit4 ,admit plurality1 and time may be its form4 #aa ,and this of course means 'miraculous' interposition1 but not necessarily of the gross sort our fathers took such delight in representing1 and which has so lost its magic for us4 ,emerson quotes some ,eastern sage as saying that if evil were really done under the sun1 the sky would incontinently shrivel to a snakeskin and cast it out in spasms4 ,but1 says ,emerson1 the spasms of ,nature are years and centuries2 and it will tax man's patience to wait so long4 ,we may think of the reserved possibilities ,god keeps in his own hand1 under as invisible and molecular and slowly self-summating a form as we please4 ,we may think of them as counteracting human agencies which he inspires ad hoc4 ,in short1 signs and wonders and convulsions of the earth and sky are not the only neutralizers of obstruction to a god's plans of which it is possible to think4 #ab ,as long as languages contain a future perfect tense1 determinists1 following the bent of laziness or passion1 the lines of least resistance1 can reply in that tense1 saying1 ,it will have been fated1 to the still small voice which urges an opposite course2 and thus excuse themselves from effort in a quite unanswerable way4 #ahd ,,the ,,moral ,,philosopher ,,and ,,the ,,moral ,,life4#a ,the main purpose of this paper is to show that there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance4 ,we all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race's moral life4 ,in other words1 there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics1 until the last man has had his experience and said his say4 ,in the one case as in the other1 however1 the hypotheses which we now make while waiting1 and the acts to which they prompt us1 are among the indispensable conditions which determine what that 'say' shall be4 ,first of all1 what is the position of him who seeks an ethical philosophy8 ,to begin with1 he must be distinguished from all those who are satisfied to be ethical sceptics4 ,he will not be a sceptic2 therefore so far from ethical scepticism being one possible fruit of ethical philosophizing1 it can only be regarded as that residual alternative to all philosophy which from the outset menaces every would-be philosopher who may give up the quest discouraged1 and renounce his original aim4 ,that aim is to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things1 which #ahe will weave them into the unity of a stable system1 and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view4 ,so far as the world resists reduction to the form of unity1 so far as ethical propositions seem unstable1 so far does the philosopher fail of his ideal4 ,the subject-matter of his study is the ideals he finds existing in the world2 the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own1 of getting them into a certain form4 ,this ideal is thus a factor in ethical philosophy whose legitimate presence must never be overlooked2 it is a positive contribution which the philosopher himself necessarily makes to the problem4 ,but it is his only positive contribution4 ,at the outset of his inquiry he ought to have no other ideals4 ,were he interested peculiarly in the triumph of any one kind of good1 he would pro tanto cease to be a judicial investigator1 and become an advocate for some limited element of the case4 ,there are three questions in ethics which must be kept apart4 ,let them be called respectively the psychological question1 the metaphysical question1 and the casuistic question4 ,the psychological question asks after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments2 the metaphysical question asks what the very meaning of the words 'good1' 'ill1' and 'obligation' are2 the casuistic question asks what is the measure of the various goods and ills which men recognize1 so that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations4 ,i4 ,the psychological question is for most disputants the only question4 ,when your ordinary doctor of #ahf divinity has proved to his own satisfaction that an altogether unique faculty called 'conscience' must be postulated to tell us what is right and what is wrong2 or when your popular-science enthusiast has proclaimed that 'apriorism' is an exploded superstition1 and that our moral judgments have gradually resulted from the teaching of the environment1 each of these persons thinks that ethics is settled and nothing more is to be said4 ,the familiar pair of names1 ,intuitionist and ,evolutionist1 so commonly used now to connote all possible differences in ethical opinion1 really refer to the psychological question alone4 ,the discussion of this question hinges so much upon particular details that it is impossible to enter upon it at all within the limits of this paper4 ,i will therefore only express dogmatically my own belief1 which is this1--that the ,benthams1 the ,mills1 and the ,barns have done a lasting service in taking so many of our human ideals and showing how they must have arisen from the association with acts of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs from pain4 ,association with many remote pleasures will unquestionably make a thing significant of goodness in our minds2 and the more vaguely the goodness is conceived of1 the more mysterious will its source appear to be4 ,but it is surely impossible to explain all our sentiments and preferences in this simple way4 ,the more minutely psychology studies human nature1 the more clearly it finds there traces of secondary affections1 relating the impressions of the environment with one another and with our impulses in quite different ways from those mere associations of coexistence and succession which are practically all that pure empiricism can admit4 ,take the love of drunkenness2 take bashfulness1 the terror #ahg of high places1 the tendency to sea-sickness1 to faint at the sight of blood1 the susceptibility to musical sounds2 take the emotion of the comical1 the passion for poetry1 for mathematics1 or for metaphysics1--no one of these things can be wholly explained by either association or utility4 ,they go with other things that can be so explained1 no doubt2 and some of them are prophetic of future utilities1 since there is nothing in us for which some use may not be found4 ,but their origin is in incidental complications to our cerebral structure1 a structure whose original features arose with no reference to the perception of such discords and harmonies as these4 ,well1 a vast number of our moral perceptions also are certainly of this secondary and brain-born kind4 ,they deal with directly felt fitnesses between things1 and often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of utility4 ,the moment you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace moral maxims1 the ,decalogues and ,poor ,richard's ,almanacs1 you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common-sense are fantastic and overstrained4 ,the sense for abstract justice which some persons have is as excentric a variation1 from the natural-history point of view1 as is the passion for music or for the higher philosophical consistencies which consumes the soul of others4 ,the feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes1 as peace1 serenity1 simplicity1 veracity2 and of the essential vulgarity of others1 as querulousness1 anxiety1 egoistic fussiness1 etc41--are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure sake4 ,the nobler thing tastes better1 and that is all that we can say4 #ahh ',experience' of consequences may truly teach us what things are wicked1 but what have consequences to do with what is mean and vulgar8 ,if a man has shot his wife's paramour1 by reason of what subtile repugnancy in things is it that we are so disgusted when we hear that the wife and the husband have made it up and are living comfortably together again8 ,or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which ,messrs4 ,fourier's and ,bellamy's and ,morris's ,utopias should all be outdone1 and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture1 what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel1 even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered1 how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain8 ,to what1 once more1 but subtile brain-born feelings of discord can be due all these recent protests against the entire race-tradition of retributive justice8--,i refer to ,tolstoi with his ideas of non-resistance1 to ,mr4 ,bellamy with his substitution of oblivion for repentance 7in his novel of ,dr4 ,heidenhain's ,process71 to ,m4 ,guyau with his radical condemnation of the punitive ideal4 ,all these subtileties of the moral sensibility go as much beyond what can be ciphered out from the 'laws of association' as the delicacies of sentiment possible between a pair of young lovers go beyond such precepts of the 'etiquette to be observed during engagement' as are printed in manuals of social form4 ,no6 ,purely inward forces are certainly at work here4 ,all the higher1 more penetrating ideals are #ahi revolutionary4 ,they present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience1 factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught as must learn to bend4 ,this is all ,i can say of the psychological question now4 ,in the last chapter of a recent work#b ,i have sought to prove in a general way the existence1 in our thought1 of relations which do not merely repeat the couplings of experience4 ,our ideals have certainly many sources4 ,they are not all explicable as signifying corporeal pleasures to be gained1 and pains to be escaped4 ,and for having so constantly perceived this psychological fact1 we must applaud the intuitionist school4 ,whether or not such applause must be extended to that school's other characteristics will appear as we take up the following questions4 ,the next one in order is the metaphysical question1 of what we mean by the words 'obligation1' 'good1' and 'ill4' ,,ii4 ,first of all1 it appears that such words can have no application or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists4 ,imagine an absolutely material world1 containing only physical and chemical facts1 and existing from eternity without a ,god1 without even an interested spectator3 would there be any sense in saying of that world that one of its states is better than another8 ,or if there were two such worlds possible1 would there be any rhyme or reason in calling one good and the other bad1--good or #aij bad positively1 ,i mean1 and apart from the fact that one might relate itself better than the other to the philosopher's private interests8 ,but we must leave these private interests out of the account1 for the philosopher is a mental fact1 and we are asking whether goods and evils and obligations exist in physical facts per se4 ,surely there is no status for good and evil to exist in1 in a purely insentient world4 ,how can one physical fact1 considered simply as a physical fact1 be 'better' than another8 ,betterness is not a physical relation4 ,in its mere material capacity1 a thing can no more be good or bad than it can be pleasant or painful4 ,good for what8 ,good for the production of another physical fact1 do you say8 ,but what in a purely physical universe demands the production of that other fact8 ,physical facts simply are or are not2 and neither when present or absent1 can they be supposed to make demands4 ,if they do1 they can only do so by having desires2 and then they have ceased to be purely physical facts1 and have become facts of conscious sensibility4 ,goodness1 badness1 and obligation must be realised somewhere in order really to exist2 and the first step in ethical philosophy is to see that no merely inorganic 'nature of things' can realize them4 ,neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo4 ,their only habitat can be a mind which feels them2 and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply4 ,the moment one sentient being1 however1 is made a part of the universe1 there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist4 ,moral relations now have their status1 in that being's consciousness4 ,so far as he feels anything to be good1 he makes it good4 ,it #aia is good1 for him2 and being good for him1 is absolutely good1 for he is the sole creator of values in that universe1 and outside of his opinion things have no moral character at all4 ,in such a universe as that it would of course be absurd to raise the question of whether the solitary thinker's judgments of good and ill are true or not4 ,truth supposes a standard outside of the thinker to which he must conform2 but here the thinker is a sort of divinity1 subject to no higher judge4 ,let us call the supposed universe which he inhabits a moral solitude4 ,in such a moral solitude it is clear that there can be no outward obligation1 and that the only trouble the god-like thinker is liable to have will be over the consistency of his own several ideals with one another4 ,some of these will no doubt be more pungent and appealing than the rest1 their goodness will have a profounder1 more penetrating taste2 they will return to haunt him with more obstinate regrets if violated4 ,so the thinker will have to order his life with them as its chief determinants1 or else remain inwardly discordant and unhappy4 ,into whatever equilibrium he may settle1 though1 and however he may straighten out his system1 it will be a right system2 for beyond the facts of his own subjectivity there is nothing moral in the world4 ,if now we introduce a second thinker with his likes and dislikes into the universe1 the ethical situation becomes much more complex1 and several possibilities are immediately seen to obtain4 ,one of these is that the thinkers may ignore each other's attitude about good and evil altogether1 and each continue to indulge his own preferences1 indifferent to what the other may feel or do4 ,in such a #aib case we have a world with twice as much of the ethical quality in it as our moral solitude1 only it is without ethical unity4 ,the same object is good or bad there1 according as you measure it by the view which this one or that one of the thinkers takes4 ,nor can you find any possible ground in such a world for saying that one thinker's opinion is more correct than the other's1 or that either has the truer moral sense4 ,such a world1 in short1 is not a moral universe but a moral dualism4 ,not only is there no single point of view within it from which the values of things can be unequivocally judged1 but there is not even a demand for such a point of view1 since the two thinkers are supposed to be indifferent to each other's thoughts and acts4 ,multiply the thinkers into a pluralism1 and we find realized for us in the ethical sphere something like that world which the antique sceptics conceived of1--in which individual minds are the measures of all things1 and in which no one 'objective' truth1 but only a multitude of 'subjective' opinions1 can be found4 ,but this is the kind of world with which the philosopher1 so long as he holds to the hope of a philosophy1 will not put up4 ,among the various ideals represented1 there must be1 he thinks1 some which have the more truth or authority2 and to these the others ought to yield1 so that system and subordination may reign4 ,here in the word 'ought' the notion of obligation comes emphatically into view1 and the next thing in order must be to make its meaning clear4 ,since the outcome of the discussion so far has been to show us that nothing can be good or right except #aic so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right1 we perceive on the very threshold that the real superiority and authority which are postulated by the philosopher to reside in some of the opinions1 and the really inferior character which he supposes must belong to others1 cannot be explained by any abstract moral 'nature of things' existing antecedently to the concrete thinkers themselves with their ideals4 ,like the positive attributes good and bad1 the comparative ones better and worse must be realised in order to be real4 ,if one ideal judgment be objectively better than another1 that betterness must be made flesh by being lodged concretely in some one's actual perception4 ,it cannot float in the atmosphere1 for it is not a sort of meteorological phenomenon1 like the aurora borealis or the zodiacal light4 ,its esse is percipi1 like the esse of the ideals themselves between which it obtains4 ,the philosopher1 therefore1 who seeks to know which ideal ought to have supreme weight and which one ought to be subordinated1 must trace the ought itself to the de facto constitution of some existing consciousness1 behind which1 as one of the data of the universe1 he as a purely ethical philosopher is unable to go4 ,this consciousness must make the one ideal right by feeling it to be right1 the other wrong by feeling it to be wrong4 ,but now what particular consciousness in the universe can enjoy this prerogative of obliging others to conform to a rule which it lays down8 ,if one of the thinkers were obviously divine1 while all the rest were human1 there would probably be no practical dispute about the matter4 ,the divine thought would be the model1 to which the others should conform4 ,but still the theoretic question #aid would remain1 ,what is the ground of the obligation1 even here8 ,in our first essays at answering this question1 there is an inevitable tendency to slip into an assumption which ordinary men follow when they are disputing with one another about questions of good and bad4 ,they imagine an abstract moral order in which the objective truth resides2 and each tries to prove that this pre-existing order is more accurately reflected in his own ideas than in those of his adversary4 ,it is because one disputant is backed by this overarching abstract order that we think the other should submit4 ,even so1 when it is a question no longer of two finite thinkers1 but of ,god and ourselves1--we follow our usual habit1 and imagine a sort of de jure relation1 which antedates and overarches the mere facts1 and would make it right that we should conform our thoughts to ,god's thoughts1 even though he made no claim to that effect1 and though we preferred de facto to go on thinking for ourselves4 ,but the moment we take a steady look at the question1 we see not only that without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no obligation1 but that there is some obligation wherever there is a claim4 ,claim and obligation are1 in fact1 coextensive terms2 they cover each other exactly4 ,our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations1 true 'in themselves1' is therefore either an out-and-out superstition1 or else it must be treated as a merely provisional abstraction from that real ,thinker in whose actual demand upon us to think as he does our obligation must be ultimately based4 ,in a theistic-ethical philosophy that thinker in question is1 of #aie course1 the ,deity to whom the existence of the universe is due4 ,i know well how hard it is for those who are accustomed to what ,i have called the superstitious view1 to realize that every de facto claim creates in so far forth an obligation4 ,we inveterately think that something which we call the 'validity' of the claim is what gives to it its obligatory character1 and that this validity is something outside of the claim's mere existence as a matter of fact4 ,it rains down upon the claim1 we think1 from some sublime dimension of being1 which the moral law inhabits1 much as upon the steel of the compass-needle the influence of the ,pole rains down from out of the starry heavens4 ,but again1 how can such an inorganic abstract character of imperativeness1 additional to the imperativeness which is in the concrete claim itself1 exist8 ,take any demand1 however slight1 which any creature1 however weak1 may make4 ,ought it not1 for its own sole sake1 to be satisfied8 ,if not1 prove why not4 ,the only possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that ran the other way4 ,the only possible reason there can be why any phenomenon ought to exist is that such a phenomenon actually is desired4 ,any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount2 it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all4 ,some desires1 truly enough1 are small desires2 they are put forward by insignificant persons1 and we customarily make light of the obligations which they bring4 ,but the fact that such personal demands as these impose small obligations does not keep the largest obligations from being personal demands4 ,if we must talk impersonally1 to be sure we can say #aif that 'the universe' requires1 exacts1 or makes obligatory such or such an action1 whenever it expresses itself through the desires of such or such a creature4 ,but it is better not to talk about the universe in this personified way1 unless we believe in a universal or divine consciousness which actually exists4 ,if there be such a consciousness1 then its demands carry the most of obligation simply because they are the greatest in amount4 ,but it is even then not abstractly right that we should respect them4 ,it is only concretely right1--or right after the fact1 and by virtue of the fact1 that they are actually made4 ,suppose we do not respect them1 as seems largely to be the case in this queer world4 ,that ought not to be1 we say2 that is wrong4 ,but in what way is this fact of wrongness made more acceptable or intelligible when we imagine it to consist rather in the laceration of an priori ideal order than in the disappointment of a living personal ,god8 ,do we1 perhaps1 think that we cover ,god and protect him and make his impotence over us less ultimate1 when we back him up with this priori blanket from which he may draw some warmth of further appeal8 ,but the only force of appeal to us1 which either a living ,god or an abstract ideal order can wield1 is found in the 'everlasting ruby vaults' of our own human hearts1 as they happen to beat responsive and not irresponsive to the claim4 ,so far as they do feel it when made by a living consciousness1 it is life answering to life4 ,a claim thus livingly acknowledged is acknowledged with a solidity and fulness which no thought of an 'ideal' backing can render more complete2 while if1 on the other hand1 the heart's response is withheld1 the stubborn phenomenon is there of an impotence in the claims #aig which the universe embodies1 which no talk about an eternal nature of things can gloze over or dispel4 ,an ineffective priori order is as impotent a thing as an ineffective ,god2 and in the eye of philosophy1 it is as hard a thing to explain4 ,we may now consider that what we distinguished as the metaphysical question in ethical philosophy is sufficiently answered1 and that we have learned what the words 'good1' 'bad1' and 'obligation' severally mean4 ,they mean no absolute natures1 independent of personal support4 ,they are objects of feeling and desire1 which have no foothold or anchorage in ,being1 apart from the existence of actually living minds4 ,wherever such minds exist1 with judgments of good and ill1 and demands upon one another1 there is an ethical world in its essential features4 ,were all other things1 gods and men and starry heavens1 blotted out from this universe1 and were there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it1 that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor4 ,it would be a tragic constitution1 because the rock's inhabitants would die4 ,but while they lived1 there would be real good things and real bad things in the universe2 there would be obligations1 claims1 and expectations2 obediences1 refusals1 and disappointments2 compunctions and longings for harmony to come again1 and inward peace of conscience when it was restored2 there would1 in short1 be a moral life1 whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed4 #aih ,we1 on this terrestrial globe1 so far as the visible facts go1 are just like the inhabitants of such a rock4 ,whether a ,god exist1 or whether no ,god exist1 in yon blue heaven above us bent1 we form at any rate an ethical republic here below4 ,and the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human1 as in a universe where there is a ,god as well4 ',the religion of humanity' affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does4 ,whether the purely human system can gratify the philosopher's demand as well as the other is a different question1 which we ourselves must answer ere we close4 ,,iii4 ,the last fundamental question in ,ethics was1 it will be remembered1 the casuistic question4 ,here we are1 in a world where the existence of a divine thinker has been and perhaps always will be doubted by some of the lookers-on1 and where1 in spite of the presence of a large number of ideals in which human beings agree1 there are a mass of others about which no general consensus obtains4 ,it is hardly necessary to present a literary picture of this1 for the facts are too well known4 ,the wars of the flesh and the spirit in each man1 the concupiscences of different individuals pursuing the same unshareable material or social prizes1 the ideals which contrast so according to races1 circumstances1 temperaments1 philosophical beliefs1 etc41--all form a maze of apparently inextricable confusion with no obvious ,ariadne's thread to lead one out4 ,yet the philosopher1 just because he is a philosopher1 adds his own peculiar ideal to the confusion #aii 7with which if he were willing to be a sceptic he would be passably content71 and insists that over all these individual opinions there is a system of truth which he can discover if he only takes sufficient pains4 ,we stand ourselves at present in the place of that philosopher1 and must not fail to realize all the features that the situation comports4 ,in the first place we will not be sceptics2 we hold to it that there is a truth to be ascertained4 ,but in the second place we have just gained the insight that that truth cannot be a self-proclaiming set of laws1 or an abstract 'moral reason1' but can only exist in act1 or in the shape of an opinion held by some thinker really to be found4 ,there is1 however1 no visible thinker invested with authority4 ,shall we then simply proclaim our own ideals as the lawgiving ones8 ,no2 for if we are true philosophers we must throw our own spontaneous ideals1 even the dearest1 impartially in with that total mass of ideals which are fairly to be judged4 ,but how then can we as philosophers ever find a test2 how avoid complete moral scepticism on the one hand1 and on the other escape bringing a wayward personal standard of our own along with us1 on which we simply pin our faith8 ,the dilemma is a hard one1 nor does it grow a bit more easy as we revolve it in our minds4 ,the entire undertaking of the philosopher obliges him to seek an impartial test4 ,that test1 however1 must be incarnated in the demand of some actually existent person2 and how can he pick out the person save by an act in which his own sympathies and prepossessions are implied8 ,one method indeed presents itself1 and has as a matter of history been taken by the more serious #bjj ethical schools4 ,if the heap of things demanded proved on inspection less chaotic than at first they seemed1 if they furnished their own relative test and measure1 then the casuistic problem would be solved4 ,if it were found that all goods qu goods contained a common essence1 then the amount of this essence involved in any one good would show its rank in the scale of goodness1 and order could be quickly made2 for this essence would be the good upon which all thinkers were agreed1 the relatively objective and universal good that the philosopher seeks4 ,even his own private ideals would be measured by their share of it1 and find their rightful place among the rest4 ,various essences of good have thus been found and proposed as bases of the ethical system4 ,thus1 to be a mean between two extremes2 to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty2 to make the agent happy for the moment2 to make others as well as him happy in the long run2 to add to his perfection or dignity2 to harm no one2 to follow from reason or flow from universal law2 to be in accordance with the will of ,god2 to promote the survival of the human species on this planet1--are so many tests1 each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the essence of all good things or actions so far as they are good4 ,no one of the measures that have been actually proposed has1 however1 given general satisfaction4 ,some are obviously not universally present in all cases1--e4 g41 the character of harming no one1 or that of following a universal law2 for the best course is often cruel2 and many acts are reckoned good on the sole condition that they be exceptions1 and serve not as examples of a universal law4 ,other #bja characters1 such as following the will of ,god1 are unascertainable and vague4 ,others again1 like survival1 are quite indeterminate in their consequences1 and leave us in the lurch where we most need their help3 a philosopher of the ,sioux ,nation1 for example1 will be certain to use the survival-criterion in a very different way from ourselves4 ,the best1 on the whole1 of these marks and measures of goodness seems to be the capacity to bring happiness4 ,but in order not to break down fatally1 this test must be taken to cover innumerable acts and impulses that never aim at happiness2 so that1 after all1 in seeking for a universal principle we inevitably are carried onward to the most universal principle1--that the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand4 ,the demand may be for anything under the sun4 ,there is really no more ground for supposing that all our demands can be accounted for by one universal underlying kind of motive than there is ground for supposing that all physical phenomena are cases of a single law4 ,the elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as those of physics are4 ,the various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals4 ,no single abstract principle can be so used as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scientifically accurate and genuinely useful casuistic scale4 ,a look at another peculiarity of the ethical universe1 as we find it1 will still further show us the philosopher's perplexities4 ,as a purely theoretic problem1 namely1 the casuistic question would hardly ever come up at all4 ,if the ethical philosopher were only asking after the best imaginable system of goods he would indeed have an easy task2 for all demands as #bjb such are prim facie respectable1 and the best simply imaginary world would be one in which every demand was gratified as soon as made4 ,such a world would1 however1 have to have a physical constitution entirely different from that of the one which we inhabit4 ,it would need not only a space1 but a time1 'of n-dimensions1' to include all the acts and experiences incompatible with one another here below1 which would then go on in conjunction1--such as spending our money1 yet growing rich2 taking our holiday1 yet getting ahead with our work2 shooting and fishing1 yet doing no hurt to the beasts2 gaining no end of experience1 yet keeping our youthful freshness of heart2 and the like4 ,there can be no question that such a system of things1 however brought about1 would be the absolutely ideal system2 and that if a philosopher could create universes priori1 and provide all the mechanical conditions1 that is the sort of universe which he should unhesitatingly create4 ,but this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern1 and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical4 ,the actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded2 and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind4 ,there is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good4 ,every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire4 ,shall a man drink and smoke1 or keep his nerves in condition8--he cannot do both4 ,shall he follow his fancy for ,amelia1 or for ,henrietta8--both cannot be the choice of his heart4 ,shall he have the #bjc dear old ,republican party1 or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs8--he cannot have both1 etc4 ,so that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need4 ,some part of the ideal must be butchered1 and he needs to know which part4 ,it is a tragic situation1 and no mere speculative conundrum1 with which he has to deal4 ,now we are blinded to the real difficulty of the philosopher's task by the fact that we are born into a society whose ideals are largely ordered already4 ,if we follow the ideal which is conventionally highest1 the others which we butcher either die and do not return to haunt us2 or if they come back and accuse us of murder1 every one applauds us for turning to them a deaf ear4 ,in other words1 our environment encourages us not to be philosophers but partisans4 ,the philosopher1 however1 cannot1 so long as he clings to his own ideal of objectivity1 rule out any ideal from being heard4 ,he is confident1 and rightly confident1 that the simple taking counsel of his own intuitive preferences would be certain to end in a mutilation of the fulness of the truth4 ,the poet ,heine is said to have written ',bunsen' in the place of ',gott' in his copy of that author's work entitled ,god in ,history1 so as to make it read ',bunsen in der ,geschichte4' ,now1 with no disrespect to the good and learned ,baron1 is it not safe to say that any single philosopher1 however wide his sympathies1 must be just such a ,bunsen in der ,geschichte of the moral world1 so soon as he attempts to put his own ideas of order into that howling mob of desires1 each struggling to get breathing-room for the ideal to which it clings8 ,the very best of men must not only be insensible1 but #bjd be ludicrously and peculiarly insensible1 to many goods4 ,as a militant1 fighting free-handed that the goods to which he is sensible may not be submerged and lost from out of life1 the philosopher1 like every other human being1 is in a natural position4 ,but think of ,zeno and of ,epicurus1 think of ,calvin and of ,paley1 think of ,kant and ,schopenhauer1 of ,herbert ,spencer and ,john ,henry ,newman1 no longer as one-sided champions of special ideals1 but as schoolmasters deciding what all must think1--and what more grotesque topic could a satirist wish for on which to exercise his pen8 ,the fabled attempt of ,mrs4 ,partington to arrest the rising tide of the ,north ,atlantic with her broom was a reasonable spectacle compared with their effort to substitute the content of their clean-shaven systems for that exuberant mass of goods with which all human nature is in travail1 and groaning to bring to the light of day4 ,think1 furthermore1 of such individual moralists1 no longer as mere schoolmasters1 but as pontiffs armed with the temporal power1 and having authority in every concrete case of conflict to order which good shall be butchered and which shall be suffered to survive1--and the notion really turns one pale4 ,all one's slumbering revolutionary instincts waken at the thought of any single moralist wielding such powers of life and death4 ,better chaos forever than an order based on any closet-philosopher's rule1 even though he were the most enlightened possible member of his tribe4 ,no6 if the philosopher is to keep his judicial position1 he must never become one of the parties to the fray4 ,what can he do1 then1 it will now be asked1 except to fall back on scepticism and give up the notion of being a philosopher at all8 #bje ,but do we not already see a perfectly definite path of escape which is open to him just because he is a philosopher1 and not the champion of one particular ideal8 ,since everything which is demanded is by that fact a good1 must not the guiding principle for ethical philosophy 7since all demands conjointly cannot be satisfied in this poor world7 be simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can8 ,that act must be the best act1 accordingly1 which makes for the best whole1 in the sense of awakening the least sum of dissatisfactions4 ,in the casuistic scale1 therefore1 those ideals must be written highest which prevail at the least cost1 or by whose realization the least possible number of other ideals are destroyed4 ,since victory and defeat there must be1 the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the more inclusive side1--of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideals in which the vanquished party's interests lay4 ,the course of history is nothing but the story of men's struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive order4 ,invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands1--that and that only is the path of peace6 ,following this path1 society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science4 ,polyandry and polygamy and slavery1 private warfare and liberty to kill1 judicial torture and arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to actually aroused complaints2 and though some one's ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement1 yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the older #bjf savage ways4 ,so far then1 and up to date1 the casuistic scale is made for the philosopher already far better than he can ever make it for himself4 ,an experiment of the most searching kind has proved that the laws and usages of the land are what yield the maximum of satisfaction to the thinkers taken all together4 ,the presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good4 ,the philosopher must be a conservative1 and in the construction of his casuistic scale must put the things most in accordance with the customs of the community on top4 ,and yet if he be a true philosopher he must see that there is nothing final in any actually given equilibrium of human ideals1 but that1 as our present laws and customs have fought and conquered other past ones1 so they will in their turn be overthrown by any newly discovered order which will hush up the complaints that they still give rise to1 without producing others louder still4 ,rules are made for man1 not man for rules1--that one sentence is enough to immortalize ,green's ,prolegomena to ,ethics4 ,and although a man always risks much when he breaks away from established rules and strives to realize a larger ideal whole than they permit1 yet the philosopher must allow that it is at all times open to any one to make the experiment1 provided he fear not to stake his life and character upon the throw4 ,the pinch is always here4 ,pent in under every system of moral rules are innumerable persons whom it weighs upon1 and goods which it represses2 and these are always rumbling and grumbling in the background1 and ready for any issue by which they may get free4 ,see the abuses which the #bjg institution of private property covers1 so that even to-day it is shamelessly asserted among us that one of the prime functions of the national government is to help the adroiter citizens to grow rich4 ,see the unnamed and unnamable sorrows which the tyranny1 on the whole so beneficent1 of the marriage-institution brings to so many1 both of the married and the unwed4 ,see the wholesale loss of opportunity under our rgime of so-called equality and industrialism1 with the drummer and the counter-jumper in the saddle1 for so many faculties and graces which could flourish in the feudal world4 ,see our kindliness for the humble and the outcast1 how it wars with that stern weeding-out which until now has been the condition of every perfection in the breed4 ,see everywhere the struggle and the squeeze2 and ever-lastingly the problem how to make them less4 ,the anarchists1 nihilists1 and free-lovers2 the free-silverites1 socialists1 and single-tax men2 the free-traders and civil-service reformers2 the prohibitionists and anti-vivisectionists2 the radical darwinians with their idea of the suppression of the weak1--these and all the conservative sentiments of society arrayed against them1 are simply deciding through actual experiment by what sort of conduct the maximum amount of good can be gained and kept in this world4 ,these experiments are to be judged1 not priori1 but by actually finding1 after the fact of their making1 how much more outcry or how much appeasement comes about4 ,what closet-solutions can possibly anticipate the result of trials made on such a scale8 ,or what can any superficial theorist's judgment be worth1 in a world where every one of hundreds of ideals has its special champion already provided #bjh in the shape of some genius expressly born to feel it1 and to fight to death in its behalf8 ,the pure philosopher can only follow the windings of the spectacle1 confident that the line of least resistance will always be towards the richer and the more inclusive arrangement1 and that by one tack after another some approach to the kingdom of heaven is incessantly made4 ,,iv4 ,all this amounts to saying that1 so far as the casuistic question goes1 ethical science is just like physical science1 and instead of being deducible all at once from abstract principles1 must simply bide its time1 and be ready to revise its conclusions from day to day4 ,the presumption of course1 in both sciences1 always is that the vulgarly accepted opinions are true1 and the right casuistic order that which public opinion believes in2 and surely it would be folly quite as great1 in most of us1 to strike out independently and to aim at originality in ethics as in physics4 ,every now and then1 however1 some one is born with the right to be original1 and his revolutionary thought or action may bear prosperous fruit4 ,he may replace old 'laws of nature' by better ones2 he may1 by breaking old moral rules in a certain place1 bring in a total condition of things more ideal than would have followed had the rules been kept4 ,on the whole1 then1 we must conclude that no philosophy of ethics is possible in the old-fashioned absolute sense of the term4 ,everywhere the ethical philosopher must wait on facts4 ,the thinkers who create the ideals come he knows not whence1 their sensibilities are evolved he knows not how2 and the #bji question as to which of two conflicting ideals will give the best universe then and there1 can be answered by him only through the aid of the experience of other men4 ,i said some time ago1 in treating of the 'first' question1 that the intuitional moralists deserve credit for keeping most clearly to the psychological facts4 ,they do much to spoil this merit on the whole1 however1 by mixing with it that dogmatic temper which1 by absolute distinctions and unconditional 'thou shalt nots1' changes a growing1 elastic1 and continuous life into a superstitious system of relics and dead bones4 ,in point of fact1 there are no absolute evils1 and there are no non-moral goods2 and the highest ethical life--however few may be called to bear its burdens--consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case4 ,there is but one unconditional commandment1 which is that we should seek incessantly1 with fear and trembling1 so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see4 ,abstract rules indeed can help2 but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing1 and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life4 ,for every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation2 and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent1 and for which no adequate previous rule exists4 ,the philosopher1 then1 qu philosopher1 is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men4 ,he sees1 indeed1 somewhat better than most men1 what the question always is1--not a question of this good or that good simply taken1 but of the two total #baj universes with which these goods respectively belong4 ,he knows that he must vote always for the richer universe1 for the good which seems most organizable1 most fit to enter into complex combinations1 most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole4 ,but which particular universe this is he cannot know for certain in advance2 he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact4 ,in all this the philosopher is just like the rest of us non-philosophers1 so far as we are just and sympathetic instinctively1 and so far as we are open to the voice of complaint4 ,his function is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day4 ,his books upon ethics1 therefore1 so far as they truly touch the moral life1 must more and more ally themselves with a literature which is confessedly tentative and suggestive rather than dogmatic1--,i mean with novels and dramas of the deeper sort1 with sermons1 with books on statecraft and philanthropy and social and economical reform4 ,treated in this way ethical treatises may be voluminous and luminous as well2 but they never can be final1 except in their abstractest and vaguest features2 and they must more and more abandon the old-fashioned1 clear-cut1 and would-be 'scientific' form4 ,v4 ,the chief of all the reasons why concrete ethics cannot be final is that they have to wait on metaphysical and theological beliefs4 ,i said some time back that real ethical relations existed in a purely human world4 ,they would exist even in what we called a moral solitude if the thinker had various #baa ideals which took hold of him in turn4 ,his self of one day would make demands on his self of another2 and some of the demands might be urgent and tyrannical1 while others were gentle and easily put aside4 ,we call the tyrannical demands imperatives4 ,if we ignore these we do not hear the last of it4 ,the good which we have wounded returns to plague us with interminable crops of consequential damages1 compunctions1 and regrets4 ,obligation can thus exist inside a single thinker's consciousness2 and perfect peace can abide with him only so far as he lives according to some sort of a casuistic scale which keeps his more imperative goods on top4 ,it is the nature of these goods to be cruel to their rivals4 ,nothing shall avail when weighed in the balance against them4 ,they call out all the mercilessness in our disposition1 and do not easily forgive us if we are so soft-hearted as to shrink from sacrifice in their behalf4 ,the deepest difference1 practically1 in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy-going and the strenuous mood4 ,when in the easy-going mood the shrinking from present ill is our ruling consideration4 ,the strenuous mood1 on the contrary1 makes us quite indifferent to present ill1 if only the greater ideal be attained4 ,the capacity for the strenuous mood probably lies slumbering in every man1 but it has more difficulty in some than in others in waking up4 ,it needs the wilder passions to arouse it1 the big fears1 loves1 and indignations2 or else the deeply penetrating appeal of some one of the higher fidelities1 like justice1 truth1 or freedom4 ,strong relief is a necessity of its vision2 and a world where all the mountains are brought down and all the valleys are #bab exalted is no congenial place for its habitation4 ,this is why in a solitary thinker this mood might slumber on forever without waking4 ,his various ideals1 known to him to be mere preferences of his own1 are too nearly of the same denominational value3 he can play fast or loose with them at will4 ,this too is why1 in a merely human world without a ,god1 the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power4 ,life1 to be sure1 is even in such a world a genuinely ethical symphony2 but it is played in the compass of a couple of poor octaves1 and the infinite scale of values fails to open up4 ,many of us1 indeed1--like ,sir ,james ,stephen in those eloquent ',essays by a ,barrister1'--would openly laugh at the very idea of the strenuous mood being awakened in us by those claims of remote posterity which constitute the last appeal of the religion of humanity4 ,we do not love these men of the future keenly enough2 and we love them perhaps the less the more we hear of their evolutionized perfection1 their high average longevity and education1 their freedom from war and crime1 their relative immunity from pain and zymotic disease1 and all their other negative superiorities4 ,this is all too finite1 we say2 we see too well the vacuum beyond4 ,it lacks the note of infinitude and mystery1 and may all be dealt with in the don't-care mood4 ,no need of agonizing ourselves or making others agonize for these good creatures just at present4 ,when1 however1 we believe that a ,god is there1 and that he is one of the claimants1 the infinite perspective opens out4 ,the scale of the symphony is incalculably prolonged4 ,the more imperative ideals now begin to speak with an altogether new objectivity and significance1 and to utter the penetrating1 shattering1 #bac tragically challenging note of appeal4 ,they ring out like the call of ,victor ,hugo's alpine eagle1 qui parle au prcipice et que le gouffre entend1 and the strenuous mood awakens at the sound4 ,it saith among the trumpets1 ha1 ha6 it smelleth the battle afar off1 the thunder of the captains and the shouting4 ,its blood is up2 and cruelty to the lesser claims1 so far from being a deterrent element1 does but add to the stern joy with which it leaps to answer to the greater4 ,all through history1 in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don't-care temper1 we see the antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods1 and the contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious obligation from on high1 and those of prudence and the satisfaction of merely finite need4 ,the capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a ,god1 men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard1 and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest4 ,our attitude towards concrete evils is entirely different in a world where we believe there are none but finite demanders1 from what it is in one where we joyously face tragedy for an infinite demander's sake4 ,every sort of energy and endurance1 of courage and capacity for handling life's evils1 is set free in those who have religious faith4 ,for this reason the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type1 and religion will drive irreligion to the wall4 ,it would seem1 too1--and this is my final conclusion1--that the stable and systematic moral universe #bad for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands4 ,if such a thinker existed1 his way of subordinating the demands to one another would be the finally valid casuistic scale2 his claims would be the most appealing2 his ideal universe would be the most inclusive realizable whole4 ,if he now exist1 then actualized in his thought already must be that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach4#c ,in the interests of our own ideal of systematically unified moral truth1 therefore1 we1 as would-be philosophers1 must postulate a divine thinker1 and pray for the victory of the religious cause4 ,meanwhile1 exactly what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence2 so that our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood4 ,but this is what it does in all men1 even those who have no interest in philosophy4 ,the ethical philosopher1 therefore1 whenever he ventures to say which course of action is the best1 is on no essentially different level from the common man4 ,see1 ,i have set before thee this day life and good1 and death and evil2 therefore1 choose life that thou and thy seed may live1--when this challenge comes to us1 it is simply our total character and personal genius that are on trial2 and if we invoke any so-called philosophy1 our choice and use of that also are but revelations of our personal aptitude or incapacity for moral life4 ,from this unsparing practical ordeal no professor's lectures and no array of books #bae can save us4 ,the solving word1 for the learned and the unlearned man alike1 lies in the last resort in the dumb willingnesses and unwillingnesses of their interior characters1 and nowhere else4 ,it is not in heaven1 neither is it beyond the sea2 but the word is very nigh unto thee1 in thy mouth and in thy heart1 that thou mayest do it4 #a ,an ,address to the ,yale ,philosophical ,club1 published in the ,international ,journal of ,ethics1 ,april1 #ahia4 #b ,the ,principles of ,psychology1 ,new ,york1 ,h4 ,holt ,co1 #ahij4 #c ,all this is set forth with great freshness and force in the work of my colleague1 ,professor ,josiah ,royce3 ,the ,religious ,aspect of ,philosophy4 ,boston1 #ahhe4 #baf ,,great ,,men ,,and ,,their ,,environment4#a ,a remarkable parallel1 which ,i think has never been noticed1 obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand1 and of zological evolution as expounded by ,mr4 ,darwin on the other4 ,it will be best to prepare the ground for my thesis by a few very general remarks on the method of getting at scientific truth4 ,it is a common platitude that a complete acquaintance with any one thing1 however small1 would require a knowledge of the entire universe4 ,not a sparrow falls to the ground but some of the remote conditions of his fall are to be found in the milky way1 in our federal constitution1 or in the early history of ,europe4 ,that is to say1 alter the milky way1 alter the federal constitution1 alter the facts of our barbarian ancestry1 and the universe would so far be a different universe from what it now is4 ,one fact involved in the difference might be that the particular little street-boy who threw the stone which brought down the sparrow might not find himself opposite the sparrow at that particular moment2 or1 finding himself there1 he might not be in that particular serene and disengaged mood of mind which expressed itself in throwing the stone4 ,but1 true as all this is1 it would be very foolish for any one who #bag was inquiring the cause of the sparrow's fall to overlook the boy as too personal1 proximate1 and so to speak anthropomorphic an agent1 and to say that the true cause is the federal constitution1 the westward migration of the ,celtic race1 or the structure of the milky way4 ,if we proceeded on that method1 we might say with perfect legitimacy that a friend of ours1 who had slipped on the ice upon his door-step and cracked his skull1 some months after dining with thirteen at the table1 died because of that ominous feast4 ,i know1 in fact1 one such instance2 and ,i might1 if ,i chose1 contend with perfect logical propriety that the slip on the ice was no real accident4 ,there are no accidents1 ,i might say1 for science4 ,the whole history of the world converged to produce that slip4 ,if anything had been left out1 the slip would not have occurred just there and then4 ,to say it would is to deny the relations of cause and effect throughout the universe4 ,the real cause of the death was not the slip1 but the conditions which engendered the slip1--and among them his having sat at a table1 six months previous1 one among thirteen4 ,that is truly the reason why he died within the year4 ,it will soon be seen whose arguments ,i am1 in form1 reproducing here4 ,i would fain lay down the truth without polemics or recrimination4 ,but unfortunately we never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be4 ,the error is needed to set off the truth1 much as a dark background is required for exhibiting the brightness of a picture4 ,and the error which ,i am going to use as a foil to set off what seems to me the truth of my own statements is contained in the philosophy of ,mr4 ,herbert ,spencer and #bah his disciples4 ,our problem is1 ,what are the causes that make communities change from generation to generation1--that make the ,england of ,queen ,anne so different from the ,england of ,elizabeth1 the ,harvard ,college of to-day so different from that of thirty years ago8 ,i shall reply to this problem1 ,the difference is due to the accumulated influences of individuals1 of their examples1 their initiatives1 and their decisions4 ,the ,spencerian school replies1 ,the changes are irrespective of persons1 and independent of individual control4 ,they are due to the environment1 to the circumstances1 the physical geography1 the ancestral conditions1 the increasing experience of outer relations2 to everything1 in fact1 except the ,grants and the ,bismarcks1 the ,joneses and the ,smiths4 ,now1 ,i say that these theorizers are guilty of precisely the same fallacy as he who should ascribe the death of his friend to the dinner with thirteen1 or the fall of the sparrow to the milky way4 ,like the dog in the fable1 who drops his real bone to snatch at its image1 they drop the real causes to snatch at others1 which from no possible human point of view are available or attainable4 ,their fallacy is a practical one4 ,let us see where it lies4 ,although ,i believe in free-will myself1 ,i will waive that belief in this discussion1 and assume with the ,spencerians the predestination of all human actions4 ,on that assumption ,i gladly allow that were the intelligence investigating the man's or the sparrow's death omniscient and omnipresent1 able to take in the whole of time and space at a single glance1 there would not be the slightest objection to the milky way or the fatal feast being #bai invoked among the sought-for causes4 ,such a divine intelligence would see instantaneously all the infinite lines of convergence towards a given result1 and it would1 moreover1 see impartially3 it would see the fatal feast to be as much a condition of the sparrow's death as of the man's2 it would see the boy with the stone to be as much a condition of the man's fall as of the sparrow's4 ,the human mind1 however1 is constituted on an entirely different plan4 ,it has no such power of universal intuition4 ,its finiteness obliges it to see but two or three things at a time4 ,if it wishes to take wider sweeps it has to use 'general ideas1' as they are called1 and in so doing to drop all concrete truths4 ,thus1 in the present case1 if we as men wish to feel the connection between the milky way and the boy and the dinner and the sparrow and the man's death1 we can do so only by falling back on the enormous emptiness of what is called an abstract proposition4 ,we must say1 ,all things in the world are fatally predetermined1 and hang together in the adamantine fixity of a system of natural law4 ,but in the vagueness of this vast proposition we have lost all the concrete facts and links2 and in all practical matters the concrete links are the only things of importance4 ,the human mind is essentially partial4 ,it can be efficient at all only by picking out what to attend to1 and ignoring everything else1--by narrowing its point of view4 ,otherwise1 what little strength it has is dispersed1 and it loses its way altogether4 ,man always wants his curiosity gratified for a particular purpose4 ,if1 in the case of the sparrow1 the purpose is punishment1 it would be idiotic to wander off from the cats1 boys1 and other possible agencies close by in the street1 to #bbj survey the early ,celts and the milky way3 the boy would meanwhile escape4 ,and if1 in the case of the unfortunate man1 we lose ourselves in contemplation of the thirteen-at-table mystery1 and fail to notice the ice on the step and cover it with ashes1 some other poor fellow1 who never dined out in his life1 may slip on it in coming to the door1 and fall and break his head too4 ,it is1 then1 a necessity laid upon us as human beings to limit our view4 ,in mathematics we know how this method of ignoring and neglecting quantities lying outside of a certain range has been adopted in the differential calculus4 ,the calculator throws out all the 'infinitesimals' of the quantities he is considering4 ,he treats them 7under certain rules7 as if they did not exist4 ,in themselves they exist perfectly all the while2 but they are as if they did not exist for the purposes of his calculation4 ,just so an astronomer1 in dealing with the tidal movements of the ocean1 takes no account of the waves made by the wind1 or by the pressure of all the steamers which day and night are moving their thousands of tons upon its surface4 ,just so the marksman1 in sighting his rifle1 allows for the motion of the wind1 but not for the equally real motion of the earth and solar system4 ,just so a business man's punctuality may overlook an error of five minutes1 while a physicist1 measuring the velocity of light1 must count each thousandth of a second4 ,there are1 in short1 different cycles of operation in nature2 different departments1 so to speak1 relatively independent of one another1 so that what goes on at any moment in one may be compatible with almost any condition of things at the same time in the next4 ,the mould on the biscuit in the store-room of a #bba man-of-war vegetates in absolute indifference to the nationality of the flag1 the direction of the voyage1 the weather1 and the human dramas that may go on on board2 and a mycologist may study it in complete abstraction from all these larger details4 ,only by so studying it1 in fact1 is there any chance of the mental concentration by which alone he may hope to learn something of its nature4 ,on the other hand1 the captain who in manoeuvring the vessel through a naval fight should think it necessary to bring the mouldy biscuit into his calculations would very likely lose the battle by reason of the excessive 'thoroughness' of his mind4 ,the causes which operate in these incommensurable cycles are connected with one another only if we take the whole universe into account4 ,for all lesser points of view it is lawful--nay1 more1 it is for human wisdom necessary--to regard them as disconnected and irrelevant to one another4 ,and this brings us nearer to our special topic4 ,if we look at an animal or a human being1 distinguished from the rest of his kind by the possession of some extraordinary peculiarity1 good or bad1 we shall be able to discriminate between the causes which originally produced the peculiarity in him and the causes that maintain it after it is produced2 and we shall see1 if the peculiarity be one that he was born with1 that these two sets of causes belong to two such irrelevant cycles4 ,it was the triumphant originality of ,darwin to see this1 and to act accordingly4 ,separating the causes of production under the title of 'tendencies to spontaneous variation1' and relegating them to a physiological cycle which he forthwith #bbb agreed to ignore altogether1#b he confined his attention to the causes of preservation1 and under the names of natural selection and sexual selection studied them exclusively as functions of the cycle of the environment4 ,pre-,darwinian philosophers had also tried to establish the doctrine of descent with modification2 but they all committed the blunder of clumping the two cycles of causation into one4 ,what preserves an animal with his peculiarity1 if it be a useful one1 they saw to be the nature of the environment to which the peculiarity was adjusted4 ,the giraffe with his peculiar neck is preserved by the fact that there are in his environment tall trees whose leaves he can digest4 ,but these philosophers went further1 and said that the presence of the trees not only maintained an animal with a long neck to browse upon their branches1 but also produced him4 ,they made his neck long by the constant striving they aroused in him to reach up to them4 ,the environment1 in short1 was supposed by these writers to mould the animal by a kind of direct pressure1 very much as a seal presses the wax into harmony with itself4 ,numerous instances were given of the way in which this goes on under our eyes4 ,the exercise of the forge makes the right arm strong1 the palm grows callous to the oar1 the mountain air distends the chest1 the chased fox grows cunning and the chased bird shy1 the arctic cold stimulates the animal combustion1 and so forth4 ,now these changes1 of which many more examples might be adduced1 are #bbc at present distinguished by the special name of adaptive changes4 ,their peculiarity is that that very feature in the environment to which the animal's nature grows adjusted1 itself produces the adjustment4 ,the 'inner relation1' to use ,mr4 ,spencer's phrase1 'corresponds' with its own efficient cause4 ,darwin's first achievement was to show the utter insignificance in amount of these changes produced by direct adaptation1 the immensely greater mass of changes being produced by internal molecular accidents1 of which we know nothing4 ,his next achievement was to define the true problem with which we have to deal when we study the effects of the visible environment on the animal4 ,that problem is simply this2 ,is the environment more likely to preserve or to destroy him1 on account of this or that peculiarity with which he may be born8 ,in giving the name of 'accidental variations' to those peculiarities with which an animal is born1 ,darwin does not for a moment mean to suggest that they are not the fixed outcome of natural law4 ,if the total system of the universe be taken into account1 the causes of these variations and the visible environment which preserves or destroys them1 undoubtedly do1 in some remote and roundabout way1 hang together4 ,what ,darwin means is1 that1 since that environment is a perfectly known thing1 and its relations to the organism in the way of destruction or preservation are tangible and distinct1 it would utterly confuse our finite understandings and frustrate our hopes of science to mix in with it facts from such a disparate and incommensurable cycle as that in which the variations are produced4 ,this last cycle is that of occurrences before the animal is born4 ,it is the cycle of influences upon ova and embryos2 #bbd in which lie the causes that tip them and tilt them towards masculinity or femininity1 towards strength or weakness1 towards health or disease1 and towards divergence from the parent type4 ,what are the causes there8 ,in the first place1 they are molecular and invisible1--inaccessible1 therefore1 to direct observation of any kind4 ,secondly1 their operations are compatible with any social1 political1 and physical conditions of environment4 ,the same parents1 living in the same environing conditions1 may at one birth produce a genius1 at the next an idiot or a monster4 ,the visible external conditions are therefore not direct determinants of this cycle2 and the more we consider the matter1 the more we are forced to believe that two children of the same parents are made to differ from each other by causes as disproportionate to their ultimate effects as is the famous pebble on the ,rocky ,mountain crest1 which separates two rain-drops1 to the ,gulf of ,st4 ,lawrence and the ,pacific ,ocean toward which it makes them severally flow4 ,the great mechanical distinction between transitive forces and discharging forces is nowhere illustrated on such a scale as in physiology4 ,almost all causes there are forces of detent1 which operate by simply unlocking energy already stored up4 ,they are upsetters of unstable equilibria1 and the resultant effect depends infinitely more on the nature of the materials upset than on that of the particular stimulus which joggles them down4 ,galvanic work1 equal to unity1 done on a frog's nerve will discharge from the muscle to which the nerve belongs mechanical work equal to seventy thousand2 and exactly the same muscular #bbe effect will emerge if other irritants than galvanism are employed4 ,the irritant has merely started or provoked something which then went on of itself1--as a match may start a fire which consumes a whole town4 ,and qualitatively as well as quantitatively the effect may be absolutely incommensurable with the cause4 ,we find this condition of things in ail organic matter4 ,chemists are distracted by the difficulties which the instability of albuminoid compounds opposes to their study4 ,two specimens1 treated in what outwardly seem scrupulously identical conditions1 behave in quite different ways4 ,you know about the invisible factors of fermentation1 and how the fate of a jar of milk--whether it turn into a sour clot or a mass of koumiss--depends on whether the lactic acid ferment or the alcoholic is introduced first1 and gets ahead of the other in starting the process4 ,now1 when the result is the tendency of an ovum1 itself invisible to the naked eye1 to tip towards this direction or that in its further evolution1--to bring forth a genius or a dunce1 even as the rain-drop passes east or west of the pebble1--is it not obvious that the deflecting cause must lie in a region so recondite and minute1 must be such a ferment of a ferment1 an infinitesimal of so high an order1 that surmise itself may never succeed even in attempting to frame an image of it8 ,such being the case1 was not ,darwin right to turn his back upon that region altogether1 and to keep his own problem carefully free from all entanglement with matters such as these8 ,the success of his work is a sufficiently affirmative reply4 ,and this brings us at last to the heart of our subject4 ,the causes of production of great men lie in a #bbf sphere wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher4 ,he must simply accept geniuses as data1 just as ,darwin accepts his spontaneous variations4 ,for him1 as for ,darwin1 the only problem is1 these data being given1 ,how does the environment affect them1 and how do they affect the environment8 ,now1 ,i affirm that the relation of the visible environment to the great man is in the main exactly what it is to the 'variation' in the ,darwinian philosophy4 ,it chiefly adopts or rejects1 preserves or destroys1 in short selects him4#c ,and whenever it adopts and preserves the great man1 it becomes modified by his influence in an entirely original and peculiar way4 ,he acts as a ferment1 and changes its constitution1 just as the advent of a new zological species changes the faunal and floral equilibrium of the region in which it appears4 ,we all recollect ,mr4 ,darwin's famous statement of the influence of cats on the growth of clover in their neighborhood4 ,we all have read of the effects of the ,european rabbit in ,new ,zealand1 and we have many of us taken part in the controversy about the ,english sparrow here1--whether he kills most canker-worms1 or drives away most native birds4 ,just so the great man1 whether he be an importation from without like ,clive in ,india or ,agassiz here1 or whether he spring from the soil like ,mahomet or ,franklin1 brings about a rearrangement1 on a large or a small scale1 of the pre-existing social relations4 #bbg ,the mutations of societies1 then1 from generation to generation1 are in the main due directly or indirectly to the acts or the example of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment1 or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments1 initiators of movement1 setters of precedent or fashion1 centres of corruption1 or destroyers of other persons1 whose gifts1 had they had free play1 would have led society in another direction4 ,we see this power of individual initiative exemplified on a small scale all about us1 and on a large scale in the case of the leaders of history4 ,it is only following the common-sense method of a ,lyell1 a ,darwin1 and a ,whitney to interpret the unknown by the known1 and reckon up cumulatively the only causes of social change we can directly observe4 ,societies of men are just like individuals1 in that both at any given moment offer ambiguous potentialities of development4 ,whether a young man enters business or the ministry may depend on a decision which has to be made before a certain day4 ,he takes the place offered in the counting-house1 and is committed4 ,little by little1 the habits1 the knowledges1 of the other career1 which once lay so near1 cease to be reckoned even among his possibilities4 ,at first1 he may sometimes doubt whether the self he murdered in that decisive hour might not have been the better of the two2 but with the years such questions themselves expire1 and the old alternative ego1 once so vivid1 fades into something less substantial than a dream4 ,it is no otherwise with nations4 ,they may be committed by kings and ministers to peace or war1 by generals to victory or defeat1 by prophets to this #bbh religion or to that1 by various geniuses to fame in art1 science1 or industry4 ,a war is a true point of bifurcation of future possibilities4 ,whether it fail or succeed1 its declaration must be the starting-point of new policies4 ,just so does a revolution1 or any great civic precedent1 become a deflecting influence1 whose operations widen with the course of time4 ,communities obey their ideals2 and an accidental success fixes an ideal1 as an accidental failure blights it4 ,would ,england have to-day the 'imperial' ideal which she now has1 if a certain boy named ,bob ,clive had shot himself1 as he tried to do1 at ,madras8 ,would she be the drifting raft she is now in ,european affairs#d if a ,frederic the ,great had inherited her throne instead of a ,victoria1 and if ,messrs4 ,bentham1 ,mill1 ,cobden1 and ,bright had all been born in ,prussia8 ,england has1 no doubt1 to-day precisely the same intrinsic value relatively to the other nations that she ever had4 ,there is no such fine accumulation of human material upon the globe4 ,but in ,england the material has lost effective form1 while in ,germany it has found it4 ,leaders give the form4 ,would ,england be crying forward and backward at once1 as she does now1 'letting ,i will not wait upon ,i would1' wishing to conquer but not to fight1 if her ideal had in all these years been fixed by a succession of statesmen of supremely commanding personality1 working in one direction8 ,certainly not4 ,she would have espoused1 for better or worse1 either one course or another4 ,had ,bismarck died in his cradle1 the ,germans would still be satisfied with appearing to themselves as a race of spectacled ,gelehrten and political herbivora1 and to the ,french as ces bons1 or ces naifs1 #bbi ,allemands4 ,bismarck's will showed them1 to their own great astonishment1 that they could play a far livelier game4 ,the lesson will not be forgotten4 ,germany may have many vicissitudes1 but they-- will never do away1 ,i ween1 ,the marks of that which once hath been-- of ,bismarck's initiative1 namely1 from #ahfj to #ahgc4 ,the fermentative influence of geniuses must be admitted as1 at any rate1 one factor in the changes that constitute social evolution4 ,the community may evolve in many ways4 ,the accidental presence of this or that ferment decides in which way it shall evolve4 ,why1 the very birds of the forest1 the parrot1 the mino1 have the power of human speech1 but never develop it of themselves2 some one must be there to teach them4 ,so with us individuals4 ,rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness1 ,wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects2 ,dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality1 ,artemus ,ward to our humor2 ,emerson kindles a new moral light within us4 ,but it is like ,columbus's egg4 ,all can raise the flowers now1 for all have got the seed4 ,but if this be true of the individuals in the community1 how can it be false of the community as a whole8 ,if shown a certain way1 a community may take it2 if not1 it will never find it4 ,and the ways are to a large extent indeterminate in advance4 ,a nation may obey either of many alternative impulses given by different men of genius1 and still live and be prosperous1 just as a man may enter either of many businesses4 ,only1 the prosperities may differ in their type4 ,but the indeterminism is not absolute4 ,not every #bcj 'man' fits every 'hour4' ,some incompatibilities there are4 ,a given genius may come either too early or too late4 ,peter the ,hermit would now be sent to a lunatic asylum4 ,john ,mill in the tenth century would have lived and died unknown4 ,cromwell and ,napoleon need their revolutions1 ,grant his civil war4 ,an ,ajax gets no fame in the day of telescopic-sighted rifles2 and1 to express differently an instance which ,spencer uses1 what could a ,watt have effected in a tribe which no precursive genius had taught to smelt iron or to turn a lathe8 ,now1 the important thing to notice is that what makes a certain genius now incompatible with his surroundings is usually the fact that some previous genius of a different strain has warped the community away from the sphere of his possible effectiveness4 ,after ,voltaire1 no ,peter the ,hermit2 after ,charles ,,ix4 and ,louis ,,xiv41 no general protestantization of ,france2 after a ,manchester school1 a ,beaconsfield's success is transient2 after a ,philip ,,ii41 a ,castelar makes little headway2 and so on4 ,each bifurcation cuts off certain sides of the field altogether1 and limits the future possible angles of deflection4 ,a community is a living thing1 and in words which ,i can do no better than quote from ,professor ,clifford1#e it is the peculiarity of living things not merely that they change under the influence of surrounding circumstances1 but that any change which takes place in them is not lost but retained1 and as it were built into the organism to serve as the foundation for future actions4 ,if you cause any distortion in the growth of a tree and make it crooked1 whatever you may do afterwards to make the tree straight the mark of your #bca distortion is there2 it is absolutely indelible2 it has become part of the tree's nature4444 ,suppose1 however1 that you take a lump of gold1 melt it1 and let it cool4444 ,no one can tell by examining a piece of gold how often it has been melted and cooled in geologic ages1 or even in the last year by the hand of man4 ,any one who cuts down an oak can tell by the rings in its trunk how many times winter has frozen it into widowhood1 and how many times summer has warmed it into life4 ,a living being must always contain within itself the history1 not merely of its own existence1 but of all its ancestors4 ,every painter can tell us how each added line deflects his picture in a certain sense4 ,whatever lines follow must be built on those first laid down4 ,every author who starts to rewrite a piece of work knows how impossible it becomes to use any of the first-written pages again4 ,the new beginning has already excluded the possibility of those earlier phrases and transitions1 while it has at the same time created the possibility of an indefinite set of new ones1 no one of which1 however1 is completely determined in advance4 ,just so the social surroundings of the past and present hour exclude the possibility of accepting certain contributions from individuals2 but they do not positively define what contributions shall be accepted1 for in themselves they are powerless to fix what the nature of the individual offerings shall be4#f #bcb ,thus social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors1--the individual1 deriving his peculiar gifts from the play of physiological and infra-social forces1 but bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands2 and1 second1 the social environment1 with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts4 ,both factors are essential to change4 ,the community stagnates without the impulse of the individual4 ,the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community4 ,all this seems nothing more than common-sense4 ,all who wish to see it developed by a man of genius should read that golden little work1 ,bagehot's ,physics and ,politics1 in which 7it seems to me7 the complete sense of the way in which concrete things grow and change is as livingly present as the straining after a pseudo-philosophy of evolution is livingly absent4 ,but there are never wanting minds to whom such views seem personal and contracted1 and allied to an anthropomorphism long exploded in other fields of knowledge4 ,the individual withers1 and the world is more and more1 to these writers2 and in a ,buckle1 a ,draper1 and a ,taine we all know how much the 'world' has come to be almost synonymous with the climate4 ,we all know1 too1 how the controversy has been kept up between the partisans of a 'science of history' and those who deny the existence of anything like necessary 'laws' where human societies are concerned4 ,mr4 ,spencer1 at the opening of his ,study of ,sociology1 makes an onslaught on the 'great-man theory' of history1 from which a few passages may be quoted3-- ,the genesis of societies by the action of great men may be comfortably believed so long as1 resting in general #bcc notions1 you do not ask for particulars4 ,but now1 if1 dissatisfied with vagueness1 we demand that our ideas shall be brought into focus and exactly defined1 we discover the hypothesis to be utterly incoherent4 ,if1 not stopping at the explanation of social progress as due to the great man1 we go back a step1 and ask1 ,whence comes the great man8 we find that the theory breaks down completely4 ,the question has two conceivable answers3 his origin is supernatural1 or it is natural4 ,is his origin supernatural8 ,then he is a deputy god1 and we have theocracy once removed1--or1 rather1 not removed at all4444 ,is this an unacceptable solution8 ,then the origin of the great man is natural2 and immediately this is recognized1 he must be classed with all other phenomena in the society that gave him birth as a product of its antecedents4 ,along with the whole generation of which he forms a minute part1 along with its institutions1 language1 knowledge1 manners1 and its multitudinous arts and appliances1 he is a resultant4444 ,you must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears1 and the social state into which that race has slowly grown4444 ,before he can remake his society1 his society must make him4 ,all those changes of which he is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations he descended from4 ,if there is to be anything like a real explanation of those changes1 it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions out of which both he and they have arisen4#g ,now1 it seems to me that there is something which one might almost call impudent in the attempt which ,mr4 ,spencer makes1 in the first sentence of this extract1 to pin the reproach of vagueness upon those who believe in the power of initiative of the great man4 #bcd ,suppose ,i say that the singular moderation which now distinguishes social1 political1 and religious discussion in ,england1 and contrasts so strongly with the bigotry and dogmatism of sixty years ago1 is largely due to ,j4 ,s4 ,mill's example4 ,i may possibly be wrong about the facts2 but ,i am1 at any rate1 'asking for particulars1' and not 'resting in general notions4' ,and if ,mr4 ,spencer should tell me it started from no personal influence whatever1 but from the 'aggregate of conditions1' the 'generations1' ,mill and all his contemporaries 'descended from1' the whole past order of nature in short1 surely he1 not ,i1 would be the person 'satisfied with vagueness4' ,the fact is that ,mr4 ,spencer's sociological method is identical with that of one who would invoke the zodiac to account for the fall of the sparrow1 and the thirteen at table to explain the gentleman's death4 ,it is of little more scientific value than the ,oriental method of replying to whatever question arises by the unimpeachable truism1 ,god is great4 ,not to fall back on the gods1 where a proximate principle may be found1 has with us ,westerners long since become the sign of an efficient as distinguished from an inefficient intellect4 ,to believe that the cause of everything is to be found in its antecedents is the starting-point1 the initial postulate1 not the goal and consummation1 of science4 ,if she is simply to lead us out of the labyrinth by the same hole we went in by three or four thousand years ago1 it seems hardly worth while to have followed her through the darkness at all4 ,if anything is humanly certain it is that the great man's society1 properly so called1 does not make him before he can remake it4 ,physiological forces1 with which #bce the social1 political1 geographical1 and to a great extent anthropological conditions have just as much and just as little to do as the condition of the crater of ,vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by which ,i write1 are what make him4 ,can it be that ,mr4 ,spencer holds the convergence of sociological pressures to have so impinged on ,stratford-upon-,avon about the #bfth of ,april1 #aefd1 that a ,w4 ,shakespeare1 with all his mental peculiarities1 had to be born there1--as the pressure of water outside a certain boat will cause a stream of a certain form to ooze into a particular leak8 ,and does he mean to say that if the aforesaid ,w4 ,shakespeare had died of cholera infantum1 another mother at ,stratford-upon-,avon would needs have engendered a duplicate copy of him1 to restore the sociologic equilibrium1--just as the same stream of water will reappear1 no matter how often you pass a sponge over the leak1 so long as the outside level remains unchanged8 ,or might the substitute arise at ',stratford-atte-,bowe'8 ,here1 as elsewhere1 it is very hard1 in the midst of ,mr4 ,spencer's vagueness1 to tell what he does mean at all4 ,we have1 however1 in his disciple1 ,mr4 ,grant ,allen1 one who leaves us in no doubt whatever of his precise meaning4 ,this widely informed1 suggestive1 and brilliant writer published last year a couple of articles in the ,gentleman's ,magazine1 in which he maintained that individuals have no initiative in determining social change4 ,the differences between one nation and another1 whether in intellect1 commerce1 art1 morals1 or general temperament1 ultimately depend1 not upon any mysterious properties of race1 nationality1 or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions1 but simply and solely upon the #bcf physical circumstances to which they are exposed4 ,if it be a fact1 as we know it to be1 that the ,french nation differs recognizably from the ,chinese1 and the people of ,hamburg differ recognizably from the people of ,timbuctoo1 then the notorious and conspicuous differences between them are wholly due to the geographical position of the various races4 ,if the people who went to ,hamburg had gone to ,timbuctoo1 they would now be indistinguishable from the semi-barbarian negroes who inhabit that central ,african metropolis2#h and if the people who went to ,timbuctoo had gone to ,hamburg1 they would now have been white-skinned merchants driving a roaring trade in imitation sherry and indigestible port4444 ,the differentiating agency must be sought in the great permanent geographical features of land and sea2 444 these have necessarily and inevitably moulded the characters and histories of every nation upon the earth4444 ,we cannot regard any nation as an active agent in differentiating itself4 ,only the surrounding circumstances can have any effect in such a direction4 ,these two sentences dogmatically deny the existence of the relatively independent physiological cycle of causation4 ,to suppose otherwise is to suppose that the mind of man is exempt from the universal law of causation4 ,there is no caprice1 no spontaneous impulse1 in human endeavors4 ,even tastes and inclinations must themselves be the result of surrounding causes4#i #bcg ,elsewhere ,mr4 ,allen1 writing of the ,greek culture1 says3-- ,it was absolutely and unreservedly the product of the geographical ,hellas1 acting upon the given factor of the undifferentiated ,aryan brain1444 ,to me it seems a self-evident proposition that nothing whatsoever can differentiate one body of men from another1 except the physical conditions in which they are set1--including1 of course1 under the term physical conditions the relations of place and time in which they stand with regard to other bodies of men4 ,to suppose otherwise is to deny the primordial law of causation4 ,to imagine that the mind can differentiate itself is to imagine that it can be differentiated without a cause4#aj ,this outcry about the law of universal causation being undone1 the moment we refuse to invest in the kind of causation which is peddled round by a particular school1 makes one impatient4 ,these writers have no imagination of alternatives4 ,with them there is no tertium quid between outward environment and miracle4 ,aut ,caesar1 aut nullus6 ,aut ,spencerism1 aut catechism6 ,if by 'physical conditions' ,mr4 ,allen means what he does mean1 the outward cycle of visible nature and man1 his assertion is simply physiologically false4 ,for a national mind differentiates 'itself' whenever a genius is born in its midst by causes acting in the invisible and molecular cycle4 ,but if ,mr4 ,allen means by 'physical conditions' the whole of nature1 his assertion1 though true1 forms but the vague ,asiatic #bch profession of belief in an all-enveloping fate1 which certainly need not plume itself on any specially advanced or scientific character4 ,and how can a thinker so clever as ,mr4 ,allen fail to have distinguished in these matters between necessary conditions and sufficient conditions of a given result8 ,the ,french say that to have an omelet we must break our eggs2 that is1 the breaking of eggs is a necessary condition of the omelet4 ,but is it a sufficient condition8 ,does an omelet appear whenever three eggs are broken8 ,so of the ,greek mind4 ,to get such versatile intelligence it may be that such commercial dealings with the world as the geographical ,hellas afforded are a necessary condition4 ,but if they are a sufficient condition1 why did not the ,phoenicians outstrip the ,greeks in intelligence8 ,no geographical environment can produce a given type of mind4 ,it can only foster and further certain types fortuitously produced1 and thwart and frustrate others4 ,once again1 its function is simply selective1 and determines what shall actually be only by destroying what is positively incompatible4 ,an ,arctic environment is incompatible with improvident habits in its denizens2 but whether the inhabitants of such a region shall unite with their thrift the peacefulness of the ,eskimo or the pugnacity of the ,norseman is1 so far as the climate is concerned1 an accident4 ,evolutionists should not forget that we all have five fingers not because four or six would not do just as well1 but merely because the first vertebrate above the fishes happened to have that number4 ,he owed his prodigious success in founding a line of descent to some entirely other quality1--we know #bci not which1--but the inessential five fingers were taken in tow and preserved to the present day4 ,so of most social peculiarities4 ,which of them shall be taken in tow by the few qualities which the environment necessarily exacts is a matter of what physiological accidents shall happen among individuals4 ,mr4 ,allen promises to prove his thesis in detail by the examples of ,china1 ,india1 ,england1 ,rome1 etc4 ,i have not the smallest hesitation in predicting that he will do no more with these examples than he has done with ,hellas4 ,he will appear upon the scene after the fact1 and show that the quality developed by each race was1 naturally enough1 not incompatible with its habitat4 ,but he will utterly fail to show that the particular form of compatibility fallen into in each case was the one necessary and only possible form4 ,naturalists know well enough how indeterminate the harmonies between a fauna and its environment are4 ,an animal may better his chances of existence in either of many ways1--growing aquatic1 arboreal1 or subterranean2 small and swift1 or massive and bulky2 spiny1 horny1 slimy1 or venomous2 more timid or more pugnacious2 more cunning or more fertile of offspring2 more gregarious or more solitary2 or in other ways besides1--and any one of these ways may suit him to many widely different environments4 ,readers of ,mr4 ,a4 ,r4 ,wallace will well remember the striking illustrations of this in his ,malay ,archipelago3-- ,borneo closely resembles ,new ,guinea not only in its vast size and its freedom from volcanoes1 but in its variety of geological structure1 its uniformity of climate1 and the general aspect of the forest vegetation that clothes its surface2 the ,moluccas are the counterpart of the ,philippines #bdj in their volcanic structure1 their extreme fertility1 their luxuriant forests1 and their frequent earthquakes2 and ,bali1 with the east end of ,java1 has a climate almost as dry and a soil almost as arid as that of ,timor4 ,yet between these corresponding groups of islands1 constructed1 as it were1 after the same pattern1 subjected to the same climate1 and bathed by the same oceans1 there exists the greatest possible contrast when we compare their animal productions4 ,nowhere does the ancient doctrine that differences or similarities in the various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to corresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries themselves1 meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction4 ,borneo and ,new ,guinea1 as alike physically as two distinct countries can be1 are zologically wide as the poles asunder2 while ,australia1 with its dry winds1 its open plains1 its stony deserts1 and its temperate climate1 yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting the hot1 damp1 luxuriant forests which everywhere clothe the plains and mountains of ,new ,guinea4 ,here we have similar physical-geography environments harmonizing with widely differing animal lives1 and similar animal lives harmonizing with widely differing geographical environments4 ,a singularly accomplished writer1 ,e4 ,gryzanowski1 in the ,north ,american ,review1#aa uses the instances of ,sardinia and ,corsica in support of this thesis with great effect ,he says3-- ,these sister islands1 lying in the very centre of the ,mediterranean1 at almost equal distances from the centres of ,latin and ,neo-,latin civilization1 within easy reach of the ,phoenician1 the ,greek1 and the ,saracen1 with a #bda coast-line of more than a thousand miles1 endowed with obvious and tempting advantages1 and hiding untold sources of agricultural and mineral wealth1 have nevertheless remained unknown1 unheeded1 and certainly uncared for during the thirty centuries of ,european history4444 ,these islands have dialects1 but no language2 records of battles1 but no history4 ,they have customs1 but no laws2 the vendetta1 but no justice4 ,they have wants and wealth1 but no commerce1 timber and ports1 but no shipping4 ,they have legends1 but no poetry1 beauty1 but no art2 and twenty years ago it could still be said that they had universities1 but no students4444 ,that ,sardinia1 with all her emotional and picturesque barbarism1 has never produced a single artist is almost as strange as her barbarism itself4444 ,near the focus of ,european civilization1 in the very spot which an priori geographer would point out as the most favorable place for material and intellectual1 commercial1 and political development1 these strange sister islands have slept their secular sleep1 like nodes on the sounding-board of history4 ,this writer then goes on to compare ,sardinia and ,sicily with some detail4 ,all the material advantages are in favor of ,sardinia1 and the ,sardinian population1 being of an ancestry more mixed than that of the ,english race1 would justify far higher expectations than that of ,sicily4 ,yet ,sicily's past history has been brilliant in the extreme1 and her commerce to-day is great4 ,dr4 ,gryzanowski has his own theory of the historic torpor of these favored isles4 ,he thinks they stagnated because they never gained political autonomy1 being always owned by some ,continental power4 ,i will not dispute the theory2 but ,i will ask1 ,why did they not gain it8 and answer immediately3 ,simply because no individuals were #bdb born there with patriotism and ability enough to inflame their countrymen with national pride1 ambition1 and thirst for independent life4 ,corsicans and ,sardinians are probably as good stuff as any of their neighbors4 ,but the best wood-pile will not blaze till a torch is applied1 and the appropriate torches seem to have been wanting4#ab ,sporadic great men come everywhere4 ,but for a community to get vibrating through and through #bdc with intensely active life1 many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required4 ,this is why great epochs are so rare1--why the sudden bloom of a ,greece1 an early ,rome1 a ,renaissance1 is such a mystery4 ,blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals4 ,then the mass of the nation grows incandescent1 and may continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away4 ,we often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life1 but that individual geniuses should seem so exceptionally abundant4 ,this mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great towns4 ,it is true that great public fermentations awaken and adopt many geniuses1 who in more torpid times would have had no chance to work4 ,but over and above this there must be an exceptional concourse of genius about a time1 to make the fermentation begin at all4 ,the unlikeliness of the concourse is far greater than the unlikeliness of any particular genius2 hence the rarity of these periods and the exceptional aspect which they always wear4 #bdd ,it is folly1 then1 to speak of the 'laws of history' as of something inevitable1 which science has only to discover1 and whose consequences any one can then foretell but do nothing to alter or avert4 ,why1 the very laws of physics are conditional1 and deal with ifs4 ,the physicist does not say1 ,the water will boil anyhow2 he only says it will boil if a fire be kindled beneath it4 ,and so the utmost the student of sociology can ever predict is that if a genius of a certain sort show the way1 society will be sure to follow4 ,it might long ago have been predicted with great confidence that both ,italy and ,germany would reach a stable unity if some one could but succeed in starting the process4 ,it could not have been predicted1 however1 that the modus operandi in each case would be subordination to a paramount state rather than federation1 because no historian could have calculated the freaks of birth and fortune which gave at the same moment such positions of authority to three such peculiar individuals as ,napoleon ,,iii41 ,bismarck1 and ,cavour4 ,so of our own politics4 ,it is certain now that the movement of the independents1 reformers1 or whatever one please to call them1 will triumph4 ,but whether it do so by converting the ,republican party to its ends1 or by rearing a new party on the ruins of both our present factions1 the historian cannot say4 ,there can be no doubt that the reform movement would make more progress in one year with an adequate personal leader than as now in ten without one4 ,were there a great citizen1 splendid with every civic gift1 to be its candidate1 who can doubt that he would lead us to victory8 ,but1 at present1 we1 his environment1 who sigh for him and would so gladly preserve and adopt him if he came1 can neither #bde move without him1 nor yet do anything to bring him forth4#ac ,to conclude3 ,the evolutionary view of history1 when it denies the vital importance of individual initiative1 is1 then1 an utterly vague and unscientific conception1 a lapse from modern scientific determinism into the most ancient oriental fatalism4 ,the lesson of the analysis that we have made 7even on the completely deterministic hypothesis with which we started7 forms an appeal of the most stimulating sort to the energy of the individual4 ,even the dogged resistance of the reactionary conservative to changes which he cannot hope entirely to defeat is justified and shown to be effective4 ,he retards the movement2 deflects it a little by the concessions he extracts2 gives it a resultant momentum1 compounded of his inertia and his adversaries' speed2 and keeps up1 in short1 a constant lateral pressure1 which1 to be sure1 never heads it round about1 but brings it up at last at a goal far to the right or left of that to which it would have drifted had he allowed it to drift alone4 ,i now pass to the last division of my subject1 the function of the environment in mental evolution4 ,after what ,i have already said1 ,i may be quite concise4 ,here1 if anywhere1 it would seem at first sight as if that school must be right which makes the mind passively plastic1 and the environment actively productive of the form and order of its conceptions2 which1 in a word1 thinks that all mental progress must result from #bdf a series of adaptive changes1 in the sense already defined of that word4 ,we know what a vast part of our mental furniture consists of purely remembered1 not reasoned1 experience4 ,the entire field of our habits and associations by contiguity belongs here4 ,the entire field of those abstract conceptions which were taught us with the language into which we were born belongs here also4 ,and1 more than this1 there is reason to think that the order of 'outer relations' experienced by the individual may itself determine the order in which the general characters imbedded therein shall be noticed and extracted by his mind4#ad ,the pleasures and benefits1 moreover1 which certain parts of the environment yield1 and the pains and hurts which other parts inflict1 determine the direction of our interest and our attention1 and so decide at which points the accumulation of mental experiences shall begin4 ,it might1 accordingly1 seem as if there were no room for any other agency than this2 as if the distinction we have found so useful between 'spontaneous variation1' as the producer of changed forms1 and the environment1 as their preserver and destroyer1 did not hold in the case of mental progress2 as if1 in a word1 the parallel with darwinism might no longer obtain1 and ,spencer might be quite right with his fundamental law of intelligence1 which says1 ,the cohesion between psychical states is proportionate to the frequency with which the relation between the answering external phenomena has been repeated in experience4#ae #bdg ,but1 in spite of all these facts1 ,i have no hesitation whatever in holding firm to the darwinian distinction even here4 ,i maintain that the facts in question are all drawn from the lower strata of the mind1 so to speak1--from the sphere of its least evolved functions1 from the region of intelligence which man possesses in common with the brutes4 ,and ,i can easily show that throughout the whole extent of those mental departments which are highest1 which are most characteristically human1 ,spencer's law is violated at every step2 and that as a matter of fact the new conceptions1 emotions1 and active tendencies which evolve are originally produced in the shape of random images1 fancies1 accidental out-births of spontaneous variation in the functional activity of the excessively instable human brain1 which the outer environment simply confirms or refutes1 adopts or rejects1 preserves or destroys1--selects1 in short1 just as it selects morphological and social variations due to molecular accidents of an analogous sort4 ,it is one of the tritest of truisms that human intelligences of a simple order are very literal4 ,they are slaves of habit1 doing what they have been taught without variation2 dry1 prosaic1 and matter-of-fact in their remarks2 devoid of humor1 except of the coarse physical kind which rejoices in a practical joke2 taking the world for granted2 and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration4 ,but #bdh even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring1 and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate matter than of the steadfastness of a human will capable of alternative choice4 ,when we descend to the brutes1 all these peculiarities are intensified4 ,no reader of ,schopenhauer can forget his frequent allusions to the trockener ernst of dogs and horses1 nor to their ehrlichkeit4 ,and every noticer of their ways must receive a deep impression of the fatally literal character of the few1 simple1 and treadmill-like operations of their minds4 ,but turn to the highest order of minds1 and what a change6 ,instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion1 we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another1 the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations1 the most unheard-of combinations of elements1 the subtlest associations of analogy2 in a word1 we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron of ideas1 where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity1 where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant1 treadmill routine is unknown1 and the unexpected seems the only law4 ,according to the idiosyncrasy of the individual1 the scintillations will have one character or another4 ,they will be sallies of wit and humor2 they will be flashes of poetry and eloquence2 they will be constructions of dramatic fiction or of mechanical device1 logical or philosophic abstractions1 business projects1 or scientific hypotheses1 with trains of experimental consequences based thereon2 they will be musical sounds1 or images of plastic beauty or picturesqueness1 or visions of moral harmony4 ,but1 whatever their #bdi differences may be1 they will all agree in this1--that their genesis is sudden and1 as it were1 spontaneous4 ,that is to say1 the same premises would not1 in the mind of another individual1 have engendered just that conclusion2 although1 when the conclusion is offered to the other individual1 he may thoroughly accept and enjoy it1 and envy the brilliancy of him to whom it first occurred4 ,to ,professor ,jevons is due the great credit of having emphatically pointed out#af how the genius of discovery depends altogether on the number of these random notions and guesses which visit the investigator's mind4 ,to be fertile in hypotheses is the first requisite1 and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next4 ,the ,baconian method of collating tables of instances may be a useful aid at certain times4 ,but one might as well expect a chemist's note-book to write down the name of the body analyzed1 or a weather table to sum itself up into a prediction of probabilities of its own accord1 as to hope that the mere fact of mental confrontation with a certain series of facts will be sufficient to make any brain conceive their law4 ,the conceiving of the law is a spontaneous variation in the strictest sense of the term4 ,it flashes out of one brain1 and no other1 because the instability of that brain is such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction4 ,but the important thing to notice is that the good flashes and the bad flashes1 the triumphant hypotheses and the absurd conceits1 are on an exact equality in respect of their origin4 ,aristotle's absurd ,physics and his immortal ,logic flow from one source3 the forces that produce the one produce the other4 #bej ,when walking along the street1 thinking of the blue sky or the fine spring weather1 ,i may either smile at some grotesque whim which occurs to me1 or ,i may suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of a long-unsolved problem1 which at that moment was far from my thoughts4 ,both notions are shaken out of the same reservoir1--the reservoir of a brain in which the reproduction of images in the relations of their outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to be the dominant law4 ,but to the thought1 when it is once engendered1 the consecration of agreement with outward relations may come4 ,the conceit perishes in a moment1 and is forgotten4 ,the scientific hypothesis arouses in me a fever of desire for verification4 ,i read1 write1 experiment1 consult experts4 ,everything corroborates my notion1 which being then published in a book spreads from review to review and from mouth to mouth1 till at last there is no doubt ,i am enshrined in the ,pantheon of the great diviners of nature's ways4 ,the environment preserves the conception which it was unable to produce in any brain less idiosyncratic than my own4 ,now1 the spontaneous upsettings of brains this way and that at particular moments into particular ideas and combinations are matched by their equally spontaneous permanent tiltings or saggings towards determinate directions4 ,the humorous bent is quite characteristic2 the sentimental one equally so4 ,and the personal tone of each mind1 which makes it more alive to certain classes of experience than others1 more attentive to certain impressions1 more open to certain reasons1 is equally the result of that invisible and unimaginable play of the forces of growth within the nervous system which1 irresponsibly to the #bea environment1 makes the brain peculiarly apt to function in a certain way4 ,here again the selection goes on4 ,the products of the mind with the determined aesthetic bent please or displease the community4 ,we adopt ,wordsworth1 and grow unsentimental and serene4 ,we are fascinated by ,schopenhauer1 and learn from him the true luxury of woe4 ,the adopted bent becomes a ferment in the community1 and alters its tone4 ,the alteration may be a benefit or a misfortune1 for it is 7pace ,mr4 ,allen7 a differentiation from within1 which has to run the gauntlet of the larger environment's selective power4 ,civilized ,languedoc1 taking the tone of its scholars1 poets1 princes1 and theologians1 fell a prey to its rude ,catholic environment in the ,albigensian crusade4 ,france in #agib1 taking the tone of its ,st4 ,justs and ,marats1 plunged into its long career of unstable outward relations4 ,prussia in #ahjf1 taking the tone of its ,humboldts and its ,steins1 proved itself in the most signal way 'adjusted' to its environment in #ahgb4 ,mr4 ,spencer1 in one of the strangest chapters of his ,psychology1#ag tries to show the necessary order in which the development of conceptions in the human race occurs4 ,no abstract conception can be developed1 according to him1 until the outward experiences have reached a certain degree of heterogeneity1 definiteness1 coherence1 and so forth4 ,thus the belief in an unchanging order1 the belief in law1 is a belief of which the primitive man is absolutely incapable4444 ,experiences such as he receives furnish but few data for the conception of uniformity1 whether as displayed in things or in relations4444 ,the daily #beb impressions which the savage gets yield the notion very imperfectly1 and in but few cases4 ,of all the objects around1--trees1 stones1 hills1 pieces of water1 clouds1 and so forth1--most differ widely1 444 and few approach complete likeness so nearly as to make discrimination difficult4 ,even between animals of the same species it rarely happens that1 whether alive or dead1 they are presented in just the same attitudes4444 ,it is only along with a gradual development of the arts 444 that there come frequent experiences of perfectly straight lines admitting of complete apposition1 bringing the perceptions of equality and inequality4 ,still more devoid is savage life of the experiences which generate the conception of the uniformity of succession4 ,the sequences observed from hour to hour and day to day seem anything but uniform1 difference is a far more conspicuous trait among them4444 ,so that if we contemplate primitive human life as a whole1 we see that multiformity of sequence1 rather than uniformity1 is the notion which it tends to generate4444 ,only as fast as the practice of the arts develops the idea of measure can the consciousness of uniformity become clear4444 ,those conditions furnished by advancing civilization which make possible the notion of uniformity simultaneously make possible the notion of exactness4444 ,hence the primitive man has little experience which cultivates the consciousness of what we call truth4 ,how closely allied this is to the consciousness which the practice of the arts cultivates is implied even in language4 ,we speak of a true surface as well as a true statement4 ,exactness describes perfection in a mechanical fit1 as well as perfect agreement between the results of calculations4 ,the whole burden of ,mr4 ,spencer's book is to show the fatal way in which the mind1 supposed passive1 is moulded by its experiences of 'outer #bec relations4' ,in this chapter the yard-stick1 the balance1 the chronometer1 and other machines and instruments come to figure among the 'relations' external to the mind4 ,surely they are so1 after they have been manufactured2 but only because of the preservative power of the social environment4 ,originally all these things and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an individual head1 of which the outer environment showed no sign4 ,adopted by the race and become its heritage1 they then supply instigations to new geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions and discoveries2 and so the ball of progress rolls4 ,but take out the geniuses1 or alter their idiosyncrasies1 and what increasing uniformities will the environment show8 ,we defy ,mr4 ,spencer or any one else to reply4 ,the plain truth is that the 'philosophy' of evolution 7as distinguished from our special information about particular cases of change7 is a metaphysical creed1 and nothing else4 ,it is a mood of contemplation1 an emotional attitude1 rather than a system of thought1--a mood which is old as the world1 and which no refutation of any one incarnation of it 7such as the spencerian philosophy7 will dispel2 the mood of fatalistic pantheism1 with its intuition of the ,one and ,all1 which was1 and is1 and ever shall be1 and from whose womb each single thing proceeds4 ,far be it from us to speak slightingly here of so hoary and mighty a style of looking on the world as this4 ,what we at present call scientific discoveries had nothing to do with bringing it to birth1 nor can one easily conceive that they should ever give it its quietus1 no matter how logically incompatible with its spirit the ultimate phenomenal distinctions which #bed science accumulates should turn out to be4 ,it can laugh at the phenomenal distinctions on which science is based1 for it draws its vital breath from a region which--whether above or below--is at least altogether different from that in which science dwells4 ,a critic1 however1 who cannot disprove the truth of the metaphysic creed1 can at least raise his voice in protest against its disguising itself in 'scientific' plumes4 ,i think that all who have had the patience to follow me thus far will agree that the spencerian 'philosophy' of social and intellectual progress is an obsolete anachronism1 reverting to a pre-darwinian type of thought1 just as the spencerian philosophy of ',force1' effacing all the previous distinctions between actual and potential energy1 momentum1 work1 force1 mass1 etc41 which physicists have with so much agony achieved1 carries us back to a pre-galilean age4 #a ,a lecture before the ,harvard ,natural ,history ,society2 published in the ,atlantic ,monthly1 ,october1 #ahhj4 #b ,darwin's theory of pangenesis is1 it is true1 an attempt to account 7among other things7 for variation4 ,but it occupies its own separate place1 and its author no more invokes the environment when he talks of the adhesions of gemmules than he invokes these adhesions when he talks of the relations of the whole animal to the environment4 ,divide et impera6 #c ,it is true that it remodels him1 also1 to some degree1 by its educative influence1 and that this constitutes a considerable difference between the social case and the zological case1 ,i neglect this aspect of the relation here1 for the other is the more important4 ,at the end of the article ,i will return to it incidentally4 #d ,the reader will remember when this was written4 #e ,lectures and ,essays1 i4 #hb4 #f ,mr4 ,grant ,allen himself1 in an article from which ,i shall presently quote1 admits that a set of people who1 if they had been exposed ages ago to the geographical agencies of ,timbuctoo1 would have developed into negroes might now1 after a protracted exposure to the conditions of ,hamburg1 never become negroes if transplanted to ,timbuctoo4 #g ,study of ,sociology1 pages #cc-ce4 #h ,no6 not even though they were bodily brothers6 ,the geographical factor utterly vanishes before the ancestral factor4 ,the difference between ,hamburg and ,timbuctoo as a cause of ultimate divergence of two races is as nothing to the difference of constitution of the ancestors of the two races1 even though as in twin brothers1 this difference might be invisible to the naked eye4 ,no two couples of the most homogeneous race could possibly be found so identical as1 if set in identical environments1 to give rise to two identical lineages4 ,the minute divergence at the start grows broader with each generation1 and ends with entirely dissimilar breeds4 #i ,article ',nation ,making1' in ,gentleman's ,magazine1 #ahgh4 ,i quote from the reprint in the ,popular ,science ,monthly ,supplement ,december1 #ahgh1 pages #aba1 #abc1 #abf4 #aj ,article ',hellas1' in ,gentleman's ,magazine1 #ahgh4 ,reprint in ,popular ,science ,monthly ,supplement1 ,september1 #ahgh4 #aa ,vol4 cxiii4 p4 #cah 7,october1 #ahga74 #ab ,i am well aware that in much that follows 7though in nothing that precedes7 ,i seem to be crossing the heavily shotted bows of ,mr4 ,galton1 for whose laborious investigations into the heredity of genius ,i have the greatest respect4 ,mr4 ,galton inclines to think that genius of intellect and passion is bound to express itself1 whatever the outward opportunity1 and that within any given race an equal number of geniuses of each grade must needs be born in every equal period of time2 a subordinate race cannot possibly engender a large number of high-class geniuses1 etc4 ,he would1 ,i suspect1 infer the suppositions ,i go on to make--of great men fortuitously assembling around a given epoch and making it great1 and of their being fortuitously absent from certain places and times 7from ,sardinia1 from ,boston now1 etc47--to be radically vicious4 ,i hardly think1 however1 that he does justice to the great complexity of the conditions of effective greatness1 and to the way in which the physiological averages of production may be masked entirely during long periods1 either by the accidental mortality of geniuses in infancy1 or by the fact that the particular geniuses born happened not to find tasks4 ,i doubt the truth of his assertion that intellectual genius1 like murder1 'will out4' ,it is true that certain types are irrepressible4 ,voltaire1 ,shelley1 ,carlyle1 can hardly be conceived leading a dumb and vegetative life in any epoch4 ,but take ,mr4 ,galton himself1 take his cousin ,mr4 ,darwin1 and take ,mr4 ,spencer3 nothing is to me more have died 'with all their music in them1' known only to their friends as persons of strong and original character and judgment4 ,what has started them on their career of effective greatness is simply the accident of each stumbling upon a task vast1 brilliant1 and congenial enough to call out the convergence of all his passions and powers4 ,i see no more reason why1 in case they had not fallen in with their several hobbies at propitious periods in their life1 they need necessarily have hit upon other hobbies1 and made themselves equally great4 ,their case seems similar to that of the ,washingtons1 ,cromwells1 and ,grants1 who simply rose to their occasions4 ,but apart from these causes of fallacy1 ,i am strongly disposed to think that where transcendent geniuses are concerned the numbers anyhow are so small that their appearance will not fit into any scheme of averages4 ,that is1 two or three might appear together1 just as the two or three balls nearest the target centre might be fired consecutively4 ,take longer epochs and more firing1 and the great geniuses and near balls would on the whole be more spread out4 #ac ,since this paper was written1 ,president ,cleveland has to a certain extent met the need4 ,but who can doubt that if he had certain other qualities which he has not yet shown1 his influence would have been still more decisive8 7#ahif47 #ad ,that is1 if a certain general character be rapidly repeated in our outer experience with a number of strongly contrasted concomitants1 it will be sooner abstracted than if its associates are invariable or monotonous4 #ad ,principles of ,psychology1 i4 #dfj4 ,see also pp4 #dfc1 #dfd1 #ejj4 ,on page #djh the law is formulated thus3 ,the persistence of the connection in consciousness is proportionate to the persistence of the outer connection4 ,mr4 ,spencer works most with the law of frequency4 ,either law1 from my point of view1 is false2 but ,mr4 ,spencer ought not to think them synonymous4 #af ,in his ,principles of ,science1 chapters xi41 xii41 xxvi4 #ag ,part viii4 chap4 iii4 #bee ,,the ,,importance ,,of ,,individuals4 ,the previous ,essay1 on ,great ,men1 etc41 called forth two replies1--one by ,mr4 ,grant ,allen1 entitled the ',genesis of ,genius1' in the ,atlantic ,monthly1 vol4 xlvii4 p4 #cea2 the other entitled ',sociology and ,hero ,worship1' by ,mr4 ,john ,fiske1 ibidem1 p4 #ge4 ,the article which follows is a rejoinder to ,mr4 ,allen's article4 ,it was refused at the time by the ,atlantic1 but saw the day later in the ,open ,court for ,august1 #ahij4 ,it appears here as a natural supplement to the foregoing article1 on which it casts some explanatory light4 ,mr4 ,allen's contempt for hero-worship is based on very simple considerations4 ,a nation's great men1 he says1 are but slight deviations from the general level4 ,the hero is merely a special complex of the ordinary qualities of his race4 ,the petty differences impressed upon ordinary ,greek minds by ,plato or ,aristotle or ,zeno1 are nothing at all compared with the vast differences between every ,greek mind and every ,egyptian or ,chinese mind4 ,we may neglect them in a philosophy of history1 just as in calculating the impetus of a locomotive we neglect the extra impetus given by a single piece of better coal4 ,what each man adds is but an infinitesimal fraction compared with what he derives from his parents1 or #bef indirectly from his earlier ancestry4 ,and if what the past gives to the hero is so much bulkier than what the future receives from him1 it is what really calls for philosophical treatment4 ,the problem for the sociologist is as to what produces the average man2 the extraordinary men and what they produce may by the philosophers be taken for granted1 as too trivial variations to merit deep inquiry4 ,now1 as ,i wish to vie with ,mr4 ,allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible1 ,i will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an ,aristotle1 a ,goethe1 or a ,napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes4 ,let it be as small as ,mr4 ,allen thinks4 ,all that ,i object to is that he should think the mere size of a difference is capable of deciding whether that difference be or be not a fit subject for philosophic study4 ,truly enough1 the details vanish in the bird's-eye view2 but so does the bird's-eye view vanish in the details4 ,which is the right point of view for philosophic vision8 ,nature gives no reply1 for both points of view1 being equally real1 are equally natural2 and no one natural reality per se is any more emphatic than any other4 ,accentuation1 foreground1 and background are created solely by the interested attention of the looker-on2 and if the small difference between the genius and his tribe interests me most1 while the large one between that tribe and another tribe interests ,mr4 ,allen1 our controversy cannot be ended until a complete philosophy1 accounting for all differences impartially1 shall justify us both4 ,an unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing3 ,there is very little difference between one man and another2 but what little there #beg is1 is very important4 ,this distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter4 ,it is not only the size of the difference which concerns the philosopher1 but also its place and its kind4 ,an inch is a small thing1 but we know the proverb about an inch on a man's nose4 ,messrs4 ,allen and ,spencer1 in inveighing against hero-worship1 are thinking exclusively of the size of the inch2 ,i1 as a hero-worshipper1 attend to its seat and function4 ,now1 there is a striking law over which few people seem to have pondered4 ,it is this3 ,that among all the differences which exist1 the only ones that interest us strongly are those we do not take for granted4 ,we are not a bit elated that our friend should have two hands and the power of speech1 and should practise the matter-of-course human virtues2 and quite as little are we vexed that our dog goes on all fours and fails to understand our conversation4 ,expecting no more from the latter companion1 and no less from the former1 we get what we expect and are satisfied4 ,we never think of communing with the dog by discourse of philosophy1 or with the friend by head-scratching or the throwing of crusts to be snapped at4 ,but if either dog or friend fall above or below the expected standard1 they arouse the most lively emotion4 ,on our brother's vices or genius we never weary of descanting2 to his bipedism or his hairless skin we do not consecrate a thought4 ,what he says may transport us2 that he is able to speak at all leaves us stone cold4 ,the reason of all this is that his virtues and vices and utterances might1 compatibly with the current range of variation in our tribe1 be just the opposites of what they are1 while his zologically human attributes cannot possibly go astray4 ,there #beh is thus a zone of insecurity in human affairs in which all the dramatic interest lies2 the rest belongs to the dead machinery of the stage4 ,this is the formative zone1 the part not yet ingrained into the race's average1 not yet a typical1 hereditary1 and constant factor of the social community in which it occurs4 ,it is like the soft layer beneath the bark of the tree in which all the year's growth is going on4 ,life has abandoned the mighty trunk inside1 which stands inert and belongs almost to the inorganic world4 ,layer after layer of human perfection separates me from the central ,africans who pursued ,stanley with cries of meat1 meat6 ,this vast difference ought1 on ,mr4 ,allen's principles1 to rivet my attention far more than the petty one which obtains between two such birds of a feather as ,mr4 ,allen and myself4 ,yet while ,i never feel proud that the sight of a passer-by awakens in me no cannibalistic waterings of the mouth1 ,i am free to confess that ,i shall feel very proud if ,i do not publicly appear inferior to ,mr4 ,allen in the conduct of this momentous debate4 ,to me as a teacher the intellectual gap between my ablest and my dullest student counts for infinitely more than that between the latter and the amphioxus3 indeed1 ,i never thought of the latter chasm till this moment4 ,will ,mr4 ,allen seriously say that this is all human folly1 and tweedledum and tweedledee8 ,to a ,veddah's eyes the differences between two white literary men seem slight indeed1--same clothes1 same spectacles1 same harmless disposition1 same habit of scribbling on paper and poring over books1 etc4 ,just two white fellows1 the ,veddah will say1 with no perceptible difference4 ,but what a difference to the literary men themselves6 ,think1 ,mr4 ,allen1 of #bei confounding our philosophies together merely because both are printed in the same magazines and are indistinguishable to the eye of a ,veddah6 ,our flesh creeps at the thought4 ,but in judging of history ,mr4 ,allen deliberately prefers to place himself at the ,veddah's point of view1 and to see things en gros and out of focus1 rather than minutely4 ,it is quite true that there are things and differences enough to be seen either way4 ,but which are the humanly important ones1 those most worthy to arouse our interest1--the large distinctions or the small8 ,in the answer to this question lies the whole divergence of the hero-worshippers from the sociologists4 ,as ,i said at the outset1 it is merely a quarrel of emphasis2 and the only thing ,i can do is to state my personal reasons for the emphasis ,i prefer4 ,the zone of the individual differences1 and of the social 'twists' which by common confession they initiate1 is the zone of formative processes1 the dynamic belt of quivering uncertainty1 the line where past and future meet4 ,it is the theatre of all we do not take for granted1 the stage of the living drama of life2 and however narrow its scope1 it is roomy enough to lodge the whole range of human passions4 ,the sphere of the race's average1 on the contrary1 no matter how large it may be1 is a dead and stagnant thing1 an achieved possession1 from which all insecurity has vanished4 ,like the trunk of a tree1 it has been built up by successive concretions of successive active zones4 ,the moving present in which we live with its problems and passions1 its individual rivalries1 victories1 and defeats1 will soon pass over to the majority and leave its small deposit on this static mass1 to make room for fresh actors and a newer play4 #bfj ,and though it may be true1 as ,mr4 ,spencer predicts1 that each later zone shall fatally be narrower than its forerunners2 and that when the ultimate lady-like tea-table elysium of the ,data of ,ethics shall prevail1 such questions as the breaking of eggs at the large or the small end will span the whole scope of possible human warfare1--still even in this shrunken and enfeebled generation1 spatio aetatis defessa vetusto1 what eagerness there will be6 ,battles and defeats will occur1 the victors will be glorified and the vanquished dishonored just as in the brave days of yore1 the human heart still withdrawing itself from the much it has in safe possession1 and concentrating all its passion upon those evanescent possibilities of fact which still quiver in fate's scale4 ,and is not its instinct right8 ,do not we here grasp the race-differences in the making1 and catch the only glimpse it is allotted to us to attain of the working units themselves1 of whose differentiating action the race-gaps form but the stagnant sum8 ,what strange inversion of scientific procedure does ,mr4 ,allen practise when he teaches us to neglect elements and attend only to aggregate resultants8 ,on the contrary1 simply because the active ring1 whatever its bulk1 is elementary1 ,i hold that the study of its conditions 7be these never so 'proximate'7 is the highest of topics for the social philosopher4 ,if individual variations determine its ups and downs and hair-breadth escapes and twists and turns1 as ,mr4 ,allen and ,mr4 ,fiske both admit1 ,heaven forbid us from tabooing the study of these in favor of the average6 ,on the contrary1 let us emphasize these1 and the importance of these2 and in picking out from history our heroes1 and communing with their #bfa kindred spirits1--in imagining as strongly as possible what differences their individualities brought about in this world1 while its surface was still plastic in their hands1 and what whilom feasibilities they made impossible1--each one of us may best fortify and inspire what creative energy may lie in his own soul4#a ,this is the lasting justification of hero-worship1 and the pooh-poohing of it by 'sociologists' is the ever-lasting excuse for popular indifference to their general laws and averages4 ,the difference between an ,america rescued by a ,washington or by a ',jenkins' may1 as ,mr4 ,allen says1 be 'little1' but it is1 in the words of my carpenter friend1 'important4' ,some organizing genius must in the nature of things have emerged from the ,french ,revolution2 but what ,frenchman will affirm it to have been an accident of no consequence that he should have had the supernumerary idiosyncrasies of a ,bonaparte8 ,what animal1 domestic or wild1 will call it a matter of no moment that scarce a word of sympathy with brutes should have survived from the teachings of ,jesus of ,nazareth8 ,the preferences of sentient creatures are what create the importance of topics4 ,they are the absolute and ultimate law-giver here4 ,and ,i for my part cannot but consider the talk of the contemporary sociological school about averages and general laws and predetermined tendencies1 with its obligatory undervaluing of the importance of individual #bfb differences1 as the most pernicious and immoral of fatalisms4 ,suppose there is a social equilibrium fated to be1 whose is it to be1--that of your preference1 or mine8 ,there lies the question of questions1 and it is one which no study of averages can decide4 #a ,m4 ,g4 ,tarde's book 7itself a work of genius71 ,les ,lois de l',imitation1 tude ,sociologique 7#bme dition1 ,paris1 ,alcan1 #ahie71 is the best possible commentary on this text1--'invention' on the one hand1 and 'imitation' on the other1 being for this author the two sole factors of social change4 #bfc ,,on ,,some ,,hegelisms4#a ,we are just now witnessing a singular phenomenon in ,british and ,american philosophy4 ,hegelism1 so defunct on its native soil that ,i believe but a single youthful disciple of the school is to be counted among the privat-docenten and younger professors of ,germany1 and whose older champions are all passing off the stage1 has found among us so zealous and able a set of propagandists that to-day it may really be reckoned one of the most powerful influences of the time in the higher walks of thought4 ,and there is no doubt that1 as a movement of reaction against the traditional ,british empiricism1 the hegelian influence represents expansion and freedom1 and is doing service of a certain kind4 ,such service1 however1 ought not to make us blindly indulgent4 ,hegel's philosophy mingles mountain-loads of corruption with its scanty merits1 and must1 now that it has become quasi-official1 make ready to defend itself as well as to attack others4 ,it is with no hope of converting independent thinkers1 but rather with the sole aspiration of showing some chance youthful disciple that there is another point of view in philosophy that ,i fire this skirmisher's shot1 which may1 ,i hope1 soon be followed by somebody else's heavier musketry4 #bfd ,the point of view ,i have in mind will become clearer if ,i begin with a few preparatory remarks on the motives and difficulties of philosophizing in general4 ,to show that the real is identical with the ideal may roughly be set down as the mainspring of philosophic activity4 ,the atomic and mechanical conception of the world is as ideal from the point of view of some of our faculties as the teleological one is from the point of view of others4 ,in the realm of every ideal we can begin anywhere and roam over the field1 each term passing us to its neighbor1 each member calling for the next1 and our reason rejoicing in its glad activity4 ,where the parts of a conception seem thus to belong together by inward kinship1 where the whole is defined in a way congruous with our powers of reaction1 to see is to approve and to understand4 ,much of the real seems at the first blush to follow a different law4 ,the parts seem1 as ,hegel has said1 to be shot out of a pistol at us4 ,each asserts itself as a simple brute fact1 uncalled for by the rest1 which1 so far as we can see1 might even make a better system without it4 ,arbitrary1 foreign1 jolting1 discontinuous--are the adjectives by which we are tempted to describe it4 ,and yet from out the bosom of it a partial ideality constantly arises which keeps alive our aspiration that the whole may some day be construed in ideal form4 ,not only do the materials lend themselves under certain circumstances to aesthetic manipulation1 but underlying their worst disjointedness are three great continua in which for each of us reason's ideal is actually reached4 ,i mean the continua of memory or personal consciousness1 of time and of space4 ,in #bfe these great matrices of all we know1 we are absolutely at home4 ,the things we meet are many1 and yet are one2 each is itself1 and yet all belong together2 continuity reigns1 yet individuality is not lost4 ,consider1 for example1 space4 ,it is a unit4 ,no force can in any way break1 wound1 or tear it4 ,it has no joints between which you can pass your amputating knife1 for it penetrates the knife and is not split1 ,try to make a hole in space by annihilating an inch of it4 ,to make a hole you must drive something else through4 ,but what can you drive through space except what is itself spatial8 ,but notwithstanding it is this very paragon of unity1 space in its parts contains an infinite variety1 and the unity and the variety do not contradict each other1 for they obtain in different respects4 ,the one is the whole1 the many are the parts4 ,each part is one again1 but only one fraction2 and part lies beside part in absolute nextness1 the very picture of peace and non-contradiction4 ,it is true that the space between two points both unites and divides them1 just as the bar of a dumb-bell both unites and divides the two balls4 ,but the union and the division are not secundum idem3 it divides them by keeping them out of the space between1 it unites them by keeping them out of the space beyond2 so the double function presents no inconsistency4 ,self-contradiction in space could only ensue if one part tried to oust another from its position2 but the notion of such an absurdity vanishes in the framing1 and cannot stay to vex the mind4#b ,beyond the parts we see or think at any #bff given time extend further parts2 but the beyond is homogeneous with what is embraced1 and follows the same law2 so that no surprises1 no foreignness1 can ever emerge from space's womb4 ,thus with space our intelligence is absolutely intimate2 it is rationality and transparency incarnate4 ,the same may be said of the ego and of time4 ,but if for simplicity's sake we ignore them1 we may truly say that when we desiderate rational knowledge of the world the standard set by our knowledge of space is what governs our desire4#c ,cannot the breaks1 the jolts1 the margin of foreignness1 be exorcised from other things and leave them unitary like the space they fill8 ,could this be done1 the philosophic kingdom of heaven would be at hand4 ,but the moment we turn to the material qualities #bfg of being1 we find the continuity ruptured on every side4 ,a fearful jolting begins4 ,even if we simplify the world by reducing it to its mechanical bare poles1--atoms and their motions1--the discontinuity is bad enough4 ,the laws of clash1 the effects of distance upon attraction and repulsion1 all seem arbitrary collocations of data4 ,the atoms themselves are so many independent facts1 the existence of any one of which in no wise seems to involve the existence of the rest4 ,we have not banished discontinuity1 we have only made it finer-grained4 ,and to get even that degree of rationality into the universe we have had to butcher a great part of its contents4 ,the secondary qualities we stripped off from the reality and swept into the dust-bin labelled 'subjective illusion1' still as such are facts1 and must themselves be rationalized in some way4 ,but when we deal with facts believed to be purely subjective1 we are farther than ever from the goal4 ,we have not now the refuge of distinguishing between the 'reality' and its appearances4 ,facts of thought being the only facts1 differences of thought become the only differences1 and identities of thought the only identities there are4 ,two thoughts that seem different are different to all eternity4 ,we can no longer speak of heat and light being reconciled in any tertium quid like wave-motion4 ,for motion is motion1 and light is light1 and heat heat forever1 and their discontinuity is as absolute as their existence4 ,together with the other attributes and things we conceive1 they make up ,plato's realm of immutable ideas4 ,neither per se calls for the other1 hatches it out1 is its 'truth1' creates it1 or has any sort of inward community with it except that of being comparable #bfh in an ego and found more or less differing1 or more or less resembling1 as the case may be4 ,the world of qualities is a world of things almost wholly discontinuous inter se4 ,each only says1 ,i am that ,i am1 and each says it on its own account and with absolute monotony4 ,the continuities of which they partake1 in ,plato's phrase1 the ego1 space1 and time1 are for most of them the only grounds of union they possess4 ,it might seem as if in the mere 'partaking' there lay a contradiction of the discontinuity4 ,if the white must partake of space1 the heat of time1 and so forth1--do not whiteness and space1 heat and time1 mutually call for or help to create each other8 ,yes2 a few such priori couplings must be admitted4 ,they are the axioms3 no feeling except as occupying some space and time1 or as a moment in some ego2 no motion but of something moved2 no thought but of an object2 no time without a previous time1--and the like4 ,but they are limited in number1 and they obtain only between excessively broad genera of concepts1 and leave quite undetermined what the specifications of those genera shall be4 ,what feeling shall fill this time1 what substance execute this motion1 what qualities combine in this being1 are as much unanswered questions as if the metaphysical axioms never existed at all4 ,the existence of such syntheses as they are does then but slightly mitigate the jolt1 jolt1 jolt we get when we pass over the facts of the world4 ,everywhere indeterminate variables1 subject only to these few vague enveloping laws1 independent in all besides4--such seems the truth4 ,in yet another way1 too1 ideal and real are so far #bfi apart that their conjunction seems quite hopeless4 ,to eat our cake and have it1 to lose our soul and save it1 to enjoy the physical privileges of selfishness and the moral luxury of altruism at the same time1 would be the ideal4 ,but the real offers us these terms in the shape of mutually exclusive alternatives of which only one can be true at once2 so that we must choose1 and in choosing murder one possibility4 ,the wrench is absolute3 ,either--or6 ,just as whenever ,i bet a hundred dollars on an event1 there comes an instant when ,i am a hundred dollars richer or poorer without any intermediate degrees passed over2 just as my wavering between a journey to ,portland or to ,new ,york does not carry me from ,cambridge in a resultant direction in which both motions are compounded1 say to ,albany1 but at a given moment results in the conjunction of reality in all its fulness for one alternative and impossibility in all its fulness for the other1--so the bachelor joys are utterly lost from the face of being for the married man1 who must henceforward find his account in something that is not them but is good enough to make him forget them2 so the careless and irresponsible living in the sunshine1 the 'unbuttoning after supper and sleeping upon benches in the afternoon1' are stars that have set upon the path of him who in good earnest makes himself a moralist4 ,the transitions are abrupt1 absolute1 truly shot out of a pistol2 for while many possibilities are called1 the few that are chosen are chosen in all their sudden completeness4 ,must we then think that the world that fills space and time can yield us no acquaintance of that high and perfect type yielded by empty space and time themselves8 ,is what unity there is in the world #bgj mainly derived from the fact that the world is in space and time and 'partakes' of them8 ,can no vision of it forestall the facts of it1 or know from some fractions the others before the others have arrived8 ,are there real logically indeterminate possibilities which forbid there being any equivalent for the happening of it all but the happening itself8 ,can we gain no anticipatory assurance that what is to come will have no strangeness8 ,is there no substitute1 in short1 for life but the living itself in all its long-drawn weary length and breadth and thickness8 ,in the negative reply to all these questions1 a modest common-sense finds no difficulty in acquiescing4 ,to such a way of thinking the notion of 'partaking' has a deep and real significance4 ,whoso partakes of a thing enjoys his share1 and comes into contact with the thing and its other partakers4 ,but he claims no more4 ,his share in no wise negates the thing or their share2 nor does it preclude his possession of reserved and private powers with which they have nothing to do1 and which are not all absorbed in the mere function of sharing4 ,why may not the world be a sort of republican banquet of this sort1 where all the qualities of being respect one another's personal sacredness1 yet sit at the common table of space and time8 ,to me this view seems deeply probable4 ,things cohere1 but the act of cohesion itself implies but few conditions1 and leaves the rest of their qualifications indeterminate4 ,as the first three notes of a tune comport many endings1 all melodious1 but the tune is not named till a particular ending has actually come1--so the parts actually known of the universe may comport many ideally possible complements4 ,but as #bga the facts are not the complements1 so the knowledge of the one is not the knowledge of the other in anything but the few necessary elements of which all must partake in order to be together at all4 ,why1 if one act of knowledge could from one point take in the total perspective1 with all mere possibilities abolished1 should there ever have been anything more than that act8 ,why duplicate it by the tedious unrolling1 inch by inch1 of the foredone reality8 ,no answer seems possible4 ,on the other hand1 if we stipulate only a partial community of partially independent powers1 we see perfectly why no one part controls the whole view1 but each detail must come and be actually given1 before1 in any special sense1 it can be said to be determined at all4 ,this is the moral view1 the view that gives to other powers the same freedom it would have itself1--not the ridiculous 'freedom to do right1' which in my mouth can only mean the freedom to do as ,i think right1 but the freedom to do as they think right1 or wrong either4 ,after all1 what accounts do the nether-most bounds of the universe owe to me8 ,by what insatiate conceit and lust of intellectual despotism do ,i arrogate the right to know their secrets1 and from my philosophic throne to play the only airs they shall march to1 as if ,i were the ,lord's anointed8 ,is not my knowing them at all a gift and not a right8 ,and shall it be given before they are given8 ,data6 gifts6 something to be thankful for6 ,it is a gift that we can approach things at all1 and1 by means of the time and space of which our minds and they partake1 alter our actions so as to meet them4 ,there are 'bounds of ord'nance' set for all things1 where they must pause or rue it4 ',facts' are the bounds of human knowledge1 set for it1 not by it4 #bgb ,now1 to a mind like ,hegel's such pusillanimous twaddle sounds simply loathsome4 ,bounds that we can't overpass6 ,data6 facts that say1 ,hands off1 till we are given6 possibilities we can't control6 a banquet of which we merely share6 ,heavens1 this is intolerable2 such a world is no world for a philosopher to have to do with4 ,he must have all or nothing4 ,if the world cannot be rational in my sense1 in the sense of unconditional surrender1 ,i refuse to grant that it is rational at all4 ,it is pure incoherence1 a chaos1 a nulliverse1 to whose haphazard sway ,i will not truckle4 ,but1 no6 this is not the world4 ,the world is philosophy's own1--a single block1 of which1 if she once get her teeth on any part1 the whole shall inevitably become her prey and feed her all-devouring theoretic maw4 ,naught shall be but the necessities she creates and impossibilities2 freedom shall mean freedom to obey her will1 ideal and actual shall be one3 she1 and ,i as her champion1 will be satisfied on no lower terms4 ,the insolence of sway1 the hubris on which gods take vengeance1 is in temporal and spiritual matters usually admitted to be a vice4 ,a ,bonaparte and a ,philip ,,ii4 are called monsters4 ,but when an intellect is found insatiate enough to declare that all existence must bend the knee to its requirements1 we do not call its owner a monster1 but a philosophic prophet4 ,may not this be all wrong8 ,is there any one of our functions exempted from the common lot of liability to excess8 ,and where everything else must be contented with its part in the universe1 shall the theorizing faculty ride rough-shod over the whole8 ,i confess ,i can see no priori reason for the exception4 ,he who claims it must be judged by the #bgc consequences of his acts1 and by them alone4 ,let ,hegel then confront the universe with his claim1 and see how he can make the two match4 ,the universe absolutely refuses to let him travel without jolt4 ,time1 space1 and his ego are continuous2 so are degrees of heat1 shades of light and color1 and a few other serial things2 so too do potatoes call for salt1 and cranberries for sugar1 in the taste of one who knows what salt and sugar are4 ,but on the whole there is nought to soften the shock of surprise to his intelligence1 as it passes from one quality of being to another4 ,light is not heat1 heat is not light2 and to him who holds the one the other is not given till it give itself4 ,real being comes moreover and goes from any concept at its own sweet will1 with no permission asked of the conceiver4 ,in despair must ,hegel lift vain hands of imprecation2 and since he will take nothing but the whole1 he must throw away even the part he might retain1 and call the nature of things an absolute muddle and incoherence4 ,but1 hark6 ,what wondrous strain is this that steals upon his ear8 ,incoherence itself1 may it not be the very sort of coherence ,i require8 ,muddle6 is it anything but a peculiar sort of transparency8 ,is not jolt passage8 ,is friction other than a kind of lubrication8 ,is not a chasm a filling8--a queer kind of filling1 but a filling still4 ,why seek for a glue to hold things together when their very falling apart is the only glue you need8 ,let all that negation which seemed to disintegrate the universe be the mortar that combines it1 and the problem stands solved4 ,the paradoxical character of the notion could not fail to please a mind monstrous even in its native #bgd ,germany1 where mental excess is endemic4 ,richard1 for a moment brought to bay1 is himself again4 ,he vaults into the saddle1 and from that time his career is that of a philosophic desperado1--one series of outrages upon the chastity of thought4 ,and can we not ourselves sympathize with his mood in some degree8 ,the old receipts of squeezing the thistle and taking the bull by the horns have many applications4 ,an evil frankly accepted loses half its sting and all its terror4 ,the ,stoics had their cheap and easy way of dealing with evil4 ,call your woes goods1 they said2 refuse to call your lost blessings by that name1--and you are happy4 ,so of the unintelligibilities3 call them means of intelligibility1 and what further do you require8 ,there is even a more legitimate excuse than that4 ,in the exceedingness of the facts of life over our formulas lies a standing temptation at certain times to give up trying to say anything adequate about them1 and to take refuge in wild and whirling words which but confess our impotence before their ineffability4 ,thus ,baron ,bunsen writes to his wife3 ,nothing is near but the far2 nothing true but the highest2 nothing credible but the inconceivable2 nothing so real as the impossible2 nothing clear but the deepest2 nothing so visible as the invisible2 and no life is there but through death4 ,of these ecstatic moments the credo quia impossibile is the classical expression4 ,hegel's originality lies in his making their mood permanent and sacramental1 and authorized to supersede all others1--not as a mystical bath and refuge for feeling when tired reason sickens of her intellectual responsibilities 7thank ,heaven6 that bath is always ready71 but as the very form of intellectual responsibility itself4 #bge ,and now after this long introduction1 let me trace some of ,hegel's ways of applying his discovery4 ,his system resembles a mouse-trap1 in which if you once pass the door you may be lost forever4 ,safety lies in not entering4 ,hegelians have anointed1 so to speak1 the entrance with various considerations which1 stated in an abstract form1 are so plausible as to slide us unresistingly and almost unwittingly through the fatal arch4 ,it is not necessary to drink the ocean to know that it is salt2 nor need a critic dissect a whole system after proving that its premises are rotten4 ,i shall accordingly confine myself to a few of the points that captivate beginners most2 and assume that if they break down1 so must the system which they prop4 ,first of all1 ,hegel has to do utterly away with the sharing and partaking business he so much loathes4 ,he will not call contradiction the glue in one place and identity in another2 that is too half-hearted4 ,contradiction must be a glue universal1 and must derive its credit from being shown to be latently involved in cases that we hitherto supposed to embody pure continuity4 ,thus1 the relations of an ego with its objects1 of one time with another time1 of one place with another place1 of a cause with its effect1 of a thing with its properties1 and especially of parts with wholes1 must be shown to involve contradiction4 ,contradiction1 shown to lurk in the very heart of coherence and continuity1 cannot after that be held to defeat them1 and must be taken as the universal solvent1--or1 rather1 there is no longer any need of a solvent4 ,to 'dissolve' things in identity was the dream of earlier cruder schools4 ,hegel will show that their very difference is their identity1 and that #bgf in the act of detachment the detachment is undone1 and they fall into each other's arms4 ,now1 at the very outset it seems rather odd that a philosopher who pretends that the world is absolutely rational1 or in other words that it can be completely understood1 should fall back on a principle 7the identity of contradictories7 which utterly defies understanding1 and obliges him in fact to use the word 'understanding1' whenever it occurs in his pages1 as a term of contempt4 ,take the case of space we used above4 ,the common man who looks at space believes there is nothing in it to be acquainted with beyond what he sees2 no hidden machinery1 no secrets1 nothing but the parts as they lie side by side and make the static whole4 ,his intellect is satisfied with accepting space as an ultimate genus of the given4 ,but ,hegel cries to him3 ,dupe6 dost thou not see it to be one nest of incompatibilities8 ,do not the unity of its wholeness and the diversity of its parts stand in patent contradiction8 ,does it not both unite and divide things2 and but for this strange and irreconcilable activity1 would it be at all8 ,the hidden dynamism of self-contradiction is what incessantly produces the static appearance by which your sense is fooled4 ,but if the man ask how self-contradiction can do all this1 and how its dynamism may be seen to work1 ,hegel can only reply by showing him the space itself and saying3 ,lo1 thus4 ,in other words1 instead of the principle of explanation being more intelligible than the thing to be explained1 it is absolutely unintelligible if taken by itself1 and must appeal to its pretended product to prove its existence4 ,surely1 such a system of explaining notum per ignotum1 of #bgg making the explicans borrow credentials from the explicand1 and of creating paradoxes and impossibilities where none were suspected1 is a strange candidate for the honor of being a complete rationalizer of the world4 ,the principle of the contradictoriness of identity and the identity of contradictories is the essence of the hegelian system4 ,but what probably washes this principle down most with beginners is the combination in which its author works it with another principle which is by no means characteristic of his system1 and which1 for want of a better name1 might be called the 'principle of totality4' ,this principle says that you cannot adequately know even a part until you know of what whole it forms a part4 ,as ,aristotle writes and ,hegel loves to quote1 an amputated hand is not even a hand4 ,and as ,tennyson says1-- ,little flower--but if ,i could understand ,what you are1 root and all1 and all in all1 ,i should know what ,god and man is4 ,obviously1 until we have taken in all the relations1 immediate or remote1 into which the thing actually enters or potentially may enter1 we do not know all about the thing4 ,and obviously for such an exhaustive acquaintance with the thing1 an acquaintance with every other thing1 actual and potential1 near and remote1 is needed2 so that it is quite fair to say that omniscience alone can completely know any one thing as it stands4 ,standing in a world of relations1 that world must be known before the thing is fully known4 ,this doctrine is of course an integral part of empiricism1 an integral part of common-sense4 ,since when could good men not apprehend the passing hour #bgh in the light of life's larger sweep1--not grow dispassionate the more they stretched their view8 ,did the 'law of sharing' so little legitimate their procedure that a law of identity of contradictories1 forsooth1 must be trumped up to give it scope8 ,out upon the idea6 ,hume's account of causation is a good illustration of the way in which empiricism may use the principle of totality4 ,we call something a cause2 but we at the same time deny its effect to be in any latent way contained in or substantially identical with it4 ,we thus cannot tell what its causality amounts to until its effect has actually supervened4 ,the effect1 then1 or something beyond the thing is what makes the thing to be so far as it is a cause4 ,humism thus says that its causality is something adventitious and not necessarily given when its other attributes are there4 ,generalizing this1 empiricism contends that we must everywhere distinguish between the intrinsic being of a thing and its relations1 and1 among these1 between those that are essential to our knowing it at all and those that may be called adventitious4 ,the thing as actually present in a given world is there with all its relations2 for it to be known as it there exists1 they must be known too1 and it and they form a single fact for any consciousness large enough to embrace that world as a unity4 ,but what constitutes this singleness of fact1 this unity8 ,empiricism says1 ,nothing but the relation-yielding matrix in which the several items of the world find themselves embedded1--time1 namely1 and space1 and the mind of the knower4 ,and it says that were some of the items quite different from what they are and others the same1 still1 for aught we can see1 an equally unitary world might be1 provided each #bgi item were an object for consciousness and occupied a determinate point in space and time4 ,all the adventitious relations would in such a world be changed1 along with the intrinsic natures and places of the beings between which they obtained2 but the 'principle of totality' in knowledge would in no wise be affected4 ,but ,hegelism dogmatically denies all this to be possible4 ,in the first place it says there are no intrinsic natures that may change2 in the second it says there are no adventitious relations4 ,when the relations of what we call a thing are told1 no caput mortuum of intrinsicality1 no 'nature1' is left4 ,the relations soak up all there is of the thing2 the 'items' of the world are but foci of relation with other foci of relation2 and all the relations are necessary4 ,the unity of the world has nothing to do with any 'matrix4' ,the matrix and the items1 each with all1 make a unity1 simply because each in truth is all the rest4 ,the proof lies in the hegelian principle of totality1 which demands that if any one part be posited alone all the others shall forthwith emanate from it and infallibly reproduce the whole4 ,in the modus operandi of the emanation comes in1 as ,i said1 that partnership of the principle of totality with that of the identity of contradictories which so recommends the latter to beginners in ,hegel's philosophy4 ,to posit one item alone is to deny the rest2 to deny them is to refer to them2 to refer to them is to begin1 at least1 to bring them on the scene2 and to begin is in the fulness of time to end4 ,if we call this a monism1 ,hegel is quick to cry1 ,not so6 ,to say simply that the one item is the rest #bhj of the universe is as false and one-sided as to say that it is simply itself4 ,it is both and neither2 and the only condition on which we gain the right to affirm that it is1 is that we fail not to keep affirming all the while that it is not1 as well4 ,thus the truth refuses to be expressed in any single act of judgment or sentence4 ,the world appears as a monism and a pluralism1 just as it appeared in our own introductory exposition4 ,but the trouble that keeps us and ,hegel from ever joining hands over this apparent formula of brotherhood is that we distinguish1 or try to distinguish1 the respects in which the world is one from those in which it is many1 while all such stable distinctions are what he most abominates4 ,the reader may decide which procedure helps his reason most4 ,for my own part1 the time-honored formula of empiricist pluralism1 that the world cannot be set down in any single proposition1 grows less instead of more intelligible when ,i add1 ,and yet the different propositions that express it are one6 ,the unity of the propositions is that of the mind that harbors them4 ,any one who insists that their diversity is in any way itself their unity1 can only do so because he loves obscurity and mystification for their own pure sakes4 ,where you meet with a contradiction among realities1 ,herbart used to say1 it shows you have failed to make a real distinction4 ,hegel's sovereign method of going to work and saving all possible contradictions1 lies in pertinaciously refusing to distinguish4 ,he takes what is true of a term secundum quid1 treats it as true of the same term simpliciter1 and then1 of course1 applies it to the term secundum aliud4 ,a #bha good example of this is found in the first triad4 ,this triad shows that the mutability of the real world is due to the fact that being constantly negates itself2 that whatever is by the same act is not1 and gets undone and swept away2 and that thus the irremediable torrent of life about which so much rhetoric has been written has its roots in an ineluctable necessity which lies revealed to our logical reason4 ,this notion of a being which forever stumbles over its own feet1 and has to change in order to exist at all1 is a very picturesque symbol of the reality1 and is probably one of the points that make young readers feel as if a deep core of truth lay in the system4 ,but how is the reasoning done8 ,pure being is assumed1 without determinations1 being secundum quid4 ,in this respect it agrees with nothing4 ,therefore simpliciter it is nothing2 wherever we find it1 it is nothing2 crowned with complete determinations then1 or secundum aliud1 it is nothing still1 and hebt sich auf4 ,it is as if we said1 ,man without his clothes may be named 'the naked4' ,therefore man simpliciter is the naked2 and finally man with his hat1 shoes1 and overcoat on is the naked still4 ,of course we may in this instance or any other repeat that the conclusion is strictly true1 however comical it seems4 ,man within the clothes is naked1 just as he is without them4 ,man would never have invented the clothes had he not been naked4 ,the fact of his being clad at all does prove his essential nudity4 ,and so in general1--the form of any judgment1 being the addition of a predicate to a subject1 shows that the subject has been conceived without the predicate1 and thus by a strained metaphor may #bhb be called the predicate's negation4 ,well and good6 let the expression pass4 ,but we must notice this4 ,the judgment has now created a new subject1 the naked-clad1 and all propositions regarding this must be judged on their own merits2 for those true of the old subject1 'the naked1' are no longer true of this one4 ,for instance1 we cannot say because the naked pure and simple must not enter the drawing-room or is in danger of taking cold1 that the naked with his clothes on will also take cold or must stay in his bedroom4 ,hold to it eternally that the clad man is still naked if it amuse you1--'tis designated in the bond2 but the so-called contradiction is a sterile boon4 ,like ,shylock's pound of flesh1 it leads to no consequences4 ,it does not entitle you to one drop of his ,christian blood either in the way of catarrh1 social exclusion1 or what further results pure nakedness may involve4 ,in a version of the first step given by our foremost ,american ,hegelian1#d we find this playing with the necessary form of judgment4 ,pure being1 he says1 has no determinations4 ,but the having none is itself a determination4 ,wherefore pure being contradicts its own self1 and so on4 ,why not take heed to the meaning of what is said8 ,when we make the predication concerning pure being1 our meaning is merely the denial of all other determinations than the particular one we make4 ,the showman who advertised his elephant as 'larger than any elephant in the world except himself' must have been in an hegelian country where he was afraid that if he were less explicit the audience would dialectically proceed to say3 #bhc ,this elephant1 larger than any in the world1 involves a contradiction2 for he himself is in the world1 and so stands endowed with the virtue of being both larger and smaller than himself1--a perfect hegelian elephant1 whose immanent self-contradictoriness can only be removed in a higher synthesis4 ,show us the higher synthesis6 ,we don't care to see such a mere abstract creature as your elephant4 ,it may be 7and it was indeed suggested in antiquity7 that all things are of their own size by being both larger and smaller than themselves4 ,but in the case of this elephant the scrupulous showman nipped such philosophizing and all its inconvenient consequences in the bud1 by explicitly intimating that larger than any other elephant was all he meant4 ,hegel's quibble with this word other exemplifies the same fallacy4 ,all 'others1' as such1 are according to him identical4 ,that is1 'otherness1' which can only be predicated of a given thing ,a1 secundum quid 7as other than ,b1 etc471 is predicated simpliciter1 and made to identify the ,a in question with ,b1 which is other only secundum aliud1--namely other than ,a4 ,another maxim that ,hegelism is never tired of repeating is that to know a limit is already to be beyond it4 ,stone walls do not a prison make1 nor iron bars a cage4 ,the inmate of the penitentiary shows by his grumbling that he is still in the stage of abstraction and of separative thought4 ,the more keenly he thinks of the fun he might be having outside1 the more deeply he ought to feel that the walls identify him with it4 ,they set him beyond them secundum quid1 in imagination1 in longing1 in despair2 argal they take him there simpliciter and #bhd in every way1--in flesh1 in power1 in deed4 ,foolish convict1 to ignore his blessings6 ,another mode of stating his principle is this3 ,to know the finite as such1 is also to know the infinite4 ,expressed in this abstract shape1 the formula is as insignificant as it is unobjectionable4 ,we can cap every word with a negative particle1 and the word finished immediately suggests the word unfinished1 and we know the two words together4 ,but it is an entirely different thing to take the knowledge of a concrete case of ending1 and to say that it virtually makes us acquainted with other concrete facts in infinitum4 ,for1 in the first place1 the end may be an absolute one4 ,the matter of the universe1 for instance1 is according to all appearances in finite amount2 and if we knew that we had counted the last bit of it1 infinite knowledge in that respect1 so far from being given1 would be impossible4 ,with regard to space1 it is true that in drawing a bound we are aware of more4 ,but to treat this little fringe as the equal of infinite space is ridiculous4 ,it resembles infinite space secundum quid1 or in but one respect1--its spatial quality4 ,we believe it homogeneous with whatever spaces may remain2 but it would be fatuous to say1 because one dollar in my pocket is homogeneous with all the dollars in the country1 that to have it is to have them4 ,the further points of space are as numerically distinct from the fringe as the dollars from the dollar1 and not until we have actually intuited them can we be said to 'know' them simpliciter4 ,the hegelian reply is that the quality of space constitutes its only worth2 and that there is nothing true1 good1 or beautiful to be known #bhe in the spaces beyond which is not already known in the fringe4 ,this introduction of a eulogistic term into a mathematical question is original4 ,the 'true' and the 'false' infinite are about as appropriate distinctions in a discussion of cognition as the good and the naughty rain would be in a treatise on meteorology4 ,but when we grant that all the worth of the knowledge of distant spaces is due to the knowledge of what they may carry in them1 it then appears more than ever absurd to say that the knowledge of the fringe is an equivalent for the infinitude of the distant knowledge4 ,the distant spaces even simpliciter are not yet yielded to our thinking2 and if they were yielded simpliciter1 would not be yielded secundum aliud1 or in respect to their material filling out4 ,shylock's bond was an omnipotent instrument compared with this knowledge of the finite1 which remains the ignorance it always was1 till the infinite by its own act has piece by piece placed itself in our hands4 ,here ,hegelism cries out3 ,by the identity of the knowledges of infinite and finite ,i never meant that one could be a substitute for the other2 nor does true philosophy ever mean by identity capacity for substitution4 ,this sounds suspiciously like the good and the naughty infinite1 or rather like the mysteries of the ,trinity and the ,eucharist4 ,to the unsentimental mind there are but two sorts of identity1--total identity and partial identity4 ,where the identity is total1 the things can be substituted wholly for one another4 ,where substitution is impossible1 it must be that the identity is incomplete4 ,it is the duty of the student then to ascertain the exact quid1 secundum which it obtains1 as we have tried to do above4 ,even the ,catholic will tell you that when he believes in the #bhf identity of the wafer with ,christ's body1 he does not mean in all respects1--so that he might use it to exhibit muscular fibre1 or a cook make it smell like baked meat in the oven4 ,he means that in the one sole respect of nourishing his being in a certain way1 it is identical with and can be substituted for the very body of his ,redeemer4 ',the knowledge of opposites is one1' is one of the hegelian first principles1 of which the preceding are perhaps only derivatives4 ,here again ,hegelism takes 'knowledge' simpliciter1 and substituting it for knowledge in a particular respect1 avails itself of the confusion to cover other respects never originally implied4 ,when the knowledge of a thing is given us1 we no doubt think that the thing may or must have an opposite4 ,this postulate of something opposite we may call a 'knowledge of the opposite' if we like2 but it is a knowledge of it in only that one single respect1 that it is something opposite4 ,no number of opposites to a quality we have never directly experienced could ever lead us positively to infer what that quality is4 ,there is a jolt between the negation of them and the actual positing of it in its proper shape1 that twenty logics of ,hegel harnessed abreast cannot drive us smoothly over4 ,the use of the maxim ',all determination is negation' is the fattest and most full-blown application of the method of refusing to distinguish4 ,taken in its vague confusion1 it probably does more than anything else to produce the sort of flicker and dazzle which are the first mental conditions for the reception of ,hegel's system4 ,the word 'negation' taken simpliciter is treated as if it covered an indefinite number of #bhg secundums1 culminating in the very peculiar one of self-negation4 ,whence finally the conclusion is drawn that assertions are universally self-contradictory4 ,as this is an important matter1 it seems worth while to treat it a little minutely4 ,when ,i measure out a pint1 say of milk1 and so determine it1 what do ,i do8 ,i virtually make two assertions regarding it1--it is this pint2 it is not those other gallons4 ,one of these is an affirmation1 the other a negation4 ,both have a common subject2 but the predicates being mutually exclusive1 the two assertions lie beside each other in endless peace4 ,i may with propriety be said to make assertions more remote still1--assertions of which those other gallons are the subject4 ,as it is not they1 so are they not the pint which it is4 ,the determination this is the pint carries with it the negation1--those are not the pints4 ,here we have the same predicate2 but the subjects are exclusive of each other1 so there is again endless peace4 ,in both couples of propositions negation and affirmation are secundum aliud3 this is a2 this is n't not-a4 ,this kind of negation involved in determination cannot possibly be what ,hegel wants for his purposes4 ,the table is not the chair1 the fireplace is not the cupboard1--these are literal expressions of the law of identity and contradiction1 those principles of the abstracting and separating understanding for which ,hegel has so sovereign a contempt1 and which his logic is meant to supersede4 ,and accordingly ,hegelians pursue the subject further1 saying there is in every determination an element of real conflict4 ,do you not in determining the milk to be this pint exclude it forever from the chance of being those gallons1 frustrate it from #bhh expansion8 ,and so do you not equally exclude them from the being which it now maintains as its own8 ,assuredly if you had been hearing of a land flowing with milk and honey1 and had gone there with unlimited expectations of the rivers the milk would fill2 and if you found there was but this single pint in the whole country1--the determination of the pint would exclude another determination which your mind had previously made of the milk4 ,there would be a real conflict resulting in the victory of one side4 ,the rivers would be negated by the single pint being affirmed2 and as rivers and pint are affirmed of the same milk 7first as supposed and then as found71 the contradiction would be complete4 ,but it is a contradiction that can never by any chance occur in real nature or being4 ,it can only occur between a false representation of a being and the true idea of the being when actually cognized4 ,the first got into a place where it had no rights and had to be ousted4 ,but in rerum natur things do not get into one another's logical places4 ,the gallons first spoken of never say1 ,we are the pint2 the pint never says1 ,i am the gallons4 ,it never tries to expand2 and so there is no chance for anything to exclude or negate it4 ,it thus remains affirmed absolutely4 ,can it be believed in the teeth of these elementary truths that the principle determinatio negatio is held throughout ,hegel to imply an active contradiction1 conflict1 and exclusion8 ,do the horse-cars jingling outside negate me writing in this room8 ,do ,i1 reader1 negate you8 ,of course1 if ,i say1 ,reader1 we are two1 and therefore ,i am two1 ,i negate you1 for ,i am actually thrusting a part into the seat of the whole4 #bhi ,the orthodox logic expresses the fallacy by saying the we is taken by me distributively instead of collectively2 but as long as ,i do not make this blunder1 and am content with my part1 we all are safe4 ,in rerum natur1 parts remain parts4 ,can you imagine one position in space trying to get into the place of another position and having to be 'contradicted' by that other8 ,can you imagine your thought of an object trying to dispossess the real object from its being1 and so being negated by it8 ,the great1 the sacred law of partaking1 the noiseless step of continuity1 seems something that ,hegel cannot possibly understand4 ,all or nothing is his one idea4 ,for him each point of space1 of time1 each feeling in the ego1 each quality of being1 is clamoring1 ,i am the all1--there is nought else but me4 ,this clamor is its essence1 which has to be negated in another act which gives it its true determination4 ,what there is of affirmative in this determination is thus the mere residuum left from the negation by others of the negation it originally applied to them4 ,but why talk of residuum8 ,the ,kilkenny cats of fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their undevoured tails4 ,but the ,kilkenny cats of existence as it appears in the pages of ,hegel are all-devouring1 and leave no residuum4 ,such is the unexampled fury of their onslaught that they get clean out of themselves and into each other1 nay more1 pass right through each other1 and then return into themselves ready for another round1 as insatiate1 but as inconclusive1 as the one that went before4 ,if ,i characterized ,hegel's own mood as hubris1 the insolence of excess1 what shall ,i say of the mood he ascribes to being8 ,man makes the gods in his #bij image2 and ,hegel1 in daring to insult the spotless sphrosune of space and time1 the bound-respecters1 in branding as strife that law of sharing under whose sacred keeping1 like a strain of music1 like an odor of incense 7as ,emerson says71 the dance of the atoms goes forward still1 seems to me but to manifest his own deformity4 ,this leads me to animadvert on an erroneous inference which hegelian idealism makes from the form of the negative judgment4 ,every negation1 it says1 must be an intellectual act4 ,even the most naf realism will hardly pretend that the non-table as such exists in se after the same fashion as the table does4 ,but table and non-table1 since they are given to our thought together1 must be consubstantial4 ,try to make the position or affirmation of the table as simple as you can1 it is also the negation of the non-table2 and thus positive being itself seems after all but a function of intelligence1 like negation4 ,idealism is proved1 realism is unthinkable4 ,now ,i have not myself the least objection to idealism1--an hypothesis which voluminous considerations make plausible1 and whose difficulties may be cleared away any day by new discriminations or discoveries4 ,but ,i object to proving by these patent ready-made priori methods that which can only be the fruit of a wide and patient induction4 ,for the truth is that our affirmations and negations do not stand on the same footing at all1 and are anything but consubstantial4 ,an affirmation says something about an objective existence4 ,a negation says something about an affirmation1--namely1 that it is false4 ,there are no negative predicates or falsities in nature4 ,being makes no false hypotheses that have #bia to be contradicted4 ,the only denials she can be in any way construed to perform are denials of our errors4 ,this shows plainly enough that denial must be of something mental1 since the thing denied is always a fiction4 ,the table is not the chair supposes the speaker to have been playing with the false notion that it may have been the chair4 ,but affirmation may perfectly well be of something having no such necessary and constitutive relation to thought4 ,whether it really is of such a thing is for harder considerations to decide4 ,if idealism be true1 the great question that presents itself is whether its truth involve the necessity of an infinite1 unitary1 and omniscient consciousness1 or whether a republic of semi-detached consciousnesses will do1--consciousnesses united by a certain common fund of representations1 but each possessing a private store which the others do not share4 ,either hypothesis is to me conceivable4 ,but whether the egos be one or many1 the nextness of representations to one another within them is the principle of unification of the universe4 ,to be thus consciously next to some other representation is the condition to which each representation must submit1 under penalty of being excluded from this universe1 and like ,lord ,dundreary's bird 'flocking all alone1' and forming a separate universe by itself4 ,but this is only a condition of which the representations partake2 it leaves all their other determinations undecided4 ,to say1 because representation b cannot be in the same universe with a without being a's neighbor2 that therefore a possesses1 involves1 or necessitates b1 hide and hair1 flesh and fell1 all appurtenances and belongings1--is #bib only the silly hegelian all-or-nothing insatiateness once more4 ,hegel's own logic1 with all the senseless hocus-pocus of its triads1 utterly fails to prove his position4 ,the only evident compulsion which representations exert upon one another is compulsion to submit to the conditions of entrance into the same universe with them--the conditions of continuity1 of selfhood1 space1 and time--under penalty of being excluded4 ,but what this universe shall be is a matter of fact which we cannot decide till we know what representations have submitted to these its sole conditions4 ,the conditions themselves impose no further requirements4 ,in short1 the notion that real contingency and ambiguity may be features of the real world is a perfectly unimpeachable hypothesis4 ,only in such a world can moral judgments have a claim to be4 ,for the bad is that which takes the place of something else which possibly might have been where it now is1 and the better is that which absolutely might be where it absolutely is not4 ,in the universe of ,hegel--the absolute block whose parts have no loose play1 the pure plethora of necessary being with the oxygen of possibility all suffocated out of its lungs--there can be neither good nor bad1 but one dead level of mere fate4 ,but ,i have tired the reader out4 ,the worst of criticising ,hegel is that the very arguments we use against him give forth strange and hollow sounds that make them seem almost as fantastic as the errors to which they are addressed4 ,the sense of a universal mirage1 of a ghostly unreality1 steals over us1 which is the very moonlit atmosphere of ,hegelism itself4 ,what wonder then if1 instead of #bic converting1 our words do but rejoice and delight1 those already baptized in the faith of confusion8 ,to their charmed senses we all seem children of ,hegel together1 only some of us have not the wit to know our own father4 ,just as ,romanists are sure to inform us that our reasons against ,papal ,christianity unconsciously breathe the purest spirit of ,catholicism1 so ,hegelism benignantly smiles at our exertions1 and murmurs1 ,if the red slayer think he slays2 ,when me they fly1 ,i am the wings1 etc4 ,to forefend this unwelcome adoption1 let me recapitulate in a few propositions the reasons why ,i am not an hegelian4 #a4 ,we cannot eat our cake and have it2 that is1 the only real contradiction there can be between thoughts is where one is true1 the other false4 ,when this happens1 one must go forever2 nor is there any 'higher synthesis' in which both can wholly revive4 #b4 ,a chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense2 that is1 no mere negation can be the instrument of a positive advance in thought4 #c4 ,the continua1 time1 space1 and the ego1 are bridges1 because they are without chasm4 #d4 ,but they bridge over the chasms between represented qualities only partially4 #e4 ,this partial bridging1 however1 makes the qualities share in a common world4 #f4 ,the other characteristics of the qualities are separate facts4 #g4 ,but the same quality appears in many times and spaces4 ,generic sameness of the quality wherever found becomes thus a further means by which the jolts are reduced4 #h4 ,what between different qualities jolts remain4 #bid ,each1 as far as the other is concerned1 is an absolutely separate and contingent being4 #i4 ,the moral judgment may lead us to postulate as irreducible the contingencies of the world4 #aj4 ,elements mutually contingent are not in conflict so long as they partake of the continua of time1 space1 etc41--partaking being the exact opposite of strife4 ,they conflict only when1 as mutually exclusive possibilities1 they strive to possess themselves of the same parts of time1 space1 and ego4 #aa4 ,that there are such real conflicts1 irreducible to any intelligence1 and giving rise to an excess of possibility over actuality1 is an hypothesis1 but a credible one4 ,no philosophy should pretend to be anything more4 ,,note4--,since the preceding article was written1 some observations on the effects of nitrous-oxide-gas-intoxication which ,i was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called ,the ,anaesthetic ,revelation and the ,gist of ,philosophy1 by ,benjamin ,paul ,blood1 ,amsterdam1 ,n4 ,y41 #ahgd1 have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of ,hegel's philosophy4 ,i strongly urge others to repeat the experiment1 which with pure gas is short and harmless enough4 ,the effects will of course vary with the individual4 ,just as they vary in the same individual from time to time2 but it is probable that in the former case1 as in the latter1 a generic resemblance will obtain4 ,with me1 as with every other person of whom ,i have heard1 the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination4 ,truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence4 ,the mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel2 only as sobriety returns1 the feeling of insight fades1 and one is left staring vacantly at a few disjointed words and phrases1 as one stares at a cadaverous-looking snow-peak from which the sunset glow has just fled1 or at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand4 #bie ,the immense emotional sense of reconciliation which characterizes the 'maudlin' stage of alcoholic drunkenness1--a stage which seems silly to lookers-on1 but the subjective rapture of which probably constitutes a chief part of the temptation to the vice1--is well known4 ,the centre and periphery of things seem to come together4 ,the ego and its objects1 the meum and the tuum1 are one4 ,now this1 only a thousandfold enhanced1 was the effect upon me of the gas3 and its first result was to make peal through me with unutterable power the conviction that ,hegelism was true after all1 and that the deepest convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong4 ,whatever idea or representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical forceps1 and served to illustrate the same truth2 and that truth was that every opposition1 among whatsoever things1 vanishes in a higher unity in which it is based2 that all contradictions1 so-called1 are but differences2 that all differences are of degree2 that all degrees are of a common kind2 that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being2 and that we are literally in the midst of an infinite1 to perceive the existence of which is the utmost we can attain4 ,without the same as a basis1 how could strife occur8 ,strife presupposes something to be striven about2 and in this common topic1 the same for both parties1 the differences merge4 ,from the hardest contradiction to the tenderest diversity of verbiage differences evaporate2 yes and no agree at least in being assertions2 a denial of a statement is but another mode of stating the same1 contradiction can only occur of the same thing1--all opinions are thus synonyms1 are synonymous1 are the same4 ,but the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two2 and here again difference and no-difference merge in one4 ,it is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience4 ,i have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication1 which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel1 but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality4 ,god and devil1 good and evil1 life and death1 ,i and thou1 sober and drunk1 matter and form1 black and white1 quantity and quality1 shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror1 vomiting and swallowing1 inspiration and expiration1 fate and reason1 great and small1 extent and intent1 joke and earnest1 tragic and comic1 and fifty other #bif contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way4 ,the mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected1 and which1 perennial and eternal1 was the nunc stans of life4 ,the thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition1 as 'nothing--but1' 'no more--than1' 'only--if1' etc41 produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture4 ,and at last1 when definite ideas to work on came slowly1 the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself1 differently emphasized1 or shorn of its initial letter4 ,let me transcribe a few sentences3 ,what's mistake but a kind of take8 ,what's nausea but a kind of -ausea8 ,sober1 drunk1 -unk1 astonishment4 ,everything can become the subject of criticism--how criticise without something to criticise8 ,agreement--disagreement66 ,emotion--motion666 ,die away from1 from1 die away 7without the from74 ,reconciliation of opposites2 sober1 drunk1 all the same6 ,good and evil reconciled in a laugh6 ,it escapes1 it escapes6 ,but---- ,what escapes1 ,,what escapes8 ,emphasis1 ,e,mphasis2 there must be some emphasis in order for there to be a phasis4 ,no verbiage can give it1 because the verbiage is other4 ,incoherent1 coherent--same4 ,and it fades6 ,and it's infinite6 ,,and it's infinite6 ,if it was n't going1 why should you hold on to it8 ,don't you see the difference1 don't you see the identity8 ,constantly opposites united6 ,the same me telling you to write and not to write6 ,extreme--extreme1 extreme6 ,within the extensity that 'extreme' contains is contained the 'extreme' of intensity4 ,something1 and other than that thing6 ,intoxication1 and otherness than intoxication4 ,every attempt at betterment1--every attempt at otherment1--is a----4 ,it fades forever and forever as we move4 #big ,there is a reconciliation6 ,reconciliation--econciliation6 ,by ,god1 how that hurts6 ,by ,god1 how it does n't hurt6 ,reconciliation of two extremes4 ,by ,george1 nothing but othing6 ,that sounds like nonsense1 but it is pure onsense6 ,thought deeper than speech----6 ,medical school2 divinity school1 school6 ,,school6 ,oh my ,god1 oh ,god1 oh ,god6 ,the most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this3-- ,there are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference4 ,this phrase has the true ,hegelian ring1 being in fact a regular sich als sich auf sich selbst beziehende ,negativitt4 ,and true ,hegelians will berhaupt be able to read between the lines and feel1 at any rate1 what possible ecstasies of cognitive emotion might have bathed these tattered fragments of thought when they were alive4 ,but for the assurance of a certain amount of respect from them1 ,i should hardly have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general4 ,but now comes the reverse of the medal4 ,what is the principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances8 ,although ,i did not see it at first1 ,i soon found that it was in each case nothing but the abstract genus of which the conflicting terms were opposite species4 ,in other words1 although the flood of ontologic emotion was ,hegelian through and through1 the ground for it was nothing but the world-old principle that things are the same only so far and no farther than they are the same1 or partake of a common nature1--the principle that ,hegel most tramples under foot4 ,at the same time the rapture of beholding a process that was infinite1 changed 7as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind7 into the sense of a dreadful and ineluctable fate1 with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent4 ,this instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is1 perhaps1 the strongest emotion ,i have ever experienced4 ,i got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea2 and ,i cannot but regard it as the normal and inevitable outcome of the #bih intoxication1 if sufficiently prolonged4 ,a pessimistic fatalism1 depth within depth of impotence and indifference1 reason and silliness united1 not in a higher synthesis1 but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one1--this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright4 ,even when the process stops short of this ultimatum1 the reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the clue4 ,something 'fades1' 'escapes2' and the feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment1 puzzle1 confusion1 astonishment4 ,i know no more singular sensation than this intense bewilderment1 with nothing particular left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself4 ,it seems1 indeed1 a causa sui1 or 'spirit become its own object4' ,my conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world1 the law of sharing1 of which ,i have said so much1 may1 when perceived1 engender a very powerful emotion1 that ,hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that its gratification became his supreme end1 and made him tolerably unscrupulous as to the means he employed2 that indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which makes infinity and continuity to be its essence1 and that pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental subjectivity of the moment2 finally1 that the identification of contradictories1 so far from being the self-developing process which ,hegel supposes1 is really a self-consuming process1 passing from the less to the more abstract1 and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness1 or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity4 #a ,reprinted from ,mind1 ,april1 #ahhb4 #b ,the seeming contradiction between the infinitude of space and the fact that it is all finished and given and there1 can be got over in more than one way4 ,the simplest way is by idealism1 which distinguishes between space as actual and space as potential4 ,for idealism1 space only exists so far as it is represented2 but all actually represented spaces are finite2 it is only possibly representable spaces that are infinite4 #c ,not only for simplicity's sake do we select space as the paragon of a rationalizing continuum4 ,space determines the relations of the items that enter it in a far more intricate way than does time2 in a far more fixed way than does the ego4 ,by this last clause ,i mean that if things are in space at all1 they must conform to geometry2 while the being in an ego at all need not make them conform to logic or any other manner of rationality4 ,under the sheltering wings of a self the matter of unreason can lodge itself as safely as any other kind of content4 ,one cannot but respect the devoutness of the ego-worship of some of our ,english-writing ,hegelians4 ,but at the same time one cannot help fearing lest the monotonous contemplation of so barren a principle as that of the pure formal self 7which1 be it never so essential a condition of the existence of a world of organized experience at all1 must notwithstanding take its own character from1 not give the character to1 the separate empirical data over which its mantle is cast71 one cannot but fear1 ,i say1 lest the religion of the transcendental ego should1 like all religions of the 'one thing needful1' end by sterilizing and occluding the minds of its believers4 #d ,journal of ,speculative ,philosophy1 viii4 #cg4 #bii ,,what ,,psychical ,,research ,,has ,,accomplished4#a ,the great field for new discoveries1 said a scientific friend to me the other day1 is always the unclassified residuum4 ,round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations1 of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with1 which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to4 ,the ideal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth4 ,the charm of most sciences to their more passive disciples consists in their appearing1 in fact1 to wear just this ideal form4 ,each one of our various ologies seems to offer a definite head of classification for every possible phenomenon of the sort which it professes to cover2 and so far from free is most men's fancy1 that1 when a consistent and organized scheme of this sort has once been comprehended and assimilated1 a different scheme is unimaginable4 ,no alternative1 whether to whole or parts1 can any longer be conceived as possible4 ,phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical #cjj absurdities1 and must be held untrue4 ,when1 moreover1 as so often happens1 the reports of them are vague and indirect2 when they come as mere marvels and oddities rather than as things of serious moment1--one neglects or denies them with the best of scientific consciences4 ,only the born geniuses let themselves be worried and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions1 and get no peace till they are brought within the fold4 ,your ,galileos1 ,galvanis1 ,fresnels1 ,purkinjes1 and ,darwins are always getting confounded and troubled by insignificant things4 ,any one will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena4 ,and when the science is renewed1 its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules4 ,no part of the unclassified residuum has usually been treated with a more contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena generally called mystical4 ,physiology will have nothing to do with them4 ,orthodox psychology turns its back upon them4 ,medicine sweeps them out2 or1 at most1 when in an anecdotal vein1 records a few of them as 'effects of the imagination1'--a phrase of mere dismissal1 whose meaning1 in this connection1 it is impossible to make precise4 ,all the while1 however1 the phenomena are there1 lying broadcast over the surface of history4 ,no matter where you open its pages1 you find things recorded under the name of divinations1 inspirations1 demoniacal possessions1 apparitions1 trances1 ecstasies1 miraculous healings and productions of disease1 and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood4 ,we suppose that 'mediumship' #cja originated in ,rochester1 ,n4 ,y41 and animal magnetism with ,mesmer2 but once look behind the pages of official history1 in personal memoirs1 legal documents1 and popular narratives and books of anecdote1 and you will find that there never was a time when these things were not reported just as abundantly as now4 ,we college-bred gentry1 who follow the stream of cosmopolitan culture exclusively1 not infrequently stumble upon some old-established journal1 or some voluminous native author1 whose names are never heard of in our circle1 but who number their readers by the quarter-million4 ,it always gives us a little shock to find this mass of human beings not only living and ignoring us and all our gods1 but actually reading and writing and cogitating without ever a thought of our canons and authorities4 ,well1 a public no less large keeps and transmits from generation to generation the traditions and practices of the occult2 but academic science cares as little for its beliefs and opinions as you1 gentle reader1 care for those of the readers of the ,waverley and the ,fireside ,companion4 ,to no one type of mind is it given to discern the totality of truth4 ,something escapes the best of us1--not accidentally1 but systematically1 and because we have a twist4 ,the scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical mind shy from each other's facts1 just as they fly from each other's temper and spirit4 ,facts are there only for those who have a mental affinity with them4 ,when once they are indisputably ascertained and admitted1 the academic and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to interpret and discuss them1--for surely to pass from mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from lunacy to sanity2 but on the other hand if there is #cjb anything which human history demonstrates1 it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts1 with no stall or pigeon-hole1 or as facts which threaten to break up the accepted system4 ,in psychology1 physiology1 and medicine1 wherever a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided1 it is the mystics who have usually proved to be right about the facts1 while the scientifics had the better of it in respect to the theories4 ,the most recent and flagrant example of this is 'animal magnetism1' whose facts were stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by academic medical science the world over1 until the non-mystical theory of 'hypnotic suggestion' was found for them1--when they were admitted to be so excessively and dangerously common that special penal laws1 forsooth1 must be passed to keep all persons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking part in their production4 ,just so stigmatizations1 invulnerabilities1 instantaneous cures1 inspired discourses1 and demoniacal possessions1 the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed 'superstitions1' now1 under the brand-new title of 'cases of hystero-epilepsy1' are republished1 reobserved1 and reported with an even too credulous avidity4 ,repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing maybe 7especially when self-complacent71 there is no sort of doubt that it goes with a gift for meeting with certain kinds of phenomenal experience4 ,the writer of these pages has been forced in the past few years to this admission2 and he now believes that he who will pay attention to facts of the sort dear to mystics1 #cjc while reflecting upon them in academic-scientific ways1 will be in the best possible position to help philosophy4 ,it is a circumstance of good augury that certain scientifically trained minds in all countries seem drifting to the same conclusion4 ,the ,society for ,psychical ,research has been one means of bringing science and the occult together in ,england and ,america2 and believing that this ,society fulfils a function which1 though limited1 is destined to be not unimportant in the organization of human knowledge1 ,i am glad to give a brief account of it to the uninstructed reader4 ,according to the newspaper and drawing-room myth1 soft-headedness and idiotic credulity are the bond of sympathy in this ,society1 and general wonder-sickness its dynamic principle4 ,a glance at the membership fails1 however1 to corroborate this view4 ,the president is ,prof4 ,henry ,sidgwick1#b known by his other deeds as the most incorrigibly and exasperatingly critical and sceptical mind in ,england4 ,the hard-headed ,arthur ,balfour is one vice-president1 and the hard-headed ,prof4 ,j4 ,p4 ,langley1 secretary of the ,smithsonian ,institution1 is another4 ,such men as ,professor ,lodge1 the eminent ,english physicist1 and ,professor ,richet1 the eminent ,french physiologist1 are among the most active contributors to the ,society's ,proceedings2 and through the catalogue of membership are sprinkled names honored throughout the world for their scientific capacity4 ,in fact1 were ,i asked to point to a scientific journal where hard-headedness and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bloom1 #cjd ,i think ,i should have to fall back on the ,proceedings of the ,society for ,psychical ,research4 ,the common run of papers1 say on physiological subjects1 which one finds in other professional organs1 are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness4 ,indeed1 the rigorous canons of evidence applied a few years ago to testimony in the case of certain 'mediums' led to the secession from the ,society of a number of spiritualists4 ,messrs4 ,stainton ,moses and ,a4 ,r4 ,wallace1 among others1 thought that no experiences based on mere eyesight could ever have a chance to be admitted as true1 if such an impossibly exacting standard of proof were insisted on in every case4 ,the ,s4 ,p4 ,r41 as ,i shall call it for convenience1 was founded in #ahhb by a number of gentlemen1 foremost among whom seem to have been ,professors ,sidgwick1 ,w4 ,f4 ,barrett1 and ,balfour ,stewart1 and ,messrs4 ,r4 ,h4 ,hutton1 ,hensleigh ,wedgwood1 ,edmund ,gurney1 and ,f4 ,w4 ,h4 ,myers4 ,their purpose was twofold1--first1 to carry on systematic experimentation with hypnotic subjects1 mediums1 clairvoyants1 and others2 and1 secondly1 to collect evidence concerning apparitions1 haunted houses1 and similar phenomena which are incidentally reported1 but which1 from their fugitive character1 admit of no deliberate control4 ,professor ,sidgwick1 in his introductory address1 insisted that the divided state of public opinion on all these matters was a scandal to science1--absolute disdain on priori grounds characterizing what may be called professional opinion1 while indiscriminate credulity was too often found among those who pretended to have a first-hand acquaintance with the facts4 ,as a sort of weather bureau for accumulating #cje reports of such meteoric phenomena as apparitions1 the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4 has done an immense amount of work4 ,as an experimenting body1 it cannot be said to have completely fulfilled the hopes of its founders4 ,the reasons for this lie in two circumstances3 first1 the clairvoyant and other subjects who will allow themselves to be experimented upon are few and far between2 and1 secondly1 work with them takes an immense amount of time1 and has had to be carried on at odd intervals by members engaged in other pursuits4 ,the ,society has not yet been rich enough to control the undivided services of skilled experimenters in this difficult field4 ,the loss of the lamented ,edmund ,gurney1 who more than any one else had leisure to devote1 has been so far irreparable4 ,but were there no experimental work at all1 and were the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4 nothing but a weather-bureau for catching sporadic apparitions1 etc41 in their freshness1 ,i am disposed to think its function indispensable in the scientific organism4 ,if any one of my readers1 spurred by the thought that so much smoke must needs betoken fire1 has ever looked into the existing literature of the supernatural for proof1 he will know what ,i mean4 ,this literature is enormous1 but it is practically worthless for evidential purposes4 ,facts enough are cited1 indeed2 but the records of them are so fallible and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion that it may be well to keep a window open upon that quarter in one's mind4 ,in the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4's ,proceedings1 on the contrary1 a different law prevails4 ,quality1 and not mere quantity1 is what has been mainly kept in mind4 ,the witnesses1 where possible1 have in every reported case been cross-examined personally1 the collateral facts #cjf have been looked up1 and the story appears with its precise coefficient of evidential worth stamped on it1 so that all may know just what its weight as proof may be4 ,outside of these ,proceedings1 ,i know of no systematic attempt to weigh the evidence for the supernatural4 ,this makes the value of the volumes already published unique2 and ,i firmly believe that as the years go on and the ground covered grows still wider1 the ,proceedings will more and more tend to supersede all other sources of information concerning phenomena traditionally deemed occult4 ,collections of this sort are usually best appreciated by the rising generation4 ,the young anthropologists and psychologists who will soon have full occupancy of the stage will feel how great a scientific scandal it has been to leave a great mass of human experience to take its chances between vague tradition and credulity on the one hand and dogmatic denial at long range on the other1 with no body of persons extant who are willing and competent to study the matter with both patience and rigor4 ,if the ,society lives long enough for the public to become familiar with its presence1 so that any apparition1 or house or person infested with unaccountable noises or disturbances of material objects1 will as a matter of course be reported to its officers1 we shall doubtless end by having a mass of facts concrete enough to theorize upon4 ,its sustainers1 therefore1 should accustom themselves to the idea that its first duty is simply to exist from year to year and perform this recording function well1 though no conclusive results of any sort emerge at first4 ,all our learned societies have begun in some such modest way4 ,but one cannot by mere outward organization make much progress in matters scientific4 ,societies can #cjg back men of genius1 but can never take their place4 ,the contrast between the parent ,society and the ,american ,branch illustrates this4 ,in ,england1 a little group of men with enthusiasm and genius for the work supplied the nucleus2 in this country1 ,mr4 ,hodgson had to be imported from ,europe before any tangible progress was made4 ,what perhaps more than anything else has held the ,society together in ,england is ,professor ,sidgwick's extraordinary gift of inspiring confidence in diverse sorts of people4 ,such tenacity of interest in the result and such absolute impartiality in discussing the evidence are not once in a century found in an individual4 ,his obstinate belief that there is something yet to be brought to light communicates patience to the discouraged2 his constitutional inability to draw any precipitate conclusion reassures those who are afraid of being dupes4 ,mrs4 ,sidgwick--a sister1 by the way1 of the great ,arthur ,balfour--is a worthy ally of her husband in this matter1 showing a similarly rare power of holding her judgment in suspense1 and a keenness of observation and capacity for experimenting with human subjects which are rare in either sex4 ,the worker of the ,society1 as originally constituted1 was ,edmund ,gurney4 ,gurney was a man of the rarest sympathies and gifts4 ,although1 like ,carlyle1 he used to groan under the burden of his labors1 he yet exhibited a colossal power of dispatching business and getting through drudgery of the most repulsive kind4 ,his two thick volumes on ',phantasms of the ,living1' collected and published in three years1 are a proof of this4 ,besides this1 he had exquisite artistic instincts1 and his massive volume on ',the ,power of ,sound' was1 when it appeared1 the most important #cjh work on aesthetics in the ,english language4 ,he had also the tenderest heart and a mind of rare metaphysical power1 as his volumes of essays1 ',tertium ,quid1' will prove to any reader4 ,mr4 ,frederic ,myers1 already well known as one of the most brilliant of ,english essayists1 is the ingenium praefervidum of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4 ,of the value of ,mr4 ,myers's theoretic writings ,i will say a word later4 ,dr4 ,hodgson1 the ,american secretary1 is distinguished by a balance of mind almost as rare in its way as ,sidgwick's4 ,he is persuaded of the reality of many of the phenomena called spiritualistic1 but he also has uncommon keenness in detecting error2 and it is impossible to say in advance whether it will give him more satisfaction to confirm or to smash a given case offered to his examination4 ,it is now time to cast a brief look upon the actual contents of these ,proceedings4 ,the first two years were largely taken up with experiments in thought-transference4 ,the earliest lot of these were made with the daughters of a clergyman named ,creery1 and convinced ,messrs4 ,balfour ,stewart1 ,barrett1 ,myers1 and ,gurney that the girls had an inexplicable power of guessing names and objects thought of by other persons4 ,two years later1 ,mrs4 ,sidgwick and ,mr4 ,gurney1 recommencing experiments with the same girls1 detected them signalling to each other4 ,it is true that for the most part the conditions of the earlier series had excluded signalling1 and it is also possible that the cheating may have grafted itself on what was originally a genuine phenomenon4 ,yet ,gurney was wise in abandoning the entire series to the scepticism of the reader4 ,many critics of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4 seem out of all #cji its labors to have heard only of this case4 ,but there are experiments recorded with upwards of thirty other subjects4 ,three were experimented upon at great length during the first two years3 one was ,mr4 ,g4 ,a4 ,smith2 the other two were young ladies in ,liverpool in the employment of ,mr4 ,malcolm ,guthrie4 ,it is the opinion of all who took part in these latter experiments that sources of conscious and unconscious deception were sufficiently excluded1 and that the large percentage of correct reproductions by the subjects of words1 diagrams1 and sensations occupying other persons' consciousness were entirely inexplicable as results of chance4 ,the witnesses of these performances were in fact all so satisfied of the genuineness of the phenomena1 that 'telepathy' has figured freely in the papers of the ,proceedings and in ,gurney's book on ,phantasms as a vera causa on which additional hypotheses might be built4 ,no mere reader can be blamed1 however1 if he demand1 for so revolutionary a belief1 a more overwhelming bulk of testimony than has yet been supplied4 ,any day1 of course1 may bring in fresh experiments in successful picture-guessing4 ,but meanwhile1 and lacking that1 we can only point out that the present data are strengthened in the flank1 so to speak1 by all observations that tend to corroborate the possibility of other kindred phenomena1 such as telepathic impression1 clairvoyance1 or what is called 'test-mediumship4' ,the wider genus will naturally cover the narrower species with its credit4 ,gurney's papers on hypnotism must be mentioned next4 ,some of them are less concerned with establishing new facts than with analyzing old ones4 ,but omitting these1 we find that in the line of pure #caj observation ,gurney claims to have ascertained in more than one subject the following phenomenon3 ,the subject's hands are thrust through a blanket1 which screens the operator from his eyes1 and his mind is absorbed in conversation with a third person4 ,the operator meanwhile points with his finger to one of the fingers of the subject1 which finger alone responds to this silent selection by becoming stiff or anaesthetic1 as the case may be4 ,the interpretation is difficult1 but the phenomenon1 which ,i have myself witnessed1 seems authentic4 ,another observation made by ,gurney seems to prove the possibility of the subject's mind being directly influenced by the operator's4 ,the hypnotized subject responds1 or fails to respond1 to questions asked by a third party according to the operator's silent permission or refusal4 ,of course1 in these experiments all obvious sources of deception were excluded4 ,but ,gurney's most important contribution to our knowledge of hypnotism was his series of experiments on the automatic writing of subjects who had received post-hypnotic suggestions4 ,for example1 a subject during trance is told that he will poke the fire in six minutes after waking4 ,on being waked he has no memory of the order1 but while he is engaged in conversation his hand is placed on a planchette1 which immediately writes the sentence1 ,p41 you will poke the fire in six minutes4 ,experiments like this1 which were repeated in great variety1 seem to prove that below the upper consciousness the hypnotic consciousness persists1 engrossed with the suggestion and able to express itself through the involuntarily moving hand4 ,gurney shares1 therefore1 with ,janet and ,binet1 the #caa credit of demonstrating the simultaneous existence of two different strata of consciousness1 ignorant of each other1 in the same person4 ,the 'extra-consciousness1' as one may call it1 can be kept on tap1 as it were1 by the method of automatic writing4 ,this discovery marks a new era in experimental psychology1 and it is impossible to overrate its importance4 ,but ,gurney's greatest piece of work is his laborious ',phantasms of the ,living4' ,as an example of the drudgery stowed away in the volumes1 it may suffice to say that in looking up the proofs for the alleged physical phenomena of witchcraft1 ,gurney reports a careful search through two hundred and sixty books on the subject1 with the result of finding no first-hand evidence recorded in the trials except the confessions of the victims themselves2 and these1 of course1 are presumptively due to either torture or hallucination4 ,this statement1 made in an unobtrusive note1 is only one instance of the care displayed throughout the volumes4 ,in the course of these1 ,gurney discusses about seven hundred cases of apparitions which he collected4 ,a large number of these were 'veridical1' in the sense of coinciding with some calamity happening to the person who appeared4 ,gurney's explanation is that the mind of the person undergoing the calamity was at that moment able to impress the mind of the percipient with an hallucination4 ,apparitions1 on this 'telepathic' theory1 may be called 'objective' facts1 although they are not 'material' facts4 ,in order to test the likelihood of such veridical hallucinations being due to mere chance1 ,gurney instituted the 'census of hallucinations1' which has been continued with the result of obtaining answers from over twenty-five thousand persons1 asked #cab at random in different countries whether1 when in good health and awake1 they had ever heard a voice1 seen a form1 or felt a touch which no material presence could account for4 ,the result seems to be1 roughly speaking1 that in ,england about one adult in ten has had such an experience at least once in his life1 and that of the experiences themselves a large number coincide with some distant event4 ,the question is1 ,is the frequency of these latter cases too great to be deemed fortuitous1 and must we suppose an occult connection between the two events8 ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,sidgwick have worked out this problem on the basis of the ,english returns1 seventeen thousand in number1 with a care and thoroughness that leave nothing to be desired4 ,their conclusion is that the cases where the apparition of a person is seen on the day of his death are four hundred and forty times too numerous to be ascribed to chance4 ,the reasoning employed to calculate this number is simple enough4 ,if there be only a fortuitous connection between the death of an individual and the occurrence of his apparition to some one at a distance1 the death is no more likely to fall on the same day as the apparition than it is to occur on the same day with any other event in nature4 ,but the chance-probability that any individual's death will fall on any given day marked in advance by some other event is just equal to the chance-probability that the individual will die at all on any specified day2 and the national death-rate gives that probability as one in nineteen thousand4 ,if1 then1 when the death of a person coincides with an apparition of the same person1 the coincidence be merely fortuitous1 it ought not to occur oftener than once in nineteen thousand cases4 ,as a matter of fact1 #cac however1 it does occur 7according to the census7 once in forty-three cases1 a number 7as aforesaid7 four hundred and forty times too great4 ,the ,american census1 of some seven thousand answers1 gives a remarkably similar result4 ,against this conclusion the only rational answer that ,i can see is that the data are still too few2 that the net was not cast wide enough2 and that we need1 to get fair averages1 far more than twenty-four thousand answers to the census question4 ,this may1 of course1 be true1 though it seems exceedingly unlikely2 and in our own twenty-four thousand answers veridical cases may possibly have heaped themselves unduly4 ,the next topic worth mentioning in the ,proceedings is the discussion of the physical phenomena of mediumship 7slate-writing1 furniture-moving1 and so forth7 by ,mrs4 ,sidgwick1 ,mr4 ,hodgson1 and ',mr4 ,davey4' ,this1 so far as it goes1 is destructive of the claims of all the mediums examined4 ',mr4 ,davey' himself produced fraudulent slate-writing of the highest order1 while ,mr4 ,hodgson1 a 'sitter' in his confidence1 reviewed the written reports of the series of his other sitters1--all of them intelligent persons1--and showed that in every case they failed to see the essential features of what was done before their eyes4 ,this ,davey-,hodgson contribution is probably the most damaging document concerning eye-witnesses' evidence that has ever been produced4 ,another substantial bit of work based on personal observation is ,mr4 ,hodgson's report on ,madame ,blavatsky's claims to physical mediumship4 ,this is adverse to the lady's pretensions2 and although some of ,madame ,blavatsky's friends make light of it1 it is a stroke from which her reputation will not recover4 #cad ,physical mediumship in all its phases has fared hard in the ,proceedings4 ,the latest case reported on is that of the famous ,eusapia ,paladino1 who being detected in fraud at ,cambridge1 after a brilliant career of success on the continent1 has1 according to the draconian rules of method which govern the ,society1 been ruled out from a further hearing4 ,the case of ,stainton ,moses1 on the other hand1 concerning which ,mr4 ,myers has brought out a mass of unpublished testimony1 seems to escape from the universal condemnation1 and appears to force upon us what ,mr4 ,andrew ,lang calls the choice between a moral and a physical miracle4 ,in the case of ,mrs4 ,piper1 not a physical but a trance medium1 we seem to have no choice offered at all4 ,mr4 ,hodgson and others have made prolonged study of this lady's trances1 and are all convinced that super-normal powers of cognition are displayed therein4 ,these are prim facie due to 'spirit-control4' ,but the conditions are so complex that a dogmatic decision either for or against the spirit-hypothesis must as yet be postponed4 ,one of the most important experimental contributions to the ,proceedings is the article of ,miss ,x4 on ',crystal ,vision4' ,many persons who look fixedly into a crystal or other vaguely luminous surface fall into a kind of daze1 and see visions4 ,miss ,x4 has this susceptibility in a remarkable degree1 and is1 moreover1 an unusually intelligent critic4 ,she reports many visions which can only be described as apparently clairvoyant1 and others which beautifully fill a vacant niche incur knowledge of subconscious mental operations4 ,for example1 looking into the crystal before breakfast one morning she reads in printed characters of the #cae death of a lady of her acquaintance1 the date and other circumstances all duly appearing in type4 ,startled by this1 she looks at the ',times' of the previous day for verification1 and there among the deaths are the identical words which she has seen4 ,on the same page of the ,times are other items which she remembers reading the day before2 and the only explanation seems to be that her eyes then inattentively observed1 so to speak1 the death-item1 which forthwith fell into a special corner of her memory1 and came out as a visual hallucination when the peculiar modification of consciousness induced by the crystal-gazing set in4 ,passing from papers based on observation to papers based on narrative1 we have a number of ghost stories1 etc41 sifted by ,mrs4 ,sidgwick and discussed by ,messrs4 ,myers and ,podmore4 ,they form the best ghost literature ,i know of from the point of view of emotional interest4 ,as to the conclusions drawn1 ,mrs4 ,sidgwick is rigorously non-committal1 while ,mr4 ,myers and ,mr4 ,podmore show themselves respectively hospitable and inhospitable to the notion that such stories have a basis of objectivity dependent on the continued existence of the dead4 ,i must close my gossip about the ,proceedings by naming what1 after all1 seems to me the most important part of its contents4 ,this is the long series of articles by ,mr4 ,myers on what he now calls the 'subliminal self1' or what one might designate as ultra-marginal consciousness4 ,the result of ,myers's learned and ingenious studies in hypnotism1 hallucinations1 automatic writing1 mediumship1 and the whole series of allied phenomena is a conviction which he expresses in the following terms3-- #caf ,each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows1--an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation4 ,the self manifests itself through the organism2 but there is always some part of the self unmanifested1 and always1 as it seems1 some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve4 ,the ordinary consciousness ,mr4 ,myers likens to the visible part of the solar spectrum2 the total consciousness is like that spectrum prolonged by the inclusion of the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays4 ,in the psychic spectrum the 'ultra' parts may embrace a far wider range1 both of physiological and of psychical activity1 than is open to our ordinary consciousness and memory4 ,at the lower end we have the physiological extension1 mind-cures1 'stigmatization' of ecstatics1 etc42 in the upper1 the hyper-normal cognitions of the medium-trance4 ,whatever the judgment of the future may be on ,mr4 ,myers's speculations1 the credit will always remain to them of being the first attempt in any language to consider the phenomena of hallucination1 hypnotism1 automatism1 double personality1 and mediumship as connected parts of one whole subject4 ,all constructions in this field must be provisional1 and it is as something provisional that ,mr4 ,myers offers us his formulations4 ,but1 thanks to him1 we begin to see for the first time what a vast interlocked and graded system these phenomena1 from the rudest motor-automatisms to the most startling sensory-apparition1 form4 ,quite apart from ,mr4 ,myers's conclusions1 his methodical treatment of them by classes and series is the first great step toward overcoming the distaste of orthodox science to look at them at all4 #cag ,one's reaction on hearsay testimony is always determined by one's own experience4 ,most men who have once convinced themselves1 by what seems to them a careful examination1 that any one species of the supernatural exists1 begin to relax their vigilance as to evidence1 and throw the doors of their minds more or less wide open to the supernatural along its whole extent4 ,to a mind that has thus made its salto mortale1 the minute work over insignificant cases and quiddling discussion of 'evidential values1' of which the ,society's reports are full1 seems insufferably tedious4 ,and it is so2 few species of literature are more truly dull than reports of phantasms4 ,taken simply by themselves1 as separate facts to stare at1 they appear so devoid of meaning and sweep1 that1 even were they certainly true1 one would be tempted to leave them out of one's universe for being so idiotic4 ,every other sort of fact has some context and continuity with the rest of nature4 ,these alone are contextless and discontinuous4 ,hence ,i think that the sort of loathing--no milder word will do--which the very words 'psychical research' and 'psychical researcher' awaken in so many honest scientific breasts is not only natural1 but in a sense praiseworthy4 ,a man who is unable himself to conceive of any orbit for these mental meteors can only suppose that ,messrs4 ,gurney1 ,myers1 ,co4's mood in dealing with them must be that of silly marvelling at so many detached prodigies4 ,and such prodigies6 ,so science simply falls back on her general non-possumus2 and most of the would-be critics of the ,proceedings have been contented to oppose to the phenomena recorded the simple presumption that in some way or other the reports must be #cah fallacious1--for so far as the order of nature has been subjected to really scientific scrutiny1 it always has been proved to run the other way4 ,but the oftener one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the use of this mere presumption1 the weaker does the presumption itself get to be2 and one might in course of time use up one's presumptive privileges in this way1 even though one started 7as our anti-telepathists do7 with as good a case as the great induction of psychology that all our knowledge comes by the use of our eyes and ears and other senses4 ,and we must remember also that this undermining of the strength of a presumption by reiterated report of facts to the contrary does not logically require that the facts in question should all be well proved4 ,a lot of rumors in the air against a business man's credit1 though they might all be vague1 and no one of them amount to proof that he is unsound1 would certainly weaken the presumption of his soundness4 ,and all the more would they have this effect if they formed what ,gurney called a fagot and not a chain1--that is1 if they were independent of one another1 and came from different quarters4 ,now1 the evidence for telepathy1 weak and strong1 taken just as it comes1 forms a fagot and not a chain4 ,no one item cites the content of another item as part of its own proof4 ,but taken together the items have a certain general consistency2 there is a method in their madness1 so to speak4 ,so each of them adds presumptive value to the lot2 and cumulatively1 as no candid mind can fail to see1 they subtract presumptive force from the orthodox belief that there can be nothing in any one's intellect that has not come in through ordinary experiences of sense4 ,but it is a miserable thing for a question of truth #cai to be confined to mere presumption and counter-presumption1 with no decisive thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling darkness4 ,and1 sooth to say1 in talking so much of the merely presumption-weakening value of our records1 ,i have myself been wilfully taking the point of view of the so-called 'rigorously scientific' disbeliever1 and making an ad hominem plea4 ,my own point of view is different4 ,for me the thunderbolt has fallen1 and the orthodox belief has not merely had its presumption weakened1 but the truth itself of the belief is decisively overthrown4 ,if ,i may employ the language of the professional logic-shop1 a universal proposition can be made untrue by a particular instance4 ,if you wish to upset the law that all crows are black1 you must not seek to show that no crows are2 it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white4 ,my own white crow is ,mrs4 ,piper4 ,in the trances of this medium1 ,i cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and wits4 ,what the source of this knowledge may be ,i know not1 and have not the glimmer of an explanatory suggestion to make2 but from admitting the fact of such knowledge ,i can see no escape4 ,so when ,i turn to the rest of the evidence1 ghosts and all1 ,i cannot carry with me the irreversibly negative bias of the 'rigorously scientific' mind1 with its presumption as to what the true order of nature ought to be4 ,i feel as if1 though the evidence be flimsy in spots1 it may nevertheless collectively carry heavy weight4 ,the rigorously scientific mind may1 in truth1 easily overshoot the mark4 ,science means1 first of all1 a certain dispassionate method4 ,to suppose that it means a certain set of #cbj results that one should pin one's faith upon and hug forever is sadly to mistake its genius1 and degrades the scientific body to the status of a sect4 ,we all1 scientists and non-scientists1 live on some inclined plane of credulity4 ,the plane tips one way in one man1 another way in another2 and may he whose plane tips in no way be the first to cast a stone6 ,as a matter of fact1 the trances ,i speak of have broken down for my own mind the limits of the admitted order of nature4 ,science1 so far as science denies such exceptional occurrences1 lies prostrate in the dust for me2 and the most urgent intellectual need which ,i feel at present is that science be built up again in a form in which such things may have a positive place4 ,science1 like life1 feeds on its own decay4 ,new facts burst old rules2 then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law4 ,and here is the real instructiveness of ,messrs4 ,myers and ,gurney's work4 ,they are trying with the utmost conscientiousness to find a reconciling conception which shall subject the old laws of nature to the smallest possible strain4 ,mr4 ,myers uses that method of gradual approach which has performed such wonders in ,darwin's hands4 ,when ,darwin met a fact which seemed a poser to his theory1 his regular custom1 as ,i have heard an able colleague say1 was to fill in all round it with smaller facts1 as a wagoner might heap dirt round a big rock in the road1 and thus get his team over without upsetting4 ,so ,mr4 ,myers1 starting from the most ordinary facts of inattentive consciousness1 follows this clue through a long series which terminates in ghosts1 and seeks to show that these are but extreme manifestations of a #cba common truth1--the truth that the invisible segments of our minds are susceptible1 under rarely realized conditions1 of acting and being acted upon by the invisible segments of other conscious lives4 ,this may not be ultimately true 7for the theosophists1 with their astral bodies and the like1 may1 for aught ,i now know1 prove to be on the correcter trail71 but no one can deny that it is in good scientific form1--for science always takes a known kind of phenomenon1 and tries to extend its range4 ,i have myself1 as ,american agent for the census1 collected hundreds of cases of hallucination in healthy persons4 ,the result is to make me feel that we all have potentially a 'subliminal' self1 which may make at any time irruption into our ordinary lives4 ,at its lowest1 it is only the depository of our forgotten memories2 at its highest1 we do not know what it is at all4 ,take1 for instance1 a series of cases4 ,during sleep1 many persons have something in them which measures the flight of time better than the waking self does4 ,it wakes them at a preappointed hour2 it acquaints them with the moment when they first awake4 ,it may produce an hallucination1--as in a lady who informs me that at the instant of waking she has a vision of her watch-face with the hands pointing 7as she has often verified7 to the exact time4 ,it may be the feeling that some physiological period has elapsed2 but1 whatever it is1 it is subconscious4 ,a subconscious something may also preserve experiences to which we do not openly attend4 ,a lady taking her lunch in town finds herself without her purse4 ,instantly a sense comes over her of rising from the breakfast-table and hearing her purse drop upon the floor4 ,on reaching home she finds #cbb nothing under the table1 but summons the servant to say where she has put the purse4 ,the servant produces it1 saying2 ,how did you know where it was8 ,you rose and left the room as if you did n't know you 'd dropped it4 ,the same subconscious something may recollect what we have forgotten4 ,a lady accustomed to taking salicylate of soda for muscular rheumatism wakes one early winter morning with an aching neck4 ,in the twilight she takes what she supposes to be her customary powder from a drawer1 dissolves it in a glass of water1 and is about to drink it down1 when she feels a sharp slap on her shoulder and hears a voice in her ear saying1 ,taste it6 ,on examination1 she finds she has got a morphine powder by mistake4 ,the natural interpretation is that a sleeping memory of the morphine powders awoke in this quasi-explosive way4 ,a like explanation offers itself as most plausible for the following case3 ,a lady1 with little time to catch the train1 and the expressman about to call1 is excitedly looking for the lost key of a packed trunk4 ,hurrying upstairs with a bunch of keys1 proved useless1 in her hand1 she hears an 'objective' voice distinctly say1 ,try the key of the cake-box4 ,being tried1 it fits4 ,this also may well have been the effect of forgotten experience4 ,now1 the effect is doubtless due to the same hallucinatory mechanism2 but the source is less easily assigned as we ascend the scale of cases4 ,a lady1 for instance1 goes after breakfast to see about one of her servants who has become ill over night4 ,she is startled at distinctly reading over the bedroom door in gilt letters the word 'small-pox4' ,the doctor is sent for1 and ere long pronounces small-pox to be the disease1 although the lady says1 ,the thought of #cbc the girl's having small-pox never entered my mind till ,i saw the apparent inscription4 ,then come other cases of warning2 for example1 that of a youth sitting in a wagon under a shed1 who suddenly hears his dead mother's voice say1 ,stephen1 get away from here quick6 and jumps out just in time to see the shed-roof fall4 ,after this come the experiences of persons appearing to distant friends at or near the hour of death4 ,then1 too1 we have the trance-visions and utterances1 which may appear astonishingly profuse and continuous1 and maintain a fairly high intellectual level4 ,for all these higher phenomena1 it seems to me that while the proximate mechanism is that of 'hallucination1' it is straining an hypothesis unduly to name any ordinary subconscious mental operation--such as expectation1 recollection1 or inference from inattentive perception--as the ultimate cause that starts it up4 ,it is far better tactics1 if you wish to get rid of mystery1 to brand the narratives themselves as unworthy of trust4 ,the trustworthiness of most of them is to my own mind far from proved4 ,and yet in the light of the medium-trance1 which is proved1 it seems as if they might well all be members of a natural kind of fact of which we do not yet know the full extent4 ,thousands of sensitive organizations in the ,united ,states to-day live as steadily in the light of these experiences1 and are as indifferent to modern science1 as if they lived in ,bohemia in the twelfth century4 ,they are indifferent to science1 because science is so callously indifferent to their experiences4 ,although in its essence science only stands for a method and for no fixed belief1 yet as habitually taken1 both by its votaries and outsiders1 it is #cbd identified with a certain fixed belief1--the belief that the hidden order of nature is mechanical exclusively1 and that non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of conceiving and explaining even such things as human life4 ,now1 this mechanical rationalism1 as one may call it1 makes1 if it becomes one's only way of thinking1 a violent breach with the ways of thinking that have played the greatest part in human history4 ,religious thinking1 ethical thinking1 poetical thinking1 teleological1 emotional1 sentimental thinking1 what one might call the personal view of life to distinguish it from the impersonal and mechanical1 and the romantic view of life to distinguish it from the rationalistic view1 have been1 and even still are1 outside of well-drilled scientific circles1 the dominant forms of thought4 ,but for mechanical rationalism1 personality is an insubstantial illusion4 ,the chronic belief of mankind1 that events may happen for the sake of their personal significance1 is an abomination2 and the notions of our grandfathers about oracles and omens1 divinations and apparitions1 miraculous changes of heart and wonders worked by inspired persons1 answers to prayer and providential leadings1 are a fabric absolutely baseless1 a mass of sheer untruth4 ,now1 of course1 we must all admit that the excesses to which the romantic and personal view of nature may lead1 if wholly unchecked by impersonal rationalism1 are direful4 ,central ,african ,mumbo-jumboism is one of unchecked romanticism's fruits4 ,one ought accordingly to sympathize with that abhorrence of romanticism as a sufficient world-theory2 one ought to understand that lively intolerance of the least grain of romanticism in the views of life of other people1 which are such characteristic marks of those who #cbe follow the scientific professions to-day4 ,our debt to science is literally boundless1 and our gratitude for what is positive in her teachings must be correspondingly immense4 ,but the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4's ,proceedings have1 it seems to me1 conclusively proved one thing to the candid reader2 and that is that the verdict of pure insanity1 of gratuitous preference for error1 of superstition without an excuse1 which the scientists of our day are led by their intellectual training to pronounce upon the entire thought of the past1 is a most shallow verdict4 ,the personal and romantic view of life has other roots besides wanton exuberance of imagination and perversity of heart4 ,it is perennially fed by facts of experience1 whatever the ulterior interpretation of those facts may prove to be2 and at no time in human history would it have been less easy than now--at most times it would have been much more easy--for advocates with a little industry to collect in its favor an array of contemporary documents as good as those which our publications present4 ,these documents all relate to real experiences of persons4 ,these experiences have three characters in common3 ,they are capricious1 discontinuous1 and not easily controlled2 they require peculiar persons for their production2 their significance seems to be wholly for personal life4 ,those who preferentially attend to them1 and still more those who are individually subject to them1 not only easily may find1 but are logically bound to find1 in them valid arguments for their romantic and personal conception of the world's course4 ,through my slight participation in the investigations of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4 ,i have become acquainted with numbers of persons of this sort1 for whom the very word 'science' has become a name of reproach1 for reasons that ,i now both understand #cbf and respect4 ,it is the intolerance of science for such phenomena as we are studying1 her peremptory denial either of their existence or of their significance 7except as proofs of man's absolute innate folly71 that has set science so apart from the common sympathies of the race4 ,i confess that it is on this1 its humanizing mission1 that the ,society's best claim to the gratitude of our generation seems to me to depend4 ,it has restored continuity to history4 ,it has shown some reasonable basis for the most superstitious aberrations of the foretime4 ,it has bridged the chasm1 healed the hideous rift that science1 taken in a certain narrow way1 has shot into the human world4 ,i will even go one step farther4 ,when from our present advanced standpoint we look back upon the past stages of human thought1 whether it be scientific thought or theological thought1 we are amazed that a universe which appears to us of so vast and mysterious a complication should ever have seemed to any one so little and plain a thing4 ,whether it be ,descartes's world or ,newton's1 whether it be that of the materialists of the last century or that of the ,bridgewater treatises of our own1 it always looks the same to us1--incredibly perspectiveless and short4 ,even ,lyell's1 ,faraday's1 ,mill's1 and ,darwin's consciousness of their respective subjects are already beginning to put on an infantile and innocent look4 ,is it then likely that the science of our own day will escape the common doom2 that the minds of its votaries will never look old-fashioned to the grandchildren of the latter8 ,it would be folly to suppose so4 ,yet if we are to judge by the analogy of the past1 when our science once becomes old-fashioned1 it will be more for its omissions of fact1 for its #cbg ignorance of whole ranges and orders of complexity in the phenomena to be explained1 than for any fatal lack in its spirit and principles4 ,the spirit and principles of science are mere affairs of method2 there is nothing in them that need hinder science from dealing successfully with a world in which personal forces are the starting-point of new effects4 ,the only form of thing that we directly encounter1 the only experience that we concretely have1 is our own personal life4 ,the only complete category of our thinking1 our professors of philosophy tell us1 is the category of personality1 every other category being one of the abstract elements of that4 ,and this systematic denial on science's part of personality as a condition of events1 this rigorous belief that in its own essential and innermost nature our world is a strictly impersonal world1 may1 conceivably1 as the whirligig of time goes round1 prove to be the very defect that our descendants will be most surprised at in our own boasted science1 the omission that to their eyes will most tend to make it look perspectiveless and short4 #a ,this ,essay is formed of portions of an article in ,scribner's ,magazine for ,march1 #ahij1 of an article in the ,forum for ,july1 #ahib1 and of the ,president's ,address before the ,society for ,psychical ,research1 published in the ,proceedings for ,june1 #ahif1 and in ,science4 #b ,written in #ahia4 ,since then1 ,mr4 ,balfour1 the present writer1 and ,professor ,william ,crookes have held the presidential office4 #cbi ,,index4 ,,absolutism1 #ab1 #cj4 ,abstract conceptions1 #bai4 ,action1 as a measure of belief1 #c1 #bi-cj4 ,actual world narrower than ideal1 #bjb4 ,agnosticism1 #ed1 #ha1 #abf4 ,allen1 ,g41 #bca1 #bce1 #bef4 ,alps1 leap in the1 #ei1 #if4 ,alternatives1 #aef1 #afa1 #bjb1 #bfi4 ,ambiguity of choice1 #aef2 of being1 #bib4 ,anaesthetic revelation1 #bid4 ,a priori truths1 #bfh4 ,apparitions1 #caa4 ,aristotle1 #bdi4 ,associationism1 in ,ethics1 #ahf4 ,atheist and acorn1 #afj4 ,authorities in ,ethics1 #bjd2 versus champions1 #bjg4 ,axioms1 #bfh4 ,,bagehot1 #bcb4 ,bain1 #ga1 #ia4 ,balfour1 #i4 ,being1 its character1 #adb2 in ,hegel1 #bha4 ,belief1 #ei4 ,see ',faith4' ,bellamy1 #ahh4 ,bismarck1 #bbh4 ,block-universe1 #bib4 ,blood1 ,b4 ,p41 vi1 #bid4 ,brockton murderer1 #afj1 #agg4 ,bunsen1 #bjc1 #bgd4 ,,calvinism1 #de4 ,carlyle1 #db1 #dd1 #de1 #gc1 #hg1 #agc4 ',casuistic question' in ,ethics1 #aih4 ,causality1 #adg4 ,causation1 ,hume's doctrine of1 #bgh4 ,census of hallucinations1 #cab4 ,certitude1 #ac1 #cj4 ,chance1 #adi1 #aec-i1 #agh-ahj4 ,choice1 #aef4 ,christianity1 #e1 #ad4 ,cicero1 #ib4 ,city of dreadful night1 #ce4 ,clark1 ,x41 #ej4 ,classifications1 #fg4 ,clifford1 #f1 #g1 #aj1 #ad1 #ai1 #ba1 #ib1 #bcj4 ,clive1 #bbh4 ,clough1 #f4 ,common-sense1 #bgj4 ,conceptual order of world1 #aah4 ,conscience1 #ahf-h4 ,contradiction1 as used by ,hegel1 #bge-bgg4 ,contradictions of philosophers1 #af4 ,crillon1 #fb ,criterion of truth1 #ae1 #af2 in ,ethics1 #bje4 ,crude order of experience1 #aah4 ,crystal vision1 #cad4 ,cycles in ,nature1 #bbj1 #bbc-d4 ,,darwin1 #bba1 #bbc1 #bbf1 #cbj4 ,data1 #bga4 ,davey1 #cac4 ,demands1 as creators of value1 #bja4 ',determination is negation1' #bhf-bij4 ,determinism1 #aej2 the ,dilemma of2 #ade-ahc2 #afc1 #aff2 hard and soft1 #adi4 ,dogs1 #eg4 ,dogmatism1 #ab4 ,doubt1 #ed1 #aji4 ,dupery1 #bg4 ,,easy-,,going mood1 #baa1 #bac4 ,elephant1 #bhb4 ,emerson1 #bc1 #age4 ,empiricism1 i41 #ab1 #ad1 #ag1 #bgh4 ,england1 #bbh4 ,environment1 its relation to great men1 #bbc1 #bbf2 to great thoughts1 #bej4 ,error1 #afc2 duty of avoiding1 #ah4 ,essence of good and bad1 #bjj-a4 ,ethical ideals1 #bjj4 ,ethical philosophy1 #bjh1 #baj1 #baf4 ,ethical standards1 #bje2 diversity of1 #bjj4 ,ethics1 its three questions1 #ahe4 ,evidence1 objective1 #ac1 #ae1 #af4 ,evil1 #df1 #di1 #afa1 #aij4 ,evolution1 social1 #bcb1 #bcg2 mental1 #bde4 ,evolutionism1 its test of right1 #ih-ajj4 ,expectancy1 #gg-hj4 ,experience1 crude1 versus rationalized1 #aah2 tests our faiths1 #aje4 ,,facts1 #bga4 ,faith1 that truth exists1 #i1 #bc2 in our fellows1 #bd-e2 school boys' definition of1 #bi2 a remedy for pessimism1 #fj1 #aja2 religious1 #ef2 defined1 #ij2 defended against 'scientific' objections1 viii-xi1 #ia-d2 may create its own verification1 #ei1 #if-ajc4 ,familiarity confers rationality1 #gf4 ,fatalism1 #hh4 ,fiske1 #bee1 #bfj4 ,fitzgerald1 #afj4 ,freedom1 #ajc1 #bga4 ,free-will1 #ajc1 #ade1 #aeg4 ,,galton1 #bdb4 ,geniuses1 #bbf1 #bbi4 ,ghosts1 #cae1 ,gnosticism1 #ach-adj1 #afe1 #afi4 ,god1 #fa1 #fh2 of ,nature1 #dc2 the most adequate object for our mind1 #aaf1 #abb2 our relations to him1 #acd-f2 his providence1 #ahb2 his demands create obligation1 #aic2 his function in ,ethics1 #bab-bae4 ,goethe1 #aaa4 ,good1 #afh1 #bjj1 #bja4 ,goodness1 #aij4 ,great-man theory of history1 #bcb4 ,great men and their environment1 #baf-bed4 ,green1 #bjf1 ,gryzanowski1 #bdj4 ,gurney1 #cjf1 #cjg1 #caa4 ,guthrie1 #cji4 ,guyau1 #ahh4 ,,hallucinations1 ,census of1 #cab4 ,happiness1 #cc4 ,harris1 #bhb4 ,hegel1 #gb1 #bfc2 his excessive claims1 #bgb2 his use of negation1 #bgc1 #bij2 of contradiction1 #bgd1 #bgf2 on being1 #bha2 on otherness1 #bhc2 on infinity1 #bhd2 on identity1 #bhe2 on determination1 #bhi2 his ontological emotion1 #big4 ,hegelisms1 on some1 #bfc-bih4 ,heine1 #bjc4 ,helmholtz1 #he1 #ia4 ,henry ,,iv41 #fb4 ,herbart1 #bhj4 ,hero-worship1 #bfa4 ,hinton1 ,c4 ,h41 #ae4 ,hinton1 ,j41 #aja4 ,hodgson1 ,r41 #cjh4 ,hodgson1 ,s1 ,h41 #aj4 ,honor1 #ej4 ,hugo1 #bac4 ,human mind1 its habit of abstracting1 #bai4 ,hume on causation1 #bgh4 ,huxley1 #f1 #aj1 #ib4 ,hypnotism1 #cjb1 #cji4 ,hypotheses1 live or dead1 #b2 their verification1 #aje2 of genius1 #bdi4 ,,ideals1 #bjj2 their conflict1 #bjb4 ,idealism1 #hi1 #bia4 ,identity1 #bhe4 ,imperatives1 #baa4 ,importance of individuals1 the1 #bee-bfb2 of things1 its ground1 #beg4 ,indeterminism1 #aej4 ,individual differences1 #bei4 ,individuals1 the importance of1 #bee-bfb ,infinite1 #bhd4 ,intuitionism1 in ,ethics1 #ahf1 #ahi4 ,,jevons1 #bdi4 ,judgments of regret1 #aei4 ,,knowing1 #ab4 ,knowledge1 #he4 ,,leap on precipice1 #ei1 #if4 ,leibnitz1 #dc4 ,life1 is it worth living1 #cb-fb4 ,,maggots1 #agf-g4 ,mahdi1 the1 #b1 #f4 ,mallock1 #cb1 #ahc4 ,marcus ,aurelius1 #da4 ,materialism1 #abf4 ',maybes1' #ei4 ,measure of good1 #bje4 ,mediumship1 physical1 #cac1 #cad4 ,melancholy1 #cd1 #ci1 #db4 ,mental evolution1 #bdf2 structure1 #aad1 #aag4 ,mill1 #bcd4 ,mind1 its triadic structure1 #aad1 #aag2 its evolution1 #bdf2 its three departments1 #aad1 #abb1 #abg-h4 ,monism1 #bgi4 ,moods1 the strenuous and the easy1 #baa1 #bac ,moralists1 objective and subjective1 #ajc-ajh4 ,moral judgments1 their origin1 #ahf-h2 obligation1 #aib-g2 order1 #aic2 philosophy1 #ahd-e4 ,moral philosopher and the moral life1 the1 #ahd-bae4 ,murder1 #agh4 ,murderer1 #afj1 #agg4 ,myers1 #cjh1 #cae1 #cbj4 ,mystical phenomena1 #cjj4 ,mysticism1 #gd4 ,,naked1 the1 #bha4 ,natural theology1 #dj-d4 ,nature1 #bj1 #da-d1 #ef4 ,negation1 as used by ,hegel1 #bgc4 ,newman1 #aj4 ,nitrous oxide1 #bid4 ,nonentity1 #gb4 ,,objective evidence1 #ac1 #ae1 #af4 ,obligation1 #aib-g4 ,occult phenomena1 #cjj2 examples of1 #cbc4 ,omar ,khayam1 #afj4 ,optimism1 #fj1 #ajb1 #afc4 ,options offered to belief1 #c1 #aa1 #bg4 ,origin of moral judgments1 #ahf-h4 ',other1' in ,hegel1 #bhc4 ,,parsimony1 law of1 #acb4 ,partaking1 #bfh1 #bgj1 #bge1 #bia4 ,pascal's wager1 #e1 #aa4 ,personality1 #cbd1 #cbg4 ,pessimism1 #ci1 #dj1 #dg1 #fj1 #ajj1 #aja1 #afa1 #afg4 ,philosophy1 #fe2 depends on personal demands1 #ic2 makes world unreal1 #ci2 seeks unification1 #fg-gj2 the ultimate1 #aaj2 its contradictions1 #af4 ,physiology1 its prestige1 #aab4 ,piper1 ,mrs41 #cad1 #cai4 ,plato1 #bfh ,pluralism1 vi1 #aea1 #agh1 #aib1 #bfd1 #bfg4 ,positivism1 #ed1 #ajh ,possibilities1 #aea1 #aha-b1 #bib1 #bid4 ,postulates1 #ia-b4 ,powers1 our powers as congruous with the world1 #hf4 ,providence1 #ahj4 ,psychical research1 what it has accomplished1 #bii-cbg2 ,society for1 #cjc1 #cje1 #cbe4 ,pugnacity1 #di1 #ea4 ,,questions1 three1 in ,ethics1 #ahe4 ,,rationalism1 #ab1 #cj4 ,rationality1 the sentiment of1 #fc-aaj2 limits of theoretic1 #fe-gd2 mystical1 #gd2 practical1 #hb-d2 postulates of1 #aeb4 ,rational order of world1 #aah1 #abe1 #adg4 ,reflex action and theism1 #aaa-add4 ,reflex action defined1 #aac2 it refutes gnosticism1 #adj-a4 ,regret1 judgments of1 #aei4 ,religion1 natural1 #eb2 of humanity1 #aih4 ,religious hypothesis1 #be1 #bh1 #ea4 ,religious minds1 #dj4 ,renan1 #agj1 #agb4 ,renouvier1 #adc4 ,risks of belief or disbelief1 ix1 #bf2 rules for minimizing1 #id4 ,romantic view of world1 #cbd4 ,romanticism1 #agb-c4 ,rousseau1 #d1 #cc1 #hg4 ,ruskin1 #cg4 ,,salter1 #fb4 ,scepticism1 #ab1 #bc1 #aji4 ,scholasticism1 #ac4 ,schopenhauer1 #gb1 #afi4 ,science1 #aj1 #ba2 its recency1 #eb-d2 due to peculiar desire1 #abi-acb1 #adg2 its disbelief of the occult1 #cag-cbj2 its negation of personality1 #cbd-f2 cannot decide question of determinism1 #aeb4 ,science of ,ethics1 #bjh-baj4 ,selection of great men1 #bbf4 ,sentiment of rationality1 #fc4 ,seriousness1 #hf4 ,shakespeare1 #cb1 #bce4 ,sidgwick1 #cjc1 #cjg4 ,sigwart1 #abj1 #adh4 ,society for psychical research1 #cjc2 its ',proceedings1' #cje1 #cbe4 ,sociology1 #bei4 ,solitude1 moral1 #aia4 ,space1 #bfe4 ,spencer1 #afh1 #bah1 #bcb-bce1 #bdf1 #bea1 #bfj4 ,stephen1 ,l41 #a4 ,stephen1 ,sir ,j41 #a1 #cj1 #bab4 ,stoics1 #bgd4 ,strenuous mood1 #baa1 #bac4 ,subjectivism1 #afe1 #agj4 ',subliminal self1' #cae1 #cba4 ,substance1 #hj4 ,suicide1 #ch1 #ej1 #fj4 ,system in philosophy1 #ac1 #ahe1 #aii4 ,,telepathy1 #aj1 #cji4 ,theism1 and reflex action1 #aaa-add4 ,theism1 #abg1 #acd-f2 see ',god4' ,theology1 natural1 #da2 ,calvinistic1 #de4 ,theoretic faculty1 #abh4 ,thought-transference1 #cji4 ,thomson1 #ce-g1 #de1 #df4 ,toleration1 #cj4 ,tolstoi1 #ahh4 ',totality1' the principle of1 #bgg4 ,triadic structure of mind1 #abc4 ,truth1 criteria of1 #ae2 and error1 #ah2 moral1 #aij-a4 ,,unitarians1 #abf1 #acc4 ,unknowable1 the1 #fh1 #ha4 ,universe ,m x1 #aja2 its rationality1 #abe1 #acg4 ,unseen world1 #ea1 #ed1 #ef1 #fa4 ,utopias1 #afh4 ,,value1 judgments of1 #ajc4 ,variations1 in heredity1 etc41 #bbe1 #bdi4 ,vaudois1 #dh4 ,veddah1 #beh4 ,verification of theories1 #ie1 #aje-h4 ,vivisection1 #eh4 ,,waldenses1 #dg-i4 ,wallace1 #bci1 #cjd1 ,whitman1 #cc1 #fd1 #gd4 ,wordsworth1 #fj4 ,world1 its ambiguity1 #gf2 the invisible1 #ea1 #ed1 #ef2 two orders of1 #aah4 ,worth1 judgments of1 #ajc4 ,wright1 #eb4 ,x41 ,miss1 #cad4 ,,zola1 #agb4 ,zllner1 #ae4 ,by the ,same ,author ,,the ,,principles ,,of ,,psychology4 #b vols4 #hvo4 ,new ,york3 ,henry ,holt ,co4 ,london2 ,macmillan ,co4 #ahij ,,psychology3 ,,briefer ,,course 7,,text ,,book74 #abmo4 ,new ,york3 ,henry ,holt ,co4 ,london3 ,macmillan ,co4 #ahib4 ,,the ,,will ,,to ,,believe1 ,,and ,,other ,,essays ,,in ,,popular ,,philosophy4 #abmo4 ,new ,york1 ,london4 ,bombay and ,calcutta3 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #ahig4 ,,human ,,immortality3 ,,two ,,supposed ,,objections ,,to ,,the ,,doctrine4 #afmo4 ,boston3 ,houghton ,mifflin ,co4 #ahih4 ,,talks ,,to ,,teachers ,,on ,,psychology3 ,,and ,,to ,,students ,,on ,,some ,,of ,,life',s ,,ideals4 #abmo4 ,new ,york3 ,henry ,holt ,co4 ,london1 ,bombay and ,calcutta3 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #ahii4 ,,the ,,varieties ,,of ,,religious ,,experience3 ,a ,,study ,,in ,,human ,,nature4 ,gifford ,lectures delivered at ,edinburgh in #aija-aijb4 #hvo4 ,new ,york1 ,london1 ,bombay and ,calcutta3 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #aijb4 ,,pragmatism3 ,a ,,new ,,name ,,for ,,some ,,old ,,ways ,,of ,,thinking3 ,,popular ,,lectures ,,on ,,philosophy4 ,new ,york1 ,london1 ,bombay and ,calcutta3 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #aijg4 ,a ,,pluralistic ,,universe3 ,,hibbert ,,lectures ,,at ,,manchester ,,college ,,on ,,the ,,present ,,situation ,,in ,,philosophy4 ,new ,york1 ,london1 ,bombay1 and ,calcutta3 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #aiji4 ,,the ,,meaning ,,of ,,truth2 ,a ,,sequel ,,to ,,pragmatism4 ,new ,york1 ,london1 ,bombay1 and ,calcutta2 ,longmans1 ,green ,co4 #aiji4 ,,the ,,literary ,,remains ,,of ,,henry ,,james ,edited1 with an ,introduction1 by ,,william ,,james4 ,with ,portrait4 ,crown #hvo4 ,boston3 ,houghton ,mifflin ,co4 #ahhe4 99 99 99 99 99 ,transcriber's notes3 ,page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces1 e4g4 #ii4 ,they have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book1 in accordance with ,project ,gutenberg's ,,faq-,v-#ii4 ,for its ,index1 a page number has been placed only at the start of that section4 ,in the ,,html version of this book1 page numbers are placed in the left margin4 ,footnotes are indicated by numbers enclosed in square brackets1 e4g4 #b4 ,they have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of their respective chapters4