b }Q06 iotneU Itntotsitg ptaatg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF iicnrg M. Sage 1891 /U°t^v?r (4i.D.\a.a5 3081 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029047086 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 7>^*f1. 7^f-^ PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES BY DAVID G. RITCHIE, M.A., LL.D. SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS- AUTHOR OF "NATURAL RIGHTS," ETC. EDITED, WITH A MEMOIR, BY ROBERT LATTA, M.A., D.Phil. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW Ionian MACMILLAN AND GO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY I9°S All rights reserved T' ^— — j ; GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. PREFACE In 1902 Professor Ritchie reprinted, under the title Studies in Political and Social JLthics, a number of essays in which he discussed " practical questions of political and social ethics on the basis of what may be called evolutionary utilitarianism, without raising, or at least without discussing, metaphysical questions." The present volume, on the other hand, consists of papers which are essentially philosophical, although they include incidentally many practical applications. Three of these papers are reprinted from the Philosophical Review and Mind, while the remaining three have been selected and arranged by me from Professor Ritchie's manuscripts. The Cogitatio Metaphysica is a general statement of his views on all the main questions of philosophy and religion. He had several times begun this and made some progress with it, only to leave it aside and begin again, and at his death it remained incomplete. Sections 1 to 21 inclusive, part of section 22, sections 23, 25 and 26, part of section 27, sections 28 and 29 and part of section 30 form the completed portion of the last draft. Following indications in Professor Ritchie's notes, I have completed section 22 from a review of Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism, and I have also expanded some of the other sections from various notes. The remainder (from section 31 onwards) I have compiled from notes in a manuscript vi PREFACE volume, which contained a complete outline, with headings, of the Cogitatio. The main parts of the Confessio Fidei and the " Moral Philosophy " were included, under these titles, in manuscript volumes ; but I have freely rearranged these, divided them into sections, expanded them from other notes and occasion- ally added connecting or explanatory sentences, which are indicated by square brackets. I have also revised the references throughout and added others. As Professor Ritchie's published works are concerned mainly with ethics and politics, it seemed to me that this posthumous volume should represent, as adequately as is now possible, the philosophical position that underlies his practical doctrine. I have therefore devoted the greater part of the Memoir to a connected exposition of his views in philosophy, and my aim has been, by full quotations from the notebooks, letters and other manuscripts which Mrs. Ritchie has kindly entrusted to me, to express his ideas as far as possible in his own words. As he wrote on these high subjects in a fresh and untechnical style, I hope that many readers, who know only his political and ethical writings, may find these studies illuminating and suggestive. My thanks are due to the editors of the Philosophical Review for their kind permission to reprint the articles on " the relation of logic to psychology " and " the relation of metaphysics to epistemology," to the editor of Mind for kindly allowing the republication of the article on " the One and the Many," and to Mrs. Ritchie for much valuable help in the preparation of the Memoir and the Index. R. L. Glasgow, Jpril, 1905. CONTENTS MEMOIR— I. Biographical, I II. Philosophical, 18 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA— What is Philosophy ? §§ 1-5, 66 Logic, §§ 6-13, 70 Metaphysics, §§ 14-21, 84 Psycho-Physical Parallelism, §§ 22-23, - 95 Morality, Society, etc., §§ 24-26, 1 10 Religion, Art, etc., §§ 27-44, ll 7 THE RELATION OF LOGIC TO PSYCHOLOGY, 134 THE RELATION OF METAPHYSICS TO EPISTE- MOLOGY, 172 THE ONE AND THE MANY, 192 I. The Logical Problem, 194 II. The Metaphysical Problem, 207 III. The Theological and Ethical Problem, 218 viii CONTENTS PAGE CONFESSIO FIDEI— § i. The Nature of God and the Problem of Scepticism, 230 §2. Essential Conditions of Knowledge, 231 § 3. Science and the Uniformity of Nature, 233 §4. Statement of these Ideas in Terms of Theology, 234. § 5. Knowledge of Our Imperfection Implies an Ideal, 235 § 6. The End of Conduct, 237 § 7. Free Will, 238 § 8. Immortality, 238 § 9. God, Freedom, Immortality — Objections, 239 §10. Free-Will and Predestination, 242 § II. Reason or Will, 244 § 12. The Wants of Our Nature, 244 § 13. Isolation of the Individual, 245 § 14. Personality, 247 § 15. The Universal and the Individual Self, 250 § 16. Religion, - 251 § 17. Evolutionary Fatalism, 252 § 18. Society and the State, 255 §19. Dialectic of Conduct : Conflict of Duties, 257 § 20. Position of the Social Reformer, 260 §21. The Significance of Martyrdom, 261 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. ON THE METHOD AND SCOPE OF ETHICS— § 1. Moral Philosophy and Science, - 264 § 2. Moral Philosophy and Psychology, 272 § 3. The Unity of Self-Consciousness in Relation to Moral Philosophy, 274 § 4. Personality and Society — The Historical Method, - 280 § 5. Scheme of a System of Ethics, 282 CONTENTS ix PAGE § 6. (A) Ethics a Philosophical Science — Difference between Philosophy and Science, - 283 § 6. (B) The Ethical End, ... 292 § 6. (C) Free-Will, 302 §7. Ethics and Religion, - - 310 § 8. The Relation of Religion to Ethics and Morality, 312 § 9. Christianity and Morality, - 3 ' 3 § 10. Society and its Institutions, 3 X 7 § 11. The Common Good in Relation to Conduct, 321 § 12. Custom and Moral Progress, 326 § 13. Morality and Nature, 332 § 14. Equality, - - - 335 §15. Means and End, - - 340 §16. Morals and Politics, - 341 INDEX, 345 Is an -i/rt/Jtrt t/fnufit/ /////? i/.t I '.rftwti MEMOIR /. BIOGRAPHICAL The life of a scholar and thinker is seldom rich in incident ; and accordingly my purpose in this Memoir is not so much to record events as to describe a personality, indicating opinions and ways of thought and life. David George Ritchie was born at Jedburgh in 1853. His father, the Rev. George Ritchie, D.D., who was minister of the parish, was a man of scholar- ship and culture, in high repute in the Church of Scotland, of whose General Assembly he was Modera- tor in 1870. Through the Rev. Dr. Aitken, of Minto, the family was connected with the Carlyles, and in 1889 Ritchie edited a volume of Early Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle. He also published in the Scottish Review an interesting article on "Germany in 1826," founded on the record of a tour made by Dr. Aitken, who met Hegel at Berlin, as well as Schleiermacher, Neander, and other men of note. His granduncle, Dr. William Ritchie, was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University. Another relative was Professor David Ritchie, Hamilton's predecessor in the Chair of Logic at Edinburgh University, whose interests, how- ever, lay rather in the direction of outdoor life and of such sports as curling than in the study of philosophy. According to Professor Campbell Fraser, 1 1 Biographla Philosophlca, p. 46 2 MEMOIR who was a pupil of his in the last of his twenty-eight years of professorship, he treated his class " more as an appendage to his ministerial charge than as the professor's supreme interest, after a fashion not un- common in philosophical professorships in Scotland about that time." Ritchie used to tell how his father, on his appointment to Jedburgh, asked his uncle for advice in performing the duties of his new charge. " Advice ! " said the Professor, " if you are a wise man, you don't need it, and if you are a fool you won't take it." And thereupon he began to discuss the best kind of flies for fishing the Border streams. Ritchie received his early schooling at Jedburgh Academy. He had two sisters, but no brother, and he was not allowed to make friends of the town boys. Consequently he lived an unboyish life, which had profound effects in later years. He never throughout his life learned to play games of any sort, and in these early days his chief recreation was solitary fishing. Much mental work and insufficient exercise tended to increase a constitutional nervous- ness, and, as he had no healthy natural outlet for his young energy, his mind became too early con- centrated on purely intellectual subjects. This early experience bred in him a longing for sympathetic companionship and a keen sense of loneliness, which he expresses vividly in his most intimate writings. 1 When his school days were over he matriculated at Edinburgh University. His bent was towards classical study, and he worked hard at Latin and Greek under Professors Sellar and Blackie, for both of whom he had a lasting regard. Blackie, as is well known, was eccentric and unsystematic in his teaching ; but Ritchie found him original and stimu- lating and learned a great deal from him. He used to tell of his surprise at finding, when he went to 1 Cf. pp. 245 sqq., 249, 276. BIOGRAPHICAL 3 Oxford, that his Greek prose was approved while in his Latin prose he was deficient. But in addition to what he obtained from Blackie, he probably owed much to the tuition of William Veitch who, as a private tutor, taught most of the abler students at Edinburgh during many years and whose Irregular Greek Verbs was a famous text-book. At Edin- burgh also Ritchie was introduced to philosophy by Professor Campbell Fraser, in whose class and in that of Professor Calderwood he gained the highest prizes, and his interest in the subject led him to join the students' Philosophical Society, where he discussed philosophical problems with the men of his own years. In one of his summers at Edinburgh he attended the class of botany, which was not required for the degree, and he thus formed an interest in natural science, which was useful, not merely as an outdoor hobby, but also as a preparation for further reading and thinking on biological problems, which bore fruit in his ethical and political theories. In later years, when he had returned to Scotland as a professor and when the endless questions of University reform were under discussion, he spoke often of the merits and demerits of the Scottish University system as compared with that of Oxford and Cambridge. He believed strongly in the Scottish lectures to large classes, as giving stimulus both to teachers and to taught, and especially as evoking interest and responsiveness in the students. But he regretted the absence in Scotland of sufficient guidance for the students' reading and (in the large Univer- sities) of personal intercourse between student and teacher. What he most strongly condemned was the system of class prizes and honours, awarded as the result of competition in essays and examinations. In this he saw a double evil, hindering the best educational results. On the one hand, it led to 4 MEMOIR bouts of over-study and cramming for this or the other class, alternating with periods of little else than note-taking, instead of moderate but regular study from day to day ; and, on the other hand, it made it almost necessary for a professor to refrain from giving advice and help to individual students, lest they should get an unfair advantage in the class competitions. At St. Andrews he endeavoured to lessen these evils by excluding essays from the com- petition for prizes, and by forming small classes of students for discussion and tutorial work. But he always felt that this was merely a makeshift and that nothing less than the abolition of class prizes would have really satisfactory results. After taking the Edinburgh degree of M.A. with First Class Honours in Classics, Ritchie went as an exhibitioner to Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained a First Class both in Moderations and in the Final "Greats" School. In 1878 he became a Fellow, and in 1881 a Tutor, of Jesus College. His work in connection with that College continued throughout his residence at Oxford, and from 1882 to 1886 he was also a Tutor at Balliol. In 1881 he married Miss Flora Lindsay Macdonell, who died in 1888, and he married again in 1889, his second wife being Miss Ellen S. Haycraft, who survives him along with a daughter of the first marriage and a son of the second. The work of the " Greats " School at Oxford, in which Ritchie as undergraduate and as tutor was for so many years engaged, consisted then as now mainly in the application of classical scholarship to the study of ancient history and political theory and ancient philosophy, with continual reference to modern developments and the problems of our own day. The first condition of a right understanding of our institutions and ways of thinking and of a sane pro- BIOGRAPHICAL 5 gress in politics and philosophy is the study of the growth of our civilisation, both on the side of practice and on that of thought, from its roots in ancient Greek life and speculation. Something like this was the dominant idea of Ritchie's work at Oxford ; and history, politics and philosophy, conceived from this point of view, became the chief interests of his life. His keen and scrupulous scholarly instincts delivered him from the dangers of rapid and abstract theorising and they were saved from passing, on the other hand, into pedantry and scholasticism by his living interest in the social and speculative problems of our own time. In his early years at Oxford he came under two great and harmonious influences, those of T. H. Green and Arnold Toynbee. Green's idealism had its roots in Hegel, to whom we owe the vitalising of the study of Greek philosophy and the broad conception of evolution which has led to the realising of the value of history in the study of modern thought and institutions. And Green's in- sistence on the duty of practical citizenship was in full harmony with the well-known work of Arnold Toynbee. Not that they and those who were in- fluenced by them held the same views, either in politics or in philosophy ; for they did not combine to institute a propaganda, but were united in virtue of common interests. Of Green's influence upon Ritchie it would be impossible to speak adequately without a long philo- sophical exposition ; but its nature may be inferred from their writings and from what will afterwards be said here regarding the governing ideas of Ritchie's thinking. His relations with Toynbee and with others of like mind are admirably described by Professor F. C. Montague, who has given me an interesting account of Ritchie and some of his friends in the early years of his life at Oxford. " Although," says Mr. Montague, 6 MEMOIR "I had been acquainted with Mr. Ritchie for some time before, I first became really intimate with him through the meetings of a little society of young men to which we both belonged and which had been formed by Arnold Toynbee in the summer of 1879. Toynbee was then full of enthusiasm for a renovation of modern politics inspired by belief in a religious and social ideal. He had chosen as members of the society several of his contemporaries who differed from him on many points or were even remote from him in habits of thought, but who would, he thought, under- stand his aims and enter into his aspirations. The original members besides Toynbee were A. Milner, P. L. Gell, J. D. Rogers, W. N. Bruce, Ritchie and myself, and we were joined some time later by E. T. Cook and B. R. Wise. Each of us took a depart- ment of public affairs for his province, and I remember that Milner took Foreign Relations and Ritchie Educa- tion. Our meetings were held sometimes in town, but oftenest in Oxford, and then in Ritchie's rooms at Jesus College. They were always very private and informal. Usually, but not always, somebody read a paper and then followed a conversation. The society lasted about three years, but expired as its members became more and more immersed in their own pur- suits. I remember the strongly original cast of Ritchie's mind. He was instinctively a philosopher with a strong tendency to system. His habit of deducing political conclusions from first principles, his dislike of compromise, his remarkably pointed and clear ex- pression struck me as rather French than English or even Scotch. Firmly as he held his own convictions, his gentle and sensitive nature ensured him from hurting those who might think otherwise. Indeed, others were prone to think that in the eagerness of discussion they might have grazed him, but he was far too earnest and unselfish ever to take offence. BIOGRAPHICAL 7 Both in writing and in conversing he had a remarkable gift of fresh, lively and characteristic expression. We all felt that he had an original and stimulating mind, and we learnt much from him although we might not be able even to approach agreement. I need not dwell at length on the particular opinions which he expressed. They were substantially the same as those which he set forth in his later writings. He was a zealous democrat, although his mode of thought seemed to have little affinity with that of common men. He was a socialist, and had the strongest belief in State action wherever possible. He had, I think, an instinctive antipathy to the English way of re- garding political questions. Nor had he, I think, much sympathy with Toynbee's peculiar temperament nor much tendency to approach modern politics from his spiritual standpoint. These discussions did not bring the members of the society nearer in belief, but they were full of interest and I look back upon them with a melancholy pleasure in which my recollection of Ritchie has a very large part." It need only be added that even at this more genial period of his life in Oxford Ritchie felt keenly the sense of intellectual loneliness and the longing for sympathy, to which reference has already been made, and that at a critical time his friendship with Arnold Toynbee saved him from a reckless indifference about himself and his future. In the interval between his graduation and the beginning of his teaching work he had difficulties about the choice of a profession. He had been brought up in the orthodox religion of his ancestral creed ; but inevitably as his mind developed, orthodoxy became to him useless and untrue. Accordingly he felt it impossible to enter the clerical profession, for which he had originally been destined, and at the same time he shrank from causing a sharp disappoint- ment to his family. Thus, although his father, with 8 MEMOIR whom he had the affectionate but reserved friendship which used to be common between fathers and sons, left him untrammelled in the choice of his life-work, he passed through a time of trying indecision. Attracted to the study of law by his interest in jurisprudence, constitutional history and political philosophy, he read for the English Bar ; but he had no wish to practise as a barrister. The tutorship at Jesus College, how- ever, solved his difficulties, and he adopted without hesitation the work of teaching. As a teacher at Oxford his study and instruction lay mainly in the departments of logic, moral philosophy and political theory; but the comprehensive concep- tion of evolutionary progress which was inherent in his idealist philosophical position led him to make a special study of the Lamarckian and Darwinian theories in biology, with the object of weighing and consider- ing the use of biological notions in politics and philosophy. This was an interest which remained with him through life and which enabled him to make his most characteristic contributions to the thought of his time. It gave him a definite field of his own, in which the philosophical convictions he held in common with many of his teachers and contemporaries could find an original application and a distinctive expression. His characteristics as a teacher of political philosophy at Oxford are well described in a letter to Mrs. Ritchie from Professor W. J. Ashley of Birmingham, who recalls the impression which Ritchie's teaching and conversation made upon him, when he was a young graduate in Oxford. "The attraction which Ritchie's speculations in political philosophy exercised on those who were drawn to him was due to the same cause as the like influence of T. H. Green and Arnold Toynbee — the complete fusion in him of the thinker and the citizen. Ritchie, absolutely free as he was from all sentimentality or gush, was yet 1ICAL 9 consumed by a passionate interest in the wellbeing of his fellowmen. He looked to political philosophy for practical guidance in his own conduct. The problem of ' the functions of the State ' was no matter of academic casuistry to him ; its solution determined his attitude to every contemporary political measure. The secret of his influence was that he cared intensely for the subject and never succumbed to that feeling of boredom which teachers in a University so often sur- render to, or cultivate. " But Ritchie — and this was another source of his power — was academic in an excellent sense. What- ever might be his own leanings, he was always scrupulously careful to know exacdy what the great masters of the world's thought, like Plato and Aristotle, Locke and Rousseau, had actually said, and to com- bine assent to or dissent from their meaning with an accurate knowledge of their text. I have often thought since, when confronted with the results of so-called ' sociological courses ' in America and elsewhere, what an enormous service it was which Ritchie did to his pupils and friends when he insisted on a thorough first-hand acquaintance with the actual words of the great writers. " The other point about Ritchie which occurs to me on looking back is that he was one of the very first among academic teachers to come to close quarters with modern biological or pseudo-biological theory in its relations to social ethics. Those who listened to him might conceivably continue to agree with Herbert Spencer's objections to State 'interference' on grounds of expediency ; they could hardly continue to have any intellectual respect for the self-contradictory phraseology of ' organism ' and the like in which he was fond of clothing them. " The crude individualism which bases itself on c the struggle for existence ' could not be disposed of quite io MEMOIR so simply. It was indeed quite time that somebody who knew the best that the philosophers have said should deal very seriously with the current notions of the ' scientific ' man in the street. Ritchie did so, I cannot but think, with a large measure of success — a success due to his own acquaintance with biological theory as set forth by its greatest exponent, Darwin, and his complete acceptance of it in its own field. " These comments are sadly inadequate. Ritchie's teaching entered so deeply into the substance of my thought that I find it hard to disentangle his special influence. I am sure that I am not alone in that respect, and that his influence has been considerable and far-reaching. Not to speak of men in England and Scotland academically educated, the pirated edition of his Darwinism and Politics is every day giving men in remote parts of America a basis for their social faith." In spite of the exacting duties of a tutorial post at Oxford, Ritchie found time to prepare the greater part of his published writings during his residence there. He contributed an essay on " The Rationality of History " to the volume of Essays in Philosophical Criticism, edited by Professor Andrew Seth and Mr. R. B. Haldane and published in 1883. Along with Professor R. Lodge and Mr. P. E. Matheson he trans- lated Bluntschli's Theory of the State, and he also published Darwinism and Politics (1889), Principles of State-Interference (1891), and Darwin and Hegel (1893). He was a frequent contributor to various journals of philosophy, including Mind, The Philosophical Review and The International Journal of Ethics, and some of his articles were reprinted in the Darwin and Hegel volume. He also wrote papers for the Aristotelian Society, which were published in its Proceedings, and he contributed a number of articles to the Dictionary BIOGRAPHICAL 1 1 of Political Economy and to Chambers's Encyclopaedia. His largest book, Natural Rights, was completed before he left Oxford, but was not published until 1895. This is no small amount of literary production in ten or twelve years of a busy tutor's life at Oxford. But, though Ritchie was full of interest in his work, he felt that much more might be done in a Scottish chair of philosophy, with its wide spaces of summer leisure. The climate of Oxford also depressed him, and he held it responsible for a good deal of the petite sante which troubled him throughout his life. Accordingly he was more than once a candidate for chairs in Scotland, and in 1894 he was appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at St. Andrews University, in succession to Professor Henry Jones of Glasgow. His teaching had hitherto been concerned more with moral philosophy than with logic, and he had not been called upon to give much instruction in metaphysics to advanced students, nor had there been occasion for regular lectures in modern psycho- logy. But his work now included a large number of lectures (150 or more in the five or six months of each winter session) in logic, psychology, meta- physics and the history of philosophy. Accordingly, during the early years of his residence at St. Andrews, the greater part of his time was occupied with the work of his classes. He was also unfortunate in the time of his coming to St. Andrews. The University was in the midst of a long and bitter conflict, involving litigation and much party feeling, regarding the position of University College, Dundee, the disposition of the Berry Bequest and the establishment of a medical school. The issues of the campaign affected not only the finance but the whole educational future of the University, and its incidents had more than once a disturbing effect on the actual teaching in nearly all the departments of study. It was impossible for the most pacific of 12 MEMOIR scholars, if he had any regard for his own and his students' work, to stand aloof from the battle. Ritchie's strong sense of public duty led him to take his full share in the controversy, of course on the side of progress and common-sense which ultimately prevailed. The extraordinary and incalculable incidents of the long struggle, when the University was " lost " and "saved" again every few months, and the pro- ceedings of the reactionaries in power were as tragic to the teaching staff as they were comic to the detached spectator, brought much worry and distraction to Ritchie, who was able, however, to relieve himself occasionally by the writing of delightfully satiric verse as well as prose skits on the ways and sayings of the tormentors. But all this was good neither for health nor for literary production, and it was not until the dispute had been satisfactorily settled by the law courts, the Universities' Commission and the Privy Council, that he was able fully to resume his work as a writer and to publish his volume of Studies in Political and Social Ethics and his Plato, both of which appeared in 1902. During his tenure of the chair at St. Andrews Ritchie naturally gave most of his interest to the logical and metaphysical aspects of philosophy. At one time he had it in mind, if opportunity occurred, to seek a chair of moral philosophy, as that subject was more in the line of his earlier work. But when, in the last year of his life, the professorship of moral philosophy at St. Andrews was vacant and it was suggested that he might desire to exchange, he preferred to retain the teaching of logic and used his influence to secure the election of Mr. Bosanquet as his colleague. His studies in ethics and politics, however, had an excellent effect on his lectures in the more speculative side of philosophy. Logic in his hands ceased to be a fruitless art of intellectual jugglery. He conceived it as a real BIOGRAPHICAL 13 analysis of concrete reasoning, and he went behind the scholastic and post-scholastic forms of the text-books, with their abstract rigid applications, to the deeper and freer principles of Aristotle. In his discussions of J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, as well as in his lectures on psychology and metaphysics, he gave point to his arguments by felicitous illustrations and examples, drawn from his wide reading in history, politics, ethics and biology. For he was never afraid of metaphor, illustration and vividness in exposition, believing that metaphors are harmful in philosophy only when they are unconscious and that the deliberate avoidance of them is a counsel of despair. Though no one spoke more strongly of the perils of " picture-thinking," no one could more skilfully encourage a halting audience by concrete stepping-stones to higher thought. And not merely the form but the matter of his lectures owed much to his pre-occupation with social problems. As he put it in a paper read to the Scots Philosophical Club, " the study of the methods of social science is a necessary part of logic ; the study of the social factor in mind and of the relation between the individual and society is an essential part of psychology and of ethics." He was convinced that the ultimate issues in ethics and in metaphysics were fundamentally the same, and he continually insisted on the importance of the social factor in perception, imagination, thinking and belief, as well as in the history of political institutions and moral systems. Probably the very fact that the social element is at first sight less prominent in the intellectual than in the practical human activities attracted him specially to the study and teaching of logic, psychology and metaphysics. In spite of the academic troubles Ritchie found much to satisfy him in his life at St. Andrews. He worked hard for his subject, his students and the University as a whole, not caring much for the details of business, i 4 MEMOIR but scrupulously attending and giving his help at the innumerable meetings which are needed to move the wheels of a place of learning in Scotland. His classes were not so large as to be unwieldy, and he had special pleasure in the work of his honours students, whom he could know individually and to whom he could give of his best in the frank and equal discussion which he loved. In general public affairs and in conventional society, where the interchange of ideas too often falls almost to a least common measure of intelligence, he took little part. He who was in the best sense social to his finger-tips used often ironically to describe him- self as " unsocial." But nothing gave him greater pleasure than to beat out, in long talks with colleagues and friends, the larger questions of philosophy and politics, art, literature and religion. To these discus- sions, for which he found frequent opportunity at St. Andrews, he brought not merely hard thinking but imagination, humour and a rare susceptibility to aes- thetic impressions. His talk was always charged with learning, thoroughly assimilated so as to be a part of himself rather than even lightly worn as a coat of mail or a weapon or a flower; and withal he was entirely unassuming and free from self-consciousness. He always unconsciously raised people to his own standard of thought, and he never, even in talk with a child, took up the position of knowing what was right but argued the matter out on equal terms. This inevitably brought him the strong affection of all who knew him well, and in the conditions of life at St. Andrews, favourable alike to intimacy and to antipathy, it mitigated his feeling of loneliness and increased the happiness which he regarded as a means rather than as the end of the best life. The climate of St. Andrews suited Ritchie better than that of Oxford. His dislike of games prevented him from playing golf; but cycling and country walks. BIOGRAPHICAL 15 which he greatly enjoyed, kept him in fair physical condition. One or two attacks of influenza depressed him and possibly left hidden traces of evil; but he had no illness so serious as to interrupt his teaching until the last fortnight of his life. His spare and somewhat delicate-looking but agile figure suggested the type of man who is " never well and never ill," for whom one is ready to prophesy a long life, remem- bering the proverb about creaking doors that hang long. But his life was destined to be all too short. In the end of 1902 and beginning of 1903 he was much troubled with neuralgic pains. Towards the end of January he took rest, on his doctor's advice, and spent a few days in bed. He grew gradually weaker, and on February 2nd symptoms of grave nervous trouble shewed themselves. The end came swiftly and merci- fully the following evening. It is difficult, if not impossible, to put on paper any adequate impression of Ritchie's many-sided person- ality. His spiritual lineaments were like those which in some people make every portrait a disappointment. Those who knew him well will always, in recalling him, think first of the simple, indefinable charm which eludes description, a charm not genial in the common sense (for he was reserved without being austere), nor flashing and wayward (for though he could coin an epigram on occasion, he shone rather than glittered), but a charm of exalted sanity, the charm of one who takes you, as it were, a few hundred feet higher in thought than you had ever been before, and gives you a new outlook on familiar things. Much of this charm was due to his complete freedom from pre-occupation with himself, his whole and simple devotion to inquiry and to truth, and his pure human sympathy. Men who can take you to intellectual heights too often drag you there and lecture you until your pleasure in the new view disappears in your resentment at being 16 MEMOIR regarded as pre-eminently foolish and ignorant. In intercourse with Ritchie there was no shadow of this kind. By his very sensitiveness to excellence in other people he brought them unconsciously to his own level and drew from them more than they seemed to possess. Above all things he detested inferior and pretentious work, which he regarded as seriously immoral ; but the intensity of his dislike to moral and intellectual failure led him to avoid mentioning circumstances that told against others, and even to feel a sort of shrinking from such failures as if they wounded him personally. In this he was influenced no less by his social ideals than by his single mind in the seeking of truth. For it seemed to him that much error in judgment arises from making too hard a distinction between intellec- tual and moral virtues and defects, and he held that intellectual ignorance and incapacity is in great part a result of indifference to social progress, and is thus moral in its source. His own social optimism made him an ardent and incessant worker, restlessly intent on thoroughness of thinking, impatient of abstractions and hazy generalisations, and scrupulous in his endea- vour to attain accuracy of statement and reference as regards even the minutest details. But there was no hardness in his sense of duty. It was rather a buoyant and optimistic belief, springing from his living interest in human wellbeing and progress. For him the whole duty of man lay not in doing good things, but in doing them well, and from this deep moral conviction there passed into his life a courtesy, gentleness and frankness that seemed instinctive in its readiness and ease. Except in matters of conduct Ritchie was little of an artist, though he was unfailingly witty, and skilled in the craft of letters. But he had a great love of poetry and art, and in talk about literary and artistic questions, his judgments were often luminous and BIOGRAPHICAL 17 suggestive. Though he had little ear for music, his mental alertness made him a good critic. It was, for instance, an idea of his own that Mendelssohn's concerted music had in it all the elements that were brought out consciously and developed by Wagner. In every kind of art his appreciation was for form rather than for colour, and as regards culture in general his sympathies were more with the classical than with the Teutonic elements. " I think," he said, in a letter to Professor Alexander (1888), "the Weltgeist has harnessed the Teutonic horse to the chariot of civilisation, but the driver is an Italian or a Romanised Celt, who has got his training from Athens and Jerusalem. Everything that lifts us above barbarians (i.e. mere Teutons) has come to us from or through Italy." Yet even in the most unclassical writers he found work which he could appreciate and enjoy. Thus he wrote (in 1886), " I am delighted at last to have found a poem of Walt Whitman's that seems to me the most genuine poetry. It is on Lincoln's death and is called ' When lilac blooms.' It is like a grand piece of music (although it contains the words c debris,' ' depot,' ' minutiae,') and as an elegy one can put it beside that on Saul and Jonathan." He was fond of a good novel, especially if its art lay in the depicting of character. " The best treatises on moral philo- sophy are good novels. But this is an esoteric doctrine, and not to be rashly communicated to the young, nor to those who arrange examinations in mental and moral science. Suppose Thackeray and Balzac were made subjects of examination in place of Plato and Aristotle, Locke and Kant, there might be some chance of these latter authors being fairly understood and appreciated." In his thinking, as in his life, the ideal of social wellbeing and progress was Ritchie's ruling motive. 1 8 MEMOIR It was the complete dominance of this ideal in him, its full penetration of his spirit, that gave him his distinctive position, and was the mainspring of all his work. He drew from this his quick and wide interest in many great studies, in politics and history, in institutions and customs, civil and religious, in the geographical features of civilised countries, in biology and economics. Thus when his speech or writing rose into the thinnest air of pure speculation, it was always enriched and vitalised by his knowledge of the facts of human experience. Yet he never lost himself in the interest of detail, but maintained through the vivacity and picturesqueness of his instances a firm hold on principles, the grasp of a clear mind and a strong purpose. Pre-eminently a thinker, he abhorred thinking in vacuo, and his peculiar strength lay in his combination of philo- sophic insight with a living interest in human affairs, past, present, and future. //. PHILOSOPHICAL When one considers the lines of Ritchie's educa- tion and study, and the subjects which mainly interested him, one can see how inevitably his thinking came to be dominated by his view of history and science, on the one hand, and of logic, ethics, and politics on the other. From his training in Greek philosophy and in modern idealism, he received the fundamental attitude of thought which, in various forms, appears in the distinctions between the question of origin and that of validity, between historical and logical method, between fact and meaning, between picturing and conceiving. The essence of this distinction is as old as Plato; but it requires re-interpretation and fresh discussion in every philosophic generation. Ritchie's whole thought was ruled by it and by PHILOSOPHICAL 19 the problems which it raises, and the special value of his work lies in this, that he did not merely reiterate and defend it as an abstract principle, but skilfully applied it to concrete questions in new and original ways. Although the distinction is familiar to all trained philosophical students, its special appli- cations have been only imperfectly worked out, and writers as well as readers in many departments of knowledge find it difficult to assent to it and to appreciate its value. Ritchie felt this very strongly. In a letter (February 7th, 1886), in which he explains the application of the principle to religious questions, he writes : "I fear I weary you and vex you by saying the same sort of thing over and over again ; but I am so much convinced of the truth of it, that it always seems to me that it must be owing to some defect in the way of putting it that it fails to produce conviction. And yet, as it is a way of looking at the whole question of religion which so few people in England at least will accept, perhaps I should not be so confident. And there always remains this great difficulty in practice. The majority of people always tend to clothe a spiritual truth in mythological form, i.e. to think of eternal relations as if these were par- ticular events in time, and so to state " value " in terms of " origin," so that there is a constantly recurring conflict. And often one feels it wrong, for the sake of difference in the way of expressing a truth, to separate oneself from the ordinary Christian — by which separation there comes so much loss, moral and otherwise. And yet again, the utter heedlessness of truth in the ecclesiastical mind sends one back again into indignant protest and solitude." The most elaborate statement and illustration of the principle, as Ritchie conceived it, is given in the essay on " Origin and Validity " in his volume Darwin and Hegel. But he was continually developing the idea, 20 MEMOIR and it appears in its latest forms in the present volume, more especially in the Cogitatio Metaphysica (pp. 76, 88, 97 sqq., 127 sqq.). While he insisted on the recog- nition of the distinction as necessary for clear thinking in philosophy, ethics, politics and religion, it must not be supposed that he regarded it as absolute, or that he sympathised with the view that there are different " spheres " or " kinds " of truth, consisting of "judgments of fact" and "judgments of value," each independent of the other and each equally ulti- mate. The business of knowledge is to ascertain the true nature of things, and this can never be fully given by any answer to the question of their origin. The question of validity is the ultimate question. As he puts it, using the language of Aristotle, in the essay on " Origin and Validity," the final cause of a thing, the end which it comes to serve, must be known, if we are to know the true nature of the thing {fi Se (pva-i's re\o? eut'l). Yet no one could be more opposed than was Ritchie to any teleological " short cuts " to truth. He had no sympathy with the facile and uncritical testing of the nature of a thing by reference to unanalysed conceptions of " indi- vidual or finite purpose " or " practical efficiency." The " use " of a thing is doubtless an expression ot its nature ; but its nature cannot be determined off- hand by the uses to which we put it. The final cause which is the ultimate meaning and nature of a thing is an immanent final cause. It is the thing seen, not as an event in this or that temporal series or as an element in one or another limited " universe of discourse," but in its consistency with itself and other things in the one all-inclusive system of reality. Thus the scientific, historical knowledge of things as events or phenomena is at once indispensable and incomplete. Some answer to the question of origin is required in order that we may deal with the question PHILOSOPHICAL 21 of validity ; but an answer to the one question ought never to be substituted for an answer to the other. We cannot, for instance, rightly relate man to the whole universe immediately, without studying him as he is for physics and biology as well as for psychology, nor can we rightly regard the physical, the biological or the psychological account of him as expressing his whole meaning or nature. But, as we have seen, Ritchie was so much impressed with the harm that has been done to thinking by neglect of the distinc- tion between origin and validity, that in most of his writing he tended to emphasise and illustrate it rather than to dwell upon its aspect of relativity. In metaphysics Ritchie applied this distinction as an eirenicon in the modern conflict between materialism or realism and idealism. He states his attitude con- cisely in the preface to Darwin and Hegel (p. vi). " 'Idealism' and ' Materialism' are commonly spoken of as antagonistic types of philosophy ; and, in a sense, they are. I have tried to show that one form of idealism is quite compatible with that materialistic monism which is now-a-days the working hypothesis of every scientific explorer in every department, what- ever other beliefs or denials he may, more or less explicitly and more or less consistently, superadd. Materialistic monism, it seems to me, only becomes false when put forward as a complete philosophy of the universe, because it leaves out of sight the con- ditions of human knowledge, which the special sciences may conveniently disregard, but which a candid philo- sophy cannot ignore. It is too probable that my eirenicon, like other efforts at peace-making, may only result in provoking a twofold hostility, and that ' Darwinians ' and ' Hegelians ' will both look on me as a heretic. But I cannot, as yet, see any other way out of a hopeless controversy than that towards which I have been led, especially by the teaching of 22 MEMOIR the late Thomas Hill Green on the one side, and by the influence of scientific friends on the other. And this Idealist Evolutionism (if a label is necessary) seems to me to give the best starting-point for an examination of the concrete problems of ethics and politics, which are, after all, the most urgent difficulties with which we have to deal." A fuller account of this "Idealist Evolutionism" was given in a paper read at the opening meeting of a " synthetic society " in the University of St. Andrews, the object of which was to bring together students of science and students of philosophy for the purpose of mutual discussion and the promotion of a better understand- ing between workers in different fields. After approv- ing what Huxley described as the " legitimate materialism " of the sciences, which " simply means temporary and convenient abstraction from the cog- nitive conditions under which alone there are ' facts ' or ' objects ' for us at all," as distinct from the " dog- matic materialism," which is " metaphysics of the bad sort," Ritchie refers to some of the features in modern science which " show the effort to reach a unity behind the manifold of phenomena " and points out the significance of these in relation to an idealist philo- sophy. " If I may so express it, all our sciences seem to assume a monistic metaphysics. The doctrine of the conservation of energy is an assertion of that monism — unity amid difference of manifestation. The evolution theory is an assertion of the principle of Continuity (on which Leibniz laid stress long ago), which is unity asserted again amid the difference of time and change. As already said, the sciences which deal with phenomena in space and time necessarily use a materialistic working hypothesis, though the most careful scientific worker will probably be the most cautious in dogmatizing as to what matter itself is. Now in these tendencies of modern science — in PHILOSOPHICAL 23 spite of its differentiation — we have, as it were, hands held out to philosophy. Philosophy, the endeavour after synthesis, must, it seems to me (though I know there are some who deny it in words) be 'monistic' An ultimate ' pluralism ' — an acquiescence in or theory of totally distinct and independent entities not in- cluded within one all-embracing system — such a notion seems to me unthinkable. Further, all philosophy, it seems to me, must be idealist. I cannot see how an ultimate explanation can be attempted except in terms of reason or intelligence. To give any other explanation is to refuse to explain. To refer one to feeling or emotion is not a philosophical explanation : a symphony of Beethoven may seem to many persons preferable to metaphysics or theology ; but it is not a philosophical answer to our questions. But in saying that philosophy is idealistic, while the sciences are materialist, I do not mean to suggest that there is a necessary conflict between philosophy and the sciences, though there is necessarily a difference be- tween the procedure of the understanding when it is dealing with some ' abstract ' isolated aspect of things and the work of reason in its endeavour to see things as a whole. Nor, on the other hand, do I mean to suggest that in these tendencies towards a monistic view of the universe, to which I have referred, we have a final treaty of peace between the sciences on the one side and theology and philosophy on the other : the region of most controversy is just the relation between the unity which a rational theory of the universe, we might say, presupposes and the mani- fold of phenomena as we know them in experience — the old and central philosophical controversy about the relation between the one and the many." " It is not, I hold, the business of philosophy to interfere in the controversies which arise within par- ticular sciences. In any case the special student of 24 MEMOIR philosophy is not likely in these days to have sufficient detailed knowledge to interfere profitably. It is his business to wait and loyally to accept the best results of scientific knowledge in his time ; they are part of the data which it is his business to try to connect and so to explain. It is a mistake which has constantly been made in the past by those who are anxious for the spiritual interests of man, to interfere with the changes that are going on in scientific conceptions. Such interference has always ended in the defeat of the supporters of quasi-scientific doctrines which the growing science of the time has discarded. Theology interfered with Galileo and gained nothing in the end by its interference. Astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, historical criticism have at different periods raised alarm in the minds of those who dread a materialistic view of man's nature ; and with the very best intentions they have tried to fight the supposed enemy on his own ground, eagerly welcoming, for instance, every sign of disagreement between Dar- winians and Lamarckians or every dispute between different schools of historical critics, as if the spiritual wellbeing of mankind were bound up with the scientific beliefs of the 17th or some earlier century, as if, e.g., it made all the difference in man's spiritual nature whether he was made directly out of inorganic dust or slowly ascended from lower organic forms. These are questions that must be settled by the specialists. On the other hand, philosophic criticism is in place when the scientific specialist begins to dogmatise about the universe as a whole, when he speaks, for example, as if an accurate narrative of the various steps by which the lower forms of life have passed into the higher was a sufficient explanation to us of the mystery of existence. . . . When the dog- matic materialist tells us that thought is a secretion of the brain, or speaks of laws of nature as if they PHILOSOPHICAL 25 were personal agents, or when he hypostatises Evolu- tion, as if before the blast of that trumpet word all philosophies and theologies must fall down, then it is time for the philosophical critic to imitate Socrates and to ask troublesome questions about the meaning of common words like ' cause ' and ' reality,' and to show that an infinite series of events in infinite time past does not give a final explanation of the universe, any more than does the Indian mythology which rests the world on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise, and which could no doubt, if required, have continued the series down and down. In raising these ultimate questions, philosophy is only renewing that wonder which, in Aristotle's famous phrase, is the beginning of all science. And the advance of scientific knowledge has usually not diminished the magnitude of the problem to be explained, while it has made it con- tinuously less easy for any one to believe in an ultimately chaotic or irrational universe. . . . The discoveries of a Newton or a Darwin give us no com- plete answer : for we feel that the universe which can produce a Newton and a Darwin must in its ultimate nature be not less intelligent than they. Considera- tions such as this, when combined with the epistemological truth that matter and motion are only known to us as forms of consciousness, may suggest how strong is the basis of philosophical idealism, difficult and doubtful as the superstructure may be." The form of this view on which Ritchie most often dwelt in his later years is carefully set forth in his review of Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism, a portion of which is reprinted in the Cogitatio Metaphysica, §22. It led him to oppose strongly, on the one hand, the uncritical use of physical and biological categories as metaphysical principles, which he found in the writings of Spencer and other philosophical evolutionists, and on the other hand, the attempts to vindicate a spiritual 26 MEMOIR view of the universe on the ground of the impenetrable " personality " of God and of individual men, along with such theories as pluralism, " the will to believe " and all forms of apologetic which seek to establish the spiritual by finding discontinuity in the natural — by maintaining, for example, the existence of ultimate " g a P s " m tne P rocess of evolution. " Naturalist " metaphysics seemed to him to rest on a confusion of the questions of fact and of meaning. The laws of physics and biology are generalised statements of fact, the truth or validity of which is dependent on certain abstract conditions or assumptions regarding space, time, matter, energy, organism, environment, etc. Such laws, when duly established, are true as facts under their appropriate conditions, within their special " universes of discourse " ; but they cannot on that account be regarded as having necessarily an ultimate validity, a validity under all conditions, as being im- mediately true within the whole universe of reality. They are true so far as they go ; but they do not go all the way. They tell us the nature of things up to a certain point, the nature of things as events of a certain kind ; but the question remains : What are events ? What are their various kinds, and how are they related to each other and to the whole in which they appear ? This is a question of meaning rather than of fact, and we cannot penetrate to the true nature of anything except by attempting the solution of it. If we neglect this, we deceive ourselves by hasty and misleading generalisation. On the other hand, those critics of " naturalism " who oppose it by in- sisting on a certain amount of discontinuity in the universe and by trying to exclude a specific part of experience from the sway of mechanical law, seemed to Ritchie to err in a similar way, but in an opposite direction. They seek to fortify islands of meaning in an estranging sea of fact, and they thus are unable PHILOSOPHICAL 27 to show that the meanings are the meanings of the facts. The " exclusive personalities " on which they insist are, just because they are exclusive, not the ultimate concrete reality of things, but abstractions of another sort, abstractions of "purpose," "will," "in- dividuality," " feeling," " spirit," logically akin to the " naturalist " abstractions of " matter," " energy," " organism," " natural selection " and the rest. " Per- sonality," he says in some rough notes on the subject, " is too apt to be treated as a solution or rather as a phrase with which to stop the mouths or arrest the progress of inquirers. A philosophical system is roughly brushed aside as untrue — certainly as danger- ous — because it seems incompatible with the personality of man and the personality of God, — whatever these phrases may mean and whether they mean the same thing with one another or not." He points out that " only in society are there ' persons,' " and that when we come to consider the ultimate metaphysical problem of the relations of man, nature and God, we must use the conception of the one in the many, not the one alongside of the many. Or, as someone else has put it, we must not expect to find the unity " lying about among the differences." " The rival theory of 'monads,' pluralism, requires unity in order to be a philosophical explanation. It comes from hypostatising some of the abstractions of ordinary belief. It is valid as a protest • on behalf of the manifold and the changing in nature, against a monism which excludes diversity, change. But mere multiplicity is contradictory and so is mere evolution, all change, iravra pet. The only tenable theory must reconcile both — the one in the many, the permanent appearing in change. Time and change are not, then, mere illusions. They are not absolute, cer- tainly, but the manifestation of the absolute. This manifestation in time is evolution. Thus there is a connection between nature and man, and yet they are 28 MEMOIR distinct when consciousness appears. Spirit comes to itself in man." In brief, then, Ritchie's metaphysical position on its critical side is a protest against the hypostatising, on the one hand, of abstractions of " fact " in the form of scientific laws and principles, and, on the other hand, of abstractions of " meaning " cut off from " fact," in the form of ordinary beliefs accepted without analysis and without investigation of their history. The distinction between fact and meaning also governs Ritchie's view of the history of philosophy, although he does not in this case expressly apply it. In a paper on " Philosophy and the study of philo- sophers " {Mind, Vol. VII. N.S.), he points out that there are " three main attitudes towards the doctrines of the old philosophers. First, there is the attitude of submission to authority." This attitude tends to become purely historical or philological rather than strictly philosophical, an inquiry into the facts regarding some thinker's opinions rather than into the meaning and value of his ideas. " A great deal of the prevalent historical interest in philosophers of the past is not properly interest in philosophy ; the two interests may even sometimes, as Green said, be in the inverse ratio. Much of the study of Plato and Aristotle is scholarship. Much of the minute study of Kant has been correctly called ' Kantphilologie.' ' The second attitude is that "represented by Bacon and Descartes — revolt against authority, assertion of individual independence in think- ing. Earlier philosophies are regarded as false. They are systems to be thrown aside. If they are dealt with, it is only that they may be refuted." Manifesdy such an attitude as this implies that the one question to be considered is that of the validity or meaning of philosophical conceptions and that the question of their history is entirely irrelevant to this. But, while history alone cannot answer our questions, the neglect of the PHILOSOPHICAL 29 history of philosophy is a sure method for the produc- tion of fallacious answers. " No avoidance of meta- physics, but only serious metaphysical effort enables us to detect the assumptions " of common-sense know- ledge and the special sciences. " ' Enough metaphysics to get rid of metaphysical ideas ' means in truth a very thorough metaphysical training, and, not merely a great deal of logical acuteness in unravelling complex concepts lurking under apparently simple words, but a know- ledge of the history of thought in the past which has gone to form the intellectual ground on which we are standing, the intellectual atmosphere we breathe." " When the religious or the philosophical systems of the past are studied in what we have come to consider ' the historical spirit,' when criticism passes from merely refuting opinions to showing how and why these opinions came to be held, above all when the concep- tion of development or evolution is extended from the natural world to the world of human thought, we have left behind the purely negative attitude to ideas that we no longer accept, and we come to see the long series of attempts to grapple with the central problems of knowledge and reality not as stray opinions with which we do not happen to agree, but as parts of one continuous movement in which our own thinking is itself included." This is the third attitude, the attitude of Hegel, which Ritchie adopted as alone satisfactory. It does not confuse origin with validity, nor does it neglect either, but it gives to each its appropriate sphere. While, however, in discussing science it was necessary to lay stress on the question of validity, it is equally necessary, in dealing with philosophy, to emphasise the value of history, which philosophers, interested in universal problems rather than in facts, are apt to overlook. Accordingly in this connection Ritchie dwelt mainly on the continuity of philosophical thought in its history, the evolution of ideas ; but he 30 MEMOIR certainly did not mean to suggest that a knowledge of the history of philosophy could take the place of independent thinking. " Despairing of finding the truth, people sometimes begin assiduously to seek the exact forms in which successive errors have been held (substituting historical antiquarianism for philosophy). But to know the errors, must we not know the truth ? " And again, " Every one must have his own philosophy. We can only face the problems rightly if we face them for ourselves. And for that reason one of the dangers we have to guard against is the scholastic habit of becoming the mere expositors of any one master, how- ever great. For that reason we should welcome the rebels and the doubters, and should value every oppor- tunity of serious discussion with those who have grown up under different influences from those that have moulded ourselves, or who by a long labour of systematic thinking have reached an independent posi- tion from which they criticise our most cherished judgments about the philosophers of the past." In his discussions of the problems of logic and the theory of knowledge Ritchie continually urged the necessity of holding fast to the distinction between logical questions as questions of validity and psychologi- cal questions as questions of fact or origin. He carried this distinction out in detail in his class lectures on J. S. Mill's Logic, and it is illustrated so frequently in his essays in this volume and elsewhere that I need not dwell upon it. He held strongly that the ideal of truth is the complete self-consistency of a rational system, and accordingly he maintained that " the in- conceivability of the opposite," if the phrase be rightly interpreted, is the sole ultimate criterion of truth. The formula, however, is often wrongly understood, both by sensationist and by intuitionist thinkers, who tend to give it a psychological rather than a logical sense. The question is not, What is it impossible for PHILOSOPHICAL 31 this or that person, or for all persons at a particular time, to conceive ? or what is it impossible for anyone at any time to picture ? but, what is it impossible for anyone at any time thoroughly and consistently to think out ? Whatever, by the very nature of its own content, apart from any question of the limits of our understanding as individuals or as men in general, cannot be consistently thought out is false and its opposite is true. There are degrees of truth, in the sense that this or that statement may be true under conditions, the validity of which has not been examined. But only that is absolutely true which, by its own nature, taking into account all the conditions and assumptions which it implies, can be consistently thought out. This, of course, means that truth does not depend in the last resort either upon abstract universal principles, intuitively known, or upon un- analysable abstract particulars, given in sensation. Both the logic of a priori intuitionism and that of a posteriori empiricism divorce fact from meaning, particular from universal. Intuitionism grounds itself on isolated meanings and endeavours deductively to approximate to the foreign facts, while empiricism begins with isolated facts and seeks inductively to establish laws, which are not the essential meaning of the facts, but are merely convenient colligations of them. In reality, neither fact nor meaning, neither particular nor uni- versal, is a given starting-point of knowledge. Both are ideals, and knowledge is the process of their realisation. Truth is the definition both of the universal and of the particular by a process of knowledge which seeks to comprehend the manifestation of the universal in the particular, the essential nature of the fact in the light of its meaning. Thus Ritchie had little positive interest in the symbolic logic which consists in the mathematical manipulation of fixed concepts (abstract universals), torn out of their context in actual concrete 32 MEMOIR discourse, and he often dwelt upon the error of dealing with logical questions in a purely mathematical way. On the other hand, he was equally convinced of the futility of trying to solve problems in logic or the theory of knowledge by an appeal to such scientific theories as natural selection or heredity. Thus, for instance, he regarded Spencer's view, that what is a posteriori to the race becomes a priori to the in- dividual, as being an irrelevant answer to the problem of the theory of knowledge, inasmuch as, even if it were true (which he doubted) it would be an answer merely to the question of fact and not to the question of meaning, which is the question in dispute. What- ever may be the facts about the development of the universals we employ, the problem of their validity remains. As he put it in a letter to Professor S. Alexander : — " Natural selection may produce greater ease in getting at truth ; but I can't see what is meant by natural selection creating truth. The logical problem of ' necessity ' seems to me to remain after every psychological and historical explana- tion of the growth of knowledge has been given. You see I am stuck fast in that old distinction." Again " natural selection {plus use-inheritance if you like) has as yet produced only a very imperfect adapta- tion of our likes and dislikes in taste, smell, etc., to what is life-furthering or life-hindering : how has it managed, working through a far shorter period, to produce an absolutely perfect adaptation of our beliefs (when we think clearly and distinctly) about mathe- matical axioms, etc., to reality ? To have a liking for unwholesome things is surely more deleterious to the organism than to imagine the diagonal commensurable with the side of the square, to try to square the circle, etc. One would have expected natural selection to produce an expectation that things that are equal to the same thing will most likely equal one another, that PHILOSOPHICAL 33 nature is sometimes uniform and sometimes not, etc. I think you are quite right in accentuating the signifi- cance of our organic experience in determining the content of our categories, e.g. 'cause' is (except by a special effort at elimination of 'animism') pictured as conscious voluntary agency, 'substance' and 'individu- ality ' are ' metaphors ' from ourselves, ' time ' is pictured as a series of discrete moments because of the way our heart and lungs work, we are sensitive to lateral but not to vertical symmetry in space because of our bodily shape, etc. ; but all that doesn't seem to me to touch the essence of Kant's reply to Hume." Psychology, in Ritchie's opinion (v. Cogitatio Metaphysica, p. 106), "hovers bat-like between the sciences which deal conceptually with some more or less abstract aspect of the universe and some ideal philosophy of the mind which should deal with what is perfectly concrete and individual, and yet take up into itself all the scattered lights of the various abstract and partial sciences." But on the whole he was inclined to regard psychology as an abstract science akin to the natural sciences, and thus to dissent from Professor Ward's statement that " psychology never transcends the limits of the individual." " In con- sidering the contents of consciousness purely as contents of consciousness, we are abstracting from the actual or real experience of any individual, and in treating of the average or normal individual mind, we have abstracted from the real individual." "We abstract from the individuality of the ego and look for the antecedent conditions of ideas, feelings and volitions as the ' causes ' of them {i.e. material causes) in precisely the same sense in which we find causes in nature ; and we seek to formulate psychological 'laws,' in precisely the same sense as in nature, i.e. they are statements of what under certain conditions must necessarily happen." But while psychology is 34 MEMOIR akin to the natural sciences as a science of fact and not of meaning, it is, in Ritchie's opinion, an error to regard the methods and conceptions of psychology as necessarily the same as those of the natural sciences. In the lecture to the St. Andrews Synthetic Society (quoted above p. 22), he says: "Psychology and sociology may be allowed the name and rank of sciences ; but it is very often taken for granted that they are only scientific in so far as they are simply extensions of biology, and that the ideal method of treatment for them, as for all the sciences, is the reduction of their stubborn material to mathematical and mechanical formulae. Now I think it necessary to protest against the assumption that the concepts and methods which are adequate in biology and the less complex sciences are therefore (without further proof) adequate to the treatment of the mental and social life of man. It is unreasonable to assume that the evolution of human society, and of all the mani- festations of the human spirit, can be properly under- stood when approached solely from the biological side. Biology has undoubtedly thrown great light on many problems of psychology, ethics, politics, and economics ; but the conditions of human society are so different from those of the individual organism, that I am not sure whether the metaphor of the social organism has not introduced so much confusion into sociological studies as to make the use of this striking phrase a rather doubtful benefit." " The biological concep- tions are not false when applied to human societies, any more than mathematical, physical, chemical con- cepts are — they are simply inadequate. The statesman — and the statesman is, or he rather ought to be, a practical sociologist — cannot afford to ignore the truth that 2 + 2 = 4; but the profoundest knowledge of abstract mathematics will not enable him to solve a single problem in public finance. The statesman PHILOSOPHICAL 35 cannot afford to ignore the doctrine of the ' survival of the fittest ' ; but he will find that natural selection in its biological sense is subtilitati rerum humanarum longe imparl Accordingly Ritchie continually insisted on the importance of the " social factor " in mental development, not merely with regard to the higher or more complex mental processes, but in connection with the most elementary forms of cognition. " The truth is that there is no such thing as wholly indivi- dual experience, beyond mere uninterpreted feeling and blind willing. It is human society, with its accumulated stock of concepts, that makes our experience a more or less organic system. The psychologists with their individualistic standpoint are, I think, responsible for much more confusion than even Mr. Ward admits. It takes more than one man to know anything, or to have an ideal end for volition." 1 The problems of ethics and politics were those to which Ritchie gave the best of his thought. He regarded it, however as a fundamental error to attempt to separate the one discipline from the other, or either of them from metaphysics. " How can we," he asked, " consider the theory of conduct with- out examining the relation of the individual to society (a question of content) and the relation of the indivi- dual to God, the ideal (a question of form) ? " And again, " has metaphysics more to do with ethics and politics than with the older sciences ? Comte held that ethics and politics remain longer in the meta- physical stage. But is there not a real reason for this ? " His reasons for holding, e.g. that while the geometrician rightly neglects both the psychological and the metaphysical questions about space, the moralist cannot do the same with regard to the self, are fully set forth in this volume, (v. Cogitatio Metaphysica, p. no, and Moral Philosophy, §§ 1, 2, 3 1 Review of Ward, Philosophical Review, Vol. IX., p. 265. 36 MEMOIR and 6). A science of ethics independent of meta- physics " would be a historical science tracing the various ethical ideals which have been accepted by men (a history of their various distinctions between right and wrong), leaving out the question what right and wrong ultimately mean, or assuming some pro- visional explanation of them." " An attempt to describe the facts of morality, either in the individual or in society, as now existing, would be very delusive if the historical origin of these facts were overlooked, because obviously our society is in a transitional stage, and the various opinions of right and wrong must be taken in connection with their history in order to be rightly understood." " On the other hand, if we insist on going beyond these questions of fact, and wish to ask about what ought to be, we cannot shirk an investigation of what ' ought ' means, i.e. we must bring in a metaphysic of ethics, by which I only mean a criticism of the basis of morality." As he puts it in a brief note : " That there is an ideal (ought, end) is fact. How there should be, is a question for metaphysics. This must be the founda- tion of ethics ; but it only gives the form. The content comes from experience — (i) What has been the history of this ideal end ? What different forms has it had at different times ? (History) ; (2) How does it come to shape itself in the mind of each individual ? (Psychology — the moral sentiments, the passions, character) ; (3) How can the ideal be {a) developed ; (b) realised ? (Practical Ethics)." The fundamental problems of ethics and politics are, accordingly, problems of form, meaning, validity, such as the nature of the ideal, and the relations of the individual to society and to God. But these problems cannot be adequately discussed apart from the questions of content, fact, origin. The chief errors in ethical and political speculation arise either from PHILOSOPHICAL 37 regarding the two sets of problems as the same, or from attempting to deal with one in complete separa- tion from the other. "The adequate study of either institutions or ideas requires both an historical exami- nation of how they came to be what they are, and of what their value now is. If it was the tendency of the confident and hopeful rationalism of the eighteenth century to neglect origins, there is an opposing tendency now sometimes prevalent to neglect the inquiry as to rationality, and to despair of truth, or to acquiesce in evils, imagining that the study of politics and law and morals consists only in translating the present into terms of the past." 1 Thus Ritchie's attitude towards current controversy about the main problems of ethics and politics was exactly similar to his views regarding metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. The intuitionist and, more generally, the moralist who takes his stand on a sup- posed sharp division between " nature," on the one hand, and human society, on the other, seemed to him to beg the question by accepting as fundamental the abstractions of ordinary belief regarding moral distinc- tions, without inquiry into their history. Such thinkers make abstraction of the formal element in the moral law, while a similar abstraction in regard to its content is made by the empirical hedonists and evolutionists, who, in their turn, beg the question by assuming that the discovery of what, as a matter of fact, is or has come to be enables us immediately to determine what ought to be. The history of moral ideas is a valuable material for ethics, and " the possibility of an interpre- tation " of that history " which shall fit in with and not distort the facts must serve as an important test of the value of any ethical theory." 2 But, on the other hand, " the presence of an ideal cannot be merely the result of an ethical development, because it is the 1 Moral Philosophy, p. 282. ' 2 Moral Philosophy, p. 289. 38 MEMOIR condition of such a development." In all Ritchie's thinking on these matters the governing idea is the conception of society. Social wellbeing is at once the ethical and the political ideal. " If we say the ultimate end is the wellbeing of all mankind, and the end we should aim at is the wellbeing of all that portion of mankind, whom we can practically affect, we mean the same thing as the utilitarian when he speaks of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but it is put in a less misleading way." 1 The utilitarian identi- fies happiness with wellbeing, the evolutionist substi- tutes being for wellbeing, and the a priori moralist maintains that there are rights and duties independent of society and of any social ideal. Ritchie argued against all these views ; but his criticisms were mainly devoted to the evolutionist and a priori positions. He regarded those who say that the end is happiness as being " cruelly if unintentionally ironical." 2 " If we use happiness in the sense in which it is used in ordi- nary language the end is not happiness. Happiness is mainly dependent on the healthy state of the bodily secretions and is a very important means to the attain- ment of the good life." And again, " suffering does not always improve character ; it often does the re- verse. To most people happiness is beneficial. But to make mankind at any given stage happy would be the greatest curse, if it were possible. Is it not because, at any given stage mankind have yet reached, the happiness of some implies the misery of others ? No civilization has yet been attained which is not merely a light sketch on a dark ground." " If happi- ness is the end we may well despair and make pes- simism our creed. We may be sure we shall not attain it." 3 And the extreme opposite of the utili- tarian view leads to the same practical result. Whether 1 Moral Philosophy, p. 299. "^Moral Philosophy, pp. 298, 299. 3 Confessio Fidei, § 6. PHILOSOPHICAL 39 we take happiness or self-mortification as the end, we move towards pessimism. " I think egoistic asceticism has done the world no good and some harm, because it has turned effort to despair." 1 But if happiness is unattainable and asceticism is futile or pernicious, may not pessimism be the true creed ? " I think pessimism is a good protest against the blind optimism of the contented conservative, who thinks this 'the best of all possible worlds'; but I think it contains its own refutation, viz., the presence of an ideal by which the world and life are judged evil." "When we see the misery of life, we can't help also seeing how much of it is remediable, by removal of abuses in social arrangements, etc. It will be time enough when we (I mean the human race) have done all we can to make life less an evil for the majority of mankind, to con- sider whether life per se is an evil. Therefore it is desirable to adjourn the question of pessimism and consider the question of socialism first." Intuitionism again has its value as a protest against a narrow hedonism, "against the notion that life could go on with cold-blooded, calculating, philosophical radicals deliberating about everything." But intuition- ism in ethics and the "natural rights" theory, which is its analogue in politics, both err by attempting to set up a priori standards independent of society. Each has in its own way an individualist basis. They pro- ceed on the assumption that individual men are per- sons, in the one case with duties, in the other with rights, which society does not determine. That, of course, means reducing to confusion the notion of moral or political personality. To call the rights "natural" is, as Ritchie very clearly showed, to evade the difficulty by the use of an ambiguous term. " ' Nature,' as we know, is a word contrived to intro- duce as many equivocations as possible into all the 1 Letter (1886). 4 o MEMOIR theories, political, legal, artistic or literary, into which it enters." J And to maintain that the duties and the rights are " divine " is to pre-suppose a society (God and ourselves), separate from all other forms of society, without cohesion and incapable of being clearly thought out. Yet even in such "perverse" theories (as Ritchie regarded them) there is one aspect of the truth. "Man's nature is not exhausted, his aspirations are not satisfied in the State. There is an appeal even from the State, nay even from society, to . . . ?" In the note from which I take this the blank is left un- filled. The question points, I think, to an ambiguity in the word "society," and Ritchie's answer to it may be gathered from what he says elsewhere. There is an appeal from any actual society, from society at any particular stage, to an ideal society. "The person who pursues ends which differ from those regarded as the only proper ones by those immediately round him (family, city, nation, church) must be acting as a member of some (ideal) community, which may be as yet only a heavenly city, l a pattern laid up in heaven.' He may not indeed have thought of it in that way, but it must be implicit in his mind." 2 It does not follow, of course, that every appeal to an ideal society is justified. We can picture clearly or vaguely many kinds of ideal society, and we can, with- out understanding what we are doing, practically appeal to an ideal society which we should find to be self- contradictory if we seriously endeavoured to think it out. The truth of the a priori theories lies in their opposition to the view that all rights and duties are in the last resort determined by actual society, whether in a limited or in the widest sense. The validity of moral principles does not depend merely on society as fact, but ultimately proceeds from society as mean- ing. The ideal society, however, is not something cut 1 Sir L. Stephen, Hobbes, p. 173. -Moral Philosophy,^. 298. PHILOSOPHICAL 41 off from the actual. It is the meaning of the society which appears and changes in actual history. It is not a Utopia beyond the seas or a society which can be realised only by the destruction of that which exists. A society which ought to be, cut off from the society which is, would, as Sidgwick has pointed out, pre- suppose another society to determine what it ought to be and so on ad infinitum. And herein lies the defect of the a priori position. Consciously or uncon- sciously it separates fact from meaning, the actual from the ideal, and thus leaves the ideal, which it solely emphasises, with a content which has been selected in a practically arbitrary way. On the other hand, Ritchie maintained that the categorical imperatives of intu- itionism and the so-called " natural rights " are not self-evident principles, data of ethics and politics, but moral and political ideals, the validity of which depends upon the proof that they are constitutive principles of ideal society, society as meaning. 1 The assertion of abstract individual liberty and innate equality tends only to give an appearance of reason to the views of those who seek to justify and to maintain privilege and caste. Men are not born free and equal : their freedom and equality are to be realised in the realising of the ideal society. The dogmatic individualism of the ' natural rights ' theorist is met by the dogmatic individualism of the conservative who believes with Dr. Johnson that " inequality is the source of all delight," or, with Coventry Patmore, that " the doctrines of liberty, fraternity and equality are known instinctively only by very bad children." Ritchie's own belief was that " all inequality is a curse. It is a fact often, but an evil one, not a thing to be commended." 2 And he held that we can look for a rational issue of the conflict between the two individualist dogmatisms only if we abandon their individualism and emphasise the 1 Cf. Moral Philosophy, § 14. 2 Letter (1887). 42 MEMOIR social ideal as the first principle of ethics and politics. This is what Ritchie meant when he preached " social- ism " and described himself as a "socialist." He was not a doctrinaire socialist, nor did he accept as a whole any of the numerous socialist systems of recent times. But he believed profoundly in the socialist attitude as against any form of individualism, empirical or a priori. This ' socialist ' belief was also the foundation of his criticism of evolutionist theories in ethics and politics. They tend to ignore the special character- istics of human society, which differentiate it from animal communities and which are the logical ground of ethical and political principles, by transferring bio- logical conceptions directly to ethics and politics. As a striking illustration of this Ritchie used often to take the evolutionist application of the conception of heredity to sociological (i.e. ethical and political) problems. 1 " The term ' inherit ' in biology has a quite definite meaning ; in sociology it is a very am- biguous word. It may mean either heredity in the biological sense or what for distinction I should prefer to call ' social inheritance ' — the transmission of ideas, sentiments, practices through the medium of tradition and imitation, irrespective of transmission in the race, or as we say, ' in the blood.' It is true that among the higher social animals we find the germs of this social inheritance (education of the young by their parents, etc., ' nurture ' added to ' nature ' — Galton) ; but this kind of inheritance is of enormously greater relative importance among human beings, who possess language and definite social and religious institutions as a vehicle for the transmission of the results of past experience. The importance of this distinction will be seen when it is considered that among the lower animals the only possibility of improvement — apart from artificial selection by human beings, 1 Synthetic Society Paper. PHILOSOPHICAL 43 which is not always improvement from the point of view of the species of animal in question — is to be found in the unchecked operation of natural selection or (if the Lamarckian hypothesis be also accepted) of natural selection plus the racial inheritance of ac- quired characteristics ; whereas among human beings reflection and discussion may lead to a deliberate change in customs and usages and beliefs that are supposed to be injurious to social wellbeing. We might call this ' artificial selection applied by a society to itself.' Such changes due to conscious choice may, in any given case, be wise or foolish, beneficial or disastrous. The working of natural selection is not eliminated. It is the final test. But the mere possi- bility of such deliberate changes makes it futile to study human societies as if their history were simply an illustration of biological laws." Again, in a note on the distinction between " evolution in the social environment" and "the inheritance of qualities in the individuals " (race inheritance), Ritchie points out that " there may be continuity of national existence and character though nearly all the original races which have set the type of civilization may have disappeared. Of course the civilization must receive some modifi- cation from its acting on new races ; but the difference between two races under the same type of civilization is less than the difference between the same race under two different types of civilization. Thus the Roman civilization became the possession of Celts and Iberians ; the New Englanders may die out, but they will have turned Irish, Germans, Norwegians and Italians into 'Yankees.'' Apart from the uncritical application of biological conceptions to sociology, the evolutionist view is inadequate in another way. Even when it clearly recognises the distinctive character- istics of human society, it seeks to determine moral principles by reference to actual society and its history 44 MEMOIR or to the direction in which, as a matter of fact, it seems to be tending. It ignores the ideal in any- other sense than that which is likely to happen. It cannot pass from what has come to be or what is going to be, as a result of the struggle for existence, to what ought to be, except by a confusion of the question of meaning with that of fact. Considering society only as an event or a series of events, it has no logical ground for criticism of the actual, it can find no criterion of excellence except success. All this is so fully expounded in the Moral Philosophy that I need not dwell upon it here. In this connection, however, something must be said about Ritchie's views regarding certain problems of practical ethics and politics. " The moralist does not profess to convert souls ; but (i) he cannot shirk the responsibility of criticising as well as ex- pounding the existing moral ideal (and as that varies so much he cannot even expound without criticising) and so suggesting its development. (2) All thinking honestly done in the long run betters practice. The ' immoral thoughtlessness ' of mankind is the chief retarding force and is too little considered by moral teachers, who are too apt to assume that the ideal is generally agreed upon and that the only question is how to realise it." " The ordinary ideal needs enlarge- ment to prevent it fossilising (evils of intuitionism) and also to show the need of a relative fixity, as against mere individualism, by constant reference to a social good. No mere appeal to ' instinct ' or ' nature ' will do." Thus one part of practical ethics is the develop- ment or enlargement of the social ideal. And along with this there must go development in the means of realising the ideal, i.e. development of customs and institutions. Now it seemed to Ritchie that in these aspects intuitionism shows great practical weakness. It prescribes absolute laws and thus overlooks (if it does PHILOSOPHICAL 45 not deny) the progressiveness of the moral ideal, and it tends to minimise the ethical importance of customs and institutions. "Herein lies the practical evil of intuitionist systems of morals, that they tend to fossilise the principles of conduct at the particular stage of social development which commends itself to the particular intuitionist." 1 Thus he dwelt on the "mis- chief of 'absolute' moral precepts," precepts which leave out of account the relative aspect of duties, their relativity to varying conditions of society and to the various persons or institutions to whom they may be owing. Such "absolute" moral precepts "may cause intense misery to conscientious persons, who feel that they are not doing right to others in obeying them, and when obeyed they may cause mischief to society. For example, take the case of filial duty. Pere Goriot has no formulated moral; but there runs through it the sentiment of the absolute claims of paternity. The evil is especially clear in the case of sexual morality and the wrong principles on which it is enforced. For the proper working of family morality, as that is conceived by all our stricter moralists and religious teachers, are not so many and such virtues needed as would be sufficient for the maintenance of a freer set of institutions, which insti- tutions should at the same time not hinder but pro- mote and stimulate these virtues ? " On the other hand, "before the institution of marriage is condemned, should we not ask whether it has ever yet had a fair chance ? Only when women are better educated, when they are no longer driven to regard marriage as a 'profession,' and more healthy acquaintance be- tween the sexes, independently of marriage, is possible than at present, only then will marriage get a fair chance. Question — would not a great many men and women choose to go through life as faithful companions 1 Moral Philosophy, § n, p. 322. 46 MEMOIR to each other without any external bond ? But what of the weaker and less worthy of both sexes ? In the meantime what have the State and the opinion of society got mainly to concern themselves with in this matter ? An increased recognition of the respon- sibilities of parentage." Public opinion should en- deavour to secure "a certain minimum standard of fitness for marriage — e.g. absence of some of the more terrible diseases. Life insurance among the more care- ful middle class is often used as a test of fitness in the case of men. This should be applied to women also. In course of time the law might require a certain minimum standard. Habitual drunkenness and lunacy might be bars to legal marriage and also grounds of divorce or at least judicial separation. So too with crimes. At present there is a tendency to treat many criminals as diseased : their punishment (whether death or life-long imprisonment) should be such as to prevent them transmitting their tendencies. It may be said that 'it is impossible to interfere in this way with human beings in such a purely personal matter as the relation of the sexes.' It is not im- possible, for it is constantly done, but on grounds that cannot be defended as rational or socially ex- pedient. For instance, there is interference with indi- vidual freedom on the ground of (i) race-prejudice (the white man who marries a black woman, etc.) ; (2) caste {mesalliance); (3) religion ('mixed marriages' discouraged); (4) prohibited degrees; (5) social and moral effect of laws about marriage and illegitimacy, e.g. Scotch law ; (6) celibacy of clergy and of scholars (meaning often survival of the unfittest) ; (7) money considerations ; (8) reasons of State. Some of these might be dropped and considerations of general fit- ness taken instead of them, in accordance with Plato's maxim, 'the most useful is the most holy.'" x 1 From a paper on "the ethical aspects of the controversy about heredity." PHILOSOPHICAL 47 " I do consider that it is the business of the State (supposing a well organised State) to regulate, if possible, the birth, and certainly the education of children so as to give them a fair chance of growing up into the best possible men and women, but that, apart from that end, the State should not interfere between fully-grown individuals ; and that the usual opinion of society, which condemns e.g. George Eliot and has nothing but sympathy for people who cause the existence of children with inherited diseases and who have no prospect of giving them a fair education, provided only they have gone through a religious ceremony, is mischievous in the extreme." 1 The great obstacle to these and other moral reforms is, in Ritchie's opinion, the individualism, on the one hand, of our sentimental belief in an abstract right of liberty and, on the other hand, of our competitive economic system. Thus in a letter (1890) he says : — " I firmly believe that the existing average moral judgments about the relations of the sexes cannot possibly alter, till the whole economic structure of society is altered. Here and there an individual may anticipate the judgments of a future age or go back on those of a past. But average morality being ulti- mately conditioned by its economic structure more than by its political institutions or anything else, this must be so — however counter it seems to one's earlier notions of what morality is. Thus, e.g. (except in polygamous societies, where all women are married and kept under guard, or in such places as small villages where every one marries early and is strictly under the priest) there will always be an ' unfortunate ' class while women's earnings are on the average less certain than those of men, and under a competitive system that will always be so. For men will as a rule only work (and stay in the country) for what will support them and a 1 Letter (1887). 4 8 MEMOIR wife and allow them a glass of beer. Women will work for what will support themselves (without the beer) and so will always undersell men and one another. Thus some women will always find life easier by selling themselves and living in comparative idleness. I know it sounds horrible, but I fear it's true. ' Moral ' and religious influences will only raise a few above the pressure of circumstances, therefore circumstances must be altered. . . . The economic change must come before the moral, before we can even know certainly what the moral change will be. This has always been so in history. However that's a long story ; but the history of slavery is very instructive in this respect." This may suffice to give an idea of Ritchie's views regarding moral reforms in which he was specially interested and of the way in which he applied his socialism to practical problems. His general attitude is clearly set forth in the Moral Philosophy, §§ 10 sqq. And when we turn to his opinions about political reform, in the widest sense, we find further illustration of the same bent of mind. He had, for instance, little if any sympathy either with narrow nationalism on the one hand or with vague cosmopolitanism on the other. But he believed firmly in the ideal of the federation of the world, agreeing with the doctrine of Kant that a permanent general peace can never be secured by treaties between independent nations, but only by the establishment of a federation of self-governing states, in which there is ultimately one sovereignty and attempts at war become equivalent to rebellion. And, again agreeing with Kant, he felt sure that this must eventually come to pass. Switzerland, which he re- garded as " a very laboratory of political experiments," exhibits the ideal in miniature, and he spoke with great sympathy of the prompt way in which the Swiss Feder- ated government suppressed at once by military force the revolt of Ticino, punished one member of the PHILOSOPHICAL 49 confederation in order to secure the interests of the whole. War, like individual crime, can only be re- strained by a common government able to keep the peace by the use of force, and he regarded as self- contradictory and delusive the views of those who preach peace between nations by means of disarmament and a refusal to employ force, while they have no objection to the use of police and prisons for the forcible maintenance of peace between individuals. Again it seemed to Ritchie that one great step towards the federation of the world would be the federation of the English-speaking communities. This also is in harmony with Kant's idea that, if one powerful federa- tion of self-governing states could be established, other states would inevitably be attracted into it until in course of time it would become universal. In this sense Ritchie was an " imperialist " and, though no one could be more free from the spirit of jingoism or the desire for indefinite territorial expansion, he stoutly defended the Boer war against the views of the majority of his own party. He would not have held his action on this occasion to be inconsistent with an earlier declaration of his that " patriotism is a valuable moral discipline in a community that is struggling for free- dom or for national existence. In a triumphant country it loses its virtuous character and is apt to be a name only for noisy disparagement of others and for self- aggrandisement at their expense." For he looked upon the South African war, not as a war of aggression, but as an endeavour on the part of the suzerain state to free the people of one of its de- pendencies from the tyranny of a narrow and stubborn oligarchy. In dealing with the problem of the ideal relations of States to one another, Ritchie held that "we must distinguish between those ideals which assume im- possible conditions and those which take account of 50 MEMOIR the conditions of nature and of human nature under which an ideal can possibly be realised." 1 The ideal of the older Utopias and the modern " anarchist " ideal both assume impossible conditions. "The imitators of Plato in modern times have been apt to place their Utopias in remote or inaccessible islands, so that the problem of good government could be restricted to internal wellbeing. To make this a condition nowa- days is to assume an impossibility. Geographical discovery, the spreading of European races over the rest of the globe, the increased rapidity of communi- cation due to steam and electricity have made it impossible to find the undisturbed solitude of the old Utopias. In other words, if we are to attempt nowa- days to construct an ideal political society which we really believe to be an ideal that can actually influence the practical reformer and can legitimately be used for the criticism of defects in the political world we live in, we must not please ourselves with the fancy of a small community in some island bearing all manner of fruits under genial skies, unoccupied by awkward savages and unvisited by trading adventurer or foreign warship." On the other hand, " we need not linger over the ideal of the philosophical anarchist. If all human beings were or were likely to become actuated by fraternal sentiment and also gifted with such in- sight as to act not only with kindly intentions but with beneficial results, we might be content to regard the ideal of politics as the disappearance of all political institutions. This is what is sometimes meant by the dictum that the end of good government is to make government superfluous. The end of good laws is to make the infliction of the penalty for disobedience unnecessary ; but that does not mean that the law makes itself unnecessary, except in the sense that the law passes into an unbroken habit. If freedom be put 1 Paper on " The ideal of a World State." PHILOSOPHICAL 51 forward as the end of the State and therefore of the whole political endeavour of mankind, this cannot mean the mere negative liberty of being left alone ; and, unless we suppose changes in human nature for which past and present experience gives us no warrant, such absolute absence of control would mean a return to the lowest savagery and a long tedious process of building up again the overthrown fabric of order and civilization. If it be suggested that religion might bring about the happy change that would render prisons and policemen and lawyers and legislators un- necessary, it is forgotten that, so far as past experience helps us, religion, while capable of being the strongest of all social forces, is a social force only in virtue of its organisation of individuals in a society — a society which, with penalties of excommunication and threats of hell-fire, can dispense with the judge and the hang- man. A religion which acted solely through the enthusiasm of disinterested love in the hearts of in- dividuals would be acting upon saintly beings such as have never yet been numerous upon earth. We assume that human nature, apart from the discipline of institutions, retains some fierce animal passions of sel- fishness, such as may be found in most healthy children, and therefore that liberty in the sense of complete absence of restraint is not a desirable end. Freedom as the end of the State means the capacity for self- realisation. It is the positive ideal of doing something, of making things, possessing and using them, of acquiring knowledge, of living a full and manysided social life. As a means to this ideal sometimes laissez- faire and sometimes social help must be used ; and opinions may reasonably differ as to the limits between them in each particular case." But liberty " in the sense of self-realisation is too vague to give us of itself much information, and further analysis is needed." And " the ideal of negative liberty applied 52 MEMOIR to independent nations means the continuance of the present constant fear of war and preparation for it." As regards political reform in Great Britain Ritchie believed in imperial federation, the germ of which is to be found in the supreme court of appeal. Within this wider federation there should be a federation of the United Kingdom, with local legislatures (or com- mittees) for Scotland, Ireland (or for each province) and Wales. The members of the House of Com- mons should be paid, and their number diminished. As to the House of Lords, the disabilities of peers should be removed ; but the appeal in actions at law should be retained. The House might be reconsti- tuted as a federal senate (at first with mainly consultative powers). In this case there might be a single chamber for Great Britain. But this would be advisable only if the referendum were adopted. Otherwise the second Chamber for Great Britain should consist of life peers and representatives of local bodies. Even in this case the referendum would be an advantage as a means of settling a possible conflict between the Chambers. Ritchie, however, regarded the referendum as likely to become a question of parlia- mentary politics only in the event of (i) "the splitting up of parties into groups, so that we no longer had the dual party system on which the smooth working of our Cabinet government depends " ; or (2) " the abolition of the House of Lords, or the abolition of its power of veto." " The greatest advantages of all in the referendum" seemed to him to be "(1) that it would separate futile discussion as to whether a government has a mandate from the people to do this or that, from profitable discussion as to whether a measure is good or bad, and (2) that it would simplify the moral problem with which the conscien- tious citizen is constantly confronted. Suppose I PHILOSOPHICAL 53 strongly approve of an important measure before the public, am rather indifferent about a second, and am strongly opposed to a third, and yet all three have been put in the party programme, what am I to do ? I know, e.g. that a vote I am really giving for dis- establishment will be counted as a vote for Home Rule or vice versa, and moreover, I am compelled to vote for Mr. A., when I really think Mr. B. would be a more useful person in Parliament. There are very great merits in our system of two parties, and two parties only ; but there are very great draw- backs, and if the system should break down, I don't feel as if one would have to despair of one's country. There are other resources in the political institutions of mankind, and amongst them the referendum seems to me one of those most worth studying." As regards the relations of Church and State Ritchie was also opposed to the policy of individualist Liber- alism. " I think disestablishment a move in the wrong direction — it is a falling back on the old anarchical Liberalism of the Herbert Spencer type." " Is not the demand for the separation of the Church from the State a confession of failure on the part of the Church ? It is only valuable as a recognition that religion is supra-national." On the other hand, is disestablishment clearly desirable from the State's point of view ? " In Italy and in France, if the State severed all connection with the Roman Church, would not the clergy form still more an anti- constitutional party than they do at present ? Is it safe to leave the clergy alone ? If we had established the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (government having a veto on the appointment of bishops), I think Ireland would have been more easily managed. But English Protestant prejudices have made that solution impossible, I fear." In some notes and suggestions, which Ritchie sent to 54 MEMOIR Mr. E. S. P. Haynes in connection with Mr. Haynes's book on Religious Persecution, he puts the matter thus : " ' Separation ' of Church and State is ambiguous, (i) It may exist in some very important cases with establishment of one or more churches {e.g. in France), and it may not exist, except merely in form, where there is no established church, but where certain religious bodies dominate political opinion. (2) Is it true that legal ' separation ' of Church and State necessarily secures more toleration than every form of State recognition of religion plus legal toleration of certain things and social toleration, due partly to the greater toleration likely to exist within a State church than within any ordinary sect ? 1 I think we must distinguish between (a) the tolera- tion which favours intellectual progress, and (b) the toleration which favours the rise of all sorts of eccen- tric sects, some of which may, indeed, conceivably prove useful ' variations.' (a) is better secured probably in Germany or Switzerland, (b) in the United States of America. Where there is no State church the leader of an intellectual advance has gener- ally to leave his sect and found a new little sect of his own. Note the difference between the Ethical Societies in America and in England. In England they may help to leaven opinion within the Churches ; in America, in most places at least, public opinion does not tolerate the man who goes to no church, so the ' agnostic ' or ' advanced thinker ' has to make his own little church, and call it an Ethical Society. I doubt if this favours progress. Nobody perhaps would think of setting up an Established Church legally in the United States now, or in any American State ; but the Supreme Court has decided that the United States is a ' Christian country,' which means establish- 1 " Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. How would he have been treated in South Carolina ? " PHILOSOPHICAL 55 ing, without endowment, the greatest common measure of the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, and the more old-fashioned Unitarian religions. " Where there exists an ancient established church, whose history is linked with that of the nation, would toleration (in sense (a) ) gain by disestablishment, and would the nation gain by either handing over the cathedrals to a sect, or turning them into museums ? Disestablishment in Scodand would give an enormous increase of members to the Scotch Episcopal Church. Many of the laity, and a good many of the clergy of the present established (Presbyterian) church would join it rather than be absorbed by the United Free Church. That might produce an intellectual widening in the Scotch Episcopal Church, but would increase the social gap between the more cultured and the less cultured form of religion. In England disestablishment would be a great gain to the Roman Catholic Church ; it alone would have the historical prestige. It would not put the Methodist or Baptist socially in any better position. In Scotland the non-established Episcopal Church has, because of its use of a stately liturgy, etc., a social prestige, in some places, over the Established Church. " Things of that sort seem to me worth considering before we accept the American solution as the best. It may, of course, come to be adopted because of the exigencies of party politics or because of growing anti- Erastianism and irrationalism in the Church. I doubt very much if the disestablishment movement is growing at present in spite of the noise of the Liberation Society. In Scotland, I think, it has decidedly gone back. Dis- establishment agitation is one of the causes why parties in Scotland have altered in strength so much since 1880; and surely the Church of England is much stronger now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. 56 MEMOIR ' Toleration ' (the abolition of tests in Universities, etc.) has on the whole diminished its unpopularity. Again, has not the change from the old-fashioned laissez- faire Liberalism to the new semi-socialistic Liberalism helped to make the idea of a State Church less strange than it seemed to the individualists of the Bright and Cobden period ? Lord Rosebery horrified old-fashioned doctrinaire Radicals by saying the State had as much right to establish a church as an army or navy. " India is the greatest example of real religious equality in the world — not the mock religious equality, which is equivalent to the Nonconformist conscience, Sabbatarian legislation, the greatest common measure of Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, old-fashioned Uni- tarian (perhaps), very low Anglican, etc., leaving out Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, Roman Catholics (for many purposes), High Anglicans (for some purposes), Mohammedans, Mormons, aggressive Atheists, etc. In India, as in the Early Roman Empire, the magistrates administer Mohammedan, Jewish, Hindu, Parsee, Christian law, etc., according to the religion of the people ' indifferently,' except, as in the Roman Empire, that certain wild things (burning of widows, etc.) are put down on grounds of social order." "The case of the Doukhobors in Canada shows the difficulty of according complete toleration to a wild sect." While Ritchie could not accept the abstract dogma of religious equality in the form in which it is usually advocated, he was equally opposed to the contention that dis- establishment is " sacrilege or robbery of God or any- thing of that sort." " If the State was justified in what it did at the Reformation in Scotland and even in what it did in England, the State would be justified in doing similar things now. The question is not one to be decided on abstract moral principles. It is solely a question of what is most for the welfare of the people as a whole." PHILOSOPHICAL 57 To the problems of religion and theology Ritchie applied the distinction between origin and validity in a way which is illustrated in the concluding sections of the Cogitatio Metaphysica. It appears further in letters written between 1885 and 1887. "The ultimate value of the Christian religion must depend on the ideal it sets before mankind, i.e. on what it is in its highest form. How it originated and grew is a matter for the historian and scholar. The Jews used to ask, ' Is not this the carpenter's son ? ' assuming that origin deter- mined value. The defence of Christianity is to be found not in the 1st chapter of Matthew but in the 5th. ' By their fruits ye shall know them ' asserts this same principle of judging by effects (end) not origin. The fourth Gospel takes Christ away from Jewish genealogies altogether and identifies him with the Eternal Reason, which is identical with God, not a mere individual in a particular time and place. Of course it still remains possible that the Eternal Reason should be specially manifested (incarnate) in some in- dividual ; but the spiritual truth is not dependent on the historical event, for any alleged historical event (and the reported ' events ' in the Gospels are not well authenticated, compared with many things in ancient history) always is open to dispute. But of a spiritual truth there can only be spiritual evidence, the witness of God in the soul, i.e. reason recognising itself . . . I know you feel this undermines reality, and most people feel that ; but it leaves the only things that can't be shaken." Again, as to miracles he writes: — "All the old religions of the world had their miracles. The early Christian apologists never denied the miracles of the heathen : they only said they were wrought by the help of the devil, as the Jews said of Christ's. There is as good historical evidence for the Emperor Vespasian having cured a blind man miraculously as for any of the miracles in the New Testament. All ancient 58 MEMOIR history swarms with miracles. The difference between Jesus and Socrates is not that the former worked miracles and the latter did not ; but that Socrates had an ideal of life for the privileged few. He even sends ' the women ' away that they might not be with him at his death, and none of his teaching was for them or for the multitude whom he despised. Jesus addressed himself to all, especially to the despised and outcast. Camille Desmoulins was quite right when he called him ' le bon sans culotte de Nazareth.' The essence of Christianity is democracy, in the very widest sense. Walt Whitman is more a Christian than an arch- bishop, ' ranking next the Prince of Wales,' can ever be (though I don't think him much of a poet). This element of Christianity could not be a mere 'invention,' though all the aspirations of the oppressed meet in it. This is what I understand by the incarnation of God in man, that man as such, humanity, can put on the divine nature. Jesus may have worked miracles, may have thought he did or may have been only supposed to do so : that matters little. It is a question for historical research, not for faith. He began the revo- lution of society, which is yet very far from its end. You will say, ' that is turning religion into politics.' It is making politics religion. I think a man should give his vote in the spirit in which he might pray, ' Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.' And if women had votes, they would be more religious, if less under ' the Church,' and would help to make politics more religious too. You will say, ' in all this there is no consolation or hope for the individual.' Perhaps not, but it is only as the individual can work for humanity, i.e. with God, that the individual has moral value or significance. All that we know as best and highest in the lives or ideas of others or in our own thoughts which tell us of our awful defects in feeling, thinking, acting — that is what PHILOSOPHICAL 59 is morally truest, that is the ideal, the revelation of God, the only God we can practically know and in whom it is a duty to have faith, not in historical state- ments or dogmatic formulae. When we condemn life and say ' it is a poor thing at the best ' (unless it is simply disappointed pleasure seeking) we do so only by measuring it by an ideal. This ideal in a progres- sive age or mind constantly grows. That is the perpetual revelation of God to man, the Holy Spirit ' leading us to all truth.' These are my sincerest con- victions, though to most people I dare not express them. They would only be misunderstood and might needlessly offend. " In Green's second sermon you will find the nature of ' faith ' put more truly and more reverentially than I could put it. According to such a view, which I thoroughly accept, miracles even if they were verified are quite irrelevant to a religious truth, which must always be a truth of principle influencing conduct, not a statement of fact. I think only those can consistendy believe in miracles having happened, who believe that they can happen now. The ordinary position of Protestants is quite illogical, I should say transitional." " When people really believed in miracles they burned ugly old women as witches and spread pestilences by crowding churches instead of cleaning cities. Now there is a sham belief in miracles that once happened and happen no longer, a belief arising from mental confusion or moral cowardice." " For beliefs about matters of fact we cannot be held morally responsible in the same way that we are for beliefs in principles of conduct. That is why it can be plausibly main- tained both that ' men are not responsible for their opinions' and that they are." Again, "the Christian doctrine of incarnation, if it means only a miraculous birth, is nothing distinctive of Christianity. What is distinctive of Christianity is its overthrow of prejudice 60 MEMOIR of race, caste, sex, and its ideal of ' losing life to save it,' which is the spiritual truth in the ideas of incarnation and resurrection (God becomes man, i.e. humbles himself, suffers, dies to live, that men may- do the same) and which is independent of any par- ticular events happening or not." Ritchie had no liking for creeds and he was strongly averse from the use of them in public worship. But he did not share the special dislike which is often felt towards the Athanasian creed. On the contrary he preferred it to the others, as being more metaphysical and less mythological. " I have no special objection to the Athanasian creed. It is a protest in favour of the Hegelian notion, the unity of contradictions, against the abstract metaphysics of the ordinary understanding. As such it is all right. All philosophers who don't accept that without doubt do ' perish everlastingly.' But as an arithmetical conundrum plus some strong swearing it is only a degradation to the souls of those who utter it and hear it. Why can't they let one worship without the insolence of repeating creeds ? Even the Apostles' Creed (not the creed of the apostles, thank God) contains that monstrous parthenogenesis and the sitting ' at the right hand of God ' (who is without body, parts or passions) and the resurrection of the body. Oh adulterous generation seeking after a sign, turning metaphors into absurd facts ! What vast moral injury is done constantly by tacking spiritual truth to materialistic mythology ! " Again, " if I were to occupy myself specially with Neo-Platonism and the metaphysical controversies of the Greek Church and to think myself into the mental atmosphere of the fourth century, I might feel quite able to accept the Athanasian creed, except a few statements at the end, which are common to it and the other creeds. It is the creed about which I felt the least difficulty for myself at the time I used to think theologically. It PHILOSOPHICAL 61 contains hardly any questionable statements of fact. All these propositions about the Trinity and the re- lation between the divine and human nature are metaphysical theories, not statements of fact for which evidence can be given or required ; and the objection to an ordinary English congregation using this creed is not that it is false, but that it is perfectly meaningless (though it may have a profound meaning to a person who has thought himself into the spirit of a Greek theologian). It has the same morally dangerous effect as the repetition of any other solemn and soothing formula, like ' Om, om, padne, om,' or ' abracadabra,' or ' the blessed word Mesopotamia.' (I think I must have told you of the Scotsman who, travelling in Russia, declared that he had found a countryman of his earning an honest (?) livelihood by becoming a priest, and, in administering the Sacrament, using the words, ' If it'll do ye nae guid, it'll do ye nae harm,' to the great edification of the Russian peasants. But possibly this was not Scotch, but old Slavonic.) Now though I might try to understand and appreciate and honestly accept some metaphysical formula about the universe, of Aristotle or Plotinus or Thomas Aquinas or Hegel or Schopenhauer, that is quite a different thing from asserting, as a historical fact, what one has no evidence for or may have evidence against. E.g. c Plato was the son, not of the Athenian Ariston, but of the God Apollo,' or ' Julius Caesar was not really killed but became one of the Olympian gods,' both which statements were believed, and in each of which I might recognise a moral truth (the grandeur of Plato and the permanent influence of Caesar), but which I should not feel justified in asserting as literally true. Suppose that again, as in the Alexandrian age, the course of progress were arrested, and the wheels of intellect, instead of moving on the mind, were to turn round on themselves, scientific philosophy might turn 62 MEMOIR into dogmatism, and one could easily frame a creed which, though quite true for oneself, would be mean- ingless if repeated by rustics and children. ' Whoso- ever will be saved (from the ridicule of all enlightened persons) it is necessary above all things that he hold the Darwinio-Spencerian faith. . . . And the Dar- winio-Spencerian faith is this : Evolution is a passing from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and from an unstable to a stable equilibrium in saecula saeculorum. . . . The struggle for existence an ultimate fact, natural selection an ultimate fact, survival of the fittest an ultimate fact : And yet they are not three ultimate facts, but one ultimate fact. . . . All knowledge is relative, and of phenomena only : all metaphysical systems that profess to reach noumena and enquire into the causes of ultimate facts shall without doubt perish everlast- ingly. On the problem of immortality Ritchie occasionally expressed opinions, but without coming to any quite definite conclusion. He discusses it briefly in the Confessio Fidei, § 8, and in the Moral Philosophy, p. 56. He was more interested in the ethical consequences of the belief in immortality than in the question of fact. Belief in an abstract individual immortality, the immortality of " individual human souls ' naturally ' indestructible and yet with a beginning in time," was, of course, inconsistent with the general principles of his thinking. Apart from this, he pointed out that " it is absurd to think it bound up with religion. Buddhism dreads it, Judaism is without it. It was not always a Christian doctrine, and it is really incom- patible with theism. It requires a theory of pluralism." " Are we not immortal just so far as we cease to be individual merely ? " His faith in society prevented him from any craving for personal immortality. His optimism, his belief in human progress, was so great PHILOSOPHICAL 63 that he hardly realised the pertinacity with which people cling to the hope of personal survival. His belief in the rationality and the ultimate goodness of the universe kept him from feeling the need of any assurances about himself and what would happen to him : his whole interest lay in the question of finding and realising in this life the will of God, the ideal, so far as we are able to comprehend it. Thus, for instance, he asks : — " If there is no individual im- mortality, ought anyone to spend a life-time in spiritual cultivation, without producing anything that will help others ? That seems to me the most difficult moral problem raised by the doubt about immortality." He did feel the difficulties which the belief endeavours to meet ; but he thought it a good thing for humanity that it should remain neither proved nor disproved, a hope rather than a certainty or an illusion. In a letter (1886) he wrote: — " For many years I had given up almost thinking about the question of a future life, and had setded down into a sort of acquiescence in the idea that all we could aim at was if possible to leave those who should come after us in the world better, or at least not worse off, than ourselves in the struggle with the evils of nature and humanity. But it was your several times coming back on the question, ' Don't you think there is any future life ? ' that set me pondering over it again and made me more clearly conscious of what in some way I could not help feeling all along — how terribly hopeless life often seems with everything in knowledge, in emotion, in conduct, even at the best so incomplete. Practically I don't get beyond this. (1) I think there can be no satisfactory argument against the probability of a future life for the individual. (2) I think a basis can be found for morality apart from any hope (or fear) of the kind ; but it is a rather stoical and despairing 64 MEMOIR morality. (3) If the world and human life has an ethical purpose in it, in some way or other our efforts must be not all in vain ; and I begin to see that ' humanity ' apart from its individual members is an unreal abstraction, — but so also is the individual apart from relation to others." In these, as in other matters, Ritchie had travelled far in thought from his early beliefs. But he had little sympathy with the explosive or the gay manner of revolution in thinking. " I like Literature and Dogma" he writes in a letter (1887), "but doesn't Matthew Arnold spread his ideas rather thin ? I think it a very useful book, more useful than more scientific and learned works. But I don't think one gains anything by trying to deny to oneself or others the saddening effect which comes from parting with old ideas, especially when that makes a break not only in the ' natural piety ' that should link our days together, but in the possibility of mutual understanding between those who belong in fact or in spirit to different generations. Still we ought to face all troubles." Firmly believing in progress, both in thought and in practice, he was equally convinced that it cannot take place " by leaps and bounds." We may turn over a new leaf from time to time ; but it is folly to try to skip the whole book except the last chapter. The good of the future is rooted in the good of the past and the present, and we shall only hinder reform if we ignore this. " I wish, for the sake of social reformers themselves, to be scrupulously just to anything of good in existing institutions, and above all to be quite just to human nature, because it is only through what is good now and through the capacities of human beings for greater goodness that we can ever get to a better society." x It was in this spirit that Ritchie did all 1 Letter, 1887, PHILOSOPHICAL 65 his work, in the belief, on the one hand, that we must have a comprehensive ideal, lest we lose our lives in meaningless little efforts without any great end, and on the other hand, that we must not merely rest in this ideal or proclaim it as an abstract dogma, but develop it and apply it in detail, finding it as we realise it. " If we are always gazing at the mountain- top, we shall never reach it — not being able to fly. We must be content to follow the humble path through forest and glen, where the view of the summit is hid from us, though the thought of it is still in our minds. We must not despise the details of duty in the citizen's life, the value of institutions though they are human and may often seem to conceal the divine end we wish to attain." 1 iFrom a MS. note. COGITATIO METAPHYSICA (1902) Perhaps not every one who reads this will grumble because it is short. " Nothing has been more injurious to Philosophy than mathe- matics, that is, than the imitation of its method in a sphere where it is impossible of application." Kant, Untersiichung uber die Deut- lichkeit der Grundsatz.e den natiirlichen TAeologie und der Moral. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? % 1. By ordinary knowledge we mean what the Greeks called " opinion," i.e. unsystematized, isolated beliefs about things, so far as they are considered true. Science is systematized knowledge, when some degree of unifica- tion has been attained. The unification in science is only partial (as Herbert Spencer says) ; for science, or rather the sciences, can only proceed by breaking up the roughly constructed wholes of ordinary belief and considering certain aspects of them to the exclusion of others. Thus the procedure of the sciences necessarily involves abstraction. Thus science, i.e. the sum of the existing sciences, still fails to satisfy the demand for unification. Philosophy, which in its origin was not distinct from science and from which the sciences have WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 67 gradually differentiated themselves, is the effort after a complete unification and systematization of knowledge. In ordinary life and in the special sciences we assume that the world is some sort of cosmos or orderly system : philosophy is the attempt to know it as such — an attempt, an effort only — for complete know- ledge is out of our reach. Philosophy is the love or striving after wisdom (Pythagoras). § 2. Unification, system, is the ideal of philosophy ; but the actual work it has to do consists mainly in criticism. For the purposes of ordinary life and of the special sciences we have to make abstractions, we have to make assumptions, we have to use conceptions (" categories ") without testing them : thus dogmatism easily rises out of the rough thinking of ordinary life and out of the necessarily partial views of the special sciences. It is the business of philosophy, in its effort to uphold the ideal of complete unification, to test and criticise these partial and one-sided views ; to en- deavour to see them in their relation to one another. In this aspect of it philosophy has been well called " the criticism of categories." Plato's phrase {Rep. VII.) (TwoirTiKos 6 SiaXeKTiKos brings out the double aspect of philosophy : it is "the looking at things as a whole," and it proceeds by dialectic, examining everything, taking nothing for granted. When philosophy attempts constructive systematiza- tion without sufficient warning that its ultimate con- structions can only be tentative and hypothetical, it is apt to seem and to be dogmatism, and to provoke scepticism in the work of philosophy generally. § 3- Philosophy is a kind of knowledge, a kind of science — an attempt to realise the ideal of knowledge and 68 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA science. It is a thinking consideration of the world (Hegel). It has to take account of feelings and emotions, of the practical needs and the unsatisfied aspirations of mankind, as part of the material to be studied. But philosophy itself must be intellectual in character. Its business is to know, not to do ; to test and criticise, 1 not to preach. Hence philosophy can never be popular. The sciences have all originated in man's practical needs (geometry was land measure- ment, etc. 2 ) ; but there is no science in the strict sense, no philosophy, until man gets beyond the mere craving for the satisfaction of material wants, and in the leisure of a civilised society can feel purely intellectual wants and seek to satisfy them. 3 Those boastfully " practical persons" who do not indulge the desire to know, which Aristotle perhaps rashly ascribes to all mankind, though they may welcome the material conveniences of scientific progress, do not have genuinely scientific interests and do not philosophise. Philosophy cannot be made palatable to them except by becoming false to its special end. § 4- Only confusion can arise from trying to get over philosophical difficulties by appealing to practical needs or to emotion, or from expecting philosophy to do the work of religion, poetry, music, cookery, or medicine. There has indeed come down to us from the Greek world, along with the name of philosophy, the conception of it as " a way of life." Pythagoras, "lover of wisdom," was thought of in later ages as a mixture of sage and saint. Stoicism, Epicureanism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism regarded philo- sophy primarily as a rule of life and as a substitute 1 "Testing the instruments may be more useful than accumulating observations with bad instruments." [Note found elsewhere.] 2 Cf. Herodotus, II., 109, v. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 19. 3 Aristotle Metaph. I. init. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 69 for religion : and so came the tendency to disparage mere knowledge, to subordinate theory to practice or even to emotional ecstasy. Philosophy to Plato and Aristotle was primarily a way of thinking, a desire to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ; but knowledge was to influence practice, as theory, conscientiously and seriously held, must always do. The philosopher, like the man of science, must discipline himself to accept truth, however it may violate his private likings. He has, however, to con- sider problems raised by those aspects of the universe and of human life which the specialist in this or that natural science can altogether disregard. It will not do to alter the multiplication table because we are getting into debt and are afraid of poverty : it will not do to twist our metaphysics in defiance of correct thinking because we are unhappy or shrink from death. Needs and desires set going all our thoughts, as well as all our other activities ; but needs and desires of themselves give us no standard of value. 1 They must themselves be estimated. What is our test of truth ? What is our test of the relative values for human beings of different beliefs and modes of conduct ? These are the fundamental questions of logic (in the widest sense) and of ethics. § 5- Philosophy cannot be profitably pursued apart from consideration of its history. To study our problems fairly we must at the least understand the way in which they have come to us. To think we can look our questions in the face unaffected by what has been believed by our predecessors is a delusion. The very language we use is permeated by the metaphysics of the past. Besides if all preceding systems were false or worthless, doesn't this make it highly probable that 1 Cf. Confesiio Fidei, p. 244. 7o COGITATIO METAPHYSICA the new system will be false also ? Whereas if all contain some element of truth and value, if the history of philosophy be itself " philosophy taking its time," gradually working out its solution in a long process of dialectic, i.e. of discussion, there is a reasonable hope that the new thought growing out of the old and worked out in relation to it, will not be worthless for the future (cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VII. i. § 5). We may well distrust any philosophical system which begins by proclaiming itself entirely new. Radicalism to be useful must be based on conservatism and on a reasonable respect for the wisdom of the past. LOGIC. § 6. Logic is the most suitable name for the whole philosophical science which discusses the question of validity in knowledge. Psychology professes to deal with knowing (" intellection ") only as a mental pro- cess : it professes to be a science concerned with descriptions of what is. To limit logic to the esti- mation of consistency and leave over the question of truth for " epistemology " may be convenient for bibliographical or for elementary educational purposes ; but it is only a makeshift division. We cannot sepa- rate the question of consistency from the question of truth. 1 Moreover there is a good historical reason for using logic to denote the subjects treated of in the Posterior Analytics, and not restricting it to some frag- ments of the Prior Analytics and the De Interpretatione twisted away from reality into a false resemblance to mathematics. The imitation of mathematics has been a curse to the philosophical sciences. 1 See next 8. LOGIC 71 § 7- Truth is often said to be conformity of our thought with facts. But what are facts ? The only pure fact {i.e. the only fact into which there enters no element of theory, of thinking, of mental construction) is the uninterpreted feeling or sensation, which so long as it is uninterpreted means nothing and cannot be ex- pressed or spoken about : and pure facts, moreover, are facts only to the one consciousness that has the feeling and at the moment at which the feeling is felt. Interpretation, even recognition of a feeling as such and such (classification), involves theory. The fact that the sun rose at 6 a.m. to-day is a theory — and a false theory, though convenient. " I saw the prisoner on such a day in such a place " is an inference — possibly erroneous. What are commonly called facts are statements which are accepted as fitting in with the actual or possible experience of mankind in general, or of the experts in any special subject, though they may never directly have entered into my experience or yours : e.g. that there is a lonely rock on a little visited portion of the Antarctic Ocean which very few have seen, or that there is such and such an element in the atmosphere of the sun, or that Julius Caesar was killed on such a day. All these " facts " are ways of thinking which we accept as valid because they fit in with other ways of thinking and other parts of our and other people's experience which we accept as valid. The sole ultimate test of truth is coherence in thinking and experience. Experience includes thinking and the pure facts of sensation and feeling. Descartes said the test of truth was " clear and distinct think- ing": he meant this principle of coherence or non- contradiction (cf. Method, Part IV.; Meditation III.) ; but his phrase was unfortunate, because it seemed to ignore all reference to the ultimate fact of mere 72 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA feeling (though penser, cogitare, to Descartes = conscious- ness in general) and because it seemed to suggest that by mere effort of individual ratiocination complete systems of truth could be built up. As a matter of psychological fact we cannot, when thinking clearly and distinctly, admit a belief which is inconsistent with the existing mass of beliefs in our mind. Either we must reject the new opinion which claims our acceptance or we must readjust our existing system of beliefs in such a way as to admit the new opinion. Most persons very seldom think clearly and distinctly and it is impossible for us to think clearly and distinctly about our whole set of beliefs at once. Hence we very easily hold or think we hold in a dim, vague, partly realised fashion all sorts of beliefs which may turn out on examination to be inconsistent with one another ; or again, we may carelessly reject what is not really inconsistent with what we really know and believe, though seemingly inconsistent with some mode in which we have been accustomed to express it. These are the reasons why the test of coherence, or non-contradiction, or inconceivability of the opposite has been rejected by some {e.g. Mill) as not an infallible test of truth. No "proof" of this ultimate axiom can be given except by reductio ad absurdum — which is an appeal to the axiom itself. Anyone who denies it must maintain that contradictory statements can both be true (at the same time in the same reference, etc.). If so he must admit that the axiom itself can be true, as well as false, in the same sense. To deny the axiom is to make discussion impossible — as was seen by the Cynics, more keen-sighted than modern empiricists. All thinking, all effort to know and understand the universe in however partial a way, makes the assump- tion that, so far at least as we can understand it, it is intelligible, i.e. it is a coherent, rational system. LOGIC 73 Philosophy, which aspires to know the universe as a whole, makes the assumption that the universe as a whole is one coherent, intelligible system, though there may be much that to minds such as ours must always remain unintelligible. We know in part, but so far as we really claim to know, we assume coherence or system in what we study. We put down the un- intelligible to defects in our present state of knowledge. To assert that anything that is ultimately real is abso- lutely unintelligible to any intelligence whatever would be to claim to possess a point of view from which we could survey the whole and see the chaos as chaos existing alongside of the orderly part. To establish the existence of a real element which could not be known in its relation to the whole would require us to know what by our profession we cannot know. There is however no necessary rejection of the ultimate prin- ciple of coherence involved in a system which is " dualistic " or " pluralistic," so far as to recognise the conditioning and limitation of the principle of order and unity by the imperfection with which it is mani- fested — (manifested to us, that is all we can judge of) — in the world of appearance or by the coexistence of beings of different grades of perfection. The prin- ciple of coherence by no means commits us to any abstract system of monism. 1 § 8. Truth is one and indivisible, in the sense that the universe is one system ; but in the one system there may be many subordinate systems, each of which is a cosmos or world, though not the universe (to 7rav, to oXov) ; and in the one system, and in each of such subordinate systems, there are many aspects, and as we know partially and incompletely, we are led to speak of there being more than one kind of truth. For we l Cf. " The One and the Many," pp. 207 sqq. 74 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA flatter ourselves, and say we know something to be true, when it is very far short of " the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." It is thus that we may hold that there can only be one true philosophy, and yet that all the great and serious philosophical systems are, so far, true and valid. They seem to conflict with one another because, and in so far as, one accentuates some element or aspect which is neglected in others. § 9- 1 The principle of Identity, the principle of Contra- diction (or rather non-contradiction), and the principle of Excluded Middle, are different aspects of this funda- mental principle of coherence in its most abstract form. They are absolutely valid if applied strictly, but they can be applied strictly only to what is abstract. A must be A in the strict sense in which we speak of the same line or the same quantity in abstract mathe- matics ; and that A must be either B or not-B is only necessarily true if not-B is taken in the strict sense of the nomen or verbum infinitum, applicable alike to that which exists or which does not exist, provided only it be not-B in the strict sense of B. 2 In ordinary language, and even in the language we use in the more concrete sciences, we do not speak in this strict sense of identity and contradiction. We do not think it worth while to assert that a person is identical with himself, unless he is in certain respects different {e.g. if, meeting a man after many years have changed him, we say " he is still the same "). "We often say " contra- dictory " when we mean the logical contrary ; and even when we expressly frame nomina infinita like " not-bad," " non-human," they do not apply to the whole of the universe actual and possible outside the " bad " and the 1 Cf. Aristotle Metaph. III. 3, 1005 b 19: — to yap avTo a/xa V7rdp)(eiv re Kal fiij vivapytiv a&vi>arov rw avriij Kal Kara, to avTO. " Cf. "The relation of logic to psychology," p. 144. LOGIC 75 " human," and they come in use to acquire a positive connotation. Hence it is that these fundamental logical principles cannot be applied directly, or without very great caution, to the solution of any concrete problem. Nevertheless they remain the ultimate test of truth even here. The apparent exceptions that have been alleged come from statements being made in confused form without all the conditions being clearly stated. The Antipodes can be called (a) " conceivable," or (b) " inconceivable," according as we think of gravita- tion (a) as a force acting in the direction of the greatest mass, or (b) as a force acting in the direction of an absolute " down." If we think seriously of gravitation as involving such an absolute " down," the Antipodes are inconceivable to us still. The followers of Heraclitus (61 (pdo-KovTe? 'H/)a/c\en-/- Qiv) 1 may have used his dicta to justify them in the absolute scepticism and impossibility of predication, which they rightly enough deduced from the denial of the principle of Contradiction. 2 Heraclitus himself was not thinking of the logical principle which had not yet been formulated. He was striving to express the idea that everything that is actual in the universe involves a unity of opposites : nothing can be understood pro- perly in bare abstract self-identity. In modern phrase, we see the truth of what he means by considering the inapplicability of mere mathematical concepts to the world of concrete human interests. We may speak of Semi-Pelagians, but he was more mathematician than theologian, who described a Pelagian as equal to two Semi-Pelagians. We cannot remove a positive quan- tity from one side of an equation without adding it as a negative quantity to the other ; but we must not argue like Mr. Spencer that every new law necessarily 1 Aristotle Metaph. ioio a n. 2 If nothing were absolutely certain, nothing could even be prob- able — nothing could be denied. (Cf. Aristotle Metaph. IV. 4.) 76 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA diminishes liberty, unless we expressly define liberty as mere absence of law, which is what no practical citizen means by it. John Locke spoke more wisely when he said : " Where there is no law, there is no liberty." § 10. The principle of sufficient reason is the principle ot coherence in its more concrete aspect. In seeking to interpret the world in which we find ourselves, we assume that it is a cosmos, that is to say that events and things cannot be regarded as isolated — they form parts of one system. Explanation in the scientific sense consists simply in taking things or events out of their isolation, and seeing them in relation to wider and wider aspects of the whole. Scientific description, classification, explanation (if we draw distinctions between them), are different grades of the same pro- cess of linking things together by the bond of a reason or cause (Plato, Meno 98 A). Whether we call the principle of universal causa- tion and the principle of the uniformity of nature ultimate axioms and presuppositions of all science, or regard them as scientific theories accepted gradually, and only as yet by scientifically-trained minds, depends entirely on what we mean by " causation " and by " nature." : The fundamental principle of coherence is one with- out which we could have no " experience " (not merely no science) — we should have nothing but a succession of isolated sensations (or rather, to use a more careful psychology) a shifting, changing blur of confusion, which could only be called " experience " by courtesy. There would be no definite things with definite characteristics amid their changing aspects, such as to allow recognition (identification) and classification. 1 Social factor in the axiom of the uniformity of nature (Royce, The World and the Individual, Vol. II., p. 195). See end of § 15. LOGIC 77 Mere naming of things involves identity and non- contradiction ; A must be A, and not other than A. A principle (ap^j major premise) may be the logical presupposition of an inference, although it is not yet formulated in words and though persons of no training in the use of abstract language might fail to recognise it or admit its truth, though they had been using it as a principle of argument all along. Axioms are often called "immediate," "self-evident," " a priori." All such phrases are open to misunder- standing. The view here taken of axioms does not imply that axioms are got at without any trouble by simply looking at them (" intuitively ") : they are a/xeara, " immediate," only in the sense of not being deductive conclusions from higher axioms ; self-evident only in the sense of not having their validity proved (awoSelicvvvai') by experience — though experience of their successful working produces conviction (SqXovv) in the mind and makes us realise them vividly. They are a priori, not in the sense of being in the mind as fully formed principles prior in time to the use made of them, but only in the sense of logical priority. They are not dependent upon experience {i.e. on the use of them in experience) for their validity ; because experi- ence is dependent on their validity being presupposed. If we are considering psychologically the growth and history of our processes of cogitation, it is important to notice that our own recognition of our self-identity amid changing experience (a recognition that is not a matter of immediate perception, but of sub-conscious inference) and of our power of so far controlling the movements of our bodies, the course of our thoughts and things in the world around us, gives us an original type of unity amid difference, of substance and attri- bute, and of cause and effect. 1 It is important also if we are studying the history 1 Cf. infra, p. 1 08, and Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, § 27. 78 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA of human civilization, to notice that practical needs in a narrowly material sense have given the starting point for what have afterwards developed into sciences (cf. an tea, § 3) ; and practical considerations may continue to affect the interpretation put upon principles used in science. Thus the warning about " plurality of causes " (which is an application of the logical rule that we cannot argue safely from the affirmation of the consequent in hypothetical syllogisms) is only necessary if we take " cause " and " effect " in the sense in which they are used in rough practical language. The same effect only follows from different causes if we are in the habit of expressing our " causes " (the point where our control over things comes in) much more carefully than " effects," e.g. if we want to kill an animal for food, it may not matter whether an arrow or a bullet or a knife does the work : if we want to kill simply to get it out of the way, we may use poison, drowning, dynamite as well. From a strictly scientific point of view, death from any one of these causes is not " the same effect " as death from another of them. But the logical question of validity is distinct from these psychological and historical questions of origin. The principle of coherence in its most abstract form and in its more concrete applications is valid because without it experience and the sciences would be im- possible. If any ingenious sceptic or empiricist argues that this only shows that it is a convenient methodo- logical postulate, a working hypothesis which may after all be false, we need not feel disturbed in our assurance of the certainty of the principle ; for the presupposition of all knowledge and of all experience has got the best testimony to its validity for knowledge that any pro- position can possibly have. Without the assumption (however little recognised in consciousness) of the principle of causation in its LOGIC 79 vaguest form, i.e. everything that happens has a cause, i.e. something with which it happens, without which (or without something analogous to which — this to allow for " plurality of causes ") it would not happen — without the assumption of uniformity of nature in the vague sense in which that is involved in the principle of causation (for if what is the same cause did not produce the same effect when tried under favourable conditions, we should not regard it as the cause) — without the assumption of such general principles con- necting our experience there could be no experience at all ; but such principles in these vague forms are quite compatible with the rudest and wildest beliefs about what sort of agencies can be causes and about the contents of nature. The unscientific person who believes that running water will stop a witch, or that human sacrifice will avert the wrath of the gods, believes in the principle of causation and of the same cause producing the same effect under proper con- ditions, as much as the man of science who rejects these agencies as unverifiable hypotheses and accepts the agency of physical, chemical, and physiological forces of which the mass of mankind knows nothing. The progress of scientific knowledge changes the content of the conceptions of " cause " and " nature " : it does not alter or increase the validity of the principle of coherence, except so far as it makes people realise more vividly the indispensableness and the universal applic- ability of the principle. What was at first a mere formal principle — " Everything, or at least every change " (for at first people don't trouble about explaining what has always been there : the thing that has been is taken for granted : only the new raises the question why ?) " has a cause ; but anything may be the cause of anything," — gains in depth and meaning as the precise nature of the coherence of things comes to be under- stood. 80 COG1TATIO METAPHYSICA § ii. At a very early stage in the history of Greek science it was seen that we must assume the conservation of matter {omnia mutantur, nil interil), if science is to be possible. This principle or its modern equivalent or supplement, the conservation of energy, does not involve the assumption that the universe is finite nor is it inconsistent with the admission that matter or energy may be infinite in quantity. What the principle, as the postulate of all accurate scientific work, means is that in any given section of the universe which we can isolate from the rest — {e.g. the substances contained in a particular test tube ; a given quantity of coal, etc.) — the sum of matter and of energy remains the same, so that all apparent loss or increase is a problem that requires to be accounted for. Such postulates gain in acceptance when it is seen that their requirements can be fulfilled in scientific investigation, even in many cases where it seems most difficult to do so ; but the logical validity of the postulate really rests on an application of the general principle of coherence. We satisfy only the pictorial imagination, which knows that light may appear out of darkness, sound out of silence, etc., and not the thinking reason, if we acquiesce in the lazy solution that things may spring into existence or go out of existence in a " mysterious fashion" or at the bidding of an almighty conjurer. Other scientific maxims, such as " Occam's razor " {entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) and the principle of Continuity {natura non facit saltuni), are in the same way checks upon our indolence. They prohibit us from falling back upon a commonsense acquiescence in lazy picture-thinking. They keep before us the ideal of nature as a coherent intelligible system — however chaotic and irregular it may yet appear to us. At the same time such maxims may 8i be foolishly as well as wisely applied. Gaps prove science incomplete ; but we must not stop them up by ambiguous phrases or by merely metaphorical or ana- logical explanation. New elements or forces must have their credentials very carefully examined ; but we must often admit our classification to be incomplete rather than make rash identifications. The ordinary scientific hypothesis is put forward to be proved or disproved : if these fundamental axioms or postulates of science could be disproved, science would come to an end. What would be the use of the chemist's laborious analysis if portions of matter could dodge in and out of the physical universe, and if an identical substance behaved in totally different ways in combination with another substance on differ- ent occasions ? Why should we waste ourselves in searching for the causes of things, if things may occur without any causes whatever, or if there are no fixed laws to be discovered ? The scientific worker shews a faith in the rationality of the universe (a faith held by him in spite of the seeming chaos of accidents he encounters): the sceptic as to the absolute validity of the fundamental principles of logic may or may not be acting in the supposed interests of theology, but it is only an irrationalist theology that he can hope to benefit. He may render probable the existence of the warring gods of Olympus, or even some less respectable powers ; but he is not helping to prove the existence of the eternal and unchanging Intelli- gence who is said to have made man in his own image and therefore capable to some extent of under- standing his working. § 12. Inference, the special subject of logic in its narrower sense (and the central subject of logic in any sense) is best studied in its clearest and most distinct forms. 82 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA By applying analysis (avaXvrucij is an older and perhaps a better name than Ao-yi/oy) to them we discover the essential elements of valid inference and are thus able afterwards to detect them in the more rudimentary forms. We understand the lower from the point of view of the higher that has developed out of it. Aris- totle took as the special material for his analysis of scientific inference, the inferences of geometry — the most advanced science of the time. 1 The first figure of the syllogism is the form in which we apply general principles to less general, or individual cases: it is the form of demonstrative science. 2 In it alone can we establish with certainty A propositions. The third figure is of use in refuting universal propositions, affir- mative or negative : and for refutation I or O is enough. The second figure is used in taking an in- dividual or a group definitely out of a class or from under the application of a general rule. The hypo- thetical syllogism, where we deny the consequent {Camestres or Cesare), is one of its most important forms. The second figure also forms one of our most common but merely probable (and often treacherous) forms of inference. AAA (the enthymeme in Fig. 2 ael Xucrt/xo?) is the form of our unconscious or subconscious infer- ences ("judgments" we call them) of perception, our inferences of practical identification, circumstantial evi- dence, diagnosis, etc. The third figure with an A con- clusion is the type of inductive generalisation of the ruder sort. More careful " inductions " (so called) 1 The Aristotelian logic has been first narrowed, then carica- tured, then attacked and ignorantly rejected. 2 Fig. I. is the bringing of a particular {i.e. individual) case or cases, either wholly or partially, under a general rule, affirmative or negative. Fig. II. is the excluding of a particular case or cases, either wholly or partially from a general rule, affirmative or negative. Fig. III. is the proof of the (partial) coincidence or disagreement of certain characteristics, through an example or examples used de- finitely, or, in part, vaguely. LOGIC 83 represent the bringing of cases under a rule or ex- cluding them from a rule (Barbara or Camestres). Mill's inductive canons are major premises of the first or second figures. § 13- Science is advanced not by mere accumulations of facts and generalisations from them. Mere facts teach nothing. Science is advanced by the framing of hypotheses {i.e. by guessing at causes) based upon our existing set of beliefs. 1 Scientific hypotheses must be such as to be capable of proof or disproof, or at least of being rendered more or less probable by tests applied in pari materia. The only useful observations or accumulations of facts are those made under the guid- ance of some hypothesis or set of alternative hypotheses. Experiments always presuppose an hypothesis of which they are the test. The procedure of ordinary life is, logically, of the same kind as that of the sciences of observation and experiment — though it is carried on in less carefully guarded and in less conscious fashion. Every perceptive judgment is an hypothesis to account for a sensation. (" This looks solid ; This is wood not stone ; This hill must be 10 miles away.") Every perceptive judgment is thus an inference (an enthymeme in Fig. II.). The method of philosophy is of the same character. We frame hypotheses to account for the facts. We throw out guesses and must then proceed to test them. We make these guesses on the basis of our accepted system of beliefs. Hence the importance of the history of philosophy, and of the criticism of concepts. Hence it is that philosophy seems so much occupied with dis- cussing the meaning of words and the meaning of ancient theories. It must do so, if we are not to be the victims of idola fori and theatri. The ultimate J Cf. Aristotle Metaph. I. 1 and 2. 84 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA hypotheses of speculative philosophy (ultimate meta- physical or ontological or cosmological theories) can never admit of verification of the kind which is possible where we can use scientific facts such as those of chemistry, or can look to see whether e.g. a supposed planet exists in such a region of the heavens. They are however quite analogous to wider scientific hypo- theses, such e.g. as those dealing with the origin of species, the nebular hypothesis, hypotheses about the past geological history of the earth — which can only be made more or less probable according as they fit better with the known facts. If we start with an initial faith in the rationality of the universe, we must include among the facts which ultimate metaphysical theories must account for, and with which they must harmonise, the prevalence of religious beliefs and philosophical theories at certain times. We cannot expect to find all these beliefs and theories true (for many of them are contradictory of each other, and some are full of inner contradictions) but we must account for their prevalence, and should hope to show that having been widely held they have had some value for human beings. 1 METAPHYSICS. % 14- Within what is generally called " Metaphysics " (Aristotle's " First Philosophy ") we may distinguish from speculative philosophy the indispensable work of " criticism of categories," which includes the episte- mological problem : " How is knowledge possible, or what are the conditions of valid intellectual processes?" This problem is at once a necessary part of logic in the full sense of that term (cf. above § 6) and a necessary preliminary of speculative metaphysics. 2 It 1 Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. VII. 1-5. 2 Cf. "Metaphysics and Epistemology," p. 175. METAPHYSICS 85 is preliminary, however, only in the sense of logical priority : we cannot keep our minds free of all guesses about the ultimate nature of things till we have settled the conditions of human knowledge. For our minds are already influenced by theories of the past which we have inherited in the intellectual atmosphere we breathe, and we cannot examine the mere form of knowledge except in reference to some matter or content. The problems of the theory of knowledge or the criticism of pure reason are best treated, therefore, in connection with the various categories which we are in the habit of using in thinking about the world — Existence, Reality, Experience, Space and Time, Cause, Sub- stance, Mind and Body, Nature and Spirit. Such are some of the fundamental concepts which must be dealt with by what we may call logic — if we take that as including the whole problem of knowledge — or if we restrict logic specially to the consideration of inference and the processes immediately connected with it, we may call it metaphysical criticism. But as we cannot discuss the meaning of these concepts without consider- ing their relation to one another, we cannot separate off this metaphysical criticism from some hypothesis about the ultimate nature of things. § 15- It does not matter whether we say to begin with that metaphysics deals with Reality as such (or the ultimate nature of Reality) or that it deals with experience as a whole ; for Reality can only mean anything to us so far as it enters into an actual or possible experience. To begin by assuming that there is a Reality which falls entirely outside all possible experience of ours, is to assume that we know the existence of that of which we professedly cannot know anything — not even whether it exists or not. For to profess to know that something exists whilst we cannot know at 86 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA all what it is, is to make our " that " and " exists " so absolutely empty of meaning that we might quite well substitute " does not exist " for " exists." If I say I know there is an animal in that hole, but I don't know what sort of animal it is, I say something ; but I at least profess to know that it is an animal (which means something to me) and by saying it is in that hole, I mean something about its size, habits, etc. If, however, I say that the ultimate Reality is altogether unknowable I say what means nothing ; and those who say this sort of thing will be found to go on to speak of this Unknowable as a Force or Power, or to treat it as an object of reverence, which is to determine, in however vague a way, what it is. Experience, however, if treated as the object of metaphysics, must be taken in the widest sense, the sense in which it includes thought, and must not be limited to sensation and feeling. In ordinary usage it is often specially applied to feeling in antithesis to thought. I have an " idea," it may be said, of what you are speaking about, but I have never "experienced" it, and yet an idea is surely an experience, though it may make a very slight impression on the mind. On the other hand, the fact that I have an experience in the sense of having a feeling or a sensation does not of itself tell us anything about the value nor even about the nature of the feeling or sensation. The feeling or sensation may be wrongly interpreted by me {i.e. wrongly thought about) or it may be a very disagree- able feeling or one that I may come to hold that I ought not to have experienced or ought at least not to encourage. Experiences are of all sorts. Religious and artistic emotion extend a man's experience ; but so also will opium eating and drunkenness and vice and crime and temporary insanity. The most experienced person in this sense might be the person who combined religious emotion with crime and sensual excesses of all METAPHYSICS 87 sorts. When we speak, however, with respect about an experienced person we mean a person who has exercised sober judgment about things, who has not merely felt but has done a great deal of thinking — practical thinking, indeed, but still thinking. Whether an experience is valuable or not (valuable to the individual and to others) must depend on tests of reason and of social cohesion and social progress. (1) Does the experience make you a wiser man, more clear-headed, more capable of judging sanely ? (2) Does it make you more useful to your fellow citizens, your fellow men ? These are the tests by which we judge ethically the value both of " luxury " and of " asceticism." It will be seen that they are particular applications of our general test of coherence ; and that test in its specially intellectual form must be applied when we are estimating the value for knowledge of any individual's " experience." Does it as interpreted by the individual (and it must be interpreted by concepts in order to be communicated to others) cohere with the rest of his experience (as interpreted) and with the experience of others (as interpreted and communicated by them). As a matter of history it is interesting to note that the needs of social cohesion are what lead to the adoption of fixed standards of judging between true and false ; but the practical needs of social cohesion are not the logical proof of the validity of theoretical propositions. Very rough approximations and partly erroneous beliefs will often do well enough merely to enable people to understand one another's wants and get on together. That the earth is flat, that the earth does not move, that the sun goes round the earth, that there is an absolute up and down in the universe are principles that have done perfectly well as a basis for social cohesion (at an early stage of the world's history). Knowledge is not the product of mere individual activity any more than conduct, our language, the 88 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA system of universities, measures, weights, stored up experience about the world, previous theories, religions, etc., are our social heritage. The " solitary thinker " is dependent on the society which has made it possible for him to think with a certain degree of clearness and with a certain amount of material to think about (con- tent for his thoughts), and the society in its turn may gain from the work of the unpractical savant or philo- sopher a general progress, through gaining power over nature, over human nature, over inherited delusions and " idola." 1 Practical utility was the source of the multiplication table, of tables of logarithms, etc. ; but their truth (validity) depends on considerations of " clear and distinct thinking," absolutely certain, and not on the fluctuating consideration of what is or may be useful. § 16. It is customary to oppose " Thought " to " Reality " — a mere idea is contrasted with what is real, ideas are valued only if they correspond to reality. This common-sense distinction cannot, however, be rigidly maintained. Reality is a very ambiguous term ; and in no intelligible sense can it be entirely opposed to thought. 2 § 17- Existence as a predicate seems separate from mean- ing (or validity) only if both be taken in a very abstract way. The conception of a mathematical figure may be easily distinguished from an actual diagram occupy- ing a certain portion of space and made at such and such a time. What exists is always individual ; mean- ing is always a universal or some combination of universals. But if in meaning we include the possi- bility of realisation, as e.g. in a rectilineal triangle as J Cf. Huxley, Methods and Results, p. 53. 2 Cf. "What is Reality?" in Darwin and Hegel, pp. 81, 87, 91. METAPHYSICS 89 distinct from a rectilineal biangle, we see that the latter figure has no meaning, i.e. it involves contra- diction and so cannot " exist." A map of a large island in mid North Atlantic has a meaning for us — only if we leave out the question whether such an imaginary place fits in with the rest of what we know to exist. . Thought can be used to determine existence most easily in what is abstract and so more completely understood. That which we understand least (isolated events) is that of which we can predicate mere exist- ence. 1 § 18. There are many grades of reality and any idea that any one actually has, however foolish its content, is real as a mere psychical occurrence. An idea which fits in with other conceptions that we accept as valid is real in a much fuller sense. To say that something is " appearance " (pheno- menon) is not to say that it is an illusion. An illusion is real only in the sense that it is an idea that someone has. It is unreal in the sense that it is an interpreta- tion of some sensation or feeling that does not fit in with the rest of a person's experience or with the experience of people in general. If a person thinks he sees someone whom he knows to be dead walking about ; or if he thinks he is Emperor of China, when nobody else thinks that, we say he has an illusion — or if there seems no suggestion in anything objective for what he believes, we call it an hallucination. To hold, however, as Berkeley did, that the world known through sense perceptions is not real in the same degree as the conscious spirits who have such percep- tions, is not to say that the world is an illusion. To 1 Cf. in Logic Intension Analytic Extension Synthetic. 90 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA hold that time and space, which condition all our perceptions, are not conditions of all thinkable realities is not to hold that they are illusions. We know things imperfectly, but imperfect know- ledge is not illusion. Appearances differ in degree of reality. Appearance is not ultimate or absolute reality, but it may be appearance of reality. 1 So far as we approximate to complete knowledge of anything, we know the universal in the particular, e.g. we do not know natural selection if we have merely in our minds some abstract phrases taken from a text- book, nor have we knowledge if we merely notice as a fact the peculiar shape of the columbine without seeing in it the working out of the results of successive self-fertilisation and cross-fertilisation. 2 We approxi- mate to complete knowledge in proportion as we see the connection between universal principles and par- ticular cases. § 19- Time cannot be an ultimate reality : for it has only a meaning in connection with change. Yet we must not call it an illusion, for we work with it successfully, and the knowledge of the way in which things must appear to us and to other similar beings must be in- cluded in a perfect or complete knowledge of the universe, just as the way in which a picture will appear to the spectator is part of what the artist knows about it. There is no reason to suppose that Omniscience knows only abstract universals — mathematical formulae — without any knowledge of the way in which things will appear to beings conditioned by time and space and perception through a limited number of senses. Kant saw that only the unchanging changes. To ICf. "The One and Many," p. 210. 2 The colour of the tiger from the jungles differs from the colour of the lion from the desert. METAPHYSICS 91 be aware of change of succession we must in some sense stand outside the succession. We cannot think universal movement, unless we imagine something stationary relative to which or within which the move- ment takes place. Our habit of using measurements of time gives a false suggestion of time as a succession or series of discrete moments. The rhythmic movement of various organic sensations helps to produce this notion. But when we think carefully, instead of merely picturing, we see that the moment of time is an arbitrary unit. Even if we discover the normal period of time (measured in reference to some fraction of some cosmic movement such as the revolution of the earth round the sun) which an individual, the average human being, can grasp as a unity, that normal period can be extended or diminished by (1) inattention or (2) attention. 1 All this is psychologically important. The lowest stage of mental process is mere awareness of a flow of sensation or feeling. In the higher process of think- ing we grasp a unity amid difference ; and we may be able to see the succession, the time process, as the appearance of a reality which is not itself conditioned by time, e.g. when we apprehend a demonstration completely, seeing the conclusion in the premises, or when we grasp a work of art as an organic unity. Yet the mathematician who conveys his demonstration to other minds has to give it out bit by bit — by a succession in time. He may put the final conclusion first as the probandum 2 — then he gives the premises and conclusion in a temporal order which generally (but not always) represents or expresses the logical order. The dramatist has to put his work in a series 1 Cf. Royce's " time-span," The World and the Individual, Vol. I. pp. 420, sq. 2 In practice we generally think and state our conclusions before we think or state the premises. 92 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA of scenes, he can't let people have it all at once. 1 Yet if the work has an artistic unity it is more than a mere succession of scenes ; it is grasped (approximately) as a unity where each part is conditioned by the whole : and the beginning needs the end to explain its meaning fully. If we distinguish mere existence — mere fact, event — from meaning, we can say that what exists " is now " and ceases to exist when it is not now ; but its meaning is not thus conditioned by time, though meaning can only be manifested in a time process. § 20. To ordinary opinion what exists must not merely be " now" but "there" (ttov kou vvv, daseyri). The soul is thought of as in the body or out of the body : God is in heaven. Even a feeling is thought of as existing in the nerves or brain or a soul inside the body. In primitive thinking there is no " existence " except in space (note that even Parmenides envisages his ov and eV as a plenum, ov yap 6vtl TreXa^ei). It is almost im- possible to keep the notion of space out of the connotation of existence (ex-sis tere) ; and so it is easy to fall into the notion that nothing is " real " except what is in space : yet the word " real " can more easily be used for what is significant, what has meaning, what has validity. We might say of a falling Government : " It exists (i.e. you may find the officials in their offices) but it is no longer a reality," i.e. people do not obey it, do not believe in it. On the other hand a truth, a principle may be very real, true or valid ; yet its only " existence " may be in some mind or perhaps written down on paper. But the written words or even the 1 It was an intoxicated person who, hearing the bell of St. Paul's strike twelve, said " Can't you give us all that at once ? " Being drunk he was demanding a mystic state of consciousness transcending the limitations of ordinary human knowledge. METAPHYSICS 93 spoken words, the mere " existence," is nothing unless the meaning is understood and accepted. 1 Space is the condition of all that can be known through the senses. The distinguishing of three dimensions in space only means that to fix a position three things must be stated, and to state more is superfluous. Two dimensions, one dimension, are not what we begin with (the space we actually know extends " round " us everywhere and may be treated as of infinite dimensions, if we like) ; they are abstractions for the convenience of mathematics. § 21. All our ordinary language being dependent on sense experience, the distinction of the " inner " as the mental from the " outer " or non-mental is a metaphor, which is very apt to mislead. The plain man means by the external world, the world outside his body. Hence the popular misunderstandings of Berkeley. What Berkeley insists on is a small matter perhaps ; but it is the essential beginning of any careful thinking about the world. Nothing exists for us except what comes as an object " into " our consciousness. We can suppose the existence of what does not come into our conscious- ness, but remains at a lower level, in a sub-conscious or unconscious stage which nevertheless is continuous 1 In the space world, the individual is simply what is separated in space from some other individual : in the world of meaning this is not necessarily so, e.g. the real self we know in consciousness contains the tribal self, etc. It is the difference between extension and intension in logic. In the spiritual world the principles of the quantitative are inapplicable, except as often misleading metaphors, and many of them have to be reversed. The part contains the whole ; the Three are One ; he that loses his life saves it. Pluralism takes the picture-thinking of the space world and applies it straight away to the spiritual — treating souls as atoms. Why may not the soul grow and become at once wider and more intense ? 94 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA with the conscious, 1 or of what exists for consciousnesses other than ours ; but of existence altogether apart from any mind, existence which cannot possibly come into any consciousness, we can have no knowledge. 2 It is a meaningless phrase. Berkeley leaves many questions over, e.g. (i) What gives statements about the primary qualities of matter a greater certainty or validity (objectivity) than any possible statement about the secondary qualities which are purely subjective ? (This was the question for Kant. " How are mathematics possible as a priori ? ") (2) How are our finite minds or egos related to other minds or egos and to the mind of God, from whom Berkeley holds the "ideas" come to us? (3) When we have admitted that all that is (with any meaning for us) is "mental," when we have said "all without is within," we have still to face the problem of the relation between that part of the content of our ideas (in the widest sense — of anything in the mind — Vorstellung) which we construe as in space, and that part which we distinguish as " inner " or not extended, purely mental or spiritual, the problem which appears most pro- minently as that of the relation between body and mind (in wider terms, of nature and spirit). Materialism as an ultimate metaphysical hypothesis is refuted by Berkeley's " idealism " (epistemological idealism). " Materialism cannot explain itself" ; but Berkeley's idealism leaves us still with the problem of the relation between " spirits " and their mental processes as such, on the one side, and that portion of our " ideas " which we call our bodies and the material world, on the other. Berkeley doesn't deny the " matter " of ordinary belief, but he doesn't discuss its relation to mind. x This Berkeley did not recognise: hence his treatment of minima visibilia, etc., as absolutes, his disparagement of advanced mathe- matics, etc. Here Leibniz was far ahead of Berkeley. 2 Cf. Huxley, Collected Essays, Vol. VI. pp. 95 sqq., 279. PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PARALLELISM 95 PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PARALLELISM. % 22. Mind and Body as " two aspects." 1 Many philosophical men of science have substituted this conception for that crude materialism which in ancient times resolved the soul into certain very fine atoms, and which in modern times has called thought a secretion of the brain ; and many psychologists have looked upon this conception as the most convenient working hypothesis by which to express the relation between psychology and physiology. Mr. Ward rightly regards the conception as the outcome of Cartesian dualism. But the dualism of Descartes was assuredly not the invention of that philosopher, but rather the survival in his system of the popularized Platonic dual- ism of soul and body, which had become stiffened into an accepted dogma in the Christian consciousness. All our ordinary language now assumes the antithesis between the inner life of the soul and the outer life of the body. The plain man means of course by the ex- ternal world the world outside his bodily self: and here the distinction of outer and inner is literally correct, the outer skin of each individual dividing all space into two parts. But then the plain man has been further taught to regard the soul as a thing inside his body, and so, when he thinks he is thinking more deeply, he puts his conscious experience as such "inside" his soul, hardly aware that he is now using a metaphor, and then he opposes to that an external world, which he assumes to be the same for every mind, and from which the mind is supposed 1 [The following pages (95 to 100) are taken from a review of Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism in the Philosophical Review, Vol. IX. pp. 253 to 257.] 96 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA passively to receive impressions. It is thus that the dualism of popular philosophy is established ; of this " common-sense " dualism Descartes accepted uncriti- cally the initial antithesis between the mental and the external, giving it, however, a deeper and truer meaning by turning it into the distinction between thought and extension, and becoming aware of the problems to which it leads. The doctrine of psycho- physical parallelism, as formulated by Spinoza, is a serious attempt to solve the problem which popular philosophy conceals under its easy metaphors of images and impressions, but which Descartes had clearly realised. Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum. Spinoza, it should be observed, does not use the metaphor of parallelism : he asserts an identity between the physical and the psychical order. And this identity in duality is maintained by the more careful philosophical psycholo- gists {e.g. Hsffding), who have employed Spinoza's conception as at least a working hypothesis. The psychical and the physical are two aspects or mani- festations of one substance. Whether that substance is material or mental, or is unknown, is left over as a question for metaphysics. Mr. Ward seems to me hardly quite just to this suggestive idea of Spinoza's. He considers only somewhat crude expressions of it, e.g. Clifford's illustration by reference to the relation between the spoken and the written sentence, or Huxley's comparison of consciousness to the sound of the bell, or the shadow of the moving train. These illustrations are defective, because both sides are in pari materia. The sound, as waves in the atmosphere, is a form of energy, and the shadow of the moving train is in the physical world. On the other hand, the sound as heard, the shadow as seen, are in the psychical world ; but so, also, are the bell as seen, the train as seen, the sentence as heard or PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 97 seen. When consciousness is called an "epiphenomon," this is really an inaccurate interpretation of metaphors like that of the shadow : it is a way, though a way philosophically indefensible, of escaping the absurdity of calling consciousness a physical product, a secretion or a vibration — an idea which would contradict the conservation of energy. The physical counterpart of a state of consciousness must be, on the principle of continuity, some " hypothetical brain mechanics," some jolt or jar among vibrating molecules. G. H. Lewes's adaptation from Aristotle of the illustration of the convex and concave aspects of the circumference of the circle is a better metaphor to express the relation of physical and mental. We might elaborate such an image a little and say that every one of us sees only the inner surface of a hollow sphere, but that surface we can construe into a moving picture made of spheres whose insides we can never see, but some or possibly all of which we conjecture to have minds inside them perceiving only inner surfaces such as we see ; for we can only interpret things on the analogy of our own experience. The " myth " or picture does not work out very well ; it brings us back to the old antithesis of " inner " and " outer," but in a way that perhaps helps to suggest, instead of to conceal, the difficulties involved in that antithesis. The best illustration of what Spinoza's doctrine, with some modification, may be made to signify is, how- ever, an illustration used several times by Mr. Ward himself, but not in connection with psychophysical parallelism (see, e.g. Vol. II. pp. 264, 273). Not the relation between the spoken sentence and the written sentence, but the relation between the sentence spoken or written, on the one side, and the meaning of that sentence, on the other side, may serve as an analogy of the relation between body and soul, or more generally between the material and the spiritual. 98 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA Aristotle's definition of \|^x>7 as the realisation of the body belongs in the main to the same mode of thinking, as distinct from the notion of soul and body as separate substances. We might, as a matter of speculation, more on the lines of Leibniz than of Spinoza, apply the conception of psychophysical parallelism in some such way as this : Let us for convenience use Roman capitals for the physical series, and the corresponding {i.e. fundamentally identical) Greek cursives for the psychical series. Then A may denote the (as yet almost entirely hypothetical) sphere of psychological physiology so far as it relates to the physical mechanism of the higher mental processes ; these processes as known in consciousness will be a. Let B denote living organisms as the subject matter of the biological sciences, and C denote matter and motion (or shall we simply say " energy " ?) as the subject matter of physics. It will be observed that in descending the scale we come always to what is more abstract ; and below C we might place separ- ately D, the abstract relations of space and quantity, though C is already so abstract in comparison with B that we may be content with three main divisions of the universe in its physical aspect, spatial extension being the characteristic that belongs to the whole of it. Now, can we give any meaning to /3 and y and any subsequent Greek letters as representing stages in the psychical scale ? Applying the same principle of continuity which led us to assert the reality (as an object of a conceivable science) of A, but applying this principle in the reverse order, we must recognize /3 as the region of " obscure percep- tion " and of feelings of attraction and aversion not yet risen into the clear consciousness of a. As the psychical side of C (motion) we find mere psychical activity or blind will. This is really an PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 99 abstraction so far as our conscious experience goes, because we never experience pure volition without any thought (becoming conscious of it makes it " thought "), any more than we ever experience pure thought without activity ; but we may follow Schopenhauer and call this mere activity, regarded as psychical, " will " a potiori, because it is the basis and lowest stage of what we know as conscious volition in a. " Will," in such a sense that we could apply it to the self-directed activities of animals and plants, is always found in some combination with feeling, or with what in the case of plants we may call such by courtesy. But this will seems only a higher develop- ment of what we may think of as the inner or psychical aspect of the inorganic mass or atom which has inertia or the conatus of self-maintenance : 7 is the selfhood of mere abstract individuality. In our mental experience we have nothing more abstract than the vague tendency to activity : and so we cannot find intelligible psychical aspects of anything more abstract than motion. Mere space or extension is mere outwardness, and we can give it no " inner " meaning. It is the characteristic of the whole physical universe, but not of the psychical. It is, in quasi- Platonic language, the " other " of thought. But what is most abstract is just for that reason what can be most completely known on the physical side, being least known on the psychical side. We can think the geometrical and the mechanical aspect of things clearly and distinctly. Our science is less able to grapple with the organic, and least with the physio- logical aspect of the psychical, where, if we are careful, we have to admit the inadequacy of our mechanical conceptions. On the other side, we can have vivid consciousness of our own thoughts and feelings, and of the ends we are striving for, but we can only conjecture the experience of other beings : and when ioo COGITATIO METAPHYSICA we attempt to interpret the inner life, the actual " experience " of plants or of what we call inanimate things, we have to use anthropomorphic expressions which we admit to be inaccurate because too complex. Observe (i) this way of looking at the relation of mind and body is an application of the distinction between (a) existence — in the sense of existence in time and space (here and now) and (F) validity or meaning. Take the analogy of writing. («) Say a fragment of papyrus with brown marks on it of various shapes. This object existing in space can be described scientifically, it can be weighed, measured, tested physically and chemically. ($) The marks may be interpreted as having a meaning. Each sentence, each word has a meaning. Some we succeed in understanding : some we cannot make out ; perhaps we cannot read the marks quite clearly {i.e. we are not quite sure about the " fact," the " event,") but even if we can we may be unable to see what it means, i.e. what its significance is in relation to the whole of which it apparently is intended to form a part. We may guess at the meaning of the doubtful words or clauses and at what is meant when there is a lacuna by considering the apparent intention or purpose of the whole pas- sage. We do not, however, get completely at the meaning of a passage unless we have the whole context to which it belongs. I suppose the piece to be not a mere series of disconnected entries, but to have some unity, such as the unity of a poem or of a continuous philosophical discourse : the author, if a good poet or a careful and skilful philosophical thinker and writer, must have had a clear idea of the whole of his meaning, and each sentence — if possible each word — must have been chosen and placed where it is to bring out that total effect. Sentences which in isolation look clumsy or seem to convey some false or absurd statement may in their context be justifiable : one sentence has to be PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 101 supplemented by others in order to fulfil its full func- tion as contributing to the whole. Now if we may apply this analogy to the relation not merely between the individual human mind and body but to the whole relation between the spiritual world and the material universe of things and events, may we not speak of God as the ultimate meaning of the whole, for whom are all things i 1 or if we keep up our imagery, as the author of the whole book of nature and of human history, who alone comprehends the relation of every part to the total meaning ? We see only fragments of the book and therefore our knowledge of the meaning even of the parts is always imperfect. Indi- vidual finite human souls have a separate "existence," i.e. they have a manifestation in particular periods of time and portions of space, but their full meaning, their full spiritual (intellectual, ethical, religious) signi- ficance can only be known in relation to the whole : they are analogous to isolated sentences. In reading we have to start with the individual words and sen- tences as our data. The whole is only a vague ideal : so we start with individuals, they are our data. We try to find the universal aspect in them in order to understand them. 2 The words and letters of which these sentences are composed may symbolise the parts which go to make up the experience of this or that individual. Seen as mere events or occurrences in time, 1 " God himself is the best poet, and the real is his song." We know only in fragments, in some of which we discern beauty and grandeur. Much we cannot understand. 2 In self-consciousness do not fact and meaning coincide ? Or rather is the self-consciousness of the individual (as e.g. empirical psychology deals with it and tries to describe it genetically) the fact of which the Eternal Self, manifested and differentiated in the system of the universe, is the ultimate meaning ? The personality of the individual is a problem, which it needs a metaphysical theory to solve. Would it be better to be an absolutely independent being whom God could not annihilate than to be a significant sentence, a " living Epistle " in the Book of God ? 102 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA words read off from the record (spoken words that have to be spoken in succession) make the best analogue of the mental processes dealt with by the psychologist. Their meaning (their worth as estimated by logic or ethics), is something over and above the mere " facts," something which has meaning and not merely existence. These things are an allegory. (2) If the double-aspect theory be taken as here, we have not a mere parallelism between two orders of being on the same level, like a document existing in two different languages, each of which equally well expresses the same meaning (or the two clocks of Geulinx' or Leibniz's illustration) : we have a relation between two perfectly different kinds of " being " — between existence on the one side (i.e. existence in time and space), which forms the subject matter of those sciences whose business is to apply the categories of quantity so far as possible and to describe everything as far as possible in terms of its " mechanical " basis, and, on the other side, a world not of existences (such a phrase is only misleading) but of meanings, values, ends, which do not admit of the categories of quantity, and which are the proper subject matter of logic, aesthetics, ethics. (3) Aristotle in his De An. I. recognised that ^ux'i must be studied differently by the (pvo-iicos and by the StaXeKTiKos and his definition of ^vyri as evre\e-^eta Twixaro's represents a point of view which agrees with that here taken. The soul is what gives meaning to the body. 1 The aspect of" existence " is that in which 1 Many people, whatever they allow one to say about God, would not like to be told that their souls are not existences but meanings. That need not be astonishing, for many people while occupying space and possessed of existence and mass do not appear to have very much meaning — though doubtless a sympathetic imagination or the faith of a charitable religion would discover meaning and worth even in them. "The soul too is immortal — where a soul can be discerned." PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 103 we apply the concept of " material cause " — and of " form " (elSos) in so far as we group " facts " according to " laws." The aspect of meaning is that in which we bring in the conception of end, purpose, and in which also we can properly use the conception of apxfi Kivr/o-ea)? which, when applied to events in space and time as such (as events), is apt to introduce animism (illegitimate anthropomorphism). 1 All this may seem fanciful. It can only be put very briefly and formally here. But it is an attempt to give a possible meaning to the old antithesis of physical and psychical, and to carry out a little further than is usually done the best working hypothesis, both for the sciences of nature, on the one side, and for psychology on the other. If what proves a good working hypothesis for all the special sciences can be fitted in with a sound epistemological theory and with a consistent speculative metaphysics, then it has received as much verification as hypotheses on such ultimate matters admit of. The sciences of nature profess to work entirely with what takes place in space and time, to apply mathematical and mechanical con- ceptions as far as possible, and to allow no " causal explanation " except in terms of what is material, i.e. of the same kind with the spatial phenomena to be explained. To recur to my symbolic letters, A must be expressed in terms of B, B of C, and so on. Just as in ordinary language, in spite of Copernicus, we speak of sunrise and sunset, so we may continue to talk of B causing a, and of a causing B (a state of the body causing a modification of consciousness, and vice versa) while rejecting the old doctrine of interaction or influxus physicus ; and such language is specially convenient, because of our almost com- plete ignorance of A and of 6, compared with our comparatively full knowledge of a and of B. But the 1 From Psychological Review, loc. cit., pp. 257 to 259. io 4 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA ideal of scientific explanation is complete description of A, B, C in their simplest and most abstract terms. Mr. Ward objects that " mechanical " explanations are mere hypothetical descriptions ; but explanation in a science of nature only aims at such description, and purposely discards all teleology which falls outside the physical series. Teleology in a sense must come in when we are dealing with the organic — structures exist for func- tions. But this states a problem of natural science, and is not itself a solution. To take refuge in phrases like a " tendency to progression," or a nisus formativus, is simply to restate the problem as if it were the solu- tion ; " occult qualities " are not scientific explanations. The only " causes " with which the natural sciences can " explain " are what Aristotle called " material causes," to e£ &v } i.e. the sum total of conditions that are equivalent to the phenomenon to be explained on its purely material (i.e. spatial) aspect. It would save much ambiguity, if we could revive the Aristotelian distinction, or introduce some adaptation of his " four causes." So far as I can make out, Mr. Ward allows no meaning to the word " cause," except that of " effi- cient cause." It is therefore inevitable that he should take all causation to imply activity of the kind that we only know directly in our own conscious striving after ends. This is precisely the view of Berkeley, to whom, curiously enough, Mr. Ward never refers in this connection. Berkeley, like Mr. Ward, resolves the substantiality of things into causality, and inter- prets all true causality as will, what are called causes and effects in scientific phrase being merely antecedent and consequent " ideas" (i.e. phenomena) which serve as signs of one another. Efficient causation, the ap^r) kivtj- a-ews, is in place when we are explaining some particular occurrence, and wish to discover who or what is responsible for it. Who threw the stone that made the apple fall from the tree ? Or was it what lawyers PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 105, call "an act of God" P 1 But science deals not with particular events (save as experiments or illustrations, or when we cannot get beyond the particular, as in the purely " historical " parts of geology), and consequently the difference between one antecedent condition and the others is only relative. The biologist as such is not concerned to explain why this flower has an abnormal number of petals, but to discover if possible the conditions of variation in general. On the other hand the a/ox 1 ? '"i^o-ewy is important in history (though the anecdotal historian is apt to overestimate its relative importance), and it is all important in judicial investi- gations, and the material causes are apt to be over- looked. The distinction between the individual and perceptual subject-matter of history on the one side and, on the other, the general and conceptual subject- matter of science is admirably put by Mr. Ward at the close of his second volume. But I think he errs in expecting from men of science a type of explanation which they do not (if they are wise) profess to give. The Aristotelian formal cause is usually supposed, by scientific men who have read Mill's Logic, to be out of date. But the formal cause is exactly what we mean by a " law of nature." It is the universal or conceptual formula which is manifested in a number of particulars. And the very common habit of hypo- statizing " Energy," " Gravitation.," "Evolution," etc., 1 An analysis of causes involves some abstraction, some rather artificial isolation of antecedent and consequent. I can intelligibly, I think, distinguish (a) a movement of the nerves from (b) the movement of the arm which follows it ; and (a) a set of feelings and ideas from (b) the external and yet " moral " action to which they give rise ; (a) (a) I call efficient causes. I admit that strictly we never can speak of the real cause of an act, without taking the whole act in all its aspects into account ; but then this conception of efficient cause is swallowed up in "material." (From Letter to Prof. Alexander.) io6 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA is only a recurrence to the mythological interpretation to which the Platonic doctrine of " ideas " or universal " forms " was exposed. The habit, again, of speaking of these abstractions with capital letters as efficient causes is the result of " animism " ; it is so difficult to eliminate anthropomorphic interpretations even in scientific thinking. (4) What is the place of psychology ? If we turn now to the psychical order, we find the proper sphere of final and of efficient causes. In our actual conscious experience we are aware of our- selves as striving for ends and as initiating events in such a sense that we are held responsible for them. Here we are in the region of what is strictly in- dividual and concrete. If psychology be the science that deals directly with what I have called a and hypothetically with /3 and y, then we may accept Mr. Ward's view that " psychology never transcends the limits of the individual." I find it, however, rather difficult to understand the account given of the province of psychology in Mr. Ward's treatise, which has done so much to reform the conceptions of English psychology, but which still remains buried in the inconvenient columns of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Psychology hovers bat-like between the sciences which deal conceptually with some more or less abstract aspect of the universe and some ideal philosophy of mind which should deal with what is perfectly concrete and individual and yet take up into itself all the scattered lights of the various abstract and partial sciences. What I call a, as it really exists i.e. as the actual conscious experience of some individual ego, contains in it all A, B, C, etc., so far as they are known to that ego ; they are abstractions, except so far as they exist for some mind, and of course they are also abstractions as apart from the totality or organic unity of a. But a strict account of a so far PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 107 as possible would be a complete autobiography, not a " spiritual autobiography " or " confession " only (for such accounts of the "inner life," as a rule, imply abstraction from a great part of experience). A science dealing with a must generalize and empty it till it becomes the possible common or average experience of any human ego, and that too only in its aspect as existing for consciousness, or for sub-conscious feeling (if such an expression may be tolerated), in abstraction from its contents. And as such a science psychology is usually treated. The psychologist, in his endeavour to make his pursuit like the sciences of nature, is obliged, like those occupied with these other sciences, to deal with abstractions ; and it seems to me only a matter of degree (though that does not make it un- important) whether we start with the extreme abstrac- tion of " sensations " or " simple ideas " (in Locke's sense), or with what Kant calls the " manifold of sense," or whether, like Mr. Ward, we start with the " presentation continuum," as it may be supposed to exist in the average normal mind and considered simply in its presentative aspect. In considering the contents of consciousness purely as contents of con- sciousness, we are abstracting from the actual or real experience of any individual ; and in treating of the average or normal individual mind we have abstracted from the real individual. But, if psychology be a science, we must, as in the other sciences, look for material and formal causes. Efficient and final causes belong more properly to practical life, and to philosophy. In psychology as a science, even in any psychological dissection of one's self, the self must be treated as an object, a quasi- thing, analyzable into various factors. The modifica- tions of consciousness must be treated as events that happen and have to be explained by reference to antecedent events. We abstract from the individuality 108 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA of the ego and look for the antecedent conditions of ideas, feelings, and volitions as the " causes " of them {i.e. material causes) in precisely the same sense in which we find causes in nature : and we seek to formulate psychological " laws " in precisely the same sense as in nature, i.e. they are statements of what, under certain conditions, must necessarily happen. All laws of nature are true universal propositions, abstract, and best formulated as hypotheticals. At the psycho- logical point of view there is no escape from necessity. The psychologist (i) leaves out space, (2) takes events as known only in consciousness, (3) but leaves out consideration of meaning. Hence psychology is the bat among the sciences — neither among the natural sciences nor completely among the philosophical. It has been denied (by Mr. Shadworth Hodgson) that we can speak of the "agent" of self-consciousness. This is true if we mean by "agent" what the word has come to mean in careful modern scientific thinking when, e.g. we are speaking of physical causation. The "agent" is then simply a necessary condition of an event happening. The self is not one among the series of physical events. On the other hand, " agent " in its literal sense applies more properly to the self than to any physical phenomenon ; for our only knowledge of agency in the sense not of mere movement in space and time, but in the sense of purposive action for which we acknowledge responsi- bility (amo?), is in our own conscious experience. We transfer this to external agents (animism). The self is not an agent in the sense in which the com- bustion of wood causes heat, or in the sense in which gravitation causes a body to fall ; but it is our only directly-known type of efficient causation. I am conscious of willing to move my arm, and of being responsible for the consequence of that volition. PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM 109 (5) The distinction between existence or fact and meaning may be further illustrated by Leibniz's distinction between " nature " and " grace " and Kant's distinction of phenomenal and noumenal (without the arbitrariness of the noumenal). On this view, the universe must be regarded as " through and through mechanical ; through and through teleo- logical." 1 " Either the universe," says Mr. Ward, " is mechani- cal or it is teleological ; it is not likely to be a mixture of the two " (II. p. 63). May not the universe be both at once, through and through mechanical when regarded in its material or spatial aspect, teleological when regarded in its spiritual aspect, when that aspect is not being treated abstracdy for the purposes of a quasi-natural science of psychology, but as the meaning of the whole process, a meaning such as we have in our consciousness of the ends and significance of some part of our own activities of thought and deed ? If epistemology shows us that nothing can ever be known to us as having any actual existence save as an object for thought, it then becomes a reasonable philosophical faith, though it goes beyond the limits of possible knowledge, to suppose that the ultimate reality of all things animate and inanimate is their meaning for the one mind which is the uni- verse in its inner aspect. This conclusion, though drawn from some of the premises that Mr. Ward questions, is not, I think, very different from his own : it may be called a spiritualistic monism, but it is not without a dualist and not without an agnostic element. 1 A thorough-going idealism must go on to deny that anything is material outside of or alongside of the spiritual. The organic world cannot be completely understood by mechanical explanations ; because the organism is something we can know partly from "within" — in the aspect of end, purpose, meaning. no COGITATIO METAPHYSICA § 23. It is quite unreasonable to suppose that the cate- gories of physics, chemistry, physiology should be adequate to explain the psychical: quantity cannot be applied in psychology. The unit of Weber's law is a purely relative thing and is moreover subjective. Still less can the categories of quantity and mechanics apply to the psychical as interpreted in respect of its meaning. Physics and chemistry will not explain the perception of a picture, nor the meaning the picture has to the spectator, who recognises what it is about and judges it beautiful. Substance and cause {i.e. material or formal) belong to the world of existence in space and time. Subject is the world on its inner side. MORALITY, SOCIETY, ETC. § 24.1 Can any science be properly treated independently of metaphysics ? i.e. can any scientific investigator continuously shirk an examination of the conceptions he is using ? We may answer no and yet recognise a sense in which the various special sciences are wisely enough treated and successfully treated and advanced without a metaphysics ; their fundamental conceptions being provisionally assumed and accepted in some more or less vague way. Thus obviously enough the geo- metrician does not investigate the nature of space and the physicist may assume some rough provisional concept of matter or force. In this sense then can we have a science of ethics (i.e. of human conduct as right and wrong) independent of metaphysics ? We can — but it will not be what is very commonly under- 1 Notes from a MS. volume, Ethica. ETHICS in stood by ethics. It would be a historical science tracing the various ethical ideals which have been accepted by men (a history of their various distinctions between right and wrong), leaving out the question what right and wrong ultimately mean or assuming some provisional explanation of them, e.g. that the right is " what furthers social well-being " ; but all questions about the ultimate nature of the moral law and about free-will must be expressly excluded, and further, most of the psychological questions commonly introduced into ethics must also be left out because they involve metaphysical questions. An attempt to describe the facts of morality, either in the individual or in society as now existing, would be very delusive, if the historical origin of these facts were overlooked, because obviously our society is in a transitional stage and the various opinions of right and wrong must be taken in connection with their history in order to be rightly understood. So that a descriptive science of ethics must be historical or delusive. On the other hand, if we insist on going beyond these questions of fact, and wish to ask about what ought to be, we cannot shirk an investiga- tion of what " ought " means, i.e. we must bring in a metaphysics of ethics, by which I only mean a criticism of the basis of morality. Now to call this a science of ethics is, I think, claiming more cer- tainty than we can rightly claim for a philosophical investigation. Philosophy must always be tentative : it must always be critical. Philosophies unfortunately are always tending to become dogmatic ; but just in so far as they do so, they cease to be part of the living movement of philosophy, which must go on in every age and in every individual who finds himself tormented by the desire to fit his various ideas together and see how they stand in relation to one another. The worst kind of dogmatism may be that ii2 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA of the scientific specialist who applies some one con- ception with which he has worked successfully in his own sphere, to unlock all mysteries. We are not going to free ourselves from theological dogmas to fall under the sway of a dogmatism of this kind. Contradiction proves falsehood somewhere ; absence of contradiction does not necessarily prove truth, but may only prove that we have taken very few ele- ments into account. The greater the complexity, the more difficult it is to avoid contradiction. Thus the term moral philosophy is really more modest than science of ethics : it ought to imply a confession that we are dealing with problems that we cannot hope completely to solve, and with some problems that we can't solve at all, but can only hope to for- mulate clearly so as to warn ourselves and others. We need not therefore be unduly puzzled by the non-progressiveness of moral philosophy, because philosophy must be born again in the mind of every thinker. But for this very reason the great philoso- phies of the past do not, like the scientific discoveries of the past, become superseded by and absorbed in later expositions of the science, (i) They have the value which all genuine products of the human mind have, like great works of art or great religions. (2) It is necessary to know something of them, if merely to be on our guard against the metaphysical con- ceptions which are embedded in our ordinary language and the ordinary materials of our thinking. We must study old metaphysics if we really wish to escape from delusions which are the effects of them. (3) The history of philosophy may, with all truth, be called " philosophy itself taking its time " ; it is the perpetual antithesis of criticism passing into dogma and requiring new criticism in turn, not a mere internecine quarrel of rival sects, but a continuous self-correction of thinking, a continuous ETHICS 113 struggle towards a more adequate conception of the multitudinous phenomena of our experience, an attempt to get some unity which shall not ignore the multiplicity of facts which the special sciences deal with. Just because the various special sciences are always amassing new material and propounding new theories, the perpetual renewal of philosophy is a necessity. Because the sciences progress continuously, philosophy can't progress continuously, but has always to be beginning over again. Yet there are certain great landmarks in the history of philosophy which do seem to represent points behind which we need not go. Rather they are turning-points at which the way of putting the central question has been changed. Such are the " dialectic of Socrates " (as applied to the dogmatism of the earlier Greeks) and his turning philosophy mainly to human problems, ( ? Aristotle's doctrine of Svva/jus) y the " doubt " of Descartes shewing us that " thought " or conscious- ness must be our starting-point, and the critical method of Kant, who insists that before we try to settle what this or that is, we must ask ourselves what are the conditions and limits of our knowledge of it. Observe that each of these philosophical revolutions results in a limitation of the problem of philosophy, in a check upon dogmatism. Limit philosophy as we may, its problems remain large enough. § 25- Ethics may mean three enquiries — and in the widest sense should include them all: (1) A scien- tific study as to the sentiments, judgments, and practice of mankind in difFerent ages and in different places and sections of society now in respect of their conduct: in these, of course, would have to be in- cluded the opinions of more reflective persons on ii 4 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA conduct, and that includes the opinions of professed moralists and moral philosophers. 1 This is per se an historical and "inductive" inquiry, too much neglected because of the long prevalent assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and that " moral law " has been the same at all times and in all places. The discussion of moral sentiments will involve a certain amount of psychological analysis — in the bringing into consciousness of what is not generally clearly conceived. (2) There are the more properly philosophical or metaphysical questions which arise out of a reflective consideration of human conduct, and the sentiments and judgments about it : How is it we have the idea of an " ought " confronting " facts " ? What is meant by "moral ideals," "moral law," "duty," " virtue," " the good for man " ? This (in its widest form) is the question of the relation between man as a social being and as a conscious reflective being on the one side, and nature — as the sum of phenomena — on the other. In this is included the question of free-will. It is idle to discuss whether this " metaphysic of ethics " should precede or follow the purely historical and inductive enquiry. Without having attended to the facts to some extent, we should not raise the problems of philosophical ethics : on the other hand, these problems give a reason for enquiry about the facts, which we should otherwise lack. The nature of moral law and of our knowledge of it give a reason for enquiring into the actual judgments of mankind. The recognition of a common element in all that can be called morality {e.g. the hypothesis of " natural law " or the view that " conscience is the tribal self") gives a guiding principle in the collec- 1 This last section would come under the head of what Aristotle calls to. \ey6[ieva or to. fyaivoiitva about conduct. ETHICS 115 tion of facts. Whether in a complete system the philosophical or the historical part should be placed first is a matter of literary or didactic convenience. (3) Reflection about conduct — however objectively scientific and impersonal in its aim 1 — cannot fail to react upon conduct, and on the sentiments and judgments about conduct. Moreover, the recognition that the "ought" confronts the "is," and that ideals have varied in the past and been " developed " makes necessary the discussion of what our ideals " ought " to be, and in what respects generally-accepted ideals and judg- ments and sentiments may require alteration. This is the practical aspect of ethics. In a sense it in- cludes " casuistry," but the old casuistry had its character affected by the assumption of absolutely fixed moral laws. Our views about many practical matters must differ according as we regard what is right and wrong as determined (1) by an absolute standard revealed to everyone's conscience or to an authoritative body of persons by a superhuman power, or (2) by some end, such as social well-being, which can be studied by historical and experiential methods. It makes a differ- ence also if ethical duties are to be recognised which fall altogether outside any social obligations or tests. If so a man may be doing right when he is acting in such a way as to lead to the destruction of the society around him. 2 It does not conflict with a " humanist " or social estimate of right and wrong if we regard evolutionary 1 Cf. Spinoza, Ethica, Part II., Prop. 49, Dem. and Schol. : " All things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity, as it follows from the essence of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles." 2 A Russian sect, the Doukhobors, asked the government of Assinoboia to assign them land where they might be subject to God only. No sane civilised government could grant such a request. It would be to recognise anarchy. n6 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA ethics as inadequate metaphysically to explain the problem of " ought " v. " is." The double aspect theory helps us here — though carried up into the less purely external (spacial) aspect itself. Self-realisation and the common good, as the end consciously sought after, may be seen as the " internal " or psychical aspects of what on its purely external side appears as the struggle for existence, where there seems only success by mechanical pressure out of the less fit. But in studying human evolution we can't take a merely external point of view : we learn most by looking from within. Self-realisation is not opposed to the common good because the self which realises itself is social. Ethics is (i) based on custom — becoming authority (of rulers, priests, sacred books, etc.). (2) There is reaction against external authority and ethics is based on " intuition " and modifications of it. This leads to the belief in a lex naturae. The defect of intuitionism is its arbitrary and individualist character. (3) Utilitarianism appears, taking as the moral end " happiness " {a) as individual pleasure {V) as social well-being and progress. (4) Utilitarianism is modified and supplemented by the theory of evolution. (5) The evolutionist view, which gives an account of the facts but does not do justice to the meaning (the " ought "), receives a metaphysical interpretation in evolutionary idealism. § 26. If the ethical end be defined as self-realisation, we have to ask what is meant by "self" ? It is not the self as something merely individual and particular — exclusive (if that were possible) of the rest of the universe and of other selves. 1 1 Cf. Confessio Fidel, §14. ETHICS 117 The investigation of the possibility of knowledge shews that the condition of knowledge (which is not mere individual feelings but has objective validity) is that sensations and feelings are held in a synthesis by a self, which cannot be itself a mere series of feelings (Mill admits this) — a self, moreover, which because aware of time and change must in some sense be " eternal." Yet such a self cannot be known as particular things or kinds of things are known. It is not " there " to be an object of knowledge. It is thus something never realised in experience : and yet it is the necessary condition of experience. Here we have the source of the contrast between "ought" and "is." 1 The external aspect has only " is." In the internal (psychical) we come upon that which is not there and yet must be. It makes nature possible as an object of knowledge and yet is more than mere nature as a series of events. In this seeming contradiction we have the explanation of that rising above mere nature, which is the charac- teristic of morality and also of art and of science. Again, the self which is to be realised is a social self. The realisation of the eternal self in time produces society (ethical institutions). For practical ethics it is best to treat the self-realisation as the good of a community. 2 Here we have the link between politics and ethics. RELIGION, ART, ETC. § 27. But the significance of the "self" is not exhausted in the never completed struggle after an ethical ideal, a good that recedes with every attainment of a step higher. 1 Cf. Moral Philosophy, p. 270. 2 Cf. Confessio Fidei, p. 255, and Moral Philosophy, pp. 280, 295, 296, 299, sqq., 318 sqq. u8 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA The effort to grasp the end — the whole truth — as something attained, to feel the eternal (since we cannot completely know it) in the temporal, is one aspect at least of religion. 1 To define religion we must not take eccentric specimens ; nor should we begin with the very lowest types. We must take the highest type (Ko^=most extravagant) known (judged highest by reference to intellectual and social characteristics). 2 Religion is " morality tinged with emotion " — an emotion that transcends mere struggle and contradiction. Religion to begin with is the effort to conciliate powers of nature often conceived as malignant — to propitiate gods or daemons. The element of ritual is thus prominent in it. It is not a mere individual effort. That is magic. The conciliation of higher powers with respect to tribal interests is religion, which is not a mere individual matter (certainly not in the early stages of religion). When combined with practical reflection on conduct and deliberate effort to attain social good, religion is ethical, not merely ritual. When combined with deeper reflection and effort to satisfy intellectual crav- ings also, we have doctrine (theology). And out of this mythology comes philosophy. The imagination is always seeking to translate conceptions into pictures of 1 Religion is different from ethics. Ethics is practically affected by religious beliefs ; but the social value of religious beliefs must be judged from the standpoint of an ethics based on sociology in- dependent of religion. Cf. Moral Philosophy, pp. 310 sqq. 2 Cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 22. "Insane conditions have this advantage that they isolate special factors of the mental life and enable us to inspect them unmasked by their more usual surroundings. They play the part in mental anatomy which the scalpel and the microscope play in the anatomy of the body." Also p. 39. " I said . . . that we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, as it were, or in its most exaggerated form." This is quite a false analogy. The microscope gives you greater detail ; but you should not choose abnormal specimens for investigation, if you want to study the type. RELIGION AND ART 119 events in particular places at particular times ; and it is often only in such pictures that concepts are first thought out {e.g. the ideas of incarnation, resur- rection, etc.). Meanings must be expressed in concrete form. We may well distrust the great thoughts that can never get themselves uttered at all, or only in very ugly and confused forms. But there is a difference between the demand that certain alleged events be accepted as the essence of a spiritual meaning (which is inverting the relation of " history " to " doctrine ") and the recognition that meanings require symbolic and figurative expression in order that they may be grasped by the ordinary mind. More can be said philosophically for an ornate ritual, symbolising ideas regarded as valid now, than for a creed containing assertions about matters of historical fact in the past. The smell of incense, if the incense is good, will do less harm to the mind than a genuine belief in stories like that of the Gadarene swine. Art may seem immoral because it recognises and reverences the beauty of the healthy human form which the ascetic and the puritan have buried under ugly clothes and stunted by unwholesome surround- ings : it may be immoral if it encourages a selfish individualism which neglects social duty or cultivates the abnormal, whether under the sanction of religion or of wild protest against Mrs. Grundy. Religion puts the individual into relation to the cosmos, not merely to human society. Individualism in religion ignores all society. The hermit withdraws from it : the soul-saving " evangelical " neglects it, his characteristic being " other-worldliness." Unequal stages of development are the cause of the conflicts between the religion of ritual and ethical religion (cf. the conflict between Hebrew priests and prophets) ; between religions of smaller groups and wider ; between traditional observance and mythological belief on the one side and reflective scientific thinking 120 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA or philosophy on the other. Yet in its ideal philosophy is the clear thinking of what is felt in religion. ART. § 28. Art in its highest form 1 is the effort to express the self (ideal) in concrete form, to fashion better than nature. Fine art is emotion, or thought suffused with emotion, expressed so as to produce in the spectator 2 or hearer a disinterested pleasure (elation). There may come conflict between art and religion, between art and morality, art and philosophy — again because of unequal development. In the ideal all might be different ways of " self-realisation." HISTORY. § 29. History is man's self-realisation in time. The im- perfections and contradictions and conflicts require a faith in ultimate rationality to give them a meaning. Progress comes through conflict and struggle — as in the history of philosophy. In some periods of history carefully studied we can verify this hypothesis {e.g. the contribution of the struggles of the 17th century to our modern political existence). History is not a mere chronicle of events ; but in- volves an attempt to read meanings? Hence it is not 1 It may have begun in superfluous " play," in sexual selection, in ritual observances, or in a combination of these. 2 Art must be judged from the point of view of the spectator. 3 E.g. The controversy as to whether history should be interpreted on its materialistic side (economic basis) or " ideally " ; both aspects are necessary. History is a series of events, to be " explained " scientifically like the phenomena of nature (cf. especially geology) ; but it has also its " meaning," to be read (imperfectly) in the light of a conception of ends or purposes (e.g. " education of the human race," "dialectic process," etc.). GOD, FREEDOM, IMMORTALITY 121 a mere collection of materials for the sociologist to generalise about. The genuine historian will never consent to hand over material to be fitted into the ready-made pigeon holes of the scientific sociologist. The individual (person, event, nation, etc.) has a value and interest for the historian. There is a spiritual world manifested in the world of space and time. Seen on its " inner " side we see a meaning in the individual for complete consciousness, which is neces- sarily ignored if the mere time and space series is considered. § 3°- The questions of God, Free Will and Immortality may be considered in the light of the distinction be- tween the psychical (inner) and material (outer) aspect. God is not a " Being among other beings," to be discovered like a heavenly body in the sky, but the meaning of the whole. The question of the existence of God is an unimportant question : the important question is what we mean by God. 1 Free Will is not caprice interrupting the causal sequence which science studies, but simply the fact that there is this inner aspect. Man is not merely a part of nature : a man's life is not merely a series of events, nor properly understood as such alone. He has also his ends, purposes for which he is held re- sponsible. He is an efficient and final cause, not merely a material and formal. 2 Man is free just because he is capable of being determined by ideas or thoughts, and by external stimuli as known. A man is held to be responsible for acts (liable to punishment or blame) just in those cases and in those cases only in which he was capable of knowing (thinking of) what he was doing or of 1 Confessio Fidei, init. ^Confessio Fidei, -p. 238. Moral Philosophy, p. 304. 122 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA putting himself into, or keeping himself in, such a position as to have or retain this capacity. Thus the element of thought (however that is to be explained) is the condition of that freedom which is presupposed in all moral (responsible) action. In so far as his conduct is determined by the thinking of such ends as reason pronounces to be truly desirable, man is free in the higher sense — the sense in which freedom is not the presupposition but the end of moral action. And the self has a meaning — included, however, in the meaning which is God : and so we come to a position like that of Lotze. THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. § 3 1 - Principal Fairbairn (Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 198) says that "Without his mythology Homer would have made no appeal to the imagination of all," (Do we care for his mythology ? Did Plato ? Is it not the purely human interest that affects us ? Hector and Andromache ; Ulysses longing for Ithaca ; Nausicaea ; the recognition by the old nurse, etc.), " iEschylus would have given us no tragedy " (myth- ology plus reflection is needed for tragedy), " Plato no philosophy " (see TLuthyphro, Republic and Laws for Plato's opinions about mythology. Mythology is the philosophy of childhood ; and childish things must be put aside), 1 " Dante no Divine Comedy " J The Jewish religion was a religion of the earthly continuance and prosperity of the race and nation ; yet it led to the vision of a kingdom of God not of this world at all. The passion for the other world of mediaeval ascetics led to the growth of art, of learning. The puritan became the founder of progressive and commercial commonwealths. Calvin first among theologians recog- nised that usury was not wrong. CHRISTIAN RELIGION 123 (true ; but Dante reads a good deal into his myth- ology), "Milton no Paradise Lost or Regained" (Satan being the most interesting character in the former, and the theology of the latter being heretical), " with- out the motive and the material which religion supplied." You must take account of the evil of religion as well as of the good to estimate fairly. It will not do to take some weak and aggressive form of philosophy, some dogmatic atheism or slip- shod agnosticism, and then point to the most thought- ful of theologians. Philosophy is not religion, but, as the critic of theology, it may affect it for good. 1 It is of no use discussing social progress as if human beings would ever do without religion of some sort ; but it is of no use speaking as if any religion was in every respect good and beneficial. The careful philosopher cannot consider all religions equally false : and the prudent magistrate cannot consider them all equally useful. 2 Philosophy and Religion. 1. Philosophy grows up out of mythology. (.) 2. Then philosophy comes to be antagonistic to religion (Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Plato, etc.). The first stage of reflective criticism always seems to suggest antagonism (cf. philosophy of art, of the state (Sophists), of morals). Yet religion cannot be ignored, hence, 1 v. Gibbon, Ch. II. init. on worship, etc. 2 Professor J. A. Stewart, in Mind, July, 1 902, speaks of " the ordinary Christian concepts, etc." What is that ? The rabble that massacred Hypatia were Christians, the savage hermits of the Thebaid were Christians, Torquemada was a Christian. The Irish Presbyterian would undoubtedly consider himself a Christian of the purest orthodoxy when he preached the doctrine of grace and not of works, and ended up with " My friends, better murder your mother than be without Christ." But Origen and Synesius were Christians, and I presume that the 39 Articles and Westminster Confession contain Christian theology. i2 4 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA 3. Philosophy tries to provide a religion (Stoicism and Neo-Platonism) and ceases to be pure philosophy. 4. Philosophy becomes ancilla fidei. Defence of a creed against philosophy requires the use of weapons taken from the philosophers. The Christian theologians of the early centuries employed the philosophical conceptions and methods of Neo- Platonism in order to refute the Neo-Platonists. Thus we have a philosophy within the Christian religion. This is true also of Judaism, Mohammed- anism and other religions. [Philosophy is no longer regarded as antagonistic to religion or as simply identical with it ; but is conceived as the ground of religion, its inner meaning.] James says that philosophy is secondary to religion. Feelings are first, the intellectual interpretation can only come later. True ; but is the first in time the criterion ? [Is not that primary which is logically prior, the ground or meaning rather than the temporal antecedent ?] Philosophy, he says, is an intellectual interpretation, and we need not expect that every one will accept it. But what criterion have we apart from reason ? § 3 2 - There are those (Hatch, etc., Ritschl), who think that it would have been a gain to Christianity if it had not been affected and infected by Greek meta- physics, and that it would be a gain to Christianity now to clear out of it its philosophical doctrines and leave before the eyes of the faithful the simple and sublime figure of the real historical Jesus Christ. But how are you to be sure you have got the real historical figure ? This requires historical and critical investigation. You escape from metaphysics to find yourself in the atmosphere of the law court (where evidence has to be tested), and of the scientific CHRISTIAN RELIGION 125 student of documents. If you neglect these scientific enquiries, you leave the interpretation to subjective caprice. 1 The Quaker, the Unitarian, the sentimental inheritor of elaborate ecclesiastical traditions, the devout Anglican or the Roman Catholic trained in the Jesuit cult of the Sacred Heart will each believe in a some- what different Jesus Christ. The Quaker will be certain that Jesus condemned war, though he spoke no word of condemnation to the Roman centurion ; Tolstoi will go further and see that precepts about turning the cheek to the smiter condemn law courts and police as much as armies and navies. The Unitarian will with justification lay stress on the first three gospels as earlier evidence than the fourth, but what is he to make of the still earlier evidence of the Pauline Epistles, where there is almost nothing about the historical Jesus and a good deal of meta- physics ? Those whose religious emotions have been developed in the shadow of old and stately shrines, in the softened light of painted windows and amid the solemn melodies of sacred music, will find no satisfaction for their hearts in seeking to look at the isolated figure of the greatest of Hebrew prophets : they see their Lord and Master, as the art and the devotion of ages has seen him, surrounded by his Apostles, and founding the Church in which he still dwells. The living reality of the Church gives them 1 Suppose you get rid of the accretions of Greek metaphysics round the primitive Christian belief, are you not all the more plainly brought face to face with the historical difficulty about alleged facts (the truth of the Resurrection, etc.) ? Can we limit ourselves to what Paul held about these ? Suppose you say : After all the main thing is the teaching of Jesus, the moralist. Then the question arises, could this morality {e.g. as in Tolstoi) be compatible with the existence of human society ? Does it correspond to our judgments of right and wrong ? It is a noble protest indeed [cf. the Hebrew prophets) ; but is it more ? Is it a rule to guide us, except as qualified by Greek ethics ? i26 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA an assurance of the reality of the Christian tradition, which the searcher of historical documents may fail to find. Of the ordinary unthinking " evangelical " Protestants not much need be said. The Bible, in whatever version they have received it, is to them what the Church is to the Catholic ; but it is the Bible not professedly guaranteed by the Church (though, whether they know it or not, that is the only medium through which they have received it). The spirit of God witnesses in their hearts to the truth of it ; but if we ask how far this witness of the spirit agrees in different minds we shall find that it is un- acknowledged ecclesiastical tradition that has given the doctrines, and proofs for them are afterwards sought in scripture, read uncritically, consulted as an oracle, and studied on bended knee. Evangelical religion is a fragment of the Catholic faith, taken out of its traditional setting ; hence the startling crudeness of the ideas of justification and atone- ment, when separated from the philosophical doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. These crude doctrines are certainly efficacious in affecting the imagination. The death on the cross and the foun- tain filled with blood appeal to the fevered mind of the tormented soul with hardly less materialistic in- tensity than the ghastly bleeding heart in the senti- mental idol which Jesuit piety has set up behind its altars. If we are to explain the victory of the Christian Church over the ancient civilization except by sup- posing a widespread degeneration in the intellect of the Roman Empire, it must be by recognising that the Christian theologians had reached a better philosophy than their pagan antagonists. The Church prevailed not by isolating itself from the surrounding world of belief and practice ; but because it absorbed in itself elements from the ritual of Greek and Oriental mys- CHRISTIAN RELIGION 127 teries, the traditions of the Jewish synagogue which enable a dispersed people to feel themselves one family, the Roman methods of organisation for purposes of government, and also the metaphysics of Plato, the Stoics, and the Neo-Platonists — take away any one of these elements and the Christian Church which became the religion of the Roman world would not have been what it was. If Julian said Vicisti Galilae (which is very doubtful) he had not said the whole truth ; for what defeated him was not merely the simple faith of the fishermen of Galilee, but a philosophy better thought out than the theosophical rhapsodies in which he found a refuge for his soul ; and what gave its greatest strength to the Christian Church in its contest with pagan religions and with Greek philosophy was that there was no such absolute gap between the Chris- tianity professed by the uneducated convert from the worship of some local god and the educated convert from the schools of Alexandria (or Athens). § 33- To the average Christian the doctrine of the Trinity may have often been simply a magic formula used in baptism ; and the idea of the incarnation simply the belief that a virgin, contrary to ordinary human ex- perience, bore a son. But no instructed Christian could be left without some opportunity of knowing the metaphysical phraseology connected with these beliefs. The philosophical conception of the Trinity and the Incarnation was not an esoteric doctrine to which only an inner circle was admitted. Within the Chris- tian Church, in the fourth century as now, there were all types of mental and moral attitude ranging from the crudest materialism upwards; but there was no abso- lute gap such as existed, to the weakness of the Graeco- Roman world, between the many and the philosophers. The difference between the " orthodox " Christian 128 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA philosophy and that of (most ?) Neo-Platonism was in the view taken of matter. Matter to Christian ascetics was evil ; but Gnosticism came to be set aside as heresy, and though monasticism was a concession to this, the official creed of the Church kept up a different idea. In the Trinity, the son and Holy Spirit are co-equal, co-eternal. This is against the idea of emanation. The Son is very God of very God. In the incarnate Son, there is no loss of equality in his eternal aspect. He remains God while yet being man. Qua man he is inferior, but the two natures are united in one. Here — though often in mythological setting — we have a real advance on Platonism, directly in the Platonic line. So the strength of the Christian religion is that, in spite of recurring extravagances, it has not proved incompatible with temporal well-being and progress. Perhaps this is partly due to its Jewish inheritance. The Jewish religion is the religion of a people who do not despise this world, who believe in rearing families and making their way in the world, and who regard such success as a proof and a result of obedience to the sane and sanitary law of Moses. The Christians unfortunately were too easily contemptuous of the washing of hands, they turned Roman baths into Churches and admired people who never took off their clothes ; but still, though the counsels of per- fection might require a break with the " world," those who lived and worked in the world as tent- makers, as soldiers, as men of letters, as lawyers and governors, were not cut off from the Church, and in the rank of her saints there are many more types than the fervid and fanatical recluse or the self-tormenting candidate for martyrdom. The gap between sacred and secular was constantiy being set up, but as con- stantly it was broken down. In rude ages the bishop had to do the work of the earthly ruler, the monk CHRISTIAN ETHICS 129 and friar the work of schoolmaster ..and scholar ; and the temporal ambition of the Pope and the spiritual claims of Emperor and anointed king — along with all the strife they caused — meant a denial that God who became flesh and dwelt among us could have made any honest work the world needed common and unclean. Note how the ascetic orders take up learning and art. CHRISTIAN ETHICS. § 34- We have learnt (except a few fanatics) that precepts such as turning the cheek to the smiter, giving indis- criminate alms, etc., must be interpreted so as not to be incompatible with an orderly, coherent and pro- gressive society. 1 We have learnt that knowledge, science, must be added to faith (is in fact involved in a thoroughgoing faith in the rationality, i.e. Divine government of the world) : hence we must not take precepts necessarily as the Church has interpreted them. If Christians are not to be forbidden to take arms at the command of the magistrate, to take oaths in accepting civic office or giving witness in the law courts, to appeal to human law for the redress of their wrongs ; may not Christians still claim to retain the name (if they choose) while prepared to revise some of the teachings of the Church about the law of marriage and divorce and the relation of the sexes generally — to base sexual morality on scientific con- sideration of individual health rather than on ascetic abhorrence of natural instincts and processes, and above all on scientific consideration of the well- being and progress of the race, rather than on abstract ideals of marriage as a sacrament ? Human beings are animals in a state of domestication. Therefore it 1 Cf. Moral Philosophy, pp. 313 sqq. I 1 3 o COGITATIO METAPHYSICA is only right to consider the lessons to be derived from the breeding of horses and dogs, as Plato did, instead of trusting to mere natural and " sexual selec- tion " on the one hand or to religious taboos on the other. If Christianity means that although we may -perhaps be permitted to doubt that an ass spoke with human speech and that a big fish swallowed a minor prophet or even that devils went into a herd of pigs, we must nevertheless fervently believe that a unique case of parthenogenesis occurred among the mammalia ; if it means that though a Christian may be a soldier, or a millionaire, or a commissioner of oaths, or even an actor or a ballet-dancer, yet a Christian may not marry a deceased wife's sister when the law of his country allows him, and that a Christian may rightly beget children certain to inherit disease or madness, and must be tied for life to a drunkard or an imbecile or a criminal, and may not further the wellbeing of his country by uniting himself to a more suitable mate if the law of the land allows, then there are many sober-minded and thoughtful persons who will feel compelled to disown the Christian name. But if the Christian name has survived the supposed im- pieties of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, and has ceased to feel alarm at the acceptance of scientific truth, may it not also survive what are called attacks on the sanctity of marriage and change its ideas of purity to something more in accordance with healthy human lives than these ascetic and irrational teachings, which permit and even encourage so much that is injurious to the survival of the fittest and forbid what might secure an increase in human happiness and welfare. The true check on selfishness should be not simply that which runs contrary to instincts and impulses, but the consideration of the future of the race. E.g. should the family be monogamous ? In what cases CHRISTIAN ETHICS 131 should divorce be allowed ? These should all be discussed from the point of view of the children and of the efficient work of the parents. This is to carry out the spirit of the Ten Commandments. 1 We must not assume that Christian ethics (the ethics of the progressive races) will crystallize exactly at the stage which would satisfy the conscience of the Irish Catholic or exactly at the stage which would satisfy the self- conscious American woman, who would prohibit whisky and tobacco and establish a matriarchate of neurotic iced-water idlers. THE QUESTION OF EVIL. § 35- God has been spoken of as a king, as a leader of armies — king of kings, the lord of hosts ; he has been pictured as the judge of all the earth ; he has been described as an artificer, shaping the heavens and the earth with his hands, and moulding man out of the dust of the earth ; he has appeared to awe-struck mortals as riding on the whirlwind, wielding the light- ning and speaking in the thunder; in the poetry of a pastoral race he has been figured more peacefully as a shepherd caring for his flock ; he has been looked on with reverence and love as the father of gods and men. May we not, using still another image drawn from our human experience, realise and shadow forth the nature of the absolute and perfect by thinking of him as a schoolmaster, guiding the education of the human race ? A father or a teacher who had warm kindly feelings, but did not think much about the best interests of his children, might try to make everything smooth for them — telling them at once the solutions of all his questions, dictating the very words of true J 4th Commandment = 1st Factory Act. 132 COGITATIO METAPHYSICA knowledge and guiding the faltering pens of the little writers. A wiser teacher leaves his pupils to make a great many blunders, which he knows quite well they will 'make; because he knows that he will thus make them sounder scholars in the end. Can we say he wills the errors and the faults and the naughtiness of his pupils ? Yes — as means to their education. He is responsible for the possibility of their errors — not the actuality. For he wishes to make men and women of character, not blameless automata. THE JOT OF BELIEVING. 1 § 36. Professor James accentuates the "happiness" of believers, if we read the lives of the saints, we find much self-tormenting among many of them. The happiest life is probably that of the man of good health with a congenial occupation, not too exhausting, and a congenial home-circle, especially with a good liver and digestive system. But his happiness won't prove the " truth " of his religion and irreligion. He can't be a very fanatic religionist of any kind nor a fanatical opponent of the religion of the people round. He probably accepts the religion he was brought up in and has never had any doubts ; and a happy temperament will blind him to the less pleasing features of it, e.g. he may be an evangelical Protestant, but he won't think of his grandfather as roasting in hell for ever, though his grandfather never went to church or chapel : he may be a Roman Catholic but he will extend the doctrine of invincible ignorance to some dear Protestant friends who have had ample opportunities of learning the true faith. If people vividly realised the misery of this life and the misery they profess to believe in 1 Cf. Confessio ■ Fidei, p. 246. THE JOY OF BELIEVING 133 another life, they could never smile again. Of course it is joyful to believe that things are going well with us, and prayer and worship are a great outlet for emotion. But what does the joy prove ? That certain beliefs and certain practices produce happiness in certain persons. The moral worth of these must be tested by their effect on social wellbeing. Here is where the superiority of some religions over others can be seen. THE RELATION OF LOGIC TO PSYCHOLOGY 1 It is easy enough to mark in general terms the dis- tinction between logic and psychology ; but in the treatment of many logical questions, even by our most careful writers, there seems to me frequently some want of clearness in the detailed application of this distinction. And, in consequence of this want of clearness, many logical questions seem to be rendered more obscure and doubtful than need be. In any case, an attempt to see how the accepted distinction works out in several of the problems of logic may serve to test the accuracy of this distinction, and, unless I am too sanguine, may even throw some light on these problems themselves. Every psychologist and every logician would agree that, whereas logic, even in its widest sense, has to do only with knowledge, and not with feeling and will, psychology has to do with all mental phenomena. So far as this goes, however, logic might be simply a branch of psychology, and many psychologists, though professedly recognising some further distinction be- tween logic and psychology, are in the habit of including a great many logical questions in their treatment of the psychology of cognition. Almost all, 1 Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. V. p. 585, and Vol. VI. p. 1. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 135 however, recognise a distinction between the properly psychological and the properly logical aspects of the problem of knowledge. This distinction may be con- veniently marked by saying that psychology has to do — among other things — with "knowing," while logic has to do with " knowledge." In other words, psychology has to do with mental processes as events ; logic has to do with the validity of these mental processes. Psychology is therefore called a "descriptive" science; 1 it deals with facts, with what actually happens in the mind. Logic, on the other hand, is a " regulative " science ; it deals with what ought to be, with rules for the right performance of the mental processes that lead to cognition. And, on this account, as is often pointed out, logic is related to the psychology of cognition in a way analogous to the relation of ethics to the psycho- logy of feeling and volition, and to the relation of aesthetics to the psychology of a certain group of the emotions. So far we seem to be on firm ground. No sooner, however, do we begin to apply these generally accepted distinctions than difficulties suggest themselves. They may show themselves even in connection with the definition given of logic in an elementary text-book. Thus Jevons mentions the common definition of logic as " the science of the laws of thought," and goes on to explain " law of thought " as meaning " a certain uniformity or agreement which exists and must exist in 1 It may seem to make no important difference if it is said that psychology is " descriptive and explanatory." Every science is, or professes to be, explanatory ; and explanation is simply a more advanced kind of description — a description that brings particular phenomena into relation with a wider range of phenomena. At the same time, in proportion as psychology professes to go beyond mere description of particular mental processes, and aims at a more and more complete grasp of all that bears on our mental life, it becomes more and more difficult to exclude logical questions from psychology. To this I shall have to refer later on. 136 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY the modes in which all persons think and reason, so long as they do not make what we call mistakes or fall into self- contradiction and fallacy? 1 Now this looks like an acceptance of the view that logic is a " regulative " science, whose "laws" are "rules" or "precepts." But Jevons continues, " the laws of thought are natural laws with which we have no power to inter- fere, and which are of course not to be in any way confused with the artificial laws of a country, which are invented by men and can be altered by them " {Elementary Lessons in Logic, p. 1). Now if by "laws of thought " we mean simply general statements of what actually happens in our thinking, or statements of what under certain conditions will happen as a matter of fact, " laws of thought " are merely the concern of the psychologist. But the psychologist is not restricted to those uniformities which exist in our thinking when we do not make mistakes. In seeking to ascertain the " laws of association of ideas," which are psychological " laws of thought," the psychologist may find the fallacies into which the average human mind is prone to fall an even more instructive study than the rigidly correct intellectual processes of the soundest scientific thinker. " Laws of thought," for the psychologist, are certainly " natural laws " in the sense of the other "laws of nature"; they are statements of what happens, or at least of what under certain conditions would happen. A statement of the fallacies into which the intellectus sibi permissus tends to fall, would be a state- ment of laws of thought in this psychological sense. But "laws of thought," in the logician's sense, tell us how we ought to reason, and thus may not seem pro- perly comparable with the "laws of nature." We all seem to be able to violate the logical laws of thought ; we do so every time we commit a logical fallacy. Now we cannot, in any strict use of language, be said to "violate a law of nature," though the phrase is used LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 137 often enough. What is meant is that we violate some practical precept of prudence based upon a knowledge of a law of nature. The man who throws himself from the top of a high cliff does not violate, he illustrates, the law of gravitation ; he may be violating the laws of prudence or of morality. And so the man who commits a fallacy illustrates psychological, but violates logical, laws. Are we, then, to compare the " laws of thought " in their logical sense with maxims of pru- dence, or precepts of morality, or even with " the artificial laws of a country " ? Are the laws of logic simply precepts of intellectual prudence which are, or should be, based on a study of psychological processes ? Warnings against inaccuracy in observation, against hasty generalisation, against the tendency to overlook negative instances, if these warnings are called logical " laws," are such only in this sense. But this is a kind of logical doctrine which some of the stricter logicians have considered an excrescence rather than an essential part of the science. And, in any case, the term " laws of thought " has not been applied to describe such maxims for the avoidance of fallacies as we find in the first book of Bacon's Novum Organum, but has always denoted specially the axioms of formal logic — the principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle ; and to these the logicians who take a wider view of their science would generally add the principle of sufficient reason (under some name or other). Now can these fundamental axioms be considered practical precepts based on psychological laws ? If so, what are these fundamental psychological laws ? If they are not distinguishable from the logical axioms, and these last are therefore laws of nature, how are the fallacies which consist in their violation possible? The distinction between nature or " things " and our thinking about things, will hardly help us here, for these axioms of logic are at once statements about things and about the 138 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY necessities of our thought. Here, then, we are face to face with a difficulty which is just one aspect of the problem, " How is knowledge possible ? " with its companion problem, "How is error possible?" The " formal " logicians, who have chiefly favoured the definition of logic as " the science of the laws of thought," may seem, in limiting the problem of logic to consistency, to have separated logic from episte- mology. But here we see that a consideration of the laws of thought themselves brings before us some at least of the fundamental questions about knowledge. In teaching logic to students who are only beginning the study of philosophy, or who are unable, or cannot be induced, to study ultimate philosophical questions, it may be advantageous to put aside the problems of epistemology. For bibliographical purposes, also, «V ov SiaXverai tj irpoTaai's \An. Pr., I. 1). "The term (terminus = limit, end) is that into which the proposition is broken up when we analyze it." The two sides of a sheet of paper have no existence apart from the sheet of paper ; but they may certainly be considered separately from it and from one another. Is not a similar abstract procedure permissible in logic ? Aristotle has been unduly blamed for adopting in the De interpretalione the concept as his starting point, and building up the judgment out of concepts. But we may reasonably suppose that, taking for granted the definition of the Analytics (which was an earlier work), he considered himself at liberty, as in the sciences, to show how to construct a whole in thought out of elements that have only been arrived at by a process of abstraction. It should be observed i54 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY further that, in the passage in the De Interpretatione, his object is to show that the isolated concept is neither true nor false, that only the judgment is the real unit of thought. The very passage in which he is supposed to lapse into an erroneous view of the term is one in which he is practically asserting the logical priority of the judgment. But here, as elsewhere, the disciples have shown a peculiar facility for overlooking the more important aspect of the master's teaching, and his reputation has suffered in consequence. In regard to the extension and intension of terms and their relation to one another, it is all important to distinguish the logical from the psychological aspects of the question. In considering the theory that the extension and intension of terms vary in- versely, we must, first of all, absolutely reject the notion that there can be anything of the nature of a mathematical ratio between these logical aspects. This " inverse ratio " is only one among many ex- amples of the fatal and delusive fascination which the exactitude of mathematics exercises over the students of other subjects. When we find a logician or a psychologist or an economist using mathematical formulae, we ought to be more than usually on our guard. Mathematical formulae in such matters are more insidious than metaphors. The extension of a term is, at least conceivably or potentially, capable of strict quantitative measurement. The number of in- dividuals or the number of species to which a term is applicable is a quantity in the mathematical sense. But the intension of a term, the number of attributes it includes, is not in this exact sense a quantity at all. How many words we take to express what we mean by a term may in any particular case be esti- mated quantitatively ; but how many they are will depend upon what particular words are used and upon what language a person happens to be using. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 155 Where one person or one language uses one word to express an attribute, another person or another language may require two or three. Extension and intension are not, therefore, strictly commensurable quantities between which we can discover an exact mathematical ratio. Nevertheless it is possible to compare them together; and, so far as I can see, there is a very good sense in which it can be held that as a matter of logic they tend to vary inversely, i.e. the larger extension as a rule goes along with the smaller intension, and vice versa. It seems to me perfectly irrelevant to object to this, that, while a person may with increasing know- ledge of a subject come to know more individual specimens or more species of a genus, his conception of the genus may and should simultaneously increase in richness of content and depth of meaning. This is an important psychological fact, and as such should find recognition in any psychological account of the growth of knowledge. A complete " theory of knowledge " may very well be expected to overlap this portion of genetic psychology. But logic has nothing directly — at least, nothing primarily — to do with the varying degrees of knowledge of different individuals or with the different stages in the history of an individual mind. For logic " extension " ought to mean the total applicability of the concept, and " intension " the total content or meaning of the concept, if its content were completely known. That is to say, here, as in other cases, logic has to do not with what may happen to be in this or that person's mind, nor even with what, as a matter of fact, is in the mind of the average person, but with an ideal standard of knowledge to which any actual human thought can at best only approximate. It is meaningless to attempt to compare such varying and contingent matters as the number of individual roses, 156 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY or even the number of species and varieties of rose, that any particular person happens to know of at any moment, with the fulness of the description which he could give at the same moment of the genus Rosa. To use and extend the convenient terminology of Dr. Keynes, 1 " subjective intension " and "subjective extension" are quantities too fluctu- ating and indeterminate to admit of comparison ; whereas "objective intension" and "objective exten- sion " do conceivably at least admit of comparison. For the purpose of illustration and exposition we must be content to take " conventional intension " and compare it with the actually known applicability of the term. " Conventional intension " Dr. Keynes uses for " those attributes which constitute the meaning of a name " ; he does not say " to whom." I suppose we must understand " to the average well-informed person of our acquaintance." This use of " conventional intension " as a substitute for " objective intension," which in most cases cannot be completely known, and of the extension known to the average person who is well informed on the sub- ject for the complete " objective extension," is per- fectly legitimate, and is only one example of that use of convention, which is necessary in every science. Because logic must accept conventions, it does not follow that it must confine itself to a manipulation of arbitrary symbols, and leave alone those fundamental problems of knowledge which we have already seen arise even out of such seemingly abstract formulae as the principle of contradiction. It is only the actually known that we are able to analyze, but we can take the best available knowledge 1 Formal Logic, 3d ed., pp. 24, 25. The names "subjective and objective extension," which I here suggest, seems to me to express a distinction more useful and important than that which Dr. Keynes draws between denotation and extension on page 31. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 157 as typical of what knowledge must be, and so seek to discover the general laws to which thinking must conform in order to be knowledge. In dealing, then, with this question of extension and intension, our best procedure is to take some well-mapped-out province of knowledge where there is a precise ter- minology and a clearly arranged system of classification. In such a subject as botany or zoology, it is obvious that the wider class needs a briefer scientific description than the narrower class, the intension of which includes all that can be said about the higher with the addition of its own differentiae. That this is so, seems to justify us in regarding the inverse variation as true generally of extension and intension. If we look on the whole universe as a classified system of beings, with the summum genus of " being " at the one end of the scale and the various individual existences at the other, then we find our law confirmed ; for mere being is the emptiest of meaning, and the individual being is the fullest. The singular term has thus an infinite intension, and is therefore incapable of com- plete definition. The question which Mill raised about the connotation of proper names, seems to me to turn entirely on whether we mean by the proper name something different from the singular term. If we do, then it may be true to say that the proper name is denotative but not connotative. But such a distinction between proper names and singular terms seems to me entirely extra-logical. It is a matter of grammatical or rhetorical import whether I say " this person" or call him "John Smith." Logic is only con- cerned with proper names as appropriated to individual beings, and can recognize no distinction between them and singular terms. If the question of extension and intension be cleared of irrelevant psychology and irre- levant grammar, and of inapplicable mathematical pre- cision, it does not seem to present much difficulty. 158 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY The problem of logic is analysis in order to discover the conditions of validity. As the logical theory of terms, therefore, should be based on a study of concepts whose applicability and meaning are well understood, so should the logical theory of judgments 1 be based on an analysis of highly developed types of judgment. In the light of such an analysis, it is then profitable to look back on the more rudimen- tary types, in order to understand their logical sig- nificance. In the analysis of a complex type it must not be assumed that one and only one form of analysis is legitimate. Logical analysis being analysis made with the view of testing validity, that form of analysis is to be preferred which is most convenient for that purpose. Now the form of analysis which is most convenient in order to make clear the mutual implication of propositions, and the validity or in- validity of the inferences of which judgments constitute the elements, is not necessarily that form which corresponds most closely to what is actually in the mind of any particular individual or of the average person when uttering the proposition. This last is a psychological problem, and should not be confused with the logical. A complete theory of knowledge may indeed be expected to contain a genetic account of the evolution of the different species of judgment, and to classify these species according to an evolution- ary or genealogical principle, as is done so admirably by Mr. Bosanquet in his Logic ; but for logic the primary business is, I think, to give an analysis applic- 1 It would be convenient if we could restrict the term " proposi- tion " to mean " a judgment so expressed as to bring out its logical character." We could then distinguish (a) the sentence (including the enunciative sentence) which is material for grammatical analysis ; (i) the judgment, which may not be expressed in words at all or which underlies expressions that are not in form enunciative ; and (c) the proposition = the judgment so formulated as to bring out its logical character. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 159 able potentially to every form of judgment, and such analysis must be based on the characteristics of those judgments where the logical aspects are most pro- minent to consciousness and can therefore be most clearly apprehended. It is undoubtedly very im- portant to recognize that in every judgment, as actually made by any one, there is a reference to reality in general, or to some portion of reality, as the ultimate " subject " of discourse. This account of judgment is confirmed in an interesting way by the fact that in the most rudimentary of all types of judgment — the impersonal perceptive judgment {e.g. " It is hot " ; " It hurts," etc.) — there is no deter- minate subject, but only the indeterminate "it" = reality in general. But this recognition of the " reference to reality " as ultimate subject of discourse does not falsify nor exclude the traditional analysis of every judgment into subject and predicate, — -an analysis which is of course based on a study of those kinds of judgments in which the " subject " is some clearly determined portion of the real world. Furthermore, the recognition that every term as actually used in a judgment must have both a mean- ing and some objective reference, however slight and indirect, allows us to analyze every judgment according to either extension or intension, or to treat the subject as primarily extensive (quantitative), and the predicate as primarily intensive (qualitative). The last of these modes of analysis may be preferred, because it corresponds best to the ordinary form of language, and to what is most usually in our minds when we say something (predicate a characteristic, i.e. a quality) of something {i.e. of all or some part of a thing or class of things). But the interpretation of both subject and predicate in terms of extension has the convenience that it exhibits most clearly the possibilities of transition from one proposition directly 160 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY to another, and the implications of combinations of propositions. The continuity which is the essence of all inference can be most easily exhibited by inter- preting the " middle term " in mediate inference extensively. The extensive interpretation of proposi- tions does, of course, make possible the treatment of judgments as equations, and so seems to threaten logic with absorption in algebra. But the logical objection to the quantification of the predicate, which is presupposed in the equational theory, is not that such equational judgments (all men = some animals, etc.) are not very often in our minds ; this would be a purely psychological argument. The real logical objection is that a proposition with a definitely quantified predicate is always a complex verbal form which expresses two judgments and not one. Thus " All equilateral triangles are all equiangular triangles " wraps up into one formula two propositions which require separate geometrical proof {Euclid, I, 5, 6). Now the business of logic is to analyze complex mental processes into single judgments, and therefore these complex equational sentences do not represent the elements with which we have to deal. The chief defects of the traditional formal logic seem to me to lie partly in its too exclusive pre- dilection for the extensive interpretation of the judgment, but still more in the absence of distinction between the singular and the universal proposition, and, above all, in the absence of distinction between the mere collective judgment and the true universal. Very different types of judgment are all classed together as A and E propositions. " All the books on this shelf are bound in calf" is a judgment of a different type from "The angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles." 1 The ignoring of this distinction is the chief thing which has exposed 1 Aristotle drew the distinction very clearly. Anal. Post., I. 4.. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 161 the Aristotelian logic to attack in modern times. Mill's thesis that the Aristotelian syllogism is by its very profession a petitio principii rests upon a narrow " class " interpretation of the dictum de omni et de nullo, that is most certainly not justified by Aristotle's own language, which simply expresses the principle of continuity (" what may be predicated of the predicate may be predicated of the subject"), 1 and on the assumption that every universal proposition is simply a collective judgment. Now certainly if "All M is P" merely means "A is P," " B is P," " C is P," and " D is P," and if we then go on to say, " B is one of this group (M), therefore it is P," we have made no advance, but, as Mill points out, are simply reading off our memoranda. Where, however, the two premises are both singulars, or where (if anywhere) one is a true universal {i.e. necessary), Mill's argu- ments are inapplicable. That excellent tale of Thackeray's about the too confidential abbe (it is quoted by Mr. Bosanquet in his Essentials of Logic, pp. 140, 141) seems to me alone sufficient to refute Mill's criticism of the syllogism. " An old abbe, talking among a party of intimate friends, happened to say ' A priest has strange experiences ; why, ladies, my first penitent was a murderer.' Upon this, the principal nobleman of the neighbourhood enters the room. ' Ah, Abbe, here you are ; do you know, ladies, I was the Abbe's first penitent, and I promise you my confession astonished him ! ' " The company, having the two premises given them from different quarters (and of course they might have been given at any interval of time and through many different channels), are at once able to form a conclusion which is certainly " new " to them. There is no suspicion of petitio principii here. The syllogism (a-vK- Aoyicr/uo'?, cow-clusio) arises only from the combination 1 Categ., 3. 1 62 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY of the premises ; but the combination of the premises is the conclusion. Mill expressly denies the existence of any true uni- versal; all judgments professing to be necessary are, according to him, simply incomplete collective judg- ments, which we assert as if they were complete. The only necessity he allows is a psychological necessity — a tendency in our minds to expect a repetition of similar experiences. Mill's argument has undoubtedly been made easier for him by the absence of any distinction in the traditional logic between the true universal and the mere collective judgment ; but the main determinant of his whole treatment of ,the subject of inference has been his assumption that he is dealing with a psycho- logical problem, and that there is no logical problem distinct therefrom. The very question " whether the syllogistic process is or is not a process of inference " shows that he thinks of the syllogism as the consciously recognized and formulated inference. We need only translate Mill's question into Aristotelian Greek to see its irrelevance as applied to Aristotle's own analysis of inference. " Syllogism " to Aristotle simply means " inference," i.e. out of a combination of data arriving at something new — in the only sense, of course, in which we can ever know anything " new " ; for we can never learn anything absolutely discontinuous with our existing knowledge. Still less could we be said to " infer " what has no connection with anything else. But how far we are conscious of the form of our infer- ence is a matter for psychology : whether we formulate it in words is a matter of grammar or rhetoric. Logical analysis applies equally to fully conscious and half-conscious inferences, to fully formulated and half- formulated inferences ; though of course, as already said, our knowledge of the logical forms of inferences is best arrived at by a study of the most fully conscious and clearly expressed specimens we can obtain. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 163 Mill holds that all inference is ultimately from par- ticular to particular. Now if it were true that, as a matter of psychology, we had first one particular case in our minds and then passed at once to the thought of another particular case, this would not prove that, as a matter of logic, inference was possible from particular to particular. Mill speaks of the village matron re- commending her neighbour to try the medicine that cured her own child, without uttering any formal universal proposition, or without consciously formu- lating any universal judgment. But if she is asked why, she must enunciate the major premise of her argument. She must either commit herself to the statement that the drug is a panacea, or she must expressly recognize the similarity of the two cases. But to recognize similarity is, as a matter of logic, to arrive at a " middle term," distributed, undistributed, or approximately distributed : " All such (or some such or most such) cases are cured by this remedy. This is such a case." Mill himself uses the words " on the recollection and authority of what she accounts the similar case of her Lucy." x Mr. Hobhouse, 2 in his chivalrous attempt to defend Mill against the fierce onslaught of Mr. Bradley, lays stress on this statement of Mill's ; and he seems even inclined to follow Mill in making likeness an ultimate category, though he admits that where there is likeness there is generally identity in difference. 3 As an argu- ment that there is not always such identity, Mr. Hobhouse asks : " What is the identity and what is the difference between blue and green ? " * This question does not seem very difficult to answer : blue (in the widest application of the name) is the identity which 1 Logic, Bk. II., ch. III., § 3 (I. p. 216, 8th ed.). 2 Theory of Knowledge, p. 282. 3 Theory of Knowledge, Bk. I., ch. III., g 1 1 (I. p. 75). i IMd., p. 109, note 2. 164 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY links together the most purple of blues and the most yellowish of greens, when we see them in the spectrum. Mr. Hobhouse's chapter on " Resemblance and Iden- tity " seems to me to offer one of the many cases in which a more precise distinction between psychology and logic is needed. " Likeness," he says, " does not in the least bit cease to be real because it is analyzed." That may be ; but it is with the analysis that logic has to do. Mr. Hobhouse seems to think both likeness and identity " given " to immediate apprehension. Whether that is so or not is a question for psychology. Logically, identity is the prior, because there can be (in thought) identity without difference, though it is a mere abstraction, whereas we cannot think " likeness " without implying both identity and difference. Mill's treatment of likeness as an ultimate category rests upon the psychological atomism which forms the basis of his whole theory of knowledge. Mr. Hob- house is indignant at Mr. Bradley's supposing that when Mill talks of inference from particular to par- ticular he means " particular images." It is quite true that Mill does not mention them in the passage which Mr. Hobhouse quotes from the Logic ; but we know sufficiently well from other sources — notably from his Examination of Hamilton — that Mill accepts that theory of knowledge which was most clearly (and with fullest consciousness of its issues) expounded by Hume. Mill's whole argument in the Logic about the nature of mathematical judgments would be without meaning, unless we suppose that by "particulars" he means ultimately particular images of particular sense-impres- sions. Once admit that, as a matter of logic, likeness may be analysed into identity in difference, then, if it is admitted that inference is only justified by similarity, it is admitted that inference implies identity and there- fore that we cannot logically pass from particular to LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 165 particular except through a universal. We may not think of formulating the universal principle, the major premise, of our inference till we are met by the ques- tion why ; and in proportion as we are untrained in abstract thinking or in the habit of scientific expression, we may find it difficult to do so ; but the validity of our inference, nevertheless, depends on the truth of the universal principle, whether it be consciously appre- hended or not. Now if it be once admitted that logically no transi- tion from particular to particular is possible except through a universal, this suggests that perhaps the psychological theory which holds that such transition takes place as a matter of fact, may also need revision. It would imply a break in the continuity of our mental life, — a break which we should not scientifically be prepared to accept without very distinct proof, — if no trace of the identity (the universal element) which comes out clearly in the higher and more fully con- scious stage of logical inference could be found in the lower and less explicit stages of association and percep- tion. And modern psychology, though it started from the empirical standpoint of Hume, seems to be coming to recognize that, in Mr. Bradley's phrase, " Associa- tion marries only universals." 1 It may be considered misleading or inconvenient, as a matter of descriptive psychology, to speak of perception as being an unconscious or subconscious inference ; but it is important as a matter of logic to recognize that the validity of perceptive judgments can be shown to depend on the same principles as those which determine the validity of conscious logical pro- cesses. If, for instance, looking at a distant mountain side, I say, " I see snow," this perceptive judgment (which I might quite as well have expressed in the iThis phrase is accepted by Mr. Stout in his Analytic Psychology, Vol. II. p. 52. See the whole passage, pp. 45 seq. 1 66 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY inferential form "That must be snow") is an inference of a probable kind. It may be analyzed as an Aris- totelian enthymeme : " Snow is white, glistening, etc. (a premise due to past experience lying latent in the mind). This presentation is white, glistening, etc. Therefore this is snow." This is an enthymeme in the second figure — an enthymeme of the weakest kind. But as the points of identity become more numerous, the middle term approximates to distribution, and so the major premise approaches the stage at which it admits of simple conversion. "All that has this par- ticular combination of marks is snow." And then the inference passes into the first figure. 1 Nothing, it may be remarked in passing, shows more forcibly the degradation to which Aristotle's logic has been subjected than the perversion of the meaning of " enthymeme " in the traditional formal logic. To define an enthymeme as a syllogism with a suppressed premise or conclusion, and solemnly to distinguish enthymemes of the first, second, or third order accord- ing as one or other of the three propositions is sup- pressed, — all this is, in logic, as absolutely irrelevant and unscientific as if, in zoology, we were to recognize a distinct species of quadruped when one or more of the legs is not seen, and then subdivide the species according as a fore leg or a hind leg, a left leg or a right leg, were at the moment out of sight. How I choose to express my argument, is a matter of rhetoric. If I wish to produce conviction, it may be expedient to conceal my weakest premise or to leave my hearers to make for themselves a conclusion which I only suggest. But such tricks of the platform furnish no special and peculiar types of inference for the science of logic. Aristotle's enthymeme " from signs (or !The relation of perception to conscious inference is admirably treated by HofFding in his Outlines of Psychology. Cf. especially p. 132 (transl.). LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 167 symptoms)" is, on the other hand, a really important contribution to the logic of probable (as distinct from demonstrative) inference, — far more important than his " inductive syllogism from all the particulars." The diagnosis of the physician (Aristotle's own illus- trations are medical), the circumstantial evidence of the law courts, and, as we have just seen, our ordinary recognitions in perception are affirmative syllogisms in the second figure, which gain in probability as they approach the stage at which the major premise can be converted, and the syllogism becomes of the first figure. Even in the first figure such enthymemes, in Aristotle's view, fall short of the scientific syllogism, because our middle term is a sign, or a combination of signs, and not a cause or ground. In the " scien- tific " syllogism the ratio cognoscendi is the ratio essendi. Mill's inductive methods are a valuable contribution to the logical study of the manner in which, in ordinary life and in the sciences, we test the guesses that we make about the causes of events; but none of them are " inductive " in the sense of being arguments which do not proceed logically from universal to particular. The " method of residues " is professedly a deductive method, and involves the assumption of an axiom, the truth of which is most easily recognized in its purely mathematical form. The other methods are deductive applications of the principle of causation, as Mill him- self acknowledges, though he attempts to derive the belief in universal causation and in the uniformity of nature from our experience of particular cases of causa- tion and of particular uniformities of sequence, — an argument which turns on the same confusion of psy- chology with logic as that on which his attack on the syllogism depends. As a matter of mental develop- ment, we understand particular cases before we under- stand the principle involved in them ; but the universal principle, though it may be apprehended and formulated 1 68 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY later, is logically prior. Our conviction of the universal may come later, but the truth of the particular instance is dependent on the truth of the universal principle. The question of the logical presuppositions of infer- ences about causation is, however, too large for treat- ment towards the end of a long discussion. 1 can only very briefly indicate what seem to me the main points for consideration, (i) In the sciences and in ordinary life we make abstractions according to our convenience. We isolate certain phenomena as "causes" for special consideration, taking for granted the other elements in the total reality. In his exposition of the inductive methods, Mill is obliged to desert his attempt at a philosophical conception of cause as the sum total of conditions, and to adopt the popular use of the term. (2) A logical analysis of what causation implies, compels us to go beyond the artificial distinction of antecedent and consequent, and to regard the assign- ment of causes as only one particular aspect of that fitting of particulars into their place in a system which constitutes " explanation." (3) This underlying assumption of system is identical with the principle of contradiction (or inconceivability of the opposite). In passing from " formal logic " to the logic of probable matter, in passing from mathematics to the sciences of observation and experiment, we do not come across a new set of a priori principles disconnected with our previous canons of inference. Our thinking is deter- mined by the same principle of totality or coherent system (or however we describe it) throughout, though in passing from the more abstract to the more concrete sphere, we pass to a region in which our certain knowledge is more limited just because it is less abstract. The sphere of the contingent is simply the sphere where it is more difficult for us in intricate material to see the necessity : and the principle of sufficient reason is identical with the principle of contradiction. LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 169 A due consideration of the difference between the logical question of validity, and the psychological question of the temporal evolution of knowledge, seems to me to vindicate the syllogistic analysis of Aristotle from another charge of incompleteness which is made even by those who recognize the necessity of a universal element in our transition from particular to particular. Such inferences as " A > B ; B > C ; .•.A>C" are supposed to be incapable of reduction to syllogistic form. But the psychological fact that it is easier to see the principle, e.g. of a fortiori, in a concrete or in a brief symbolic form than when fully expressed in abstract language is no proof that the inference is logically possible except in virtue of the truth of the abstract general principle. The general principle here and in all similar cases (most A are B ; most A are C ; A is to the north of B, B is to the east of C, etc.) is a principle of quantity or a necessity of spatial relations ; and it is to con- fuse logic with mathematics, if we set up axioms of quantity and axioms about space as if they were parallel to the dictum de omni et de nullo. Every science has its own axioms, which may be arbitrary conventions, or derived from other sciences, or capable of proof -per impossible (by inconceivability of the opposite) ; but the axioms of quantity or space are no more themselves principles of logic than are the Acts of Parliament which form the major premises of judicial and administrative inferences. Finally, to guard against misunderstanding, it may be well to point out that the " Intuitionist " who appeals to the evidence of consciousness or the con- sensus humani generis in support of his immediate or necessary truths falls into precisely the same confusion of psychology (or anthropology) with logic as his " Sensationalist " opponent. A priori principles, if we call them so, are not known " prior to " experience ; 170 LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY they are not " immediate," in the sense of being got straight away, without any trouble, by anybody and everybody. They are a priori only in the sense of not being dependent upon experience for their validity ; they are " immediate " only in the sense of not being deducible through a middle term from other logi- cally prior principles. They cannot be " proved " except by a " transcendental proof," i.e. per impossibile, by showing that the denial of them makes knowledge impossible and involves us in contradiction. Nothing has more hindered the understanding and acceptance of the idealist theory of knowledge, than the per- sistent error of treating the logical argument for the validity and necessity of the laws of thought, as if it were an appeal to the average individual's incapacity to analyze some of the facts of his consciousness. In the attempt to deal with my problem, I have been obliged to sketch in brief outline a good many parts of logic. If I have not altogether failed to make my points clear, I think I have done some- thing incidentally towards vindicating the essential value of the Aristotelian logical analysis. I have also tried to show that " formal logic" is not so barren of philosophical interest as is often supposed, but, if studied seriously, leads us inevitably into problems of epistemology and metaphysics. But we are left with this seemingly paradoxical conclusion, that although psychology ought to be kept out of logic, it cannot be kept out of a complete epistemology to which logic leads up ; and, on the other hand, logic ought not to be kept out of psychology. This conclusion is paradoxical only if we have been making the false assumption that logic and psychology are parallel sciences, or that logic is simply a branch or application of psychology. Psychology is, or pro- fesses to be, one of the special sciences, like physiology ; and yet, as the science of the knowing mind, it occupies LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 171 a " unique " central position. So far as psychology is a special science, logic is related to it as it is to any other of the special sciences. But it is difficult for psychology to become one of the special sciences of nature or to remain merely one of them ; logic and epistemology claim part of its province for their own, and seek to turn it into a " philosophy," as distinct from a special " science," of mind. THE RELATION OF METAPHYSICS TO EPISTEMOLOGY 1 How does the problem of the ultimate nature of Reality stand related to the problem of the possibility of knowledge ? In attempting to deal with this question, it seems most convenient to refer directly to the opinions on the subject which have been advocated by Professor Andrew Seth in the Philosophical Review, especially in his articles in No. 2 and No. 5. In the first of these articles, Mr. Seth has argued for the separation of psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics from one another. With what he says about psychology I am inclined on the whole to agree, though with some qualifications. The question of the separation of psychology from epistemology (I should prefer to say, in more general terms, "from logic") and from metaphysics is to a great extent a question of convenience of terminology. But it is also a question which depends upon the possibility of the existence of psychology as a particular science of nature. This possibility might, indeed, seem to be proved by the existence of psych- ologists, who adopt that view of their science. The question, however, may still be raised, how far these psychologists are consistent with themselves. If, how- ever, psychology can be treated as a special science like the other sciences of nature, it can be kept free of meta- physics in the same sense, and in the same sense only, 1 Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. III. p. 14. METAPHYSICS &? EPISTEMOLOGY 173 in which they can be kept free of metaphysics. We know that even the mathematician, still more the physicist or the biologist, is apt to trespass beyond the limits of his special science and to put forward the abstractions or the conventional concepts, of which in his special science he has rightly made use, as if they were absolute realities, truths about the universe as a whole, truths about the ultimate nature of things. It is obviously still harder for the psychologist, dealing as he does with a more complex material and with a material in which the idola fori and idola theatri are more difficult to escape, to avoid such trespassing on metaphysics. And it may be argued that psychology, apart from metaphysics, or at least apart from epistem- ology, is too apt to mean an uncritical use of fundamental conceptions and a tacit and therefore mischievous assumption of some general philosophical theory ; that psychology, apart from a critical theory of knowledge, is too often only a combination of haphazard observation and bad metaphysics, helped out by a little second-hand physiology. But a better ideal is possible, and is certainly present to the minds of many psychologists at the present day. A full recognition of the necessary abstractness of the psychologist's point of view and a careful elimination of metaphysical assertions, whether affirmative or negative, justify the claim to treat psychology as a natural science, or at least as what " wishes to be " a natural science. If, however, psychology be treated in this way, as a special science like physiology or chemistry, it can no longer put forward the claim to be the foundation of philosophy or even of any of the special philosophical sciences, such as logic, ethics, aesthetics. All the special sciences form part of the material for philosophy. That is one reason why philosophy is never complete, but has to have its problems worked out afresh by every generation, and, in a sense, by every individual 174 METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY who takes it seriously. All changes in scientific conceptions, just as all changes in religious ideas, in economical, social, and political conditions, bring new problems to light and compel us to face old problems in new ways. Psychology, from the nature of its subject-matter, has a closer connection with many philosophical problems than some of the other sciences. But philosophy cannot be based on psychology (as a science excluding epistemology and metaphysics) in any sense in which it is not also based on sociology and history, the sciences which deal with the human mind " writ large." Admitting, then, a possible separation of psychology from epistemology and from metaphysics, we have to ask whether these can be separated from one another. Mr. Seth admits that metaphysics should be based on epistemology : at least he says that " Epistemology clears the way for metaphysical construction or hypothesis." 1 But he treats epistemology as if it were a science clearly separable from metaphysics, so much so that he thinks it possible for us to be " realists " in our epistemology, while we are " idealists " in our metaphysics. 2 There is an intelligible sense in which it can be said that mere subjective idealism — the assertion that we never can know any- thing beyond the "states of consciousness " which are the hypostatised abstractions with which the psychologist may profess to work — is inconsistent with idealism in the sense in which that means a belief in the ultimate rationality of the universe. But Mr. Seth sets up " reals " in epistemology — the supposed absolutely existing " things " of ordinary picture-thinking — in order to knock them down in metaphysics, by regarding them only as " moments in the being of an intelligently directed Life." It would seem easier, at least, and more obviously logical, to base such a metaphysical 1 Philosophical Review, Vol. I. p. 138. 2 p. 142. METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY 175 theory on an epistemology which denied the possibility of knowing anything that existed independently of all thought, and to base a denial of such a metaphysical theory on an epistemology which made the fact of knowledge require the existence of a plurality of absolutely existing " reals." If metaphysics be strictly limited to speculative metaphysics, the attempt to frame an all-embracing hypothesis about the ultimate nature of the universe as a whole, we can, of course, distinguish that part of philosophy (whether possible or not) from an inquiry into the conditions of knowledge ; but we cannot safely separate such speculations from the preliminary inquiry. If our epistemology gives us no ground for any belief in any unity of the cosmos whatever or in any rationality in the process of it, the attempt to explain it as a whole is condemned at the outset. The attempt to construct a speculative metaphysics, however tentative and hypothetical, is only defensible if we feel some justification for believing that there is a cosmos to be explained, and that it must be to some extent intelligible by us. That is to say, in our epistemology, we are already, if we are taking it seriously, on metaphysical ground. Knowledge professes to be knowledge of reality ; and thus if we raise the question " How is knowledge possible ? " or even the sceptical question " Is knowledge possible at all ? " we are ipso facto dealing with the question " What is reality — the only reality we ever can know or intelligently talk about ? " We may, indeed, reserve the question, " What is the full meaning of reality ? " and we shall do well not to profess to give any but a provisional answer to it — such provisional answer constituting our speculative metaphysics, or " philosophy " in the narrower and special sense. The plain man certainly believes that, when he claims to know anything, he knows what is real ; but I do 176 METAPHYSICS fcf EPISTEMOLOGY not think he really believes this real world that he knows to be something outside his consciousness, how- ever ready he may be to assent to the dualistic realism of so-called common-sense philosophy, which our realists in epistemology and our realists who try to do with- out epistemology alike tend to rehabilitate. Mr. Seth urges that knowledge, "if it is not an illusion altogether, is a knowledge of realities which are trans-subjective or extra-conscious ; i.e. which exist beyond and inde- pendently of the consciousness of the individual know- ing them." 1 That all knowledge is " trans-subjective," in the sense of having an objective reference, is un- doubtedly true. Even my knowledge of my own mental states is trans-subjective, in the sense that there is a distinction between the knowing subject and the object known, as there must be in all knowledge. Such knowledge may also be called objective in the further sense that even my own mental states, though known directly to myself alone, are events in the real universe and are capable of becoming mediately an object of knowledge to other persons than myself, if I speak truthfully about them. But I am unable to see how a knowledge of my own mental states — and such know- ledge both the plain man and the psychologist profess to have — can be described as " a knowledge of realities which exist beyond the consciousness of the individual knowing them." Nor can I see how even my know- ledge of the external world or of the mental states of other persons can be a knowledge of that which is " beyond my consciousness" in any accurate sense of these words. The plain man certainly believes that he knows what is external to himself ; but such a belief is entirely misrepresented by the epistemological realist, who declares that the plain man believes that he knows what is external to or beyond his consciousness. When the plain man talks of what is external to himself, he means 1 Philosophical Review, Vol. I. p. 505. METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY 177 what is external to his body ; and that is exactly why he finds a theory of matter, such as that of Berkeley, so ridiculous. He " refutes" Berkeley by kicking a stone, like Dr. Johnson, or by suggesting that an idealist should sit down on a gorse bush. If the plain man be made to think a little about the question, he will admit that the outside of his body, at least, is part of the ex- ternal world ; but he probably continues to speak of his digestive apparatus as inside him. If the plain man thinks about his soul or his mind, he probably pictures it as a thing, occupying space, however tiny, inside his body — a box within a box : he may locate it in his bosom or in his head, according to the physiology of his period and to the degree in which physiological notions have penetrated into ordinary speech. It is only in virtue of this crude picture-thinking that the plain man is induced to say that he knows anything external to his mind or consciousness. No valid argument in behalf of the theory of epistemological realism can be drawn from what Mr. Seth calls the " primary, instinctive, and irresistible belief of all mankind, nay of the whole animal creation." 1 For the epistemological theories of other animals I cannot profess to speak confidently, but I feel certain that the " crude " or " naive " or " uncritical realism " of the plain man is nothing more than his belief that the real world is the world of his sensations and of the mental constructs by which he has (without being aware of the process, save very dimly) got into the habit of interpreting them to himself : that is to say, the real world of the plain man's belief consists in sensations plus images and ideas suggested by them, and is a real world against which idealism finds nothing to say. " Crude realism " supplies no argument for the plausibility of episte- mological realism unless advantage be taken of the ambiguity in the word " external." 1 he. cii. p. 506. M 178 METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY But how, one may well ask one's self, is it possible that a philosophical thinker like Professor Seth can have come to maintain such a proposition, as that knowledge is of that which is external to consciousness? Sympathy with Reid is an inadequate explanation. My suggestion is that Professor Seth has not really escaped from a confusion between psychology and epistemology ; or, to put it rather more accurately, his theory of knowledge depends upon a juxtaposition in the same sentence of the abstractions of the psychologist and the abstractions of ordinary language and of the special sciences. I must explain this in greater detail. " The world of consciousness on the one hand," we are told, " and the (so far hypothetical) world of real things on the other, are two mutually exclusive spheres. No member of the real sphere can intrude itself into the conscious sphere, nor can consciousness go out into the real sphere and, as it were, lay hold with hands upon a real object." 1 This passage suggests some of the same difficulties to which I have already referred. If the world of my consciousness excludes the real world, are my internal, my mental, experiences not real ? Is it a delusion on my part that at this moment I am thinking of an article of Professor Seth's ? On the other hand, the moment I have put down these words on paper, are the visible written words excluded from the world of my consciousness ? Again, in which sphere is my body ? I do not see how I can describe various bodily sensations of which I am very distinctly con- scious as outside the world of my consciousness. If anything I know or think of is excluded from my consciousness because I know it, the sphere of my consciousness must be completely empty. If the sphere of my consciousness is not empty, I cannot see on what principle anything that I know is excluded from it. 1 loc. at. p. 515. METAPHYSICS fc? EPISTEMOLOGY 179 There is one sense only in which I can see an intelligible meaning in speaking of the world of my consciousness as a sphere that excludes the real world : and that is, if by the world of my consciousness be meant — certainly not what actually exists in my consciousness — but the abstraction with which the psychologist professes to deal, the stream of mental events regarded apart from their content. But if this is the meaning of the world of my consciousness in Mr. Seth's sentence, that part of the proposition belongs to psychology and not to epistemology. In epistemology the world of my consciousness ought surely to mean the world of my consciousness as that actually exists, i.e. a series of images, ideas, etc., with their content, i.e. with their objective reference. Even if we took the world of my consciousness to mean the abstraction dealt with by the psychologist, the difficulty would not be entirely removed ; for, as already said, the series of my mental states is supposed to be a series of events which form part of the real world, although only one aspect of the really existing fact is considered by the psychologist as such. But the difficulty in Professor Seth's proposition does not end here. What does he mean by the " real world " — " so far hypothetical " even — which excludes the sphere of consciousness, and is excluded from it? There is certainly a real world which does not enter into my consciousness ; but what is the real world which does not enter into any consciousness, if it be not that abstraction of real things, objects taken apart from their existence as objects for any subject, which ordinary language and the various special sciences find it convenient to assume ? But epistemology as a philosophical science is surely bound to correct the convenient abstractions of the " abstract understanding" and to attempt to deal with the whole truth. " At no point," says Professor Seth in another i8o METAPHYSICS &? EPISTEMOLOGY passage, 1 " can the real world, as it were, force an entrance into the closed sphere of the ideal ; nor does that sphere open at any point to receive into itself the smallest atom of the real world, qud real, though it has room within itself ideally for the whole universe of God." The "as it were " and these metaphors of " spheres intruding themselves," etc., and such like, perhaps un- avoidable, spatial figures leave one in some doubt how far the expressions are meant to be taken literally. I do not see how there can be any such thing as knowledge at all, unless the world of my consciousness is not a closed sphere, and unless the real world, qua real, does intrude itself into that sphere. "When I know anything, the sphere of my consciousness does lay hold with its hands (the metaphor is not mine) upon a real object : otherwise I do not know that thing, but am under an illusion that I do so. If the sphere of my consciousness insists on keeping its hands in its pockets and its mouth shut, it will inevitably find its inside empty. That we never know the real world, qud real, is an odd formula for what calls itself epistemological realism. If " qud real' 1 means "qua thing-itt-itself" the statement is indeed an identical proposition : we cannot know what we cannot know. But if our knowledge is of ideas of things, and never of real things, the logical conclusion is the sceptical conclusion of Hume, and certainly not any doctrine that can claim kinship with the beliefs of the ordinary man. To sum up, the two closed spheres, in the only sense in which they have any meaning that I can understand, seem to me two opposite abstractions. On the one side there are the states of consciousness minus the content of these states, on the other, objects of possible knowledge (unless I am to say, of impossible knowledge — if " things-in-themselves " be meant) minus the subject which makes them objects of possible knowledge. That these two abstractions exclude one 1 kc. clt. p. 516. METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY 181 another may readily be admitted (apart from the difficulty that in psychology the states of consciousness minus their content are just the objects of possible knowledge which the psychologist, as such, treats in abstraction from the conditions under which they are objects). But the statement seems to me irrelevant in epistemology — a science which professes to deal with the conditions of knowledge. Epistemology is nothing but a part of logic. It is only because of the wretchedly limited sense in which the term " logic " has come to be used, that there is any excuse for a separate term for the philosophical investigation of the conditions of knowledge. If logic be supposed to deal with consistency only, the question of truth {i.e. the question how knowledge is possible) — a question which Aristotle certainly dealt with in his Analytics — seems to require a separate science to deal with it. But this distinction between consistency and truth cannot be maintained as an absolute distinction. How, e.g. can we use the argument per impossible, which we do use even in the most abstract mathematics and in the most purely formal logic, unless we hold that the inconceivability of the opposite is the test of truth ? To speak of truth or knowledge as being the corre- spondence of thought to things is to fall back upon a metaphor and to adopt from popular language a theory of knowledge which only states the problem it professes to solve. The distinction between my thought and reality is a perfectly valid and a very important distinction ; but it affords no grounds for the opinion that reality in its ultimate nature can be something quite other than thought. Reality is objectivity, i.e. coherence in thought for myself, and — whenever I can apply this test also — coherence of my thought with that of others. 1 So far as our feelings are concerned, we are 1 See article What is reality ? in the Philosophical Review, Vol. I. No. 3, reprinted in Darwin and Hegel. 1 82 METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY each of us shut up in " closed spheres " ; but it is for that very reason that mere feelings do not constitute knowledge (though there may be knowledge of them). I have, therefore, taken it for granted that in a dis- cussion about epistemology the world of consciousness referred to was the world of thought, or of feelings only as interpreted and transmuted by thinking. It is only the ratio of our feelings to one another that admits of comparison with what others experience. I can never know, for instance, that what I call a red colour gives you the same feeling that it gives me ; but I am satisfied, if I find that I distinguish red from green and other colours in the same sort of way in which you and other persons do (not being the colour-blind minority — whose judgment I do not accept, simply because their judg- ments of identity and difference do not fit in with those of the majority of human beings nor even with those of one another). Identity of ratios — of relationships — is all I can know, when I say that sensations or feelings are the same to me and to you. But, as we know, f = £, and yet i and 4, 3 and 6 are different numbers. It is because of the objectivity of the primary, as contrasted with the subjectivity of the secondary qualities of matter that scientific men tend to regard the real world " behind " sensible phenomena as consisting of what possesses the primary qualities only, and to endeavour constantly to translate the chaos of subjective feelings into the terms of number and measure, i.e. to turn the ordinary man's real world, that he sees, touches, smells, into a world of thought-relations. After all, however, this real world of scientific thought is a world of imagined phenomena — figures, vibrations, etc., which we should see and feel if we had keener eyes and a keener sense of touch. In either aspect the real world of science is a world that implies the presence to it of a conscious subject to make it possible. Most scientists are fond of asserting the relativity of knowledge, without perhaps taking the METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY 183 notion quite seriously : the more philosophical scientists admit that their atoms, molecular movements, etc., are only working hypotheses, i.e. mental constructs. The objectivity of knowledge implies at least some degree of similarity between the mental structure of different human beings : still more obviously does the possibility of communicating knowledge imply such similarity. An epistemology, which does not wish to foredoom itself to complete scepticism, must take for granted that reality is — in some sense, that it can be known — to some extent, and that what is known can be communicated — to some extent. Otherwise we may as well accept the paradoxes of Gorgias as the sum total of human wisdom. But there cannot be similarity without identity. Mere similarity is a contradictory conception. Thus we are logically driven to the conclusion that, if knowledge is possible and if know- ledge is communicable, there must be some identity underlying the differences of individual human minds. The question about the minds of lower animals or of any other possible intelligences need cause no trouble. If, and so far as, we can communicate our thoughts and feelings to dogs and cats, angels and devils, so far is there identity underlying the differences between us and them. To argue that such identity is merely " logical " and not " real " is only to evade the question and implicitly to deny the possibility of knowledge, by re- asserting an impassable gap between thought and reality. 1 Whether we are to say that reality is thought or not, is a good deal a question of language. If the term " thought " be expressly limited to discursive thought, which is necessarily abstract, and which necessarily accentuates the distinction between subject and predi- cate, we cannot without qualification identify reality with thought in that sense. The predicate of the 1 On "the identity between souls," cf. Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, pp. 347-353- i8 4 METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY judgment is by its very nature a predicate of reality, and so distinguished from it. But this is only one aspect of the judgment. If the difference or distinc- tion were the sole aspect of judgment, judgment would be impossible. Judgment is distinction ; but it is distinction within a unity, difference in identity. If the predicate is not predicated of the subject as a part of it (or, in the negative judgment, denied of the sub- ject to which it has been suggested it may possibly belong), there is no predication at all. A theory which asserts difference without identity and a theory which asserts identity without difference, both make predica- tion impossible and land us in the old series of " Sophistic " difficulties, the outcome of Heracleiteanism and of Eleaticism alike, when these had given birth to popular philosophy. Now, if this identity of the real and that which we think of it is not to be called an identity in " thought " we must simply invent some other term. "Thought " seems to me a good term for the purpose : it is a possible equivalent of fow or v6t]v ilftiov (jiiXoi (cf. Soph., 248A) — i.e. other pupils of Plato who had adhered to the earlier doctrines of their master — the difficulty of explaining Aristotle's criticisms of the theory of ideas seems to me greatly diminished. But the question cannot be discussed here. Lutos- lawski (The Origin and Growth of Plata 's Logic, p. 401) argues that, even if we admit the possibility of an allusion to Aristotle in the " Aristoteles " of Parm., Aristotle was too young to have made objections which modified the course of Plato's thought. Surely a Greek youth of eighteen or twenty might well have raised metaphysical difficulties, especially when that youth was Aristotle. Berkeley at twenty was criticizing Locke in his commonplace- book. [Cf. Ritchie's Plato, ch. 2 and 5.] 202 THE ONE AND THE MANY to see that dualism puts off difficulties and does not solve them, and that to explain the world of appear- ance it is necessary to recognize that in the intel- ligible world itself there must be diversity as well as unity. In the same way Christian theology, which is just Platonism applied to the interpre- tation of the beliefs of the first Christians, came to recognize that the relation of God to the world and to man cannot be thought out, unless in the Divine nature itself there is diversity and not merely abstract unity. The doctrine of the Trinity is often represented by opponents and by anti-rationalist believers as if it were a mere magical violation of arithmetic, whereas it is a recognition in a theological form that the abstract category of quantity is inapplicable to what is most real — the spiritual principle which governs the universe. Aristotle, when he is expressly engaged in criticising Plato, seems to disparage unity ; but it is only to " excessive unification " (to Xlav evovv) that he objects — to an abstract unity which excludes differ- ence. His idealism is more fearless than Plato's earlier philosophy : for he does not seek to escape from the manifold details of the world of appearance but to find rationality (Qelov n) in what Plato had thrust aside as irrational. Still it must be admitted that even Aristotle seems to fall back upon a notion which looks very like that of objective contingency or chance, though he describes rvy^j and to avrofiarov not as positive agents, but merely as arepyjcreK 1 — so that he must have held a theory of the imperfections in the universe more comparable to that of Spinoza than to that of Prof. James, who pleads for the recognition of "real evil" and "real contingency" apparently in the very same sense as that in which 1 Cf. Mr. Stewart's remarks on rvxq and to avTO/taTov in Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics, Vol. I. pp. 259, 260. THE LOGICAL PROBLEM 203 he wishes to maintain " a real God " and " a real moral life." 1 In the special province of logic two extreme types of thought have been represented among us, though not with the same relentless audacity as among the Greeks. The Pure Formal Logic of Hamilton accentuates the principle of Identity in such a way as to reduce logic to a manipulation of abstract quantities. Mill, on the other hand, resolves inference into a mere unex- plained transition from one particular to another. Hamilton and Mill did not go to the extremes of Megaric (or later Eleatic) and Heracleitean (or Cyre- naic) Sophists, who, from the opposite points of view of Identity and Difference respectively, agreed in making predication impossible. But Hamilton's quanti- fication of the predicate tends to abolish the distinction between subject and predicate which seems essential in every real judgment : and Mill's refusal to see any- thing " new " in the conclusion of a syllogism, unless the conclusion be absolutely disconnected with the pre- mises, makes inference impossible. In logic, as commonly understood, we are only brought into the presence of the problem of the One and the Many; but the problem is certainly there, 1 It may be urged that even Aristotle does not succeed in get- ting rid of a dualism such as he himself finds fault with in Plato's theory of ideas (as he understands that theory) ; but it may still be maintained that both Plato (in his later dialogues) and Aristotle have endeavoured to see the One in the Many and the Many in the One, instead of adopting either the one-sided theory of an Abstract Monism like the Eleatics (and the Stoics afterwards) or contenting themselves with the rough and ready " pluralism " of popular belief. When Plato is spoken of as a " dualist," it should be remembered that what he calls " matter " or " the unlimited " is described by him in more metaphysical language as "the other." It is the " not-being " which " is " — the negative element and not a second positive element alongside of the ideal element. The language in which the Timaeus describes the making of the physical universe is " mythical " and must not be taken literally. 2o 4 THE ONE AND THE MANY confronting us in every one of the customary divisions of logic, (i) What is the general concept? If it is said to be an abstraction from particulars, what is meant by this ? Is there nothing general except the name ? If so, how can we distinguish " real kinds " (which even Mill recognizes) from ra o^ww^a ? If generality is only a generality in our thought, how can we distinguish truth from falsehood in the case of any general proposition ? If we are thinking rightly when we think something common to different things, must there not be something common to them, identical amid the difference ? Either we must give up the possibility of any scientific proposition, or we must admit some amount of truth in Platonic Idealism and Mediaeval Realism. (It is curious how those who speak most about the laws of nature often throw most scorn upon " universals.") And so we arrive at the old pro- blem : How can the many " partake " in the One ? How can the One be manifested in the Many? (2) The judgments, which we really think and utter — as distinct from artificial dried specimens in text- books — cannot be either purely analytic or purely synthetic. They cannot be either of the type " A is A " (A remaining absolutely self-identical in subject and predicate), nor of the type "A is B " (A and B being absolutely different). 1 Even in the negative judgment as really thought and uttered there must be some ground or basis of identity. 2 No one thinks it 1 " A {Alpha) is N {Aleph) " has been suggested to me as the most appropriate symbol for the judgment. 2 Negation implies a possible affirmation, as Aristotle recognized. But Prof. James exaggerates this into falsity when he makes an absolute distinction between the affirmative judgment as objective and the negative as merely subjective {The Will to Believe, pp. 290, 291). A negative judgment is, as really thought or uttered, just as much a judgment about reality as an affirmative. And an affirmative judgment, as really thought or uttered, is just as much relative to some possible negation as a negative judgment is relative to a pos- THE LOGICAL PROBLEM 205 worth while to judge that " An elephant is not an illicit process of the major." All real judgments involve an identity in difference, a difference in identity. Judgments differ in degree of development — as Mr. Bosanquet has fully shown : and the most highly developed type of judgment — the disjunctive — in its logical ideal of an exhaustive enumeration of mutually exclusive alternatives makes the identity and the difference within that identity apparent in its very form. (3) The whole controversy about inference turns on the same question : Can we pass from particular to particular except through a universal, identical amid the difference of these particulars ? " We have not got inference," as Mr. Bosanquet says, 1 " unless the con- clusion (i.) is necessary from the premises, and (ii.) goes beyond the premises." This is " the paradox of inference." There must be something new, and yet there must not be anything new. It is the old puzzle about the impossibility of learning, raised by the Greek Sophists : and it is only capable of solution, if we are allowed to make the distinction between what is implicit and what is explicit — a distinction which Mill puts aside as " a mere salvo" 2 — and to recognize that identity and difference are not mutually exclusive, a conclusion which cost Plato a great dialectical struggle, and which to modern common-sense still seems absurd. sible affirmation. "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." Here we have a negative judgment directed against the pagans who assert the existence of other gods and an affirmative directed against those who deny that Mohammed is a true prophet. Affirmative clauses are only put into creeds when somebody is denying them. All genuine affirmation is negation of negation. " Smoking carriage " means that the rule prohibiting smoking does not hold there ; just as " Nichtraucher " negatives the prevailing habit. Prof. James must think that the English notice says some- thing about objective existence while the German notice does not! 1 Essentials of Logic, p. 137. 2 Logic, Book II., chap. III., §2. 206 THE ONE AND THE MANY (4) The more concrete problems of logic, such as the investigation of the methods of proof in the sciences of observation and experiment, make it clear, as has been already said, that all science, all that can be called real knowledge, all that can be called " ex- perience," in the sense in which experience supplies the materials for science, presupposes a coherent universe. The philosophical doubter, like Hume or Mr. Arthur Balfour, professes to be able to think a universe in which every event is "loose and separate," in which there is a " haphazard multiplicity of unordered suc- cession." 1 Hume logically remains a complete sceptic, and holds that he has shown the impossibility of meta- physics ; but Mr. Balfour thinks such a universe may satisfy the modest claims of philosophy, though he sees clearly enough that such a universe could never be interpreted by science. The possibility of even a few absolutely isolated, detached " phenomena " or "events" would upset the presuppositions with which science works. The accidental or contingent for science can only mean the as yet unexplained, never the uncaused or really spontaneous. Science demands a One in the Many in a much fuller sense than the co-existence of unrelated events in one Time and in one Space and (even) in one Consciousness. And surely philosophy, which attempts, however vainly, to obtain "complete unification," should not be satisfied with a lower stan- dard of coherence, a less organized system, than satisfies the various particular sciences. It cannot settle down contented with an acceptance of mere plurality or multiplicity. The philosopher cannot, as such, make a system of Louis Stevenson's delightful child's-verses : The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. 1 Cf. The Foundations of Belief, p. 154. [8th Ed., p. 164,] THE METAPHYSICAL PROBLEM 207 II. — The Metaphysical Problem. Thus metaphysics receives from logic the problem of the relation between the One and the Many. That in some sense the One must be in the Many is all that the science of logic requires. How ? In what sense ? That is the problem which metaphysics must attempt to solve and is always attempting to solve, whether a solution be possible or not. Popular thinking, or want of thinking, is content to leave such problems alone, or to accept any partial and haphazard solution of them : and a certain kind of popular philosophy has in all ages since the time of the Greek Sophists been ready, in its fear of " letting philosophy go too far," to lend support to the intellectual indolence of " the vulgar." Prof. James's " Essays in Popular Philo- sophy," as he purposely calls them, are the latest important example of brilliant cleverness holding a brief for laziness and stupidity. So far as I can make out, the main theses in Prof. James's qualified defence of the pluralism of ordinary belief are these: (1) that monism resolves real facts into illusions, (2) that philosophy is bound to satisfy other demands of our nature than those of reason, and (3) that, in order to explain that free-will which is presupposed in our moral judgments, we must posit a real objective contingency in the universe. If I have done any injustice to Prof. James in formulating these theses in a few words, I must apologise and excuse myself by explaining that I am not asking for any formal condemnation of his book on the ground of its containing philosophical heresy, but that I am simply using it as a suggestive expression of a discontent with idealist philosophies that is widely felt ; and of this discontent these three theses seem to me a sufficiently precise statement. As to the opinion that monism resolves real facts into illusions, the criticism is undoubtedly applicable 208 THE ONE AND THE MANY to strict monism like that of the Eleatics, to the pre- dominant tendency of Spinoza's thought and to systems like those of Oriental pantheism or their modern imitations in Schopenhauer and others, — systems which treat the world of appearance in space and time as a world of illusion that we must leave behind us in order to discover truth. But the criticism seems to me inapplicable to the later form of Plato's idealism, and inapplicable to the idealism of Aristotle, which refuses to make any absolute gap (j(wpi 137, H 1 . H4> H7> l68 > 198. Contradictory and contrary oppo- sition, 148. Courthope, W. J., 339. Custom, and moral progress, 298, 326sq. ; need of reflection on, 327 ; evils of, 327 ; support of, should be won for new ideas, 331. Customs, tendency, to undue per- sistence of, 329. Cynics, 72. Darwin, Charles, 54, 269, 272. Democracy, true defence of, 338- Democratic and aristocratic ideals, 340. v Descartes, 28, 113, i;o, 231, 274- test of truth, 71 sq. ; dualism, 95 sq. Desire, satisfaction of, does not guarantee truth, 225, 244. Determinism, distinguished from fatalism, 223 ; inadequacy of psychological answer to, 303 sq. Dialectic, 67, 149. Dictum of Aristotle, 161. Disestablishment, effects of, 53 sq. Doukhobors, 56, 115. Dualism, 73. Duties, conflict of, 257 sq., 259 298, 324. Duty, form and content of, 236. INDEX 347 Economic relations supranational, 257 ; economic factor in his- tory, 306. Ego, transcendental and empirical, 275- Eleatics, 200, 203, 208. Emanation theory, 128. Emigration, 246. Empedocles, 200. -Empiricism, 31, 72, 278. End, various meanings of, 292 ; end and means, 340, 341, 342 ; end of conduct, form and con- tent of, 277. Enthymeme, Aristotelian, 166. Environment, social, 337. Epicureans, attitude to religion, 312. Epiphenomenon, consciousness as, ?7- Epistemology, and logic, 70, 84, 138, 181 sq. ; and psychology, 178 ; and metaphysics, I72sq. Epistemological idealism, 94. Equality, 41, 335 sq. ; various meanings of, 336 ; an ideal, 336, 337 5 civil > political, and social, 336, 337, 33 8; equality and freedom, 3 3 8 sq. ; equality and inequality, social, 339. Ethical end, 292. Ethics, in relation to metaphysics, 1 10 sq., 286 sq. ; and politics, 117, 281, 308; and religion, 118,310; metaphysic of, 282 ; science of, 36, 283 ; distinct from sciences of nature, 271 ; scheme of a system of ethics, 282; Christian ethics, 313; historical ethics, 288 ; history of ethics, 291 ; art of ethics, 283 ; ethics and morality in relation to religion, historical outline, 312. Evangelical religion a fragment of Catholic faith, 126. Evil, problem of, 131, 225. Evolution, nature of, 228 ; and principle of continuity, 22 ; distinction between biological and social, 318. Evolutionism, idealist, 22. Evolutionist philosophy, 190 ; ethics, 116, 279, 289; ethics and politics, 42 ; sociology, 43 ; tends to fatalism, 252. Excluded middle, principle of, 74, I37-.H 1 * Hi- Existence, in space, 92 ; relation to consciousness, 93 sq. Experience, 85 ; as object of metaphysics, 86 sq. ; experience and the Absolute, 1 84. External world, plain man's view of, 93> I7 6 "- Fact and theory, 71 sqq., 92, 146, 264 sq. Fairbairn, Principal A. M., 122. Faith, rational, meaning of, 226. Fatalism, 243 ; and determinism, 223 ; not involved in heredity, 331 ; evolutionist, 252 ; fatal- ism of the Radical, 253. Federation, of the world, 49 ; Imperial, 52. Feeling, nature of, 184; and thought, 181 sq. Form and content of the moral end, 277. Fouillee, 305 ; on intellect and feeling, 2 1 7. Fraser, Professor A. Campbell, 1, 3 : Frederick the Great, 255. Free actions distinguished from unfree, 303. Freedom, and necessity, 148 ; and equality, 338 sq.; not a fact but an ideal, 243. 34« INDEX Free-will, 114, 223, 279, 302; nature of, 121, 238; theo- logical aspect of, 224 ; and predestination, 242 ; defects of ordinary doctrine of, 305 ; evil effect of false conception of, 309. Galton, Francis, 42. Geometry, non-Euclidean, I 50. Germany in 1826, I. Geulinx, illustration of two clocks, 102. Girondists, 263. Gnosticism, 128. God, nature of, 59, 121, 131, 225, 230, 234, 241 ; per- sonality of, 239 ; evil effect of false conceptions of, 308. Good, conception of, 294 ; the common good in relation to conduct, 32 1 sq. ; development of ideas of, 325. Gospel, fourth, identifies Christ with eternal reason, 57. Great Britain, political reform in, 5 2 - Greek philosophy, 66, 68, 193. Green, T. H., 22, 28 ; influence on Ritchie, 5 ; sermon on faith, 59; on " timeless act," 189. Hamilton, Sir W., on formal logic, 203. Happiness, as moral end, 38, 237, 279, 298; as means,237 ; happi- ness of believers, 132, 246. Hartmann, 306. Hatch, Edwin, 124. Haynes, E. S. P., 54. Hedonism, 39, 279. Hegel, 5, 61, 68, 201, 208, 222, 2 5 1 ; attitude towards older philosophy, 29 ; view of appearance and reality, 21 1 ; philosophy of history, 212. Hegelianism and the Athanasian Creed, 60. Henry VIII., 255. Heracleiteans, 200, 203. Heraclitus, 75, 123, 228. Heredity, in relation to biology and sociology, 42 ; in relation to moral practice, 331 sq. ; does not involve fatalism, 331. Heretics, evil effect of solitude on, 3 1 5 s q- Hero, explanation of the, 307. Hindu law, 56. History, has to do with meanings as well as events, 1 20 ; problems of, distinguished from those of science, 214. Historical method, the, 281. Hobbes, 266. Hobhouse, L. T., on likeness and identity, 163, 4. Hodgson, Shadworth, 108. Hoffding, H., 96, 166. Home Rule, 53. Houses of Parliament, reforms in, 5 2 " . . Humanity, life of, as ethical end, 301. *Hume, David, 33, 164, 165, 180, 194, 196, 197, 200, 206. Huxley, T. H., 22, 88, 94, 96. Hyslop, Professor J. H., 150. Ideal, conception of, 235 sq. ; and real, supposed antithesis of, 88, 148. Idealism, Berkeley's, 94; and pessimism, 335. Idealist and evolutionist ethics, 289 ; idealist evolutionism, 22. Ideas, influence of, on practice, 306. INDEX 349 Identity, principle of, 74, 137, 141 ; and similarity, 183. Illusions, nature of, 208. Imitation, conscious, a factor in human evolution, 318; imita- tion and instinct in human beings, 332. Immortality, 62, 238; evil effect of false conceptions of, 308. Incarnation, doctrine of, 59, 126. Inconceivability of the opposite, as a test of truth, 30, 140, 146, 198 ; views of Mill and Spencer on, 140, 194. Individual, nature of, 251 ; isolation of, 245, 249, 252, 276 ; importance of, 213. Individualism, problem of, 249 ; in religion, 119; objections to, 41, 42, 47. Inductive methods of Mill really deductive, 167. Inference, problem and paradox of, 20; ; Mill's view of, 163 ; inferences a fortiori, 169. Institutions and customs, capable of enormous variation, 320 sq. ; corrective of evil heredity in individuals, 331 ; Athenian and Spartan institutions, 3l8sq. _ Introspection, 273. Intuitionism, 280 ; defects of, 3i> 37> 39>4!> 45. Il6 > 3 ZZ ? confuses psychology with logic, 169. Intuitionist systems of morals, - practical evils of, 322. Ireland, 53. Isolation v. Individual. James, Professor William, 1 1 8, 19;, 213, 218, 223; on real contingency, 196 sq., 202, 227 ; on objective chance, 220 sq. ; on religion, 1 24, 132; defence of pluralism, 207 ; on affirmative and negative judg- ments, 204; on the emotional character of belief in reality, 210 ; on faith, 226. Jesus, and Socrates, 58 ; moral teaching of, 125. Jevons, W. S., view of logic, 135 sq., 139 ; on logical terms, 153- Jews, religion of, 57, 62, 122. Johnson, Samuel, refutation of Berkeley, 177. Joseph II., 255. Judgment, nature of, 183 sq. : Aristotle's view of, 154 ; types of, 158 ; the unit of thought, I 5 3 sq. ; negative and affirma- tive, 204 ; analytic and syn- thetic, 204; singular, collective, and universal, 1 60 ; extensive and intensive interpretation of, 159; logical analysis of, 158; equational theory of, 160; nature of perceptive judgment, 165 sq. ; judgment involves reference to reality, 159; judgment, proposition, and sentence, 158; ethical and political judgments are about particulars, 326. Justification, evangelical doctrine of, 126. Kant, 28, 66, 107, 109, 113, 200, 208, 228, 236, 269, 274 ; Kant and scepticism, 231 ; reply to Hume, 33 ; on ethics and religion, 312; on per- petual peace, 48 ; on federa- tion of the world, 49. Keynes, J. N., on intension of terms, 156. 35° INDEX Knowledge, essential conditions of, 231 ; relativity of, 274; objectivity of, 182 sq., 232; trans-subjective, 176 ; not a product of mere individual activity, 87 ; knowledge and science, 265 ; imperfect know- ledge implies an ideal, 235 ; knowledge brings suffering, 245. relation to psychology, i34sq., 1 70 ; metaphysical application of logical laws, 148. Logical priority and priority in time, 152, 278. Loneliness, 246, 7. Lotze, 122, 200, 268 ; on Hegel's philosophy of history, 212. Love, 250. Lutoslawski, W., 201. Laissez-faire, 51, 56. Lamarckian hypothesis, 43. Laplace, 230. Laurie, Professor S. S., 238, 243; on conflict of duties, 258. Law and morality, distinction between, 343. Law and liberty, supposed an- tithesis between, 148. Law of nature, distinguished from moral law, 136, 236, 270 sq. ; 333- Laws of thought, in psychology and logic, 136; metaphysical application of, 148. Leibniz, 102, 109, 201, 225, 239 ; principle of continuity, 22 ; mind and body, 98 ; view of contingency, 222 ; Leib- niz and Berkeley, 94. Letourneau, 289. Lewes, George Henry, 97. Liberalism, 53, 56. Liberty v. Freedom. Life, waste and preservation of, . 2 93- Life of the social organism as ethical end, 299. Likeness v. Similarity. .Locke, 76, 107, 201, 272, 336. Logic, nature of, 70 ; a regula- tive science, 135 ; criticism of categories, 84 ; relation to epistemology, 138, 181 sq. ; Machiavelli, 343. Mackintosh, Sir James, 267. M'Lennan, J. F., 269. M'Taggart, J. M. E., 147. Mahaffy, J. P., 339. Maine, Sir H. S., 223, 269 Martineau, James, 272. Martyrdom, significance of, 261 ; not a proof of facts, 243. Master and servant, relations of, 339- Mathematical formulae delusive in logic, 154, 268. Mathematics, progress of, 150; conceptions of, applied to study of man, 266; imitation of, a curse to philosophy, 70. Material cause, 121. Materialism, 21, 22, 94. Matter and mind not separate substances, 232. Maudsley, H., 253, 261, 278. Means and end, 340, 341, 342. Meta-geometry, 151. Metaphysics, subject-matter of, 84 sqq. ; speculative, problems of, i88sq. ; relation to episte- mology, 172 sq. ; relation to science, 278 ; relation to ethics, 1 10 sq., 286 sq. Metarithmetic, 151. SVtill, J. S., T 3, 105, 144, 267, 272, 321 ; confusion of logical and psychological questions, 30, X 3P 140 ; on inconceivability of the opposite, 72, 140 sqq., 194; on connotation of proper names, 1 57 j on likeness as ultimate category, 194; on real kinds, 194; view of universals, 162, 194; on Aristotelian syllogism, 161 sq., 203 ; on inference from particular to particular, 163 ; conception of cause, 168; inductive methods, 83, 167 ; logic and philosophical radi- calism, 193 ; psychological atomism, 1 64; pluralism, 194; on happiness, 237, 298 ; on theism, 225. Mind and matter, not separate substances, 232. Mind and body, 95 sqq., 177. Minds, differences of, 273. Miracles, 57, 59, 317 ; as evi- dence, 313. Monadism, 188; imperfections of, 27. Monism, 22, 73 ; materialistic, 21 ; and pluralism, 192 ; James's criticism of, 207 sq. Montague, Professor F. C, 5. Morality, and custom, 326 sq.; and Christianity, 313; Chris- tian, nature of, 314; ecclesias- tical, 314 ; and law, 343 ; and nature, 332, 335 ; and religion, 311, 312. Moral philosophy, 35, 44, 48, 62 ; metaphysical and historical elements of, 29 1 ; distinguished from moral science, 283 ; and psychology, 272 sq. ; and science, 264. Morals and politics, relation of, 341 sq. v. Ethics. Moral progress is progress in the ideal of conduct, 297 ; con- sists in creating good customs, 327- Moral reforms must be capable of becoming customs, 328. Moral theology of the schoolmen, 312. Morison, James Cotter, 314. Miiller, Professor Max, 269. Mysticism, 190. Mythology, 122. Nationality, 256. Natural rights, 39, 41. Natural selection, 32, 35. Naturalist metaphysics, 26, 27. Nature, 37, 39, 76 sq., 79, 114; relation to morality, 332, 334, 335 ; relation to thought, 335; meaning of obedience to, 333; evil of blind obedience to, 33+: Necessity distinguished from fate, 223. Neo-Platonism, 68, 128. Neo-Pythagoreanism, 68. Nonconformist conscience, limita- tions of, 56. Objectivity of knowledge, i82sq. Occam's razor, 80. One in the many, 188, 192 sq. Opinion, Greek sense of, 66. Optimism and pessimism, 39, Origin and validity, 1 8 sqq., 57, 78, 268 sq. Ought, conception of, 114 sqq., 235 sq., 276. Owen, Robert, 305, 309. Paley, 312, 313. Parallelism, psychophysical, 95 sqq., 272. Patmore, Coventry, 41, 338. Pauline Epistles, 125. 3S 2 INDEX Pearson, Professor Karl, 285. Perception as subconscious infer- ence, 165. Perceptive judgments, 165 sq., 199. Perfection of mankind as ethical end, 323. Personality, 27, 240, 247 sq. ; implies society, 27, 280 ; in connection with pluralism, 218 ; double nature of, 276. Pessimism, 39, 226, 294; and optimism, 39, 244; and idealism, 335. Philosophy, 23, 67 sq., 73, 112, 124; history of, 28, 69; relation to religion, 123; relation to science, 23, 24, 264 sq., 284 sq., 286, 290 ; professes to satisfy only intel- lectual demands, 215. Plato, 46, 106, 197, 200, 201, 205, 211, 216, 225, 241, 266, 281, 284, 296, 310, 340; view of philosophy, 67, 69 ; attitude to religion, 312; dualism, 203 ; Parmenides of, 192, 201 ; Sophistes of, 192 ; Plato and Aristotle, 202, 203, 208. Pluralism, 23, 26, 27, 62, 73, 93, 188; and personality, 218; and polytheism, 218; and monism, 73, 192 ; Pro- fessor James on, 196, 207 ; criticism of, 23, 26, 219. Politics and ethics, 117, 281, 308 ; and morals, 341 sq. ; and statesmanship, 341 sq. Polytheism and pluralism in ordinary thought, 218. Predestination and free-will, 242. Predication, 184. Priority, logical, and priority in time, 152, 278. Proper names, connotation of, Protestant revolt against authority, 312- Psychology, nature of, 106 sq., 272 sq.; as a science, 70, 106, 135, 172 sq. ; relation to epistemology, 178 ; logic, 70, 134 sq., 170; metaphysics, 172, 173; moral philosophy, 272 sq. Psychophysical parallelism,95sqq., 272. Pythagoras, 6j, 266. Quantification of the predicate, 160. Radical and Tory, 339. ^^Radicalism and Conservatism, 70. Rationalism of the 1 8th century, 282. Realism, epistemological, 1 74 sq. Reality, nature of, 85 sqq., 88, 181 ; degrees of, 89, 210, 212 sq. ; knowledge of, 175; test of, 197 ; implies objec- tivity, 187 ; relation to appear- ance and illusion, 89, 209 ; relation to thought, 183. Real World, meaning of, 1 79 sq. Reason the only ultimate authority, 216; reason and will, 244. Referendum, 5 2 sq. Reformers, position of social, 260, 33°- Reid, Thomas, 178. Religion, nature of, 118, 251 sq.; relation to ethics, 118, 310, 312; relation to morality, 312; uniformity of, 340 ; and happiness, 132, 246. Responsibility, not individual but social, 306 sq. INDEX 353 Revolt against established order, two kinds of, 320. Ritchie, Professor David, of Edin- burgh University, 1, 2. Ritchie, David George, ante- cedents, 1 ; student at Edin- burgh, 2 sqq. ; opinion of ScottishUniversity system, 3 sq. ; at Oxford, 4 sqq. ; marriage, 4 ; connection with T. H. Green and A. Toynbee, 5 sq. ; characteristics as a teacher, 8 sqq. ; published writings, 10 sq., 12 ; Professor at St. Andrews, 1 1 sqq. ; personality, 14 sqq. ; death, 15; philo- sophical position, 18 sqq. ; idealist evolutionism, in meta- physics, 2 1 sq. ; on naturalism and pluralism, 25 sq.; on the history of philosophy, 28 sq. ; on logic and theory of know- ledge, 30 sq.; on psychology, 3 3 sq. ; on ethics and politics, 35 sq. ; on intuitionism and hedonism, 37 sq.; on socialism and individualism, 39 sq.; on practical ethics and politics, 44 sq. ; on marriage and the family, 45 sq. ; on war and peace, 48 sq. ; on relations of states, 49 sq. ; on political reform in Great Britain, 52 ; on Church and State 53 sq.; on religion and theology, 57 sq. ; on creeds, 60 sq. ; on immortality, 62 sq. Ritchie, Professor William, of Edinburgh University, 1. Ritschl, 124. Ritual element in primitive religion, 1 1 8. Rosebery, Earl of, 56. Scepticism, 231. Schiller, F. C. S., 150, 191, 210; on radical empiricism, 195. Scholastics, moral theology of, 312. Schopenhauer, 99, 208, 306. Schurman, j. E., 283. Science, conceptual subject- matter of, 105, 106; legiti- mate materialism of, 22 ; presuppositions of, 206, 233 ; progress of, 149 ; science and philosophy, 24, 264, 278, 284, 286, 290; science and ethical ideals, 254. Scientific thought, world of, 182. Sellar, Professor W. Y., 2. Self, universal and individual, 250; timeless, 189; timeless and empirical, 247, 275 ; as cause, 304; self and other selves, 187, 249. Self-consciousness, 253 ; the unity of, 274 sq. ; the condi- tion of free-will, 304. Self-identity, evidence of, 248. Selfishness, complete and uni- versal, is unthinkable, 296. Self-realisation, not merely rela- tive and individual, 296 ; as moral end, 237, 295. Selves, individual, not separate, 232 ; existence of other selves, 187, 249. Seth, Professor Andrew, 172, I74sq. Sexes, equality of, 328 sq. Sidgwick, Professor Henry, 41, . 3.l6. Similarity as an ultimate category, 163 sq., 194; similarity and identity, 183. Socialism, 246 ; and individualism, 42 ; and the conflict of duties, 2 .59- Social environment, importance of, 337- 354 INDEX Social organism, 251, 268, 271 ; varieties of, 300 ; as ethical end, 299, 322. Social reformer, difficulties of, 260, 330. Society, 251; cosmopolitan, 256; application of biological con- ceptions to, 267 ; society and its institutions, 317; society and the state, 255. Socrates, 58, 113, 312. Solipsism, 187. Solitude, evil effects of, 3 1 6. Sophists, 328. Space and time, not illusions, 90sqq., 190, 208; spiritual world manifested in, 121 ; spherical space, of more than three dimensions, 150. s 'Spencer, Herbert, 9, 53, 75, 251, 252, 269, 271, 289; theory of knowledge, 32 ; on philo- sophy and science, 66, 284 ; criticism of Mill, 194. , Spinoza, 1 1 5, 200, 208, 239, 250, 267 ; on the physical and the psychical orders, 96sqq. ; de- grees of reality, 2 1 1 ; freedom, 3°4- State, differentiated from society, 255; self-preservation as ulti- mate principle of, 343 ; state interference, 7, 47 ; state and church, 53 sq.; spheres of state and individual, 326. Statesmanship and political science, 254. Stephen, Sir Leslie, 40, 264, 271. Stewart, Professor J. A., 123, 202. Stoics, 68, 242, 310, 312, 314, 3 2 5. 33 2 - Stout, Professor G. F., 165. Strauss, 334. Struggle for existence, 292, 318. Subject and object, 186. Sufficient reason, principle of, 168, 198. Suffrage, universal, 338. Sully, Professor James, 152. Switzerland a laboratory of political experiment, 48. Syllogism, Mill's criticism of, 161, 162 ; adequate for a fortiori arguments, 1 69. Taylor, Professor A. E., 264. Tennyson, 309. Terms, logical, Aristotle's de- finition of, 153 ; relation to judgment, 152; intension and extension of, 154, 155 ; sub- jective, objective and conven- tional intension of, 156. Thackeray, W. M., 17, 161. Theology, Christian, and Platonism, 127, 128, 202. Theory of knowledge, 30, 155. Theory and fact, 71 sq., 92, 146, 264 sq. Thought, nature of, 1 85 ; thought and reality, 183 ; thought and nature, 335. Time and space not illusory, 90, 91, 190, 208, 209. Timeless self, 189, 248, 275. Toleration, religious, 54 sq. Tory and Radical, 339. Toynbee, Arnold, 5, 6, 7. Trans-subjective knowledge, 176. Trinity, doctrine of, 61, 127, 202, 241. Truth and consistency, 146, 188. Truth, unity of, 185, 199 ; different kinds of, 142, 1 43, 145. Tylor, E. B„ 327, 329. Uniformity of nature, 76, 234. Universal and particular, 239. INDEX 355 University education, advantage of, 246. University system, Scottish, 3. Upton, Professor C. B., 280. -Utilitarianism, 38, 1 16, 299, 322. Validity and origin, distinction between, 18 sqq., 57, 77, 78 sq., 268 sq. Veitch, William, 3. Virtues, intellectual, 308. Ward, Professor James, 25, 33, 35> 95 s qq-> io 4> lo6 » I0 7> 109, 197, 267. Watson, Professor John, 186. Weber's law, no. Will, 185 ; freedom of, 114, 121, 223, 238, 279, 302 sqq., 309; will and reason, 244 ; will to live,292 ; real will is universal, 243 ; will of the people, 254. Worship, 252. War, South African, 49. Zeno, 228. GLASGOW I PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BV ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.