,,character ,,and ,,opinion ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states ,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,reason ,,or ,,the ,,phases ,,of ,,human ,,progress ,vol4 ,i4 ,reason in ,common ,sense4 ,vol4 ,,ii4 ,reason in ,society4 ,vol4 ,,iii4 ,reason in ,religion4 ,vol4 ,,iv4 ,reason in ,art4 ,vol4 ,v4 ,reason in ,science4 image ,,interpretations ,,of ,,poetry ,,and ,,religion image ,,the ,,sense ,,of ,,beauty image ,,little ,,essays ,,drawn ,,from ,,the ,,writings ,,of ,,george ,,santayana ,edited with a ,preface by ,,logan ,,pearsall ,,smith image 99,,character ,,opinion ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states99 99,,with ,,reminiscences ,,of ,,william ,,james ,,and ,,josiah ,,royce99 99,,and ,,academic ,,life ,,in ,,america99 ,,by ,,george ,,santayana ,,late ,,professor ,,of ,,philosophy ,,in ,,harvard ,,university ,,new ,,york ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons #aiba ,first ,published #aibj ,reprinted #aiba ,,preface ,the major part of this book is composed of lectures originally addressed to ,british audiences4 ,i have added a good deal1 but ,i make no apology1 now that the whole may fall under ,american eyes1 for preserving the tone and attitude of a detached observer4 ,not at all on the ground that 8to see ourselves as others see us0 would be to see ourselves truly2 on the contrary1 ,i agree with ,spinoza where he says that other people's idea of a man is apt to be a better expression of their nature than of his4 ,i accept this principle in the present instance1 and am willing it should be applied to the judgements contained in this book1 in which the reader may see chiefly expressions of my own feelings and hints of my own opinions4 ,only an ,american--and ,i am not one except by long association--can speak for the heart of ,america4 ,i try to understand it1 as a family friend may who has a different temperament2 but it is only my own mind that ,i speak for at bottom1 or wish to speak for4 ,certainly my sentiments are of little importance compared with the volume and destiny of the things ,i discuss here3 yet the critic and artist too have their rights1 and to take as calm and as long a view as possible seems to be but another name for the love of truth4 ,moreover1 ,i suspect that my feelings are secretly shared by many people in ,america1 natives and foreigners1 who may not have the courage or the occasion to express them frankly4 ,after all1 it has been acquaintance with ,america and ,american philosophers that has chiefly contributed to clear and to settle my own mind4 ,i have no axe to grind1 only my thoughts to burnish1 in the hope that some part of the truth of things may be reflected there2 and ,i am confident of not giving serious offence to the judicious1 because they will feel that it is affection for the ,american people that makes me wish that what is best and most beautiful should not be absent from their lives4 ,civilisation is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time4 ,a flood of barbarism from below may soon level all the fair works of our ,christian ancestors1 as another flood two thousand years ago levelled those of the ancients4 ,romantic ,christendom--picturesque1 passionate1 unhappy episode--may be coming to an end4 ,such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair4 ,nothing lasts for ever2 but the elasticity of life is wonderful1 and even if the world lost its memory it could not lose its youth4 ,under the deluge1 and watered by it1 seeds of all sorts would survive against the time to come1 even if what might eventually spring from them1 under the new circumstances1 should wear a strange aspect4 ,in a certain measure1 and unintentionally1 both this destruction and this restoration have already occurred in ,america4 ,there is much forgetfulness1 much callow disrespect for what is past or alien2 but there is a fund of vigour1 goodness1 and hope such as no nation ever possessed before4 ,in what sometimes looks like ,american greediness and jostling for the front place1 all is love of achievement1 nothing is unkindness2 it is a fearless people1 and free from malice1 as you might see in their eyes and gestures1 even if their conduct did not prove it4 ,this soil is propitious to every seed1 and tares must needs grow in it2 but why should it not also breed clear thinking1 honest judgement1 and rational happiness8 ,these things are indeed not necessary to existence1 and without them ,america might long remain rich and populous like many a barbarous land in the past2 but in that case its existence would be hounded1 like theirs1 by falsity and remorse4 ,may ,heaven avert the omen1 and make the new world a better world than the old6 ,in the classical and romantic tradition of ,europe1 love1 of which there was very little1 was supposed to be kindled by beauty1 of which there was a great deal3 perhaps moral chemistry may be able to reverse this operation1 and in the future and in ,america it may breed beauty out of love4 #a ,perhaps ,i should add that ,i have not been in the ,united ,states since ,january #aiab4 ,my observations stretched1 with some intervals1 through the forty years preceding that date4 ,,contents ,,preface ,,chapter ,i--,,the ,,moral ,,background ,,chapter ,,ii--,,the ,,academic ,,environment ,,chapter ,,iii--,,william ,,james ,,chapter ,,iv--,,josiah ,,royce ,,chapter ,v--,,later ,,speculations ,,chapter ,,vi--,,materialism ,,and ,,idealism ,,in ,,american ,,life ,,chapter ,,vii--,,english ,,liberty ,,in ,,america ,,chapter ,i--,,the ,,moral ,,background ,about the middle of the nineteenth century1 in the quiet sunshine of provincial prosperity1 ,new ,england had an ,indian summer of the mind2 and an agreeable reflective literature showed how brilliant that russet and yellow season could be4 ,there were poets1 historians1 orators1 preachers1 most of whom had studied foreign literatures and had travelled2 they demurely kept up with the times2 they were universal humanists4 ,but it was all a harvest of leaves2 these worthies had an expurgated and barren conception of life2 theirs was the purity of sweet old age4 ,sometimes they made attempts to rejuvenate their minds by broaching native subjects2 they wished to prove how much matter for poetry the new world supplied1 and they wrote 8,rip van ,winkle10 8,hiawatha10 or 8,evangeline02 but the inspiration did not seem much more ,american than that of ,swift or ,ossian or ,chteaubriand4 ,these cultivated writers lacked native roots and fresh sap because the ,american intellect itself lacked them4 ,their culture was half a pious survival1 half an intentional acquirement2 it was not the inevitable flowering of a fresh experience4 ,later there have been admirable analytic novelists who have depicted ,american life as it is1 but rather bitterly1 rather sadly2 as if the joy and the illusion of it did not inspire them1 but only an abstract interest in their own art4 ,if any one1 like ,walt ,whitman1 penetrated to the feelings and images which the ,american scene was able to breed out of itself1 and filled them with a frank and broad afflatus of his own1 there is no doubt that he misrepresented the conscious minds of cultivated ,americans2 in them the head as yet did not belong to the trunk4 ,nevertheless1 belleslettres in the ,united ,states--which after all stretch beyond ,new ,england--have always had two points of contact with the great national experiment4 ,one point of contact has been oratory1 with that sort of poetry1 patriotic1 religious1 or moral1 which has the function of oratory4 ,eloquence is a republican art1 as conversation is an aristocratic one4 ,by eloquence at public meetings and dinners1 in the pulpit or in the press1 the impulses of the community could be brought to expression2 consecrated maxims could be reapplied2 the whole latent manliness and shrewdness of the nation could be mobilised4 ,in the form of oratory reflection1 rising out of the problems of action1 could be turned to guide or to sanction action1 and sometimes could attain1 in so doing1 a notable elevation of thought4 ,although ,americans1 and many other people1 usually say that thought is for the sake of action1 it has evidently been in these high moments1 when action became incandescent in thought1 that they have been most truly alive1 intensively most active1 and although doing nothing1 have found at last that their existence was worth while4 ,reflection is itself a turn1 and the top turn1 given to life4 ,here is the second point at which literature in ,america has fused with the activities of the nation3 it has paused to enjoy them4 ,every animal has his festive and ceremonious moments1 when he poses or plumes himself or thinks2 sometimes he even sings and flies aloft in a sort of ecstasy4 ,somewhat in the same way1 when reflection in man becomes dominant1 it may become passionate2 it may create religion or philosophy--adventures often more thrilling than the humdrum experience they are supposed to interrupt4 ,this pure flame of mind is nothing new1 superadded1 or alien in ,america4 ,it is notorious how metaphysical was the passion that drove the ,puritans to those shores2 they went there in the hope of living more perfectly in the spirit4 ,and their pilgrim's progress was not finished when they had founded their churches in the wilderness2 an endless migration of the mind was still before them1 a flight from those new idols and servitudes which prosperity involves1 and the eternal lure of spiritual freedom and truth4 ,the moral world always contains undiscovered or thinly peopled continents open to those who are more attached to what might or should be than to what already is4 ,americans are eminently prophets2 they apply morals to public affairs2 they are impatient and enthusiastic4 ,their judgements have highly speculative implications1 which they often make explicit2 they are men with principles1 and fond of stating them4 ,moreover1 they have an intense selfreliance2 to exercise private judgement is not only a habit with them but a conscious duty4 ,not seldom personal conversions and mystical experiences throw their ingrained faith into novel forms1 which may be very bold and radical4 ,they are traditionally exercised about religion1 and adrift on the subject more than any other people on earth2 and if religion is a dreaming philosophy1 and philosophy a waking religion1 a people so wide awake and so religious as the old ,yankees ought certainly to have been rich in philosophers4 ,in fact1 philosophy in the good old sense of curiosity about the nature of things1 with readiness to make the best of them1 has not been absent from the practice of ,americans or from their humorous moods2 their humour and shrewdness are sly comments on the shortcomings of some polite convention that everybody accepts tacitly1 yet feels to be insecure and contrary to the principles on which life is actually carried on4 ,nevertheless1 with the shyness which simple competence often shows in the presence of conventional shams1 these wits have not taken their native wisdom very seriously4 ,they have not had the leisure nor the intellectual scope to think out and defend the implications of their homely perceptions4 ,their fresh insight has been whispered in parentheses and asides2 it has been humbly banished1 in alarm1 from their solemn moments4 ,what people have respected have been rather scraps of official philosophy1 or entire systems1 which they have inherited or imported1 as they have respected operas and art museums4 ,to be on speaking terms with these fine things was a part of social respectability1 like having family silver4 ,high thoughts must be at hand1 like those candlesticks1 probably candleless1 sometimes displayed as a seemly ornament in a room blazing with electric light4 ,even in ,william ,james1 spontaneous and stimulating as he was1 a certain underlying discomfort was discernible2 he had come out into the open1 into what should have been the sunshine1 but the vast shadow of the temple still stood between him and the sun4 ,he was worried about what ought to be believed and the awful deprivations of disbelieving4 ,what he called the cynical view of anything had first to be brushed aside1 without stopping to consider whether it was not the true one2 and he was bent on finding new and empirical reasons for clinging to freewill1 departed spirits1 and tutelary gods4 ,nobody1 except perhaps in this last decade1 has tried to bridge the chasm between what he believes in daily life and the 8problems0 of philosophy4 ,nature and science have not been ignored1 and 8practice0 in some schools has been constantly referred to2 but instead of supplying philosophy with its data they have only constituted its difficulties2 its function has been not to build on known facts but to explain them away4 ,hence a curious alternation and irrelevance1 as between weekdays and ,sabbaths1 between ,american ways and ,american opinions4 ,that philosophy should be attached to tradition would be a great advantage1 conducive to mutual understanding1 to maturity1 and to progress1 if the tradition lay in the highway of truth4 ,to deviate from it in that case would be to betray the fact that1 while one might have a lively mind1 one was not master of the subject4 ,unfortunately1 in the nineteenth century1 in ,america as elsewhere1 the ruling tradition was not only erratic and far from the highway of truth1 but the noonday of this tradition was over1 and its classic forms were outgrown4 ,a philosophy may have a high value1 other than its truth to things1 in its truth to method and to the genius of its author2 it may be a feat of synthesis and imagination1 like a great poem1 expressing one of the eternal possibilities of being1 although one which the creator happened to reject when he made this world4 ,it is possible to be a master in false philosophy--easier1 in fact1 than to be a master in the truth1 because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases4 ,such had been the masters of the tradition prevalent in ,new ,england--,calvin1 ,hume1 ,fichte1 not to mention others more relished because less pure2 but one of the disadvantages of such perfection in error is that the illusion is harder to transmit to another age and country4 ,if ,jonathan ,edwards1 for instance1 was a ,calvinist of pristine force and perhaps the greatest master in false philosophy that ,america has yet produced1 he paid the price by being abandoned1 even in his lifetime1 by his own sect1 and seeing the world turn a deaf ear to his logic without so much as attempting to refute it4 ,one of the peculiarities of recent speculation1 especially in ,america1 is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling1 without any new evidence or new arguments4 ,we do not nowadays refute our predecessors1 we pleasantly bid them goodbye4 ,even if all our principles are unwittingly traditional we do not like to bow openly to authority4 ,hence masters like ,calvin1 ,hume1 or ,fichte rose before their ,american admirers like formidable ghosts1 foreign and unseizable4 ,people refused to be encumbered with any system1 even one of their own2 they were content to imbibe more or less of the spirit of a philosophy and to let it play on such facts as happened to attract their attention4 ,the originality even of ,emerson and of ,william ,james was of this incidental character2 they found new approaches to old beliefs or new expedients in old dilemmas4 ,they were not in a scholastic sense pupils of anybody or masters in anything4 ,they hated the scholastic way of saying what they meant1 if they had heard of it2 they insisted on a personal freshness of style1 refusing to make their thought more precise than it happened to be spontaneously2 and they lisped their logic1 when the logic came4 ,we must remember that ever since the days of ,socrates1 and especially after the establishment of ,christianity1 the dice of thought have been loaded4 ,certain pledges have preceded inquiry and divided the possible conclusions beforehand into the acceptable and the inacceptable1 the edifying and the shocking1 the noble and the base4 ,wonder has no longer been the root of philosophy1 but sometimes impatience at having been cheated and sometimes fear of being undeceived4 ,the marvel of existence1 in which the luminous and the opaque are so romantically mingled1 no longer lay like a sea open to intellectual adventure1 tempting the mind to conceive some bold and curious system of the universe on the analogy of what had been so far discovered4 ,instead1 people were confronted with an orthodoxy--though not always the same orthodoxy--whispering mysteries and brandishing anathemas4 ,their wits were absorbed in solving traditional problems1 many of them artificial and such as the ruling orthodoxy had created by its gratuitous assumptions4 ,difficulties were therefore found in some perfectly obvious truths2 and obvious fables1 if they were hallowed by association1 were seriously weighed in the balance against one another or against the facts2 and many an actual thing was proved to be impossible1 or was hidden under a false description4 ,in conservative schools the student learned and tried to fathom the received solutions2 in liberal schools he was perhaps invited to seek solutions of his own1 but still to the old questions4 ,freedom1 when nominally allowed1 was a provisional freedom2 if your wanderings did not somehow bring you back to orthodoxy you were a misguided being1 no matter how disparate from the orthodox might be the field from which you fetched your little harvest2 and if you could not be answered you were called superficial4 ,most spirits are cowed by such disparagement2 but even those who snap their fingers at it do not escape2 they can hardly help feeling that in calling a spade a spade they are petulant and naughty2 or if their inspiration is too genuine for that1 they still unwittingly shape their opinions in contrast to those that claim authority1 and therefore on the same false lines--a terrible tax to pay to the errors of others2 and it is only here and there that a very great and solitary mind1 like that of ,spinoza1 can endure obloquy without bitterness or can pass through perverse controversies without contagion4 ,under such circumstances it is obvious that speculation can be frank and happy only where orthodoxy has receded1 abandoning a larger and larger field to unprejudiced inquiry2 or else 7as has happened among liberal ,protestants7 where the very heart of orthodoxy has melted1 has absorbed the most alien substances1 and is ready to bloom into anything that anybody finds attractive4 ,this is the secret of that extraordinary vogue which the transcendental philosophy has had for nearly a century in ,great ,britain and ,america2 it is a method which enables a man to renovate all his beliefs1 scientific and religious1 from the inside1 giving them a new status and interpretation as phases of his own experience or imagination2 so that he does not seem to himself to reject anything1 and yet is bound to nothing1 except to his creative self4 ,many too who have no inclination to practise this transcendental method--a personal1 arduous1 and futile art1 which requires to be renewed at every moment--have been impressed with the results or the maxims of this or that transcendental philosopher1 such as that every opinion leads on to another that reinterprets it1 or every evil to some higher good that contains it2 and they have managed to identify these views with what still seemed to them vital in religion4 ,in spite of this profound mutation at the core1 and much paring at the edges1 traditional belief in ,new ,england retained its continuity and its priestly unction2 and religious teachers and philosophers could slip away from ,calvinism and even from ,christianity without any loss of elevation or austerity4 ,they found it so pleasant and easy to elude the past that they really had no quarrel with it4 ,the world1 they felt1 was a safe place1 watched over by a kindly ,god1 who exacted nothing but cheerfulness and goodwill from his children2 and the ,american flag was a sort of rainbow in the sky1 promising that all storms were over4 ,or if storms came1 such as the ,civil ,war1 they would not be harder to weather than was necessary to test the national spirit and raise it to a new efficiency4 ,the subtler dangers which we may now see threatening ,america had not yet come in sight--material restlessness was not yet ominous1 the pressure of business enterprises was not yet out of scale with the old life or out of key with the old moral harmonies4 ,a new type of ,american had not appeared--the untrained1 pushing1 cosmopolitan orphan1 cocksure in manner but not too sure in his morality1 to whom the old ,yankee1 with his sour integrity1 is almost a foreigner4 ,was not 8increase10 in the ,bible1 a synonym for benefit8 ,was not 8abundance0 the same1 or almost the same1 as happiness8 ,meantime the churches1 a little ashamed of their past1 began to court the good opinion of so excellent a world4 ,although called evangelical1 they were far1 very far1 from prophesying its end1 or offering a refuge from it1 or preaching contempt for it2 they existed only to serve it1 and their highest divine credential was that the world needed them4 ,irreligion1 dissoluteness1 and pessimism--supposed naturally to go together--could never prosper2 they were incompatible with efficiency4 ,that was the supreme test4 8,be ,christians10 ,i once heard a president of ,yale ,college cry to his assembled pupils1 8be ,christians and you will be successful40 ,religion was indispensable and sacred1 when not carried too far2 but theology might well be unnecessary4 ,why distract this world with talk of another8 ,enough for the day was the good thereof4 ,religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics1 and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings1 on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life4 ,revelation was nothing miraculous1 given once for all in some remote age and foreign country2 it must come to us directly1 and with greater authority now than ever before4 ,if evolution was to be taken seriously and to include moral growth1 the great men of the past could only be steppingstones to our own dignity4 ,to grow was to contain and sum up all the good that had gone before1 adding an appropriate increment4 ,undoubtedly some early figures were beautiful1 and allowances had to be made for local influences in ,palestine1 a place so much more primitive and backward than ,massachusetts4 ,jesus was a prophet more winsome and nearer to ourselves than his predecessors2 but how could any one deny that the twenty centuries of progress since his time must have raised a loftier pedestal for ,emerson or ,charming or ,phillips ,brooks8 ,it might somehow not be in good taste to put this feeling into clear words2 one and perhaps two of these men would have deprecated it2 nevertheless it beamed with refulgent selfsatisfaction in the lives and maxims of most of their followers4 ,all this liberalism1 however1 never touched the centre of traditional orthodoxy1 and those who1 for all their modernness1 felt that they inherited the faith of their fathers and were true to it were fundamentally right4 ,there was still an orthodoxy among ,american highbrows at the end of the nineteenth century1 dissent from which was felt to be scandalous2 it consisted in holding that the universe exists and is governed for the sake of man or of the human spirit4 ,this persuasion1 arrogant as it might seem1 is at bottom an expression of impotence rather than of pride4 ,the soul is originally vegetative2 it feels the weal and woe of what occurs within the body4 ,with locomotion and the instinct to hunt and to flee1 animals begin to notice external things also2 but the chief point noticed about them is whether they are good or bad1 friendly or hostile1 far or near4 ,the station of the animal and his interests thus become the measure of all things for him1 in so far as he knows them2 and this aspect of them is1 by a primitive fatality1 the heart of them to him4 ,it is only reason that can discount these childish perspectives1 neutralise the bias of each by collating it with the others1 and masterfully conceive the field in which their common objects are deployed1 discovering also the principle of foreshortening or projection which produces each perspective in turn4 ,but reason is a later comer into this world1 and weak2 against its suasion stands the mighty resistance of habit and of moral presumption4 ,it is in their interest1 and to rehabilitate the warm vegetative autonomy of the primitive soul1 that orthodox religion and philosophy labour in the western world--for the mind of ,india cannot be charged with this folly4 ,although inwardly these systems have not now a good conscience and do not feel very secure 7for they are retrograde and sin against the light71 yet outwardly they are solemn and venerable2 and they have incorporated a great deal of moral wisdom with their egotism or humanism--more than the ,indians with their respect for the infinite4 ,in deifying human interests they have naturally studied and expressed them justly1 whereas those who perceive the relativity of human goods are tempted to scorn them--which is itself unreasonable--and to sacrifice them all to the single passion of worship or of despair4 ,hardly anybody1 except possibly the ,greeks at their best1 has realised the sweetness and glory of being a rational animal4 ,the ,jews1 as we know1 had come to think that it was the creator of the world1 the ,god of the universe1 who had taken them for his chosen people4 ,christians in turn had asserted that it was ,god in person who1 having become a man1 had founded their church4 ,according to this ,hebraic tradition1 the dignity of man did not lie in being a mind 7which he undoubtedly is7 but in being a creature materially highly favoured1 with a longer life and a brighter destiny than other creatures in the world4 ,it is remarkable how deep1 in the ,hebraic religions1 is this interest in material existence2 so deep that we are surprised when we discover that1 according to the insight of other races1 this interest is the essence of irreligion4 ,some detachment from existence and from hopes of material splendour has indeed filtered into ,christianity through ,platonism4 ,socrates and his disciples admired this world1 but they did not particularly covet it1 or wish to live long in it1 or expect to improve it2 what they cared for was an idea or a good which they found expressed in it1 something outside it and timeless1 in which the contemplative intellect might be literally absorbed4 ,this philosophy was no less humanistic than that of the ,jews1 though in a less material fashion3 if it did not read the universe in terms of thrift1 it read it in terms of art4 ,the pursuit of a good1 such as is presumably aimed at in human action1 was supposed to inspire every movement in nature2 and this good1 for the sake of which the very heavens revolved1 was akin to the intellectual happiness of a ,greek sage4 ,nature was a philosopher in pursuit of an idea4 ,natural science then took a moralising turn which it has not yet quite outgrown4 ,socrates required of astronomy1 if it was to be true science1 that it should show why it was best that the sun and moon should be as they are2 and ,plato1 refining on this1 assures us that the eyes are placed in the front of the head1 rather than at the back1 because the front is the nobler quarter1 and that the intestines are long in order that we may have leisure between meals to study philosophy4 ,curiously enough1 the very enemies of final causes sometimes catch this infection and attach absolute values to facts in an opposite sense and in an inhuman interest2 and you often hear in ,america that whatever is is right4 ,these naturalists1 while they rebuke the moralists for thinking that nature is ruled magically for our good1 think her adorable for being ruled1 in scorn of us1 only by her own laws2 and thus we oscillate between egotism and idolatry4 ,the ,reformation did not reform this belief in the cosmic supremacy of man1 or the humanity of ,god2 on the contrary1 it took it 7like so much else7 in terrible ,german earnest1 not suffering it any longer to be accepted somewhat lightly as a classical figure of speech or a mystery resting on revelation4 ,the human race1 the chosen people1 the ,christian elect were like tabernacle within tabernacle for the spirit2 but in the holy of holies was the spirit itself1 one's own spirit and experience1 which was the centre of everything4 ,protestant philosophy1 exploring the domain of science and history with confidence1 and sure of finding the spirit walking there1 was too conscientious to misrepresent what it found4 ,as the terrible facts could not be altered they had to be undermined4 ,by turning psychology into metaphysics this could be accomplished1 and we could reach the remarkable conclusion that the human spirit was not so much the purpose of the universe as its seat1 and the only universe there was4 ,this conclusion1 which sums up idealism on its critical or scientific side1 would not of itself give much comfort to religious minds1 that usually crave massive support rather than sublime independence2 it leads to the heroic egotism of ,fichte or ,nietzsche rather than to any green pastures beside any still waters4 ,but the critical element in idealism can be used to destroy belief in the natural world2 and by so doing it can open the way to another sort of idealism1 not at all critical1 which might be called the higher superstition4 ,this views the world as an oracle or charade1 concealing a dramatic unity1 or formula1 or maxim1 which all experience exists to illustrate4 ,the habit of regarding existence as a riddle1 with a surprising solution which we think we have found1 should be the source of rather mixed emotions2 the facts remain as they were1 and rival solutions may at any time suggest themselves2 and the one we have hit on may not1 after all1 be particularly comforting4 ,the ,christian may find himself turned by it into a heathen1 the humanist into a pantheist1 and the hope with which we instinctively faced life may be chastened into mere conformity4 ,nevertheless1 however chilling and inhuman our higher superstition may prove1 it will make us feel that we are masters of a mystical secret1 that we have a faith to defend1 and that1 like all philosophers1 we have taken a ticket in a lottery in which if we hit on the truth1 even if it seems a blank1 we shall have drawn the first prize4 ,orthodoxy in ,new ,england1 even so transformed and attenuated1 did not of course hold the field alone4 ,there are materialists by instinct in every age and country2 there are always private gentlemen whom the clergy and the professors cannot deceive4 ,here and there a medical or scientific man1 or a man of letters1 will draw from his special pursuits some hint of the nature of things at large2 or a political radical will nurse undying wrath against all opinions not tartly hostile to church and state4 ,but these clever people are not organised1 they are not always given to writing1 nor speculative enough to make a system out of their convictions4 ,the enthusiasts and the pedagogues naturally flock to the other camp4 ,the very competence which scientific people and connoisseurs have in their special fields disinclines them to generalise1 or renders their generalisations onesided2 so that their speculations are extraordinarily weak and stammering4 ,both by what they represent and by what they ignore they are isolated and deprived of influence1 since only those who are at home in a subject can feel the force of analogies drawn from that field1 whereas any one can be swayed by sentimental and moral appeals1 by rhetoric and unction4 ,furthermore1 in ,america the materialistic school is without that support from popular passions which it draws in many ,european countries from its association with anticlericalism or with revolutionary politics2 and it also lacks the maturity1 selfconfidence1 and refinement proper in older societies to the great body of ,epicurean and disenchanted opinion1 where for centuries wits1 critics1 minor philosophers1 and men of the world have chuckled together over their ,horace1 their ,voltaire1 and their ,gibbon4 ,the horror which the theologians have of infidelity passes therefore into the average ,american mind unmitigated by the suspicion that anything pleasant could lie in that quarter1 much less the open way to nature and truth and a secure happiness4 ,there is another handicap1 of a more technical sort1 under which naturalistic philosophy labours in ,america1 as it does in ,england2 it has been crossed by scepticism about the validity of perception and has become almost identical with psychology4 ,of course1 for any one who thinks naturalistically 7as the ,british empiricists did in the beginning1 like every unsophisticated mortal71 psychology is the description of a very superficial and incidental complication in the animal kingdom3 it treats of the curious sensibility and volatile thoughts awakened in the mind by the growth and fortunes of the body4 ,in noting these thoughts and feelings1 we can observe how far they constitute true knowledge of the world in which they arise1 how far they ignore it1 and how far they play with it1 by virtue of the poetry and the syntax of discourse which they add out of their own exuberance2 for fancy is a very fertile treacherous thing1 as every one finds when he dreams4 ,but dreams run over into waking life1 and sometimes seem to permeate and to underlie it2 and it was just this suspicion that he might be dreaming awake1 that discourse and tradition might be making a fool of him1 that prompted the hardheaded ,briton1 even before the ,reformation1 to appeal from conventional beliefs to 8experience40 ,he was anxious to clear away those sophistries and impostures of which he was particularly apprehensive1 in view of the somewhat foreign character of his culture and religion4 ,experience1 he thought1 would bear unimpeachable witness to the nature of things2 for by experience he understood knowledge produced by direct contact with the object4 ,taken in this sense1 experience is a method of discovery1 an exercise of intelligence2 it is the same observation of things1 strict1 cumulative1 and analytic1 which produces the natural sciences4 ,it rests on naturalistic assumptions 7since we know when and where we find our data7 and could not fail to end in materialism4 ,what prevented ,british empiricism from coming to this obvious conclusion was a peculiarity of the national temperament4 ,the ,englishman is not only distrustful of too much reasoning and too much theory 7and science and materialism involve a good deal of both71 but he is also fond of musing and of withdrawing into his inner man4 ,accordingly his empiricism took an introspective form2 like ,hamlet he stopped at the how2 he began to think about thinking4 ,his first care was now to arrest experience as he underwent it2 though its presence could not be denied1 it came in such a questionable shape that it could not be taken at its word4 ,this mere presence of experience1 this ghostly apparition to the inner man1 was all that empirical philosophy could now profess to discover4 ,far from being an exercise of intelligence1 it retracted all understanding1 all interpretation1 all instinctive faith2 far from furnishing a sure record of the truths of nature1 it furnished a set of pathological facts1 the passive subjectmatter of psychology4 ,these now seemed the only facts admissible1 and psychology1 for the philosophers1 became the only science4 ,experience could discover nothing1 but all discoveries had to be retracted1 so that they should revert to the fact of experience and terminate there4 ,evidently when the naturalistic background and meaning of experience have dropped out in this way1 empiricism is a form of idealism1 since whatever objects we can come upon will all be a priori and a fortiori and sensu eminentiori ideal in the mind4 ,the irony of logic actually made ,english empiricism1 understood in this psychological way1 the startingpoint for transcendentalism and for ,german philosophy4 ,between these two senses of the word experience1 meaning sometimes contact with things and at other times absolute feeling1 the empirical school in ,england and ,america has been helplessly torn1 without ever showing the courage or the selfknowledge to choose between them4 ,i think we may say that on the whole their view has been this3 that feelings or ideas were absolute atoms of existence1 without any ground or source1 so that the elements of their universe were all mental2 but they conceived these psychical elements to be deployed in a physical time and even 7since there were many simultaneous series of them7 in some sort of space4 ,these philosophers were accordingly idealists about substance but naturalists about the order and relations of existences2 and experience on their lips meant feeling when they were thinking of particulars1 but when they were thinking broadly1 in matters of history or science1 experience meant the universal nebula or cataract which these feelings composed--itself no object of experience1 but one believed in and very imperfectly presented in imagination4 ,these men believed in nature1 and were materialists at heart and to all practical purposes2 but they were shy intellectually1 and seemed to think they ran less risk of error in holding a thing covertly than in openly professing it4 ,if any one1 like ,herbert ,spencer1 kept psychology in its place and in that respect remained a pure naturalist1 he often forfeited this advantage by enveloping the positive information he derived from the sciences in a whirlwind of generalisations4 ,the higher superstition1 the notion that nature dances to the tune of some comprehensive formula or some magic rhyme1 thus reappeared among those who claimed to speak for natural science4 ,in their romantic sympathy with nature they attributed to her an excessive sympathy with themselves2 they overlooked her infinite complications and continual irony1 and candidly believed they could measure her with their thumbrules4 ,why should philosophers drag a toynet of words1 fit to catch butterflies1 through the sea of being1 and expect to land all the fish in it8 ,why not take note simply of what the particular sciences can as yet tell us of the world8 ,certainly1 when put together1 they already yield a very wonderful1 very true1 and very sufficient picture of it4 ,are we impatient of knowing everything8 ,but even if science was much enlarged it would have limits1 both in penetration and in extent2 and there would always remain1 ,i will not say an infinity of unsolved problems 7because 8problems0 are created by our impatience or our contradictions71 but an infinity of undiscovered facts4 ,nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view2 as to knowing her through and through1 that is nonsense in both cases1 and might not reward our pains4 ,the love of allinclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art4 ,the savour of nature can be enjoyed by us only through our own senses and insight1 and an outline map of the entire universe1 even if it was not fabulously concocted1 would not tell us much that was worth knowing about the outlying parts of it4 ,without suggesting for a moment that the proper study of mankind is man only--for it may be landscape or mathematics--we may safely say that their proper study is what lies within their range and is interesting to them4 ,for this reason the moralists who consider principally human life and paint nature only as a background to their figures are apt to be better philosophers than the speculative naturalists4 ,in human life we are at home1 and our views on it1 if onesided1 are for that very reason expressive of our character and fortunes4 ,an unfortunate peculiarity of naturalistic philosophers is that usually they have but cursory and wretched notions of the inner life of the mind2 they are dead to patriotism and to religion1 they hate poetry and fancy and passion and even philosophy itself2 and therefore 7especially if their science too1 as often happens1 is borrowed and vague7 we need not wonder if the academic and cultivated world despises them1 and harks back to the mythology of ,plato or ,aristotle or ,hegel1 who at least were conversant with the spirit of man4 ,philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much4 ,even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre4 ,as the senses open to us only partial perspectives1 taken from one point of view1 and report the facts in symbols which1 far from being adequate to the full nature of what surrounds us1 resemble the coloured signals of danger or of free way which a railway enginedriver peers at in the night1 so our speculation1 which is a sort of panoramic sense1 approaches things peripherally and expresses them humanly4 ,but how doubly dyed in this subjectivity must our thought be when an orthodoxy dominant for ages has twisted the universe into the service of moral interests1 and when even the heretics are entangled in a scepticism so partial and arbitrary that it substitutes psychology1 the most derivative and dubious of sciences1 for the direct intelligent reading of experience6 ,but this strain of subjectivity is not in all respects an evil2 it is a warm purple dye4 ,when a way of thinking is deeply rooted in the soil1 and embodies the instincts or even the characteristic errors of a people1 it has a value quite independent of its truth2 it constitutes a phase of human life and can powerfully affect the intellectual drama in which it figures4 ,it is a value of this sort that attaches to modern philosophy in general1 and very particularly to the ,american thinkers ,i am about to discuss4 ,there would be a sort of irrelevance and unfairness in measuring them by the standards of pure science or even of a classic sagacity1 and reproaching them for not having reached perfect consistency or fundamental clearness4 ,men of intense feeling--and others will hardly count--are not mirrors but lights4 ,if pure truth happened to be what they passionately desired1 they would seek it singlemindedly1 and in matters within their competence they would probably find it2 but the desire for pure truth1 like any other1 must wait to be satisfied until its organ is ripe and the conditions are favourable4 ,the nineteenth century was not a time and ,america was not a place where such an achievement could be expected4 ,there the wisest felt themselves to be1 as they were1 questioners and apostles rather than serene philosophers4 ,we should not pay them the doubtful compliment of attributing to them merits alien to their tradition and scope1 as if the nobleness they actually possessed--their conscience1 vigour1 timeliness1 and influence--were not enough4 ,,chapter ,,ii--,,the ,,academic ,,environment ,during some twentyfive years--from about #ahhe to #aiaj--there was at ,harvard ,college an interesting congregation of philosophers4 ,why at ,harvard in particular8 ,so long as philosophy is the free pursuit of wisdom1 it arises wherever men of character and penetration1 each with his special experience or hobby1 look about them in this world4 ,that philosophers should be professors is an accident1 and almost an anomaly4 ,free reflection about everything is a habit to be imitated1 but not a subject to expound2 and an original system1 if the philosopher has one1 is something dark1 perilous1 untested1 and not ripe to be taught1 nor is there much danger that any one will learn it4 ,the genuine philosopher--as ,royce liked to say1 quoting the ,upanishads--wanders alone like the rhinoceros4 ,he may be followed1 as he may have been anticipated2 and he may even be accompanied1 though there is as much danger as stimulus to him in flying with a flock4 ,in his disputations1 if he is drawn into them1 he will still be soliloquising1 and meeting not the arguments persuasive to others1 but only such a version of them as his own thought can supply4 ,the value of his questions and answers1 as ,socrates knew so well1 will lie wholly in the monition of the argument developing within him and carrying him whithersoever it will1 like a dream or like a god4 ,if philosophers must earn their living and not beg 7which some of them have thought more consonant with their vocation71 it would be safer for them to polish lenses like ,spinoza1 or to sit in a black skullcap and white beard at the door of some unfrequented museum1 selling the catalogues and taking in the umbrellas2 these innocent ways of earning their breadcard in the future republic would not prejudice their meditations and would keep their eyes fixed1 without undue affection1 on a characteristic bit of that real world which it is their business to understand4 ,or if1 being mild and bookish1 it is thought they ought to be teachers1 they might teach something else than philosophy2 or if philosophy is the only thing they are competent to teach1 it might at least not be their own1 but some classic system with which1 and against which1 mankind is already inoculated--preferably the civilised ethics and charming myths of ,plato and ,aristotle1 which everybody will be the better for knowing and few the worse for believing4 ,at best1 the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly1 which is to pilot himself1 or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat4 ,it is not easy for him to shout1 or address a crowd2 he must be silent for long seasons2 for he is watching stars that move slowly and in courses that it is possible though difficult to foresee2 and he is crushing all things in his heart as in a winepress1 until his life and their secret flow out together4 ,the tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection3 it is scholastic and proper to the ,middle ,ages and to ,germany4 ,and the reason is not far to seek4 ,when there is a philosophical orthodoxy1 and speculation is expected to be a reasoned defence of some funded inspiration1 it becomes itself corporate and traditional1 and requires centres of teaching1 endowment1 and propaganda4 ,fundamental questions have been settled by the church1 the government1 or the ,zeitgeist1 and the function of the professor1 himself bred in that school1 is to transmit its lore to the next generation1 with such original touches of insight or eloquence as he may command4 ,to maintain and elucidate such a tradition1 all the schools and universities of ,christendom were originally founded2 and if philosophy seemed sometimes to occupy but a small place in them--as for instance in the oldfashioned ,american college--it was only because the entire discipline and instruction of the place were permeated with a particular system of faith and morals1 which it was almost superfluous to teach in the abstract4 ,in those universities where philosophical controversy is rife1 its traditional and scholastic character is no less obvious2 it lives less on meditation than on debate1 and turns on proofs1 objections1 paradoxes1 or expedients for seeming to reestablish everything that had come to seem clearly false1 by some ingenious change of front or some twist of dialectic4 ,its subjectmatter is not so much what is known of the world1 as what often very ignorant philosophers have said in answer to one another2 or else1 when the age is out of patience with scholasticism1 orthodoxy may take refuge in intuition1 and for fear of the letter without the spirit1 may excuse itself from considering at all what is logical or probable1 in order to embrace whatever seems most welcome and comforting4 ,the sweet homilies of the professors then become clerical1 genteel1 and feminine4 ,harvard ,college had been founded to rear puritan divines1 and as ,calvinism gradually dissolved1 it left a void there and as it were a mould1 which a philosophy expressing the same instincts in a world intellectually transformed could flow into and fill almost without knowing it4 ,corporate bodies are like persons1 long vaguely swayed by early impressions they may have forgotten4 ,even when changes come over the spirit of their dream1 a sense of the mission to which they were first dedicated lingers about them1 and may revive1 like the antiquarian and poetic ,catholicism of ,oxford in the nineteenth century4 ,in academic ,america the ,platonic and ,catholic traditions had never been planted2 it was only the ,calvinistic tradition1 when revived in some modern disguise1 that could stir there the secret cord of reverence and enthusiasm4 ,harvard was the seminary and academy for the inner circle of ,bostonians1 and naturally responded to all the liberal and literary movements of which ,boston was the centre4 ,in religion it became first ,unitarian and afterwards neutral2 in philosophy it might long have been satisfied with what other ,new ,england colleges found sufficient1 namely such lofty views as the president1 usually a clergyman1 could introduce into his baccalaureate sermons1 or into the course of lectures he might give for seniors on the evidences of ,christianity or on the theory of evolution4 ,such philosophical initiation had sufficed for the distinguished literary men of the middle of the century1 and even for so deep a sage as ,emerson4 ,but things cannot stand still1 and ,boston1 as is well known1 is not an ordinary place4 ,when the impulse to domestic literary expression seemed to be exhausted1 intellectual ambition took other forms4 ,it was an age of science1 of philology1 of historical learning1 and the laurels of ,germany would not let ,boston sleep4 ,as it had a great public library1 and hoped to have a great art museum1 might it not have a great university8 ,harvard in one sense was a university already1 in that the college 7although there was only one7 was surrounded by a group of professional schools1 notably those of law and medicine1 in which studies requisite for the service of the community1 and leading potentially to brilliant careers1 were carried on with conspicuous success4 ,the number of these professional schools might have been enlarged1 as has been actually done later1 until training in all the professions had been provided4 ,but it happens that the descriptive sciences1 languages1 mathematics1 and philosophy are not studies useful for any profession1 except that of teaching these very subjects over again2 and there was no practical way of introducing them into the ,harvard system except to graft them upon the curriculum of the college2 otherwise neither money nor students could have been found for so much ornamental learning4 ,this circumstance1 external and irrelevant as it may seem1 ,i think had a great influence over the temper and quality of the ,harvard philosophers2 for it mingled responsibility for the education of youth1 and much labour in it1 with their pure speculation4 ,teaching is a delightful paternal art1 and especially teaching intelligent and warmhearted youngsters1 as most ,american collegians are2 but it is an art like acting1 where the performance1 often rehearsed1 must be adapted to an audience hearing it only once4 ,the speaker must make concessions to their impatience1 their taste1 their capacity1 their prejudices1 their ultimate good2 he must neither bore nor perplex nor demoralise them4 ,his thoughts must be such as can flow daily1 and be set down in notes2 they must come when the bell rings and stop appropriately when the bell rings a second time4 ,the best that is in him1 as ,mephistopheles says in ,faust1 he dare not tell them2 and as the substance of this possession is spiritual1 to withhold is often to lose it4 ,for it is not merely a matter of fearing not to be understood1 or giving offence2 in the presence of a hundred youthful upturned faces a man cannot1 without diffidence1 speak in his own person1 of his own thoughts2 he needs support1 in order to exert influence with a good conscience2 unless he feels that he is the vehicle of a massive tradition1 he will become bitter1 or flippant1 or aggressive2 if he is to teach with good grace and modesty and authority1 it must not be he that speaks1 but science or humanity that is speaking in him4 ,now the state of ,harvard ,college1 and of ,american education generally1 at the time to which ,i refer1 had this remarkable effect on the philosophers there3 it made their sense of social responsibility acute1 because they were consciously teaching and guiding the community1 as if they had been clergymen2 and it made no less acute their moral loneliness1 isolation1 and forced selfreliance1 because they were like clergymen without a church1 and not only had no common philosophic doctrine to transmit1 but were expected not to have one4 ,they were invited to be at once genuine philosophers and popular professors2 and the degree to which some of them managed to unite these contraries is remarkable1 especially if we consider the character of the academic public they had to serve and to please4 ,while the sentiments of most ,americans in politics and morals1 if a little vague1 are very conservative1 their democratic instincts1 and the force of circumstances1 have produced a system of education which anticipates all that the most extreme revolution could bring about2 and while no one dreams of forcibly suppressing private property1 religion1 or the family1 ,american education ignores these things1 and proceeds as much as possible as if they did not exist4 ,the child passes very young into a free school1 established and managed by the municipal authorities2 the teachers1 even for the older boys1 are chiefly unmarried women1 sensitive1 faithful1 and feeble2 their influence helps to establish that separation which is so characteristic of ,america between things intellectual1 which remain wrapped in a feminine veil and1 as it were1 under glass1 and the rough business and passions of life4 ,the lessons are ambitious in range1 but are made as easy1 as interesting1 and as optional as possible2 the stress is divided between what the child likes now and what he is going to need in his trade or profession4 ,the young people are sympathetically encouraged to instruct themselves and to educate one another4 ,they romp and make fun like young monkeys1 they flirt and have their private 8brainstorms0 like little supermen and superwomen4 ,they are tremendously in earnest about their college intrigues and intercollegiate athletic wars4 ,they are fond1 often compassionately fond1 of their parents1 and home is all the more sacred to them in that they are seldom there4 ,they enjoy a surprising independence in habits1 friendships1 and opinions4 ,brothers and sisters often choose different religions4 ,the street1 the school1 the young people's club1 the magazine1 the popular novel1 furnish their mental pabulum4 ,the force of example and of passing custom is all the more irresistible in this absence of authority and tradition2 for this sort of independence rather diminishes the power of being original1 by supplying a slenderer basis and a thinner soil from which originality might spring4 ,uniformity is established spontaneously without discipline1 as in the popular speech and ethics of every nation4 ,against this tendency to uniformity the efforts of a cultivated minority to maintain a certain distinction and infuse it into their lives and minds are not very successful4 ,they have secondary schools for their boys in which the teachers are men1 and even boardingschools in the country1 more or less ,gothic in aspect and ,english in regimen2 there are other semiforeign institutions and circles1 ,catholic or ,jewish1 in which religion is the dominant consideration4 ,there is also the society of the very rich1 with cosmopolitan leanings and a vivacious interest in artistic undertakings and personalities4 ,but all these distinctions1 important as they may seem to those who cultivate them1 are a mere shimmer and ripple on the surface of ,american life2 and for an observer who sees things in perspective they almost disappear4 ,by a merciful dispensation of nature1 the pupils of these choice establishments1 the moment they plunge into business or politics1 acquire the protective colouring of their environment and become indistinguishable from the generic ,american4 ,their native disposition was after all the national one1 their attempted special education was perfunctory1 and the influence of their public activities and surroundings is overwhelming4 ,american life is a powerful solvent4 ,as it stamps the immigrant1 almost before he can speak ,english1 with an unmistakable muscular tension1 cheery selfconfidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes1 so it seems to neutralise every intellectual element1 however tough and alien it may be1 and to fuse it in the native goodwill1 complacency1 thoughtlessness1 and optimism4 ,consider1 for instance1 the ,american ,catholics1 of whom there are nominally many millions1 and who often seem to retain their ancestral faith sincerely and affectionately4 ,this faith took shape during the decline of the ,roman empire2 it is full of large disillusions about this world and minute illusions about the other4 ,it is ancient1 metaphysical1 poetic1 elaborate1 ascetic1 autocratic1 and intolerant4 ,it confronts the boastful natural man1 such as the ,american is1 with a thousand denials and menaces4 ,everything in ,american life is at the antipodes to such a system4 ,yet the ,american ,catholic is entirely at peace4 ,his tone in everything1 even in religion1 is cheerfully ,american4 ,it is wonderful how silently1 amicably1 and happily he lives in a community whose spirit is profoundly hostile to that of his religion4 ,he seems to take stock in his church as he might in a gold mine--sure it is a grand1 dazzling1 unique thing2 and perhaps he masks1 even to himself1 his purely imaginative ardour about it1 with the pretext that it is sure to make his fortune both in this life and in the next4 ,his church1 he will tell you1 is a firstrate church to belong to2 the priests are fine fellows1 like the policemen2 the ,sisters are dear noble women1 like his own sisters2 his parish is flourishing1 and always rebuilding its church and founding new schools1 orphan asylums1 sodalities1 confraternities1 perpetual adoration societies4 ,no parish can raise so much money for any object1 or if there are temporary troubles1 the fact still remains that ,america has three ,cardinals and that the ,catholic religion is the biggest religion on earth4 ,attachment to his church in such a temper brings him into no serious conflict with his ,protestant neighbours4 ,they live and meet on common ground4 ,their respective religions pass among them for family matters1 private and sacred1 with no political implications4 ,such was the education and such the atmosphere of intellectual innocence which prevailed in the public--mostly undergraduates--to which the ,harvard philosophers adapted their teaching and to some extent their philosophy4 ,the students were intelligent1 ambitious1 remarkably able to 8do things02 they were keen about the matters that had already entered into their lives1 and invincibly happy in their ignorance of everything else4 ,a gentle contempt for the past permeated their judgements4 ,they were not accustomed to the notion of authority1 nor aware that it might have legitimate grounds2 they instinctively disbelieved in the superiority of what was out of reach4 ,about high questions of politics and religion their minds were open but vague2 they seemed not to think them of practical importance2 they acquiesced in people having any views they liked on such subjects2 the fluent and fervid enthusiasms so common among ,european students1 prophesying about politics1 philosophy1 and art1 were entirely unknown among them4 ,instead they had absorbing local traditions of their own1 athletic and social1 and their college life was their true education1 an education in friendship1 cooperation1 and freedom4 ,in the eighteeneighties a good deal of oldfashioned shabbiness and jollity lingered about ,harvard4 ,boston and ,cambridge in those days resembled in some ways the ,london of ,dickens3 the same dismal wealth1 the same speechifying1 the same anxious respectability1 the same sordid back streets1 with their air of shiftlessness and decay1 the same odd figures and loud humour1 and1 to add a touch of horror1 the monstrous suspicion that some of the inhabitants might be secretly wicked4 ,life1 for the undergraduates1 was full of droll incidents and broad farce2 it drifted goodnaturedly from one commonplace thing to another4 ,standing packed in the tinkling horsecar1 their coatcollars above their ears and their feet deep in the winter straw1 they jogged in a long halfhour to ,boston1 there to enjoy the delights of female society1 the theatre1 or a good dinner4 ,and in the summer days1 for ,class ,day and ,commencement1 feminine and elderly ,boston would return the visit1 led by the governor of ,massachusetts in his hired carriageandfour1 and by the local orators and poets1 brimming with jokes and conventional sentiments1 and eager not so much to speed the youngsters on their career1 as to air their own wit1 and warm their hearts with punch and with collective memories of youth4 ,it was an idyllic1 haphazard1 humoristic existence1 without fine imagination1 without any familiar infusion of scholarship1 without articulate religion3 a flutter of intelligence in a void1 flying into trivial play1 in order to drop back1 as soon as college days were over1 into the drudgery of affairs4 ,there was the love of beauty1 but without the sight of it2 for the bits of pleasant landscape or the works of art which might break the ugliness of the foreground were a sort of sthetic miscellany1 enjoyed as one enjoys a museum2 there was nothing in which the spirit of beauty was deeply interfused1 charged with passion and discipline and intricate familiar associations with delicate and noble things4 ,of course1 the sky is above every country1 and ,new ,england had brilliant sunsets and deep snows1 and sea and woods were at hand for the holidays2 and it was notable how much even what a homely art or accident might have done for the towns was studied and admired4 ,old corners were pointed out where the dingy red brick had lost its rigidity and taken on a mossy tinge1 and where here and there a pane of glass1 surviving all tenants and housemaids1 had turned violet in the sunlight of a hundred years2 and most precious of all were the high thin elms1 spreading aloft1 looped and drooping over old streets and commons4 ,and yet it seemed somehow as if the sentiment lavished on these things had been intended by nature for something else1 for something more important4 ,not only had the mind of the nation been originally somewhat chilled and impoverished by ,protestantism1 by migration to a new world1 by absorption in material tasks1 but what fine sensibility lingered in an older generation was not easily transmitted to the young4 ,the young had their own ways1 which on principle were to be fostered and respected2 and one of their instincts was to associate only with those of their own age and calibre4 ,the young were simply young1 and the old simply old1 as among peasants4 ,teachers and pupils seemed animals of different species1 useful and welldisposed towards each other1 like a cow and a milkmaid2 periodic contributions could pass between them1 but not conversation4 ,this circumstance shows how much ,american intelligence is absorbed in what is not intellectual4 ,their tasks and their pleasures divide people of different ages2 what can unite them is ideas1 impersonal interests1 liberal arts4 ,without these they cannot forget their mutual inferiority4 ,certainly those four college years1 judged by any external standard1 were trivial and wasted2 but ,americans1 although so practical in their adult masculine undertakings1 are slow to take umbrage at the elaborate playfulness of their wives and children4 ,with the touching humility of strength1 they seem to say to themselves1 8,let the dear creatures have their fling1 and be happy3 what else are we old fellows slaving for80 ,and certainly the joy of life is the crown of it2 but have ,american ladies and collegians achieved the joy of life8 ,is that the summit8 ,william ,james had a theory that if some scientific widower1 with a child about to learn to walk1 could be persuaded to allow the child's feet to be blistered1 it would turn out1 when the blisters were healed1 that the child would walk as well as if he had practised and had many a fall2 because the machinery necessary for walking would have matured in him automatically1 just as the machinery for breathing does in the womb4 ,the case of the oldfashioned ,american college may serve to support this theory4 ,it blistered young men's heads for four years and prevented them from practising anything useful2 yet at the end they were found able to do most things as well1 or twice as well1 as their contemporaries who had been all that time apprenticed and chained to a desk4 ,manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves2 it suffices not to repress or distort them4 ,the college liberated the young man from the pursuit of money1 from hypocrisy1 from the control of women4 ,he could grow for a time according to his nature1 and if this growth was not guided by much superior wisdom or deep study1 it was not warped by any serious perversion2 and if the intellectual world did not permanently entice him1 are we so sure that in philosophy1 for instance1 it had anything to offer that was very solid in itself1 or humanly very important8 ,at least he learned that such things existed1 and gathered a shrewd notion of what they could do for a man1 and what they might make of him4 ,when ,harvard was reformed--and ,i believe all the colleges are reformed now--the immediate object was not to refine college life or render it more scholarly1 though for certain circles this was accomplished incidentally2 the object was rather to extend the scope of instruction1 and make it more advanced4 ,it is natural that every great city1 the capital of any nation or region1 should wish to possess a university in the literal sense of the word--an encyclopdic institute1 or group of institutes1 to teach and foster all the professions1 all the arts1 and all the sciences4 ,such a university need have nothing to do with education1 with the transmission of a particular moral and intellectual tradition4 ,education might be courteously presupposed4 ,the teacher would not be a man with his hand on a lad's shoulder1 his son or young brother2 he would be an expert in some science1 delivering lectures for public instruction1 while perhaps privately carrying on investigations with the aid of a few disciples whom he would be training in his specialty4 ,there would be no reason why either the professors or the auditors in such an institution should live together or should have much in common in religion1 morals1 or breeding1 or should even speak the same language4 ,on the contrary1 if only each was competent in his way1 the more miscellaneous their types the more perfect would these render their universitas4 ,the public addressed1 also1 need not be restricted1 any more than the public at a church or a theatre or a town library1 by any requirements as to age1 sex1 race1 or attainments4 ,they would come on their own responsibility1 to pursue what studies they chose1 and so long as they found them profitable4 ,nor need there be any limit as to the subjects broached1 or any division of them into faculties or departments1 except perhaps for convenience in administration4 ,one of the functions of professors would be to invent new subjects1 because this world is so complex1 and the play of the human mind upon it is so external and iridescent1 that1 as men's interests and attitude vary1 fresh unities and fresh aspects are always discernible in everything4 ,as ,harvard ,university developed1 all these characteristics appeared in it in a more or less marked degree2 but the transformation was never complete4 ,the centre of it remained a college1 with its local constituency and rooted traditions1 and its thousand or two thousand undergraduates needing to be educated4 ,experts in every science and money to pay them were not at hand1 and the foreign talent that could be attracted did not always prove morally or socially digestible4 ,the browsing undergraduate could simply range with a looser tether1 and he was reinforced by a fringe of graduates who had not yet had enough1 or who were attracted from other colleges4 ,these graduates came to form a sort of normal school for future professors1 stamped as in ,germany with a ,ph4,d42 and the teachers in each subject became a committee charged with something of the functions of a registry office1 to find places for their nurslings4 ,the university could thus acquire a national and even an international function1 drawing in distinguished talent and youthful ambition from everywhere1 and sending forth in various directions its apostles of light and learning4 ,i think it is intelligible that in such a place and at such a crisis philosophy should have played a conspicuous part1 and also that it should have had an ambiguous character4 ,there had to be1 explicit or implicit1 a philosophy for the college4 ,a place where all polite ,boston has been educated for centuries cannot bely its moral principles and religious questionings2 it must transmit its austere1 faithful1 reforming spirit4 ,but at the same time there had now to be a philosophy for the university4 ,a chief part of that traditional faith was the faith in freedom1 in inquiry2 and it was necessary1 in the very interests of the traditional philosophy1 to take account of all that was being said in the world1 and to incorporate the spirit of the times in the spirit of the fathers4 ,accordingly1 no single abstract opinion was particularly tabooed at ,harvard2 granted industry1 sobriety1 and some semblance of theism1 no professor was expected to agree with any other4 ,i believe the authorities would have been well pleased1 for the sake of completeness1 to have added a ,buddhist1 a ,moslem1 and a ,catholic scholastic to the philosophical faculty1 if only suitable sages could have been found1 housetrained1 as it were1 and able to keep pace with the academic machine and to attract a sufficient number of pupils4 ,but this official freedom was not true freedom1 there was no happiness in it4 ,a slight smell of brimstone lingered in the air4 ,you might think what you liked1 but you must consecrate your belief or your unbelief to the common task of encouraging everybody and helping everything on4 ,you might almost be an atheist1 if you were troubled enough about it4 ,the atmosphere was not that of intelligence nor of science1 it was that of duty4 ,in the academic life and methods of the university there was the same incomplete transformation4 ,the teaching required was for the most part college teaching1 in college subjects1 such as might well have been entrusted to tutors2 but it was given by professors in the form of lectures1 excessive in number and too often repeated2 and they were listened to by absentminded youths1 illgrounded in the humanities1 and not keenly alive to intellectual interests4 ,the graduates 7like the young ladies7 were more attentive and anxious not to miss anything1 but they were no better prepared and often less intelligent2 and there is no dunce like a mature dunce4 ,accordingly1 the professor of philosophy had to swim against rather a powerful current4 ,sometimes he succumbed to the reality2 and if1 for instance1 he happened to mention ,darwin1 and felt a blank before him1 he would add in a parenthesis1 8,darwin1 ,charles1 author of the ,origin of ,species1 #ahei2 epochmaking work40 ,at other times he might lose himself altogether in the ideal and imagine that he was publishing immortal thoughts to the true university1 to the world at large1 and was feeling an exhilarating contact with masses of mankind1 themselves quickened by his message4 ,he might see in his mind's eye rows of learned men and women before him1 familiar with every doubt1 hardened to every conflict of opinion1 ready for any revolution1 whose minds nothing he could say could possibly shock1 or disintegrate any further2 on the contrary1 the naked truth1 which is gentle in its austerity1 might come to them as a blessed deliverance1 and he might fancy himself for a moment a sort of hero from the realms of light descending into the nether regions and throwing a sop of reason into the jaws of snarling prejudice and frantic error4 ,or if the class was small1 and only two or three were gathered together1 he might imagine instead that he was sowing seeds of wisdom1 warmed by affection1 in the minds of genuine disciples1 future tabernacles of the truth4 ,it is possible that if the reality had corresponded more nearly with these dreams1 and ,harvard had actually been an adult university1 philosophers there might have distilled their doctrines into a greater purity4 ,as it was1 ,harvard philosophy had an opposite merit3 it represented faithfully the complex inspiration of the place and hour4 ,as the university was a local puritan college opening its windows to the scientific world1 so at least the two most gifted of its philosophers were men of intense feeling1 religious and romantic1 but attentive to the facts of nature and the currents of worldly opinion2 and each of them felt himself bound by two different responsibilities1 that of describing things as they are1 and that of finding them propitious to certain preconceived human desires4 ,and while they shared this double allegiance1 they differed very much in temper1 education1 and taste4 ,william ,james was what is called an empiricist1 ,josiah ,royce an idealist2 they were excellent friends and greatly influenced each other1 and the very diversity between them rendered their conjunction typical of the state of philosophy in ,england and ,america1 divided between the old ,british and the ,german schools4 ,as if all this intellectual complication had not been enough1 they were obliged to divide their energies externally1 giving to their daily tasks as professors and pedagogues what duty demanded1 and only the remainder to scholarship1 reflection1 and literary work4 ,even this distracting circumstance1 however1 had its compensations4 ,college work was a human bond1 a common practical interest2 it helped to keep up that circulation of the blood which made the whole ,harvard school of philosophy a vital unit1 and cooperative in its freedom4 ,there was a general momentum in it1 half institutional1 half moral1 a single troubled1 noble1 exciting life4 ,every one was labouring with the contradiction he felt in things1 and perhaps in himself2 all were determined to find some honest way out of it1 or at least to bear it bravely4 ,it was a fresh morning in the life of reason1 cloudy but brightening4 ,,chapter ,,iii--,,william ,,james ,william ,james enjoyed in his youth what are called advantages3 he lived among cultivated people1 travelled1 had teachers of various nationalities4 ,his father was one of those somewhat obscure sages whom early ,america produced3 mystics of independent mind1 hermits in the desert of business1 and heretics in the churches4 ,they were intense individualists1 full of veneration for the free souls of their children1 and convinced that every one should paddle his own canoe1 especially on the high seas4 ,william ,james accordingly enjoyed a stimulating if slightly irregular education3 he never acquired that reposeful mastery of particular authors and those safe ways of feeling and judging which are fostered in great schools and universities4 ,in consequence he showed an almost physical horror of club sentiment and of the stifling atmosphere of all officialdom4 ,he had a knack for drawing1 and rather the temperament of the artist2 but the unlovely secrets of nature and the troubles of man preoccupied him1 and he chose medicine for his profession4 ,instead of practising1 however1 he turned to teaching physiology1 and from that passed gradually to psychology and philosophy4 ,in his earlier years he retained some traces of polyglot student days at ,paris1 ,bonn1 ,vienna1 or ,geneva2 he slipped sometimes into foreign phrases1 uttered in their full vernacular2 and there was an occasional afterglow of ,bohemia about him1 in the bright stripe of a shirt or the exuberance of a tie4 ,on points of art or medicine he retained a professional touch and an unconscious ease which he hardly acquired in metaphysics4 ,i suspect he had heartily admired some of his masters in those other subjects1 but had never seen a philosopher whom he would have cared to resemble4 ,of course there was nothing of the artist in ,william ,james1 as the artist is sometimes conceived in ,england1 nothing of the sthete1 nothing affected or limp4 ,in person he was short rather than tall1 erect1 brisk1 bearded1 intensely masculine4 ,while he shone in expression and would have wished his style to be noble if it could also be strong1 he preferred in the end to be spontaneous1 and to leave it at that2 he tolerated slang in himself rather than primness4 ,the rough1 homely1 picturesque phrase1 whatever was graphic and racy1 recommended itself to him2 and his conversation outdid his writing in this respect4 ,he believed in improvisation1 even in thought2 his lectures were not minutely prepared4 ,know your subject thoroughly1 he used to say1 and trust to luck for the rest4 ,there was a deep sense of insecurity in him1 a mixture of humility with romanticism3 we were likely to be more or less wrong anyhow1 but we might be wholly sincere4 ,one moment should respect the insight of another1 without trying to establish too regimental a uniformity4 ,if you corrected yourself tartly1 how could you know that the correction was not the worse mistake8 ,all our opinions were born free and equal1 all children of the ,lord1 and if they were not consistent that was the ,lord's business1 not theirs4 ,in reality1 ,james was consistent enough1 as even ,emerson 7more extreme in this sort of irresponsibility7 was too4 ,inspiration has its limits1 sometimes very narrow ones4 ,but ,james was not consecutive1 not insistent2 he turned to a subject afresh1 without egotism or pedantry2 he dropped his old points1 sometimes very good ones2 and he modestly looked for light from others1 who had less light than himself4 ,his excursions into philosophy were accordingly in the nature of raids1 and it is easy for those who are attracted by one part of his work to ignore other parts1 in themselves perhaps more valuable4 ,i think that in fact his popularity does not rest on his best achievements4 ,his popularity rests on three somewhat incidental books1 ,the ,will to ,believe1 ,pragmatism1 and ,the ,varieties of ,religious ,experience1 whereas1 as it seems to me1 his best achievement is his ,principles of ,psychology4 ,in this book he surveys1 in a way which for him is very systematic1 a subject made to his hand4 ,in its ostensible outlook it is a treatise like any other1 but what distinguishes it is the author's gift for evoking vividly the very life of the mind4 ,this is a work of imagination2 and the subject as he conceived it1 which is the flux of immediate experience in men in general1 requires imagination to read it at all4 ,it is a literary subject1 like autobiography or psychological fiction1 and can be treated only poetically2 and in this sense ,shakespeare is a better psychologist than ,locke or ,kant4 ,yet this gift of imagination is not merely literary2 it is not useless in divining the truths of science1 and it is invaluable in throwing off prejudice and scientific shams4 ,the fresh imagination and vitality of ,william ,james led him to break through many a false convention4 ,he saw that experience1 as we endure it1 is not a mosaic of distinct sensations1 nor the expression of separate hostile faculties1 such as reason and the passions1 or sense and the categories2 it is rather a flow of mental discourse1 like a dream1 in which all divisions and units are vague and shifting1 and the whole is continually merging together and drifting apart4 ,it fades gradually in the rear1 like the wake of a ship1 and bites into the future1 like the bow cutting the water4 ,for the candid psychologist1 carried bodily on this voyage of discovery1 the past is but a questionable report1 and the future wholly indeterminate2 everything is simply what it is experienced as being4 ,at the same time1 psychology is supposed to be a science1 a claim which would tend to confine it to the natural history of man1 or the study of behaviour1 as is actually proposed by ,auguste ,comte and by some of ,james's own disciples1 more jejune if more clearheaded than he4 ,as matters now stand1 however1 psychology as a whole is not a science1 but a branch of philosophy2 it brings together the literary description of mental discourse and the scientific description of material life1 in order to consider the relation between them1 which is the nexus of human nature4 ,what was ,james's position on this crucial question8 ,it is impossible to reply unequivocally4 ,he approached philosophy as mankind originally approached it1 without having a philosophy1 and he lent himself to various hypotheses in various directions4 ,he professed to begin his study on the assumptions of common sense1 that there is a material world which the animals that live in it are able to perceive and to think about4 ,he gave a congruous extension to this view in his theory that emotion is purely bodily sensation1 and also in his habit of conceiving the mind as a total shifting sensibility4 ,to pursue this path1 however1 would have led him to admit that nature was automatic and mind simply cognitive1 conclusions from which every instinct in him recoiled4 ,he preferred to believe that mind and matter had independent energies and could lend one another a hand1 matter operating by motion and mind by intention4 ,this dramatic1 amphibious way of picturing causation is natural to common sense1 and might be defended if it were clearly defined2 but ,james was insensibly carried away from it by a subtle implication of his method4 ,this implication was that experience or mental discourse not only constituted a set of substantive facts1 but the only substantive facts2 all else1 even that material world which his psychology had postulated1 could be nothing but a verbal or fantastic symbol for sensations in their experienced order4 ,so that while nominally the door was kept open to any hypothesis regarding the conditions of the psychological flux1 in truth the question was prejudged4 ,the hypotheses1 which were parts of this psychological flux1 could have no object save other parts of it4 ,that flux itself1 therefore1 which he could picture so vividly1 was the fundamental existence4 ,the sense of bounding over the waves1 the sense of being on an adventurous voyage1 was the living fact2 the rest was dead reckoning4 ,where one's gift is1 there will one's faith be also2 and to this poet appearance was the only reality4 ,this sentiment1 which always lay at the back of his mind1 reached something like formal expression in his latest writings1 where he sketched what he called radical empiricism4 ,the word experience is like a shrapnel shell1 and bursts into a thousand meanings4 ,here we must no longer think of its setting1 its discoveries1 or its march2 to treat it radically we must abstract its immediate objects and reduce it to pure data4 ,it is obvious 7and the sequel has already proved7 that experience so understood would lose its romantic signification1 as a personal adventure or a response to the shocks of fortune4 8,experience0 would turn into a cosmic dance of absolute entities created and destroyed in vacuo according to universal laws1 or perhaps by chance4 ,no minds would gather this experience1 and no material agencies would impose it2 but the immediate objects present to any one would simply be parts of the universal fireworks1 continuous with the rest1 and all the parts1 even if not present to anybody1 would have the same status4 ,experience would then not at all resemble what ,shakespeare reports or what ,james himself had described in his psychology4 ,if it could be experienced as it flows in its entirety 7which is fortunately impracticable71 it would be a perpetual mathematical nightmare4 ,every whirling atom1 every changing relation1 and every incidental perspective would be a part of it4 ,i am far from wishing to deny for a moment the scientific value of such a cosmic system1 if it can be worked out2 physics and mathematics seem to me to plunge far deeper than literary psychology into the groundwork of this world2 but human experience is the stuff of literary psychology2 we cannot reach the stuff of physics and mathematics except by arresting or even hypostatising some elements of appearance1 and expanding them on an abstracted and hypothetical plane of their own4 ,experience1 as memory and literature rehearse it1 remains nearer to us than that3 it is something dreamful1 passionate1 dramatic1 and significative4 ,certainly this personal human experience1 expressible in literature and in talk1 and no cosmic system however profound1 was what ,james knew best and trusted most4 ,had he seen the developments of his radical empiricism1 ,i cannot help thinking he would have marvelled that such logical mechanisms should have been hatched out of that egg4 ,the principal problems and aspirations that haunted him all his life long would lose their meaning in that cosmic atmosphere4 ,the pragmatic nature of truth1 for instance1 would never suggest itself in the presence of pure data2 but a romantic mind soaked in agnosticism1 conscious of its own habits and assuming an environment the exact structure of which can never be observed1 may well convince itself that1 for experience1 truth is nothing but a happy use of signs--which is indeed the truth of literature4 ,but if we once accept any system of the universe as literally true1 the value of convenient signs to prepare us for such experience as is yet absent cannot be called truth3 it is plainly nothing but a necessary inaccuracy4 ,so1 too1 with the question of the survival of the human individual after death4 ,for radical empiricism a human individual is simply a certain cycle or complex of terms1 like any other natural fact2 that some echoes of his mind should recur after the regular chimes have ceased1 would have nothing paradoxical about it4 ,a mathematical world is a good deal like music1 with its repetitions and transpositions1 and a little trill1 which you might call a person1 might well peep up here and there all over a vast composition4 ,something of that sort may be the truth of spiritualism2 but it is not what the spiritualists imagine4 ,their whole interest lies not in the experiences they have1 but in the interpretation they give to them1 assigning them to troubled spirits in another world2 but both another world and a spirit are notions repugnant to a radical empiricism4 ,i think it is important to remember1 if we are not to misunderstand ,william ,james1 that his radical empiricism and pragmatism were in his own mind only methods2 his doctrine1 if he may be said to have had one1 was agnosticism4 ,and just because he was an agnostic 7feeling instinctively that beliefs and opinions1 if they had any objective beyond themselves1 could never be sure they had attained it71 he seemed in one sense so favourable to credulity4 ,he was not credulous himself1 far from it2 he was well aware that the trust he put in people or ideas might betray him4 ,for that very reason he was respectful and pitiful to the trustfulness of others4 ,doubtless they were wrong1 but who were we to say so8 ,in his own person he was ready enough to face the mystery of things1 and whatever the womb of time might bring forth2 but until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama 7and it might have no last act67 he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at2 perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play4 ,who could tell what heavenly influences might not pierce to these sensitive halfflayed creatures1 which are lost on the thickskinned1 the sane1 and the duly goggled8 ,we must not suppose1 however1 that ,james meant these contrite and romantic suggestions dogmatically4 ,the agnostic1 as well as the physician and neurologist in him1 was never quite eclipsed4 ,the hope that some new revelation might come from the lowly and weak could never mean to him what it meant to the early ,christians4 ,for him it was only a right conceded to them to experiment with their special faiths2 he did not expect such faiths to be discoveries of absolute fact1 which everybody else might be constrained to recognise4 ,if any one had made such a claim1 and had seemed to have some chance of imposing it universally1 ,james would have been the first to turn against him2 not1 of course1 on the ground that it was impossible that such an orthodoxy should be true1 but with a profound conviction that it was to be feared and distrusted4 ,no3 the degree of authority and honour to be accorded to various human faiths was a moral question1 not a theoretical one4 ,all faiths were what they were experienced as being1 in their capacity of faiths2 these faiths1 not their objects1 were the hard facts we must respect4 ,we cannot pass1 except under the illusion of the moment1 to anything firmer or on a deeper level4 ,there was accordingly no sense of security1 no joy1 in ,james's apology for personal religion4 ,he did not really believe2 he merely believed in the right of believing that you might be right if you believed4 ,it is this underlying agnosticism that explains an incoherence which we might find in his popular works1 where the story and the moral do not seem to hang together4 ,professedly they are works of psychological observation2 but the tendency and suasion in them seems to run to disintegrating the idea of truth1 recommending belief without reason1 and encouraging superstition4 ,a psychologist who was not an agnostic would have indicated1 as far as possible1 whether the beliefs and experiences he was describing were instances of delusion or of rare and fine perception1 or in what measure they were a mixture of both4 ,but ,james--and this is what gives such romantic warmth to these writings of his--disclaims all antecedent or superior knowledge1 listens to the testimony of each witness in turn1 and only by accident allows us to feel that he is swayed by the eloquence and vehemence of some of them rather than of others4 ,this method is modest1 generous1 and impartial2 but if ,james intended1 as ,i think he did1 to picture the drama of human belief1 with its risks and triumphs1 the method was inadequate4 ,dramatists never hesitate to assume1 and to let the audience perceive1 who is good and who bad1 who wise and who foolish1 in their pieces2 otherwise their work would be as impotent dramatically as scientifically4 ,the tragedy and comedy of life lie precisely in the contrast between the illusions or passions of the characters and their true condition and fate1 hidden from them at first1 but evident to the author and the public4 ,if in our diffidence and scrupulous fairness we refuse to take this judicial attitude1 we shall be led to strange conclusions4 ,the navigator1 for instance1 trusting his 8experience0 7which here1 as in the case of religious people1 means his imagination and his art71 insists on believing that the earth is spherical2 he has sailed round it4 ,that is to say1 he has seemed to himself to steer westward and westward1 and has seemed to get home again4 ,but how should he know that home is now where it was before1 or that his past and present impressions of it come from the same1 or from any1 material object8 ,how should he know that space is as trim and tridimensional as the discredited ,euclidians used to say it was8 ,if1 on the contrary1 my worthy aunt1 trusting to her longer and less ambiguous experience of her garden1 insists that the earth is flat1 and observes that the theory that it is round1 which is only a theory1 is much less often tested and found useful than her own perception of its flatness1 and that moreover that theory is pedantic1 intellectualistic1 and a product of academies1 and a rash dogma to impose on mankind for ever and ever1 it might seem that on ,james's principle we ought to agree with her4 ,but no2 on ,james's real principles we need not agree with her1 nor with the navigator either4 ,radical empiricism1 which is radical agnosticism1 delivers us from so benighted a choice4 ,for the quarrel becomes unmeaning when we remember that the earth is both flat and round1 if it is experienced as being both4 ,the substantive fact is not a single object on which both the perception and the theory are expected to converge2 the substantive facts are the theory and the perception themselves4 ,and we may note in passing that empiricism1 when it ceases to value experience as a means of discovering external things1 can give up its ancient prejudice in favour of sense as against imagination1 for imagination and thought are immediate experiences as much as sensation is3 they are therefore1 for absolute empiricism1 no less actual ingredients of reality4 ,in ,the ,varieties of ,religious ,experience we find the same apologetic intention running through a vivid account of what seems for the most part 7as ,james acknowledged7 religious disease4 ,normal religious experience is hardly described in it4 ,religious experience1 for the great mass of mankind1 consists in simple faith in the truth and benefit of their religious traditions4 ,but to ,james something so conventional and rationalistic seemed hardly experience and hardly religious2 he was thinking only of irruptive visions and feelings as interpreted by the mystics who had them4 ,these interpretations he ostensibly presents1 with more or less wistful sympathy for what they were worth2 but emotionally he wished to champion them4 ,the religions that had sprung up in ,america spontaneously--communistic1 hysterical1 spiritistic1 or medicinal--were despised by select and superior people4 ,you might inquire into them1 as you might go slumming1 but they remained suspect and distasteful4 ,this picking up of genteel skirts on the part of his acquaintance prompted ,william ,james to roll up his sleeves--not for a knockout blow1 but for a thorough clinical demonstration4 ,he would tenderly vivisect the experiences in question1 to show how living they were1 though of course he could not guarantee1 more than other surgeons do1 that the patient would survive the operation4 ,an operation that eventually kills may be technically successful1 and the man may die cured2 and so a description of religion that showed it to be madness might first show how real and how warm it was1 so that if it perished1 at least it would perish understood4 ,i never observed in ,william ,james any personal anxiety or enthusiasm for any of these dubious tenets4 ,his conception even of such a thing as freewill1 which he always ardently defended1 remained vague2 he avoided defining even what he conceived to be desirable in such matters4 ,but he wished to protect the weak against the strong1 and what he hated beyond everything was the non possumus of any constituted authority4 ,philosophy for him had a ,polish constitution2 so long as a single vote was cast against the majority1 nothing could pass4 ,the suspense of judgement which he had imposed on himself as a duty1 became almost a necessity4 ,i think it would have depressed him if he had had to confess that any important question was finally settled4 ,he would still have hoped that something might turn up on the other side1 and that just as the scientific hangman was about to despatch the poor convicted prisoner1 an unexpected witness would ride up in hot haste1 and prove him innocent4 ,experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions1 but empiricism has sworn never to draw them4 ,in the discourse on 8,the ,energies of ,men10 certain physiological marvels are recorded1 as if to suggest that the resources of our minds and bodies are infinite1 or can be infinitely enlarged by divine grace4 ,yet ,james would not1 ,i am sure1 have accepted that inference4 ,he would1 under pressure1 have drawn in his mystical horns under his scientific shell2 but he was not naturalist enough to feel instinctively that the wonderful and the natural are all of a piece1 and that only our degree of habituation distinguishes them4 ,a nucleus1 which we may poetically call the soul1 certainly lies within us1 by which our bodies and minds are generated and controlled1 like an army by a government4 ,in this nucleus1 since nature in a small compass has room for anything1 vast quantities of energy may well be stored up1 which may be tapped on occasion1 or which may serve like an electric spark to let loose energy previously existing in the grosser parts4 ,but the absolute autocracy of this central power1 or its success in imposing extraordinary trials on its subjects1 is not an obvious good4 ,perhaps1 like a democratic government1 the soul is at its best when it merely collects and coordinates the impulses coming from the senses4 ,the inner man is at times a tyrant1 parasitical1 wasteful1 and voluptuous4 ,at other times he is fanatical and mad4 ,when he asks for and obtains violent exertions from the body1 the question often is1 as with the exploits of conquerors and conjurers1 whether the impulse to do such prodigious things was not gratuitous1 and the things nugatory4 ,who would wish to be a mystic8 ,james himself1 who by nature was a spirited rather than a spiritual man1 had no liking for sanctimonious transcendentalists1 visionaries1 or ascetics2 he hated minds that run thin4 ,but he hastened to correct this manly impulse1 lest it should be unjust1 and forced himself to overcome his repugnance4 ,this was made easier when the unearthly phenomenon had a healing or saving function in the everyday material world2 miracle then reestablished its ancient identity with medicine1 and both of them were humanised4 ,even when this union was not attained1 ,james was reconciled to the miracleworkers partly by his great charity1 and partly by his hunter's instinct to follow a scent1 for he believed discoveries to be imminent4 ,besides1 a philosopher who is a teacher of youth is more concerned to give people a right start than a right conclusion4 ,james fell in with the hortatory tradition of college sages2 he turned his psychology1 whenever he could do so honestly1 to purposes of edification2 and his little sermons on habit1 on will1 on faith1 and this on the latent capacities of men1 were fine and stirring1 and just the sermons to preach to the young ,christian soldier4 ,he was much less sceptical in morals than in science4 ,he seems to have felt sure that certain thoughts and hopes--those familiar to a liberal ,protestantism--were every man's true friends in life4 ,this assumption would have been hard to defend if he or those he habitually addressed had ever questioned it2 yet his whole argument for voluntarily cultivating these beliefs rests on this assumption1 that they are beneficent4 ,since1 whether we will or no1 we cannot escape the risk of error1 and must succumb to some human or pathological bias1 at least we might do so gracefully and in the form that would profit us most1 by clinging to those prejudices which help us to lead what we all feel is a good life4 ,but what is a good life8 ,had ,william ,james1 had the people about him1 had modern philosophers anywhere1 any notion of that8 ,i cannot think so4 ,they had much experience of personal goodness1 and love of it2 they had standards of character and right conduct2 but as to what might render human existence good1 excellent1 beautiful1 happy1 and worth having as a whole1 their notions were utterly thin and barbarous4 ,they had forgotten the ,greeks1 or never known them4 ,this argument accordingly suffers from the same weakness as the similar argument of ,pascal in favour of ,catholic orthodoxy4 ,you should force yourself to believe in it1 he said1 because if you do so and are right you win heaven1 while if you are wrong you lose nothing4 ,what would ,protestants1 ,mohammedans1 and ,hindus say to that8 ,those alternatives of ,pascal's are not the sole nor the true alternatives2 such a wager--betting on the improbable because you are offered big odds--is an unworthy parody of the real choice between wisdom and folly4 ,there is no heaven to be won in such a spirit1 and if there was1 a philosopher would despise it4 ,so ,william ,james would have us bet on immortality1 or bet on our power to succeed1 because if we win the wager we can live to congratulate ourselves on our true instinct1 while we lose nothing if we have made a mistake2 for unless you have the satisfaction of finding that you have been right1 the dignity of having been right is apparently nothing4 ,or if the argument is rather that these beliefs1 whether true or false1 make life better in this world1 the thing is simply false4 ,to be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth2 it is not nearly so safe1 not nearly so sweet1 and not nearly so fruitful4 ,these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind4 ,believe1 certainly2 we cannot help believing2 but believe rationally1 holding what seems certain for certain1 what seems probable for probable1 what seems desirable for desirable1 and what seems false for false4 ,in this matter1 as usual1 ,james had a true psychological fact and a generous instinct behind his confused moral suggestions4 ,it is a psychological fact that men are influenced in their beliefs by their will and desires2 indeed1 ,i think we can go further and say that in its essence belief is an expression of impulse1 of readiness to act4 ,it is only peripherally1 as our action is gradually adjusted to things1 and our impulses to our possible or necessary action1 that our ideas begin to hug the facts1 and to acquire a true1 if still a symbolic1 significance4 ,we do not need a will to believe2 we only need a will to study the object in which we are inevitably believing4 ,but ,james was thinking less of belief in what we find than of belief in what we hope for3 a belief which is not at all clear and not at all necessary in the life of mortals4 ,like most ,americans1 however1 only more lyrically1 ,james felt the call of the future and the assurance that it could be made far better1 totally other1 than the past4 ,the pictures that religion had painted of heaven or the millennium were not what he prized1 although his ,swedenborgian connection might have made him tender to them1 as perhaps it did to familiar spirits4 ,it was the moral succour offered by religion1 its open spaces1 the possibility of miracles in extremis1 that must be retained4 ,if we recoiled at the thought of being dupes 7which is perhaps what nature intended us to be71 were we less likely to be dupes in disbelieving these sustaining truths than in believing them8 ,faith was needed to bring about the reform of faith itself1 as well as all other reforms4 ,in some cases faith in success could nerve us to bring success about1 and so justify itself by its own operation4 ,this is a thought typical of ,james at his worst--a worst in which there is always a good side4 ,here again psychological observation is used with the best intentions to hearten oneself and other people2 but the fact observed is not at all understood1 and a moral twist is given to it which 7besides being morally questionable7 almost amounts to falsifying the fact itself4 ,why does belief that you can jump a ditch help you to jump it8 ,because it is a symptom of the fact that you could jump it1 that your legs were fit and that the ditch was two yards wide and not twenty4 ,a rapid and just appreciation of these facts has given you your confidence1 or at least has made it reasonable1 manly1 and prophetic2 otherwise you would have been a fool and got a ducking for it4 ,assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is selfknowledge4 ,if you had been rattled you might have failed1 because that would have been a symptom of the fact that you were out of gear2 you would have been afraid because you trembled1 as ,james at his best proclaimed4 ,you would never have quailed if your system had been reacting smoothly to its opportunities1 any more than you would totter and see double if you were not intoxicated4 ,fear is a sensation of actual nervousness and disarray1 and confidence a sensation of actual readiness2 they are not disembodied feelings1 existing for no reason1 the devil ,funk and the angel ,courage1 one or the other of whom may come down arbitrarily into your body1 and revolutionise it4 ,that is childish mythology1 which survives innocently enough as a figure of speech1 until a philosopher is found to take that figure of speech seriously4 ,nor is the moral suggestion here less unsound4 ,what is good is not the presumption of power1 but the possession of it3 a clear head1 aware of its resources1 not a fuddled optimism1 calling up spirits from the vasty deep4 ,courage is not a virtue1 said ,socrates1 unless it is also wisdom4 ,could anything be truer both of courage in doing and of courage in believing8 ,but it takes tenacity1 it takes reasonable courage1 to stick to scientific insights such as this of ,socrates or that of ,james about the emotions2 it is easier to lapse into the traditional manner1 to search natural philosophy for miracles and moral lessons1 and in morals proper1 in the reasoned expression of preference1 to splash about without a philosophy4 ,william ,james shared the passions of liberalism4 ,he belonged to the left1 which1 as they say in ,spain1 is the side of the heart1 as the right is that of the liver2 at any rate there was much blood and no gall in his philosophy4 ,he was one of those elder ,americans still disquieted by the ghost of tyranny1 social and ecclesiastical4 ,even the beauties of the past troubled him2 he had a puritan feeling that they were tainted4 ,they had been cruel and frivolous1 and must have suppressed far better things4 ,but what1 we may ask1 might these better things be8 ,it may do for a revolutionary politician to say3 8,i may not know what ,i want--except office--but ,i know what ,i don't want02 it will never do for a philosopher4 ,aversions and fears imply principles of preference1 goods acknowledged2 and it is the philosopher's business to make these goods explicit4 ,liberty is not an art1 liberty must be used to bring some natural art to fruition4 ,shall it be simply eating and drinking and wondering what will happen next8 ,if there is some deep and settled need in the heart of man1 to give direction to his efforts1 what else should a philosopher do but discover and announce what that need is8 ,there is a sense in which ,james was not a philosopher at all4 ,he once said to me3 8,what a curse philosophy would be if we couldn't forget all about it60 ,in other words1 philosophy was not to him what it has been to so many1 a consolation and sanctuary in a life which would have been unsatisfying without it4 ,it would be incongruous1 therefore1 to expect of him that he should build a philosophy like an edifice to go and live in for good4 ,philosophy to him was rather like a maze in which he happened to find himself wandering1 and what he was looking for was the way out4 ,in the presence of theories of any sort he was attentive1 puzzled1 suspicious1 with a certain inner prompting to disregard them4 ,he lived all his life among them1 as a child lives among grownup people2 what a relief to turn from those stolid giants1 with their prohibitions and exactions and tiresome talk1 to another real child or a nice animal6 ,of course grownup people are useful1 and so ,james considered that theories might be2 but in themselves1 to live with1 they were rather in the way1 and at bottom our natural enemies4 ,it was well to challenge one or another of them when you got a chance2 perhaps that challenge might break some spell1 transform the strange landscape1 and simplify life4 ,a theory while you were creating or using it was like a story you were telling yourself or a game you were playing2 it was a warm1 selfjustifying thing then2 but when the glow of creation or expectation was over1 a theory was a phantom1 like a ghost1 or like the minds of other people4 ,to all other people1 even to ghosts1 ,william ,james was the soul of courtesy2 and he was civil to most theories as well1 as to more or less interesting strangers that invaded him4 ,nobody ever recognised more heartily the chance that others had of being right1 and the right they had to be different4 ,yet when it came to understanding what they meant1 whether they were theories or persons1 his intuition outran his patience2 he made some brilliant impressionistic sketch in his fancy and called it by their name4 ,this sketch was as often flattered as distorted1 and he was at times the dupe of his desire to be appreciative and give the devil his due2 he was too impulsive for exact sympathy2 too subjective1 too romantic1 to be just4 ,love is very penetrating1 but it penetrates to possibilities rather than to facts4 ,the logic of opinions1 as well as the exact opinions themselves1 were not things ,james saw easily1 or traced with pleasure4 ,he liked to take things one by one1 rather than to put two and two together4 ,he was a mystic1 a mystic in love with life4 ,he was comparable to ,rousseau and to ,walt ,whitman2 he expressed a generous and tender sensibility1 rebelling against sophistication1 and preferring daily sights and sounds1 and a vague but indomitable faith in fortune1 to any settled intellectual tradition calling itself science or philosophy4 ,a prophet is not without honour save in his own country2 and until the return wave of ,james's reputation reached ,america from ,europe1 his pupils and friends were hardly aware that he was such a distinguished man4 ,everybody liked him1 and delighted in him for his generous1 gullible nature and brilliant sallies4 ,he was a sort of ,irishman among the ,brahmins1 and seemed hardly imposing enough for a great man4 ,they laughed at his erratic views and his undisguised limitations4 ,of course a conscientious professor ought to know everything he professes to know1 but then1 they thought1 a dignified professor ought to seem to know everything4 ,the precise theologians and panoplied idealists1 who exist even in ,america1 shook their heads4 ,what sound philosophy1 said they to themselves1 could be expected from an irresponsible doctor1 who was not even a college graduate1 a crude empiricist1 and vivisector of frogs8 ,on the other hand1 the solid men of business were not entirely reassured concerning a teacher of youth who seemed to have no system in particular--the ignorant rather demand that the learned should have a system in store1 to be applied at a pinch2 and they could not quite swallow a private gentleman who dabbled in hypnotism1 frequented mediums1 didn't talk like a book1 and didn't write like a book1 except like one of his own4 ,even his pupils1 attached as they invariably were to his person1 felt some doubts about the profundity of one who was so very natural1 and who after some interruption during a lecture--and he said life was a series of interruptions--would slap his forehead and ask the man in the front row 8,what was ,i talking about80 ,perhaps in the first years of his teaching he felt a little in the professor's chair as a military man might feel when obliged to read the prayers at a funeral4 ,he probably conceived what he said more deeply than a more scholastic mind might have conceived it2 yet he would have been more comfortable if some one else had said it for him4 ,he liked to open the window1 and look out for a moment4 ,i think he was glad when the bell rang1 and he could be himself again until the next day4 ,but in the midst of this routine of the classroom the spirit would sometimes come upon him1 and1 leaning his head on his hand1 he would let fall golden words1 picturesque1 fresh from the heart1 full of the knowledge of good and evil4 ,incidentally there would crop up some humorous characterisation1 some candid confession of doubt or of instinctive preference1 some pungent scrap of learning2 radicalisms plunging sometimes into the subsoil of all human philosophies2 and1 on occasion1 thoughts of simple wisdom and wistful piety1 the most unfeigned and manly that anybody ever had4 ,,chapter ,,iv--,,josiah ,,royce ,meantime the mantle of philosophical authority had fallen at ,harvard upon other shoulders4 ,a young ,californian1 ,josiah ,royce1 had come back from ,germany with a reputation for wisdom2 and even without knowing that he had already produced a new proof of the existence of ,god1 merely to look at him you would have felt that he was a philosopher2 his great head seemed too heavy for his small body1 and his portentous brow1 crowned with thick red hair1 seemed to crush the lower part of his face4 8,royce10 said ,william ,james of him1 8has an indecent exposure of forehead40 ,there was a suggestion about him of the benevolent ogre or the old child1 in whom a preternatural sharpness of insight lurked beneath a grotesque mask4 ,if you gave him any cue1 or even without one1 he could discourse broadly on any subject2 you never caught him napping4 ,whatever the textbooks and encyclopdias could tell him1 he knew2 and if the impression he left on your mind was vague1 that was partly because1 in spite of his comprehensiveness1 he seemed to view everything in relation to something else that remained untold4 ,his approach to anything was oblique2 he began a long way off1 perhaps with the ,american preface of a funny story2 and when the point came in sight1 it was at once enveloped again in a cloud of qualifications1 in the parliamentary jargon of philosophy4 ,the tap once turned on1 out flowed the stream of systematic disquisition1 one hour1 two hours1 three hours of it1 according to demand or opportunity4 ,the voice1 too1 was merciless and harsh4 ,you felt the overworked1 standardised1 academic engine1 creaking and thumping on at the call of duty or of habit1 with no thought of sparing itself or any one else4 ,yet a sprightlier soul behind this performing soul seemed to watch and laugh at the process4 ,sometimes a merry light would twinkle in the little eyes1 and a bashful smile would creep over the uncompromising mouth4 ,a sense of the paradox1 the irony1 the inconclusiveness of the whole argument would pierce to the surface1 like a whitecap bursting here and there on the heavy swell of the sea4 ,his procedure was first to gather and digest whatever the sciences or the devil might have to say4 ,he had an evident sly pleasure in the degustation and savour of difficulties2 biblical criticism1 the struggle for life1 the latest ,german theory of sexual insanity1 had no terrors for him2 it was all grist for the mill1 and woe to any tender thing1 any beauty or any illusion1 that should get between that upper and that nether millstone6 ,he seemed to say3 ,if ,i were not ,alexander how gladly would ,i be ,diogenes1 and if ,i had not a system to defend1 how easily ,i might tell you the truth4 ,but after the sceptic had ambled quizzically over the ground1 the prophet would mount the pulpit to survey it4 ,he would then prove that in spite of all those horrors and contradictions1 or rather because of them1 the universe was absolutely perfect4 ,for behind that mocking soul in him there was yet another1 a devout and heroic soul4 ,royce was heir to the ,calvinistic tradition2 piety1 to his mind1 consisted in trusting divine providence and justice1 while emphasising the most terrifying truths about one's own depravity and the sinister holiness of ,god4 ,he accordingly addressed himself1 in his chief writings1 to showing that all lives were parts of a single divine life in which all problems were solved and all evils justified4 ,it is characteristic of ,royce that in his proof of something sublime1 like the existence of ,god1 his premiss should be something sad and troublesome1 the existence of error4 ,error exists1 he tells us1 and common sense will readily agree1 although the fact is not unquestionable1 and pure mystics and pure sensualists deny it4 ,but if error exists1 ,royce continues1 there must be a truth from which it differs2 and the existence of truth 7according to the principle of idealism1 that nothing can exist except for a mind that knows it7 implies that some one knows the truth2 but as to know the truth thoroughly1 and supply the corrective to every possible error1 involves omniscience1 we have proved the existence of an omniscient mind or universal thought2 and this is almost1 if not quite1 equivalent to the existence of ,god4 ,what carried ,royce over the evident chasms and assumptions in this argument was his earnestness and passionate eloquence4 ,he passed for an eminent logician1 because he was dialectical and fearless in argument and delighted in the play of formal relations2 he was devoted to chess1 music1 and mathematics2 but all this show of logic was but a screen for his heart1 and in his heart there was no clearness4 ,his reasoning was not pure logic or pure observation2 it was always secretly enthusiastic or malicious1 and the result it arrived at had been presupposed4 ,here1 for instance1 no unprejudiced thinker1 not to speak of a pure logician1 would have dreamt of using the existence of error to found the being of truth upon4 ,error is a biological accident which may any day cease to exist1 say at the extinction of the human race2 whereas the being of truth or fact is involved indefeasibly and eternally in the existence of anything whatever1 past1 present1 or future2 every event of itself renders true or false any proposition that refers to it4 ,no one would conceive of such a thing as error or suspect its presence1 unless he had already found or assumed many a truth2 nor could anything be an error actually unless the truth was definite and real4 ,all this ,royce of course recognised1 and it was in some sense the heart of what he meant to assert and to prove2 but it does not need proving and hardly asserting4 ,what needed proof was something else1 of less logical importance but far greater romantic interest1 namely1 that the truth was hovering over us and about to descend into our hearts2 and this ,royce was not disinclined to confuse with the being of truth1 so as to bring it within the range of logical argument4 ,he was tormented by the suspicion that he might be himself in the toils of error1 and fervently aspired to escape from it4 ,error to him was no natural1 and in itself harmless1 incident of finitude2 it was a sort of sin1 as finitude was too4 ,it was a part of the problem of evil2 a terrible and urgent problem when your first postulate or dogma is that moral distinctions and moral experience are the substance of the world1 and not merely an incident in it4 ,the mere being of truth1 which is all a logician needs1 would not help him in this wrestling for personal salvation2 as he keenly felt and often said1 the truth is like the stars1 always laughing at us4 ,nothing would help him but possession of the truth1 something eventual and terribly problematic4 ,he longed to believe that all his troubles and questions1 some day and somewhere1 must find their solution and quietus2 if not in his own mind1 in some kindred spirit that he could1 to that extent1 identify with himself4 ,there must be not only cold truth1 not even cold truth personified1 but victorious knowledge of the truth1 breaking like a sunburst through the clouds of error4 ,the nerve of his argument was not logical at all2 it was a confession of religious experience1 in which the agonised consciousness of error led to a strong imaginative conviction that the truth would be found at last4 ,the truth1 as here conceived1 meant the whole truth about everything2 and certainly1 if any plausible evidence for such a conclusion could be adduced1 it would be interesting to learn that we are destined to become omniscient1 or are secretly omniscient already4 ,nevertheless1 the aspiration of all religious minds does not run that way4 ,aristotle tells us that there are many things it is better not to know2 and his sublime deity is happily ignorant of our errors and of our very existence2 more emphatically so the even sublimer deities of ,plotinus and the ,indians4 ,the omniscience which our religion attributes to ,god as the searcher of hearts and the judge of conduct has a moral function rather than a logical one2 it prevents us from hiding our sins or being unrecognised in our merits2 it is not conceived to be requisite in order that it may be true that those sins or merits have existed4 ,atheists admit the facts1 but they are content or perhaps relieved that they should pass unobserved4 ,but here again ,royce slipped into a romantic equivocation which a strict logician would not have tolerated4 ,knowledge of the truth1 a passing psychological possession1 was substituted for the truth known1 and this at the cost of rather serious ultimate confusions4 ,it is the truth itself1 the facts in their actual relations1 that honest opinion appeals to1 not to another opinion or instance of knowledge2 and if1 in your dream of warm sympathy and public corroboration1 you lay up your treasure in some instance of knowledge1 which time and doubt might corrupt1 you have not laid up your treasure in heaven4 ,in striving to prove the being of truth1 the young ,royce absurdly treated it as doubtful1 setting a bad example to the pragmatists2 while in striving to lend a psychological quality to this truth and turning it into a problematical instance of knowledge1 he unwittingly deprived it of all authority and sublimity4 ,to personify the truth is to care less for truth than for the corroboration and sympathy which the truth1 become human1 might bring to our opinions4 ,it is to set up another thinker1 ourself enlarged1 to vindicate us2 without considering that this second thinker would be shut up1 like us1 in his own opinions1 and would need to look to the truth beyond him as much as we do4 ,to the old problem of evil ,royce could only give an old answer1 although he rediscovered and repeated it for himself in many ways1 since it was the core of his whole system4 ,good1 he said1 is essentially the struggle with evil and the victory over it2 so that if evil did not exist1 good would be impossible4 ,i do not think this answer set him at rest2 he could hardly help feeling that all goods are not of that bellicose description1 and that not all evils produce a healthy reaction or are swallowed up in victory2 yet the fact that the most specious solution to this problem of evil left it unsolved was in its way appropriate2 for if the problem had been really solved1 the struggle to find a solution and the faith that there was one would come to an end2 yet perhaps this faith and this struggle are themselves the supreme good4 ,accordingly the true solution of this problem1 which we may all accept1 is that no solution can ever be found4 ,here is an example of the difference between the being of truth and the ultimate solution of all our problems4 ,there is certainly a truth about evil1 and in this case not an unknown truth2 yet it is no solution to the 8problem0 which laid the indomitable ,royce on the rack4 ,if a younger son asks why he was not born before his elder brother1 that question may represent an intelligible state of his feelings2 but there is no answer to it1 because it is a childish question4 ,so the question why it is right that there should be any evil is itself perverse and raised by false presumptions4 ,to an unsophisticated mortal the existence of evil presents a task1 never a problem4 ,evil1 like error1 is an incident of animal life1 inevitable in a crowded and unsettled world1 where one spontaneous movement is likely to thwart another1 and all to run up against material impossibilities4 ,while life lasts this task is recurrent1 and every creature1 in proportion to the vitality and integrity of his nature1 strives to remove or abate those evils of which he is sensible4 ,when the case is urgent and he is helpless1 he will cry out for divine aid2 and 7if he does not perish first7 he will soon see this aid coming to him through some shift in the circumstances that renders his situation endurable4 ,positive religion takes a naturalistic view of things1 and requires it4 ,it parts company with a scientific naturalism only in accepting the authority of instinct or revelation in deciding certain questions of fact1 such as immortality or miracles4 ,it rouses itself to crush evil1 without asking why evil exists4 ,what could be more intelligible than that a deity like ,jehovah1 a giant inhabitant of the natural world1 should be confronted with rivals1 enemies1 and rebellious children8 ,what could be more intelligible than that the inertia of matter1 or pure chance1 or some contrary purpose1 should mar the expression of any platonic idea exercising its magic influence over the world8 ,for the ,greek as for the ,jew the task of morals is the same3 to subdue nature as far as possible to the uses of the soul1 by whatever agencies material or spiritual may be at hand2 and when a limit is reached in that direction1 to harden and cauterise the heart in the face of inevitable evils1 opening it wide at the same time to every sweet influence that may descend to it from heaven4 ,never for a moment was positive religion entangled in a sophistical optimism4 ,never did it conceive that the most complete final deliverance and triumph would justify the evils which they abolished4 ,as ,william ,james put it1 in his picturesque manner1 if at the last day all creation was shouting hallelujah and there remained one cockroach with an unrequited love1 that would spoil the universal harmony2 it would spoil it1 he meant1 in truth and for the tender philosopher1 but probably not for those excited saints4 ,james was thinking chiefly of the present and future1 but the same scrupulous charity has its application to the past4 ,to remove an evil is not to remove the fact that it has existed4 ,the tears that have been shed were shed in bitterness1 even if a remorseful hand afterwards wipes them away4 ,to be patted on the back and given a sugarplum does not reconcile even a child to a past injustice4 ,and the case is much worse if we are expected to make our heaven out of the foolish and cruel pleasures of contrast1 or out of the pathetic obfuscation produced by a great relief4 ,such a heaven would be a lie1 like the sardonic heavens of ,calvin and ,hegel4 ,the existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism4 ,nevertheless philosophers have always had a royal road to complete satisfaction4 ,one of the purest of pleasures1 which they cultivate above all others1 is the pleasure of understanding4 ,now1 as playwrights and novelists know1 the intellect is no less readily or agreeably employed in understanding evil than in understanding good--more so1 in fact1 if in the intellectual man1 besides his intelligence1 there is a strain of coarseness1 irony1 or desire to belittle the good things others possess and he himself has missed4 ,sometimes the philosopher1 even when above all meanness1 becomes so devoted a naturalist that he is ashamed to remain a moralist1 although this is what he probably was in the beginning2 and where all is one vast cataract of events1 he feels it would be impertinent of him to divide them censoriously into things that ought to be and things that ought not to be4 ,he may even go one step farther4 ,awestruck and humbled before the universe1 he may insensibly transform his understanding and admiration of it into the assertion that the existence of evil is no evil at all1 but that the order of the universe is in every detail necessary and perfect1 so that the mere mention of the word evil is blind and blasphemous4 ,this sentiment1 which as much as any other deserves the name of pantheism1 is often expressed incoherently and with a false afflatus2 but when rationally conceived1 as it was by ,spinoza1 it amounts to this3 that good and evil are relations which things bear to the living beings they affect4 ,in itself nothing--much less this whole mixed universe--can be either good or bad2 but the universe wears the aspect of a good in so far as it feeds1 delights1 or otherwise fosters any creature within it4 ,if we define the intellect as the power to see things as they are1 it is clear that in so far as the philosopher is a pure intellect the universe will be a pure good to the philosopher2 everything in it will give play to his exclusive passion4 ,wisdom counsels us therefore to become philosophers and to concentrate our lives as much as possible in pure intelligence1 that we may be led by it into the ways of peace4 ,not that the universe will be proved thereby to be intrinsically good 7although in the heat of their intellectual egotism philosophers are sometimes betrayed into saying so71 but that it will have become in that measure a good to us1 and we shall be better able to live happily and freely in it4 ,if intelligibility appears in things1 it does so like beauty or use1 because the mind of man1 in so far as it is adapted to them1 finds its just exercise in their society4 ,this is an ancient1 shrewd1 and inexpugnable position4 ,if ,royce had been able to adhere to it consistently1 he would have avoided his gratuitous problem of evil without1 ,i think1 doing violence to the sanest element in his natural piety1 which was joy in the hard truth1 with a touch of humour and scorn in respect to mortal illusions4 ,there was an observant and docile side to him2 and as a child likes to see things work1 he liked to see processions of facts marching on ironically1 whatever we might say about it4 ,this was his sense of the power of ,god4 ,it attached him at first to ,spinoza and later to mathematical logic4 ,no small part of his lifelong allegiance to the ,absolute responded to this sentiment4 ,the outlook1 however1 was complicated and half reversed for him by the transcendental theory of knowledge which he had adopted4 ,this theory regards all objects1 including the universe1 as merely terms posited by the will of the thinker1 according to a definite grammar of thought native to his mind4 ,in order that his thoughts may be addressed to any particular object1 he must first choose and create it of his own accord2 otherwise his opinions1 not being directed upon any object in particular within his ken1 cannot be either true or false1 whatever picture they may frame4 ,what anything external may happen to be1 when we do not mean to speak of it1 is irrelevant to our discourse4 ,if1 for instance1 the real ,royce were not a denizen and product of my mind--of my deeper self--,i could not so much as have a wrong idea of him4 ,the need of this initial relevance in our judgements seems to the transcendentalist to drive all possible objects into the fold of his secret thoughts1 so that he has two minds1 one that seeks the facts and another that already possesses or rather constitutes them4 ,pantheism1 when this new philosophy of knowledge is adopted1 seems at first to lose its foundations4 ,there is no longer an external universe to which to bow2 no little corner left for us in the infinite where1 after making the great sacrifice1 we may build a safe nest4 ,the intellect to which we had proudly reduced ourselves has lost its preeminence2 it can no longer be called the faculty of seeing things as they are4 ,it has become what psychological critics of intellectualism1 such as ,william ,james1 understand by it3 a mass of human propensities to abstraction1 construction1 belief1 or inference1 by which imaginary things and truths are posited in the service of life4 ,it is therefore on the same plane exactly as passion1 music1 or sthetic taste3 a mental complication which may be an index to other psychological facts connected with it genetically1 but which has no valid intent1 no ideal transcendence1 no assertive or cognitive function4 ,intelligence so conceived understands nothing3 it is a buzzing labour in the fancy which1 by some obscure causation1 helps us to live on4 ,to discredit the intellect1 to throw off the incubus of an external reality or truth1 was one of the boons which transcendentalism in its beginnings brought to the romantic soul4 ,but although at first the sense of relief 7to ,fichte1 for instance7 was most exhilarating1 the freedom achieved soon proved illusory3 the terrible ,absolute had been simply transplanted into the self4 ,you were your own master1 and omnipotent2 but you were no less dark1 hostile1 and inexorable to yourself than the gods of ,calvin or of ,spinoza had been before4 ,since every detail of this mock world was your secret work1 you were not only wiser but also more criminal than you knew4 ,you were stifled1 even more than formerly1 in the arms of nature1 in the toils of your own unaccountable character1 which made your destiny4 ,royce never recoiled from paradox or from bitter fact2 and he used to say that a mouse1 when tormented and torn to pieces by a cat1 was realising his own deepest will1 since he had subconsciously chosen to be a mouse in a world that should have cats in it4 ,the mouse really1 in his deeper self1 wanted to be terrified1 clawed1 and devoured4 ,royce was superficially a rationalist1 with no tenderness for superstition in detail and not much sympathy with civilised religions2 but we see here that in his heart he was loyal to the aboriginal principle of all superstition3 reverence for what hurts4 ,he said to himself that in so far as ,god was the devil--as daily experience and ,hegelian logic proved was largely the case--devilworship was true religion4 ,a protest1 however1 arose in his own mind against this doctrine4 ,strong early bonds attached him to moralism--to the opinion of the ,stoics and of ,kant that virtue is the only good4 ,yet if virtue were conceived after their manner1 as a heroic and sublimated attitude of the will1 of which the world hardly afforded any example1 how should the whole whirligig of life be good also8 ,how should moralism1 that frowns on this wicked world1 be reconciled with pantheism and optimism1 that hug it to their bosom8 ,by the ingenious if rather melodramatic notion that we should hug it with a bear's hug1 that virtue consisted 7as ,royce often put it7 in holding evil by the throat2 so that the world was good because it was a good world to strangle1 and if we only managed to do so1 the more it deserved strangling the better world it was4 ,but this ,herculean feat must not be considered as something to accomplish once for all2 the labours of ,hercules must be not twelve but infinite1 since his virtue consisted in performing them1 and if he ever rested or was received into ,olympus he would have left virtue--the only good--behind4 ,the wickedness of the world was no reason for quitting it2 on the contrary1 it invited us to plunge into all its depths and live through every phase of it2 virtue was severe but not squeamish4 ,it lived by endless effort1 turbid vitality1 and ,sturm und ,drang4 ,moralism and an apology for evil could thus be reconciled and merged in the praises of tragic experience4 ,this had been the burden of ,hegel's philosophy of life1 which ,royce admired and adopted4 ,hegel and his followers seem to be fond of imagining that they are moving in a tragedy4 ,but because ,aeschylus and ,sophocles were great poets1 does it follow that life would be cheap if it did not resemble their fables8 ,the life of tragic heroes is not good2 it is misguided1 unnecessary1 and absurd4 ,yet that is what romantic philosophy would condemn us to2 we must all strut and roar4 ,we must lend ourselves to the partisan earnestness of persons and nations calling their rivals villains and themselves heroes2 but this earnestness will be of the histrionic ,german sort1 made to order and transferable at short notice from one object to another1 since what truly matters is not that we should achieve our ostensible aim 7which ,hegel contemptuously called ideal7 but that we should carry on perpetually1 if possible with a crescendo1 the strenuous experience of living in a gloriously bad world1 and always working to reform it1 with the comforting speculative assurance that we never can succeed4 ,we never can succeed1 ,i mean1 in rendering reform less necessary or life happier2 but of course in any specific reform we may succeed half the time1 thereby sowing the seeds of new and higher evils1 to keep the edge of virtue keen4 ,and in reality we1 or the ,absolute in us1 are succeeding all the time2 the play is always going on1 and the play's the thing4 ,it was inevitable that ,royce should have been at home only in this circle of ,protestant and ,german intuitions2 a more refined existence would have seemed to him to elude moral experience4 ,although he was born in ,california he had never got used to the sunshine2 he had never tasted peace4 ,his spirit was that of courage and labour4 ,he was tender in a bashful way1 as if in tenderness there was something pathological1 as indeed to his sense there was1 since he conceived love and loyalty to be divine obsessions refusing to be rationalised2 he saw their essence in the child who clings to an old battered doll rather than accept a new and better one4 ,following orthodox tradition in philosophy1 he insisted on seeing reason at the bottom of things as well as at the top1 so that he never could understand either the root or the flower of anything4 ,he watched the movement of events as if they were mysterious music1 and instead of their causes and potentialities he tried to divine their motif4 ,on current affairs his judgements were highly seasoned and laboriously wise4 ,if anything escaped him1 it was only the simplicity of what is best4 ,his reward was that he became a prophet to a whole class of earnest1 troubled people who1 having discarded doctrinal religion1 wished to think their life worth living when1 to look at what it contained1 it might not have seemed so2 it reassured them to learn that a strained and joyless existence was not their unlucky lot1 or a consequence of their solemn folly1 but was the necessary fate of all good men and angels4 ,royce had always experienced and seen about him a groping1 burdened1 mediocre life2 he had observed how fortune is continually lying in ambush for us1 in order to bring good out of evil and evil out of good4 ,in his age and country all was change1 preparation1 hurry1 material achievement2 nothing was an old and sufficient possession2 nowhere1 or very much in the background1 any leisure1 simplicity1 security1 or harmony4 ,the whole scene was filled with arts and virtues which were merely useful or remedial4 ,the most pressing arts1 like war and forced labour1 presuppose evil1 work immense havoc1 and take the place of greater possible goods4 ,the most indispensable virtues1 like courage and industry1 do likewise4 ,but these seemed in ,royce's world the only honourable things1 and he took them to be typical of all art and virtue--a tremendous error4 ,it is very true1 however1 that in the welter of material existence no concrete thing can be good or evil in every respect2 and so long as our rough arts and virtues do more good than harm we give them honourable names1 such as unselfishness1 patriotism1 or religion2 and it remains a mark of good breeding among us to practise them instinctively4 ,but an absolute love of such forced arts and impure virtues is itself a vice2 it is1 as the case may be1 barbarous1 vain1 or fanatical4 ,it mistakes something specific--some habit or emotion which may be or may have been good in some respect1 or under some circumstances the lesser of two evils--for the very principle of excellence4 ,but good and evil1 like light and shade1 are ethereal2 all things1 events1 persons1 and conventional virtues are in themselves utterly valueless1 save as an immaterial harmony 7of which mind is an expression7 plays about them on occasion1 when their natures meet propitiously1 and bathes them in some tint of happiness or beauty4 ,this immaterial harmony may be made more and more perfect2 the difficulties in the way of perfection1 either in man1 in society1 or in universal nature1 are physical not logical4 ,worship of barbarous virtue is the blackest conservatism2 it shuts the gate of heaven1 and surrenders existence to perpetual follies and crimes1 ,moralism itself is a superstition4 ,in its abstract form it is moral1 too moral2 it adores the conventional conscience1 or perhaps a morbid one4 ,in its romantic form1 moralism becomes barbarous and actually immoral2 it obstinately craves action and stress for their own sake1 experience in the gross1 and a goodandbad way of living4 ,royce sometimes conceded that there might be some pure goods1 music1 for instance1 or mathematics2 but the impure moral goods were better and could not be spared4 ,such a concession1 however1 if it had been taken to heart1 would have ruined his whole moral philosophy4 ,the romanticist must maintain that only what is painful can be noble and only what is lurid bright4 ,a taste for turbid and contrasted values would soon seem perverse when once anything perfect had been seen and loved4 ,would it not have been better to leave out the worst of the crimes and plagues that have heightened the tragic value of the world8 ,but if so1 why stop before we had deleted them all8 ,we should presently be horrified at the mere thought of passions that before had been found necessary by the barbarous tragedian to keep his audience awake2 and the ear at the same time would become sensitive to a thousand harmonies that had been inaudible in the hurlyburly of romanticism4 ,the romanticist thinks he has life by virtue of his confusion and torment1 whereas in truth that torment and confusion are his incipient death1 and it is only the modicum of harmony he has achieved in his separate faculties that keeps him alive at all4 ,as ,aristotle taught1 unmixed harmony would be intensest life4 ,the spheres might make a sweet and perpetual music1 and a happy ,god is at least possible4 ,it was not in this direction1 however1 that ,royce broke away on occasion from his ,hegelian ethics2 he did so in the direction of ethical dogmatism and downright sincerity4 ,the deepest thing in him personally was conscience1 firm recognition of duty1 and the democratic and ,american spirit of service4 ,he could not adopt a moral bias histrionically1 after the manner of ,hegel or ,nietzsche4 ,to those hardened professionals any rle was acceptable1 the more commanding the better2 but the good ,royce was like a sensitive amateur1 refusing the rle of villain1 however brilliant and necessary to the play4 ,in contempt of his own speculative insight1 or in an obedience to it which forgot it for the time being1 he lost himself in his part1 and felt that it was infinitely important to be cast only for the most virtuous of characters4 ,he retained inconsistently the ,jewish allegiance to a ,god essentially the vindicator of only one of the combatants1 not in this world often the victor2 he could not stomach the providential scoundrels which the bad taste of ,germany1 and of ,carlyle and ,browning1 was wont to glorify4 ,the last notable act of his life was an illustration of this1 when he uttered a ringing public denunciation of the sinking of the ,lusitania4 ,orthodox ,hegelians might well have urged that here1 if anywhere1 was a plain case of the providential function of what1 from a finite merely moral point of view1 was an evil in order to make a higher good possible--the virtue of ,german selfassertion and of ,american selfassertion in antithesis to it1 synthesised in the concrete good of war and victory1 or in the perhaps more blessed good of defeat4 ,what could be more unphilosophical and gedankenlos than the intrusion of mere morality into the higher idea of worlddevelopment8 ,was not the ,universal ,spirit compelled to bifurcate into just such ,germans and just such ,americans1 in order to attain selfconsciousness by hating1 fighting against1 and vanquishing itself8 ,certainly it was ,american duty to be angry1 as it was ,german duty to be ruthless4 ,the ,idea liked to see its fightingcocks at it in earnest1 since that was what it had bred them for2 but both were good cocks4 ,villains1 as ,hegel had observed in describing ,greek tragedy1 were not less selfjustified than heroes2 they were simply the heroes of a lower stage of culture4 ,america and ,england remained at the stage of individualism2 ,germany had advanced to the higher stage of organisation4 ,perhaps this necessary war was destined1 through the apparent defeat of ,germany1 to bring ,england and ,america up to the ,german level4 ,of course2 and yet somehow1 on this occasion1 ,royce passed over these profound considerations1 which lifelong habit must have brought to his lips4 ,a ,socratic demon whispered ,no1 ,no in his ear2 it would have been better for such things never to be4 ,the murder of those thousand passengers was not a providential act1 requisite to spread abroad a vitalising war2 it was a crime to execrate altogether4 ,it would have been better for ,hegel1 or whoever was responsible for it1 if a millstone had been hanged about his neck and he1 and not those little ones1 had been drowned at the bottom of the sea4 ,of this terrestrial cockpit ,royce was willing to accept the agony1 but not the ignominy4 ,the other cock was a wicked bird4 ,this honest lapse from his logic was habitual with him at the sight of sin1 and sin in his eyes was a fearful reality4 ,his conscience spoiled the pantheistic serenity of his system2 and what was worse 7for he was perfectly aware of the contradiction7 it added a deep1 almost remorseful unrest to his hard life4 ,what calm could there be in the double assurance that it was really right that things should be wrong1 but that it was really wrong not to strive to right them8 ,there was no conflict1 he once observed1 between science and religion1 but the real conflict was between religion and morality4 ,there could indeed be no conflict in his mind between faith and science1 because his faith began by accepting all facts and all scientific probabilities in order to face them religiously4 ,but there was an invincible conflict between religion as he conceived it and morality1 because morality takes sides and regards one sort of motive and one kind of result as better than another1 whereas religion according to him gloried in everything1 even in the evil1 as fulfilling the will of ,god4 ,of course the practice of virtue was not excluded2 it was just as needful as evil was in the scheme of the whole2 but while the effort of morality was requisite1 the judgements of morality were absurd4 ,now ,i think we may say that a man who finds himself in such a position has a divided mind1 and that while he has wrestled with the deepest questions like a young giant1 he has not won the fight4 ,i mean1 he has not seen his way to any one of the various possibilities about the nature of things1 but has remained entangled1 sincerely1 nobly1 and pathetically1 in contrary traditions stronger than himself4 ,in the goodly company of philosophers he is an intrepid martyr4 ,in metaphysics as in morals ,royce perpetually laboured the same points1 yet they never became clear2 they covered a natural complexity in the facts which his idealism could not disentangle4 ,there was a voluminous confusion in his thought2 some clear principles and ultimate possibilities turned up in it1 now presenting one face and now another1 like chips carried down a swollen stream2 but the most powerful currents were below the surface1 and the whole movement was hard to trace4 ,he had borrowed from ,hegel a way of conceiving systems of philosophy1 and also the elements of his own thought1 which did not tend to clarify them4 ,he did not think of correcting what incoherence there might remain in any view1 and then holding it in reserve1 as one of the possibilities1 until facts should enable us to decide whether it was true or not4 ,instead he clung to the incoherence as if it had been the heart of the position1 in order to be driven by it to some other position altogether1 so that while every view seemed to be considered1 criticised1 and in a measure retained 7since the argument continued on the same lines1 however illchosen they might have been originally71 yet justice was never done to it2 it was never clarified1 made consistent with itself1 and then accepted or rejected in view of the evidence4 ,hence a vicious and perplexing suggestion that philosophies are bred out of philosophies1 not out of men in the presence of things4 ,hence too a sophistical effort to find everything selfcontradictory1 and in some disquieting way both true and false1 as if there were not an infinite number of perfectly consistent systems which the world might have illustrated4 ,consider1 for instance1 his chief and most puzzling contention1 that all minds are parts of one mind4 ,it is easy1 according to the meaning we give to the word mind1 to render this assertion clear and true1 or clear and false1 or clear and doubtful 7because touching unknown facts71 or utterly absurd4 ,it is obvious that all minds are parts of one flux or system of experiences1 as all bodies are parts of one system of bodies4 ,again1 if mind is identified with its objects1 and people are said to be 8of one mind0 when they are thinking of the same thing1 it is certain that many minds are often identical in part1 and they would all be identical with portions of an omniscient mind that should perceive all that they severally experienced4 ,the question becomes doubtful if what we mean by oneness of mind is unity of type2 our information or plausible guesses cannot assure us how many sorts of experience may exist1 or to what extent their development 7when they develop7 follows the same lines of evolution4 ,the animals would have to be consulted1 and the other planets1 and the infinite recesses of time4 ,the straitjacket which ,german idealism has provided is certainly far too narrow even for the varieties of human imagination4 ,finally1 the assertion becomes absurd when it is understood to suggest that an actual instance of thinking1 in which something1 say the existence of ,america1 is absent or denied1 can be part of another actual instance of thinking in which it is present and asserted4 ,but this whole method of treating the matter--and we might add anything that observation might warrant us in adding about multiple personalities--would leave out the problem that agitated ,royce and that bewildered his readers4 ,he wanted all minds to be one in some way which should be logically and morally necessary1 and which yet1 as he could not help feeling1 was morally and logically impossible4 ,for pure transcendentalism1 which was ,royce's technical method1 the question does not arise at all4 ,transcendentalism is an attitude or a point of view rather than as system4 ,its ,absolute is thinking 8as such10 wherever thought may exert itself4 ,the notion that there are separate instances of thought is excluded1 because space1 time1 and number belong to the visionary world posited by thought1 not to the function of thinking2 individuals are figments of constructive fancy1 as are material objects4 ,the stress of moral being is the same wherever it may fall1 and there are no finite selves1 or relations between thinkers2 also no infinite self1 because on this principle the ,absolute is not an existent being1 a psychological monster1 but a station or office2 its essence is a task4 ,actual thinking is therefore never a part of the ,absolute1 but always the ,absolute itself4 ,thinkers1 finite or infinite1 would be existing persons or masses of feelings2 such things are dreamt of only4 ,any system of existences1 any truth or matter of fact waiting to be recognised1 contradicts the transcendental insight and stultifies it4 ,the allinclusive mind is my mind as ,i think1 mind in its living function1 and beyond that philosophy cannot go4 ,royce1 however1 while often reasoning on this principle1 was incapable of not going beyond it1 or of always remembering it4 ,he could not help believing that constructive fancy not only feigns individuals and instances of thought1 but is actually seated in them4 ,the ,absolute1 for instance1 must be not merely the abstract subject or transcendental self in all of us 7although it was that too71 but an actual synthetic universal mind1 the ,god of ,aristotle and of ,christian theology4 ,nor was it easy for ,royce1 a sincere soul and a friend of ,william ,james1 not to be a social realist2 ,i mean1 not to admit that there are many collateral human minds1 in temporal existential relations to one another1 any of which may influence another1 but never supplant it nor materially include it4 ,finite experience was not a mere element in infinite experience2 it was a tragic totality in itself4 ,i was not ,god looking at myself1 ,i was myself looking for ,god4 ,yet this strain was utterly incompatible with the principles of transcendentalism2 it turned philosophy into a simple anticipation of science1 if not into an indulgence in literary psychology4 ,knowledge would then have been only faith leaping across the chasm of coexistence and guessing the presence and nature of what surrounds us by some hint of material influence or brotherly affinity4 ,both the credulity and the finality which such naturalism implies were offensive to ,royce1 and contrary to his sceptical and mystical instincts4 ,was there some middle course8 ,the audience in a theatre stand in a transcendental relation to the persons and events in the play4 ,the performance may take place today and last one hour1 while the fable transports us to some heroic epoch or to an age that never existed1 and stretches through days and perhaps years of fancied time4 ,just so transcendental thinking1 while actually timeless and not distributed among persons1 might survey infinite time and rehearse the passions and thoughts of a thousand characters4 ,thought1 after all1 needs objects1 however fictitious and ideal they may be2 it could not think if it thought nothing4 ,this indispensable world of appearance is far more interesting than the reality that evokes it2 the qualities and divisions found in the appearance diversify the monotonous function of pure thinking and render it concrete4 ,instances of thought and particular minds may thus be introduced consistently into a transcendental system1 provided they are distinguished not by their own times and places1 but only by their themes4 ,the transcendental mind would be a pure poet1 with no earthly life1 but living only in his works1 and in the times and persons of his fable4 ,this view1 firmly and consistently held1 would deserve the name of absolute idealism1 which ,royce liked to give to his own system4 ,but he struggled to fuse it with social realism1 with which it is radically incompatible4 ,particular minds and the whole process of time1 for absolute idealism1 are ideas only2 they are thought of and surveyed1 they never think or lapse actually4 ,for this reason genuine idealists can speak so glibly of the mind of a nation or an age4 ,it is just as real and unreal to them as the mind of an individual2 for within the human individual they can trace unities that run through and beyond him1 so that parts of him1 identical with parts of other people1 form units as living as himself2 for it is all a web of themes1 not a concourse of existences4 ,this is the very essence and pride of idealism1 that knowledge is not knowledge of the world but is the world itself1 and that the units of discourse1 which are interwoven and crossed units1 are the only individuals in being4 ,you may call them persons1 because 8person0 means a mask2 but you cannot call them souls4 ,they are knots in the web of history4 ,they are words in their context1 and the only spirit in them is the sense they have for me4 ,royce1 however1 in saying all this1 also wished not to say it1 and his two thick volumes on ,the ,world and the ,individual leave their subject wrapped in utter obscurity4 ,perceiving the fact when he had finished1 he very characteristically added a 8,supplementary ,essay0 of a hundred more pages1 in finer print1 in which to come to the point4 ,imagine1 he said1 an absolutely exhaustive map of ,england spread out upon ,english soil4 ,the map would be a part of ,england1 yet would reproduce every feature of ,england1 including itself2 so that the map would reappear on a smaller scale within itself an infinite number of times1 like a mirror reflected in a mirror4 ,in this way we might be individuals within a larger individual1 and no less actual and complete than he4 ,does this solve the problem8 ,if we take the illustration as it stands1 there is still only one individual in existence1 the material ,england1 all the maps being parts of its single surface2 nor will it at all resemble the maps1 since it will be washed by the sea and surrounded by foreign nations1 and not1 like the maps1 by other ,englands enveloping it4 ,if1 on the contrary1 we equalise the status of all the members of the series1 by making it infinite in both directions1 then there would be no ,england at all1 but only map within map of ,england4 ,there would be no absolute mind inclusive but not included1 and the ,absolute would be the series as a whole1 utterly different from any of its members4 ,it would be a series while they were maps1 a truth while they were minds2 and if the ,absolute from the beginning had been regarded as a truth only1 there never would have been any difficulty in the existence of individuals under it4 ,moreover1 if the individuals are all exactly alike1 does not their exact similarity defeat the whole purpose of the speculation1 which was to vindicate the equal reality of the whole and of its limited parts8 ,and if each of us1 living through infinite time1 goes through precisely the same experiences as every one else1 why this vain repetition8 ,is it not enough for this insatiable world to live its life once8 ,why not admit solipsism and be true to the transcendental method8 ,because of conscience and good sense8 ,but then the infinite series of maps is useless1 ,england is herself again1 and the prospect opens before us of an infinite number of supplementary essays4 ,royce sometimes felt that he might have turned his hand to other things than philosophy4 ,he once wrote a novel1 and its want of success was a silent disappointment to him4 ,perhaps he might have been a great musician4 ,complexity1 repetitions1 vagueness1 endlessness are hardly virtues in writing or thinking1 but in music they might have swelled and swelled into a real sublimity1 all the more that he was patient1 had a voluminous meandering memory1 and loved technical devices4 ,but rather than a musician--for he was no artist--he resembled some greathearted medival peasant visited by mystical promptings1 whom the monks should have adopted and allowed to browse among their theological folios2 a ,duns ,scotus earnest and studious to a fault1 not having the lightness of soul to despise those elaborate sophistries1 yet minded to ferret out their secret for himself and walk by his inward light4 ,his was a gothic and scholastic spirit1 intent on devising and solving puzzles1 and honouring ,god in systematic works1 like the coral insect or the spider2 eventually creating a fabric that in its homely intricacy and fulness arrested and moved the heart1 the web of it was so vast1 and so full of mystery and yearning4 ,,chapter ,v--,,later ,,speculations ,a question which is curious in itself and may become important in the future is this3 ,how has migration to the new world affected philosophical ideas8 ,at first sight we might be tempted1 perhaps1 to dismiss this question altogether1 on the ground that no such effect is discernible4 ,for what do we find in ,america in the guise of philosophy8 ,in the background1 the same ,protestant theology as in ,europe and the same ,catholic theology2 on the surface1 the same adoption of ,german idealism1 the same vogue of evolution1 the same psychology becoming metaphysics1 and lately the same revival of a mathematical or logical realism4 ,in no case has the first expression of these various tendencies appeared in ,america1 and no original system that ,i know of has arisen there4 ,it would seem1 then1 that in philosophy1 as in letters generally1 polite ,america has continued the common tradition of ,christendom1 in paths closely parallel to those followed in ,england2 and that modern speculation1 which is so very sensitive to changed times1 is quite indifferent to distinctions of place4 ,perhaps2 but ,i say advisedly polite ,america1 for without this qualification what ,i have been suggesting would hardly be true4 ,polite ,america carried over its household gods from puritan ,england in a spirit of consecration1 and it has always wished to remain in communion with whatever its conscience might value in the rest of the world4 ,yet it has been cut off by distance and by revolutionary prejudice against things ancient or foreign2 and it has been disconcerted at the same time by the insensible shifting of the ground under its feet3 it has suffered from inbreeding and anmia4 ,on the other hand1 a crude but vital ,america has sprung up from the soil1 undermining1 feeding1 and transforming the ,america of tradition4 ,this young ,america was originally composed of all the prodigals1 truants1 and adventurous spirits that the colonial families produced3 it was fed continually by the younger generation1 born in a spacious1 halfempty world1 tending to forget the old straitened morality and to replace it by another1 quite jovially human4 ,this truly native ,america was reinforced by the miscellany of ,europe arriving later1 not in the hope of founding a godly commonwealth1 but only of prospering in an untrammelled one4 ,the horde of immigrants eagerly accepts the external arrangements and social spirit of ,american life1 but never hears of its original austere principles1 or relegates them to the same willing oblivion as it does the constraints which it has just escaped--,jewish1 ,irish1 ,german1 ,italian1 or whatever they may be4 ,we should be seriously deceived if we overlooked for a moment the curious and complex relation between these two ,americas4 ,let me give one illustration4 ,professor ,norton1 the friend of ,carlyle1 of ,burne,jones1 and of ,matthew ,arnold1 and1 for the matter of that1 the friend of everybody1 a most urbane1 learned1 and exquisite spirit1 was descended from a long line of typical ,new ,england divines3 yet he was loudly accused1 in public and in private1 of being un,american4 ,on the other hand1 a ,frenchman of ripe judgement1 who knew him perfectly1 once said to me3 8,norton wouldn't like to hear it1 but he is a terrible ,yankee40 ,both judgements were well grounded4 ,professor ,norton's mind was deeply moralised1 discriminating1 and sad2 and these qualities rightly seemed ,american to the ,french observer of ,new ,england1 but they rightly seemed un,american to the politician from ,washington4 ,philosophical opinion in ,america is of course rooted in the genteel tradition4 ,it is either inspired by religious faith1 and designed to defend it1 or else it is created somewhat artificially in the larger universities1 by deliberately proposing problems which1 without being very pressing to most ,americans1 are supposed to be necessary problems of thought4 ,yet if you expected academic philosophers in ,america1 because the background of their minds seems perfunctory1 to resemble academic philosophers elsewhere1 you would be often mistaken4 ,there is no prig's paradise in those regions4 ,many of the younger professors of philosophy are no longer the sort of persons that might as well have been clergymen or schoolmasters3 they have rather the type of mind of a doctor1 an engineer1 or a social reformer2 the wideawake young man who can do most things better than old people1 and who knows it4 ,he is less eloquent and apostolic than the older generation of philosophers1 very professional in tone and conscious of his ,fach2 not that he would deny for a moment the manysided ignorance to which nowadays we are all reduced1 but that he thinks he can get on very well without the things he ignores4 ,his education has been more pretentious than thorough2 his style is deplorable2 social pressure and his own great eagerness have condemned him to overwork1 committee meetings1 early marriage1 premature authorship1 and lecturing two or three times a day under forced draught4 ,he has no peace in himself1 no window open to a calm horizon1 and in his heart perhaps little taste for mere scholarship or pure speculation4 ,yet1 like the plain soldier staggering under his clumsy equipment1 he is cheerful2 he keeps his faith in himself and in his allotted work1 puts up with being toasted only on one side1 remains openminded1 wholehearted1 appreciative1 helpful1 confident of the future of goodness and of science4 ,in a word1 he is a cell in that teeming democratic body2 he draws from its warm1 contagious activities the sanctions of his own life and1 less consciously1 the spirit of his philosophy4 ,it is evident that such minds will have but a loose hold on tradition1 even on the genteel tradition in ,american philosophy4 ,not that in general they oppose or dislike it2 their alienation from it is more radical2 they forget it4 ,religion was the backbone of that tradition1 and towards religion1 in so far as it is a private sentiment or presumption1 they feel a tender respect2 but in so far as religion is a political institution1 seeking to coerce the mind and the conscience1 one would think they had never heard of it4 ,they feel it is as much every one's right to choose and cherish a religion as to choose and cherish a wife1 without having his choice rudely commented upon in public4 ,hitherto ,america has been the land of universal goodwill1 confidence in life1 inexperience of poisons4 ,until yesterday it believed itself immune from the hereditary plagues of mankind4 ,it could not credit the danger of being suffocated or infected by any sinister principle4 ,the more errors and passions were thrown into the meltingpot1 the more certainly would they neutralise one another and would truth come to the top4 ,every system was met with a frank gaze4 8,come on10 people seemed to say to it1 8show us what you are good for4 ,we accept no claims2 we ask for no credentials2 we just give you a chance4 ,plato1 the ,pope1 and ,mrs4 ,eddy shall have one vote each40 ,after all1 ,i am not sure that this toleration without deference is not a cruel test for systematic delusions3 it lets the daylight into the stage4 ,philosophic tradition in ,america has merged almost completely in ,german idealism4 ,in a certain sense this system did not need to be adopted3 something very like it had grown up spontaneously in ,new ,england in the form of transcendentalism and unitarian theology4 ,even the most emancipated and positivistic of the latest thinkers--pragmatists1 new realists1 pure empiricists--have been bred in the atmosphere of ,german idealism2 and this fact should not be forgotten in approaching their views4 ,the element of this philosophy which has sunk deepest1 and which is reinforced by the influence of psychology1 is the critical attitude towards knowledge1 subjectivism1 withdrawal into experience1 on the assumption that experience is something substantial4 ,experience was regarded by earlier empiricists as a method for making real discoveries1 a safer witness than reasoning to what might exist in nature2 but now experience is taken to be in itself the only real existence1 the ultimate object that all thought and theory must regard4 ,this empiricism does not look to the building up of science1 but rather to a more thorough criticism and disintegration of conventional beliefs1 those of empirical science included4 ,it is in the intrepid prosecution of this criticism and disintegration that ,american philosophy has won its wings4 ,it may seem a strange ,nemesis that a critical philosophy1 which on principle reduces everything to the consciousness of it1 should end by reducing consciousness itself to other things2 yet the path of this boomerang is not hard to trace4 ,the word consciousness originally meant what ,descartes called thought or cogitation--the faculty which attention has of viewing together objects which may belong together neither in their logical essence nor in their natural existence4 ,it colours events with memories and facts with emotions1 and adds images to words4 ,this synthetic and transitive function of consciousness is a positive fact about it1 to be discovered by study1 like any other somewhat recondite fact4 ,you will discover it if you institute a careful comparison and contrast between the way things hang together in thought and the way they hang together in nature4 ,to have discerned the wonderful perspectives both of imagination and of will seems to me the chief service done to philosophy by ,kant and his followers4 ,it is the positive1 the nonmalicious element in their speculation2 and in the midst of their psychologism in logic and their egotism about nature and history1 consciousness seems to be the one province of being which they have thrown true light upon4 ,but just because this is a positive province of being1 an actual existence to be discovered and dogmatically believed in1 it is not what a malicious criticism of knowledge can end with4 ,not the nature of consciousness1 but the data of consciousness1 are what the critic must fall back upon in the last resort2 and ,hume had been in this respect a more penetrating critic than ,kant4 ,one cannot1 by inspecting consciousness1 find consciousness itself as a passive datum1 because consciousness is cogitation2 one can only take note of the immediate objects of consciousness1 in such private perspective as sense or imagination may present4 ,philosophy seems to be richer in theories than in words to express them in2 and much confusion results from the necessity of using old terms in new meanings4 ,in this way1 when consciousness is disregarded1 in the proper sense of cogitation1 the name of consciousness can be transferred to the stream of objects immediately present to consciousness2 so that consciousness comes to signify the evolving field of appearances unrolled before any person4 ,this equivocation is favoured by the allied ambiguity of an even commoner term1 idea4 ,it is plausible to say that consciousness is a stream of ideas1 because an idea may mean an opinion1 a cogitation1 a view taken of some object4 ,and it is also plausible to say that ideas are objects of consciousness1 because an idea may mean an image1 a passive datum4 ,passive data may be of any sort you like--things1 qualities1 relations1 propositions--but they are never cogitations2 and to call them consciousness or components of consciousness is false and inexcusable4 ,the ideas that may be so called are not these passive objects1 but active thoughts4 ,indeed1 when the psychological critic has made this false step1 he is not able to halt3 his method will carry him presently from this position to one even more paradoxical4 ,is memory knowledge of a past that is itself absent and dead1 or is it a present experience8 ,a complete philosophy would doubtless reply that it is both2 but psychological criticism can take cognisance of memory only as a mass of present images and presumptions4 ,the experience remembered may indeed be exactly recovered and be present again2 but the fact that it was present before cannot possibly be given now2 it can only be suggested and believed4 ,it is evident1 therefore1 that the historical order in which data flow is not contained bodily in any one of them4 ,this order is conceived2 the hypothesis is framed instinctively and instinctively credited1 but it is only an hypothesis4 ,and it is often wrong1 as is proved by all the constitutional errors of memory and legend4 ,belief in the order of our personal experiences is accordingly just as dogmatic1 daring1 and realistic as the parallel belief in a material world4 ,the psychological critic must attribute both beliefs to a mere tendency to feign2 and if he is true to his method he must discard the notion that the objects of consciousness are arranged in psychological sequences1 making up separate minds4 ,in other words1 he must discard the notion of consciousness1 not only in the sense of thought or cogitation1 but in the sense he himself had given it of a stream of ideas4 ,actual objects1 he will now admit1 not without a certain surprise1 are not ideas at all3 they do not lie in the mind 7for there is no mind to be found7 but in the medium that observably surrounds them4 ,things are just what they seem to be1 and to say they are consciousness or compose a consciousness is absurd4 ,the socalled appearances1 according to a perfected criticism of knowledge1 are nothing private or internal2 they are merely those portions of external objects which from time to time impress themselves on somebody's organs of sense and are responded to by his nervous system4 ,such is the doctrine of the new ,american realists1 in whose devoted persons the logic of idealism has worked itself out and appropriately turned idealism itself into its opposite4 ,consciousness1 they began by saying1 is merely a stream of ideas2 but then ideas are merely the parts of objects which happen to appear to a given person2 but again1 a person 7for all you or he can discover7 is nothing but his body and those parts of other objects which appear to him2 and1 finally1 to appear1 in any discoverable sense1 cannot be to have a ghostly sort of mental existence1 but merely to be reacted upon by an animal body4 ,thus we come to the conclusion that objects alone exist1 and that consciousness is a name for certain segments or groups of these objects4 ,i think we may conjecture why this startling conclusion1 that consciousness does not exist1 a conclusion suggested somewhat hurriedly by ,william ,james1 has found a considerable echo in ,america1 and why the system of ,avenarius1 which makes in the same direction1 has been studied there sympathetically4 ,to deny consciousness is to deny a prerequisite to the obvious1 and to leave the obvious standing alone4 ,that is a relief to an overtaxed and selfimpeded generation2 it seems a blessed simplification4 ,it gets rid of the undemocratic notion that by being very reflective1 circumspect1 and subtle you might discover something that most people do not see4 ,they can go on more merrily with their work if they believe that by being so subtle1 circumspect1 and reflective you would only discover a mare's nest4 ,the elimination of consciousness not only restores the obvious1 but proves all parts of the obvious to be equally real4 ,not only colours1 beauties1 and passions1 but all things formerly suspected of being creatures of thought1 such as laws1 relations1 and abstract qualities1 now become components of the existing object1 since there is no longer any mental vehicle by which they might have been created and interposed4 ,the young ,american is thus reassured3 his joy in living and learning is no longer chilled by the contempt which idealism used to cast on nature for being imaginary and on science for being intellectual4 ,all fictions and all abstractions are now declared to be parcels of the objective world2 it will suffice to live on1 to live forward1 in order to see everything as it really is4 ,if we look now at these matters from a slightly different angle1 we shall find psychological criticism transforming the notion of truth much as it has transformed the notion of consciousness4 ,in the first place1 there is a similar ambiguity in the term4 ,the truth properly means the sum of all true propositions1 what omniscience would assert1 the whole ideal system of qualities and relations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify4 ,the truth is all things seen under the form of eternity4 ,in this sense1 a psychological criticism cannot be pertinent to the truth at all1 the truth not being anything psychological or human4 ,it is an ideal realm of being properly enough not discussed by psychologists2 yet so far as ,i know it is denied by nobody1 not even by ,protagoras or the pragmatists4 ,if ,protagoras said that whatever appears to any man at any moment is true1 he doubtless meant true on that subject1 true of that appearance3 because for a sensualist objects do not extend beyond what he sees of them1 so that each of his perceptions defines its whole object and is infallible4 ,but in that case the truth about the universe is evidently that it is composed of these various sensations1 each carrying an opinion impossible for it to abandon or to revise1 since to revise the opinion would simply be to bring a fresh object into view4 ,the truth would further be that these sensations and opinions stand to one another in certain definite relations of diversity1 succession1 duration1 et ctera1 whether any of them happens to assert these relations or not4 ,in the same way1 ,i cannot find that our contemporary pragmatists1 in giving their account of what truth is 7in a different and quite abstract sense of the word truth71 have ever doubted1 or so much as noticed1 what in all their thinking they evidently assume to be the actual and concrete truth3 namely1 that there are many states of mind1 many labouring opinions more or less useful and good1 which actually lead to others1 more or less expected and satisfactory4 ,surely every pragmatist1 like every thinking man1 always assumes the reality of an actual truth1 comprehensive and largely undiscovered1 of which he claims to be reporting a portion4 ,what he rather confusingly calls truth1 and wishes to reduce to a pragmatic function1 is not this underlying truth1 the sum of all true propositions1 but merely the abstract quality which all true propositions must have in common1 to be called true4 ,by truth he means only correctness4 ,the possibility of correctness in an idea is a great puzzle to him1 on account of his idealism1 which identifies ideas with their objects2 and he asks himself how an idea can ever come to be correct or incorrect1 as if it referred to something beyond itself4 ,the fact is1 of course1 that an idea can be correct or incorrect only if by the word idea we mean not a datum but an opinion2 and the abstract relation of correctness1 by virtue of which any opinion is true1 is easily stated4 ,an opinion is true if what it is talking about is constituted as the opinion asserts it to be constituted4 ,to test this correctness may be difficult or even impossible in particular cases2 in the end we may be reduced to believing on instinct that our fundamental opinions are true2 for instance1 that we are living through time1 and that the past and future are not1 as a consistent idealism would assert1 mere notions in the present4 ,but what renders such instinctive opinions true1 if they are true1 is the fact affirmed being as it is affirmed to be4 ,it is not a question of similarity or derivation between a passive datum and a hidden object2 it is a question of identity between the fact asserted and the fact existing4 ,if an opinion could not freely leap to its object1 no matter how distant or hypothetical1 and assert something of that chosen object1 an opinion could not be so much as wrong2 for it would not be an opinion about anything4 ,psychologists1 however1 are not concerned with what an opinion asserts logically1 but only with what it is existentially2 they are asking what existential relations surround an idea when it is called true which are absent when it is called false4 ,their problem is frankly insoluble2 for it requires us to discover what makes up the indicative force of an idea which by hypothesis is a passive datum2 as if a grammarian should inquire how a noun in the accusative case could be a verb in the indicative mood4 ,it was not idly that ,william ,james dedicated his book on ,pragmatism to the memory of ,john ,stuart ,mill4 ,the principle of psychological empiricism is to look for the elements employed in thinking1 and to conclude that thought is nothing but those elements arranged in a certain order4 ,it is true that since the days of ,mill analysis has somewhat extended the inventory of these elements1 so as to include among simples1 besides the data of the five senses1 such things as feelings of relation1 sensations of movement1 vague illfocused images1 and perhaps even telepathic and instinctive intuitions4 ,but some series or group of these immediate data1 kept in their crude immediacy1 must according to this method furnish the whole answer to our question3 the supposed power of an idea to have an object beyond itself1 or to be true of any other fact1 must be merely a name for a certain position which the given element occupies in relation to other elements in the routine of experience4 ,knowledge and truth must be forms of contiguity and succession4 ,we must not be surprised1 under these circumstances1 if the problem is shifted1 and another somewhat akin to it takes its place1 with which the chosen method can really cope4 ,this subterfuge is not voluntary2 it is an instinctive effect of fidelity to a point of view which has its special validity1 though naturally not applicable in every sphere4 ,we do not observe that politicians abandon their party when it happens to have brought trouble upon the country2 their destiny as politicians is precisely to make effective all the consequences1 good or evil1 which their party policy may involve4 ,so it would be too much to expect a school of philosophers to abandon their method because there are problems it cannot solve2 their business is rather to apply their method to everything to which it can possibly be applied2 and when they have reached that limit1 the very most we can ask1 if they are superhumanly modest and wise1 is that they should make way gracefully for another school of philosophers4 ,now there is a problem1 not impossible to confuse with the problem of correctness in ideas1 with which psychological criticism can really deal2 it is the question of the relation between a sign and the thing signified4 ,of this relation a genuinely empirical account can be given2 both terms are objects of experience1 present or eventual1 and the passage between them is made in time by an experienced transition4 ,nor need the signs which lead to a particular object be always the same1 or of one sort2 an object may be designated and announced unequivocally by a verbal description1 without any direct image1 or by images now of one sense and now of another1 or by some external relation1 such as its place1 or by its proper name1 if it possesses one2 and these designations all convey knowledge of it and may be true signs1 if in yielding to their suggestion we are brought eventually to the object meant4 ,here1 if ,i am not mistaken1 is the genuine application of what the pragmatists call their theory of truth4 ,it concerns merely what links a sign to the thing signified1 and renders it a practical substitute for the same4 ,but this empirical analysis of signification has been entangled with more or less hazardous views about truth1 such as that an idea is true so long as it is believed to be true1 or that it is true if it is good and useful1 or that it is not true until it is verified4 ,this last suggestion shows what strange reversals a wayward personal philosophy may be subject to4 ,empiricism used to mean reliance on the past2 now apparently all empirical truth regards only the future1 since truth is said to arise by the verification of some presumption4 ,presumptions about the past can evidently never be verified2 at best they may be corroborated by fresh presumptions about the past1 equally dependent for their truth on a verification which in the nature of the case is impossible4 ,at this point the truly courageous empiricist will perhaps say that the real past only means the ideas of the past which we shall form in the future4 ,consistency is a jewel2 and1 as in the case of other jewels1 we may marvel at the price that some people will pay for it4 ,in any case1 we are led to this curious result3 that radical empiricism ought to deny that any idea of the past can be true at all4 ,such dissolving views1 really somewhat like those attributed to ,protagoras1 do not rest on sober psychological analysis3 they express rather a certain impatience and a certain despairing democracy in the field of opinion4 ,great are the joys of haste and of radicalism1 and young philosophers must not be deprived of them4 ,we may the more justly pass over these small scandals of pragmatism in that ,william ,james and his ,american disciples have hardly cared to defend them1 but have turned decidedly in the direction of a universal objectivism4 ,the spirit of these radical views is not at all negative3 it is hopeful1 revolutionary1 inspired entirely by love of certitude and clearness4 ,it is very sympathetic to science1 in so far as science is a personal pursuit and a personal experience1 rather than a body of doctrine with moral implications4 ,it is very close to nature1 as the lover of nature understands the word4 ,if it denies the existence of the cognitive energy and the colouring medium of mind1 it does so only in a formal sense2 all the colours with which that medium endows the world remain painted upon it2 and all the perspectives and ideal objects of thought are woven into the texture of things4 ,not1 ,i think1 intelligibly or in a coherent fashion2 for this new realism is still immature1 and if it is ever rendered adequate it will doubtless seem much less original4 ,my point is that in its denial of mind it has no bias against things intellectual1 and if it refuses to admit ideas or even sensations1 it does not blink the sensible or ideal objects which ideas and sensations reveal1 but rather tries to find a new and 7as it perhaps thinks7 a more honourable place for them2 they are not regarded as spiritual radiations from the natural world1 but as parts of its substance4 ,this may have the ring of materialism2 but the temper and faith of these schools are not materialistic4 ,systematic materialism is one of the philosophies of old age4 ,it is a conviction that may overtake a few shrewd and speculative cynics1 who have long observed their own irrationality and that of the world1 and have divined its cause2 by such men materialism may be embraced without reserve1 in all its rigour and pungency4 ,but the materialism of youth is part of a simple faith in sense and in science2 it is not exclusive2 it admits the cooperation of any other forces--divine1 magical1 formal1 or vital--if appearances anywhere seem to manifest them4 ,the more we interpret the ambiguities or crudities of ,american writers in this sense1 the less we shall misunderstand them4 ,it seems1 then1 that the atmosphere of the new world has already affected philosophy in two ways4 ,in the first place1 it has accelerated and rendered fearless the disintegration of conventional categories2 a disintegration on which modern philosophy has always been at work1 and which has precipitated its successive phases4 ,in the second place1 the younger cosmopolitan ,america has favoured the impartial assemblage and mutual confrontation of all sorts of ideas4 ,it has produced1 in intellectual matters1 a sort of happy watchfulness and insecurity4 ,never was the human mind master of so many facts and sure of so few principles4 ,will this suspense and fluidity of thought crystallise into some great new system8 ,positive gifts of imagination and moral heroism are requisite to make a great philosopher1 gifts which must come from the gods and not from circumstances4 ,but if the genius should arise1 this vast collection of suggestions and this radical analysis of presumptions which he will find in ,america may keep him from going astray4 ,nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough4 ,without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression1 and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts4 ,it is time for it to become less solemn and more serious4 ,we may be frightened at first to learn on what thin ice we have been skating1 in speculation as in government2 but we shall not be in a worse plight for knowing it1 only wiser today and perhaps safer tomorrow4 ,,chapter ,,vi--,,materialism ,,and ,,idealism ,,in ,,american ,,life ,the language and traditions common to ,england and ,america are like other family bonds3 they draw kindred together at the greater crises in life1 but they also occasion at times a little friction and faultfinding4 ,the groundwork of the two societies is so similar1 that each nation1 feeling almost at home with the other1 and almost able to understand its speech1 may instinctively resent what hinders it from feeling at home altogether4 ,differences will tend to seem anomalies that have slipped in by mistake and through somebody's fault4 ,each will judge the other by his own standards1 not feeling1 as in the presence of complete foreigners1 that he must make an effort of imagination and put himself in another man's shoes4 ,in matters of morals1 manners1 and art1 the danger of comparisons is not merely that they may prove invidious1 by ranging qualities in an order of merit which might wound somebody's vanity2 the danger is rather that comparisons may distort comprehension1 because in truth good qualities are all different in kind1 and free lives are different in spirit4 ,comparison is the expedient of those who cannot reach the heart of the things compared2 and no philosophy is more external and egotistical than that which places the essence of a thing in its relation to something else4 ,in reality1 at the centre of every natural being there is something individual and incommensurable1 a seed with its native impulses and aspirations1 shaping themselves as best they can in their given environment4 ,variation is a consequence of freedom1 and the slight but radical diversity of souls in turn makes freedom requisite4 ,instead of instituting in his mind any comparisons between the ,united ,states and other nations1 ,i would accordingly urge the reader to forget himself and1 in so far as such a thing may be possible for him or for me1 to transport himself ideally with me into the outer circumstances of ,american life1 the better to feel its inner temper1 and to see how inevitably the ,american shapes his feelings and judgements1 honestly reporting all things as they appear from his new and unobstructed station4 ,i speak of the ,american in the singular1 as if there were not millions of them1 north and south1 east and west1 of both sexes1 of all ages1 and of various races1 professions1 and religions4 ,of course the one ,american ,i speak of is mythical2 but to speak in parables is inevitable in such a subject1 and it is perhaps as well to do so frankly4 ,there is a sort of poetic ineptitude in all human discourse when it tries to deal with natural and existing things4 ,practical men may not notice it1 but in fact human discourse is intrinsically addressed not to natural existing things but to ideal essences1 poetic or logical terms which thought may define and play with4 ,when fortune or necessity diverts our attention from this congenial ideal sport to crude facts and pressing issues1 we turn our frail poetic ideas into symbols for those terrible irruptive things4 ,in that paper money of our own stamping1 the legal tender of the mind1 we are obliged to reckon all the movements and values of the world4 ,the universal ,american ,i speak of is one of these symbols2 and ,i should be still speaking in symbols and creating moral units and a false simplicity1 if ,i spoke of classes pedantically subdivided1 or individuals ideally integrated and defined4 ,as it happens1 the symbolic ,american can be made largely adequate to the facts2 because1 if there are immense differences between individual ,americans--for some ,americans are black--yet there is a great uniformity in their environment1 customs1 temper1 and thoughts4 ,they have all been uprooted from their several soils and ancestries and plunged together into one vortex1 whirling irresistibly in a space otherwise quite empty4 ,to be an ,american is of itself almost a moral condition1 an education1 and a career4 ,hence a single ideal figment can cover a large part of what each ,american is in his character1 and almost the whole of what most ,americans are in their social outlook and political judgements4 ,the discovery of the new world exercised a sort of selection among the inhabitants of ,europe4 ,all the colonists1 except the negroes1 were voluntary exiles4 ,the fortunate1 the deeply rooted1 and the lazy remained at home2 the wilder instincts or dissatisfaction of others tempted them beyond the horizon4 ,the ,american is accordingly the most adventurous1 or the descendant of the most adventurous1 of ,europeans4 ,it is in his blood to be socially a radical1 though perhaps not intellectually4 ,what has existed in the past1 especially in the remote past1 seems to him not only not authoritative1 but irrelevant1 inferior1 and outworn4 ,he finds it rather a sorry waste of time to think about the past at all4 ,but his enthusiasm for the future is profound2 he can conceive of no more decisive way of recommending an opinion or a practice than to say that it is what everybody is coming to adopt4 ,this expectation of what he approves1 or approval of what he expects1 makes up his optimism4 ,it is the necessary faith of the pioneer4 ,such a temperament is1 of course1 not maintained in the nation merely by inheritance4 ,inheritance notoriously tends to restore the average of a race1 and plays incidentally many a trick of atavism4 ,what maintains this temperament and makes it national is social contagion or pressure--something immensely strong in democracies4 ,the luckless ,american who is born a conservative1 or who is drawn to poetic subtlety1 pious retreats1 or gay passions1 nevertheless has the categorical excellence of work1 growth1 enterprise1 reform1 and prosperity dinned into his ears3 every door is open in this direction and shut in the other2 so that he either folds up his heart and withers in a corner--in remote places you sometimes find such a solitary gaunt idealist--or else he flies to ,oxford or ,florence or ,montmartre to save his soul--or perhaps not to save it4 ,the optimism of the pioneer is not limited to his view of himself and his own future3 it starts from that2 but feeling assured1 safe1 and cheery within1 he looks with smiling and most kindly eyes on everything and everybody about him4 ,individualism1 roughness1 and selftrust are supposed to go with selfishness and a cold heart2 but ,i suspect that is a prejudice4 ,it is rather dependence1 insecurity1 and mutual jostling that poison our placid gregarious brotherhood2 and fanciful passionate demands upon people's affections1 when they are disappointed1 as they soon must be1 breed illwill and a final meanness4 ,the milk of human kindness is less apt to turn sour if the vessel that holds it stands steady1 cool1 and separate1 and is not too often uncorked4 ,in his affections the ,american is seldom passionate1 often deep1 and always kindly4 ,if it were given me to look into the depths of a man's heart1 and ,i did not find goodwill at the bottom1 ,i should say without any hesitation1 ,you are not an ,american4 ,but as the ,american is an individualist his goodwill is not officious4 ,his instinct is to think well of everybody1 and to wish everybody well1 but in a spirit of rough comradeship1 expecting every man to stand on his own legs and to be helpful in his turn4 ,when he has given his neighbour a chance he thinks he has done enough for him2 but he feels it is an absolute duty to do that4 ,it will take some hammering to drive a coddling socialism into ,america4 ,as selftrust may pass into selfsufficiency1 so optimism1 kindness1 and goodwill may grow into a habit of doting on everything4 ,to the good ,american many subjects are sacred3 sex is sacred1 women are sacred1 children are sacred1 business is sacred1 ,america is sacred1 ,masonic lodges and college clubs are sacred4 ,this feeling grows out of the good opinion he wishes to have of these things1 and serves to maintain it4 ,if he did not regard all these things as sacred he might come to doubt sometimes if they were wholly good4 ,of this kind1 too1 is the idealism of single ladies in reduced circumstances who can see the soul of beauty in ugly things1 and are perfectly happy because their old dog has such pathetic eyes1 their minister is so eloquent1 their garden with its three sunflowers is so pleasant1 their dead friends were so devoted1 and their distant relations are so rich4 ,consider now the great emptiness of ,america3 not merely the primitive physical emptiness1 surviving in some regions1 and the continental spacing of the chief natural features1 but also the moral emptiness of a settlement where men and even houses are easily moved about1 and no one1 almost1 lives where he was born or believes what he has been taught4 ,not that the ,american has jettisoned these impedimenta in anger2 they have simply slipped from him as he moves4 ,great empty spaces bring a sort of freedom to both soul and body4 ,you may pitch your tent where you will2 or if ever you decide to build anything1 it can be in a style of your own devising4 ,you have room1 fresh materials1 few models1 and no critics4 ,you trust your own experience1 not only because you must1 but because you find you may do so safely and prosperously2 the forces that determine fortune are not yet too complicated for one man to explore4 ,your detachable condition makes you lavish with money and cheerfully experimental2 you lose little if you lose all1 since you remain completely yourself4 ,at the same time your absolute initiative gives you practice in coping with novel situations1 and in being original2 it teaches you shrewd management4 ,your life and mind will become dry and direct1 with few decorative flourishes4 ,in your works everything will be stark and pragmatic2 you will not understand why anybody should make those little sacrifices to instinct or custom which we call grace4 ,the fine arts will seem to you academic luxuries1 fit to amuse the ladies1 like ,greek and ,sanskrit2 for while you will perfectly appreciate generosity in men's purposes1 you will not admit that the execution of these purposes can be anything but business4 ,unfortunately the essence of the fine arts is that the execution should be generous too1 and delightful in itself2 therefore the fine arts will suffer1 not so much in their express professional pursuit--for then they become practical tasks and a kind of business--as in that diffused charm which qualifies all human action when men are artists by nature4 ,elaboration1 which is something to accomplish1 will be preferred to simplicity1 which is something to rest in2 manners will suffer somewhat2 speech will suffer horribly4 ,for the ,american the urgency of his novel attack upon matter1 his zeal in gathering its fruits1 precludes meanderings in primrose paths2 devices must be short cuts1 and symbols must be mere symbols4 ,if his wife wants luxuries1 of course she may have them2 and if he has vices1 that can be provided for too2 but they must all be set down under those headings in his ledgers4 ,at the same time1 the ,american is imaginative2 for where life is intense1 imagination is intense also4 ,were he not imaginative he would not live so much in the future4 ,but his imagination is practical1 and the future it forecasts is immediate2 it works with the clearest and least ambiguous terms known to his experience1 in terms of number1 measure1 contrivance1 economy1 and speed4 ,he is an idealist working on matter4 ,understanding as he does the material potentialities of things1 he is successful in invention1 conservative in reform1 and quick in emergencies4 ,all his life he jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped2 and he never once gets left behind1 or breaks a leg4 ,there is an enthusiasm in his sympathetic handling of material forces which goes far to cancel the illiberal character which it might otherwise assume4 ,the good workman hardly distinguishes his artistic intention from the potency in himself and in things which is about to realise that intention4 ,accordingly his ideals fall into the form of premonitions and prophecies2 and his studious prophecies often come true4 ,so do the happy workmanlike ideals of the ,american4 ,when a poor boy1 perhaps1 he dreams of an education1 and presently he gets an education1 or at least a degree2 he dreams of growing rich1 and he grows rich--only more slowly and modestly1 perhaps1 than he expected2 he dreams of marrying his ,rebecca and1 even if he marries a ,leah instead1 he ultimately finds in ,leah his ,rebecca after all4 ,he dreams of helping to carry on and to accelerate the movement of a vast1 seething1 progressive society1 and he actually does so4 ,ideals clinging so close to nature are almost sure of fulfilment2 the ,american beams with a certain selfconfidence and sense of mastery2 he feels that ,god and nature are working with him4 ,idealism in the ,american accordingly goes hand in hand with present contentment and with foresight of what the future very likely will actually bring4 ,he is not a revolutionist2 he believes he is already on the right track and moving towards an excellent destiny4 ,in revolutionists1 on the contrary1 idealism is founded on dissatisfaction and expresses it4 ,what exists seems to them an absurd jumble of irrational accidents and bad habits1 and they want the future to be based on reason and to be the pellucid embodiment of all their maxims4 ,all their zeal is for something radically different from the actual and 7if they only knew it7 from the possible2 it is ideally simple1 and they love it and believe in it because their nature craves it4 ,they think life would be set free by the destruction of all its organs4 ,they are therefore extreme idealists in the region of hope1 but not at all1 as poets and artists are1 in the region of perception and memory4 ,in the atmosphere of civilised life they miss all the refraction and all the fragrance2 so that in their conception of actual things they are apt to be crude realists2 and their ignorance and inexperience of the moral world1 unless it comes of illluck1 indicates their incapacity for education4 ,now incapacity for education1 when united with great inner vitality1 is one root of idealism4 ,it is what condemns us all1 in the region of sense1 to substitute perpetually what we are capable of imagining for what things may be in themselves2 it is what condemns us1 wherever it extends1 to think a priori2 it is what keeps us bravely and incorrigibly pursuing what we call the good--that is1 what would fulfil the demands of our nature--however little provision the fates may have made for it4 ,but the want of insight on the part of revolutionists touching the past and the present infects in an important particular their idealism about the future2 it renders their dreams of the future unrealisable4 ,for in human beings--this may not be true of other animals1 more perfectly preformed--experience is necessary to pertinent and concrete thinking2 even our primitive instincts are blind until they stumble upon some occasion that solicits them2 and they can be much transformed or deranged by their first partial satisfactions4 ,therefore a man who does not idealise his experience1 but idealises a priori1 is incapable of true prophecy2 when he dreams he raves1 and the more he criticises the less he helps4 ,american idealism1 on the contrary1 is nothing if not helpful1 nothing if not pertinent to practicable transformations2 and when the ,american frets1 it is because whatever is useless and impertinent1 be it idealism or inertia1 irritates him2 for it frustrates the good results which he sees might so easily have been obtained4 ,the ,american is wonderfully alive2 and his vitality1 not having often found a suitable outlet1 makes him appear agitated on the surface2 he is always letting off an unnecessarily loud blast of incidental steam4 ,yet his vitality is not superficial2 it is inwardly prompted1 and as sensitive and quick as a magnetic needle4 ,he is inquisitive1 and ready with an answer to any question that he may put to himself of his own accord2 but if you try to pour instruction into him1 on matters that do not touch his own spontaneous life1 he shows the most extraordinary powers of resistance and oblivescence2 so that he often is remarkably expert in some directions and surprisingly obtuse in others4 ,he seems to bear lightly the sorrowful burden of human knowledge4 ,in a word1 he is young4 ,what sense is there in this feeling1 which we all have1 that the ,american is young8 ,his country is blessed with as many elderly people as any other1 and his descent from ,adam1 or from the ,darwinian rival of ,adam1 cannot be shorter than that of his ,european cousins4 ,nor are his ideas always very fresh4 ,trite and rigid bits of morality and religion1 with much seemly and antique political lore1 remain axiomatic in him1 as in the mind of a child2 he may carry all this about with an unquestioning familiarity which does not comport understanding4 ,to keep traditional sentiments in this way insulated and uncriticised is itself a sign of youth4 ,a good young man is naturally conservative and loyal on all those subjects which his experience has not brought to a test2 advanced opinions on politics1 marriage1 or literature are comparatively rare in ,america2 they are left for the ladies to discuss1 and usually to condemn1 while the men get on with their work4 ,in spite of what is oldfashioned in his more general ideas1 the ,american is unmistakably young2 and this1 ,i should say1 for two reasons3 one1 that he is chiefly occupied with his immediate environment1 and the other1 that his reactions upon it are inwardly prompted1 spontaneous1 and full of vivacity and selftrust4 ,his views are not yet lengthened2 his will is not yet broken or transformed4 ,the present moment1 however1 in this1 as in other things1 may mark a great change in him2 he is perhaps now reaching his majority1 and all ,i say may hardly apply today1 and may not apply at all tomorrow4 ,i speak of him as ,i have known him2 and whatever moral strength may accrue to him later1 ,i am not sorry to have known him in his youth4 ,the charm of youth1 even when it is a little boisterous1 lies in nearness to the impulses of nature1 in a quicker and more obvious obedience to that pure1 seminal principle which1 having formed the body and its organs1 always directs their movements1 unless it is forced by vice or necessity to make them crooked1 or to suspend them4 ,even under the inevitable crust of age the soul remains young1 and1 wherever it is able to break through1 sprouts into something green and tender4 ,we are all as young at heart as the most youthful ,american1 but the seed in his case has fallen upon virgin soil1 where it may spring up more bravely and with less respect for the giants of the wood4 ,peoples seem older when their perennial natural youth is encumbered with more possessions and prepossessions1 and they are mindful of the many things they have lost or missed4 ,the ,american is not mindful of them4 ,in ,america there is a tacit optimistic assumption about existence1 to the effect that the more existence the better4 ,the soulless critic might urge that quantity is only a physical category1 implying no excellence1 but at best an abundance of opportunities both for good and for evil4 ,yet the young soul1 being curious and hungry1 views existence a priori under the form of the good2 its instinct to live implies a faith that most things it can become or see or do will be worth while4 ,respect for quantity is accordingly something more than the childish joy and wonder at bigness2 it is the fisherman's joy in a big haul1 the good uses of which he can take for granted4 ,such optimism is amiable4 ,nature cannot afford that we should begin by being too calculating or wise1 and she encourages us by the pleasure she attaches to our functions in advance of their fruits1 and often in excess of them2 as the angler enjoys catching his fish more than eating it1 and often1 waiting patiently for the fish to bite1 misses his own supper4 ,the pioneer must devote himself to preparations2 he must work for the future1 and it is healthy and dutiful of him to love his work for its own sake4 ,at the same time1 unless reference to an ultimate purpose is at least virtual in all his activities1 he runs the danger of becoming a living automaton1 vain and ignominious in its mechanical constancy4 ,idealism about work can hide an intense materialism about life4 ,man1 if he is a rational being1 cannot live by bread alone nor be a labourer merely2 he must eat and work in view of an ideal harmony which overarches all his days1 and which is realised in the way they hang together1 or in some ideal issue which they have in common4 ,otherwise1 though his technical philosophy may call itself idealism1 he is a materialist in morals2 he esteems things1 and esteems himself1 for mechanical uses and energies4 ,even sensualists1 artists1 and pleasurelovers are wiser than that1 for though their idealism may be desultory or corrupt1 they attain something ideal1 and prize things only for their living effects1 moral though perhaps fugitive4 ,sensation1 when we do not take it as a signal for action1 but arrest and peruse what it positively brings before us1 reveals something ideal--a colour1 shape1 or sound2 and to dwell on these presences1 with no thought of their material significance1 is an sthetic or dreamful idealism4 ,to pass from this idealism to the knowledge of matter is a great intellectual advance1 and goes with dominion over the world2 for in the practical arts the mind is adjusted to a larger object1 with more depth and potentiality in it2 which is what makes people feel that the material world is real1 as they call it1 and that the ideal world is not4 ,certainly the material world is real2 for the philosophers who deny the existence of matter are like the critics who deny the existence of ,homer4 ,if there was never any ,homer1 there must have been a lot of other poets no less ,homeric than he2 and if matter does not exist1 a combination of other things exists which is just as material4 ,but the intense reality of the material world would not prevent it from being a dreary waste in our eyes1 or even an abyss of horror1 if it brought forth no spiritual fruits4 ,in fact1 it does bring forth spiritual fruits1 for otherwise we should not be here to find fault with it1 and to set up our ideals over against it4 ,nature is material1 but not materialistic2 it issues in life1 and breeds all sorts of warm passions and idle beauties4 ,and just as sympathy with the mechanical travail and turmoil of nature1 apart from its spiritual fruits1 is moral materialism1 so the continual perception and love of these fruits is moral idealism--happiness in the presence of immaterial objects and harmonies1 such as we envisage in affection1 speculation1 religion1 and all the forms of the beautiful4 ,the circumstances of his life hitherto have necessarily driven the ,american into moral materialism2 for in his dealings with material things he can hardly stop to enjoy their sensible aspects1 which are ideal1 nor proceed at once to their ultimate uses1 which are ideal too4 ,he is practical as against the poet1 and worldly as against the clear philosopher or the saint4 ,the most striking expression of this materialism is usually supposed to be his love of the almighty dollar2 but that is a foreign and unintelligent view4 ,the ,american talks about money1 because that is the symbol and measure he has at hand for success1 intelligence1 and power2 but as to money itself he makes1 loses1 spends1 and gives it away with a very light heart4 ,to my mind the most striking expression of his materialism is his singular preoccupation with quantity4 ,if1 for instance1 you visit ,niagara ,falls1 you may expect to hear how many cubic feet or metric tons of water are precipitated per second over the cataract2 how many cities and towns 7with the number of their inhabitants7 derive light and motive power from it2 and the annual value of the further industries that might very well be carried on by the same means1 without visibly depleting the world's greatest wonder or injuring the tourist trade4 ,that is what ,i confidently expected to hear on arriving at the adjoining town of ,buffalo2 but ,i was deceived4 ,the first thing ,i heard instead was that there are more miles of asphalt pavement in ,buffalo than in any city in the world4 ,nor is this insistence on quantity confined to men of business4 ,the ,president of ,harvard ,college1 seeing me once by chance soon after the beginning of a term1 inquired how my classes were getting on2 and when ,i replied that ,i thought they were getting on well1 that my men seemed to be keen and intelligent1 he stopped me as if ,i was about to waste his time4 8,i meant10 said he1 8what is the number of students in your classes40 ,here ,i think we may perceive that this love of quantity often has a silent partner1 which is diffidence as to quality4 ,the democratic conscience recoils before anything that savours of privilege2 and lest it should concede an unmerited privilege to any pursuit or person1 it reduces all things as far as possible to the common denominator of quantity4 ,numbers cannot lie3 but if it came to comparing the ideal beauties of philosophy with those of ,anglo,saxon1 who should decide8 ,all studies are good--why else have universities8--but those must be most encouraged which attract the greatest number of students4 ,hence the ,president's question4 ,democratic faith1 in its diffidence about quality1 throws the reins of education upon the pupil's neck1 as ,don ,quixote threw the reins on the neck of ,rocinante1 and bids his divine instinct choose its own way4 ,the ,american has never yet had to face the trials of ,job4 ,great crises1 like the ,civil ,war1 he has known how to surmount victoriously2 and now that he has surmounted a second great crisis victoriously1 it is possible that he may relapse1 as he did in the other case1 into an apparently complete absorption in material enterprise and prosperity4 ,but if serious and irremediable tribulation ever overtook him1 what would his attitude be8 ,it is then that we should be able to discover whether materialism or idealism lies at the base of his character4 ,meantime his working mind is not without its holiday4 ,he spreads humour pretty thick and even over the surface of conversation1 and humour is one form of moral emancipation4 ,he loves landscape1 he loves mankind1 and he loves knowledge2 and in music at least he finds an art which he unfeignedly enjoys4 ,in music and landscape1 in humour and kindness1 he touches the ideal more truly1 perhaps1 than in his ponderous academic idealisms and busy religions2 for it is astonishing how much even religion in ,america 7can it possibly be so in ,england87 is a matter of meetings1 buildingfunds1 schools1 charities1 clubs1 and picnics4 ,to be poor in order to be simple1 to produce less in order that the product may be more choice and beautiful1 and may leave us less burdened with unnecessary duties and useless possessions--that is an ideal not articulate in the ,american mind2 yet here and there ,i seem to have heard a sigh after it1 a groan at the perpetual incubus of business and shrill society4 ,significant witness to such aspirations is borne by those new forms of popular religion1 not mere variations on tradition1 which have sprung up from the soil--revivalism1 spiritualism1 ,christian ,science1 the ,new ,thought4 ,whether or no we can tap1 through these or other channels1 some cosmic or inner energy not hitherto at the disposal of man 7and there is nothing incredible in that71 we certainly may try to remove friction and waste in the mere process of living2 we may relax morbid strains1 loosen suppressed instincts1 iron out the creases of the soul1 discipline ourselves into simplicity1 sweetness1 and peace4 ,these religious movements are efforts toward such physiological economy and hygiene2 and while they are thoroughly plebeian1 with no great lights1 and no idea of raising men from the most vulgar and humdrum worldly existence1 yet they see the possibility of physical and moral health on that common plane1 and pursue it4 ,that is true morality4 ,the dignities of various types of life or mind1 like the gifts of various animals1 are relative4 ,the snob adores one type only1 and the creatures supposed by him to illustrate it perfectly2 or envies and hates them1 which is just as snobbish4 ,veritable lovers of life1 on the contrary1 like ,saint ,francis or like ,dickens1 know that in every tenement of clay1 with no matter what endowment or station1 happiness and perfection are possible to the soul4 ,there must be no browbeating1 with shouts of work or progress or revolution1 any more than with threats of hellfire4 ,what does it profit a man to free the whole world if his soul is not free8 ,moral freedom is not an artificial condition1 because the ideal is the mother tongue of both the heart and the senses4 ,all that is requisite is that we should pause in living to enjoy life1 and should lift up our hearts to things that are pure goods in themselves1 so that once to have found and loved them1 whatever else may betide1 may remain a happiness that nothing can sully4 ,this natural idealism does not imply that we are immaterial1 but only that we are animate and truly alive4 ,when the senses are sharp1 as they are in the ,american1 they are already half liberated1 already a joy in themselves2 and when the heart is warm1 like his1 and eager to be just1 its ideal destiny can hardly be doubtful4 ,it will not be always merely pumping and working2 time and its own pulses will lend it wings4 ,,chapter ,,vii--,,english ,,liberty ,,in ,,america ,the straits of ,dover1 which one may sometimes see across1 have sufficed so to isolate ,england that it has never moved quite in step with the rest of ,europe in politics1 morals1 or art4 ,no wonder that the ,atlantic ,ocean1 although it has favoured a mixed emigration and cheap intercourse1 should have cut off ,america so effectually that all the people there1 even those of ,latin origin1 have become curiously different from any kind of ,european4 ,in vain are they reputed to have the same religions or to speak the same languages as their cousins in the old world2 everything has changed its accent1 spirit1 and value4 ,flora and fauna have been intoxicated by that untouched soil and fresh tonic air1 and by those vast spaces2 in spite of their hereditary differences of species they have all acquired the same crude savour and defiant aspect4 ,in comparison with their ,european prototypes they seem tough1 meagre1 bold1 and ugly4 ,in the ,united ,states1 apart from the fact that most of the early colonists belonged to an exceptional type of ,englishman1 the scale and speed of life have made everything strangely un,english4 ,there is cheeriness instead of doggedness1 confidence instead of circumspection2 there is a desire to quizz and to dazzle rather than a fear of being mistaken or of being shocked2 there is a pervasive cordiality1 exaggeration1 and farcical humour2 and in the presence of the ,englishman1 when by chance he turns up or is thought of1 there is an invincible impatience and irritation that his point of view should be so fixed1 his mind so literal1 and the freight he carries so excessive 7when you are sailing in ballast yourself71 and that he should seem to take so little notice of changes in the wind to which you are nervously sensitive4 ,nevertheless there is one gift or habit1 native to ,england1 that has not only been preserved in ,america unchanged1 but has found there a more favourable atmosphere in which to manifest its true nature--,i mean the spirit of free cooperation4 ,the root of it is free individuality1 which is deeply seated in the ,english inner man2 there is an indomitable instinct or mind in him which he perpetually consults and reveres1 slow and embarrassed as his expression of it may be4 ,but this free individuality in the ,englishman is crossed and biased by a large residue of social servitude4 ,the church and the aristocracy1 entanglement in custom and privilege1 mistrust and bitterness about particular grievances1 warp the inner man and enlist him against his interests in alien causes2 the straits of ,dover were too narrow1 the shadow of a hostile continent was too oppressive1 the ,english sod was soaked with too many dews and cut by too many hedges1 for each individual1 being quite master of himself1 to confront every other individual without fear or prejudice1 and to unite with him in the free pursuit of whatever aims they might find that they had in common4 ,yet this slow cooperation of free men1 this liberty in democracy--the only sort that ,america possesses or believes in--is wholly ,english in its personal basis1 its reserve1 its tenacity1 its empiricism1 its public spirit1 and its assurance of its own rightness2 and it deserves to be called ,english always1 to whatever countries it may spread4 ,the omnipresence in ,america of this spirit of cooperation1 responsibility1 and growth is very remarkable4 ,far from being neutralised by ,american dash and bravura1 or lost in the opposite instincts of so many alien races1 it seems to be adopted at once in the most mixed circles and in the most novel predicaments4 ,in ,america social servitude is reduced to a minimum2 in fact we may almost say that it is reduced to subjecting children to their mothers and to a common public education1 agencies that are absolutely indispensable to produce the individual and enable him to exercise his personal initiative effectually2 for after all1 whatever metaphysical egotism may say1 one cannot vote to be created4 ,but once created1 weaned1 and taught to read and write1 the young ,american can easily shoulder his knapsack and choose his own way in the world4 ,he is as yet very little trammelled by want of opportunity1 and he has no roots to speak of in place1 class1 or religion4 ,where individuality is so free1 cooperation1 when it is justified1 can be all the more quick and hearty4 ,everywhere cooperation is taken for granted1 as something that no one would be so mean or so shortsighted as to refuse4 ,together with the will to work and to prosper1 it is of the essence of ,americanism1 and is accepted as such by all the unkempt polyglot peoples that turn to the new world with the pathetic but manly purpose of beginning life on a new principle4 ,every political body1 every public meeting1 every club1 or college1 or athletic team1 is full of it4 ,out it comes whenever there is an accident in the street or a division in a church1 or a great unexpected emergency like the late war4 ,the general instinct is to run and help1 to assume direction1 to pull through somehow by mutual adaptation1 and by seizing on the readiest practical measures and working compromises4 ,each man joins in and gives a helping hand1 without a preconceived plan or a prior motive4 ,even the leader1 when he is a natural leader and not a professional1 has nothing up his sleeve to force on the rest1 in their obvious goodwill and mental blankness4 ,all meet in a genuine spirit of consultation1 eager to persuade but ready to be persuaded1 with a cheery confidence in their average ability1 when a point comes up and is clearly put before them1 to decide it for the time being1 and to move on4 ,it is implicitly agreed1 in every case1 that disputed questions shall be put to a vote1 and that the minority will loyally acquiesce in the decision of the majority and build henceforth upon it1 without a thought of ever retracting it4 ,such a way of proceeding seems in ,america a matter of course1 because it is bred in the bone1 or imposed by that permeating social contagion which is so irresistible in a natural democracy4 ,but if we consider human nature at large and the practice of most nations1 we shall see that it is a very rare1 wonderful1 and unstable convention4 ,it implies a rather unimaginative optimistic assumption that at bottom all men's interests are similar and compatible1 and a rather heroic public spirit--such that no special interest1 in so far as it has to be overruled1 shall rebel and try to maintain itself absolutely4 ,in ,america hitherto these conditions happen to have been actually fulfilled in an unusual measure4 ,interests have been very similar--to exploit business opportunities and organise public services useful to all2 and these similar interests have been also compatible and harmonious4 ,a neighbour1 even a competitor1 where the field is so large and so little preempted1 has more often proved a resource than a danger4 ,the rich have helped the public more than they have fleeced it1 and they have been emulated more than hated or served by the enterprising poor4 ,to abolish millionaires would have been to dash one's own hopes4 ,the most opposite systems of religion and education could look smilingly upon one another's prosperity1 because the country could afford these superficial luxuries1 having a constitutional religion and education of its own1 which everybody drank in unconsciously and which assured the moral cohesion of the people4 ,impulses of reason and kindness1 which are potential in all men1 under such circumstances can become effective2 people can help one another with no great sacrifice to themselves1 and minorities can dismiss their special plans without sorrow1 and cheerfully follow the crowd down another road4 ,it was because life in ,america was naturally more cooperative and more plastic than in ,england that the spirit of ,english liberty1 which demands cooperation and plasticity1 could appear there more boldly and universally than it ever did at home4 ,english liberty is a method1 not a goal4 ,it is related to the value of human life very much as the police are related to public morals or commerce to wealth2 and it is no accident that the ,anglo,saxon race excels in commerce and in the commercial as distinguished from the artistic side of industry1 and that having policed itself successfully it is beginning to police the world at large4 ,it is all an eminence in temper1 goodwill1 reliability1 accommodation4 ,probably some other races1 such as the ,jews and ,arabs1 make individually better merchants1 more shrewd1 patient1 and loving of their art4 ,englishmen and ,americans often seem to miss or force opportunities1 to play for quick returns1 or to settle down into ponderous corporations2 for successful men they are not particularly observant1 constant1 or economical4 ,but the superiority of the ,oriental is confined to his private craft2 he has not the spirit of partnership4 ,in ,english civilisation the individual is neutralised2 it does not matter so much even in high places if he is rather stupid or rather cheap2 public spirit sustains him1 and he becomes its instrument all the more readily1 perhaps1 for not being very distinguished or clearheaded in himself4 ,the community prospers2 comfort and science1 good manners and generous feelings are diffused among the people1 without the aid of that foresight and cunning direction which sometimes give a temporary advantage to a rival system like the ,german4 ,in the end1 adaptation to the world at large1 where so much is hidden and unintelligible1 is only possible piecemeal1 by groping with a genuine indetermination in one's aims4 ,its very looseness gives the ,english method its lien on the future4 ,to dominate the world cooperation is better than policy1 and empiricism safer than inspiration4 ,anglo,saxon imperialism is unintended2 military conquests are incidental to it and often not maintained3 it subsists by a mechanical equilibrium of habits and interests1 in which every colony1 province1 or protectorate has a different status4 ,it has a commercial and missionary quality1 and is essentially an invitation to pull together--an invitation which many nations may be incapable of accepting or even of understanding1 or which they may deeply scorn1 because it involves a surrender of absolute liberty on their part2 but whether accepted or rejected1 it is an offer of cooperation1 a project for a limited partnership1 not a complete plan of life to be imposed on anybody4 ,it is a wise instinct1 in dealing with foreigners or with material things 7which are foreigners to the mind71 to limit oneself in this way to establishing external relations1 partial mutual adjustments1 with a great residuum of independence and reserve2 if you attempt more you will achieve less2 your interpretations will become chimerical and your regimen odious4 ,so deepseated is this prudent instinct in the ,english nature that it appears even at home2 most of the concrete things which ,english genius has produced are expedients4 ,its spiritual treasures are hardly possessions1 except as character is a possession2 they are rather a standard of life1 a promise1 an insurance4 ,english poetry and fiction form an exception2 the very incoherence and artlessness which they share with so much else that is ,english lend them an absolute value as an expression4 ,they are the mirror and prattle of the inner man--a boyish spirit astray in the green earth it loves1 rich in wonder1 perplexity1 valour1 and faith1 given to opinionated little prejudices1 but withal sensitive and candid1 and often laden1 as in ,hamlet1 with exquisite music1 tender humour1 and tragic selfknowledge4 ,but apart from the literature that simply utters the inner man1 no one considering the ,english language1 the ,english church1 or ,english philosophy1 or considering the common law and parliamentary government1 would take them for perfect realisations of art or truth or an ideal polity4 ,institutions so jumbled and limping could never have been planned2 they can never be transferred to another setting1 or adopted bodily2 but special circumstances and contrary currents have given them birth1 and they are accepted and prized1 where they are native1 for keeping the door open to a great volume and variety of goods1 at a moderate cost of danger and absurdity4 ,of course no product of mind is merely an expedient2 all are concomitantly expressions of temperament2 there is something in their manner of being practical which is poetical and catches the rhythm of the heart4 ,in this way anything foreign--and almost all the elements of civilisation in ,england and ,america are foreign--when it is adopted and acclimatised1 takes on a native accent1 especially on ,english lips2 like the ,latin words in the language1 it becomes thoroughly ,english in texture4 ,the ,english ,bible1 again1 with its archaic homeliness and majesty1 sets the mind brooding1 not less than the old ballad most redolent of the native past and the native imagination2 it fills the memory with solemn and pungent phrases2 and this incidental spirit of poetry in which it comes to be clothed is a selfrevelation perhaps more pertinent and welcome to the people than the alien revelations it professes to transmit4 ,english law and parliaments1 too1 would be very unjustly judged if judged as practical contrivances only2 they satisfy at the same time the moral interest people have in uttering and enforcing their feelings4 ,these institutions are ceremonious1 almost sacramental2 they are instinct with a dramatic spirit deeper and more vital than their utility4 ,englishmen and ,americans love debate2 they love sitting round a table as if in consultation1 even when the chairman has pulled the wires and settled everything beforehand1 and when each of the participants listens only to his own remarks and votes according to his party4 ,they love committees and commissions2 they love public dinners with afterdinner speeches1 those stammering compounds of facetiousness1 platitude1 and business4 ,how distressing such speeches usually are1 and how helplessly prolonged1 does not escape anybody2 yet every one demands them notwithstanding1 because in pumping them up or sitting through them he feels he is leading the political life4 ,a public man must show himself in public1 even if not to advantage4 ,the moral expressiveness of such institutions also helps to redeem their clumsy procedure2 they would not be useful1 nor work at all as they should1 if people did not smack their lips over them and feel a profound pleasure in carrying them out4 ,without the ,english spirit1 without the faculty of making themselves believe in public what they never feel in private1 without the habit of clubbing together and facing facts1 and feeling duty in a cautious1 consultative1 experimental way1 ,english liberties forfeit their practical value2 as we see when they are extended to a volatile histrionic people like the ,irish1 or when a jury in ,france1 instead of pronouncing simply on matters of fact and the credibility of witnesses1 rushes in the heat of its patriotism to carry out1 by its verdict1 some political policy4 ,the practice of ,english liberty presupposes two things3 that all concerned are fundamentally unanimous1 and that each has a plastic nature1 which he is willing to modify4 ,if fundamental unanimity is lacking and all are not making in the same general direction1 there can be no honest cooperation1 no satisfying compromise4 ,every concession1 under such circumstances1 would be a temporary one1 to be retracted at the first favourable moment2 it would amount to a mutilation of one's essential nature1 a partial surrender of life1 liberty1 and happiness1 tolerable for a time1 perhaps1 as the lesser of two evils1 but involving a perpetual sullen opposition and hatred4 ,to put things to a vote1 and to accept unreservedly the decision of the majority1 are points essential to the ,english system2 but they would be absurd if fundamental agreement were not presupposed4 ,every decision that the majority could conceivably arrive at must leave it still possible for the minority to live and prosper1 even if not exactly in the way they wished4 ,were this not the case1 a decision by vote would be as alien a fatality to any minority as the decree of a foreign tyrant1 and at every election the right of rebellion would come into play4 ,in a hearty and sound democracy all questions at issue must be minor matters2 fundamentals must have been silently agreed upon and taken for granted when the democracy arose4 ,to leave a decision to the majority is like leaving it to chance--a fatal procedure unless one is willing to have it either way4 ,you must be able to risk losing the toss2 and if you do you will acquiesce all the more readily in the result1 because1 unless the winners cheated at the game1 they had no more influence on it than yourself--namely none1 or very little4 ,you acquiesce in democracy on the same conditions and for the same reasons1 and perhaps a little more cheerfully1 because there is an infinitesimally better chance of winning on the average2 but even then the enormity of the risk involved would be intolerable if anything of vital importance was at stake4 ,it is therefore actually required that juries1 whose decisions may really be of moment1 should be unanimous2 and parliaments and elections are never more satisfactory than when a wave of national feeling runs through them and there is no longer any minority nor any need of voting4 ,free government works well in proportion as government is superfluous4 ,that most parliamentary measures should be trivial or technical1 and really devised and debated only in government offices1 and that government in ,america should so long have been carried on in the shade1 by persons of no name or dignity1 is no anomaly4 ,on the contrary1 like the good fortune of those who never hear of the police1 it is all a sign that cooperative liberty is working well and rendering overt government unnecessary4 ,sometimes kinship and opportunity carry a whole nation before the wind2 but this happy unison belongs rather to the dawn of national life1 when similar tasks absorb all individual energies4 ,if it is to be maintained after lines of moral cleavage appear1 and is to be compatible with variety and distinction of character1 all further developments must be democratically controlled and must remain1 as it were1 in a state of fusion4 ,variety and distinction must not become arbitrary and irresponsible4 ,they must take directions that will not mar the general harmony1 and no interest must be carried so far as to lose sight of the rest4 ,science and art1 in such a vital democracy1 should remain popular1 helpful1 bracing2 religion should be broadly national and in the spirit of the times4 ,the variety and distinction allowed must be only variety and distinction of service4 ,if they ever became a real distinction and variety of life1 if they arrogated to themselves an absolute liberty1 they would shatter the unity of the democratic spirit and destroy its moral authority4 ,the levelling tendency of ,english liberty 7inevitable if plastic natures are to cooperate and to make permanent concessions to one another's instincts7 comes out more clearly in ,america than in ,england itself4 ,in ,england there are still castles and rural retreats1 there are still social islands within the ,island1 where special classes may nurse particular allegiances4 ,america is all one prairie1 swept by a universal tornado4 ,although it has always thought itself in an eminent sense the land of freedom1 even when it was covered with slaves1 there is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions4 ,the prohibitions1 although important and growing1 are not yet1 perhaps1 so many or so blatant as in some other countries2 but prohibitions are less galling than compulsions4 ,what can be forbidden specifically--bigamy1 for instance1 or heresy--may be avoided by a prudent man without renouncing the whole movement of life and mind which1 if carried beyond a certain point1 would end in those trespasses against convention4 ,he can indulge in hypothesis or gallantry without falling foul of the positive law1 which indeed may even stimulate his interest and ingenuity by suggesting some indirect means of satisfaction4 ,on the other hand1 what is exacted cuts deeper2 it creates habits which overlay nature1 and every faculty is atrophied that does not conform with them4 ,if1 for instance1 ,i am compelled to be in an office 7and up to business1 too7 from early morning to late afternoon1 with long journeys in thundering and sweltering trains before and after and a flying shot at a quick lunch between1 ,i am caught and held both in soul and body2 and except for the freedom to work and to rise by that work--which may be very interesting in itself--,i am not suffered to exist morally at all4 ,my evenings will be drowsy1 my ,sundays tedious1 and after a few days' holiday ,i shall be wishing to get back to business4 ,here is as narrow a path left open to freedom as is left open in a monastic establishment1 where bell and book keep your attention fixed at all hours upon the hard work of salvation--an infinite vista1 certainly1 if your soul was not made to look another way4 ,those1 too1 who may escape this crushing routine--the invalids1 the ladies1 the fops--are none the less prevented by it from doing anything else with success or with a good conscience2 the bubbles also must swim with the stream4 ,even what is best in ,american life is compulsory--the idealism1 the zeal1 the beautiful happy unison of its great moments4 ,you must wave1 you must cheer1 you must push with the irresistible crowd2 otherwise you will feel like a traitor1 a soulless outcast1 a deserted ship high and dry on the shore4 ,in ,america there is but one way of being saved1 though it is not peculiar to any of the official religions1 which themselves must silently conform to the national orthodoxy1 or else become impotent and merely ornamental4 ,this national faith and morality are vague in idea1 but inexorable in spirit2 they are the gospel of work and the belief in progress4 ,by them1 in a country where all men are free1 every man finds that what most matters has been settled for him beforehand4 ,nevertheless1 ,american life is free as a whole1 because it is mobile1 because every atom that swims in it has a momentum of its own which is felt and respected throughout the mass1 like the weight of an atom in the solar system1 even if the deflection it may cause is infinitesimal4 ,in temper ,america is docile and not at all tyrannical2 it has not predetermined its career1 and its merciless momentum is a passive resultant4 ,like some ,mississippi or ,niagara1 it rolls its myriad drops gently onward1 being but the suction and pressure which they exercise on one another4 ,any tremulous thought or playful experiment anywhere may be a first symptom of great changes1 and may seem to precipitate the cataract in a new direction4 ,any snowflake in a boy's sky may become the centre for his boule de neige1 his prodigious fortune2 but the monster will melt as easily as it grew1 and leaves nobody poorer for having existed4 ,in ,america there is duty everywhere1 but everywhere also there is light4 ,i do not mean superior understanding or even moderately wide knowledge1 but openness to light1 an evident joy in seeing things clearly and doing them briskly1 which would amount to a veritable triumph of art and reason if the affairs in which it came into play were central and important4 ,the ,american may give an exorbitant value to subsidiary things1 but his error comes of haste in praising what he possesses1 and trusting the first praises he hears4 ,he can detect sharp practices1 because he is capable of them1 but vanity or wickedness in the ultimate aims of a man1 including himself1 he cannot detect1 because he is ingenuous in that sphere4 ,he thinks life splendid and blameless1 without stopping to consider how far folly and malice may be inherent in it4 ,he feels that he himself has nothing to dread1 nothing to hide or apologise for2 and if he is arrogant in his ignorance1 there is often a twinkle in his eye when he is most boastful4 ,perhaps he suspects that he is making a fool of himself1 and he challenges the world to prove it2 and his innocence is quickly gone when he is once convinced that it exists4 ,accordingly the ,american orthodoxy1 though imperious1 is not unyielding4 ,it has a keener sense for destiny than for policy4 ,it is confident of a happy and triumphant future1 which it would be shameful in any man to refuse to work for and to share2 but it cannot prefigure what that bright future is to be4 ,while it works feverishly in outward matters1 inwardly it only watches and waits2 and it feels tenderly towards the unexpressed impulses in its bosom1 like a mother towards her unborn young4 ,there is a mystical conviction1 expressed in ,anglo,saxon life and philosophy1 that our labours1 even when they end in failure1 contribute to some ulterior achievement in which it is well they should be submerged4 ,this ,anglo,saxon piety1 in the form of trust and adaptability1 reaches somewhat the same insight that more speculative religions have reached through asceticism1 the insight that we must renounce our wills and deny ourselves4 ,but to have a will remains essential to animals1 and having a will we must kick against the pricks1 even if philosophy thinks it foolish of us4 ,the spirit in which parties and nations beyond the pale of ,english liberty confront one another is not motherly nor brotherly nor ,christian4 ,their valorousness and morality consist in their indomitable egotism4 ,the liberty they want is absolute liberty1 a desire which is quite primitive4 ,it may be identified with the love of life which animates all creation1 or with the pursuit of happiness which all men would be engaged in if they were rational4 ,indeed1 it might even be identified with the first law of motion1 that all bodies1 if left free1 persevere in that state of rest1 or of motion in a straight line1 in which they happen to find themselves4 ,the enemies of this primitive freedom are all such external forces as make it deviate from the course it is in the habit of taking or is inclined to take2 and when people begin to reflect upon their condition1 they protest against this alien tyranny1 and contrast in fancy what they would do if they were free with what under duress they are actually doing4 ,all human struggles are inspired by what1 in this sense1 is the love of freedom4 ,even craving for power and possessions may be regarded as the love of a free life on a larger scale1 for which more instruments and resources are needed4 ,the apologists of absolute will are not slow1 for instance1 to tell us that ,germany in her laborious ambitions has been pursuing the highest form of freedom1 which can be attained only by organising all the resources of the world1 and the souls of all subsidiary nations1 around one luminous centre of direction and selfconsciousness1 such as the ,prussian government was eminently fitted to furnish4 ,freedom to exercise absolute will methodically seems to them much better than ,english liberty1 because it knows what it wants1 pursues it intelligently1 and does not rely for success on some measure of goodness in mankind at large4 ,english liberty is so trustful6 ,it moves by a series of checks1 mutual concessions1 and limited satisfactions2 it counts on chivalry1 sportsmanship1 brotherly love1 and on that rarest and least lucrative of virtues1 fairmindedness3 it is a broadbased1 stupid1 blind adventure1 groping towards an unknown goal4 ,who but an ,englishman would think of such a thing6 ,a fanatic1 a poet1 a doctrinaire1 a dilettante--any one who has a fixed aim and clear passions--will not relish ,english liberty4 ,it will seem bitter irony to him to give the name of liberty to something so muffled1 exacting1 and oppressive4 ,in fact ,english liberty is a positive infringement and surrender of the freedom most fought for and most praised in the past4 ,it makes impossible the sort of liberty for which the ,spartans died at ,thermopyl1 or the ,christian martyrs in the arena1 or the ,protestant reformers at the stake2 for these people all died because they would not cooperate1 because they were not plastic and would never consent to lead the life dear or at least customary to other men4 ,they insisted on being utterly different and independent and inflexible in their chosen systems1 and aspired either to destroy the society round them or at least to insulate themselves in the midst of it1 and live a jealous1 private1 unstained life of their own within their city walls or mystical conclaves4 ,any one who passionately loves his particular country or passionately believes in his particular religion cannot be content with less liberty or more democracy than that2 he must be free to live absolutely according to his ideal1 and no hostile votes1 no alien interests1 must call on him to deviate from it by one iota4 ,such was the claim to religious liberty which has played so large a part in the revolutions and divisions of the western world4 ,every new heresy professed to be orthodoxy itself1 purified and restored2 and woe to all backsliders from the reformed faith6 ,even the popes1 without thinking to be ironical1 have often raised a wail for liberty4 ,such too was the aspiration of those medival cities and barons who fought for their liberties and rights4 ,such was the aspiration even of the ,american declaration of independence and the ,american constitution3 castiron documents1 if only the spirit of cooperative ,english liberty had not been there to expand1 embosom1 soften1 or transform them4 ,so the ,french revolution and the ,russian one of today have aimed at establishing society once for all on some eternally just principle1 and at abolishing all traditions1 interests1 faiths1 and even words that did not belong to their system4 ,liberty1 for all these pensive or rabid apostles of liberty1 meant liberty for themselves to be just so1 and to remain just so for ever1 together with the most vehement defiance of anybody who might ask them1 for the sake of harmony1 to be a little different4 ,they summoned every man to become free in exactly their own fashion1 or have his head cut off4 ,of course1 to many an individual1 life even in any such free city or free church1 fiercely jealous of its political independence and moral purity1 would prove to be a grievous servitude2 and there has always been a sprinkling of rebels and martyrs and scornful philosophers protesting and fuming against their ultraindependent and nothingifnotprotesting sects4 ,to cooperate with anybody seems to these esprits forts contamination1 so sensitive are they to any deviation from the true north which their compass might suffer through the neighbourhood of any human magnet4 ,if it is a weakness to be subject to influence1 it is an imprudence to expose oneself to it2 and to be subject to influence seems ignominious to any one whose inward monitor is perfectly articulate and determined4 ,a certain vagueness of soul1 together with a great gregariousness and tendency to be moulded by example and by prevalent opinion1 is requisite for feeling free under ,english liberty4 ,you must find the majority right enough to live with2 you must give up lost causes2 you must be willing to put your favourite notions to sleep in the family cradle of convention4 ,enthusiasts for democracy1 peace1 and a league of nations should not deceive themselves2 they are not everybody's friends2 they are the enemies of what is deepest and most primitive in everybody4 ,they inspire undying hatred in every untamable people and every absolute soul4 ,it is in the nature of wild animal life to be ferocious or patient1 and in either case heroic and uncompromising4 ,it is inevitable1 in the beginning1 that each person or faction should come into the lists to serve some express interest1 which in itself may be perfectly noble and generous4 ,but these interests are posited alone and in all their ultimate consequences4 ,the parties meet1 however diplomatic their procedure1 as buyers and sellers bargain in primitive markets4 ,each has a fixed programme or1 as he perhaps calls it1 an ideal2 and when he has got as much as he can get today1 he will return to the charge tomorrow1 with absolutely unchanged purpose4 ,all opposed parties he regards as sheer enemies to be beaten down1 driven off1 and ultimately converted or destroyed4 ,meantime he practises political craft1 of which the climax is war2 a craft not confined to priests1 though they are good at it1 but common to every missionary1 agitator1 and philosophical politician who operates in view of some vested interest or inflexible plan1 in the very un,english spirit of intrigue1 cajolery1 eloquence1 and dissimulation4 ,his art is to worm his way forward1 using people's passions to further his own ends1 carrying them off their feet in a wave of enthusiasm1 when that is feasible1 and when it is not1 recommending his cause by insidious halfmeasures1 flattery of private interests1 confidencetricks1 and amiable suggestions1 until he has put his entangled victims in his pocket2 or when he feels strong enough1 browbeating and intimidating them into silence4 ,such is the inevitable practice of every prophet who heralds an absolute system1 political or religious1 and who pursues the unqualified domination of principles which he thinks right in themselves and of a will which is selfjustified and irresponsible4 ,why1 we may ask1 are people so ready to set up absolute claims1 when their resources are obviously so limited that permanent success is impossible1 and their will itself1 in reality1 is so fragile that it abandons each of its dreams even before it learns that it cannot be realised8 ,the reason is that the feebler1 more ignorant1 and more childlike an impulse is1 the less it can restrain itself or surrender a part of its desire in order the better to attain the rest4 ,in most nations and most philosophies the intellect is rushed2 it is swept forward and enamoured by the first glimpses it gets of anything good4 ,the dogmas thus precipitated seem to relieve the will of all risks and to guarantee its enterprises2 whereas in fact they are rendering every peril tragic by blinding us to it1 and every vain hope incorrigible4 ,a happy shyness in the ,english mind1 a certain torpor and lateness in its utterance1 have largely saved it from this calamity1 and just because it is not brilliant it is safe4 ,being reticent1 it remains fertile2 being vague in its destination1 it can turn at each corner down the most inviting road4 ,in this race the intellect has chosen the part of prudence1 leaving courage to the will1 where courage is indispensable4 ,how much more becoming and fortunate is this balance of faculties for an earthly being than an intellect that scales the heavens1 refuting and proving everything1 while the will dares to attempt and to reform nothing1 but fritters itself away in sloth1 petty malice1 and irony6 ,in the ,english character modesty and boldness appear in the right places and in a just measure4 ,manliness ventures to act without pretending to be sure of the issue2 it does not cry that all is sure1 in order to cover up the mortal perils of finitude2 and manliness has its reward in the joys of exploration and comradeship4 ,it is this massive malleable character1 this vigorous moral youth1 that renders cooperation possible and progressive4 ,when interests are fully articulate and fixed1 cooperation is a sort of mathematical problem2 up to a certain precise limit1 people can obviously help one another by summing their efforts1 like sailors pulling at a rope1 or by a division of labour2 they can obviously help one another when thereby they are helping themselves4 ,but beyond that1 there can be nothing but mutual indifference or eternal hostility4 ,this is the old way of the world4 ,most of the lower animals1 although they run through surprising transformations during their growth1 seem to reach maturity by a predetermined method and in a predetermined form4 ,nature does everything for them and experience nothing1 and they live or die1 as the case may be1 true to their innate character4 ,mankind1 on the contrary1 and especially the ,english races1 seem to reach physical maturity still morally immature2 they need to be finished by education1 experience1 external influences4 ,what so often spoils other creatures improves them4 ,if left to themselves and untrained1 they remain all their lives stupid and coarse1 with no natural joy but drunkenness2 but nurseries and schools and churches and social conventions can turn them into the most refined and exquisite of men1 and admirably intelligent too1 in a cautious and special fashion4 ,they may never become1 for all their pains1 so agile1 graceful1 and sure as many an animal or a priori man is without trouble1 but they acquire more representative minds and a greater range of material knowledge4 ,such completion1 in the open air1 of characters only halfformed in the womb may go on in some chance direction1 or it may go on in the direction of a greater social harmony1 that is1 in whatever direction is suggested to each man by the suasion of his neighbours4 ,society is a second mother to these souls2 and the instincts of many animals would remain inchoate if the great instinct of imitation did not intervene and enable them to learn by example4 ,development in this case involves assimilation2 characters are moulded by contagion and educated by democracy4 ,the sphere of unanimity tends to grow larger1 and to reduce the margin of diversity to insignificance4 ,the result is an everincreasing moral unison1 which is the simplest form of moral harmony and emotionally the most coercive4 ,democracy is often mentioned in the same breath with liberty1 as if they meant the same thing2 and both are sometimes identified with the sort of elective government that prevails in ,great ,britain and the ,united ,states4 ,but just as ,english liberty seems servitude to some people because it requires them to cooperate1 to submit to the majority1 and to grow like them1 so ,english democracy seems tyranny to the wayward masses1 because it is constitutional1 historical1 and sacred1 narrowing down the power of any group of people at any time to voting for one of two or three candidates for office1 or to saying yes or no to some specific proposal--both the proposals and the candidates being set before them by an invisible agency2 and fate was never more inexorable or blinder than is the grinding of this ponderous political mill1 where routine1 nepotism1 pique1 and swagger1 with love of office and money1 turn all the wheels4 ,and the worst of it is that the revolutionary parties that oppose this historical machine repeat all its abuses1 or even aggravate them4 ,it would be well if people in ,england and ,america woke up to the fact that it is in the name of natural liberty and direct democracy that enemies both within and without are already rising up against their democracy and their liberty4 ,just as the ,papacy once threatened ,english liberties1 because it would maintain one inflexible international religion over all men1 so now an international democracy of the disinherited many1 led by the disinherited few1 threatens ,english liberties again1 since it would abolish those private interests which are the factors in any cooperation1 and would reduce everybody to forced membership and forced service in one universal flock1 without property1 family1 country1 or religion4 ,that life under such a system might have its comforts1 its arts1 and its atomic liberties1 is certain1 just as under the ,catholic system it had its virtues and consolations2 but both systems presuppose the universality of a type of human nature which is not ,english1 and perhaps not human4 ,the great advantage of ,english liberty is that it is in harmony with the nature of things2 and when living beings have managed to adapt their habits to the nature of things1 they have entered the path of health and wisdom4 ,no doubt the living will is essentially absolute1 both at the top and at the bottom1 in the ferocious animal and in the rapt spirit2 but it is absolute even then only in its deliverance1 in what it asserts or demands2 nothing can be less absolute or more precarious than the living will in its existence4 ,a living will is the flexible voice of a thousand submerged impulses1 of which now one and now another comes to the surface2 it is responsive1 without knowing it1 to a complex forgotten past and a changing1 unexplored environment4 ,the will is a mass of passions2 when it sets up absolute claims it is both tragic and ridiculous4 ,it may be ready to be a martyr1 but it will have to be one4 ,martyrs are heroic2 but unless they have the nature of things on their side and their cause can be victorious1 their heroism is like that of criminals and madmen1 interesting dramatically but morally detestable4 ,madmen and criminals1 like other martyrs1 appeal to the popular imagination1 because in each of us there is a little absolute will1 or a colony of little absolute wills1 aching to be criminal1 mad1 and heroic4 ,yet the equilibrium by which we exist if we are sane1 and which we call reason1 keeps these rebellious dreams under2 if they run wild1 we are lost4 ,reason is a harmony2 and it has been reputed by egotistical philosophers to rule the world 7in which unreason of every sort is fundamental and rampant71 because when harmony between men and nature supervenes at any place or in any measure1 the world becomes intelligible and safe1 and philosophers are able to live in it4 ,the passions1 even in a rational society1 remain the elements of life1 but under mutual control1 and the life of reason1 like ,english liberty1 is a perpetual compromise4 ,absolute liberty1 on the contrary1 is impracticable2 it is a foolish challenge thrown by a newborn insect buzzing against the universe2 it is incompatible with more than one pulse of life4 ,all the declarations of independence in the world will not render anybody really independent4 ,you may disregard your environment1 you cannot escape it2 and your disregard of it will bring you moral empoverishment and some day unpleasant surprises4 ,even ,robinson ,crusoe--whom offended ,america once tried to imitate--lived on what he had saved from the wreck1 on footprints and distant hopes4 ,liberty to be left alone1 not interfered with and not helped1 is not ,english liberty4 ,it is the primeval desire of every wild animal or barbarous tribe or jealous city or religion1 claiming to live and to tramp through the world in its own sweet way4 ,these combative organisms1 however1 have only such strength as the opposite principle of cooperation lends them inwardly2 and the more liberty they assume in foreign affairs the less liberty their members can enjoy at home4 ,at home they must then have organisation at all costs1 like ancient ,sparta and modern ,germany2 and even if the restraints so imposed are not irksome and there is spontaneous unison and enthusiasm in the people1 the basis of such a local harmony will soon prove too narrow4 ,nations and religions will run up against one another1 against change1 against science1 against all the realities they had never reckoned with2 and more or less painfully they will dissolve4 ,and it will not be a normal and fruitful dissolution1 like that of a man who leaves children and heirs4 ,it will be the end of that evolution1 the choking of that ideal in the sand4 ,this collapse of fierce liberty is no ordinary mutation1 such as time brings sooner or later to everything that exists1 when the circumstances that sustained it in being no longer prevail4 ,it is a deep tragedy1 because the narrower passions and swifter harmonies are more beautiful and perfect than the chaos or the dull broad equilibrium that may take their place4 ,cooperative life is reasonable and longwinded2 but it always remains imperfect itself1 while it somewhat smothers the impulses that enter into it4 ,absolute liberty created these elements2 inspiration1 free intelligence1 uncompromising conviction1 a particular home and breedingground1 were requisite to give them birth4 ,nothing good could arise for cooperation to diffuse or to qualify unless first there had been complete liberty for the artist and an uncontaminated perfection in his work4 ,reason and the principle of ,english liberty have no creative afflatus2 they presuppose spontaneity and yet they half stifle it2 and they can rest in no form of perfection1 because they must remain plastic and continually invite amendments1 in order to continue broadly adjusted to an infinite moving world4 ,their work is accordingly like those cathedrals at which many successive ages have laboured1 each in its own style4 ,we may regret1 sometimes1 that some one design could not have been carried out in its purity1 and yet all these secular accretions have a wonderful eloquence2 a common piety and love of beauty have inspired them2 age has fused them and softened their incongruities2 and an inexpressible magic seems to hang about the composite pile1 as if ,god and man breathed deeply within it4 ,it is a harmony woven out of accidents1 like every work of time and nature1 and all the more profound and fertile because no mind could ever have designed it4 ,some such natural structure1 formed and reformed by circumstances1 is the requisite matrix and home for every moral being4 ,accordingly there seems to have been sober sense and even severe thought behind the rant of ,webster when he cried1 8,liberty and ,union1 now and for ever1 one and inseparable60 because if for the sake of liberty you abandon union and resist a mutual adaptation of purposes which might cripple each of them1 your liberty loses its massiveness1 its plasticity1 its power to survive change2 it ceases to be tentative and human in order to become animal and absolute4 ,nature must always produce little irresponsible passions that will try to rule her1 but she can never crown any one of them with more than a theatrical success2 the wrecks of absolute empires1 communisms1 and religions are there to prove it4 ,but ,english liberty1 because it is cooperative1 because it calls only for a partial and shifting unanimity among living men1 may last indefinitely1 and can enlist every reasonable man and nation in its service4 ,this is the best heritage of ,america1 richer than its virgin continents1 which it draws from the temperate and manly spirit of ,england4 ,certainly absolute freedom would be more beautiful if we were birds or poets2 but cooperation and a loving sacrifice of a part of ourselves--or even of the whole1 save the love in us--are beautiful too1 if we are men living together4 ,absolute liberty and ,english liberty are incompatible1 and mankind must make a painful and a brave choice between them4 ,the necessity of rejecting and destroying some things that are beautiful is the deepest curse of existence4 ,,the ,,end ,printed in ,great ,britain by ,r4 ,r4 ,clark1 ,limited1 ,edinburgh4