Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume II

“Kant tells us that Space is the form of all external intuition; which is not true. He tells us that the consciousness of Space continues when the consciousness of all things contained in it is suppressed; which is also not true. From these alleged facts he infers that Space is an à priori form of intuition. I say infers , because this conclusion is not presented in necessary union with the premises, in the same way that the consciousness of duality is necessarily presented along with the consciousness of inequality; but it is a conclusion voluntarily drawn for the purpose of explaining the alleged facts. And then that we may accept this conclusion, which is not necessarily presented along with these alleged facts which are not true, we are obliged to affirm several propositions which cannot be rendered into thought. When Space is itself contemplated, we have to conceive it as at once the form of intuition and the matter of intuition; which is impossible. We have to unite that which we are conscious of as Space with that which we are conscious of as the ego , and contemplate the one as a property of the other; which is impossible. We have at the same time to disunite that which we are conscious of as Space, from that which we are conscious of as the non-ego, and contemplate the one as separate from the other; which is also impossible. Further, this hypothesis that Space is “nothing else” than a form of intuition belonging wholly to the ego , commits us to one of the two alternatives, that the non-ego is formless or that its form produces absolutely no effect upon the ego; both of which alternatives involve us in impossibilities of thought.” – Prin. of Psy., § 399.

Objections of another, though allied, class have been made in a review of the Principles of Psychology by Mr. H. Sidgwick – a critic whose remarks on questions of mental philosophy always deserve respectful consideration.

Mr. Sidgwick’s chief aim is to show what he calls “the mazy inconsistency of his [my] metaphysical results.” More specifically, he expresses thus the proposition he seeks to justify – “His view of the subject appears to have a fundamental incoherence, which shows itself in various ways on the surface of his exposition, but of which the root lies much deeper, in his inability to harmonise different lines of thought.”

Before dealing with the reasons given for this judgment, let me say that, in addition to the value which candid criticisms have as showing where more explanation is needed, they are almost indispensable as revealing to a writer incongruities he had not perceived. Especially where, as in this case, the subject-matter has many aspects, and where the words supplied by our language are so inadequate in number that, to avoid cumbrous circumlocution, they have to be used in senses that vary according to the context, it is extremely difficult to avoid imperfections of statement. But while I acknowledge sundry such imperfections and the resulting incongruities, I cannot see that these are, as Mr. Sidgwick says, fundamental. Contrariwise, their superficiality seems to me proved by the fact that they may be rectified without otherwise altering the expositions in which they occur. Here is an instance.

Mr. Sidgwick points out that, when treating of the “Data of Psychology,” I have said (in § 56) that, though we reach inferentially “the belief that mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing, we remain utterly incapable of seeing, and even of imagining, how the two are related” (I quote the passage more fully than he does). He then goes on to show that in the “Special Synthesis,” where I have sketched the evolution of Intelligence under its objective aspect, as displayed in the processes by which beings of various grades adjust themselves to surrounding actions, I “speak as if” we could see how consciousness “naturally arises at a particular stage” of nervous action. The chapter he here refers to is one describing that “differentiation of the psychical from the physical life” which accompanies advancing organization, and more especially advancing development of the nervous system. In it I have shown that, while the changes constituting physical life continue to be characterized by the simultaneity with which all kinds of them go on throughout the organism, the changes constituting psychical life, arising as the nervous system develops, become gradually more distinguished by their seriality. And I have said that as nervous integration advances, “there must result an unbroken series of these changes – there must arise a consciousness.” Now I admit that here is an apparent inconsistency. I ought to have said that “there must result an unbroken series of these changes,” which, taking place in the nervous system of a highly-organized creature, gives coherence to its conduct; and along with which we assume a consciousness, because consciousness goes along with coherent conduct in ourselves. If Mr. Sidgwick will substitute this statement for the statement as it stands, he will see that the arguments and conclusions remain intact. A survey of the chapter as a whole, proves that its aim is not in the least to explain how nervous changes, considered as waves of molecular motion, become the feelings constituting consciousness; but that, contemplating the facts objectively in living creatures at large, it points out the cardinal distinction between vital actions in general, and those particular vital actions which, in a creature displaying them, lead us to speak of it as intelligent. It is shown that the rise of such actions becomes marked in proportion as the changes taking place in the part called the nervous system, are made more and more distinctly serial, by union in a supreme centre of co-ordination. The introduction of the word consciousness, arises in the effort to show what fundamental character there is in these particular physiological changes which is parallel to a fundamental character in the psychological changes.

Another instance of the way in which Mr. Sidgwick evolves an incongruity which he considers fundamental, out of what I should have thought he would see is a defective expression, I will give in his own words. Speaking of a certain view of mine, he says: —

“He tells us that ‘logic.. contemplates in its propositions certain connexions predicated, which are necessarily involved with certain other connexions given: regarding all these connexions as existing in the non-ego – not, it may be, under the form in which we know them, but in some form.’ But in § 473, where Mr. Spencer illustrates by a diagram his ‘Transfigured Realism,’ the view seems to be this: although we cannot say that the real non-ego resembles our notion of it in ‘its elements, relations, or laws,’ we can say that ‘a change in the objective reality causes in the subjective state a change exactly answering to it – so answering as to constitute a cognition of it .’ Here the ‘something beyond consciousness’ is no longer said to be unknown, as its effect in consciousness ‘constitutes a cognition of it.’”

This apparent inconsistency, marked by the italics, would not have existed if, instead of “a cognition of it,” I had said, as I ought to have said, “ what we call a cognition of it” – that is, a relative cognition as distinguished from an absolute cognition. In ordinary language we speak of as cognitions, those connexions in thought which so guide us in our dealings with things, that actual experience verifies ideal anticipation: marking off, by opposed words, those connexions in thought which mis – guide us. The difference between accepting a cognition as relatively true and accepting it as absolutely true, will be clearly shown by an illustration. There is no direct resemblance whatever between the sizes, forms, colours, and arrangements, of the figures in an account-book, and the moneys or goods, debts or credits, represented by them; and yet the forms and arrangements of the written symbols, are such as answer in a perfectly-exact way to stocks of various commodities and to various kinds of transactions. Hence we say, figuratively, that the account-book will “tell us” all about these stocks and transactions. Similarly, the diagram Mr. Sidgwick refers to, suggests a way in which symbols, registered in us by objects, may have forms and arrangements wholly unlike their objective causes and the nexus among those causes, while yet they are so related as to guide us correctly in our transactions with those objective causes, and, in that sense , constitute cognitions of them; though they no more constitute cognitions in the absolute sense, than do the guiding symbols in the account-book constitute cognitions of the things to which they refer. So repeatedly is this view implied throughout the Principles of Psychology , that I am surprised to find a laxity of expression raising the suspicion that I entertain any other.

To follow Mr. Sidgwick through sundry criticisms of like kind, which may be similarly met, would take more space than I can here afford. I must restrict myself now to the alleged “fundamental incoherence” of which he thinks these inconsistencies are signs. I refer to that reconciliation of Realism and Idealism considered by him as an impossible compromise. A difficulty is habitually felt in accepting a coalition after long conflict. Whoever has espoused one of two antagonist views, and, in defending it, has gained a certain comprehension of the opposite view, becomes accustomed to regard these as the only alternatives, and is puzzled by an hypothesis which is at once both and neither. Yet, since it turns out in nearly all cases that, of conflicting doctrines, each contains an element of truth, and that controversy ends by combination of their respective half-truths, there is a priori probability on the side of an hypothesis which qualifies Realism by Idealism.

Mr. Sidgwick expresses his astonishment, or rather bespeaks that of his readers, because, while I accept Idealistic criticisms, I nevertheless defend the fundamental intuition of Common Sense; and, as he puts it, “fires his [my] argument full in the face of Kant, Mill, and ‘metaphysicians’ generally.”

“He tells us that ‘metaphysicians’ illegitimately assume that ‘beliefs reached through complex intellectual processes,’ are more valid than ‘beliefs reached through simple intellectual processes;’ that the common language they use refuses to express their hypotheses, and thus their reasoning inevitably implies the common notions which they repudiate; that the belief of Realism has the advantage of ‘priority,’ ‘simplicity,’ ‘distinctness.’ But surely this prior, simple, distinctly affirmed belief is that of what Mr. Spencer terms ‘crude Realism’, the belief that the non-ego is per se extended, solid, even coloured (if not resonant and odorous). This is what common language implies; and the argument by which Mr. Spencer proves the relativity of feelings and relations, still more the subtle and complicated analysis by which he resolves our notion of extension into an aggregate of feelings and transitions of feeling, lead us away from our original simple belief – that ( e. g.) the green grass we see exists out of consciousness as we see it – just as much as the reasonings of Idealism, Scepticism, or Kantism.”

On the face of it the anomaly seems great; but I should have thought that after reading the chapter on “Transfigured Realism,” a critic of Mr. Sidgwick’s acuteness would have seen the solution of it. He has overlooked an essential distinction. All which my argument implies is that the direct intuition of Realism must be held of superior authority to the arguments of Anti-Realism, where their deliverances cannot be reconciled. The one point on which their deliverances cannot be reconciled, is the existence of an objective reality. But while, against this intuition of Realism, I hold the arguments of Anti-Realism to be powerless, because they cannot be carried on without postulating that which they end by denying; yet, having admitted objective existence as a necessary postulate, it is possible to make valid criticisms upon all those judgments which Crude Realism joins with this primordial judgment: it is possible to show that a transfigured interpretation of properties and relations, is more tenable than the original interpretation.

To elucidate the matter, let us take the most familiar case in which the indirect judgments of Reason correct the direct judgments of Common Sense. The direct judgment of Common Sense is that the Sun moves round the Earth. In course of time, Reason, finding some facts at variance with this, begins to doubt; and, eventually, hits upon an hypothesis which explains the anomalies, but which denies this apparently-certain dictum of Common Sense. What is the reconciliation? It consists in showing to Common Sense that the new interpretation equally well corresponds with direct intuition, while it avoids all the difficulties. Common Sense is reminded that the apparent motion of an object may be due either to its actual motion or to the motion of the observer; and that there are terrestrial experiences in which the observer thinks an object he looks at is moving, when the motion is in himself. Extending the conception thus given, Reason shows that if the Earth revolves on its axis, there will result that apparent motion of the Sun which Common Sense interpreted into an actual motion of the Sun; and the common-sense observer thereupon becomes able to think of sunrise and sunset as due to his position as spectator on a vast revolving globe. Now if the astronomer, setting out by recognizing these celestial appearances, and proceeding to evolve the various anomalies following from the common-sense interpretation of them, had drawn the conclusion that there externally exist no Sun and no motion at all, he would have done what Idealists do; and his arguments would have been equally powerless against the intuition of Common Sense. But he does nothing of the kind. He accepts the intuition of Common Sense respecting the reality of the Sun and of the motion; but replaces the old interpretation of the motion by a new interpretation reconcilable with all the facts.

Everyone must see that here, acceptance of the inexpugnable element in the common-sense judgment, by no means involves acceptance of the accompanying judgments; and I contend that the like discrimination must be made in the case we are considering. It does not follow that while, against the consciousness which Crude Realism has of an objective reality, the arguments of Anti-Realism are futile, they are therefore futile against the conceptions which Crude Realism forms of the objective reality. If Anti-Realism can show that, granting an objective reality, the interpretation of Crude Realism contains insuperable difficulties, the process is quite legitimate. And, its primordial intuition remaining unshaken, Realism may, on reconsideration, be enabled to frame a new conception which harmonizes all the facts.

To show that there is not here the “mazy inconsistency” alleged, let us take the case of sound as interpreted by Crude Realism, and as re-interpreted by Transfigured Realism. Crude Realism assumes the sound present in consciousness to exist as such beyond consciousness. Anti-Realism proves the inadmissibility of this assumption in sundry ways (all of which, however, set out by talking of sounding bodies beyond consciousness, just as Realism talks of them); and then Anti-Realism concludes that we know of no existence save the sound as a mode of consciousness: which conclusion, and all kindred conclusions, I contend are vicious – first, because all the words used connote an objective activity; second, because the arguments are impossible without postulating at the outset an objective activity; and third, because no one of the intuitions out of which the arguments are built, is of equal validity with the single intuition of Realism that an objective activity exists. But now the Transfigured Realism which Mr. Sidgwick thinks “has all the serious incongruity of an intense metaphysical dream,” neither affirms the untenable conception of Crude Realism, nor, like Anti-Realism, draws unthinkable conclusions by suicidal arguments; but, accepting that which is essential in Crude Realism, and admitting the difficulties which Anti-Realism insists upon, reconciles matters by a re-interpretation analogous to that which an astronomer makes of the solar motion. Continuing all along to recognize an objective activity which Crude Realism calls sound, it shows that the answering sensation is produced by a succession of separate impacts which, if made slowly, may be separately identified, and which will, if progressively increased in rapidity, produce tones higher and higher in pitch. It shows by other experiments that sounding bodies are in states of vibration, and that the vibrations may be made visible. And it concludes that the objective activity is not what it subjectively seems, but is proximately interpretable as a succession of aërial waves. Thus Crude Realism is shown that while there unquestionably exists an objective activity corresponding to the sensation known as sound, yet the facts are not explicable on the original supposition that this is like the sensation; while they are explicable by conceiving it as a rhythmical mechanical action. Eventually this re-interpretation, joined with kindred reinterpretations of other sensations, comes to be itself further transfigured by analysis of its terms, and re-expression of them in terms of molecular motion; but, however abstract the interpretation ultimately reached, the objective activity continues to be postulated: the primordial judgment of Crude Realism remains unchanged, though it has to change the rest of its judgments.

In another part of his argument, however, Mr. Sidgwick implies that I have no right to use those conceptions of objective existence by which this compromise is effected. Quoting sundry passages to show that while I hold the criticisms of the Idealist to be impossible without “tacitly or avowedly postulating an unknown something beyond consciousness,” I yet admit that “our states of consciousness are the only things we can know;” he goes on to argue that I am radically inconsistent, because, in interpreting the phenomena of consciousness, I continually postulate, not an unknown something, but a something of which I speak in ordinary terms, as though its ascribed physical characters really exist as such, instead of being, as I admit they are, synthetic states of my consciousness. His objection, if I understand it, is that for the purposes of Objective Psychology I apparently profess to know Matter and Motion in the ordinary realistic way; while, as a result of subjective analysis, I reach the conclusion that it is impossible to have that knowledge of objective existence which Realism supposes we have. Doubtless there seems here to be what he calls “a fundamental incoherence.” But I think it exists, not between my two expositions, but between the two consciousnesses of subjective and objective existence, which we cannot suppress and yet cannot put into definite forms. The alleged incoherence I take to be but another name for the inscrutability of the relation between subjective feeling and its objective correlate which is not feeling – an inscrutability which meets us at the bottom of all our analyses. An exposition of this inscrutability I have elsewhere summed up thus: —

“See, then, our predicament. We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are referred to the second for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it. We find the value of x in terms of y; then we find the value of y in terms of x; and so on we may continue for ever without coming nearer to a solution.” – Prin. of Psy. § 272.

Carrying a little further this simile, will, I think, show where lies the insuperable difficulty felt by Mr. Sidgwick. Taking x and y as the subjective and objective activities, unknown in their natures and known only as phenomenally manifested; and recognizing the fact that every state of consciousness implies, immediately or remotely, the action of object on subject or subject on object, or both; we may say that every state of consciousness will be symbolized by some modification of xy – the phenomenally-known product of the two unknown factors. In other words, xy′ , x′y , x′y′ , x″y′ , x′y″ , &c., &c., will represent all perceptions and thoughts. Suppose, now, that these are thoughts about the object; composing some hypothesis respecting its characters as analyzed by physicists. Clearly, all such thoughts, be they about shapes, resistances, momenta, molecules, molecular motions, or what not, will contain forms of the subjective activity x. Now let the thoughts be concerning mental processes. It must similarly happen that some mode of the unknown objective activity y , will be in every case a component. Now suppose that the problem is the genesis of mental phenomena; and that, in the course of the inquiry, bodily organization and the functions of the nervous system are brought into the explanation. It will happen, as before, that these, considered as objective, have to be described and thought about in modes of xy. And when by the actions of such a nervous system, conceived objectively in modes of xy , and acted upon by physical forces which are conceived in other modes of xy , we endeavour to explain the genesis of sensations, perceptions, and ideas, which we can think of only in other modes of xy, we find that all our factors, and therefore all our interpretations, contain the two unknown terms, and that no interpretation is imaginable that will not contain the two unknown terms.

What is the defence for this apparently-circular process? Simply that it is a process of establishing congruity among our symbols. It is finding a mode of so symbolizing the unknown activities, subjective and objective, and so operating with our symbols, that all our acts may be rightly guided – guided, that is, in such ways that we can anticipate, when, where, and in what quantity some one of our symbols, or some combination of our symbols, will be found. Mr. Sidgwick’s difficulty arises, I think, from having insufficiently borne in mind the statements made at the outset, in “The Data of Philosophy,” that such conceptions as “are vital, or cannot be separated from the rest without mental dissolution, must be assumed as true provisionally ;” that “there is no mode of establishing the validity of any belief except that of showing its entire congruity with all other beliefs;” and that “Philosophy, compelled to make those fundamental assumptions without which thought is impossible, has to justify them by showing their congruity with all other dicta of consciousness.” In pursuance of this distinctly-avowed mode of procedure, I assume provisionally, an objective activity and a subjective activity, and certain general forms and modes (Space, Time, Matter, Motion, Force), which the subjective activity, operated on by the objective activity, ascribes to it, and which I suppose to correspond in some way to unknown forms and modes of the objective activity. These provisional assumptions, having been carried out to all their consequences, and these consequences proved to be congruous with one another and with the original assumptions, these original assumptions are justified. And if, finally, I assert, as I have repeatedly asserted, that the terms in which I express my assumptions and carry on my operations are but symbolic, and that all I have done is to show that by certain ways of symbolizing, perfect harmony results – invariable agreement between the symbols in which I frame my expectations, and the symbols which occur in experience – I cannot be blamed for incoherence. On the contrary, it seems to me that my method is the most coherent that can be devised. Lastly, should it be said that this regarding of everything constituting experience and thought as symbolic, has a very shadowy aspect; I reply that these which I speak of as symbols, are real relatively to our consciousness; and are symbolic only in their relation to the Ultimate Reality.