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PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE
PROFESSOR LADD'S WORKS.
PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE. An Inquiry into
the Nature, Limits, and Validity of Human Cognitive Fac-
ulty. 8vo. $4.00.
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. An Essay in the Metaphysics
of Psychology. 8vo. $3.00.
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY. An Inquiry
after a Rational System of Scientific Principles in their
Relation to Ultimate Reality. 8vo. $3 00.
PRIMER OF PSYCHOLOGY. i 2 mo. $1.00 net.
PSYCHOLOGY; DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANA-
TORY. A Treatise of the Phenomena, Laws, and Develop-
ment of Human Mental Life. 8vo. $4.50.
OUTLINES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
A Text-book on Mental Science for Academies and Colleges.
Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00.
ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
A Treatise of the Activities and Nature cf the Mind, from
the Physical and Experimental Point of View. With numer-
ous illustrations. 8vo. $4.50.
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE. A
Critical, Historical, and Dogmatic Inquiry into the Origin and
Nature of the Old and New Testaments. 2 vols. 8vo. $7.00.
WHAT IS THE BIBLE? An Inquiry into the Origin and
Nature of the Old and New Testaments in the Light of
Modern Biblical Studv. r2mo. $2.00.
THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH POLITY. Crown
8vo. $2.50.
Philosophy of Knowledge
AN INQUIRY
INTO
THE NATURE, LIMITS, AND VALIDITY
OF
HUMAN COGNITIVE FACULTY
BY
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALE UNIVERSITY
AX
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V
f\\3
"■.
V
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1897
*f>
Copyright, 1897, by
Charles Scribner's Sons.
J-
$f?tft
Hntasitg ^rcss:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A.
TO
THOSE WHO
BY SERIOUS AND PROLONGED
INQUIRY, HOWEVER SCEPTICAL, ASPIRE
TO APPROACH THE TRUTH,
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY
AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
,0
&
:
" Shall we not look into the laws
Of life and death, and things that seem,
And things that be, and analyze
Our double nature ? "
PREFACE
'TH^HIS book is an Essay in the interests of some of the
-*- most profound and difficult of the problems which can
engage the reflective thinking of man. It would scarcely be
an exaggeration to say that the nature, limits, and guaranty of
knowledge afford subjects of inquiry which exceed all others
in the demand they make for deep and earnest reflection. If
one were at liberty to construct a Theory of Reality which
should be simply a logically consistent and symmetrical
affair, satisfactory to the ideals of the architect but without
regard to foundations of fact or questions of the right to
occupy the ground in this way, the task would seem compara-
tively light. But in this day, and in the face of history, such
a liberty cannot be intelligently claimed ; much less can it be
successfully exercised. Facts must be considered, and ques-
tions of right cannot be thrust aside or overlooked. For
the former part of one's philosophical basis, the particular
sciences are now responsible ; for the latter part — the search
after guide and guaranty — a particular form of philosophical
discipline, sometimes called epistemology, is invoked. It is
this form of philosophy which this book undertakes. Its
author asks that the intrinsic character of its problems, and
all the perplexities it entails, should be constantly remem-
bered by the reader.
I should probably have found my self-imposed task some-
what less troublesome if I had more predecessors among
vin PREFACE
modern writers on philosophy in English. But, so far as I
am aware, there are none from whom any help is to be de-
rived. 1 In Germany a considerable number of books, with the
title UrJcenntnisslehre, or some similar title, have recently ap-
peared ; and German works on Logic and systematic Philos-
ophy have generally the merit of dealing in a more thorough
way with the epistemological problem, wherever they touch
its sensitive points, than is customary in England or this
country. Now and then a French writer, too, has afforded
a hint, or suggestion, of which I have availed myself. So
far as these helps have been consciously received, they have
been acknowledged in the few references of the text. But I
think it fair to ask that this book should be regarded as,
much more exclusively than often occurs, the outcome of its
author's own reflections over the difficult questions it essays
to answer. It asks and should receive the treatment due to
a pioneer work.
At the same time it is also true that no other questions,
practical or philosophical, are being more anxiously considered
or are more influential over life and conduct than those which
merge themselves in the epistemological problem. While
this problem is reflected upon, largely in an unguided and
illogical way, by multitudes of minds, the authorities, who
ought also to be guides in reflective thinking, have been of
late accustomed to reiterate the cry of " Back to Kant ! " As
a student for years of the critical philosophy, I have not been
unmindful of the demand to place myself in the line of its
development of the epistemological inquiry. I have had the
method and the conclusions of the great master in criticism
before me, from the beginning to the end of my work. Yet
1 An exception cannot be made in the case of Mr. Hobhouse's elaborate work,
" The Theory of Knowledge," since it is confessedly a treatise in Logic rather
than Epistemology, as I conceive of epistemological problems and method.
PREFACE ix
the positions to which my independent investigations have
forced me are chiefly critical of, and antagonistic to, the posi-
tions of the Critique of Pure Reason.
If I may claim any peculiar merit for the method followed
in discussing the problem of knowledge, it is perhaps chiefly
this : I have striven constantly to make epistemology vital, —
a thing of moment, because indissolubly and most intimately
connected with the ethical and religious life of the age. I
have no wish to conceal, therefore, the quite unusual interest
which I take in the success of this book ; I sincerely hope
that it may be a guide and help to not a few of those minds
to whom I have dedicated it.
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
Yale University, Mav, 1897.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
The Problem
PAGE
The Anthropological View — Standpoint of Psychology — Appeal to Rea-
son — Kant's Position in History — Relation to Metaphysics — Freedom
from Assumption— The Primary Datum — The Dilemma stated —
Sources of an Answer— The Implicates necessary — The Method to
be pursued — Practical Benefits expected 1
CHAPTER II
History of Opinion
Purpose of the Sketch — The View of Plato — The Doctrine of Aristotle —
Post-Aristotelian Schools — Origen's Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge —
Augustine's Merits in Epistemology — The Middle Ages 30
CHAPTER HI
History of Opinion {continued)
The Position of Descartes — Pioneer Work of Locke — Views of Berkeley
— Scepticism of Hume — Position of Leibnitz — Kant's Critical "Work ;
His Problem and Conclusions — Kant's Ethical Interests — Hegel and
Schopenhauer 57
CHAPTER IV
The Psychological View
Psychology and Epistemology — Origin of Knowledge — Psychic Factors of
Cognition — Corollaries following — Possibilities of the Case — Cognition
as Consciousness — as Awareness of an Object — Misstatements criticised
— Problem restated .„,....•. 94
Xll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
Thinking and Knowing
Eelations of Thought to Cognition — Views of Others — Thinking as Activ-
ity — and Positing of Relations — Nature of the Cognitive Judgment —
Implicates of all Judgment — Conceptual Knowledge and Reasoning . .
.30
CHAPTER VI
Knowledge as Feeling and Willing
The Psychology of Feeling — Emotional Factors in Cognition — Influence
on intellectual Development — Impulsive Emotions — Ethical and JEs-
thetical Feeling — Feelings regulative of Logical Processes — So-called
" integrating " Emotions — Place of Will in Cognition 160
CHAPTER VII
Knowledge of Things and of Self
Distinction of Subject and Object — Position of Formal Logic — Office of
Self-Consciousness — Implicates of Reality — Identity of Self as implied
— Distinction of Things and Self — Diremptive Work of Intellect — The
Function of Analogy — Epistemology of Perception — and of Science . .193
CHAPTER VIII
Degrees, Limits, and Kinds of Knowledge
Meaning of Terms — Standards of Measurement of Cognition — Relation of
Knowledge to Life — Nature of Opinion — Possibility of Knowledge in
Dreams — Distinctions Relative — Essentials of Cognition — Limits not
Presuppositions — Kinds of Limits — Limits of Perception — and of
Science — Kinds of Knowledge — Case of Mathematics — Immediate and
Mediate Knowledge . 228
CHAPTER IX
Identity and Difference
Experience and Cognition — Fundamental Principles of all Knowledge —
Views of Logic — Meaning of Identity — The Principle as applied to
Reality 268
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER X
Sufficient Reason"
PAGE
Nature of Reasoning —Development of Reasoning — Application to Reality
— Kant's inadequate View — Causation and External Nature Origin of
the Principle — Use of Cognitive Judgments — Difficulties of Syllogism
— Concerned in Self-Knowledge — Assumptions involved — Goal of En-
deavor — The Grounds of Natural Science — Einal Purpose implied . .283
CHAPTER XI
Experience and the Transcendent
Meaning of Experience — The misleading Figures of Speech — Experience
necessarily Transcendent — Conditions of Experience — and its Laws . 322
CHAPTER XII
The Implicates of Knowledge
The Question stated — Modes of Implication possible — Necessity of Com-
pleteness of View — Being of Self implied — and of Not-Self — Influence
of ethical and sesthetical Considerations — System of Ontology involved —
The principal Categories guaranteed 337
CHAPTER XIII
Scepticism, Agnosticism, and Criticism
Attitudes of Mind toward Truth — Unity of Experience — Sources and
Value of Scepticism — Limits of Scepticism — Doubts in Perception and
in Science — Necessity for Agnosticism — Limits of Agnosticism —
Knowledge positive 367
CHAPTER XIV
Alleged " Antinomies " J *
Effect of the Antinomy — Meaning of the Term — Denial of the Doctrine
Antinomies — Claims of Kant examined — Mr. Bradley's Views critic Ar nest
— Application of the Categories to Reality lOIlistic
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER XV
Truth and Error
PAGE
Nature of the Distinction — Error as non-Truth — Error and Wrong-doing —
Truth dependent on Judgment — and on the Meaning of Judgment —
Nature of Mathematical Truth — The Truth of Perception — Truth and
Error in Science — Foundations of Scientific Knowledge — Sources of
Error — True Cognition of Self — Criterion of Truth — Belief and
Reality 424
CHAPTER XVI
The Teleology of Knowledge
Cognition and Action — The Teleology of Perception — and of Conception
— Final Purpose among the Sciences — Knowledge as End in Itself —
' Knowledge as Part of Life — Final Purpose in Reality 472
CHAPTER XVII
Ethical and ^Esthetical " Momenta " of Knowledge
Character and Cognition — Influence of Feeling on Judgment — Attribu-
tion of Ideals to Nature — Benevolence of Law — Limits of the Ethical
" Momenta " — Characteristics of JEsthetical Consciousness — Beauty in
Reality — The Epistemological Postulate . . 500
CHAPTER XVIII
Knowledge and Reality
Cognition as Species of " Commerce " — Failures of the Identity-hypothe-
sis — Distinction in Reality necessary to Knowledge — Truth in all Kinds
of Cognition — Variety of the real World — Causation as Connection in
Reality 530
CHAPTER XIX
Idealism and Realism
Experie. * exclusive Views — Tenable Positions of Idealism — Negation of
Views? ernes — The Truth of Realism — Criticism of its Denials — The
Reality ;ure of Reality 559
CONTENTS xv
CHAPTER XX
Dualism and Monism
PAGE
Conceptions of Number applied to Reality — Unity and Duality of Body and
Mind — Unity of the Self — Defects of extreme Dualism — The Truth
and the Limitations of Monism 574
CHAPTER XXI
Knowlege and the Absolute
Final Position of Agnosticism — Explication of Terms — Danger from ab-
stract Conceptions — Unchanging Laws of Cognition — Presence of the
Absolute in Consciousness — The comprehensive View of Epistemology . 591
INDEX , 611
Of
o deter-
ild have
.^iientioned
ss fade n ce, if
memory ?
sciously earnest
" eudaemonistic
Co
h
of Co
Reality
Experie. * exclusive
Views -ernes — 'I
Reality ;ure of
PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
THE struggles of the mind of man to come to a satis-
factory understanding with itself are among the most
interesting exhibitions of his greatness. This is true from
whichever of several points of view we regard the phenomena.
For suppose that — disregarding for the moment the more
distinctively metaphysical considerations — we appro" oh the
subject in the light of the biological and anthrorJto ghoul
sciences. The surpassingly strange spectacle of anh" are
which is not content with the occupations prompts which
restless and almost unceasing practical curiosity, nor £ hypo-
simply to learn how it may possess and use the instrier the
of its own temporary well-being, is certainly most atgnition,
to a reflective mind. During certain periods ake, we intro-
existence the human animal exhibits a sols problem cannot
the truth of its own being; it becomes cropological point of
validity of its knowledge of the being :
things. But why should not man be sat research to deter-
mere living, a fairly uninterrupted succekince would have
states of feeling, and to let the painful expert-mentioned
trouble the flow of the stream of consciousness fade n ce, if
in the dreamlike illusoriness of an animal's memory ?
Like the other higher animals, man is consciously earnest
and absorbed in the pursuit of various forms of eudaemonistic
1
2 THE PROBLEM
good. But unlike all the other animals, so far as we are
able to get behind the barriers interposed between us and
their psychical states, man comes to regard this very concep-
tion of " truth " as something in itself good. Then he turns
upon his own reason with a complaint which is frequently
bitter, or with a self-accusation of impotence which may
become savage, in the demand that it should furnish him
with a more complete authentication for the good which
bears this peculiar form. Moreover, the truth, as he con-
ceives of it, is in his thought correlated with what he calls
" reality. " Indeed, what he means by that kind of truth,
which he needs to possess in order fully to satisfy the
demands of reason, is not definable without an implicate of
reality. But why, again, as merely the highest form of
animal life, should man alone among all the species not be
satisfied with appearances, if only they be of a pleasant char-
acter? Why should he insist on dissecting his puppets to
dete- ne whether they have the anatomy of actual living
or not ; why be so eager to disturb the interest in the
z appearance by exposing too cruelly the actual mech-
)f the strings ? We can discover no wholly adequate
— no very convincing partial answer — which modern
has afforded to inquiries such as these. And yet
' ?. of this kind are undoubted facts in the complex
%.,
'same phenomena to be approached from
h and historical points of view. Here it
of u mied that the unsatisfied need for valid-
Reality
in conscious attitudes, the various presen-
ce, the trains of associated ideas, and the
incepts, as well as the varied and ceaseless efforts
jd men make to satisfy this need, have always been most
important factors to aid in the evolution of the race. All
merely anthropological theories of evolution, however, appear
unable to account for the existence of this need ; and we
THE PROBLEM 3
believe that they not only are now, but will always remain,
quite outside of such a task. The right claimed by the
majority of the students of modern science, distinctly to aim
at keeping clear of all metaphysics and so-called " theories of
knowledge," may be conceded. And indeed, if there could
be knowledge that is not something much more than this
majority will admit it to be, science itself would consist of
a succession of presentations of sense, associated ideas, and
thoughts, about the truth of which no one would ever even
raise a question. From the merely logical and formal point
of view, the peculiar kind of syllogism which belongs to
science, as such, may fitly be called the hypothetical syl-
logism. Its form is as follows : If A is B, then is D ;
but whether or not A really is, and whether, admitting that
both it and B really are, they are actually related as belong-
ing to the same species, or as reciprocal influences in deter-
mining the same result, — with this, science need not concern
itself. Only now, such science could scarcely be called
knowledge ; much less, truth. For, as we undertake to show
in detail later on, the words " knowledge " and " truth " are
significant of mental processes and mental positions which
can neither be attained nor stated by the use of the hypo-
thetical syllogism merely. But the moment we consider the
evolution of science itself as a growth in actual cognition,
whether on the part of the individual or of the race, we intro-
duce the epistemological problem ; and this problem cannot
even be considered from the merely anthropological point of
view.
It would furnish a most curious bit of research to deter-
mine what the development of physical science would have
been, if only its students had really held the above-mentioned
conception of it. Would it now continue to advance, if
investigators and the people generally attached to its con-
clusions only the significance and validity which belong to
dreams ? However we might incline to answer this question,
4 THE PROBLEM
one thing is sure. " Science," thus conceived of, would
suffer a mighty and pathetic fall from its place of dignity
in the present estimate of mankind. Theories of evolution
as applied to the human race, stand in respect to this instinc-
tive metaphysical faith, less in the relation of satisfactory
explanatory causes than of partial effects. They are them-
selves mental phenomena, for the understanding of which we
must resort to a study of the constitution of reason itself.
The conclusion which has just been drawn from a brief
survey of the merely biological and anthropological aspects
of our problem may be summarized as follows. What man-
kind calls its knowledge, or science, of Self and of Things,
is assumed to be something more than mere self-referring,
psychical occurrences,— mere presentations of sense, asso-
ciated ideas, and subjectively connected thoughts. It is
assumed to be the truth, either already attained or capable of
being reached and verified. And by " truth " men generally
understand a form of mental representation which has its
correlate in reality, in the actual being and matter-of-fact
performances of things. Yet doubt is constantly arising as
to the meaning and as to the validity of this universal
assumption. The doubt is productive of restless endeavor, as
well as of sadness, increased doubt, and even of indifference
and disgust, when the assumption itself is made the subject
of inquiry. It is somehow thus that the problem of knowl-
edge has progressively defined and emphasized itself as an
influential factor in the development of the reflective thinking
of man. The problem is by no means new, as the history
of this thinking conclusively shows.
It is to the increasingly keen and searching analysis of
mental processes, to the science of psychology, and to the
critical examination of reason — first undertaken in a thor-
ough and methodical way by Kant — that we must resort
for the more definite, technically exact statement of our
problem. Now psychology, as its very nature and lcgiti-
THE PROBLEM 5
mate mission compel it, considers all cognitions, whether of
the ordinary or of the so-called scientific variety, as merely
mental (or subjective) phenomena. For it, all beings are
resolvable into states of consciousness. Its definition is,
" The science of states of consciousness, as such." And as
its means for analyzing the content of consciousness become
improved and are more faithfully and skilfully applied, and
as the laws of the combination and succession of the dif-
ferent states of consciousness are brought to light, the entire
domain of knowledge is made the subject of its investigations.
All cognitions, all sciences, undoubtedly are states of con-
sciousness ; from the psychological point of view, they are
simply this. The one psychological assumption, from which
no escape is possible, the assumption which is presupposi-
tionless and absolutely undeniable, is this : My cognition is
a process in my consciousness. But this assumption is as true
for you, and for him (for "the other," whoever he may be),
as it is for me. It is as true, when the object of cognition
is a thing, a stone or a star or a microbe, as when the ob-
ject of cognition is definitively recognized as my own state,
whether in the form of a toothache or a thought about God.
The ultimate psychic fact is simply : " I know."
Further, all the researches of modern psychology tend to
show that in those mysterious beginnings of psychic life,
which are forever hidden from direct observation and from
■recognitive memory, ideation and object existed as in a
common root of consciousness. One may speak of these
beginnings as the "original unity of our perceptive life,"
as the original "unity of apperception," or as one please.
Nothing more impresses students of Kant than his elaborate
architectonic in exhibition of the complicated nature of that
mental edifice, ascribed in part to imagination and in part
to intellect, which the unity of apperception constructs. But
those who dissent from the Kantian method and its conclu-
sions, and will hear nothing of "psychic synthesis," even
6 THE PROBLEM
as a conscious and self-active energy, are compelled either
to resort to the hypothesis of sensations that somehow get
together or put themselves together ; or else they have alto-
gether to abandon the problem of psychic unity of any kind.
What all are aware of, however, whether psychologists or
not, and independently of learned or thoughtless talk about
"synthesis" and "apperception," is a most startling experi-
ence of an opposite kind. It has already been said that the
one indisputable fact upon which epistemological doctrine
must build is the "I know" of every man's consciousness.
This fact, when repeated and generalized, becomes the foun-
dation of the most presuppositionless of all psychological
truths, — " all cognition is a process in consciousness. " But
on the very first experience of this fact, and in connection
with all experiences of this truth, knowledge appears no
longer as a one-sided affair. It appears rather as an affair
of Subject and Object ; and, in the greater number of its
most impressive instances, it becomes an affair implying a
fundamental and unalterable distinction between Self and
Things.
The general fact of cognition requires restatement, then,
in the following way. It is still, undoubtedly, a state of
consciousness ; or rather, it is a conscious process. It is also
a state of my consciousness, a conscious process which —
including, as it must, its object-thing — I attribute to myself
as subject, and call my own. But this object, which is my
object-consciousness, my state objectively described, is cog-
nized as not-me, as " out of " me. Objectivity, in the sense
of imws-subjectivity, the really existent out of my conscious
state, is, then, as will be shown in detail elsewhere, the
implicate of every truly cognitive act of mine. The
inquiries, how this can be, and what is implied as to a
reality that is trans-subjective, constitute the problem of the
philosophy of knowledge. The descriptive science of psy-
chology, in its study of the plain man's consciousness, shows
THE PROBLEM 7
beyond all doubt that knowledge, even as admitted fact and
state of consciousness, cannot be faithfully described, on
the basis of a full and satisfactory analysis, without recog-
nition of this implicate of what is not a present fact and
state of consciousness. Thus much, at the very least, must
be insisted upon. For the time being let those think, who
so think can, that knowledge is explicable without recog-
nition of the reality both of the object and of the subject,
as a self-active and self-conscious synthesis, a unifying
life-force.
It appears, then, that the subjective and the formal lies,
in the process of cognition, actually inseparable as an expe-
rience from the trans-subjective and the real. The two ex-
ist, as it were, side by side and in a living unity; and yet
the two are not incapable of being distinguished both by
immediate introspection and by reflective thinking. For
cognition is a modification of consciousness that is depen-
dent, in part, for its existence and for its particular form,
upon reality outside of consciousness (upon not-my-con-
sciousness). On the one hand, it cannot be, or even be
conceived of, other than as a modification of consciousness.
It must be explained as dependent, both for its existence and
for its form, upon the fact and the laws of the cognizing
subject. On the other hand, its existence implies, and its
form requires for explanation, some other being than that
which is present in the modified consciousness. As to
the further analysis and explanation, the import, and the
validating of the import, of all this, the philosophical theory
of knowledge inquires.
The problem of knowledge is not, however, grasped in its
entirety and handled in a manner to promise a solution
which is either theoretically satisfying or practically help-
ful, until it is seen that both problem and solution lie
embedded, so to speak, in the very heart of reason itself.
It was the distinctive merit of Kant, as has already been
8 THE PROBLEM
implied, to make this truth clear as it had never been made
clear before. Since his day, the theory of knowledge
(Epistemology or Noetics, sometimes so called) has been
one of the most active and fruitful branches of philosophical
discipline. Indeed, some have gone so far as to make the
formation of a theory of knowledge coincident with the
entire function of philosophy. That which calls itself
knowledge of the universe "we call self-knowledge," says
Kuno Fischer. 1 We cannot agree to this restriction in the
definition of the sphere of philosophy. And how widely the
method we shall follow, and the results at which we shall
arrive, differ from the method and conclusions of the
immortal thinker of Konigsberg, should appear at the end
rather than at the beginning of our task. But when Kant
asserted, "Human reason has this peculiar fate, that, with
reference to one species of its cognition, it is always burdened
with questions which it cannot cast aside; for they are given
to it by the very nature of reason itself, but they cannot be
answered because they transcend the powers of reason," 2 he
indicated beyond question for all time the sources of the
epistemological problem.
The history of reflective thinking, and indeed of the
literature which either embodies, or is tinged by, the results
of reflective thinking, has during the last century shown
that Kant did not fully realize the success which he claimed
for his critical philosophy. By following "the secure pro-
cess of science," in his "elaboration of the cognitions which
belong to the concern of reason," he expected, on the one
hand, forever "to deprive speculative reason of its preten-
sions to transcendent insights," and, on the other hand, "to
furnish the needed preliminary preparation in furtherance of
1 " Philosophic ist die Wissenschaft und Kritik der Erkenntniss," says Riehl, —
Der Philosophische Kriticismus, iii. p. 15.
2 Opening sentence of the Preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen
Vernunft.
THE PROBLEM y
a fundamental metaphysics in scientific form. " 1 But, strange
to say, Kant's destructive effort was followed in history by
the erection of systems of metaphysics which made, above
all others since man began to think, the most enormous
"pretensions to transcendent insights;" while his positive
intent has left behind few traces of accepted metaphysical
science. It is the sceptical and agnostic conclusions as to
the cognitions of reason which so-called neo-Kantians
accept. The determination and defence of the subjective
origin and the objective reference of the "categories," and
the rationalized faith of Kant in the postulates of the
practical reason are accepted, when accepted at all, by quite
other schools of thinkers than those commonly called by his
name.
It is not the chief interest at present, however, to define
epistemological truth with reference to the author of the
modern critical doctrine of knowledge. It is rather the
purpose to point out that the origin, nature, and importance
of that problem which knowledge, with its essential objec-
tive implicates, offers to the knowing subject, have in some
sort been settled once for all by the critical work of Kant.
The human mind, by virtue of its necessary and constitu-
tional way of functioning in all its cognitive acts, contains
at once the proposal and the answer, if answer there be, to
the problem. Neither the biological and anthropological,
nor even the distinctively psychological study of the nature
and growth of man's mind will avail fully to explicate or to
answer the epistemological inquiry. The rather is this,
fundamentally considered, a philosophical problem. And
it is inextricably intermingled with the prob]em of the
Nature of Reality, as this conception of reality is ap-
plied both to the mind of man and to the object of his
knowledge.
It will appear as an opinion for which we shall constantly
1 Preface to the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
10 THE PROBLEM
contend that the problem of knowledge cannot be properly
stated, much less satisfactorily discussed, without unceas-
ing reference to the conclusions of a scientific psychology.
The reference must even be a deference. The point of start-
ing must be psychological. Epistemological discussion
must begin by understanding analytically the actual, con-
crete content of consciousness. But the consciousness which
enfolds the problem, and which must be analyzed, and so
far as possible understood in order to the best mastery of the
problem, is a developed human consciousness. It is the
consciousness of a being who has already become appercep-
tive and self-conscious. It is not, therefore, an animal
consciousness; nor is it an inchoate and beginning human
consciousness. The study of the psychological origin and
growth of knowledge is, indeed, a valuable contribution
toward apprehending and solving the philosophical problem
which gives rise to a theory of knowledge. But inasmuch
as this problem is given in processes of cognition whose
essential characteristic is that the knowing subject already
distinguishes the forms of his cognition from the forms of
existence implicate in cognition, and either naively identi-
fies the two or raises the sceptical question about their iden-
tification, psychological study is not in itself a sufficient
indication or instrument for its solution. The more dis-
tinctively epistemological problem now emerges; the criti-
cal inquiry is raised as to whether, and how far, the forms
of cognition coincide with the forms of existence.
The fundamental problem of the philosophy of knowledge
is, then, an inquiry into the relations between certain states
of consciousness and what we conceive of as "the really
existent. " 1 But at this point a reflective study of human
knowledge reveals the fact that its problem is already inex-
tricably interwoven with the ontological problem, — the meta-
physical inquiry, in the more restricted meaning of the
1 Compare Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnisstheorie, p. v.
THE PROBLEM 11
much-abused word "metaphysics." 1 For suppose that the
two spheres be distinguished as follows: Epistemology, or
the philosophy of knowledge, deals with the concept of the
True; and Metaphysics, or the philosophy of being, deals
with the concept of the Real. We find ourselves, however,
quite unable to form any concept, or even to hold in con-
sciousness the most shadowy mental picture, of what men
affirm, with genuine conviction, to be true, without impli-
cating the for-us-real in this concept, this mental image.
On the other hand, no meaning can be given to the word
"real " without stating a judgment as to what is considered
true. Yet the two words are by no means precisely identi-
cal. For the more correct usage speaks of presentations of
sense, of images of recognitive memory, and of certified
thoughts about things, as true; and they are thus distin-
guished from images of fancy or from unverifiable thoughts.
But men speak of minds and things as real — meaning thus
to imply a sort of existence which belongs neither to the
true nor to the false mental representations.
We have already (in the Preface) stated that we intend to
discuss separately the epistemological and the ontological
problems. About the order and the method of these two dis-
cussions something will be said later on. The connection of
the two — intimate and inextricable as it is — is emphasized
at this point in order to show that the impulse to the quest,
which it is proposed in subsequent chapters to follow, is
indeed set fast in the very heart of human reason. To
explicate the problem of knowledge, it is necessary to search
to its depths the mind of man. To solve it completely
would be to comprehend and expose all the profoundest
mysteries of his mind. And not only this : it would be, as
Kant held, to prepare the way for a systematic and defen-
sible exposition of the inmost nature of Reality, so far
1 Note the phrase of Riehl, — die metaphysischen Erkenntnissprobleme. See
Der Philosophische Kriticismus, Vorwort to Part ii.
12 THE PROBLEM
as this knowledge comes within the possible grasp of our
reason itself. But, doubtless, this will remain for a long
time to come one of the most alluring and important, yet
difficult tasks of philosophical discipline. And one thinker
can scarcely hope to do more than bear a small portion of
the burden of so great a task. There will probably not
arise another Copernicus in this stellar science of mind.
Something more should at this point receive at least a
passing notice. It would not be surprising if a critical
inquiry into the nature, extent, and validity of knowledge
should bring us, at various points along its course, in sight
of, if not into closest contact with, certain important con-
cepts of ethics and of the philosophy of religion. It will be
the declared purpose and fixed rule of the prese'nt investiga-
tion to avoid contested ethical and religious questions as
much as is consistent with a thorough treatment of the
epistemological problem. And where foresight makes con-
tact inevitable, we shall still try to accomplish our task
without undue influence from ethical and religious preju-
dices. But it should be remembered that, in the discussion
of all the problems of philosophy, and perhaps in the discus-
sion of the epistemological problem in particular (since
over it the forces of dogmatism and agnosticism, of extreme
idealism and extreme realism, of crude evolutionism and
old-fashioned theology, come to a sort of life-and-death
struggle), prejudices are not likely to be all on one side.
No author can promise more than we are ready to promise,
— namely, to do the best that in him lies. And if it should
be discovered that knowledge cannot be divorced from faith
or separated from the life of action (from conduct, which is
the sphere of ethics), why ! whose fault will it be that this
is so ? Will not the discovery serve to make the unity of
man's total life, and its oneness, in some sort, with the
Reality of the Universe, yet more undoubted and more
comprehensive ?
THE PROBLEM 13
The nature and extent of the epistemological problem,
the discussion of which is a philosophy of knowledge, can be
better comprehended only by emphasizing certain considera-
tions somewhat more in detail. And first of all the follow-
ing consideration: this problem is the most primary and
fundamental, in the sense that it is of all philosophical
problems the most free from the influence of necessary pre-
liminary assumptions. To argue it is as near as the human
mind can come to presuppositionless reflective thinking.
This is, in part, but in part only, what Fichte meant by
calling his critical examination of the primary and perma-
nent content of consciousness a Wissenschaftslehre. For the
same reason this kind of philosophical study is sometimes
said to aim at a "science of science." All the particular
sciences necessarily and fitly cherish their own particular
assumptions. They cannot be successfully pursued, or even
seriously approached, without taking for granted many
important principles and not a few fundamental entities.
Some of these principles and entities are assumptions of the
most ordinary human knowledge ; others are presuppositions
which have been won for the modern student by the re-
searches of the past along different scientific lines. For
example, chemistry adopts the work-a-day assumption of an
extra-mentally existent matter, which is capable of actual
subdivision into parts that are too minute to affect the
senses, and that can therefore never have their existence
verified by immediate testimony from sensuous observation.
It also assumes the entity called an " atom, " with its mar-
vellous non-sensuous characteristics and its faithful obe-
dience to the law of equivalents. In common with all the
physical sciences it assumes the capacity of the human mind
to arrive at the truth of things, to bring its forms of mental
representation into agreement with the forms of the actually
existent. All the particular sciences presuppose, as truths
which enable them to be "particular," the extra-mental
14 THE PROBLEM
validity of the so-called categories of time, space, relation,
causation, etc.
Those branches of philosophical discipline which are
called metaphysics of ethics, philosophy of art, of nature,
and of religion, as well as of rights and of history, have a
complicated net-work of presuppositions, which is the very
substance of what holds them within their proper bounds.
The actuality of the existence of multitudes of men, in the
present and through the past, with a real history of develop-
ment, and standing in a great variety of actual relations to
nature and to one another, is taken for granted in the very
attempt to establish a philosophy of conduct; while any-
thing approaching a philosophy of nature receives from the
hands of the natural sciences a vast body of alleged, and not
a few (we venture to suspect) of only conjectured, principles
and entities, which become the necessary presuppositions of
its constructive effort.
But with the philosophy of knowledge the case is not the
same. It at once and distinctly puts all the above-mentioned
assumptions to one side. They may be true, but they can-
not be adopted from the beginning by a critical theory of
knowledge. The very aim of this theory is to get behind and
underneath all these and other similar assumptions. And if
there are assumptions back of which the mind cannot go,
— because it is compelled to make them by the very consti-
tution of its own most sceptical and critical life, as it were,
— then epistemological inquiry will get down to these
assumptions also and view them face to face, in calmness
and with purified and sharpened vision. For it is not the
nature and validity, or the value, of this or that class of
cognitions with which the philosophical theory of knowledge
aims to deal, — it is the cognitive faculty itself; or, to state
the problem in more abstract and objective fashion, it is
human cognition itself which is the subject of critical
examination in every attempt at an epistemology. This
THE PROBLEM 15
inquiry is, therefore, the most nearly presuppositionless of
all possible inquiries. It assumes nothing but the one
general fact in which all individual cognitions, whether so-
called scientific or not, "live and move and have their
being," — the one fact, I know.
It soon appears, however, as analysis and reflective study
of the fact of knowledge moves forward and downward, that
this fact is itself no simple affair. By this we mean some-
thing more than that " our experience is an extremely com-
plicated web of sensations and intellectual elaboration of
sensations, and of the results of their elaboration." Locke
would have had little doubt to throw upon a statement like
this ; and even less doubt would have proceeded out of the
mouth of the great sceptic Hume. The successors of Locke
in France, the most extreme of sensationalists in the psychol-
ogy of to-day, might admit as much. Modern psychological
analysis, especially of the experimental type, in its effort to
disentangle the " web " of experience, has thus far succeeded
in increasing rather than diminishing its apparent com-
plexity. Even the most presuppositionless of all inquiries,
then, since it must assume the fact of knowledge, has also
to assume a history of the complication of sensations, of the
intellectual elaboration of sensations, and of the gathering
of the results of their elaboration. That is to say, in the '
very reception of the datum, "I know," the assumption of
an organization of experience has already, of necessity, been
made. Nor is it possible to get back of this process of
organization, with its complex results, in order, freed from
its influences, to examine the fact of knowledge.
So obvious is the truth to which attention has just been
called that its statement is often made in half-jocose form.
When I most carefully and critically examine this datum,
"I know," and when I push my presuppositionless and
sceptical inquiry to its extremest limits, what is all this
but a going-round in an endless circle? I know; and I
16 THE PROBLEM
propose, without favorable or unfavorable prejudice, to dis-
tinguish the ultimate nature, to get the full import, and to
estimate the real value of this fact. But the conduct of the
examination is itself, at best, only a series of similar facts :
"I know," and again, "I know," or it may be, "I do not
know." But this last, "I do not know," is only another
way of saying Iknow, — at least, something, namely, that I
do not know. At its best, too, the result of critical exami-
nation is itself a cognition, which lies still further from the
certitude of envisagement or of the concrete judgments of
daily experience. At its worst, the same examination ends
in a series of opinions, which are far enough from laying
claim to be any kind of knowledge.
Put into more serious philosophical form, the dilemma
may be stated in something like the following way. A fun-
damental critique of the faculty of cognition is now proposed ;
but if this critique is really to be fundamental, it must be free
from all the assumptions which belong to any of the special
systems of cognitions, the sciences so-called. Theory of
knowledge aims to be presuppositionless, to have no assump-
tions beyond the one primary datum of my knowledge.
In studying the data of actual cognitions, however, so as thus
to frame a critique of the faculty of cognition which shall
be based upon the facts, I am always using this same faculty.
Hegel thus accused Kant of allowing to creep in " the mis-
conception of already knowing before you know, — the error
of refusing to enter the water until you have learned to swim. "
And Lotze compares those who spend their strength upon a
theory of knowledge to men constantly whetting the knife,
and feeling its edge to see if it will cut; or to an orchestra
which is forever tuning its instruments and still wondering
if they can play in tune.
To objectors in general, we shall either propose our
answer in due time, or else conclude that a much needed
work will be better done if they are silently passed by.
THE PROBLEM 17
Two things are enough to say at present. Of these the first
is this: if the critical theory of knowledge must be satisfied
with a completely sceptical or agnostic outcome, then all
human science is but consistent dreaming, at its best. For
the very guarantee of truth which consistency gives is itself
dependent upon trust in the constitution of reason. But,
second, the absurdity of an utterly presuppositionless cri-
tique of reason must be acknowledged at the very beginning
of every epistemological inquiry. All reflective thinking
upon this class of problems must be content to move within
the inevitable circle. The human mind cannot contemplate
itself from an outside point of view, as it were. It must
accept at its own hands the terms upon which it will under-
take and complete its task of self-understanding.
Here, then, we get the first strong intimation of charac-
teristic difficulties besetting the path which must necessarily
be followed in the attempt to investigate with critical thor-
oughness the philosophical problem of knowledge. Nothing,
we assure ourselves with encouraging confidence, must be
taken for granted, beyond the ultimate and indisputable datum
of all science, — the fact, above or behind or beneath which
no one can go. This is the datum and the fact of knowledge
itself. But surely this datum must be received as being all
that it in fact is; this fact must be held for all that it, as
conscious datum, is worth. This is to say that a philo-
sophical theory of knowledge must deal with the whole
circumference, as it were, and with the most intimate and
inclusive significance, of the psychological process of cogni-
tion. Criticism must accejrt, as its prohlem^ cognition includ-
ing all its necessary implicates. What is it to know, in
respect of all that knowledge is, of all that knowledge guar-
antees, and of all that it necessarily implicates ? It is in
the primary fact of cognition, when critically regarded, that
we find the sources of the possible forms of conclusion con-
cerning the true philosophical theory of knowledge. The
2
18 THE PROBLEM
permanent sources of philosophical scepticism and agnosti-
cism exist in the incontestable fact that all knowledge is
subjective; that, proximately considered, it is a conscious
process in time, a mental state which arises and then passes
away. Moreover, one of the first discoveries which criti-
cism makes is the truth, also incontestable, that the laws
of the knowing faculty, and so the limits of knowledge, are
firmly set in the constitution and characteristic development
of the cognitive subject. Human cognition, therefore, con-
tains in its own nature a standing warning, and even a vin-
dication of the necessity for doubt of the most fundamental
sort. It issues a perpetual call to those self-searchings
which lead into a theoretical reconstruction of our concept
of knowledge.
Equally certain is it, however, that the sources from
which must come the healing of the wounds which reason
receives at her own hands are with reason herself. The
primary datum of cognition contains within itself the cor-
rective of agnosticism, the chastening of raw and unbridled
scepticism ; or else no such corrective and no such chasten-
ing are anywhere to be found. The sources of a philosophy
of knowledge and of a trustworthy metaphysics also exist,
inexhaustible, in the incontestable fact that knowledge is
trans-subjective, and, in its very nature, implicates existence
beyond the process of knowledge; that cognition itself guar-
antees the extra-mental being of that which, by the very
nature of this process the cognitive subject is compelled
to recognize as not identical with its own present state.
Thus the most primary problem of epistemology becomes a
concern of reason with the ultimate, the unanalyzable and
irreducible momenta and principles of objective cognition. 1
The further advance of this concernment may be described
as reason becoming more self-conscious in the way of bring-
ing to its own recognition what is implicate in conscious-
ness as objective.
1 Compare Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken, p. 35.
THE PROBLEM 19
Mere recognition of the implicates of cognition is not in
itself, however, enough to satisfy all the demands made
by the self-searching and critical activity of man's mind.
These implicates must themselves be made the matter of a
further concern of reason. Suppose, for example, that I
have come to a consciousness of what is involved in saying,
" I know " — any simplest truth of fact or of a physical law ;
such as that the chair is over yonder, or that the force of
gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance and
directly as the mass of the two bodies taking part in that
transaction which reveals the existence of this force. Here,
as in every act of knowledge, are two classes of implicates.
One of these is the implied control of consciousness by
what are called the "laws of the mind." It is an invin-
cible persuasion, belief — use what word you will, if you
do not like the term "rational assumption" — of all men
that truth is somehow to be attained by the mind. This
is the indestructible self-confidence of human reason. Dis-
appoint her as often as you may, deceive her as badly as
you can, accuse her of unlimited audacity in enterprises
that concern what appears to transcend her powers, and
yet you can never wholly destroy her self-confidence. So
often as she falls, she rises again and makes once more the
persistent effort to stand and to walk alone. Or in her more
pious moods, if much chastened by rebukes for her many
errors, she still "trusts in God and is not confounded."
This trust of reason in herself, which is always at least a
silent and concealed postulate of all her distrust, itself needs
critical investigation; in order, to drop the figure of speech,
that the mental principles of those processes of knowledge
which all involve the persuasion, or the conviction of knowl-
edge, may themselves be criticised in detail. Certainly we
shall not by the critical method escape the necessity of
using and of trusting these principles; nor shall we succeed
in establishing their claims in a more fundamental way by
20 THE PROBLEM
smart and consecutive dialectic and trains of argument.
Something better than merely this, however, may be hoped
for, which it is by all means necessary to attempt, and
which is not without a certain large positive value. We
may hope to bring to light the truer meaning of these forms
of the constitution of mind, these ways of the functioning
of all human reason. Moreover, since there is no little
apparent conflict among these principles, as well as vague-
ness and uncertainty respecting the best ways of stating each
of them, we may attempt to effect something in the interests
of harmony and clearness. The doctrine of irreconcilable
conflict, of fundamental and irremovable " antinomies " of
intellect so-called, is favorite with many acute students of
the mental life. This doctrine, in itself so distasteful or
even abhorrent and frightful to the higher interests of ethics
and religion as some conceive it to be, certainly requires
perpetual re-examination. To speak technically, the critical
and " reconciling " discussion of the " categories " is an
important problem for the student of epistemology. And
when he is incontinently and even coarsely accused of foster-
ing scepticism and agnosticism, of emasculating a sturdy
and effective manhood by calling in question its most fun-
damental faiths, he may answer : " Nay, not so ; for no faith
can lay claim to be fundamental, or to contribute to a sturdy
and effective manhood, which cannot submit itself to the
freest criticism."
To-day and throughout all history, the struggle of a posi-
tive and critical philosophy with scepticism and agnosticism
over a theory of knowledge is a life-and-death struggle.
War to the knife is already declared between the two. He
is the emasculator of reason, the effeminate student of the
mind's life, who would deprive us of the power to answer
ever anew the call : " Let the thinker arouse himself and
respond to the demand to give reasons for the faith that is
in him, by an effort at improved self-knowledge." But
THE PROBLEM 21
surely self-knowledge cannot be improved, or made true
knowledge of Self, unless we look below the superficial area
of particular cognitions and undertake to validate the prin-
ciples of all cognition. Surely it is no less true now than it
was in mediaeval times, when the principle of authority was
wellnigh universal in its sway, that the friends of human
reason are not those who refuse to have its claims examined.
What higher principle of truth can there be than this: That
must be true which is so connected with the knowing sub-
ject that he must either relinquish all claim to any kind of
knowledge or else assume the same to be true ? What is
actually thus connected with the knowing subject can only
appear as the result of a critical investigation into the fun-
damental laws of the mental life in its acts of cognition.
For the theory of hnoivledge must be a theory of certainty.
But the process of thinking may conform, at least in cer-
tain respects, to logical laws without putting the thinker in
possession of material truth. Whether an agreement of the
total activity of knowledge with all the formal laws of intel-
lect would unfailingly guarantee the truth is a question which
need not be raised at present. Certainly, neither what is
called ordinary knowledge, nor what is called science, con-
sists simply in weaving into a consistent totality a number
of universal and necessary laws. A critical analysis will
establish the conclusion that thinking alone — the pure dia-
lectical process, mere thinking, if that were possible — can-
not produce a certified experience of Reality or a sure convic-
tion as to the essential and unchanging nature of Reality.
This truth emphasizes the necessity of extending still further
the problem of the epistemological branch of philosophy.
Besides the formal laws of intellect, another class of impli-
cates is found in every act of cognition, and furnishes a
demand for more detailed examination. These are impli-
cates of beings, of entities, of the really existent. The
exercise of "metaphysical instinct," if we may for the
22 THE PROBLEM
moment employ such a term, is an indispensable form of
functioning in every act of cognition. To know is to make
an ontological leap, a spring from the charmed circle of
pure subjectivity into the mystery of the real. This in-
stinctive metaphysics maintains its inexorable rule over
the human mind, in spite of all sceptical inquiry ; and just
as inexorably after we have adopted the agnostic view
regarding the validity of human knowledge, or the most
extremely idealistic theory of the nature of experience, as
before. But in its uncritical and instinctive form it is
neither theoretically nor practically satisfying. There must
be substituted for this uncritical metaphysics some postu-
late, thoughtfully wrought out, which will show how the
contents of developed and carefully guarded human con-
sciousness may be true and valid representations of actual
transactions in the world of reality.
The detailed critical discussion of those conceptions which
fall under the general concept of Reality constitutes the
peculiar field of metaphysics proper. This field, in not a
few places, overlays the field of epistemology. The path
by which both fields are reached follows the same method,
— beginning in psychological science and continuing by
reflective thinking upon the problems which this science,
as applied to the presuppositions of all the other sciences,
brings to our view. Some adjustment of our examination
into the problem of knowledge, so as to make it fit in with
conclusions that belong to the problem of being, seems not
only desirable but even indispensable. Otherwise the criti-
cism of man's cognitive faculty must inevitably fall into one
of two extremes. To assume, uncritically, that the forms of
our conscious life — our representations of sense, our trains
of associated ideas, and even our connected thoughts —
necessarily correspond with the actual transactions of the
real world, whether we make the assumption according to
the plain man's " common-sense " or in the more elaborate
THE PROBLEM 23
forms of so-called "scientific realism," is to leave the prob-
lem of knowledge unattempted at one of its most important
and even vital points.
On the other hand, agreement in some sort and to some
extent between the forms of human consciousness and the
real beings and actual transactions of the world outlying the
individual's immediate experience, is an assumption from
which we can never set free the critique of reason itself.
Uncritical faith and dogmatic agnosticism are both unphilo-
sophical. The actual condition of thought and things in
every process of knowing, and the indications which the
critical study of the process offers respecting the real rela-
tions of thought and things, become then a problem for
further examination. The apparent contradictions which
the epistemological problem contains cannot contentedly be
left in the uncriticised and unsettled position in which
naive consciousness finds them. To leave them thus would
be to confess that knowledge is no knowledge, and that our
most essential activities are self -stultifying.
But further pursuit of such considerations as the foregoing
must be left to the attempted solution of the problems which
a philosophy of knowledge propounds. Enough has been
said to show how it is that epistemology undertakes, as its
important and difficult task, to discover, to expound criti-
cally, and to defend both circumstantially and by harmoniz-
ing them with each other, the implicates of every act of
knowledge. This is also its chief theoretical interest.
The method which must be pursued in any partially suc-
cessful attempt to form a philosophical theory of knowledge
has already been indicated. A few words are needed, how-
ever, to make this indication clearer. In the study of the
epistemological problem, as in the study of all philosophical
problems, psychology stands in the relation of a propaedeutic.
It is this science alone which, when appealed to in faithful
and unprejudiced fashion, can put us into possession of
24 THE PROBLEM
those concrete and indisputable facts of experience wherein
the philosophical problem has its origin. The inquirer who
is defective or slovenly in his analysis of psychological fact,
of the concrete and feeling-full life of the human mind, will
surely fail even to grasp the significance of the problem of
knowledge. He certainly can never have in hand the data
for helping to make more satisfactory the attempt at its
answer. And the epistemology which despises or neglects
the assistance of psychological science will either mistake
the real nature of its mission, or else its entire view and
attempted solution will be ghostly, — an unsubstantial image
suspended in thin mid-air. The successful critic of human
cognition must have penetrated and resided long within the
theatre where the factors of the conscious and self-conscious
life are enacting their varied drama upon the mind's stage.
Nor will it suffice for this that he shall have merely
studied the logic of the actor. For, as we shall see in de-
tail subsequently, human knowledge is not merely a logical
affair.
His despite of psychology, as well as the forlorn condition
of the science in his day, and his over-credulous acceptance
of the logical schemata of Aristotle in the attempt to esti-
mate the constitution, the presuppositions, and the limits
of human cognition, had an evil influence upon even the
"astounding Kant." It was chiefly the rigid maintenance
of the purely conceptual points of view, the treatment of
the categories, or forms of the functioning of judgment, as
merely formal, which led irresistibly to the sceptical and
agnostic outcome of the "Critique of Pure Reason." But
Kant's abandonment of the merely formal points of view,
in the other two Critiques, came too late to secure our re-
spect and adherence for the class of objects with which these
works attempt to deal. A more comprehensive and truer
psychology would have shown the author that it is not a
question of pure knowledge here and of pure faith over yon-
THE PROBLEM 25
der ; of objective cognition free from doubtful postulates in
the case of sensuous objects, and of practical trust without
intuitive data in the case of so-called transcendent objects.
It would possibly have guarded this great philosopher —
above ail others acute as a reflective analyzer of the formal
presuppositions of reason — from claiming, in the interests
of a harmonious apriorism, to have "knowledge " in so many
places where no knowledge is; as well as from denying
knowledge in certain other places where its claim to ex-
istence may well enough be maintained. For surely the
Kantian "ideas of pure reason" have as good title to
objective validity as have many of the "concepts of pure
understanding. " The real unity of the soul is, at worst, as
much known as is the objective verity of the principle of
causation in physics, or — to take another instance — of the
principle of reciprocity. Certain judgments to which Kant
gives a priori and objective authority, as "making a pure
science of physics " possible, are no more entitled to this
distinction than are many of the theological judgments
which he relegates to the limbo of dead metaphysical
speculations.
We have dwelt upon the example of Kant in order to
show that metaphysical acumen and power in reflective
analysis, however surpassing, will not serve one to the best
advantage in the study of the problem of knowledge, unless
these qualities be employed upon a sound and broad basis
of psychological fact. But, on the other hand, the mere
student of psychology (especially of the purely experimental
type) cannot grasp, much less satisfactorily solve, the diffi-
culties inherent in a philosophical theory of knowledge.
For the method of stating and of handling the epistemo-
logical problem must be something more than descriptive
and experimental. The peculiar discursive analysis which
philosophy habitually employs must unfold the presupposi-
tions that lie implicate in the facts of cognition. It must
26 THE PKOBLEM
also be persistently and systematically used in order to
attain a consistent and harmonious theory.
Upon one point affecting the method of epistemology a
further word needs to be said. We have seen that the prob-
lem of knowledge is in its very nature such as to involve
metaphysical discussion in the narrower meaning of the word
"metaphysics:" that is to say, it is impossible to discuss
this problem without introducing the influence of one's posi-
tions respecting the ultimate questions in ontology. Accord-
ingly a dispute has for some time been rife over the inquiry,
" Which of the two logically precedes the other in a philo-
sophical system ? " The answer of Kant to this inquiry was
not equivocal. He held that to attempt a system of meta-
physics, or even to discuss any of the great metaphysical
problems, previous to a critique of reason itself, was mis-
chievous and absurd. On the other hand, not a few would
agree with Paulsen 1 in recommending, or insisting upon,
the opposite order. We have expressed our opinion as to
the merits of the question of method elsewhere. 2 The his-
torical order coincides with that which is advocated by those
who oppose Kant upon this point. The logical order, on
the contrary, is the one advocated so earnestly by Kant him-
self. The two classes of problems, and the two branches
of philosophical discipline which cultivate them, cannot be
kept apart. When historically considered they will be, and
when logically considered they cannot help being, cultivated
in their relations of mutual dependence. But it does not
follow, because the historical order favors the view of
Paulsen, that the more logical order may not be entitled
at some time in the development of reflective thinking
to displace the historical. We can see no serious objec-
tion to allowing any author to follow his own inclinations
or convenience in arranging this point in the method of
1 Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 340 f.
2 See the author's Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 178 f.
THE PROBLEM 27
treatment given to the connected epistemological and onto-
logical problems.
As concerns the purpose and the method of this treatise,
therefore, all that it is now necessary to say may be sum-
marized as follows. We propose a philosophical criticism of
knowledge, with a view to point oat its origin and nature as
implicating reality; to validate it by reducing to their sim-
plest terms and arranging in a harmonious whole its necessary
forms, its assumptions, and its postulates; and to mark out
its limits by further criticism and especially by distinguishing
the sources and kinds of error and of half-truth. This is the
task belonging to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge.
We shall go for our facts to psychology, to the descriptive
and explanatory science of those mental processes which are
called "knowledge," and of that mental development which
is called "growth of knowledge." We shall subject these
facts to a thorough reflective analysis; and we shall use
what speculative skill we can command to set our results
into relation with sound conclusions on the other great
problems of philosophy.
To any who question the importance or doubt the benefit
of such a study as that here proposed, a few words will
suffice. There can be no doubt about the existence in culti-
vated and thoughtful circles of a vast amount of scepticism
which has led many minds either to a self-confident dogmatic
agnosticism or to a pathetic despair of knowledge. These
mental attitudes are, of course, especially obvious toward
the transcendent objects which have always commanded the
assent of the great majority of thinkers upon ethics and
religion. But the agnostic or despairing attitude toward the
problem of knowledge itself lies, both logically and in fact,
at the base of all other agnosticism and of manifold forms
of despair. The history of mental development shows that,
in order to set free the forces of thinking for positive and
fruitful activity, there is nothing against which we need
28 THE PROBLEM
to guard ourselves more carefully than the haste with which
the most important and fundamental conceptions of the
intellect are permitted to lose their absolute significance
for the cognition of the being and the connections of the
real world. Witness the cheap and easy-going fashion with
which the sceptical and agnostic outcome of the Kantian
critical system gets itself accepted on every side. And this
oftenest comes about without serious effort to understand
Kant aright; and with even less sympathy with the effort
which led him to undertake the critique of reason, — the
effort, namely, to save the ethical and religious postulates
from the attacks of the speculative reason.
For souls who take themselves seriously and who enter
in earnest upon the exploration of reason, if they become
tired, discouraged, or misled, there is no permanent cure
but that which it lies in the hands of reason, with a pro-
founder and richer understanding of her own self and her own
resources, to accomplish. And they do not catch the true
voice of the Zeitgeist who cannot hear and interpret it as a
call. It is a call for a stronger and sweeter word of healing,'
spoken in the name of reason to soothe the sufferings and re-
move the scars which have been inflicted in her own name.
Nor is this mental attitude and its accompanying tone of
the emotional and practical life confined by any means to
those who have reflected upon the criticism of the categories.
There are thousands of plain men and women who do not
so much as know whether there be any critical philosophy,
and who have scarcely even heard the name of Kant, but
who are profoundly influenced by the streams of think-
ing of which that masterful mind is the principal modern
philosophical source. They, too, are ready to join the
complaint: —
" There was the Door to which I found no key ;
There was the Veil through which I could not see :
Some little talk awhile of ME-and-THEE
There was — and then no more of thee and me."
THE PROBLEM 29
And the chances, as the history of humanity abundantly
shows, are not altogether against their coming soon to add
to complaint this teaching of experience : —
" Then to the lip of this poor earthen Urn
I lean'd the Secret of my Life to learn :
And lip to lip it murmur'd — ' While you live,
Drink ! — for, once dead, you never shall return.' "
Now we cannot believe that it is matter of small impor-
tance whether or not any helpful word is spoken to those
who are asking of reason a contribution to her own better
self-understanding. And if, as has always happened, this
word, when first spoken to more serious students, should
filter downward and outward through the currents of popular
opinion and popular impression, it might strengthen and
sweeten the daily life of some of these "plain men and
women." At any rate, here is a task worth trying. For
the critical study of cognition is essentially an effort to
make the total of our human life more dignified and better
worth the living. It is an effort to heighten our rational
estimate of the calling and the destiny of man. Scant
respect is due that doctor in psychology who, when his
patient comes to him heart-sick and brain-confused, either
makes light of his ills or sends him to the nearest apothe-
cary's shop, with orders to put himself to sleep by taking as
much crude opium as some unskilled hand may choose to
measure out for him. And, surely, that teacher of phi-
losophy has either mistaken his mission, or else has no real
mission to fulfil, who is not ready to welcome any honest
and fairly competent attempt at so important a task.
CHAPTER II
HISTOEY OF OPINION
r ~PO write a detailed history of the opinions of reflective
-*• thinkers respecting the nature, origin, limits, and
relations to reality, of human knowledge, would be to traverse
the whole field of the more important philosophical litera-
ture. But a far narrower and less arduous work is proposed
for the sketch made in the two following chapters. The
character of this sketch is to be understood and its value
estimated only by keeping steadily in mind both the consid-
erations which have chiefly influenced it. First, only those
authors have been selected for brief review whose opinions
have been found most suggestive and helpful in the histori-
cal study of the epistemological problem. Second, among
the opinions of these authors only such points of suggestion
and helpfulness have been noted as, on the one hand, seem
most distinctive of their particular authors, and, on the
other hand, fit in best with our own method of study and
with the conclusions to which it has led us. Selections
and omissions alike must be regarded in the light of these
considerations.
" Antiquity, " says Windelband, 1 "did not attain a theory
of investigation." This statement is true only if by "a
theory of investigation " we mean to indicate such a concep-
tion and treatment of the grounds of knowledge and of the
method of attaining truth as prevail in their modern more
1 A History of Philosophy (English Translation by Professor Tufts), p. 198.
HISTORY OF OPINION 31
precise and systematic form. But in Plato, and in many
writers from Plato onward through antiquity, not a few nug-
gets of most precious truth on the "elaboration of those
cognitions which belong to the concern of reason " are found
scattered. Kant was by no means the first to criticise
acutely the " pretensions of reason to transcendent insights " ;
neither was he the first who undertook to " make room for
faith" by "removing knowledge." Even much more is
true, for there are in ancient and mediaeval authors frequent
suggestions of a correct theory, variously shaped and pro-
pounded, which the modern student of the psychology and
philosophy of cognition cannot wisely afford to overlook.
Nor need one hesitate to affirm that in some cardinal par-
ticulars the Church Fathers Origen and Augustine were
nearer the final statement of facts, and showed more of
verifiable speculative insight into the significance of the
facts than Kant himself. Yet so distinctive was the con-
ception which the latter held of the epistemological prob-
lem, so relatively firm his grasp upon it in all its large
roundness, and so unique the answer which he elaborated,
that the entire history of human reflection upon this prob-
lem fitly divides itself at the Kantian epoch.
It is indispensable for the recognition and use of the sug-
gestions which antiquity and even the Middle Ages afford,
that the loose and figurative forms of expression employed
by the writers of these periods should be pardoned and set
aside. Modern thinking must gladly accept the truths they
suggest, although the expression given to these truths may
be much too fanciful to accord well with modern philo-
sophical taste. Furthermore, the practical, the ethical, and
the religious bearings of the problem and of the solution
which happens to be suggested for it are seldom or never lost
out of sight by these writers. A purely speculative interest
in epistemology, or a rigidly technical presentation of its
various possible answers must not be expected from them.
32 HISTORY OF OPINION
But in this respect, too, it is far from being certain that
the modern philosophy of knowledge has not something valu-
able to learn from its earlier and vaguer forms.
It is the Platonic Socrates and Plato — for we do not care
to distinguish the two ■ — who first has something interesting
to say to us respecting the origin, the nature, and the vali-
dating of knowledge. In Socrates' rude midwifery and in
the polished dialectic of Plato attempts are not wanting to
criticise man's cognitive faculty and its product of so-called
knowledge. Nor is the conception of a theory of knowledge,
a science of science, unknown to Plato. There are hints at
this conception in the distinction between the "what" of
knowledge and the " that " of knowledge (between a olSev and
ore olBev). The question as to the possibility of such a
science is raised in the " Charmides " ; and again in the
" Thesetetus, " under form of the inquiry, "What is knowl-
edge ? " And although the notion of an absolutely self-
determined knowledge is disputed by Socrates, it is concluded
that, if a science of science can be found, it will also be
"the science of the absence of science." 1 The critique of
cognitive faculty., that is to say, will give us the absolute
criteria of truth and of error in general. This science of
science is not identical with self-knowledge ; for the former
determines that, "of two things, one is, and the other is
not, science or knowledge." Neither is it identical with
wisdom; for such a science is not the cure of folly, although
it is the cure of the scepticism and agnosticism which are
the breeders of folly. 2
The problem of the origin of knowledge was a puzzling
one to Plato, as it has always been to all who have made it
the subject of reflection. For to give the descriptive history
of how the different concrete and actual cognitions arise in
consciousness did not seem to him a sufficient explanation
of their arising at all, or of the universal forms under which
i Charmides, 166. 2 Ibid. 172.
HISTORY OF OPINION 33
they arose. Such history might explain what I know, why
I know this rather than that ; but it could not explain, he
thinks, that I know rather than have an opinion or a thought,
and that this knowledge is an implied seizure of reality.
Herein lies the mystery of knowledge. This recognized
certainty of present reality appears to Plato as implying
some sort of commerce with the invisible world of the ideal.
How otherwise can that which is universal, necessary, and
eternal be given to every man in the concrete, varied, and
fleeting experiences of his earthly life ? In the "Meno," for
example, the difficulty of defining virtue leads to the con-
viction of the truth : " Nature is of one kindred ; and every
soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into all
knowledge." Even Meno's slaves recognize some elementary
relations of all the geometrical figures. But though the
simple sensations which reach the soul through the body are
given by nature, at birth, to men and to animals, reflections
on the being and use of the sensations are gained slowly
and with difficulty, if they are ever gained at all, by educa-
tion and by experience. But how can education and expe-
rience account for all that is in every man's knowledge ?
It must be that cognition, somehow, is prior to particular
cognitions. As to the manner of this pre-existence of the
universal and necessary element of cognition, Jowett, misled
by Plato's figurative use of words, commits him to the
modern evolutionary hypothesis that it "exists, not in the
previous state of the individual, but of the race." The
rather have we here, though only dimly apprehended, the
thought that the origin of knowledge cannot be understood
merely empirically, but must be found in the native consti-
tution of the cognitive soul. 1 How did it get there? Here
Plato's characteristic figurative ontology must account for
the fallacy in his argument. Socrates is made to say:
"But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, he
1 Compare Thesetetus, 186 ; Meno, 86; Phsedo, 73.
3
34 HISTORY OF OPINION
must have had and learned it at some other time." And
again, Cebes, referring to Socrates, remarks : " Your favorite
doctrine that knowledge is recollection." Thus the pre-
existence and immortality of the cognitive soul is made to
stand or fall with the ontological doctrine of the ideal
world. For "if the ideas of men are eternal, their souls
are eternal ; and if not the ideas, then not the souls. " 1
The impossibility of giving a wholly empirical account of
the origin of cognition, and the necessity of recognizing
elements that for their explanation demand an appeal to the
reality and eternal existence of the ideal, are tenets in the
Platonic doctrine of knowledge. These same tenets are
repeatedly affirmed in the treatment given to the essential
nature of knowledge; for truth cannot be imparted by the
best of the senses, not even by sight and hearing. The
disparagement of sensuous cognition is common to Plato
with most idealists ; and this mistaken view is connected
with the failure — which he shares in common with modern
solipsism — to recognize that both thought and the mental
leap to reality are involved in all perception. And so he
distinguishes knowledge from opinion, which is interme-
diate hetween ignorance and knowledge, even asserting that
the two have to do with different kinds of matter corre-
sponding to different faculties, 2 and from belief, which
may be false, while there can be no false knowledge; and
he endeavors to refute the view that perception of things
is knowledge at all. 3 Here the Hindu mysticism, which
regarded the soul as addressing itself in every act of per-
ception of a Thing with a " That-too-art-thou, " came far
nearer the truth than did the Greek idealism. But with
Plato it is thought by which existence must be revealed to
the soul, if at all. 4 Dialectic is the true method of rational
knowledge. Upon this point Plato comes nearest to the
1 Plifledo, 76. 2 Republic, 477.
8 Theoetetus, 152 f. 4 Phado, 65.
HISTORY OF OPINION 35
truth in the statement that knowledge is true opinion accom-
panied by a reason, or resting on a ground. 1 It is this over-
estimate of dialectic as the deliverer of knowledge within
the soul of man, which is the chief error of Plato and of
all similar forms of idealism since Plato until the present
hour.
On one other phase of the problem of knowledge the
Platonic writings are worthy to instruct the student of the
epistemological problem to the end of time. Throughout
does Plato emphasize the dependence of knowledge on desire,
aspiration, virtue, and character. " In the ' Phsedrus, ' " says
Jowett, "love and philosophy join hands." With the excep-
tion of some of the writers of the Christian Church we have
to wait until Fichte to have the inseparable and vital union
of cognition with the life of feeling and action so emphati-
cally affirmed. "The true knowledge of things in heaven
and earth is based upon enthusiasm, or love of the ideas
going before us and ever present to us in this world and in
another." Only through the exercise of this love can that
divine knowledge be attained which is "knowledge absolute
in existence absolute. " Hence the firm connection between
knowledge and the teleology of the idea of the good; 2 for,
indeed, the idea of the good is the cause of science, and
virtue is identical with knowledge. 3 In a word, it is the
distinguishing feature of Plato's doctrine of cognition that
he treats knowledge, not as "pure," but as the epistemolog-
ical and metaphysical presupposition of ethics.
It is the merit of Aristotle to have brought the early
attempts at a science of knowledge into much more definite
and systematic shape — especially in his works on Logic and
Metaphysics. On the possibility of such a science we find
with him no such expressions of doubt, approaching despair,
as are found in Plato; also no such merely tentative and
1 Theaetetus, 206 f. 2 Compare Republic, 508.
3 To show which, is the aim of the " Protagoras."
36 HISTORY OF OPINION"
mystical treatment of his problem. Aristotle distinctly
recognizes the truth that, since there are certain principles
common to all the particular sciences, and since, although
these principles depend upon one another, the process of
regressive dependence cannot go on forever, therefore there
are premises which are themselves undemonstrable, but
from which all demonstration begins. 1 His view of the
criteria of cognition seems to have been in part derived from
his criticism of the doctrine of Protagoras {irav to (^atvo^evov
akrjdes). In spite of Grote's assertion that Aristotle dis-
countenances altogether the doctrine which represents the
mind, or intellect, as "a source of first or universal truths
peculiar to itself, " the doctrine of the Greek thinker amounts
to an espousal of a certain form of apriorism in respect of
the sources and nature of human cognition. 2
Knowledge, according to Aristotle, has its origin both in
dialectical induction and logical demonstration. The soul,
in its thinking nature, possesses the possibility of all knowl-
edge (all knowledge dynamically) ; but it actually attains to
its knowledge only by degrees. 3 His doctrine of the syllo-
gism leads him to conclude that there are two kinds of ulti-
mate presuppositions : these are (1) the actual fact as known
to us in perception without proof, and (2) general principles
whose source is in reason (z>o0?), — the power of direct,
intuitive, and therefore unerring knowledge of such prin-
ciples. Here we have a hint at the different kinds of impli-
cates which have already been discovered as given in the
fact "I know." And although in his psychology Aristotle
regards the mind as in some sort a tabula rasa, thought takes
the main part in writing some definite object upon the
1 See Anal. Post. p. 100, b. 3.
2 This we should argue, not simply on the basis of an appeal to passages in
which Aristotle appears as the champion of " common-sense " (such as Eth.
Nikom. I., vii., 14, and Eth. Eud. V., vi. f.), but chiefly as having his general doc-
trine of the nature and growth of knowledge in mind.
a Anal. Post, p. 71, b. 33; Phys. i., p. 184, a. 16.
HISTORY OF OPINION 37
tablet. 1 By " thought " is meant, not a merely sensuous per-
ception, although in perception thought is always accom-
panied by sensuous images {^avrda^ara)', but the intuition
of that which is rational (the vonrd) is a necessary part of
the knowledge even of things. For it is not in reason (1/0O9)
as merely passive (waOnTi/co?), but also as creative {ttol^tlko^
that knowledge has its source. And there is an activity of
the reason as such (" pure "), which consists in the imme-
diate grasping of the highest truths. For knowledge becomes
possible only as reason creates, into rational form, the object
of knoivledge.
Further as to Aristotle's view of the nature of knowledge
we learn by following his description of the laws and manner
of its growth. The mind rises, he thinks, by successive steps
from individual observations to perception, from perception,
by means of memory, to experience, and from such expe-
rience to the truer knowledge. Aristotle defends the truth
of sense-perception. And it is in the interests of this view
■ — as we should now say, " for the sake of knowledge " as
such, and not, like Plato, for the sake of ethics — that he
develops the theory of the syllogism. Complete science is
realized only when that which needs to be proved is derived
through all the intermediate members from its highest pre-
suppositions. 2 In the Metaphysics he discusses the principle
of non-contradiction and finds it the most cognizable of all
principles ; and yet, for this very reason, quite undemon-
strable. 3 The true object of knowledge he agrees with Plato
in holding to be only the necessary and the unchanging.
Cognition cannot be explained unless the universal and the
particular are " looked at in implication of each other."
But with him it is not the universal as extra to the concrete
envisaged reality, but the universal as immanent in the in-
1 Compare De Anima, and for citations see Zeller's " Outlines of the History
of Greek Philosophy," p. 207, note.
2 See Anal. Prior, p. 24, b. 18. 3 Met. p. 1005, b. 20.
38 HISTORY OF OPINION
dividual thing (universale in re, not universale extra rem).
So, then, with Aristotle, as not with Plato, the important
truth is emphasized that knowledge is a development resting
upon a basis of sense-perception, and requiring rational
faculty which proceeds according to laws of its own. In
this regard, indeed, the pupil stands far nearer than his
teacher to the modern psychology of knowledge. As has
been well said, he displaces " the seat of reality " and trans-
fers it from the abstract universal of mere thinking to the
concrete particular of sense-perception. 1
Finally, with Aristotle, far more than with Plato, knowl-
edge has its end in itself rather than in being a means,
or requisite, of virtue. Philosophy is itself a greater good
than any of the virtues. 2 Cognition is thus more clearly dis-
tinguished from moral activity. Connected with this diver-
gence of theory is another : for, in the view of the later
thinker, the attainment of knowledge is much less dependent
on emotional and voluntary attitudes ; and empirical data are
made more important for establishing our cognitions. Desire,
aspiration, love, and intuition, retreat into the background.
The doctrine of the practical syllogism remains, however :
"No creature moves or acts except with some end in view." 3
And the mission of philosophy also remains, as with Plato,
" the knowledge of unchangeable Being and of the ultimate
bases of things, of the universal and necessary." 4
Little that throws new light on the problem of knowledge
is to be learned from the post-Aristotelian schools of phi-
losophy. The Stoics, however, elaborated in a somewhat
instructive way the view of Aristotle regarding the criteria
of cognition; while it was a fundamental tenet with this
whole group of thinkers to emphasize the importance, for
right living, of scientific inquiry. Though the ontology of
1 Compare Grote, ii. pp. 257 f.
2 See A. Grant, the Ethics of Aristotle (3d ed.), i. pp. 226 f.
8 De Mot. An., vi. f. 4 Zeller, Outlines, etc., p. ISO.
HISTORY OF OPINION 39
the Stoics undoubtedly has a quasi-materialistic outcome, the
content of human consciousness is so sharply contrasted with
real being as to give a painful emphasis to the epistemo-
logical problem : " How are we to construe the relations by
which this content refers to real being and agrees with it ?"
As to the sources of knowledge, Zeno holds that it must all
proceed from perception, as though the soul were a tabula
rasa ; but Chrysippus defines knowledge as a change produced
on the soul by an object. From the impression (tvttghtk;)
arises the presentation of mental images (fyavraaia). Out of
perceptions come recollections, and from these experience ;
and by conclusions from what is immediately given in percep-
tions we arrive at general images {icoival evvoiai). Science,
however, depends on the regulated formation and demonstra-
tion of concepts. When pressed to the last resort, the
possibility of knowledge is made by the Stoics to rest upon
the assertion that otherwise no action carrying with it a
rational conviction is possible. And so perception and science
are both made, in an unanalyzed and inexplicable mixture,
the sources of cognition.
As to the nature of knowledge, Zeno's illustration (sensa-
tion is like the extended ringers ; conception like the fist ;
and knowledge, or science, like one fist clasped by another)
seems to resolve the differences in the different stages of
cognition into those of degree only. But knowledge is defined
by the Stoics as " a fixed and immovable conception, or
system of such conceptions." In other words, cognition is a
system of perceptions and of notions derived by applying
logical processes to perceptions.
Here, at once the psychological doctrine of the nature of
cognition is merged in the epistemological doctrine of the
criteria of cognition. How is truth to be attained, and how
distinguished from the error with which, in experience, it
is so closely intermingled ? Now part of our conceptions
are of such a rature that they compel consent ; we are con-
40 HISTORY OF OPINION
scious that they can only arise from something real, for they
have direct evidence (ivepyeia). This kind of conceiving
involves a mental " seizure " (KardXijyfr^') ; and so it differs
from the passive having of mere notions, even when the
conscious contents are the same, by having also the active
consciousness of agreement with its object. Cognition, in the
form of a " conceptual presentation " compelling conviction,
becomes then the Criterion of Truth. 1 In all the Stoical
doctrine the important psychological conclusions are recog-
nized that (1) judgment, produced by the faculty of thought,
is necessary to knowledge ; 2 and (2) knowledge which allows
of certainty of conviction requires that perception and
thought should be somehow brought into harmonious rela-
tions. A true perception is one which represents the object
as it really is ; but how shall we know when we have such
a perception ? To answer this problem the appeal is some-
times made to the strength of the impression and of the
conviction which the impression carries ; sometimes to that
distinction in the form of notions which laid the basis of
the third part added to Logic by the Stoics, — namely,
the Doctrine of the Standard of Truth or the Theory of
Knowledge ; but, in the last resort, as has already been
said, to the practical postulate that " unless the cognition
of truth were possible, it would be impossible to act on fixed
principles and rational convictions." 3 Here we return to the
point on the circumference of the circle from which we set
out : The search after a firm support for the life of conduct
compels us to investigate the criteria of truth; but the investi-
gation of the criteria of truth brings us to the conclusion that
these criteria are chiefly to be found in the necessity felt by the
soul for a firm support for the life of conduct. Let us not forget
1 This view must not be confounded with that of the innate ideas which was
propagated on into the Middle Ages under the Stoic name.
2 Compare Sext. Adv. Math., viii. 70 f. ; Diog., vii. 63.
3 This is the position of Plutarch and Stobreus ; on the entire subject see
Heinze, " Zur Erkenntnisslehre der Stoiker," Leipzig, 18S0.
HISTORY OF OPINION 41
this gyratory motion of the Stoics in their quest for a defen-
sible theory of cognition. It is somewhat of a return to Plato
from Aristotle, who regarded knowledge rather more as an
end in itself. It may suggest to the modern student of
epistemology the truths that, in cognition, the soul is one,
a unitary being incapable of divorcing feeling and willing
from its thinking; and, also, that the action of so-called
necessity and the action of reason is not two principles, but
only one.
Little additional to the lessons taught by the Stoics is to
be gained by a study of the ancient Epicureans and Sceptics.
The former held that, in theory, perception furnishes the
criterion of truth and that what is most obvious (by its
ive'pyeia) is always true; nor can such truth be doubted
without destroying the foundations both of knowledge and
of action. But, in practice, pleasure and pain furnish the
criterion. Yet these teachers were, of course, pressed to
the important admission that the knowledge requisite simply
for wise conduct needs, besides, cognition of that which is
not immediately perceptible ; it needs the cognition of the
grounds of phenomena and also of the expectations for the
future which may be inferred from these grounds. Thus
both Epicureans and Stoics, as a sort of fundamental postu-
late upon which alone the wise man can ground his maxims
for the practical life, came to the recognition of the truth
that there is agreement of the individual reason with the
universal, with the World-Reason, — an implied mental seizure
upon the heart of Reality.
To something like the same opinion even certain of the
Sceptics were finally driven. They did, indeed, theoretically
hold that the essential nature of things is inaccessible to
human knowledge ; nothing is immediately certain ; nothing,
therefore, can be made mediately certain by processes of argu-
ment. This scepticism they defended by calling attention to
the conflict of opinions, to the endless regressus in proving, to
42 HISTORY OF OPINION
the relativity of all perception, to the impossibility of other
than hypothetical premises, and to the circle in the syllogism.
It is most interesting, however, to notice how some of them
— Arcesilaus, for example — brought forward the view that,
in the practical life, the wise man must content himself with
a certain kind of trust (irlans), according to which some
ideas are the more probable, reasonable, and adaptable to the
purposes of life.
This impressive exhibition which Greek antiquity furnishes
of the relations, both in fact and in theory, between our
doctrine of cognition and our life of conduct, as well as its
accompanying recognition of " confidence," " conviction,"
" trust," as an inseparable element of cognition itself, fitly
prepare the way for a consideration of the views of two great
thinkers among the Fathers of the Christian Church. In
respect of their insight into the true state of the case, and
as estimated by the important points which they make through
their discursive treatment of the subject, Origen and' Augus-
tine are entirely worthy to stand beside Plato and Aristotle.
To understand their points of view we must remember that
the very nature of the regnant philosophy, and the urgent
needs of the age, turned the currents of thought from purely
speculative into practical and religious channels. The great
doctrine of a " Christian Gnosis " was now the form in which
a theory of knowledge was found interesting and was actually
discussed. Two important truths derived from non-Chris-
tian Gnosticism became, from this time onward, very in-
fluential. These were the exceedingly influential conception
of self-consciousness (irapafcoXovOelv eavrw), — of intellect as
thought active and in motion (1/0*70-19), having for its object
itself, as a resting, objective thought (vo-qrov) ; and thus
the identification of intellect as knowledge with intellect
as being. 1
1 See Windelband, A History of Philosophy, p. 234 ; and Plotiuus, Eun. L
4, 10.
HISTORY OF OPINION 43
In Origen's thought, as in the thought of Clement aud
of the Alexandrine School generally, Christianity — its tenets
being rationally understood and explained — is Knowledge.
But to attain this knowledge, we must advance to it, from
faith through philosophy ; and, indeed, he who would attain
the true Gnosis without philosophy is to be compared to the
man who would gather grapes without cultivating his vines. 1
The sources of such true and highest knowledge are both
subjective and objective. Among the former are faith, hope,
imagination, love ; these are the avenues through which
cognition comes to the human soul. Love and mental grasp
go hand in hand. Here, then, we meet again with the beauti-
ful and stirring conception of Plato, that the craving for
truth is divinely planted, as an honorable passion which
may not honorably be denied. Gaining knowledge implies
a progressive assimilation of the soul to God. The objective
sources of knowledge, in the view of this Church Father, are
Scripture and the- Church, which are assumed to be in har-
mony. But the source of all true knowledge is undivided ;
it is one, and only one ; it is divine revelation. God him-
self, " an incomparable intellectual nature " (" in all parts
Mom? and, so to speak, e Ez^a? ") is the Mind, and the Source,
from which all intellectual nature or mind takes its begin-
ning. 2 Origen's fundamental postulate, then, is this : The
mind of the illumined and cultured man is akin to God,
and has thus become capable of knowing the truth of God,
the Absolute Mind. For how could rational beings exist
unless the Word or Reason had previously existed ? How
could men be wise, unless there were wisdom in the world
of the really Existent ? Rational beings derive their rational
nature from God through the Logos. " Now we are," he
affirms, 3 " of opinion that every rational creature, without
any distinction, receives a share of Him," — that is, of the
1 Compare Strom. II. vii. and ix.
2 De Frinc, I. i. 6. 3 De Princ. II. vii. 2.
44 HISTORY OF OPINION
Holy Spirit, the revealer of Absolute Reason to the reason
of man.
Origen's view of the nature of knowledge follows from the
foregoing description of the sources of knowledge. This
thinker felt that, while much of the non-Christian philoso-
phizing moved in the region of mere abstraction, the Christian
Gnosis gave a living grasp upon realities, both persons and
facts, which it was his aim to present in the form of a
rational system as objective truth. Not by sense-perception
alone can knowledge come. For " it is one thing to see,
and another to know : to see and to be seen is a property
of material bodies ; to know, and to be known, an attribute
of intellectual being." 1 Knowledge is of the mind, intel-
lectual. But the proposal to change faith into knowledge
does not imply questioning, much less rejecting the entire
content of faith ; it implies rather the attempt to give to
the accepted content of faith a scientific form, such as shall
commend it to philosophical or reflective minds. Neverthe-
less, it has truly been said : " In all such doctrines the inter-
est of science ultimately predominates over that of faith ;
they are accommodations of philosophy to the need of reli-
gious authority, felt at this time."
The distinctive thing about Origen's answer to the inquiry
into the sources and the nature of human cognition is that
he makes it a commerce of minds. The secret of this episte-
mological theory is given in the consideration that knoivledge
is a transaction between rational beings. As to the source
of knowledge, it is found in Absolute Personal Reason reveal-
ing its true life within the human personal reason. As to
the nature of knowledge, it is a certain complex attitude of
human personal reason toward Absolute Personal Reason.
In this complex attitude, the more practical and distinctively
ethical " momenta " of admiring and aspiring love, of faith
as a sort of opening of the soul to the truth, which is both
1 De Princ. I. i. 8.
HISTORY OF OPINION 45
a reasonable acquiescence (\oyiK7] avyicdOea^) and a volun-
tary grasp on the truth (irpdkq^rK e/covcno*;), are made promi-
nent by this Church Father. However, since free-will — the
capacity for virtue and its opposite, the power to become
wise or to refuse to become wise — is the centre of per-
sonality, it must co-operate with feeling and intellect, in
order to attain the true Gnosis. For how can knowledge
be divorced from free-will, since every judgment, which
both accepts and declares the truth, is an act of free-will ?
Origen is neither so happy nor so suggestive in his answer
to the question, How shall the false and the true be distin-
guished ? for, whether we emphasize faith, judgment, con-
viction, opinion as to the content of revelation, or the
decision of free-will, each one and all of these may be
evoked in the interests of the false as well as of the true.
This fact raises the problem of the criteria of knowledge.
Origen takes it for granted that the contents of Christian
faith, as given in Holy Scripture and declared by the voice
of the Church, are true. The acceptance of what is authenti-
cally taught is thus made, by his epistemological theory,
the ultimate test of truth. Authority becomes the objective
criterion of knowledge ; faith is the right attitude of soul
for the attainment of this knowledge. We must not, how-
ever, discredit this thinker — the most suggestive of all
thinkers within the ancient Church — by understanding his
principle of authority in the mediaeval or — worse still ! —
in the post-Reformation sense. It is not the ipse-dixit,
either of the Biblical writers or of the traditors of churchly
tenets, which Origen would elevate into the place of the ulti-
mate test of truth. His epistemological postulate, as bearing
upon the criteria of knowledge, is the assumption of an essen-
tial identity, in the ground of self -revealing Reason from which
both spring, between authority and rational knowledge.
The significance of Origen is so great for an historical study
of the opinions of reflective thinkers upon the epistemological
46 HISTORY OF OPINION
problem that we gather up his more impressive views into
the following statements : —
All knowledge is, by nature, a revelation from Absolute
Reason, " a spiritual enlightenment " from the one Holy
Spirit of God. Hence the ontological postulate of Origen's
theory of knowledge is the reality of the idea of the Good, —
a truly Platonic postulate. Our knowledge is the human
equivalent of the Divine Idea. Thus insight is more empha-
sized than ratiocination ; and the gaining of knowledge be-
comes, for the soul of man, an epoch, an illumination, a
surprise.
Faith and reason co-operate, in the unity of the soul-life,
in order to make possible the reception and the attainment
of knowledge.
Free-will, issuing in judgment of the truth, is essential to
all knowledge ; it is, indeed, the very self-activity which
becomes knowledge when it is directed rightly toward the
absolute and self-revealing Reason. Diversity of will is the
cause of the variety in human opinions and in the courses of
conduct pursued by different men. Perversity of will is the
cause, not only of all evil conduct, but also of all error in
judgment. It is the function of the moral will, rooted and
grounded in love, to lead on the acquirement of all knowledge
and all wisdom to the final goal, which is the vision of all in
God. 1 But this will must be motived, backed up, and spurred
forward by rational love (Xoyi/cr) ope|t?).
It was Augustine, however, who first grappled w 7 ith the
problem of cognition in a thoroughly psychological and criti-
cal way. Indeed, Augustine may be said to have been the
first to place philosophy upon a psychological basis. It must
be remembered, however, that we have two men expressing
themselves in the later writings of this Church Father : and
that these two minds move in opposite directions, and even
come to contradictory conclusions. It is not Augustine the
1 Compare De Princ. I. v. 3 ; I. vi. 3 ; II. i. 2 ; II. iv. 3.
HISTORY OF OPINION" 47
ecclesiastic, alarmed for the foundations of Christian faith
and making an exoteric appeal to the authority of the Church
as the criterion of knowledge, in behalf of the uninitiated
and unenlightened, to whom we may hopefully look for epis-
temological truth ; it is rather to Augustine the master of
psychological analysis, and, in some sort, the founder of
philosophy upon the indisputable data of consciousness for
all places and all times. In Augustine's case the theologian
and the philosopher are not, as in the case of Origen, of
one and the same mind, equally sincere. The theologian,
indeed, is ready at times to run perilously near the final
sacrifice of all consistency, if not of all claim to sincerity.
But the psychologist and philosopher expounds the principle
of the immediate and absolute certainty of self-conscious-
ness in a way to anticipate Descartes and even to excel
him. In his treatment of this epistemological doctrine Aug-
ustine is a modern man ; or, rather, he is a thinker for all
times to venerate.
It is with respect to the criteria of knowledge, the function
of philosophical doubt, and the ultimate grounds of certainty,
that Augustine rises superior to Aristotle and to all antiquity.
Here we are charmed by his skill in psychological analysis
and by the thoroughness of his reflective thinking. In these
subjects he so far anticipates and even surpasses the so-called
" father of modern philosophy " as to warrant what Fenelon
said of him, that he would sooner trust Augustine than Des-
cartes upon matters of pure philosophy ; indeed, the Arch-
bishop of Cambrai even declared that a collection of this
Church Father's utterances would be u much superior to the
Meditations " of the French philosopher. And Nourisson 1
affirms : " It is beyond all question that this great man made
use of the method, and put in practice the principles, which
Descartes would one day employ in order to reconstruct
philosophy."
1 Progres de la Pensee Humaine, p. 209.
48 HISTORY OF OPINION
Augustine sought the way to certainty of truth through
scepticism and criticism. He pointed out that all the various
kinds of conscious states — memory, judgment, knowledge,
and will — are involved in the very act of doubting. He
sought also to demonstrate the existence of necessary ele-
ments in all cognition in opposition to the Academicians,
with whom he at one time agreed as to the practical end of
happiness. 1 In the most primary and incontestable fashion,
he thinks, does the certainty of self-consciousness affirm the
reality of the conscious subject. 2 In order even to err, J,
that err, must exist. Even the possibility of our being de-
ceived implies the fact of our existence, and makes being,
life, and thought co-ordinate. Every one who knows himself
as a doubter knows the truth, and from this fact is certain
that he knows. Let, then, the man who wishes to have
knowledge attain the science of Self. But faith is necessary
to knowledge of the existence of other men ; and we can only
believe (not know) that material bodies exist, though the
belief is practically necessary. With profound epistemologi-
cal reflection Augustine finds the idea of God, as absolute
Truth, involved in the certainty of self-consciousness. Eor
how could we so much as question and doubt our sense-
perceptions, if we had not derived criteria and standards of
truth from other sources ? The very life of the human soul
is such as to show that there is an unchanging norm of
truth, — God, who includes all real being. Thus does this
great thinker strive to place on a psychological basis the
epistemological conclusion that the existence of truth cannot
be doubted, and that all Reality is implicate in the being,
knowing, and willing of the self-conscious subject?
i See the De Vita beat , and compare Cont. Acad. III. xi. 26, where he finds
the test of truth in disjunctive propositions, and remarks that perceptions are, at
least, subjectively true.
2 De Vita beat., ii. 7 ; Solil. IT. i. 1 f. ; De Ver. Kel. xxxix. 72 f. ; De Trin. x. 14.
3 Confessions, VI. v. 7 ; De Fide Rerum, i. 2 ; De Ver. Rel. xxxix. 72 f. ; De
Lib. Arb. II. ii. 6 ; De Civ. Dei, i. 6.
HISTORY OF OPINION 49
Augustine's view of the sources and nature of human cog-
nition is, of course, dependent upon his positions regarding
the criteria of all cognitive faculty. Besides sensation Qsen-
sus), he holds that man possesses the higher capacity of
reason (intellectus and ratio) ; we thus have immediate per-
ception of incorporeal truths, — the principles of all judging.
Thus, too, all individual consciousness — and no less in its
doubting than in every other form of its actual functioning —
transcends itself as individual; it sees itself attached in its
own exercise to something universal and universally valid. 1
It was, indeed, the influence of theological prejudice against
the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls which led Augustine
to abandon the Platonic reminiscence (avdfivtjcrLs), and in more
nearly the modern way regard reason as the intuitive faculty for
the incorporeal world. Yet he conceives of the existence of the
ideas in neo-Platonic fashion. They are princip ales for mce vel
rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quce in divino intel-
lects, continentur. All rational knowledge is, then, ultimately,
knowledge of God ; all ideas are in God ; He is the eternal
Ground of all form, — the Absolute Unity, the Supreme Beauty.
The knowledge which Augustine seeks is, then, summed up as
knowledge of Self and of God. 2 The sciences, which in early
life he regarded as avenues to knowledge of God and to sal-
vation, he later regarded as of little worth. Nor can there
be any doubt that this disregard of scientific knowledge, born
of theological prejudice, had, through the influence of Augus-
tine, a decisive and baleful effect upon the subsequent history
of Christendom. It is one of the most interesting specu-
lations as to what might have been in the case of that
" long-standing conflict " between science and religion, if the
Descartes of Christian antiquity had not been overlain and
submerged by the ecclesiastic anxious to defend the supreme
and unquestioned authority of the Church.
1 De Trin. XII. ii. 2 ; Cont. Acad. III. xiii. 29 ; De Lib. Arb. II. in. 7.
2 Deura et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus 1 Nihil omnino. (Solil. I. 7.)
4
50 HISTORY OF OPINION
With Augustine, even more than with Origen, the doctrine
of free-will is dominant in connection with his entire view of
the criteria, sources, nature, and limits of cognition. The
primacy of the will is maintained in the entire process of
thinking, ideating, and knowing. Only in relation to the
highest truths, the rational cognitions, is the attitude of the
mind more passive and receptive. Here revelation, as a
divine illumination, has its truest sphere. Hence the doc-
trine of Truth by Faith — a doctrine which Kant revived
as the positive outcome of his critical protest against an
unwarranted extension of the pretence of knowledge. How-
ever, with Augustine, full rational insight remains first in
dignity. But such insight is not for the weak nor for the
average man ; not for the wise even, except imperfectly.
Here again we are made witnesses to the disturbing influence
of the ecclesiastic's fears lest the authority of the Church
might suffer if knowledge of the transcendent should be too
broadly affirmed as lying within the possible domain of the
" plain man's " self-conscious life.
On the whole, however, what student of the history of
epistemological doctrine can deny the eminent distinction
which Nourisson claims for Augustine as a reflective and
critical thinker upon the problem of knowledge ? To him
more than to any one else in antiquity (indeed, he has few
rivals in modern times) we may ascribe the three following
important merits : (1) The philosophic use of methodical
doubt; (2) the doctrine of self-consciousness as a manifes-
tation, absolutely certain, of the really existent ; and (3) the
recognition of the evidence for making this particular cer-
tainty the criterion of all ulterior certainty.
During the Middle Ages the entire problem of Being and
Knowing became absorbed in discussion over the nature
and reality of so-called " universals." The significance of
this discussion for all mediaeval philosophy, on account of
its bearing upon the metaphysics of Christian doctrine, is
HISTORY OF OPINION" 51
at once apparent. The general epistemological assumption
of the regnant school was that the more universal substances
are, the more real they are. Reality is thus regarded as a
matter of degrees, or as measurable by a scale in which
things and souls can have more or less of participation. This
is the very opposite of the affirmation of Lotze, that the mean-
est thing which exists is as truly real as is the most important
and imposing universal. In the mediaeval thinking the iden-
tity of Real Being with the thinnest or highest abstractions
was thus maintained ; real dependence of things and events
was also identified with logical dependence. A pyramid of
concepts was erected, and to this conceptual structure was
given an ontological significance, without further attempt at
criticism or proof. From this doctrine a transition was inevi-
table to the view which saw the universal in every concrete
existence (universalia in re). But this doctrine, too, was
taken abstractly. One and the same reality was held to be,
in its differing status, animate being, man, Greek, Socrates.
Formal and logical pantheism — essentially like that of the
great Jewish thinker, Spinoza — was the inevitable outcome.
The final ontological assertion, built upon the fundamental
epistemological assumption, becomes the following: God =
Being superlatively real Qens realissimum).
Some wrong would be done to these mediaeval thinkers,
however, if it were held that they contributed nothing what-
ever to the statement or solution of the problem of knowl-
edge. In the field of psychology they attained (by speculation,
of coarse, rather than by experiment and induction) a
few valuable results. The Platonists and the Mystics, who
undertook to exhibit the development of inner life as the
history of salvation for the individual soul, were promi-
nent workers in this field. Especially important is their
thought that, by virtue of the motive forces of will, faith
furnishes conditions to knowledge. Thus Bernard is never
weary of denouncing the heathenish nature of the pure
52 HISTORY OF OPINION
impulse after knowledge for its own sake. "With the great
Thomas the psychology of knowledge holds an important
place. 1 The human soul is a substance, incorporeal, imper-
ishable, and capable of apprehending universals. Yet he
maintains the unity of the soul, 2 and informs us that such
terms as "the vegetative soul," "sensitive soul," "rational
soul," etc., are not to be understood as other than designat-
ing functions of one and the same soul. By virtue of the
same soul, Socrates is both man and animal. The essential
form, both generic and specific, comes from the soul, which
is the source of all life. With Hugo, cogitation, meditation,
contemplation, are the three stages of mental activity which
result in knowledge. Man has the eye of flesh to know the
corporeal world, the eye of reason to know his own inner
nature, and the eye of contemplation to know the spiritual
world and God. But Duns Scotus rejects the hypothesis of
soul as pure form and energy, possible apart from the body ;
and between the body and the intelligent soul he introduces
an inherent form a corporeitatis.
In accordance with his doctrine of the nature of the soul,
Thomas Aquinas places it on a sort of middle ground within
the hierarchy of substances. As to the source of knowledge,
it follows that the soul of man does not possess truth per
se; it must acquire truth. This it does by experiencing
certain elementary notions through the senses as its instru-
ment. The whole problem of the origin and nature of
knowledge must, of course, be attacked by the Schoolmen
in some form to make intelligible the process by which
universal ideas arise in the individual consciousness. Nomi-
nalism, in the person of Abelard and John of Salisbury,
attempted to show the psychological origin of knowledge.
Sensation, as confused idea, gives content to imagination,
1 See liis Summa Theol., qnrest. 75-90 and 92, Part I.
2 See the section, De Anima, in the Qutestiones; especially, §§ 4-7, 11-13,
and 20.
HISTORY OF OPINION 53
which grasps and holds together the content; then under-
standing, by discursive activity, elaborates it into judgments
and concepts; and after all these conditions are fulfilled,
somehow or other, opinion, faith, and knowledge arise, in
which the intellect ultimately knows its object as a single
collective perception or intuition. These writers hold to
the modern theory that in sensation, perception, and imagi-
nation, an act of judgment is performed.
Thomas Aquinas and the Realists generally, however,
held that all true knowledge — all science — is of the intel-
lect; the psychological inquiry as to the nature, results,
and certainty of its functioning is thus made the most
important of all epistemological inquiries. The puzzling
problem becomes, then, to reconcile the individuality of
intelligence with the universality of the ideas. 1 The answer
of Thomas to this problem is an evasion of it : the power of
apprehending the universal is assigned by him to an " intel-
lective soul." This results in a division of the faculties of
the soul, which is wholly inconsistent with his maintenance
elsewhere of the true view that the soul is one, but gifted
with diverse energies. For while some of the faculties, as
senses and imagination, are in both body and soul, others,
he thinks, like will and intellect, participate in no respect
in the body. 2
With such views of the origin of knowledge as the fore-
going, the validating of knowledge becomes a hopeless
puzzle. And, indeed, the epistemological and the ontologi-
cal problems are scarcely conceived of apart. Thomas
Aquinas approaches the former of the two problems from
1 See Met. i., prooem., cap. 1 ; Phys. i., cap. 1 ; and comp. Haureau, Philosophie
Scholastique, ii., pp. 110 and 116.
2 Windelband (ibid. p. 325) holds that Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus alike
followed the old Greek idea that, in the process of cognition, by means of the co-
operation of soul and external object, a copy of the latter arises, to be appre-
hended by the soul. This doctrine Occam rejected and held a view more akin to
that of Locke and his followers. With him an idea is indeed, as such, a state
or act of the soul, but it forms in the soul a sign for the external thing.
54
HISTORY OF OPINION
the point of view taken by Aristotle in his doctrine of form
and matter. The doctrine of universals as entities, and the
attempt to explain and to validate knowledge, realistically,
by the assumption of these entities, are abandoned by him.
Such ideas he regards as mere fictions, wrongly posited
in the interests of an attempt to explain the knowledge of
things. But God knows all things in themselves, and has
no need of the intervention of ideas. In Occam's writings
the fundamental separation between the world of sense and
the supersensible world bears fruit in the beginnings of a
psychological and epistemological Idealism. The world of
consciousness becomes another world from the world of
things ; and sensuous knowledge loses for him its character
of being a copy as compared with its real object. Between
the psychological, the inner, reality and the ontological, or
outer, reality there is a relation, but it is not that of
resemblance.
Perhaps the most important and distinguishing feature of
the doctrine of the Middle Ages is its extension of that
schism between faith and knowledge which appeared in the
later writings of Augustine. Albertus holds that philosophy
(as of knowledge) and theology (as of faith) can no longer
be identified. All that is really known in philosophy by
the light of nature holds good also in theology; but the
soul of man can completely know only that the principles
of which it carries within itself. Thomas seems to reverse
the relation between faith and knowledge which Origen and
Augustine (in his earlier writings) maintained. The rela-
tion then becomes one of different degrees of development;
but philosophical knowledge is given in man's natural
endowment, which is brought to full realization only by the
grace active in revelation. Duns Scotus goes further and
maintains that theology is a practical discipline, while phi-
losophy is pure theory. Philosophy is thus made a secular
science set over against theology as a divine science. Here
HISTORY OF OPINION 55
the relation becomes one of separation; and a contradic-
tion is ready to emerge between knowledge and faith. This
separation became, as the rights of reason were more vigor-
ously maintained, a charter of liberty for philosophy, but a
condemnation of theology to the prison-house of external
authority. More especially as to faith and knowledge,
Scotus maintains that belief in the Bible and in the infal-
libility of the Apostles rests upon the authority of the
Church.
At one point, however, does this thinker keep alive the
warm and vital thought of Plato, of Origen, and of Augustine.
As an opponent of determinism, Scotus emphasizes the self-
activity of will — as everywhere else, so also in knowing.
He maintains, in opposition to Thomas, that thinking often
depends on willing. The beginning of all knowledge can be
called an act of receiving, inasmuch as every perception has
sensation for its basis et seminarium, which is possible only
as the result of an impression or image of the object.
Even this, however, is not mere passivity. In all percep-
tion, the external object and the perceiving subject co-
operate. 1 The calling up of the phantasmata and their
transformation in memory also implies activity of will ;
still more does the active intellect, the power of the soul,
which is related to the sensible images as light to colors.
But especially where the thing is not certain, and the con-
sent of will is compelled, belief (fides), as an act of will, is
necessary. 2 Hence it follows that a great deal of our knowl-
edge is based upon faith ; indeed, the greater part of knowl-
edge is but a completion of belief. 3
These few thoughts concerning the philosophy of knowl-
edge are discovered, only after winnowing them out of much
chaff, in the thinking of the Middle Ages. The number of
1 Op. Oxon. I. D. 3 quaest. 4, 7, 8.
2 De Anima, quaest. 17 ; and Report. Par. IV. D. 45, 9.
3 Report. Par., Prol., quaest. 2.
56 HISTORY OF OPINION
thoughts which has any essential value would scarcely be at
all increased even if this very brief sketch were indefinitely
extended. But they show how the continuity of human
reflection upon the epistemological problem was maintained,
and what are the matters in respect of its statement and
solution which it was considered necessary to keep before
the mind for its critical consideration.
CHAPTER III
HISTORY OF OPINION {continued)
IT is a statement common among historians of philosophy
that the foundations of the modern view regarding the
sources, the nature, and the criteria of knowledge were laid
by the reflective thinking of Descartes. And there is a cer-
tain warrant in the facts themselves for such a statement.
For it has been shown how that side of the philosophizing of
Augustine over the epistemological problem which, in spirit
and with respect to the significance of its conclusions, was
opposed to the trustful attitude of Origen toward the illu-
mined reason of the individual, and which upheld the au-
thority of the Church against free critical inquiry, dominated
the doctrine of the Middle Ages. Descartes, indeed, took the
appeal away from this tribunal of ecclesiastical authority, to
that which holds its court of judgment within the inmost
recesses of every man's self-consciousness. In doing so,
however, he only returned to the other and better side of the
philosophizing of Augustine himself. Neither in acuteness
of analysis, nor in clearness and beauty of statement, nor
especially in his manner of finding the reality of the soul, of
the world, and of God, implicate in the primary act of cog-
nition, was the founder of modern philosophy the equal of
the Church Father. Indeed, we fear it must be confessed
that, with the exception of Kant and Hume, down to
very recent years, modern philosophy has not been much
superior to ancient philosophy in its handling of the most
important points in the problem of knowledge. Logic and
58 HISTORY OF OPINION
psychology have greatly flourished ; but a satisfying episte-
mology has been less promoted thereby than it would seem
reasonable to expect. The greater freshness and naivete of
those earlier times, and the more ardent and unconcealed
interest in the bearings of sceptical and agnostic conclusions
upon the concerns of ethics and religion, make the thought of
antiquity all the more profitable for studious consideration.
The most distinguished exception to this disparaging view
of modern efforts is, of course, Immanuel Kant. He was
the first of all the world's thinkers to give to the problem of
knowledge a formulated construction ; to attempt the follow-
ing of this problem through many winding ways, down to
its lowest depths and out to its farthest limits, in elaborate
monographs ; and so to set his answer before mankind that
thenceforth its immense significance and portentous claim
could never fail of recognition. Few — even among the
ancient and mediaeval teachers of the Christian Church —
had more upon their heart and conscience the practical out-
come of the attempt at a settlement of the problem. Out-
side of what leads up to, and of what has flowed from, the
Kantian critique of knowledge, there is little to add to
ancient and mediaeval thinking, by way of profit derived
from an historical sketch.
Most of the philosophical works of Descartes bear upon his
attempt to construct a theory of knowledge. His "Rules
for the Direction of the Mind " is perhaps of first importance
here ; while the " Discourse on Method " is more obviously
directed to the same end. Some of the more impressive
"Meditations" concern "Things that may be doubted," etc.
The posthumous " Recherches de la Ve'rite* " deals, as its title
signifies, with similar themes. In the First Part of the
" Principles of Philosophy " Descartes discusses the founda-
tions of human knowledge. Both his "Treatise on the
Passions" and his "Treatise on Man" occupy themselves
with safeguarding the mind against error and assisting it
HISTORY OF OPINION 59
in the ascertainment of truth ; while even in his " Treatise
on the World," his "Happy Life and Summum Bonum,"
and in many of his "Letters," such topics as truth, error,
knowledge, and the validity of our ideas, are continually
brought to the front. That there is a philosophical problem
which demands inquiry into the inmost nature and the neces-
sary limits of knowledge, Descartes expressly affirms. No
subject of investigation, he thinks, can be more important;
indeed, in one of his Rules (No. VIII.) he affirms, "There is
here a question which a man must examine, at least once
in his life, if he love the truth. " But his more distinctive
merit lay in the proposal to make a methodical search after
a science of man's cognitive faculty ; and to build upon the
truth revealed by this search, when conducted to its utmost
possible limits, a superstructure of truths which might with-
stand all the assaults of scepticism. For so important did
Descartes consider method in inquiry that he even goes to
the extreme and absurd length of declaring it better never
to discover the truth than not to use method in its discovery.
It is quite unnecessary for our purpose to rehearse the well-
known Cartesian tenets which have a bearing upon episte-
mological inquiry. The return from trust in the principle
of external authority to confidence in the witness whose light
shines within the soul of every man, is the important contri-
bution which Descartes made to the theory of knowledge in
its more modern form. This inner light is to be disclosed,
however, by the use of methodical doubt. In the primary
fact of knowledge — the cogito, even if it be in the special
form of a dubito — the self -known reality of the subject of
cognition, and the implied existence, as not-me, of the
object of cognition, are both to be discerned. For the cogito,
in barbarous Latin, = cogitans sum : thinking is self-conscious
being; and there are certain forms of this cogito which, when
their nature as mental transactions is fully discerned, can-
not be accounted for otherwise than on the assumption that
60 HISTORY OF OPINION
somewhat other than the thinking subject has being too.
Among those ideas which demand by their very nature an
extra-mental correlate, the idea of God stands eminent and
supreme. It appears, as of its own evidence, the idea of
that which makes irresistible claim to be really existent. It
thus becomes the bridge of Reality between the indubitably
self-cognizing existence of the soul and the existence of the
world of actual things.
The several gaps in that Cartesian argument which sets
the limits and establishes the validity of human cognitive
faculty have often enough been pointed out. Of it all,
only two things remain, forever sure and unchanging so
long as the fundamental construction of man's intellect
remains sure and unchanged : these are, first, the rights of
methodical doubt, or (to use a more modern term) of a
critical self-examination on the part of the knower; and,
second, the necessity for acknowledging, theoretically as
well as practically, the ultimate limits of this doubt when,
by the critical process itself, we stand face to face with the
implicates of every act of knowing.
It was a hindrance to the development of epistemology
that Descartes' elaborate doctrine of method, with the
unwarrantable hopes and perverse trials which it excited,
became so influential with his successors. For this he is
himself largely to blame. He was always a dry light, with
a mind better adapted for mathematics and speculative
physics than for critical philosophy. His most admired
type of investigation was the mathematical method, as
involving "the analysis of the ancients," the "algebra of
the moderns," and the application of both to geometry. The
scope of this method he considered unlimited;, and for it he
claimed a decided superiority over all other methods, as
being the origin and source of all truths. In fact, however,
the entire Cartesian method, as employed by its founder, is,
in the last resort, an appeal to the self-conscious subject
HISTORY OF OPINION 61
of all the states of knowledge. The final test of all truth
is "the self -evidencing conception of a sound, attentive
mind." Windelband 1 is, then, justified in affirming that
the disciples of Descartes confounded "the relatively free
creative activity " which Descartes himself had in mind (the
analytical method as he pursued it) with "the rigidly de-
monstrative system of exposition which they found in
Euclid's text-book of geometry." In "all the change of
epistemological investigations until far into the eighteenth
century, this conception of mathematics was a firmly estab-
lished axiom of all parties." It reached its culmination in
the pantheism of Spinoza, where, without previous critical
examination of the underlying assumptions of the mind, a
logical systemization of the most abstract conceptions more
mathematico is identified throughout with the essential truths
respecting the really Existent. But even in Spinoza's case,
the purely speculative interests were not left wholly without
suggestion and control on the part of the practical and the
religious. And at the last, the glow of that love which is
the attitude of the philosophical mind toward the Absolute
One warms and illumines the theorems of his barren and
frozen theological geometry. In the total system, side by
side with the beginning "Definition," "By substance I un-
derstand that which is in itself and is conceived through
itself," stands the closing axiomatic "Proposition": "He
who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his
affects loves God, and better loves him the better he under-
stands his affects. " Thus the way of mathematical demon-
stration, on the unverified and uncritical assumption that
conceptual gymnastics by seizing the rope let down by
Euclid can climb alone to the heights of insight into Ab-
solute Being, has become the way of salvation. It was in
more simple and effective, if less elaborate fashion, that
Jacob Boehme, and the Mystics generally, controverted and
1 A History of Philosophy, p. 395.
62 HISTORY OF OPINION
abandoned the Cartesian theory of knowledge. With them,
as with Spinoza at the last, the affectional and emotional
interests prevailed — through help of the stimulus given to
claims of knowing by means of faith, intuition, and the
unreasoned leap to the seizure, as truth, of what the soul
ardently desires.
It was the Englishman John Locke who first pursued in
more elaborate researches the psychological path to the prob-
lem of epistemology. But alas ! like so many of his avowed
or unconscious followers, he was guilty of the fallacy which
lies in the supposition — even now so widely current — that
a survey of the superficial content of our individual cogni-
tions, and of their more obvious associations and logical
relations, is a sufficient answer to the quest for a phi-
losophy of knowledge. Thus having led us face to face with
the problem, he leaves both us and it hanging in mid-air.
It is indeed difficult to classify Locke with respect to the
position which he assumes toward truly epistemological
questions. It is, therefore, easy to deny that it is either the
position of sensualism or the position of idealistic empiri-
cism, or that of unqualified empiricism. 1 The epistemology
of Locke is, doubtless, an espousal of some sort of empiri-
cism ; but then of what sort ? To this the most obvious
answer seems to be that he never clearly comprehended the
inquiry into the nature of knowledge as a speculative prob-
lem, which requires an analysis that goes beyond the analysis
of descriptive psychology and results in disclosing and test-
ing the ultimate metaphysical assumptions implicate in all
exercise of cognitive function. To be sure, there is a recog-
nized problem of knowledge in pursuit of some answer to
which his whole course of investigation conducts him. He
is induced to recognize this problem by following out his
first and purely psychological inquiry, — namely, as to the
1 Thus Grimm denies that any of the current descriptions is satisfactory as
applied to Locke. See " Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems," p. 340.
HISTORY OF OPINION 63
rise of the ideas in grounds of inner experience. Even here,
a soul, as a real being with an inherent capacity or sus-
ceptibility to special forms of excitement, is assumed by
Locke from the first. Certainly the founder of English psy-
chology was very far from intending to teach a science of
"psychology without a soul."
But from the very first, too, as Locke himself assures us
in his own account of what led to his investigations " Con-
cerning Human Understanding, " and of what he hoped to
accomplish by these investigations (namely, first, to " inquire
into the original of the ideas ; " secondly, " to show what
knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the
certainty, evidence, and extent of it;" thirdly, "to make
some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith, or
opinion "), a there is a goal held up to view which the plain,
historical method he pursues can never reach. " Knowledge
of our capacity a cure of scepticism " is the heading of one of
the earlier articles of his book. But when we are informed
that, besides the presentations of sense, there are in con-
sciousness certain other ideas, "originally begotten," which
proceed from the operations of the thinking activity itself,
and which become apprehended by reflection upon them, the
need that criticism should be applied to these ideas is ob-
vious enough. But if either of these classes of ideas, when
— to use the Lockean expression — we "become conscious of
them," are held to constitute cognition in the special sense,
then the problem of epistemology is upon us with its full
force. For the " original " of the cognitions is drawn from
experience; but the cognitions contain what appears to
transcend experience ; and thus what Locke defines as " the
apprehension of the agreement or non-agreement of our
ideas " is, as yet, not cognition at all. To explain its being
transmuted into cognition, Locke has only the assumptions
of a naive, common-sense realism. His account of "the
1 Book I., chap, i., 3.
64 HISTORY OF OPINION
origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge " comes
to an unsatisfactory end within the field of a descriptive
psychology. It never becomes a truly epistemological affair;
for it never bases itself upon a thorough sceptical inquiry
and critical analysis of the processes and postulates of all
knowledge. And the same shirking of the real problem of
cognition, under cover of a descriptive psychology or a
formal logic, has characterized the work of English writers
almost down to the present hour.
Perhaps the most important contribution which Locke
made to a future theory of knowledge lay in the emphasis
he placed upon a distinction between the primary and the
secondary qualities of things. Berkeley, while pushing
sceptical inquiry into the field of qualities of the primary
order, the cognition of which was with Locke a kind of copy-
ing-off process, still confined his critical philosophy to the
nature and validity of sense-perception. He raised, how-
ever, one forceful question in such a way as henceforth to
allow of only one intelligent answer. How shall aught, not
in reality mentally represented or mentally representable,
be similar to that which is mentally represented ? What
cannot in any manner or degree be mentally represented,
that cannot in any manner or degree be cognized as really
existent. It is here that the epistemological problem comes
into closest contact with psychology.
In the " Siris " Berkeley takes the position that phenomena
— apprehended each for itself, as it were — cannot yield
cognition. Their combination through rules or laws is
necessary to make the actual world intelligible; and the
corresponding combination of our mental representations
is necessary to make cognition possible. To be perceived is
still held really to be; but now we are informed that God is
the ground of all reality, and that to be a mode of his law-
abiding spiritual activity is, for things, really to be. Thus
those things which formerly seemed to constitute collective
HISTORY OF OPINION 65
reality are known to be only fleeting phantoms ; God is the
one true principle of unity, of identity, and of existence.
Knowledge is, then, the work of intellect or reason. Sense
and experience make us acquainted with the course and
analogies of phenomena (natural events); thinking, reason,
intellect, brings us to the cognition of them and of their
causes.
It was, however, the acutely critical activity of Hume
which began to give to the problem of the philosophy of
knowledge its more nearly modern and final shape. This
critical activity was, indeed, most effectively directed
toward entangling the fundamental concepts of human cog-
nition in seemingly hopeless contradictions. Nor can we
agree at all with Riehl 1 in attributing to the Scottish phi-
losopher the same motif as that which stimulated Kant, —
namely, to lay the foundations of cognition for practical
purposes more securely in rational faith. From the nega-
tive and destructive effort of Hume, however, came a most
important positive result. It was made clearer that cer-
tainty, and true knowledge as always implying certainty, is
not attainable through mere thinking, or concepts. From the
psychological point of view Hume inquires, much more
acutely and fundamentally than did Locke, into the "cer-
tainty " as well as the " origin " of human knowledge. It is
perhaps not incorrect, then, to speak of Hume as the first to
develop a critical theory of knowledge out of the Lockean
psychology of ideas. His supreme effort was to show how,
admitting that criticism of the content of consciousness must
lead us to scepticism concerning the reality of our knowl-
edge, nevertheless the appearance, the conviction, of real
knowledge arises as a matter of fact. Thus he aims at a
complete psychological account of the origin of cognition,
as comprising those beliefs and ontological postulates which
practically defy the assaults of a theoretical criticism.
1 Der Philosophische Kriticismus, I., pp. 66 f. ; but compare p. 69.
5
66 HISTORY OF OPINION
In Hume's account of the nature and process of knowledge,
however, nearly everything is superficial and merely descrip-
tive ; while the shifty and loose use which he makes of the
conception of "experience" tends to constant confusion.
All cognition, he holds, arises from one of two sources,
and so may be divided into two kinds — cognition arising
immediately from ideas, and cognition arising from experi-
ence. 1 In working up — so to speak — the material which
originates in these sources, Hume emphasizes the imagina-
tion. According to three points of view, this faculty is
wont to bind together the passively received ideas. These
points of view not only form the rules according to which
imagination actively combines the ideas ; they also give the
relations which the mind recognizes as existing between
things. They enter, at least partially, into the constitution
of that object which rests upon experience, and which can,
therefore, never attain an unconditioned certainty. These
three points of view give (1) resemblance, (2) contiguity in
space and time, and (3) causality, as the relations under
which this combining activity of imagination makes the
objects of cognition to appear in the guise of realities. Two
of these three classes of relations — identity and the rela-
tions of space and time — consist essentially in a passive
reception of impressions through the organs of sense. But
the relation of cause and effect carries us beyond the im-
mediate perception of the senses, and presupposes a cer-
tain further process which perfects itself within the mind.
Here the distinctive part of Hume's theory of knowledge
comes to the front. This process, which gives objects to
experience as real and causally related, is a process of
feeling and imagination, and not a process of reason. It
is an act of the sensitive part of our nature rather than an
act of thinking. Imagination, then, as the lively potency
of ideas in combination, is the faculty in which Hume lays
1 Treatise, I., iii., section 1 f.
HISTORY OF OPINION 67
the foundation of cognition. Memory, sense, intellect, all
have their basis in imagination, which imparts lifelikeness
to the ideas, and so constitutes the bridge between mere
subjectivity and what we consider a real world of things. 1
This potency itself has its root in a sort of blind emotion on
which our intellect can throw some light, but which it is
powerless either to beget or to destroy. Feeling, therefore,
is shown to be the ultimate foundation of all cognition. 2
As to limits, it follows that, in the strict meaning of the
word, our knowledge cannot reach beyond that of numbers
and magnitudes, and a knowledge of facts. The latter, how-
ever, may be either knowledge of particular facts or knowl-
edge of general facts, — that is, such as have to do with the
properties, causes, and effects of an entire species of objects.
In one class we may place the results of our investigations
into history, chronology, geography, astronomy; in another
class, such studies as politics, and the philosophy of nature,
consisting of chemistry, physics, etc. Ethics and aesthetics
are matters of feeling or taste. 3
In the attempt to validate our knowledge we see at once,
Hume thinks, that one kind — namely, knowledge immediately
from ideas — has a perfect certainty; since the relations of
the ideas admit of face-to-face inspection, or envisagement, as
it were. Its type is the knowledge of algebra, arithmetic, and
geometry. But cognition from experience, or a knowledge of
general facts by means of the principle of causality, has only
a "moral" certainty. In the last analysis, then, as we see
again, certainty does not repose at all on rational grounds,
but on grounds of imagination and feeling. We are com-
pelled "according to nature" to apprehend, or rather to
be impressed with certain ideas, rather than others, in a
peculiarly strong and vivid manner. If we surrender our-
1 Treatise, L, iii., section 8 f. ; Inquiry, section 5 ; Treatise, I., iv., section 2 f.
2 Treatise, L, iv., section 7.
3 Inquiry, section 12.
68 HISTORY OF OPINION
selves to a complete trust in intellect, and try to reason
ourselves into knowledge, we have no other device than the
choice between false reason, utter scepticism, and a return
to unreasoning faith. It thus becomes a necessity of practical
life to cherish certain cognitions.
Few thinkers have had, more than Hume, the fate of influ-
encing the reflections of their successors, by way of suggesting
and stimulating new endeavors and new resulting views,
while at the same time themselves meeting with almost
universal and even scornful and vituperative rejection. Hume
cannot, indeed, be regarded as a serious, though sceptical and
critical, inquirer after a doctrine of cognition, in the fashion
of a Descartes or a Kant, or even of his own more immediate
predecessor, Locke. At the same time it is doubtful whether
any one in modern times, with the single exception of Kant,
whom he stimulated and to whom he handed over his central
problem, has made more important positive contributions to
a theory of knowledge than those which may be gathered from
the writings of this philosopher. A modern writer 1 on the his-
tory of this theory has declared that Hume ends by doing
away with all important distinctions between human reason
and brute instinct ; and, indeed, that thus he does away with
knowledge altogether. The critical part of our investigation,
however, will make it apparent that knowledge is impossible
for man without admitting the validating force of those men-
tal attitudes, or activities, which are closely akin to wdiat we
so vaguely call " instinct " in the lower animals. And they
who make knowledge purely a matter of intelle dualizing, and
who disregard what is contributed by imagination, feeling,
and will, do away with real knowledge, as men actually have
it in the concrete, warm, practical life of work-a-day experi-
ence, quite as completely as does the sceptical theory of
Hume. Moreover, in concentrating attention upon the syn-
thetic force of blind imagination, in emphasizing the value
1 Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkeuutuissproblems, p. 557.
HISTORY OF OPINION 69
and necessity of unreasoning beliefs, in holding that the
intellectual use of the causal principle can never of itself
serve as a bridge between the subjective world and things-
in-themselves, and in concluding that our choice of certain
practical postulates will be necessary in the last resort to
validate our cognitions, what did Hume do but anticipate
much which Kant subsequently elaborated in detail ? And
as to manner of saying it, we are obliged not infrequently to
ascribe the greater merit to the Scottish rather than to the
German thinker. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Hume's more
prominent opponents in his own country, the Scottish Realists,
had not the insight to see what advantages were offered to
them in their advocacy of ethical and religious truths, if,
while pointing out the insufficiency of his sceptical analysis
of the data of consciousness, they made good use of its several
positive conclusions. And so, the rather, they abandoned
investigation into a really critical theory of knowledge, and
made a bid for popular favor in the form of a naive and
uncritical return to the position of Realism.
"With Leibnitz the epistemological problem is never pri-
mary ; the nature of substance is his primary and all-impor-
tant problem. It is not until about 1684 that we find in his
writings any clear recognition of the existence of such a
problem. Both before and after this date, what with Des-
cartes was a criterion of truth becomes with Leibnitz an
ontological predicate. Leibnitz was at first one of the most
consistent supporters of the prevalent view which made
mathematics the type of all genuine cognition. He was
jesting, indeed, in his " Specimen Demonstrationum ; " but he
was seriously of the opinion that philosophical controversies
ought to end in a philosophy which could state its conclusions
in as clear and certain a form as that employed by mathe-
matical calculation. 1 Hence arose his thought of writing
out the results of reflective thinking in general formulas,
1 See "De Scientia Universali seu Calculo Philosophico," 1684.
70 HISTORY OF OPINION
more geometrico. Hence also his idea of the distinction
between eternal truths and truths of fact (yerites eternelles
and verites de fait). The former need no proof, are in-
tuited as true in themselves, as " first truths " or " prime
possibilities."
As to the nature of knowledge, Leibnitz's position is largely
determined by the leading motive in all his philosophical
thinking, which is the reconciliation of the mechanical and
the teleological views of the world, so as to unite the scien-
tific and the religious interests of his age. To this end the
important principle was announced and expounded : " Sub-
stance is a being capable of action." This principle, although
ontological in its character, could not fail to have a most
important bearing upon the epistemological problem. By
it the Cartesian co-ordination of the two attributes of sub-
tance (extensio and cogitatid) was again abolished : the world
of consciousness becomes the truly actual ; the world of ex-
tension is phenomenon. Thus Leibnitz " sets the intelligible
world of substances over against the phenomena of the senses,
or material world, in a completely Platonic fashion." x Sub-
stance becomes a unity in plurality, after the pattern of the
self-cognizing unitary being of mind ; and space and time
both belong to mental being. Even the deeper sense and
justification of the ambiguity into which his doctrine of the
monads, each one " representing " the world of reality, be-
trays him, as Windelband declares, has its truth " in the
fact that we cannot form any clear and distinct idea whatever
of the unifying of the manifold, except after the pattern of
that kind of connection which we experience within ourselves
in the function of consciousness."
It was mainly the criticism of Locke which compelled Leib-
nitz to develop a theory of knowledge. Concerning the
source of knowledge, he attempts a middle way between the
positions of sensualism and the high-and-dry a priori theory.
1 Compare Nouveaux Essais, iv., 3, §§ 20 f.
HISTORY OF OPINION 71
It is here that his conception of unconscious representations,
or petites perceptions, arises. 1 The further important dis-
tinction is made between states in which the mind merely
has ideas, and those in which it is conscious of having them ;
that is, between " perception " and " apperception." By the
latter he understands " the process by which the unconscious,
confused and obscure representations are raised into clear
and distinct consciousness, and are thereby recognized by
the soul as its own, and thus are appropriated by self-con-
sciousness." The distinguishing activity of the mind as cog-
nitive, the genetic process which conditions the unfolding of
the psychical life, is the taking up of perceptions into apper-
ceptions. 2 The " innate ideas," which with Leibnitz are,
like the categories of Kant, forms of the functioning of in-
tellect in its unification of knowledge, are implicit in the petites
'perceptions, as the involuntary forms of relating activity.
As to the validating of knowledge, Leibnitz would have us
distinguish two kinds of intuitive cognitions. Here he fol-
lows a distinction as old as Aristotle ; but both kinds of
intuition must possess the Cartesian marks of clearness
and distinctness. Then in the case of one form, intuitive
certainty reposes upon the principle of contradiction ; in
the other form, the possibility guaranteed by perception of the
actual fact needs still an explanation in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason. This distinction has reference,
however, only to the human understanding. For the divine
understanding, empirical truths, too, are so grounded that
the opposite is impossible, although it remains thinkable for
us. More and more, nevertheless, did this antithesis between
necessary and contingent truths gain with Leibnitz an onto-
logical significance. God's being is an eternal truth ; finite
things are contingent and exist only in dependence upon the
principle of sufficient reason.
1 Monadology, sections 14 and 21.
2 Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, 4 ; Nouv. Ess. II., ix. 4.
72 HISTORY OF OPINION
In spite of the unsystematic thinking of Leibnitz, and of
the fact that an elaborate and self-conscious theory of cog-
nition never was wrought out by him, 1 he strengthened one
or two truths of immense epistemological importance. With
him, sensibility and intellect are not separate powers or dis-
tinct sources of knowledge ; they are at most different stages
of one and the same living activity with which the monad
soul represents, and comprehends as it represents, the uni-
verse within itself. Nor are the world of soul and the world
of the really existent conceived of as having a " great gulf
fixed " between them, over which some bridge other than
the perfect, living activity of the soul itself mast be thrown
in order to make possible a meeting of these two disparate
worlds. The monad knows the world because its own self-
known life mirrors the world ; its activity is the law of the
world ; its mirroring is no passive reflection of dead and
inert forms of existence, but an active and voluntary ideating.
We are not left where Hume left us, to conclude by force
of a doubtful use of a principle which itself defies the powers
of reason to comprehend or to justify it ; in its own life the
soul envisages force ; and the very principle of all concluding
is itself the ontological law of the life of the really existent.
The claim has been made that the " Nouveaux Essais " of
Leibnitz stimulated Kant to build up its doctrine into a sys-
tem of epistemology. Whether this claim be historically
true or not, there can be no doubt that the lines which had
been followed by the problems and answers belonging to the
philosophy of knowledge, through both Leibnitz and Hume,
united in Kant. To the lonely thinker of Koenigsberg it was
given, first among men, to plan and to attempt the critique
of human cognition in a manner which left the impress of
his thinking upon both problem and its answer to the end
of time.
1 He has himself meditated concerning the foundations of knowledge. " None
are more important," he says in his " First Reflections on Locke's Essay."
HISTORY OF OPINION 73
The space which can be given in this historical sketch to
the Kantian doctrine of the nature, origin, limits, and criteria
of knowledge bears no proportion to the importance of this
doctrine in its influence upon the reflective thinking of mod-
ern times. Certain points will be briefly stated ; for the
common proof of which only the painstaking and thorough
study of Kant can be, in this connection, adduced. For, con-
trary to the somewhat widely prevalent view, there are few
great philosophical writings in whose case single citations,
if not taken in connection with prolonged study of the entire
circle of the same author's writings, carry so little weight as
do citations from the three Critiques of Kant.
First of all, in respect of several most important points
Kant cannot be reconciled with himself. How so thoroughly
sincere, patient, and penetrating a thinker could involve him-
self in such patent inconsistencies, we have probably lost the
historical clues which might possibly enable us to tell in detail.
Although the " Critique of Pure Reason " was so long and
thoroughly excogitated and so quickly written, and although
all three of the critical masterpieces were written at so late
a period in the life of their author as to secure for them his
maturer powers, they bear manifold marks that he had not
thought himself all the way clearly and thoroughly through.
Nor is this deficiency surprising in view of the magnitude of
the task undertaken, of its essentially pioneer character (at
least in the Kantian form), and of the splendor of the work
actually accomplished. Nevertheless, the ambiguities and in-
consistencies of Kant are too numerous and too important
ever successfully to be denied.
But, second, the deeper purpose of Kant remained from the
beginning to the end of his critical era one and the same ;
and this purpose was, by reconciling the two great schools as
to the sources of knowledge, and thus by offering an explana-
tion of the nature of knowledge which should have " sun-
clear " truth for every one who once really understood it, to
74 HISTORY OF OPINION
set irremovable limits to the pretence of knowledge and to
clear the ground from it, in order to make room for the
practical postulates of the life of conduct and of religion.
The " Critique of Practical Reason," with its discovery of the
lost truths of Freedom, God, and Immortality, was no after-
thought with Kant. On the contrary, it was from the begin-
ning his chief concern.
Two or three pervasive causes of defect and of inconclusive-
ness should also be borne in mind in all study of Kant's
treatment of the epistemological problem. He, as is well
known, constantly depreciates the influence of psychology
(or the physiology of mind) upon a satisfactory epistemologi-
cal doctrine. He wishes to keep his critique independent of
all doubtful opinion regarding the descriptive and explana-
tory science of cognitions. It must be constructed of a purity,
of a universally and necessarily convincing character, which
shall correspond to the purity and the necessary character
of the elements criticised. But such an attempt to divorce
the theory of knowledge from a critical opinion upon mooted
questions in the psychology of knowledge is impossible of
execution. The defective psychological basis of Kant is the
cause of many important fallacies in his critical system.
Certain na'ive assumptions of Kant — for example, as to
the satisfactory character of the Aristotelian logic ; as to the
nature of the so-called a priori concepts in general, and of
mathematical concepts in particular ; as to a " pure science "
of physics ; and as to the possibility of setting forth in demon-
strative form the results of a critical estimate of cognitive
faculty — are themselves in need of being subjected to the
severest criticism. To do this, as has often been remarked, is
to follow our leader in the spirit, if not in the letter of his
system of thinking. Especially must inquiry be pressed into
the sources and validity of those ontological postulates which
are so grudgingly admitted in the " Critique of Pure Reason,"
and so generously but unwarrantably introduced into the
HISTORY OF OPINION 75
" Critique of Practical Reason." But about all such dissent
from Kant we refrain from anticipating further the course of
our own epistemological discussion. Enough has been said
to indicate his claims to precedence beyond all predecessors
or successors in this field. They are : (1) the clear and
comprehensive way in which he conceives of his problem ;
(2) the thoroughness with which he employs the critical
method as a matter of fundamental principle ; (3) the defin-
itively ethical purpose which, although often for a time ob-
scured, is really present and dominant from beginning to
end of the critical inquiry.
It has often been pointed out that Kant, by his critique of
human cognitive faculty, intended to mediate between the
extremes of dogmatism aud scepticism. 1 The position of the
dogmatist, who regards transcendental truth as attainable
only by some sort of copying-off process, he overthrows with
the denial that the universal and necessary quality which
such truth possesses could in this way be given to it at all.
But he likewise intends to destroy that kind of scepticism
which persistently overlooks such universal and necessary
quality; and this he will do by showing how it is just this
quality which makes any cognition possible. Thus the
Kantian theory of knowledge appears before us as a living
and inner combination of the two opposed theories held,
respectively, by Wolff and by Hume. Sense and intellect,
intuition and concept, are both necessary to knowledge.
Without intuition concepts are empty, without conception
sense is blind. The real thought safeguarded here is illumi-
nating, and widely extends our view of the nature and limits
of human knowledge. But, alas, the truth of the postulates
which secure the central positions of dogmatic and rational
realism is nowhere treated by Kant to a thorough criticism ; in
1 See, especially, his expressed intention " to steer reason safely between these
two rocks," — the dogmatism of Locke and the scepticism of Hume. (K. d. R.
V. (2d ed.) Analytic, chap, ii., sec. i. § 14.)
76 HISTORY OF OPINION
the " Critique of Pure Reason," it is scarcely even brought to
mind. Then, too, those suggestions with regard to the entire
nature and full import of knowledge, with which the scepti-
cism of Hume is so rich, are not made use of, so as to set
the author of the three critiques himself free from the limi-
tations of his own dogmatic rationalizing. For Kant's world
of reality is cold and formal ; as a world of work-a-day things,
it lacks heart and will ; and even as a world of conduct in
pursuit of ideals, its postulates consist rather of a system of
impersonal laws than of a social community, striving and
counter-striving with reference to some far-off and dimly
descried end of attainable good.
Instructive as it would be, we cannot here follow the scat-
tered indications which show how the critical philosophy of
Kant probably took shape in his own mind. The Disserta-
tion of 1770 is still dogmatic with regard to the problem of
knowledge ; it assumes uncritically a correspondence between
the world of concepts and the world of objective real things.
It was to account for this correspondence, as growing out of
the inmost nature of cognitive faculty, that the critical phi-
losophy was undertaken. As we learn from his letters writ-
ten to Herz in 1772, the "Transcendental Logic" is the
thing on which Kant worked for ten years or more. The
answer which comes forth as the product of so much travail
of intellect is, in brief, this: The judging faculty, with its
twelve forms of functioning (the a priori concepts of under-
standing, the categories) produces the world of objective
real things in the unity of consciousness. This doctrine of
the absolute dependence of all objects of experience upon the
constitutional forms of the functioning of intellect, in the
unit}^ of consciousness, is the Kantian discovery. It was
upon the basis of this discovery that he himself claimed to
be the Copernicus of epistemological science. But we shall
soon be made to see that the way in which its author states
his great discovery, together with the unwarrantable infer-
HISTORY OF OPINION 77
ence which he draws from it, lands us inextricably in a posi-
tion of sceptical and agnostic idealism.
In the development of his great epistemological thesis,
especially in the " Critique of Pare Reason," Kant states the
problem in several different and somewhat confusing ways.
Among these, as the most definite proposal for a science of
science, he affirms that he is aiming at a critique of all knowl-
edge a priori, — that is, of all those universal and necessary
factors of knowledge for which definite and concrete experi-
ences, as such, do not account. " Philosophy requires a
science to determine a 'priori the possibility, the principles,
and the extent of all knowledge." 1 Surely the world needs
to see that " there can be a special science serving as a cri-
tique of pure reason ; " and that there should precede all
attempts at metaphysics a " critique of pure reason, its
sources, and limits, as a kind of preparation for a complete
system of pure reason." But again, the broader question is
proposed as the topic for critical investigation : How is expe-
rience at all possible ? Yet again, the great problem is stated
in form more deferential to the students of mathematics and
physics : How is pure science possible, — (a) mathematics,
and (b) physics ? And why do men so persistently follow the
attempt at a science of metaphysics, in spite of the un-
doubted fact that the issue of all such attempt is only ther
unverifiable appearance of such a science ? Yet once more
the problem is proposed in that form, nearer to the logician's
heart, in which Kant so early began to reflect upon it : How
is it possible that we should frame synthetic judgments which
have universal and necessary validity ?
In all the various ways which Kant adopts for stating the
epistemological problem, there is something common ; and
this common part comprises the essential puzzle of a critical
epistemology. For whether I know things immediately by
sense-perception (or intuition, to use the Kantian term), or
1 New headings in the introduction to the second edition, No. III.
78 HISTORY OF OPINION
know about them by processes of reasoning that rest back
upon observation through the senses, I am alike persuaded
that my consciousness is somehow put in possession of the
truth of things. For knowledge that does not carry convic-
tion of putting us into possession of the truth of things, men
decline to call knowledge at all. Experience is attained ;
science is cultivated and increased ; knowledge grows by
rising through higher and higher forms of synthesis toward
an ideal unity ; but all this, from the psychologist's point of
view, is subjective, is only a succession of more and yet more
complex and contentful states of consciousness. And yet the
moment we consider this as knowledge, it is something more ;
it is the progressively perfect and comprehensive seizure by
the human mind of the objective universe, the increasingly
exact and detailed correspondence of the flowing stream of
man's consciousness with the being and the movement of the
world of things. How can this be ? Only, Kant answers,
because this world of objective reality is the construct of the
cognitive intellect itself, functioning in all its different con-
stitutional forms, but always in the unity of the one unfolding
conscious life.
We shall not attempt to follow Kant into the details with
which he laboriously furnishes us thoughout the first two
Parts of the " Critique of Pure Reason." Our positions both
of consent and of dissent will be taken in the subsequent
chapters, for the most part without reference to him. Two
or three main points of agreement and also of divergence may,
however, be noted in this historical sketch. In his attempt
at reconciling the claims of the exclusively sensational and
the exclusively intellectual theories of knowledge, Kant set
forth more fully than had any one else the complicated and
combined uses of faculty in all our cognition of external
things. Such cognition implies, (1) the arousement of the
sensitive side of mind in response to stimulation from with-
out (receptivity of sensibility) ; (2) the combining activity of
HISTORY OF OPINION 79
image-making faculty (synthesis of imagination — a much
truer statement of the actual facts of consciousness than all
talk of mere passive " aggregation" and "agglomeration," or
even of " association " of sensations and ideas) ; and (3) the
exercise of judgment in one or more of its various forms of
functioning. Without justifying the abstract and separatist
fashion in which this schematizing is wrought out, we, too,
believe that cognition of things is impossible without the
so-called faculties of sense, imagination, and intellect, all
being called forth and developed in their living unity. And
it is not so much the complicated nature of the Kantian
intellectual " machine-shop " with which we find fault as it
is the fact that Kant has left out of his analysis of cognition
two thirds of the complete whole.
With Kant's main conclusion, that no analysis of knowl-
edge is complete which does not recognize the universal,
the necessary, and the eternal as seated within it, and that
no reason for all this can be given which fails to reckon
with the unchanging constitution of the mind, we also find
ourselves in substantial agreement. Certainl}-, many of the
details of his doctrine of the a priori nature of cognition can-
not be maintained. Moreover, his entire conception of this
element, at least as he sometimes presents it, may fitly
enough be criticised. But, however particular and concrete
our experience of this or that act of knowing may be made,
and however contingent and fleeting the mental phenom-
enon called knowledge (the " relativity " of knowledge) may
appear, every " plain man's " consciousness envelops and
cherishes the seeds of that which is absolute and unchang-
ing. That this is so, a thorough analysis of all which is
involved in the most primary cognitions indubitably reveals ;
and how it can be so, can only be explained if, sooner or
later in the course of our analysis, we invoke with Kant
the hypothesis of constitutional forms of functioning for
that living and developing existence we call the Self, or
80 HISTORY OF OPINION
Mind. As the author of the " Critique of Pure Reason "
himself repeatedly states his conclusion, the accredited
objective reality of the world of finite physical phenomena
can be maintained only in connection with the equally
accredited transcendental ideality of the same world. It is
the work of mind which makes the world to appear as a
system of legally related beings. The subjective gives laws
to the objective. The forms of cognizing faculty set terms
to our cognition of things.
But from this positive and relatively indisputable conclu-
sion of a critical study of knowledge Kant leaps at once,
and often without a show even of laying the stepping-stones
of an argument, to a wholly negative and agnostic position.
Space and time are, without further critical examination,
declared to be " mere form of our intuition " (blosse Form
eurer Anschauung) ; " they can never tell us the least thing "
about that eatfra-mental reality which, however, — as Kant
himself asserts, either naively or perforce, driven by the uni-
versal conviction, — lies at the foundation of, and is the
ultimate explaining cause of the phenomena. 1 Now it is
plain that unless time has some kind of transcendental
reality, change cannot be a characteristic of the real world ;
and if we are not able to affirm or to postulate the reality of
change, knowledge itself — both as respects its subjective
content and its trans-subjective reference — becomes impos-
sible. One way of recovery, however, consists in showing
that throughout Kant's discussion of both space and time,
the question as to the psychological origin and nature of
human mental representations corresponding to these words,
and the question as to the possibility and the nature of the
ontological correlates of these forms of mental representa-
tions, are constantly confused. In this confusion the true
epistemological problem, as to the nature, extent, and proof
1 See the " General Remarks on the Transcendental ^Esthetic " in the second
edition.
HISTORY OF OPINION 81
of the truth of our mental representations is almost wholly
lost out of sight.
So, too, it is declared by Kant concerning all the consti-
tutional forms of the functioning of intellect in the knowl-
edge of things, that they are mere forms of our minding, and
can never tell us anything about the transcendental reality
of things. The categories, indeed, seem " to be capable of
an application beyond the sphere of sensuous objects. But
this is not the case. They are nothing but mere forms of
thought." 1 Matter itself is substantia phenomenon. It is
never known as anything but the intellectualized "phe-
nomena of the external sense." And as to "the transcen-
dental object, which is the ground of this phenomenon that
we call matter," it is a "mere somewhat" (ein Mosses Utwas,
a nescio quid) of which " we should not at all understand
what it is, even if some one could tell us. " 2 Such nescience,
dogmatically asserted and boldly declared forever irremov-
able, is the negative conclusion of the Kantian critique of
knowledge; and that, as to the assumed entities which lie
within the comparatively narrow limits of what is admitted
to belong to the sphere of knowledge. But when the case
comes forward for adjudication upon the merits of the
claims put forth to know the Self, and God, or any invis-
ible non-sensuous realities, it goes much harder against
the plaintiff. For in all this realm, according to Kant,
intellect is lured on by an irresistible dialectic of self-deceit
(eine Logik des Scheins). And by this he will not allow us
to suppose that there is meant such an estimate of probabili-
ties, or balancing of postulates, as often we must accept in
the "room" of surer cognition, and must make use of as
man's best substitute for demonstrated truth. But he would
have us understand that all our choicest structures of rea-
1 On the " Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and
Noumena."
2 " Of the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection."
6
82 HISTORY OF OPINION
soning on such subjects are full of the dry rot of innumer-
able paralogisms and antinomies. Therefore they vanish in
dust and ashes of this same illusory dialectic, as often as
the finger of critical inquiry touches them.
As to the truth of the charge that human reason is involved
in hopeless "paralogisms" and "antinomies," we shall
inquire more particularly in a later chapter. And the
inquiry will show that most, if not all, of these alleged
paralogisms and antinomies exist in rational consciousness
only as they are put there by the critic of reason himself.
Such of them, however, as cannot be quite so summarily
dealt with will be seen to be premises, or starting-points,
or incitements, to the outreach after those higher truths
in the full apprehension of which the very appearance of
paralogism or antinomy passes away. But what we wish
now to cry out against involves two quite unwarrantable
assumptions in the critical philosophy of Kant. The first
of these is his proposal to limit the extent and the claims of
experience, with its ripening into full fruitage of assured
knowledge, to the domain of sensuous cognition. Episte-
mological criticism itself shows that neither scepticism nor
agnosticism can maintain any right to dig a ditch between
the domains of the things of sense and the things of the
spirit. Or, at any rate, if scepticism digs such a ditch, and
agnosticism consigns to it the alleged entities of the soul
and of God, it is quite impossible to keep the choicest curios
and even the most substantial furniture of the physical
sciences from being flung unceremoniously into the same
ditch. The things of science need salvation both by faith
and by works quite as much as does the soul of man or the
soul of the World-All.
But, second, we object to the off-hand assumption that —
to employ the Kantian terminology — the transcendental
ideality of things is identical with the transcendental non-
reality of things. A protest to this crucial estimate of the
HISTORY OF OPINION 83
use made of the critical method by the author of reason's
Critique has already been entered. But the protest needs
at this point some further explanation and enforcement.
Let it be granted that all cognition is, as described by
psychology and handed over to the philosophy of knowledge
for its profounder analysis, a subjective or ideal affair. Let
it also be granted that all cognition, regarded as giving us
a world of objects which are set in fixed and legal relations
to each other, can only be accounted for by referring it to
fixed laws, or constitutional modes of the functioning, of
the cognizing subject, — the human Self or Mind. Let it
also be granted that no means can ever be discovered, not
only of knowing but even of imagining in the most shadowy
way, what are the nature and modes of behavior of so-called
" things-in-themselves, " — meaning by this realities regarded
as out of all relation to the cognitive human mind. Still
the assumption which Kant impliedly finds fault with
Aristotle and with all his own predecessors for making —
namely, that the fundamental forms of cognition also some-
how correspond to the forms of the being of things given in
cognition — cannot be curtly dismissed. At any rate the
denial that this correspondence is actual, or that it may be
actual, cannot be dogmatically made by the critical investi-
gator of cognitive faculty, who remains faithful to his task
of analyzing and explaining the entire structure of human
knowledge. In fact, we shall show that some such assump-
tion is of the very essence of cognition itself.
To put the same protest in yet more familiar terms, let us
suppose that I am told: "All this fair and orderly world
of so-called material things is but phenomenon of your
consciousness. Sun, moon, and star, as well as the clod
beneath the foot and the rose on the bush, and even the child
or the wife by your side, is, and ever must be, for you, this
only — your idea." What response is possible but this? —
"Yes, truly, no object of knowledge exists for me, except
84 HISTORY OF OPINION
as I know it to exist ; and for me, there is nothing known,
without my cognitive activity. " But suppose I am further
assured that the case is worse than this. All the perma-
nent and necessary forms of the things you know — what
they appear to you to be and to do — depend upon the char-
acter of the tissue, as it were, upon the warp and woof, of
your cognitive faculty. This knowing of yours is your
knowing ; it is your finite, relative, and merely human way
of sensing, imagining, and thinking things. Yes, still
truly, although, perhaps, not quite so obviously. For I
know no way of knowing but that which I suppose I share
in common with my fellow-men. I also suppose, if I should
ever come into possession of quite other and now wholly in-
conceivable ways of knowing, that these, too, would still be
my ways of knowing. And if 1 could not recognize them as
" my " ways, then this new form of mentality would not be
what I now call "knowing;" nor could I communicate its
content to other minds, or even know of the existence of
such minds, unless I then, as now, supposed that these other
minds were of like constitution with myself.
At this point we come upon the fundamental fallacy of the
Kantian critical philosophy in its effort to accomplish the
end which it deliberately chose as the highest of its entire
endeavor. This end is the placing of the life of conduct
upon sure foundations. "I had, therefore," says Kant, 1 "to
remove knowledge in order to make room for faith. " " All
speculative knowledge of reason is limited to objects of
experience (the world of things regarded as merely phe-
nomena) ; but it should be carefully borne in mind that this
leaves it perfectly open to us to think the same objects as
things by themselves, though we cannot know them. " Thus,
in the "Critique of Practical Reason," the transcendental
realities, and the actuality of our non-sensuous relations to
them, are brought back to our possession, but only as postu-
1 Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason.
HISTORY OF OPIXION 85
lates needed for the life of conduct. We may act — nay, we
are bound to act — as though a world of ethical personalities
constituted like ourselves were in existence, and as though
our thoughts about God, freedom, and immortality were
true; we must not, however, affirm that such realities are in
any way, or degree, given to us as objects of knowledge.
Now the inadequate and false psychology which teaches
the doctrine of a " thought " justifiable about things, which
neither starts from nor leads to safer foundations of knowl-
edge, and which separates cognition and belief as though
they referred to totally different spheres of objects, will be
exposed in the proper place. What is here necessary to
emphasize with regard to the outcome of the Kantian critical
philosophy is this : Human nature cannot be divided into
mutilated halves, one of which is valid for the cognition of
sensuous things regarded as mere phenomena, and the other
of which is valid for the rational apprehension (''thinking
about," "having faith in," or seizure in anyway — call it
what you will) of transcendental realities. Human nature,
as cognitive faculty, is one thing throughout ; its functioning,
in all spheres, is as a living unity ; its growth, in all stages
and degrees of development, falls under the principle of
continuity. The man of science is also the man of good or
bad moral character and the man of religion or irreligion.
When knowledge has been, whether rudely or ceremoniously,
banished by the front door of the temple of reason, it cannot
afterward, whether pompously or surreptitiously, be intro-
duced again by the back door concealed beneath covers
labelled "faith," or "practical postulate." Religion itself
is an attitude of the whole man, — intellect, feeling, will.
Knowledge is also an attitude of the whole man, — intellect,
feeling, will. Mere thinking, or pure faith, is as impotent
in ethics or religion as it is in science. But there is no
science that is not of faith, and does not include thinking.
To return to our critical estimate of Kant, one is forced
86 HISTORY OF OPINION
by every interest of logical consistency, however strongly
adverse other interests may be, either to refuse, almost in
toto, the conclusions of the " Critique of Practical Reason "
or thoroughly to revise the conclusions of the "Critique of
Pure Reason. " Accepting the negative and agnostic outcome
of the earlier treatise one cannot follow Kant in accepting
the positive gift to a rational faith that is offered by the later
treatise. Here is the case of a clear-cut and inescapable
" either-or. " Believe something and know something, and
so perchance be saved for this world and for the world to
come; or else doubt and deny consistently, and manfully
face your fate in both worlds.
The indubitable law which Kant finds implicate in moral
consciousness, in the form of a categorical imperative, he
states as follows : a " Act so that the maxim of the will can
always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal
legislation." There is something painful about the effort
which the great critic of all cognitive faculty makes to
expound the " purity " of this law, its perfect freedom from
all doubtful and empirical data. The argument by which
he supports this favoritism shown to the practical reason (as
though, indeed, it were a separate faculty or store-house of
faculties), and proves its " primacy " " in its union with the
speculative reason," fails completely. Unless the life of
conduct is known to be regulated in accordance with actual
relations of a self-cognizing Self to a system of cognized
realities, — selves and things, — it is absurd to speak of it
as "practical" or as having any "fundamental law." But
if the forms of our cognition are supposed to be merely sub-
jective, and to give objectivity to their own functioning
without implicating corresponding forms in the actual rela-
tions of the, for us, extra-mentally existent, no meaning can
be given to this fundamental law of the practical reason.
"The Kantian theory of knowledge, then, of necessity
1 Critique of Practical Reason, Book I., chap, i., § 7.
HISTORY OF OPINION 87
breaks down when it virtually tries to vindicate for the
metaphysics of ethics and the practical reason what it had
denied as forever impossible in the functioning of the pure
speculative reason. We say 'virtually,' for its author
obviously foresaw that both scepticism and dogmatism
would, from their respective points of view, attack his
transcendental ethical system; and he strove hard to defend
it against the charge of inconsistency. Kant will not at first
call the practical reason ' pure, ' because he wishes not to
assume a pure practical reason, in order rather to show that
it exists. But its existence being shown, he considers that
it stands in no need of a critique to hinder it from trans-
cending its limits; for it proves its own reality and the
reality of its conceptions by an argument of fact. We may
know the fundamental law of the practical reason ; it bears
the form of a command, — a categorical imperative. What-
ever principles are, as necessary convictions, attached to
this principle are postulates of the pure practical reason.
Hence we find Freedom, Immortality, and God restored from
the spaces swept empty by the critique of speculative reason.
" But Kant's categorical imperative is itself only an imper-
fect and faulty generalization from empirical data of ethical
feeling, judgments, and conduct. It is not even an exact
summary of the testimony, in reality, of human moral con-
sciousness. Were it a true generalization, however, and
therefore worthy to be itself called a knowledge, it could be
shown to be dependent for its validity upon many subordi-
nate conceptions and convictions which must also have the
validity of known truths. Otherwise, the categorical im-
perative itself is condemned as the vague and illusory dream
of the individual consciousness. Metaphysical postulates,
other than the three acknowledged postulates of the pure
practical reason, with that inseparably adhering conviction
which makes them principles of all knowledge as well as
principles of all thought, enter into the very substance of
88 HISTORY OF OPINION
this categorical imperative. Beings, with powers called
' wills, ' rationally answering to ends that involve other beings-
not-themselves but like constituted, and who may be expected
to act as bound with their fellows in a system of moral
order — all this, and much more, is involved in the main
principle of the practical reason. But what an infinity of
knowledge, made knowledge by the suffusion of rational
thinking with rational conviction, and in some sort placing
the mind of the individual face to face with a world of
reality, is here ! Some of these are the very things of which
we have been told, as the result of the critical process
applied to speculative reason, that they may not be spoken
of as ' known, ' but may only be permitted to thought, with-
out hope of finding content for the empty form, no matter
how much we extend the bounds of experience. If these
postulated entities and relations are not real, then the cate-
gorical imperative and all it implicates is but a dream —
nay, it is only the dream of a dream. Must we not then, in
consistency, either include all — and especially the categor-
ical imperative with its accessory postulates — under the
condemnation uttered by consistent scepticism, or else
retrace the steps passed over in the criticism of speculative
reason, and discover grounds for a larger ' knowledge, ' with
its eternal accompaniment of rational faith ?
" The same fate must await all those theories of knowledge
which end in scepticism as the result of critical processes.
Nor is the fate much better of those theories which endeavor
to save from scepticism certain portions of human knowl-
edge, while denying in general the possibility of validating
knowledge as such. The principle of self-consistency is of
the last importance to reason. It is in fact only one form
of stating the undying self-confidence of reason. The prac-
tical exhortation of experience in noetical philosophy is, then :
Let us by all means maintain a rational consistency." l
1 Quoted from the author's " Introduction to Philosophy," pp. 186 f.
HISTORY OF OPINION 89
It would seem as though one lesson in the philosophy of
knowledge should be thoroughly learned for all time from
the example of Kant. Between the outfit of man for a scien-
tific knowledge of the world of sensuous facts and of their
connections, on the one hand, and his outfit for the life of
conduct and religious belief on the other hand, no great gulf
can be fixed in the name of a consistent epistemology. We
cannot " make room for faith " by " removing knowledge " ; we
cannot posit knowledge in spheres where faith has no province.
We cannot virtually discredit the cognitive faculty of man
throughout, and then save to knowledge, or to faith, or to
practical postulates, some specially favored kind of cogni-
tion. Neither can we undermine the foundations of the plain
man's consciousness and trust the superstructure of philoso-
phy's more ponderous and towering speculative thought. 1
In closing this historical sketch we only mention three
attempts subsequent to Kant that supply elements to the
philosophical account of knowledge which his criticism had
either neglected or relatively depressed. Fichte emphasizes
feeling — especially moral feeling; Hegel emphasizes the
dialectical process, or thinking; Schopenhauer emphasizes
the intuitive attitude of will. But neither of these at all
approaches Kant, either in the critical spirit or in the
patient, detailed investigation which the latter brought to
bear upon the problem of knowledge.
Fichte based the validity as well as the constitution of
knowledge upon feeling, as yearning and as certitude. The
criterion of cognition he makes, not insight, as Reinhold
had done, but rather an intellectual feeling of certainty
which cannot be explained. This emotional attitude is in-
separable from every content of thought, and from all activity
1 In Mansel's " Limits of Religious Thought " we have an example of the
futility of trying to secure to faith what has been made impossible or absurd to
knowledge. In Bradley's " Appearance and Reality " we have an example of
the futility of trying to secure by speculative thinking what has been made both
impossible to faith and absurd to knowledge.
90 HISTORY OF OPINION
of thinking. It is, however, only immediate and probable,
not demonstrable; it is to be assumed as necessarily be-
longing to every Ego. But the highest form of cognition
is that which arises out of the ethical feeling of responsibil-
ity, which issues out of a recognized fiat, "Thou shalt." 1
Hegel takes many important exceptions to the conclusions
of Kant respecting the possibility, the criteria, and the
limits of knowledge. To the latter's agnostic outcome he
opposes the claim by logic (now no longer a "logic of illu-
sion") to unfold the very nature of Absolute Being, read-
ing in the inner movement of reason's dialectic, as Kepler
did in the movements of the planets, the very thoughts of
God, after Him. "Thoughts, according to Kant," says he,
"although universal and necessary categories, are only our
thoughts, — separated by an impassable gulf from the thing,
as it exists apart from oar knowledge. But a truly objec-
tive thought, far from being merely ours, must at the same
time be what we have to discover in things, and in every
object of perception." These two elements, Being and
Thought, which Kant had separated, after " denuding them "
of what they have in their united existence, Hegel would
bring together again. The conceptions which are analyzed
out of the process of thinking are the categories of reality ;
they must be understood as "moments" in a living develop-
ment. Our knowledge is not merely of the phenomenon.
The rather "is the phenomenon the arising and passing-
away of that which itself does not arise and pass away, but
is in itself, and constitutes the reality and the movement of
the life of truth."
But this notable and praiseworthy attempt to overcome
the agnostic outcome of the Kantian critique, which Hegel
elaborated, itself issues in positions that are theoretically
one-sided and practically faulty. Our entire epistemological
theory cannot safely be resolved into an assumption that
1 See especially his " Essay on the Grounds of Certainty in Religion."
HISTORY OF OPINION 91
when we have discovered the categories, and arranged them
systematically so as to construct a circle or globus of such
pure concepts, we have justified our faculty of cognition
against all the assaults of scepticism and agnosticism, or
have even succeeded in understanding it. Moreover, the
ontological postulate, or view of reality which conceives of
Spirit as possibly having being-in-itself that is not also
being-for-itself, is full of internal contradictions. Nor are
the Hegelian antinomies much less dangerous to the validity
for reality of our thoughts than are the antinomies of Kant.
Indeed, they may be understood so as to prove more danger-
ous. For Kant's antinomies, if admitted, only affect a
limit to human efforts in applying our sensuous imagination
to subjects with which it cannot rightly claim the ability to
deal. But the antinomies of the Hegelian dialectic, con-
ceived of as an essentially true representation of the nature
of all reality, have their seat in more vital parts of the
organism of knowledge. And, practically, the history of
human experience has since shown that Hegel's philosophy
extols theory too much, and makes it a substitute for
insight, for instinct and feeling, for morality as conduct,
and for religion as life.
There are few passages in any of our modern books on
philosophy which, when read in the light of the day of their
writing, seem more timely and suggestive than the latter
two thirds of the first Book of Schopenhauer's " World as
Will and Idea." In these pages the author, with much ill-
concealed scorn of Fichte and Hegel, and with considerable
invective against their views, propounds his own theory of
knowledge. His earlier work on the " Four-fold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason " presents some of the most
technical parts of his theory in a more systematic form.
His "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy" develops his
views further, though chiefly in a polemical and negative
way. The positive merit of Schopenhauer's utterances con-
92 HISTORY OF OPINION
sists in their bringing forward — if we may venture upon such
a term — the " biological view " of the origin, nature, and
criteria of human cognition. Over against knowledge by
concepts — that knowledge which Hegel identified with the
very life of reality — Schopenhauer maintains the claims of
perceptual knowledge, of the immediate seizure, as a matter
of warm feeling and energetic volition, of the really existent
relations of things and of events. The Kennen of the artist,
or the discoverer, or the true saint, is surer knowledge, he
thinks, and less fraught with erroneous fragments of so-called
" reason's " manufacture, than is the Wissen of the man of
science. For intellect, impelled by the will to live, and
guided by the feeling for what is seemingly good to live by
and upon, brings us more immediately and surely to the
heart of reality. And intellect, in Schopenhauer's vocabu-
lary, is not a reasoning faculty; it is the unreasoned envis-
agement of the presence and significance of the principle of
sufficient reason as constitutive of the world of things.
We need not delay to criticise the extremes to which
Schopenhauer carries his view of the superior value of per-
ceptive as compared with conceptual knowledge. It is
enough at present to say that the marked separation which
he makes between perception and conception is psychologi-
cally false. Knowledge is not, indeed, mere thinking; but,
then, there is no knowledge to be had without, at least, the
primary activities of thinking faculty. And there is surely
no structure of knowledge, no growth and systematization of
cognitions which we can take, even on faith, as representa-
tive of the world of real beings and real events, without
elaborate activity of thought.
We turn now to face for ourselves the different, though
not distinct problems which enter into the one great problem
of knowledge. This brief survey of the history of opinion,
if it does not start us on our way with handfuls of coin
which will pass current in the markets of the present world
HISTORY OF OPINION 93
of thought, may serve to warn us in what direction our
journey lies, through what thickets and swamps we must find
a path, and over what mountains we must pass ; as well as
— surely a no less important lesson — what short cuts we
must avoid taking with the vain hope thus more easily to
reach the desired end. But when we have reached this end,
and look back to find the views we have taken by the way,
all confirmed by the more profound insights and permanent
impressions of those who have travelled before us, we shall
the more confidently believe that the truth of cognition has
been found as it is justified in the truth of things.
CHAPTER IV
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
THE necessity for steadfastly maintaining the proper psy-
chological noint of view in all reflective consideration
of the philosophical problem of knowledge has already been v
sufficiently emphasized. A sketch of the history of opinion
has shown how light broke in (for example, through Augus-
tine, Descartes, Hume) upon this problem whenever an
improved acquaintance with the nature of concrete mental
phenomena was gained. It has also shown how, even in the
case of the greatest of all critics of the human faculty of
cognition, a certain despite of "mental physiology," or of
the natural history of psychical life, and an excessive
credulity toward the accepted forms of logic, was productive
of important errors. Indeed, throughout the historical
development of epistemological philosophy, defective and
one-sided views of the psychology of cognition have been
the chief sources of the fatal extremes of dogmatism and of
agnosticism. We propose, then, to begin our discussion of
the epistemological problem by taking the psychological
point of view.
What has psychology, as the descriptive and explanatory
science of mental phenomena, to tell about the origin, the
nature, and the growth of human cognitive faculty ? Whence
comes knowledge ? What is knowledge ? and What is the
course of its development ? These are the inquiries for which
an answer is now sought from experience ; and for the kind of
answer now sought, there is no proper recourse but to the
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 95
concrete, plain, work-a-day facts of human consciousness.
It is not what the master of the subtleties of scholastic
logic, or the student of psycho-physics by laboratory methods,
or the philosophizer already committed to some metaphysical
dogma thinks about knowledge, — which we now wish to
know. It is rather just what every one actually experiences
who affirms, "I know;" and just what they experience most
fully who have made most advancement in genuine knowl-
edge. But, of course, it turns out here, as everywhere when
search is made for the truth of things, that the content of
life is much richer, and its complexity of method and of
products much greater than human science is easily able to
depict or to comprehend. The plain man's work-a-day con-
sciousness perpetually achieves the end of cognition ; but it is
too deep for the logician, the psychologist, or the philosopher
of any school to fathom. And the danger of error from fail-
ure to include important elements in one's catalogue of the
"facta," or "momenta," implicate in every "I know" is
far greater than the risk of putting more into this catalogue
than life has itself put there. Indeed, the descriptive and
explanatory history of cognition comprises no less than the
whole of psychology.
As to the Origin of Knowledge it is possible to speak
clearly only after the meaning given to the term has been
strictly defined. That psychological fact which induces the
search after its own begetting and birthright becomes an
actual matter of experience only when the records of the
exact history of its sources have been lost beyond the possi-
bility of complete recovery. Men find themselves already
well advanced in the growth of cognitive faculty before they
begin to ask whence this faculty with its resulting products
has arrived. And after a critical inquiry into origins is
undertaken, both the inquiry and the summing up of its re-
sults in recorded experience must take shape either as knowl-
edge or as the pretence of knowledge. Unless I already know,
96 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
with faculties developed far beyond the point when the first
datum fit to be called " knowledge " arose in consciousness, I
cannot intelligently raise the question, Whence comes knowl-
edge to me and to other men ? If examination is made of
the inferior cognitive faculty of the lower animals, or of the
earlier forth-puttings, the budding cognitions of the human
infant's mind, the examination and its conclusions can
assume only those points of view which belong to an adept in
the use of cognitive faculty. Now, while this fact does not
by any means debar us from forming justifiable impressions
as to the manner in which we ourselves, and all other men,
begin the life of cognition, it does limit the nature and
restrict the proof which is accessible to us by immediate
observation of all the actual processes of cognition.
There is one meaning to the word "origin" which is cer-
tainly unwarrantable and useless in the effort to throw light
upon the epistemological problem. Yet, alas, this meaning
has been in the past most frequently, and is now in certain
quarters most persistently, employed. The fallacy involved
in the figures of speech which are commonly employed by
those who undertake the research into the origins of things
physical condemns, for their utter inadequacy, all the so-
called " sensational " theories of knowledge. These theories
find their explanation of the beginning of knowledge in the
assembling somehow of sensations and of the revived images
of past sensations, called ideas, under the well-known laws
of association. It is assumed by them all that when mental
states, or forms of the functioning of mind — even including
those elaborations called cognitions — are described " content-
wise," they are adequately described. It is also assumed
that the particular content called a " sensation, " either in its
original or transformed character as an "idea," exhausts the
entire catalogue of mental contents — the whole life of mind,
even when described "content-wise." Now the peculiar fal-
lacy of which all sensational theories are guilty in this con-
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 97
nection is shared by them with the greater part of the
modern science of origins, as this science is taught by
the current biology. This is the fallacy of so working the
principle of continuity as to do away with essential differ-
ences by substituting for their honest and frank recognition
and explanation a connection between them, often conjec-
tural, under the forms of time or of causal influence. A
similar fallacy afflicts sorely all the psychological sciences,
— the sciences of man both as an individual and in all the
various forms of his relations and development as a race.
It is the very bone and flesh of the hypothesis customarily
applied to these sciences.
In biology one at least knows what real transactions are
referred to, if one hears of the " origin " of the individual
animal from an impregnated egg, or of the " origin " of the
fully developed plant from a germ or seed. In the case of
the animal an actually existent cell from the male parent
has fused with a cell from the female ; and out of the product
of this fusion — though in most marvellous and mysterious
fashion — has followed a growth which results in the full
complement of organs possessed by the adult animal, as
united anew in the offspring. In the case of the plant the
process is markedly similar. So, too, one knows what is
meant when the chemist affirms that water has its origin
in the union of oxygen and hydrogen gases ; or, conversely,
that these gases may have their origin in the chemical
analysis of water. But only a most shallow student of
biological science considers that a complete account has
been given of the origin of the adult by describing the physi-
cal and chemical properties of the egg. For, besides such
more obvious factors in the scientific account of the genesis
and development of animal organisms, there are many others
which must come into the complete account. These may be
roughly divided into two classes: such as take the individual
animal out into what is known of the beings, forces, and
98 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
laws of the "cosmos " at large; and such as end in the unex-
plained mystery of the " nature " of the individual animal.
In the case of the drop of water, too, there is something
vastly more in the compound than can be accounted for by
rehearsing the marriage service over oxygen and hydrogen
gases as a merely numerical formula of 1000 to 2002.
But the case of the student of psychological origins is nota-
bly different from that of the student of biology or of chem-
istry. For the psychologist there exist no real factors, or
actual antecedents, which he may observe in their isolation,
or understand previous to their combination or while they
are in actual process of combining. Strictly speaking, there
are no sensations, simple or complex, and either actually
existent or representatively existent in the imagination and
thought of the observer. So-called sensations are themselves
the product of the analytical activity of self-cognition, — quite
impotent, therefore, to establish any claim to be or to act of
themselves, as though separable from the cognitive process it-
self. To speak of the origin of knowledge from a combination
of sensations is, then, to deceive one's self with a misapplied
figure of speech. Sensations are not entities, even of the
psychological order; and if they were entities, they are not
the kind of entities to offer, by any combination, in however
large quantities and high degrees of value, an adequate ex-
planation for the origin of knowledge.
What has just been said of sensational theories of knowl-
edge is also true of all strictly ideational theories. The
psychological doctrine of Herbart, .especially as it came to
its ripest fruitage in the later work of his distinguished pupil,
Volkmann von Volkmar, has been of great value to modern
psychological science. Its value lias been increased rather
than diminished by its frank avowal of the need of metaphys-
ical standpoints and by its tenacious defence of the propo-
sition that mental phenomena are all to be considered as
" forthputtings " of the unfolding life of mind. But in its
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 99
doctrine of judgment, and of feeling, and of will, — and so
of all these as constituting two thirds or three fourths of
cognition, — its weakness is most manifest. Cognition can-
not, either for its origin, or for its nature, or for its growth,
be considered as completely explained by any theory of ideas.
It is true that the later developments of the Herbartian
doctrine, especially as set forth by Yolkmann, include under
the term " idea " various complex forms of mental functioning ;
true also that they emphasize, in a commendable way, the
active rather than the passive aspect of ideation-processes
(Vbrstellen rather than Vorstellung or Das Vorgestellt).
They thus succeed both in getting a richer content into their
description of mental phenomena, and in regarding these
phenomena " function-wise " as well as u content- wise " much
more faithfully than do the advocates of the sensational
school. But we must not be deceived by increased subtlety
of analysis and more generous use of terminology. As will
be made clear by the detailed and critical examination of the
nature of cognition, every mental positing corresponding to
the words " I know" implies something far more than can be
explained by combination of ideation-processes.
As to the possibility of a purely biological or physiological
explanation of the origin of knowledge, the case is so hope-
less that it is scarcely worth while to argue it. For those,
however, who incline to confuse such an explanatory theory
with another contention quite different, we have presented
the subject in another place. 1
Thus far negatively. In some sort, however, appeal may
successfully be made to modern psychology to render an
account of the origin of knowledge. Such an appeal may
rightfully expect an answer in both of two ways. Psycho-
logical analysis can exhibit those manifold factors which may
be discerned by the self-cognizing mind as characterizing its
activities on the way to, or after it is regarded as already hav-
1 See the author's " Philosophy of Mind," pp. 98 f., 115 f., 229 f.
100 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
ing reached, the mental attitude called cognition. Of course,
by the term " factors," in all such connection, one must not
understand separable entities, or even actual separable ele-
ments or momenta of the complex mental state. But the
trained self-consciousness of every man enables him to ob-
serve with concentrated attention now one and now another of
the so-called faculties of mind, or forms of psychical function
ing, as they are concerned in the living unity of an act of
knowing. This analysis of self-consciousness may be made,
by exercise and study of mental phenomena, by growth in
depth and in quickness of insights, more rich in its response
to the call for a true picture of actuality. The actuality of
cognition belongs to every human consciousness as an incon-
testable fact ; but the analytic discovery and portrayal of this
actuality is a matter of combined science and tact, as is every
other matter of psychic life. And like all matters of psycho-
logical science, this study may be enriched by observation of
others and by the experimental method.
Not only the so-called psychic factors, but also the prin-
ciples according to which these factors combine, may be
made the subject of inquiry. In the actual process of cog-
nition the different forms of mental functioning (which are
the realities corresponding to the word " factors ") rise and
fall in extensity and intensity ; they come forward and take
the lead, so to speak, or retreat into the background of a
relative obscurity and insignificance. In knowing anything,
for example, I am at one instant more obviously sensing it
through this, and at another instant through that, avenue of
sense. In other words, the particular " Thing " is now to
me a thing chiefly of sight ; now of touch and the muscular
sense ; now, perchance, of taste or of hearing. But again,
the same thing, in the same complex process of cognition,
is rather known by being judged to belong to this or that
class of things, or by being thought about as standing in
this or that relation to me and to other things. And yet,
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 101
anon, the same thing is more felt and cognized as opposed
to my will, — a forceful thing, that will not what I will, and
that reveals itself as a resistance to the forthputtings of my
embodied Self. In all this living flux of my conscious life,
this stream of consciousness I call my cognizing Ego, with
the rise and fall of the varying shades of sense, judgment,
feeling, and will, the object there, the " real Thing," becomes
known to me.
In the meaning, then, of giving a descriptive history
(accompanied by certain meagre and tentative explanatory
remarks) of the different factors discovered in what is called
a cognition, and of the way these factors behave with refer-
ence to each other and to the Self, the origin of knowledge
may be said to be explained.
But by the word " knowledge " (" yours " or " mine," or
u his," or that of the race) men generally intend to designate
something more than a. single process of cognition. It is,
indeed, only this single process, and usually only a part even
of any single process, which can be made the subject of intro-
spective or experimental study. But in some sort, the mental
doing and achieving which ends in the judgment " I know "
does take place under the mind's immediate gaze ; it may
be self-consciously known to be going on. Yet even if this
analysis were far more certain and comprehensive than it is,
no one would think of claiming that it alone could result in a
science of the origin of knowledge. The origin of knowledge
may, then, in a certain way be understood by adding to our
descriptive history and tentative explanation of the single pro-
cesses of cognition a somewhat similar history and explanation
of the enlargement of the content of knowledge and the growth
of the faculty of knowing, in the individual and in the race.
Here memory must be summoned to the front ; for it is de-
signed to study our own processes of cognition in their rela-
tions to each other, as they have actually occurred in time.
But memory of our own past states will take us only a little
102 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
way here. Hence the value of comparative psychology for a
mastery of the descriptive history of cognition. On the gen-
eral assumption (which is sufficiently well verified) that our
own earliest mental states, the forerunners and preparers of
the fuller activities of adult cognition, corresponded in kind
to such of our present mental states as appear to have least
of the more prominent cognitive factors, we may employ in-
trospection still further in studying the origin of knowledge.
For example, I may give an attentive study to my own states
of reverie and dreaming (when I am more exclusively bound
under the laws of the association of ideas), or of absorption in
sense or in pleasurable or painful feelings (when I am eating
with a good relish, or suffering from toothache, or enjoying
music), or of abstraction (when I am more " purely " thinking.)
It appears, then, that the stages through which the growth
of cognitive faculty passes in the life of the individual and of
the race, may be made the subject of more or less successful
investigation ; and something may also be confidently asserted
as to the laws which control this growth. In some sort all
this may properly be called a study of the " origin of knowl-
edge." But here again one must not be deceived by the
charms of any particular evolutionary hypothesis, whether
as applied to the development of the individual or of the
race, into supposing that cognition can be wholly accounted
for, as respects its sources, by giving the detailed account of
that which is not cognition. So often as this is done, the
mystery of the actual achievement of cognitive faculty is
explained (sic) by being overlooked or buried beneath a
heap of rubbishy figures of speech.
The only answer, then, which can be given to the inquiry
after the psychological " origin " of knowledge falls most
fitly under the titles, the " nature " and the " growth " of
knowledge. In other words, when that has been told which
can be told in response to the questions : What is cognitive
faculty, regarded as activity and as resultant ? and, What are
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 103
the successive stages in which it unfolds itself? — nothing
more is to be said about the psychological genesis of this
faculty. At no step in these inquiries should it be supposed
that anything is added to the science of cognition by identi-
fying in thought things which are not actually the same ; and
a merely genetic and psychological study of the phenomena
will never suffice for the solution of the epistemological prob-
lem upon this point.
Several most important corollaries follow from what has
just been said ; and these concern both the method of psy-
chological study which is fitted to present the epistemological
problem, and also the character and extent of that which our
study can hope to accomplish. A certain prejudice, not
altogether wrong and unnatural, exists in these days against
the refinements and subtleties of analysis. But a theory of
knowledge, from its very nature, requires, chiefly and almost
exclusively, refinement and subtlety in analysis. The entire
science and philosophy of cognition, the complete mastery of
the secrets of cognitive faculty, is necessarily a matter of
thorough analysis and of sound discursive reasoning upon a
basis of such analysis. Who will tell us all that can be told
about the mystery of the conscious processes of every human
being when he reaches the mental attitude expressed by the
words " I know " ? Who will furnish the theoretical justifica-
tion for that trust in the human mind which it belongs to
human nature, however often and sorely baffled, continually
to cherish ? Who will set the theoretical limits to scepti-
cism, and administer the convincing theoretical rebuke to
agnosticism, for the rational comfort of doubting and despair-
ing souls ? Only he who can most fully and convincingly
expound the length and breadth, the heighth and depth, of
man's power to know, and the extent and strength of the
grasp of this power upon reality. But this end can be
reached only by analysis. Certain partially successful prac-
tical refuges may indeed be offered for extreme scepticism
104 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
and agnosticism. But the only refuge which can serve the
persistent inquirer must be found in a better understanding
of what it is to know, and of all that every act of knowledge
implicates. The path to this refuge is an analytical and dis-
cursive exploration of cognitive faculty itself.
From the same statement of the facts in the case we derive
a certain set of limitations to our expectations concerning
what we may reasonably hope. This consideration of limits
is important, both in a theoretical and in a practical way.
For depressing scepticism and despairing agnosticism are most
often reactions from the breaking-down of unwarrantable
expectations or unreasonable hopes. It cannot be too con-
stantly borne in mind, then, that no standpoint outside of
reason itself is attainable for the more secure criticism of
reason. The self-limiting nature of sceptical inquiry into
the validity of knowledge, and the self-destructive nature of
the agnostic conclusion to terminate this inquiry, will be
shown in due time. But it is well at the outset to remind
ourselves that we, as critics of cognitive faculty, cannot claim
any point of vantage which towers above the cognitive faculty
itself. The philosopher may, perchance, tell the plain man
more than he can himself discover of the content and the
meaning and the implicates of the plain man's mind ; but
what the analyst sees, and even what he imagines he sees, is
all contained within the known or the imagined horizon of
their common consciousness. Special gifts at dialectic, claims
of intellectual intuition, visions of the Platonic ideas, lofty
or profound insights into the mysteries of the transcendental
realm, are all of account here only as they can justify them-
selves and their deliverances at the bar of that reason in
which all men have a share. The critique of cognitive fac-
ulty neither has, nor can attain, a point of view outside of
the domain ruled over by that faculty. Flights sunward are
limited by the sustaining power of that very atmosphere above
whose dust and smoke-begrimed regions they rise.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 105
Again, no certification of knowledge is possible that is not
somehow found actually existent within the process of cogni-
tion itself. If scepticism is self-limiting, and the extreme of
agnosticism self-destructive, it is equally true that the positive
and dogmatic resultant of analysis is self-limiting also. The
process of certifying stops somewhere ; it cannot, of course,
go on forever. And where this " process " stops as a process,
what other kind of certification can be either expected or
actually found ? Plainly, the answer to this question leaves
us with some total attitude of mind, or in face-to-face recog-
nition of certain implicates of all cognitive processes, which
do not admit of any certification lying outside of that which
they themselves possess. In other words, critical analysis of
the nature of cognition, with a view to certify it, ends in the
discovery of aspects, or factors, or implicates, of every exer-
cise of cognitive faculty, which are self-certifying. The in-
quirer after certitude observes or infers his way up to this
point, and then finds certitude in reposing there. The de-
tailed exposition of this truth is the most important and
difficult part of every philosophical theory of knowledge.
But at the outset it promises a saving of time and strength,
which will otherwise be wastefully and even foolishly em-
ployed, to recognize the absolutely inevitable character of this
truth. If by analysis, a fundamental and universal position
of certitude belonging to every act of genuine cognition is
discovered^ we cannot be asked to certify this feeling of cer-
titude by discovering another position of a similar kind. If
by analysis we find that judgment in cognition is of its very
nature, a positing in reality of the object of cognition, we
cannot be required to justify this judgment by a process of
reasoning that could itself only repose on judgments of like
character. Dispute and argument cannot serve as grounds
for that which is assumed in all proposal to dispute and to
argue, invariably and with an absolute necessity. They who
will not be satisfied until they have certified, in infinitum, all
106 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
certitude would found the world of human reason as the East-
Indian myth founded the world of matter. But the world of
human reason is a self-supporting and self-sufficient cosmos,
rather than a flat and level expanse, resting on the back of an
elephant, supported by a tortoise, — and so on.
Or, to bring somewhat the same truth before us in a state-
ment even more naively adapted to make it self-evident, no
other kind of knowledge is possible, or even conceivable for
us men but human knowledge, — or just such knowledge as all
men know themselves to have. This is a primary and invin-
cible epistemological postulate. The picture of a divine in-
tuition that should have no thought in it, as Kant attempts
repeatedly to sketch the picture, is as purely imaginary as the
conceit of a dialectical unfolding of concepts that never come
to a resting-place in any intuitive knowledge. But both are
alike due to the unwarrantable hypostasizing of a one-sided
recognition of the work actually done by all human cognitive
faculty. The effort to exalt cognition by stripping it of some
of the fundamental qualifications which belong to it in a living
human experience, and then to set it over against its actual
self as a something worthy of envy by itself, if only it could
be attained, always ends in the very opposite of what is in-
tended. If our human knowledge cannot be shown to include
some sure envisagement, so to speak, or trustworthy mental
representation of the being and doings of the Really Existent,
then no other knowledge more inclusive can ever be the object
of our striving or even the subject of our inquiry.
Let us, then, from the beginning, renounce all vague long-
ings and vain efforts after the absurd and the impossible. It
is not to dehumanize ourselves by a self-apotheosis that we are
called. But, on the other hand, it is not to annualize ourselves
by reducing man's birthright to the limitations of a merely
sensational and ideating consciousness. Epistemology does
not propose to enter upon the manufacture of knowledge, by
putting inferior raw stuffs into an empty receptacle and taking
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 107
out the finished product as the resultant of their combination,
before a bewildered crowd of spectators. The mystery of cog-
nition will certainly not be diminished, it will very likely be
not a little increased, by what the most accurate and thorough
analysis can accomplish. Nor can the seeker after a critical
theory of knowledge secure or maintain any standpoint supe-
rior to that of the multitude of rational souls, from which to
view the nature, or to discover the certification, of cognitive
faculty. What he finds of the supernatural must be imma-
nent in, or implicate within, the nature of all mankind ; what
of the divine must still be clothed in recognizable human garb.
Or, to drop all figures of speech, the thorough analysis and
reflective discussion of the cognitive faculty of man — how it
behaves, how it grows, what is implied in it by way of feeling,
faith, envisagement, postulate, or other form of implicate —
is all that the psychology and philosophy of knowledge can
rightly aim to accomplish.
The details of the first introspective and experimental an-
alysis, and the resulting descriptive history of human cogni-
tion belong to psychology. 1 As to the Nature of Knowledge,
psychologically considered, it will then be necessary here
only to call attention to the following series of propositions,
which form the basis of further reflective thinking upon the
epistemological problem.
All cognition is consciousness. The reverse proposition,
that all consciousness is cognition, by no means follows.
What consciousness is in general, or what is any particular
form or modification of consciousness, cannot, of course, be
known without assuming the activity of self-cognizing faculty.
This amounts to saying that without self-consciousness there
can be no science of knowledge ; and that the systematic study
of the nature, growth, and implicates of knowledge demands
highly developed activities of the self-conscious order. There
1 For these details see the author's " Psychology, Descriptive and Explana-
tory," especially chapters xiv., xv., xvi., xx., xxii.
108 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
is abundant indirect evidence, however, that all the very earli-
est, most of the earlier, and many of the later modifications
of the " stream of consciousness," neither of themselves
amount to cognition, nor do they terminate in a mental atti-
tude which can properly be called an act, or fact of cognition.
But, on the other hand, a continuous stream of cerebrations,
a psychic act or factor, or an inference that is not in and of
consciousness, certainly cannot have the epithet cognitive
attached to itself. The extremest form of a mind-stuff the-
ory, the older or newer forms of the Leibnitzian hypothesis,
which assume an unbroken series of consciousnesses, varying
from zero to the unity of developed apperceptive self-con-
sciousness whether correlated or not with physical and neural
aggregates, have no bearing on the problem of epistemology.
The conception of " unconscious knowledge " remains not only
untenable, but even impossible to frame. One may be par-
doned, perhaps, for saying " I must have felt (or imagined or
inferred) it to be so without being fully conscious at the
time ; " but one cannot say " I knew it, and yet I was
unconscious when I knew. ,,
Whatever may be held as to the possibility of certain lower
forms of psychic manifestation being correlated with the
functioning of the sporadic ganglia and spinal cord of the
lower animals, or with the different parts of those worms
which allow of subdivision without loss of animation, or
with the different micro-organisms, or even with the life of
the plants, cognition appears to require a highly elaborate
nervous organism crowned by a cerebral development.
In Schopenhauer's careless language, knowledge of under-
standing is only the phenomenon of the self-objectifica-
tion of Will in the brain. It is not necessary to occupy
ourselves with the crudities of this, or of any other material-
istic hypothesis on this subject. But the biological connec-
tion of that most elaborate physical organism, the brain, with
the life of conscious cognition is full of meaning. The white
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 109
blood-corpuscles can do certain wonderful and purposeful
things ; and so can the cilia on a bit of skin from the throat
of the frog. So can microbes, and harmful germs, and helpful
germicides, innumerable. How much of such doing, which
seems full of a sort of knowing (a Kennen, if not a Wisseri), is
really dependent on or is, at least, correlated with " momenta "
of consciousness, even if they are not organized into a stream
of consciousness, one cannot very confidently affirm. But
when we approach an act of cognition, properly so-called, we
have long since passed beyond the border-land of the uncon-
scious. To speak of unconscious knowledge would be no less
absurd than to speak of " wooden iron." Just as the physi-
cal basis of all psychic life reaches its culmination, puts forth
its supremely noble blossom in the convoluted hemispheres
of the human brain, so does the life of consciousness reach its
supreme manifestation, its crowning achievement in those
forms of consciousness, called acts of knowledge, which
depend upon the employment in their integrity of these
hemispheres.
All cognition is a conscious process, a process in con-
sciousness. But not only has each act of cognition a con-
scious character; it has also a becoming of its own character;
it is a coming to a peculiar kind of consciousness. The
experimental demonstration of this truth, too, is complete.
Reaction-time is prolonged in some sort of proportion to
the extent, the certainty, and the clearness of the cognitive
process which it measures. If mere sensation is called for,
and signalled as arising in consciousness, then the reaction-
time is relatively short. If sensation, more accurately
discriminated as to quantity or quality by comparison with
a memory-image is demanded, then reaction-time is more
prolonged. But if the full-orbed and perfected act of cogni-
tion, resulting in judgment that posits a relation between
self and its object, with the essential accompanying seizure
of will and feeling of certitude, is demanded, then still more
110 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
time must be allowed for the achievement of so elaborate a
conscious process.
Moreover, each act of cognition, so far as its time-rate, its
order of the succession in fusion of different psychic factors,
and its richness, clearness, and distinctive characteristics
of content are concerned, is an individual affair. No two
human beings are alike in these particular features of their
cognitive faculty. Habits and "types," in multiform combi-
nations of the different kinds of sensation, and of intellec-
tive, affective, and voluntary activity, characterize the
individuality of every person. They also impart individual-
ity to each exercise of the complex faculty of cognition. To
know this or that thing, even by the most immediate and
rapid of observations, is a different affair for different
minds ; a different affair also for the same mind at different
moments of its experience. The unceasing and infinite
variation of that species of mental states which we call
cognitions shows that they are all, properly speaking, not
mere states or statical conditions of consciousness, but con-
scious processes or changing modes of the conscious pro-
cedures of psychic life. Special experiment and ordinary
experience alike prove that, within limits, the introduction
of new elements, whether arising through external stim-
ulus or from internal sources, and with or without con-
scious volition, changes the character of the cognitive issue;
this it does by affecting the "stream of consciousness."
After it gets started, so to speak, we can disturb, divert,
modify the exercise of cognitive faculty so as to alter more
or less profoundly the concluding judgment which marks
the attainment of knowledge. Cognition regarded as result-
ant depends upon the influences which determine the cogni-
tion regarded as a process ; but it is also a matter of sure
proof that cognition is itself a process having a certain
termination, appropriate or perhaps peculiar to itself.
This truth regarding the psychological nature of every gen-
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 111
uine act of knowledge can be brought clearly before self-
consciousness in cases where the conscious process is at the
same time slowly evolved, yet vivid and picturesque, and is
watched and remembered with interest and accuracy of intro-
spection. For example : I am standing at the street's corner,
waiting for a car and looking straight before me, but ab-
sorbed in thought about a lecture to be given later in the day
in a neighboring city. Suddenly the stream of reflective
consciousness is interrupted. All at once I become con-
scious of an obscurely perceived (but, by no means, clearly
apperceived) human figure which seems struggling toward
the focus of attention in the field of consciousness, of a feel-
ing which is a mixture of pleasure in recognition and of
perplexity as to the propriety of recognition, and of a dis-
tinct motor tendency to bow and to raise my hat. This
complex mental "state" (which is not itself, however, a
status, a stationary experience) almost immediately fuses
with another state in which the perception-content has more
clearly defined itself — sensation-wise and memory-wise ;
now the feeling has become a mixture of disappointed expec-
tation and of lingering though fast failing doubt ; and the
motor consciousness is chiefly that of a strongly inhibited
tendency to move the arm upward and to stare at the ap-
proaching form with inquiring eyes. And, finally, the psychic
process that started off on the way to an act of cognition
which would have been recognition of a friend, with its ap-
propriate affective and motor accompaniments or commingled
factors, has become a completed cognition of an object clearly
differentiated from the object expected, a self-recognition of
the just previous mistaken attitude of the mind toward its
object, with the appropriate changes in the affective and
motor accompaniments. To use the language of every-day
life : At first I saw the approaching person very dimly, but
half-unconsciously fancied it was my friend, felt pleased,
and was about to raise my hat and extend my hand. Then I
112 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
saw more clearly, though not with perfect distinctness,
doubted my just rising judgment, experienced a reversal of
feeling and a check to the motor activities which I had
begun. Finally, I clearly and indubitably saw that the per-
son was not the one I had at first imagined, then judged with-
out further hesitation, U I do not know you," and deliberately
suppressed the rising tide of friendly feeling and the actions
which were to give it expression. All this, however, occu-
pied not more than a second and a half. The total expe-
rience was not three successive and separate states, or statical
conditions, of consciousness; it was one living process,
terminating in knowledge. Physiologically described, what
probably happened was this. The cerebral hemispheres, in
which the physical basis of cognitive consciousness is laid,
were preoccupied with those molecular changes which are
the conjectural correlate of the process of thinking rather
than of sense -perception. The lower ganglia and centres
of the brain responded promptly and effectively — accord-
ing to the power which in them lies — to the sensory
impulses thrown in upon them along the nerve-tracts of
vision. Certain ideation and motor responses habitually
connected with similar impulses were awakened in these
lower centres; and the impulses were started down the
motor-tracts. But as these sensory impulses, in the succes-
sive fractions of the second and a half rose, spread over,
and mastered the higher centres of the brain, the character
of the ideation and motor responses became changed. The
new form now given to the latter overtook the earlier motor
impulses and inhibited them before they could get the
muscles well under way. Psychologically described and
explained, however, we have here a cognitive process, going
on to its completion in that mental attitude which is called
judgment, with its consciously recognized content, its feel-
ing of certitude and other affective moods, its support and
outcome in volition as engaged in attention or otherwise, —
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 113
all under the mind's eye. In one word, we have the birth
of cognition, self-consciously known as a conscious process.
All cognition, moreover, is objective consciousness, or
awareness of an object. As to the ultimate nature and sig-
nificance for man's intellectual, moral, and religious life, of
the object given to consciousness in cognition, it is the busi-
ness of the appropriate philosophical disciplines to inquire.
But at present it is simply the objective nature of cognition
as displayed in indisputable psychological facts, upon which
emphasis is laid. Unless the process of consciousness be-
comes objective, unless the stream of consciousness termi-
nates in a "position" taken and regarded by the conscious
subject, as corresponding to the nature and behavior of the
known object, we have no right to speak of it as knowledge.
Mere sensation, mere belief, mere association of ideas, mere
thinking, may perhaps be conceived of, if not actually
experienced, as merely subjective; but knowledge cannot
even be so conceived of, or thought about. By its very
nature it is always objective. Conversely, whatever state,
condition, activity, or process, in consciousness is capable of
being considered as merely subjective, such state, condition,
activity or process is never to be called "knowledge."
Sensation, belief, association of ideas, thinking, may all be
considered as constituents of cognition; without them all, no
cognition were possible. But merely as such, whether single
or in combination, without acquiring by the combination
something more than their inherent subjective quality, they
cannot be identified with cognition. Indeed, it is this pecu-
liar characteristic of objectivity which, as was seen when we
were extricating and defining the epistemological problem
(Chap. I. passim), starts the critical philosophy of knowledge
upon the basis of the full and accurate psychological descrip-
tion of the nature of knowledge.
Of all the profitless fallacies of psychology, old or new,
that is perhaps supreme which explains the act of cognition
8
114 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
by explaining away its peculiar matter-of-fact characteris-
tics. In combating these fallacies at their initial position,
fortunately or unfortunately nothing can be done which is
more effective than to insist upon the actual facts of the
case. These facts are given, in spite of any contradictory
or disputatious doctrine of so-called psychological science,
in every plain man's consciousness. "Fortunately or unfor-
tunately," it has just been said. "Unfortunately" so, if
those students of psychological science who wish to accept
the concrete and content-full actuality of mental life must
be compelled to refute by arguments those who would rule
out of their account much more than half of this actuality.
" Fortunately " so because, when the very nature of science
and of its proofs is understood, it is found that the postu-
lated objectivity of knowledge lies at the base of all scien-
tific research and scientific discovery. Indeed, without it,
the very word " science " has no meaning in such connection.
There are several current and yet specious ways of speak-
ing, which may or may not amount to a denial of the real
objectivity of all cognition. We are often told, for example,
that knowledge can only be "of phenomena." By this it is
ordinarily intended to carry some such concealed syllogism
as the following: Knowledge is merely subjective; its
object is necessarily no thing but what appears to conscious-
ness. Its object is subjective, mere appearance to the sub-
ject. Therefore it is illusory; and cognition must not be
supposed to afford a correct picture or other mental repre-
sentation of Reality. All knowledge is only "of phenom-
ena. " Now some of this and of all similar talk is undoubtedly
true, is merely correct statement of incontestable psycho-
logical fact. But most of it is just as undoubtedly false
from the start, and contradictory of incontestable fact. It
is true, as has just been admitted, that knowledge is always
essentially of consciousness, a conscious process; therefore
subjective. It is also true that the object given to the grasp
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 115
of consciousness, whenever an act of cognition is completed,
is my object, is the thing as known to me. It may then —
borrowing a figure of speech derived from certain acts of
vision which is helpful, but, like all other figures of speech,
needs careful interpretation — be called "a phenomenon,"
or appearance to me in my consciousness. But it is the
very reverse of the truth to say that knowledge is merely
subjective; for until the stream of consciousness, the state
or activity of the knowing subject, has become also objec-
tive, cognition has not taken place. The very problem
in epistemology, which excites the greatest interest and calls
out the supreme critical effort, is just this : How shall we
account for the undoubted and indubitable fact that my
subjective experience can be objectively determined, can
become knowledge of an object ?
"In vain is the snare spread in the sight of any bird."
And this proverb ought to prove true, no matter how foolish
the bird or how skilful the fowler. For suppose that one is
again reminded : " Yes, undoubtedly the phenomenon you
know appears to you as an object, in the fullest meaning of
that word, even as a really and entfnz-mentally existent
Thing; but so it only appears, so you think it to be, and so
it is as phenomenon merely." The answer of escape is ready
as soon as the meshes of this net are made visible. It may
be made in this way: Thus stated, the conclusion totally
perverts and squarely contradicts the facts of experience.
For the very nature of every object of my cognition is such
that, as object, it refuses to be identified with my subjective
condition; it will not be described as my sensation, or my
thought, merely; or as mere appearance to me, as only a
phenomenon. So that the problem remains, deeply and
inextricably woven into every portion of my most funda-
mental experience : How shall I account for the undoubted
fact that when I know, the object of my knowledge is not
mere phenomenon ? Surely, to tell one that cognition is
116 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
only of phenomena is to ask one to accept an explanation
which begins by explaining away the very facts which consti-
tute the problem. " Nor is it true " — to quote from Stumpf 1
— " that natural science deals only with phenomena. There
is not a single natural law which admits of being expressed
as a law of mere phenomena. "
Not more happy and profound, though more convincing to
a large number, is the declaration that man can know only
his own states of consciousness. Here, too, there is truth of
fact mixed up with error in fact and falsehood in inference.
That all knowledge is a state of some one's consciousness, or
rather, a conscious process belonging to the life-history of
some mind, is a fact that cannot be doubted. And how
absurd it is to ask for some other knowledge that takes its
standpoints outside of or above the laws of human conscious-
ness, or for a cognition that is other than human cognition,
has surely been affirmed quite often enough. But to say
that I can know only "states," and among conceivable
"states," only such as I am obliged to refer to my Self as
" my own " states is to contradict twice over the plainest and
most universal facts of knowledge. Indeed, it would be truer
to the actual, concrete experience of mankind to remark that
one can never know any mere "states of consciousness,"
much less one's own states simply. For knowledge is not
more truly to be described as " of states " than it is to be
described as " of phenomena. " Properly speaking, such ex-
treme solipsistic psychology is a meagre and yet false way
of identifying cognition with self-consciousness. To be con-
sistent, it must end with the denial of cognition altogether ;
and it must couch this denial in terms so absurd as really to
be unstatable.
It may be granted, as an assumption implied in a construc-
tive theory of psychology, that having states of consciousness
does not necessarily imply cognizing them as one's own. In
1 Psychologie uud Erkeiintnisstheorie, p. 316.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 117
other words, being conscious and being self-conscious, even
if a trace of the latter be involved in every known case of
the former, are not identical processes. But it must be, not
simply granted as an assumption, but also recognized as a
fact, that to speak of a knowledge " of states only " is to
misrepresent all our cognitive experience. That which is
given to the cognizing subject as its object in every act of
cognition, is something more than "states," whether of his
own or of another being. Indeed, the very word, whether used
as applied to the self or to things as known by the self, is
a relative term ; and this word no more fitly represents a real
object of cognition than do phrases such as " pure " substance
(or substance unqualified) or "pure " quality (qualification,
that is, which qualifies nothing, and is — so to speak — auf
der Luft). What is meant by "states," and by all terms
which can be substituted for this term, is the more or less
continuous condition of some being, its mode of existence or
of behavior regarded as filling an interval of time. If, then,
we mean to limit the cognitive faculty of man by identifying
the object of cognition with his own states simply, and thus
to deny its power to apprehend or comprehend real beings as
in those states, we make the mistake of identifying an ab-
straction with an actuality. This mistake is the more fatal
because it happens at the very beginning of an analysis of
the genuine act of knowledge. Phenomenalism and the ex-
tremes of individual idealism are forever, professedly, fight-
ing shy of abstractions. They exhibit an anxiety, usually
earnest but often excessive, to get at the concrete facts and
to tell a plain, unvarnished tale about them. Hence the
customary amount of polemic in the treatises on mental life
produced by them, and which is directed against hypostasiz-
ing the results of the thinking faculty. But what, taken at
its literal worth, is this conclusion which they themselves
support ? It is an hypostasis of the abstract and purely
imaginary statical condition of a being, which is made to
118 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
take the place of the living and acting reality. The ab-
straction ends in a denial of the possibility of knowledge,
because the essential and unique characteristic of the act of
knowledge, as determined by its objectivity, is removed from
the primary fact of experience. This characteristic assures
us that the object of cognition never is, and never can be
defined as "states only;" it ever is, and ever must be,
"existences in states," — real beings that are suffering or
acting in certain ways.
Suppose, however, that the primary psychological datum
as regards the object of knowledge is somewhat more gener-
ously treated, while stated in terms of essentially the same
theory. We are now invited to consider the declaration
that the only possible object of cognition is the being I call
myself, as known to myself in its various successive states.
"I can know only my own states of consciousness" now T be-
comes equivalent to this : The only way of certified knowing
is, after all, self -consciousness, and the only kind of imme-
diate knowledge is the knowledge of the Self — my Self (a
word which may be identified, according to the psychologist's
humor toward the prospect of ethical and theological conse-
quences, either with the so-called " empirical Ego " or with
a Ding-an-sich Ego which forever calls forth but deludes and
eludes its own cognitive powers). The false positions and
mistakes in philosophy which follow upon setting such a
limitation to the objectivity of knowledge, will continually
appear more clearly as our epistemological analysis moves
forward. It is sufficient at present to notice that the con-
clusion at which this theory of knowledge arrives, and
usually without any sufficient show of examination or argu-
ment, is all involved in its starting with a denial of the
plainest facts of the conscious cognitive process. That pro-
cess is, in its very essence, as experienced by every man,
objective with reference to, and with implicates of, a wof-sclf,
— this, just as certainly and truly as of a self-conscious Self.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 119
Perception by the senses, when it reaches full-orbed apper-
ceptive cognition, is just as undoubtedly an act involving the
reality of its object, as is the clearest, compietest conscious-
ness of one's own states. What philosophy has to say of the
more ultimate natures, and of the relations in reality, of these
two classes of objects, does not concern the present argument.
Be the outcome of further reflective thinking some form of
dualism or of monism, of realism or of idealism, the nature
of the primary act of cognition remains unchanged. And it
is this from which all epistemological theory takes its point
of starting. It is this to which it returns for the testing of
its validity as conformable to the facts of experience. It is
this to which fidelity must be maintained at any cost to
the smoothness and consistency of the theory. For if this
is lost, all is lost. The denial of the full import of the
primary acts of cognition is the denial of the possibility of
knowledge of any kind ; it is the abandonment of all attempt
at a critical epistemology.
Much more than a numerical half of our earlier cognitions,
and these the more impressive and important for the safety
and development of our entire spiritual life, have for their
objects the states and relations of things. About these
objects the "plain man's" consciousness affirms, and not
without a strong show of reason, a more immediate and
certain knowledge than about its own states. Psychological
investigation demonstrates, indeed, that the affirmation is
not altogether well chosen; for no objects can excel, in
the immediacy of their presentation and the strength of
accompanying conviction, those that are presented in self-
consciousness. However, our scientifically assured position
on this point must not lead us to disparage or overlook the
character of the testimony which every-day experience gives
to the immediacy and certainty of the knowledge of things.
So far as obvious and recognizable independence and per-
manency of existence are concerned, things appear to have
120 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
the advantage over Self. It is perhaps only when we intro-
duce certain ideas of value, and so consider whether the
Self should desire to be independent and permanent pre-
cisely in the way in which things are, that the former
regains its position of superior advantage. On what ground,
then, does epistemological theory deny the affirmation of
the universal consciousness that, in a large proportion
of those cases where the fullest activity of cognitive func-
tion is employed and the fullest certitude of cognition
achieved, the object of knowledge is decidedly not my state
of consciousness, nor any state of any man's conscious-
ness ? The nature of the primary act of cognition by
sense-perception refuses to adjust itself to such a denial.
But at this point, in the effort to escape the full force of
the testimony derived from every act of cognition to the
truth that all cognition is objective consciousness, resort
may be had to a deceptive ambiguity in the meaning of
the word " object. " Kant's critique of knowledge is full of
perplexities due to this ambiguity. Because any adequate
account of the possibility of objective knowledge requires
that the constitutional forms of the knowing subject should
be recognized, it does not follow that this recognition fur-
nishes the entire account of all our objective knowledge.
For example, I take my stand in receptive or more active
apperceptive attitude before some natural object. I am
using my senses to get a knowledge of this bit of mineral I
have just picked up in the field. Looking, feeling, smell-
ing, tasting, recalling what I have seen and been told before,
filling out the picture with imaginings as to how it would
behave should I subject it to certain physical and chemical
tests, and reflectively thinking over the whole case, I judge
it to be " a piece of feldspar. " If the grounds of the final
judgment, on reviewing them, seem satisfactory, I say: "I
know it is a piece of feldspar." I have, in arriving at
knowledge of this sort, reached an elaborate objective con-
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 121
sciousness of this thing. Now suppose, however, that in
order to explain such objectivity of consciousness, epistemo-
logical criticism points out how, in addition to " receptivity
of sensibility" and "synthesis of imagination," there must
have been "activity of intellect," functioning according to
one or more of the constitutional forms of intellectual func-
tion (the so-called " categories "). This it is, I am now
informed, in the name of a critique of pure reason, which
makes the consciousness ohjective ; all external objects are
made to be, and to be what they are, by the intellect itself.
In a word, to know things, you must mind them ; or — as is
so significantly said in popular speech — "put your mind
into them. " If I follow the path of criticism myself, I may
be ready to. admit all this as necessary to account for any
" objective " consciousness whatever. But when I am bidden
to accept this as the complete and final account of knowl-
edge, when I am exhorted to believe that this is all I am
sure of with regard to the existence and nature of the ex-
ternal object of knowledge, and that this it is which makes
it an object, set over against the subject, as a non-self over
against the Self, in the very act of cognition, then I answer,
" I will not, because I cannot. " Nor did Kant himself con-
sistently maintain this position; because, in fact, he could
not. But to prove our statement on this point belongs to
the criticism of the Kantian Critique rather than to the
criticism of the faculty of knowledge.
The characteristic of objectivity, in a meaning more full
than either of the three foregoing forms of limitation admit,
must be recognized as belonging to the essential nature of
all cognition. To deny this characteristic altogether is to
commit the absurdity of beginning a criticism of knowing
faculty by overlooking the most essential facts which need
criticism. It is virtually to assert the theoretical impossi-
bility of knowledge. To define this objectivity in accordance
with the phrases, " Knowledge is only of phenomena ; " or,
122 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
" We can never -know anything but our own states of con-
sciousness," is to be scarcely less absurd; while we must
not be deceived into accepting off-hand the sceptical or
agnostic attitude toward the persuasion that in knowledge
we somehow come into valid relations with extra-mental
reality, by an ambiguous use of the words "object" and
"objective." Further details on this characteristic of cog-
nition belong, of course, to the main body of epistemology.
Once more, the psychological nature of cognition is such
as to involve all the factors and forms of psychic life and of
psychic activity. If we are to speak of " cognitive faculty "
— as has already been done repeatedly — then this faculty
calls forth and summarizes, by absorption into itself, as it
were, all other faculties. Whichever of the current psycho-
logical divisions into faculties be adopted, there is no one
of them whose employment is not, either as actually dis-
cernible or as theoretically necessary, contained in the full
account of human cognition. Take away any of these facul-
ties and knowledge would become either much less than it
actually is or else actually impossible. But none of them,
drawn off from and considered apart from the others, is capa-
ble of achieving an act of cognition. Without content of
sensation there can be no cognition of external objects. But
almost equally obvious is the psychological truth that with-
out this same content, no vital and warm consciousness of
Self could arise ; certainly, no development of the knowledge
which comes through self-consciousness is possible with-
out the delimitation and opposition of Self and Things as
dependent upon changes in the nature of this sensuous
content. Without memory, knowledge of the past would
be a meaningless phrase ; without knowledge of the past,
through memory, present knowledge both of Things and
of Self would be impossible ; and growth of knowledge for
the individual or the race could not take place. But only
as the form of psychic life called imagination is at work,
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 123
can there be constructed in consciousness that series of
mental representations which forms a picture for thought to
modify, and for faith to attach itself to, as a true picture of
the transcendent Reality. Even in all our more solid and
scientific knowledge of natural and physical objects, psycho-
logical analysis shows the presence of a sort of substitu-
tionary and analogical activity of phantasy. For all such
knowledge requires interpretation based upon the sympa-
thetic projection of the Self into the situation of the other.
What is called "knowledge of human nature " is confessedly
dependent upon this sort of faculty. But with the most
exact of the sciences, with mathematics and mathematical
physics, the words and symbols employed cannot serve
either as the vehicles or as the excitants of cognitive pro-
cesses, unless this activity can be supplied by the cognitive
subject. " Molecular " and " atomic " motions, " stored " and
"kinetic" energies, — these and similar terms have no life,
no warmth, no real meaning for the mind of man, unless
they are filled with the blood which such an interpretative
imagination supplies. 1
Knowledge, however, is not a passive happening, a copying-
off of reality upon an impressionable psychic substance,
or a solidarity of ideation-processes empirically produced.
Neither is it such a merely reproductive activity that the
subject in which the activity is induced goes through a
series of processes precisely similar to those gone through
with by the reality, regarded as stimulating it to the re-
productive activity. Thinking, as an active rational form
of functioning, must take in hand the trains of associated
ideas, in order that genuine cognition may take place.
Thinking becomes cognition, or rather leads the conscious
processes up to the completed cognitive act, when judgment
1 Die Phantctsie ist diejenige Function des DenJcens, die in ihrer Bedeutungjur die
Wissenschaft, fur die Weltmiffassung und fur die Daseingestaltung am meisten ver-
kannt wird. — Duehring, Cursus der Philosophie, p. 44.
124 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
on recognized grounds is consciously made. All the more
purely intellectual "momenta" become fused in that total
attitude of mind toward objective reality, which is most
properly called knowledge, only when such judgment is
attained.
But how necessary to every act of cognition are other than
the strictly intellectual "momenta," how truly knowledge
is an affair of feeling and will and involves all the affective
and voluntary mind, must be made clear with some detail,
unless our epistemology is willing quite to mistake the
nature of knowledge. The feeling aspects of our psychic
life are in themselves just as really varied and variously
colored, just as constantly present, as are the intellectual
momenta. Were it not for this ever present and vital
experience of feeling, our sensations, ideas, and thoughts
would all be thinner and paler than the trooping shadows of
the vaguest dream, — without interest, without value, with-
out reality of any kind. Nor would our trains of ideas
result in judgments apprehending and comprehending the
changing qualifications and relations of the really existent;
truth would not be seized upon and appropriated with warm
conviction as to its certitude and its worth.
Peculiar forms of conscious experience there are which
we seem compelled to recognize as the feelings belonging
uniquely to cognition. Reference has repeatedly been made
to the perfectly invincible conviction that in knowledge we,
the subjective, come into some sort of relations with an
object that is not-us, that is trans-subjective. Experience
by way of cognition implicates the transcendent, — of this, at
least a naive and vague confidence seems to be an essential
part of every completed cognitive process. But what shall
be said of this conviction ? The completer answer to this
inquiry takes us well into the heart of the epistemological
problem. It is, indeed, upon this feeling of conviction that
in the last analysis our doctrine of knowledge has largely to
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 125
rely for the defence of its theoretical conclusion : the facts
of consciousness are not themselves intelligible without the
assumption of an extra-mental Reality on which conscious-
ness is dependent.
That the will of the knower is ever present and taking a
part, so to speak, in every act of knowledge, is a psycho-
logical truism ; it follows from the very conception of knowl-
edge itself as a complex form of mental activity. The
psychological doctrine of the influence of attention upon
perception, upon self-consciousness, and upon all the grow-
ing body of knowledge in which science consists, is an
expression of this truth. But below this familiar line of
thinking reposes the psycho-physical structure of facts which
shows us that cognition itself is never a purely sensory,
but always also a sensory-motor affair. In that living
commerce with things which requires action, and which
consists in doing something to them, with a will and a
purpose in it, and in letting them do something to us which
restricts or thwarts, or executes our will and purpose,
does all human knowledge of things grow. This truth also
demands further interpretation.
In this connection the practical value of a comprehensive
view has a bearing upon theoretical truth. There are real
dangers to the life of conduct and of religion which come
from saying: "Intellect is all;" or "Feeling is all;" or
"Will is all." The theoretical truth on which the practical
rests is this: Knowledge is of neither one alone; knowledge
is of intellect, feeling, and will. The final witness, to
which we are forced to make appeal for the attainment of
truth, and for escape from error, is a sort of complex mental
attitude. This attitude involves feeling and will as well as
intellect. Emphasizing the aspect of feeling, we may call it
a kind of conviction of the truth of the cognitive judgment ;
in matters of contested evidence, or of practical importance,
or of grave intellectual interest, the conviction may become
126 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
of a highly emotional character. Emphasizing the aspect
of will, we may refer to it as a mental positing of the
reality of the object, which may become a seizure of, and a
holding on to, this object in the presence of sceptical temp-
tations ; and which may then appear as a quasi-ethical activ-
ity. It is just these emotional and voluntary aspects of the
total cognitive process that have led men in all ages to
regard their cognitions as answers to voices which called to
them from out of the depths of Reality, or as intuitions
and insights which brought them into the most interior
construction and processes of Reality (Eirileuchtungen and
Anschauungen as well as Vorstellungen and Begriffe). Rec-
ognizing and submitting one's judgment to the voice, to the
light, thus gives a moral significance to scientific and philo-
sophical investigation in general. Hence the picture drawn
by Augustine of God originally speaking with men as with
angels (ipsa ineommutabili veritate, illustrans mentes eormn).
As said Bonaventura, "Thou hast per se the capacity to
behold truth, if concupiscences and phantasms do not hinder
thee, and like clouds interpose between thee and truth's
ray. "
A psychological view of the Development of Knowledge
reveals still more clearly the nature of the problem which
epistemological philosophy has to examine. In the indi-
vidual and in the race the growth of cognition does not,
indeed, result from the introduction of new powers, or from
the sudden appearance of distinctly different faculties, in an
epoch-making way. The kingdom of knowledge, like the
kingdom of heaven, grows as does a grain of mustard seed.
Indeed, if we could only use the word comprehensively
enough we might be tempted to declare that it resembles a
"biological" development. It is not given to the observer,
by a microscopic examination of the mustard seed, to predict
the character of the developed plant. Nor can one say that
all of the latter is given potentially, or even that its con-
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 127
ditions are present, in the seed. Neither, again, can one
discern the separate functional growths, and the correlation
of the organic processes, in the very earliest growth. Yet
the forces and principles at work, and with which the inves-
tigator must reckon, are the same throughout. In no other
realm of inquiry is the principle of continuity more strictly
applicable, more obviously potent, than in the growth of
human knowledge. The detailed descriptive history of this
growth it belongs to psychology to give. The interpretation
of some of the more important aspects and portions of this
history is, indeed, of supreme interest to epistemology ; it
will constantly excite our effort in the subsequent chapters
of this book. At present a few words in addition to what
has already been brought to notice will suffice.
Psychology can describe many of the conditions under
which that great "diremptive process" takes place, whose
accomplishment is crowned by knowledge as a consciousness
of relation between subject and object, and as an objective
consciousness of both subject and object existing in this
relation. It can show how, as the entire sensory-motor
mechanism runs more smoothly in the channels which have
become marked out, certain groups of resulting experiences
form themselves into a Self, envisaged or conceived of, and
certain others into Things, either immediately known or
only inferred. And now the 'whole world of experienced
objects has organized itself into two great classes of cognized
and cognizable realities ; but this world of opposed and yet
intercommunicating entities had its growth, psychologically,
from a common root! Now, too, the world of science begins
to reveal itself as under tuition purchased at the expense of
the persistent and rationally ordered experience of the race.
A strange world this, of which we are told in terms of
highly preferred knowledge ! Yet this knowledge claims to
be based upon observation by the senses, — of somewhat
more than ordinary pretensions to accuracy and painstaking
128 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
care. It results from much looking, hearing, feeling, smell-
ing, tasting, and especially from much muscular intercourse
with things; and it is called the "world of sense," in which
every sensible man implicitly believes, and to doubt which
is to discredit " common-sense " and science alike.
But further acquaintance with this body of knowledge, so
precious in the eyes of those who cultivate it, and in the
sight of us all, reveals its true character in a different way.
It is rather a world of ideas and of thoughts. It makes the
most enormous demands upon thinking faculty to carry the
mind through tortuous and complicated processes of ratioci-
nation, where symbols and words that surely have no real
correlates are the necessary scaffolding for every step. It
challenges phantasy far more severely and peremptorily than
any poet or artist has ever done. Without doubt, imagina-
tion breaks quite down in its effort to conceive of forces that
are stored and do not act (or energies of position), of atoms
that have no color or shape, of ether that is limitless in
tenacity and infinitely tenuous and without weight, etc.
The whole structure of this world is underlain and inter-
penetrated with hypothetical entities, causes, transactions,
etc., which are introduced in the interest of observed facts,
but which can never themselves become actual objects of
observation. Yet if we reject it as merely hypothetical and
imaginary, or as the product of purely abstract thinking — a
system of mental images and conceptions of most extraordi-
nary and non-sensible kind — we confine human knowledge
within undesirably narrow limitations. And, indeed, these
activities of imagination and thought, with their underlying
postulates, and their inciting and supporting play of the
feeling that it is so, and of the will to have it so, are essen-
tially the same as those employed in all the knowledge of
our daily life. If science cannot correct common-sense by
denying to it the exercise of all its dearest and most impor-
tant rights, common-sense cannot distrust science without
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 129
surrendering the rationality of all that is of practical inter-
est to itself. For cognition, by the very principles of its
growth, tends more and more to the solidarity and yet per-
petual flux of a system of living organisms. Nor can science
and common -sense safely or correctly draw the line that
shall shut philosophy out of this growing body of human
knowledge.
CHAPTER V
THINKING AND KNOWING
THAT knowledge cannot be gained without more or less of
correct and prolonged thinking is a practical maxim
which no one would be found to dispute. But that there is
much knowledge which does not come by mere thinking is a
maxim scarcely more to be held in doubt. Thinking is,
then, universally recognized as an important and even neces-
sary part of knowing; but it is not the whole of knowing.
Or, in other words, one must make use of one's faculties of
thought as an indispensable means to cognition; but there
are other means which must also be employed, since it is
not by thought alone that the human mind attains cognition.
This manner of speech is indicative of that trustworthy
psychological instinct and its resulting body of opinion
which characterizes human nature. And thus, in the elabo-
ration of a philosophical theory of knowledge which shall be
true to the facts of life, it is matter of the first importance
to compare thought and cognition, and to recognize both
their points of resemblance and their points of difference.
A sound epistemological doctrine must make clear how
much and what of the cognitive process consists in that
movement of the intellect which we call thinking ; and how
it is that truth, with its assured grasp upon the existence
and relations of the real — the trans-subjective — world, is
thus made the possession of the subject, in the form of states
of his own consciousness.
If now the popular opinion, as well as that of the majority
of writers on logic, be taken in answer to the question,
THINKING AND KNOWING 131
What besides clear, patient, and correct thinking is neces-
sary to a knowledge of truth ? there is discoverable an almost
complete agreement. It is observation — patient, exact, and
intelligent — that lays the basis, so to speak, for the struc-
ture of truth which thinking rears. And, moreover, since
every thinker is liable to have his thoughts wander, or
become too much mixed up with imaginings, and since
there is danger from too " pure " or " abstract " thoughts, the
results of thinking must be constantly compared with renewed
and improved observations of fact. It is thus by using
observation to start the trains of thinking, which now — once
started — carry us into a wider and more airy domain, where,
however, our conceptions of things must be tested with ever
open eyes and freshened memories of our actual visions, that
we gain more and more of assured knowledge. Indeed,
under the influence of a natural reaction against former
magnificent attempts to handle the truths of the real world
as problems for thought only, modern science has often no
little contempt to throw upon " abstractions " as compared
with that cognition of facts which is gained by observation.
Some of its devotees are even tempted to forget that mere
observation, if such a thing indeed were possible, would no
more create science than mere thinking.
The more carefully analytic studies of modern psychology
prove that, in fact, thinking and cognition are, so to speak,
per se inseparable. They show that without thinking no
cognition whatever is possible. This is a truth of which no
one has ever been more firmly persuaded than was Kant;
and it is to be hoped that no one will ever attempt to elabo-
rate it more fully than he did. But what is chiefly needed
at the present time is to learn from modern psychology, and
to expand and teach in an improved epistemology, the fuller
doctrine of the relations between the two. In previous works
on logic, and even in not a few of the most important philo-
sophical treatises, the distinction between knowledge by ob-
132 THINKING AND KNOWING
servation and knowledge by thinking has been defectively
made or grossly exaggerated. Not infrequently, the former
is called "intuitive" or "immediate" knowledge, and the
latter "rational" or "mediate" or "abstract" knowledge.
And now the logician thinks it right to hold that when he
has given an account of the forms which characterize the
mental life of thought, he has discharged his entire duty as
a student of mental life. For is not logic & formal affair,
— a presentation (usually most dry and lifeless), with dread-
ful array of strange symbols, of the mere forms of thinking
faculty as it conceives, judges, and reasons from grounds to
consequences ? To the psychologist belongs, in sooth ! the
explication and the vindication of so-called intuitive or
immediate knowledge. How, and on what terms of self-
conscious estimate of my own cognitive faculty, and in
the exercise of what dark and mysterious rights, do I stand
before any natural object — a tree, a stone, a human face —
and affirm : " I know you, for sure ; that you are, that you
really are ; and what you are in your actual structure and
modes of behavior " ? This is a complex and most vexing
question which logic is glad enough to turn over to psy-
chology. And yet, it is not a question which can be
answered, or even have its import faithfully recognized,
without taking into account the application of the laws of
thought in all so-called immediate cognition of reality.
There is little reason for wonder, then, when psychology
— especially of that "new" type which is prone to abjure
metaphysics and epistemology as unworthy members of its
own family, and to consort rather with biology and physi-
ology as with persons of its nearer kinship — refuses to take
this question off the hands of its ancient partner in intel-
lectual concerns, the stately "scientist" (of the high-and-
dry a priori order) called logic. For does not psychology
aim to become the exact science of mental phenomena, of
" states of consciousness, as such " ? But at this point other
THINKING AND KNOWING 133
questions arise. Is not my cognition of that thing over
there — that tree, or stone, or human face — a mental phe-
nomenon, a state of my consciousness ? And if it is to be
described and explained at all by any form of human
science, does not the duty of description and explanation
fall upon that science which defines itself as having a right
to the sphere of mental phenomena in general, of all con-
scious states ? If, further, cognition is to be described and
explained by psychology at all, should it not be scientifically
handled in its entirety, without mutilation or suppression of
anything which rightly belongs to its mental constitution ?
Further, is it not clear that objective reference, warmed with
the unchanging conviction of the trans-subjective and the
extra-mental, is something inseparable from the very psychic
being of cognition ? How, then, can psychology shirk the
task of an analytic that goes to the very core of cognitive
consciousness ? But in vain is a piteous pleading for response
to these questions set up before the bar of the current scien-
tific psycholog} 7 . Such questions are by her chief doctors of
laws nowadays handed over to epistemology. Meantime
they are themselves spending their "labor for that which
satisfieth not."
At this point, then, we are again thrown back upon Kant
and upon his followers in the same line of critical inquiry.
We find this master of analytic constantly insisting upon the
truth that knowledge is impossible without thought; mere
sensation-content, held up in consciousness as a picture by
constructive imagination, does not as yet amount to knowl-
edge. For if " thoughts without contents are empty, intui-
tions without concepts are blind." Bat Kant, in the
working out of his theory of the relations between " empty
thoughts" and "blind intuitions," often so sets intuitions
and thoughts in contrast as to seem to make them functions
and products of diverse powers of the soul. And — a much
more serious deficiency which finally becomes a source of
134 THINKING AND KNOWING
disastrous error — he devotes his theory of knowledge wholly
to its a priori, formal side. Such a restriction of our
critique might, indeed, be allowed in the interests of nar-
rowing the problem, which is, as Kant attempts to isolate
and discuss it, sufficiently comprehensive and profound.
But the analysis of form, while it may for a time seem to
expose and to account for the peculiar nature of thought,
does not for one single moment even seem to do the same
thing for cognition. For when, in the evolution of mental
life, we come to knowledge, it is the origin, nature, and
validating of the matter-of-fact content which interests and
concerns us most. How does sensibility originally come to
be impressed at all ? and how does it come to be impressed
as it actually is impressed, beyond the ability of phantasy
and will and thought wholly to control the impression ?
Whence comes, and what is the value of, that belief in an
envisaged reality which is essential to the very existence
of every act of intuitive knowledge ? In answer to these
and other similar inquiries, Kant can only repeat his doc-
trine of the a priori forms of the two distinct kinds of
cognition, — intuitions and concepts ; except as he every-
where, at times, by sundry hints and nods and dumb but
meaningful gesticulations, indicates the presence in the dark
background of a mysterious X, a Ding-an-sich indeed.
The creation of a fixed gulf between kinds of knowledge,
and the relegation, for its sources and its validity, of one
kind to an unanalyzable mystery, and of the other to a
system of merely formal rules, with the accompanying sepa-
ration of the faculties involved in all cognitive activity, and
a total disregard of the necessary implicates of every cogni-
tion, have been the irpoyrov i/reOSo? and the chief mischief-
maker in epistemological theories since Kant. Fichte's
science of knowledge aimed to attain a systematic cognition
of the really existent by a series of states of self -envisage -
mcnt. The processes of self-consciousness were here thought
THINKING AXD KXOWIXG 135
out into the form of a system of concepts, and then identified
off-hand with the sum-total of Reality. With Schelling
" the true direction " of cognition is not a movement along
the line of self-consciousness alone. "We can go." says
he, "from nature to ourselves, or from ourselves to nature,
but the true direction for him to whom knowledge is of
more account than all else, is that which nature herself
adopts. " 1 Moving in this direction he would give to the
place which thought reaches the characteristics of a stand-
point for intuition. "For there dwells in us all a secret,
wonderful faculty, by virtue of which we can withdraw from
the mutations of time into our innermost disrobed selves,
and there behold the eternal under the form of immutability ;
such vision is our innermost and peculiar experience, on
which alone depends all that we know and believe of a
supra-sensible world." Thus from Schelling's faculty of
"intellectual intuition" are both intuition and thought
really dropped out; and with them the subject and the
object vanish together from the field of the really existent
as necessary "moments" in the operation of cognitive
faculty. Knowledge is once more explained by being
destroyed.
Hegel showed a saner mind in his appreciation of the
relations between thinking and knowing, and between know-
ing and being. His philosophy has been called "a critical
transformation and development of Schelling's System of
Identity." His aim, as defined by himself, was (1) "to ele-
vate consciousness to the standpoint of absolute knowledge;"
and (2) "to develop systematically the entire contents of
this knowledge by the dialectical method." In accomplish-
ing this aim, an overestimate is placed upon the syste-
matic arrangement of the mere forms of thinking; absolute
knowledge becomes so elevated above the standpoint of the
1 From the close of an article by Schelling himself in the first volume of the
" Zeitschrift fur speculative Physik."
136 THINKING AND KNOWING
ordinary consciousness that it cannot be attained or even
descried by those who maintain this standpoint; and the
critical examination of the import and value of the funda-
mental assumption, that the forms of thought are the forms
of reality, is stopped short almost before it is fairly begun.
Hence, in part, it is that men devoted to the enlargement of
the field of knowledge as covered by the concrete sciences of
nature have, often in extreme ignorance of his real position,
treated Hegel so contemptuously. Nor is it very strange
that such investigators feel more sympathy with the position
of the most contemptuous of Hegel's critics in the common
field of philosophy, — namely, Schopenhauer. "Perception,"
says the latter, " is not only the source of all knowledge, but
is itself knowledge /car e^oxqv, is the only unconditionally
true, genuine knowledge worthy of the name. For it alone
imparts insight properly so-called, it alone is actually assimi-
lated by man, passes into his nature, and can with fall
reason be called his; while the conceptions merely cling to
him." They "thus afford the real content of all our thought,
and whenever they are wanting we have not had conceptions
bat mere words in our heads." Thought, consisting in com-
paring conceptions, gives us no really new knowledge. "On
the other hand, to perceive, to allow the things themselves
to speak to us, to apprehend new relations of them, and then
to take up and deposit all this in conceptions, in order to
possess it with certainty, — that gives new knowledge. "
To all such one-sided views of the nature of knowledge, its
growth, and the way, through it, that we come at reality, so
to speak, it is the completer understanding of the primary
facts of knowledge, especially as they evince the similarities
and differences between thinking and knowing, which affords
the only satisfactory critical standpoint. Cognition is one
living process throughout; and valuable as a distinction of
its stages and kinds and points of departure may be, there
is one essential body of characteristics to be recognized as
THINKING AND KNOWING 137
everywhere present. Intuitive knowledge does not come at
first, or grow, without thinking; nor is thinking that is
not in some sort intuitive, if such a thing were at all pos-
sible, the avenue to more of mediate and indirect knowledge.
The first act of cognition achieved by the infant mind is a
triumph of thinking faculty. The last and highest achieve-
ment of knowledge gained by the highly trained and richly
stored reflective mind is also a feeling-full and voluntary
envisagement of reality. Cognition purified of thought is
deprived of a factor essential to cognition. Pure thinking
is never so abstracted from successive steps of intuitive
commerce with the real as to be purely thinking; and if it
could be thus abstracted, it could not become the beginning,
the means, or the end of a cognitive process. The very
prevalence, however, of this principle of continuity, as
applied to all the growth of knowledge in and through
thought, makes it the more necessary that we should under-
stand the resemblances and the differences of these two atti-
tudes of Mind toward Reality.
Let us, then, compare that mental movement or form of
psychic life which is called "thought" with our previous
description of the nature and growth of knowledge. What
is it to think ? To answer with Mr. Spencer and others as
though thinking were mere generalizing under the principle
of comparison is to fail of fully describing what men ordi-
narily experience when they think, and think concretely,
and to some definite purpose. With us all, when we make
earnest with our thoughts, the stream of consciousness
becomes an active conscious relating of otherwise separate
items of cognition. It is subjective and conscious, a pro-
cess ; but a process in consciousness which is better described
as distinctively not a passive suffering of something, but a
doing of something with our own ideas. Thinking is will-
ing; jedes DenJcen ein Wollen, as Wundt admirably says. 1
1 System der Philosophie, p. 42.
138 THINKING AND KNOWING
Thought is experienced as a transaction produced by ourselves.
So that, although it is not to be described as willing per se,
and can neither be always identified with the higher forms
of self-conscious choice nor — which is yet more certain —
usually relegated to the lower forms of so-called unimotived
volition, it appears as a quasi-voluntary response to a
demand. Often one's thinking is a highly developed and
singularly pronounced and self-conscious form of willing.
When I am thinking, — always about this or that, — and in
proportion as I am not dreaming or letting my ideas run
away with me, I am " making up my mind. " i, the mind,
am making up myself, — although in accordance, as further
investigation shows me, with internal necessities called
"laws of the mind," and more obviously in attempted
accordance with the actual relations and forms of the
behavior of things. Thus men tell each other what J think,
about this or that; and they ask each other: "What do you
think ? " — you, as a self-active, self-directing subject of the
conscious process called your thoughts.
Yet again, all cognition, which comes by thinking,
involves some seeking, striving after, actual pursuing of the
truth ; and this necessarily implies willing as a " moment "
in the thinking process. No man is likely to know the truth
who does not will to know it, who actively restrains, or pas-
sively refrains himself from willing. As we think, we pur-
pose to apprehend and comprehend, to seize hold of and
grasp around the object about which we are thinking. And
although, of course, language here is pregnant with figures
of speech, there are few matters of common experience
where figures of speech are more pregnant with truth than
are those here employed.
Thinking, too, is a more complex form of psychic move-
ment or activity than is mental representation, — meaning by
the latter the merely passive flow of unchecked and relatively
purposeless trains of associated ideas. It is upon the basis
THINKING AND KNOWING 139
of this lower form of mental representation that thinking,
properly so-called, reposes. In saying this, we are probably
separating in thought what never occurs wholly separate in
the actual life of the mind. In few, indeed, of one's states
of reverie and of fancy-play, even in dreams, does one seem
to one's self wholly to refrain from taking any part in the
character and succession of the ideas which appear in con-
sciousness. Rarely is the Ego a mere passive spectator of
the drama enacted by the faculty of ideation. Even when
the ideas get away from me, as it were, and disport them-
selves as becomes the ideas of an animal or of a madman, I
am still right there, ready to prompt or to repress them, and
not wholly theirs instead of their being at least partly
mine. Thus, too, in accordance with the active character-
istic of all thinking do we distinguish it as a more complex
process than mere association of ideas, — endowed, as it
were, with a higher style of mentality. Ideation appears
as a process given to consciousness ; thinking is more fully
self-conscious and self -induced, selective and preferential.
From this point of view it has even been argued 2 that only
free wills can truly t7iink, not to say think truly. For the
thinking subject must have the power to grasp and hold the
thought-element (the " moment " which may be used to enter
into the judgment) against the destructive influence of the
flux of images mechanically determined ; must choose a com-
panion for comparison or contrast with it, and so judge what
is true in reality as distinguished from what is passively
determined in the mental train.
In connection with such experiences as illustrate the dis-
tinctions already made, we become aware of the peculiar
strain and tone of attention which accompanies the thinking
process. When one is not thinking somewhat intently, or
not definitively and determinately thinking at all, one is
1 Compare Kaulich, " Ueber die Moglichkeit, das Ziel, und die Grenzen des
Wissens," pp. 29 f.
140 THINKING AND KNOWING
like a spectator of a light drama, or it may be of a comedy.
One attends with interest, indeed, but with the interest
rather of those who will have others do the work or conduct
the play, while they amuse themselves by looking on. But
let any of the actors (the ideas) challenge and secure another
kind of interest; and then the whole strain and tone of
attention changes, as one begins to think more reflectively
and to conclude about what is going on. For thinking is
somewhat of business, is no mere play, for the mind; and
business demands attention, directed to the accomplishment
of a clearly conceived end. Hence the teleology of thinking
as it enters into the final purposes of cognition, and brings
the man of thought and the man of action into the unity of
one life. With this change in the character of the attention,
demanded and given, there goes a change in the feelings,
both such as have reference to self and such as have refer-
ence to things. For the total affective accompaniment of
thinking as a necessary process to the completed act of cog-
nition is of a peculiar, complex kind. I am more self-
conscious in thinking, more keenly alive and sensitive to
every subjective change as a possible clue to the knowledge
I seek, or as a possible temptation or solicitation into some
path of error. I care more about myself when I, as subject,
make me, as object, the terminal of my train of thought.
But if I, as subject, make some thing or relation between
things, the object of my thinking, the same characteristic
wakefulness and feeling-full attention belongs to the conscious
processes evoked.
Let all this be considered, as illustrated in men's daily
experiences, — remembering that the thinking of which we
are discoursing is not that pale and ghostly process of linking
together so-called concepts by highly abstract symbols which
is scholastically held to represent the formal laws of thought.
The rather must the philosophical theory of knowledge
primarily deal with the blood-red and sinewy thought of the
THINKING AND KNOWING 141
street, the mart, the ordinary waking life of the multitude
of men. Actual thinking, as distinguished from the linking
of symbols and concepts together in books on logic, seldom
for a moment relaxes its firm clutch upon reality, and its
invincible conviction that the self-conscious thinker is
adjusting his own mental attitudes, with a prompt sequence
in adjustment of the appropriate actions, to the real proper-
ties and actual relations of selves and of things. But this
is the kind of thinking that enters into every primary act of
knowledge, of every cognition which, for certitude and so-
called immediacy or " intuitive " characteristics, belongs to
the first rank.
The most special characterization of thinking as a factor
of all cognition is reached, however, only when it is affirmed
that all thinking is relating activity. From one standpoint,
from which it is always proper to regard consciousness,
thought is a recognition of relations determined by the
action of objects as they appear to the thinking mind. This
is the so-called common-sense, realistic way of stating the
facts. What is the metaphysical truth in such expressions ?
It is a fact of experience which may not be questioned, that
one " feels at liberty " to imagine various sorts of relations,
between things and their qualities, between things and
minds, and between things and things, as one wills and
without regard to the actuality of these relations. But if
one intends to think, — meaning by this something more
than mere play of imagination, — one is under compulsion
to follow, either in actual observation or in intent, the
courses marked out by reality. In recognition of this pas-
sive and objectively determined aspect of the relating func-
tion in thought, the pious enthusiast may exclaim: "I think
thy thoughts after Thee, God ! " when he has adjusted his
own mental representations to the relations of the external
world. So also the " scientist " holds himself obligated to
think natural objects as they actually are related to each
142 THINKING AND KNOWING
other in Nature herself. And the plain man considers his
fellow to have lost the most trustworthy possession of his
common-sense, if he habitually mistakes imagination for
thought as to the qualities and the transactions of things.
But the other and opposite point of view must not be lost
out of sight. For if to think is active consciousness, and
its peculiar characteristic is a sort of "getting-at " relations,
then it is right to declare that thinking is relating activity.
And, indeed, this goes to the very heart of the question.
We cannot, indeed, accept the often repeated dictum of Lotze
— " To be is to be related " — as a satisfactory metaphysical
principle. But that no thing is known, or can be known, as
out of relation, or without being in relation, is an un-
doubted epistemological fact. For the declaration that "to
know is to relate " is a valid, if only a partial, description
of knowledge. But that activity of the mind which per-
forms the act of relating is precisely what is meant by
thinking, in respect of its most fundamental and universal
characteristic.
The details implied in affirming that all thinking is relat-
ing activity, must be referred back to descriptive psychology
to tell. From it we learn that relating is not merely com-
parison, not merely assimilation, or differentiation. It
serves our purpose — which, it must not be forgotten, is to
show how thinking enters into all cognition without being
the whole of any complete cognitive act — simply to notice
that thinking, as relating activity or the conscious and pur-
poseful bringing of our ideas into relations which are
believed to be conformable to the actual relations of the
extra-mentally existent world, culminates in judgment.
Thinking involves discrimination; indeed, the primary
phase of the so-called faculty of thought may best be spoken
of as "discriminating consciousness." 1 So, too, in its
higher forms of manifestation thinking is analyzing activity;
1 See Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, chap. xiv.
THINKING AND KNOWING 143
and without such analyzing activity, true judgment (at least,
in the form in which judgment enters into a finished act of
apperceptive consciousness) cannot be formed. For every
true judgment implies a consciously recognized duality —
albeit as existent, combined in the unity of the judgment
itself. But it is judgment as synthetic, essentially so, in
which all thinking processes culminate, and which becomes
an essential factor in every primary act of cognition.
Only, then, as we understand the actual, concrete judgments
of men, what they consciously are and what they signify,
can we understand the relations of thinking and knowing ;
and thus, so far forth, frame a theory of knowledge consistent
with the facts of experience. Now the actual concrete act of
judging is. itself a process in consciousness. Strictly speak-
ing, it is not so much a mental seizure and permanent hold-
ing of some island in the flowing stream of conscious life as
it is a determinate direction in the flow of the stream itself.
"When, therefore, judgment is spoken of as a " synthesis," it is
well not to be deceived by the figure of speech. In no judg-
ment, not even in affirming the simplest identity of a mathe-
matical or logical sort (X= Y; or, All A is B), does the
mind stand still while it places the ideas, one upon top of
the other, or contemplates them lying side by side. In affirm-
ing X= X, I distinguish the X which is in the place of the
subject from the X which is in the place of the predicate ;
and, then, I posit a certain relation by mentally constituting
a synthesis of the two. This I must do, if I recognize the
relation existing between the terms of the judgment; that
is, if I make a true judgment as the terminal, so to speak,
of an act of real cognition. But here two things of common
experience must be borne in mind. I may have some sort of
a mental presentment of terms which might possibly be formed
into a judgment, or even of these terms as somehow set
objectively in the relations appropriate to a possible judg-
ment, without either actually recognizing them as terms of
144 THINKING AND KNOWING
a judgment or synthesizing them as an actual judgment of
my own. I may see X=X, and make use of this percept as
a kind of momentary stepping-stone in an argument, with-
out judging X really to be = X. It is not in mathematics
alone that men conduct complicated trains of ideation, with
more or less control by active thinking, and yet only occa-
sionally perform the mental act of judgment, in the more
proper meaning of that term. Moreover, in considering the
relation of thinking to knowing, it is always essential to
inquire carefully what it is that is really judged. Is it that
X is equal to X; or only that i" am proceeding along the
right path toward the solution of my problem ? The life of
our daily activities is full of problems for consciousness to
solve ; but more and more does the practical solution of many of
these problems take place as the result of past acquirements
and growths of cognition, with relatively little actual judg-
ment exercised at the precise moment of such solution. Yet
all this psychic life is illuminated by spots of mental awaken-
ing to the higher and more complicated activities of a self-
conscious and apperceptive sort ; and then we find ourselves
really judging. Such genuine judgment is always itself a
movement of consciousness toward an end which is a men-
tal synthesis of distinguishably separate terms.
But, second, after saying thus much we must not be con-
sidered as advocates of that atomistic view of psychologists
who find insoluble puzzles where none exist, and who even
go to the length of declaring impossible what is plain matter-
of-fact in every man's daily experience. It is not a fair
representation of consciousness, or even an adequate sug-
gestion for an outline picture of it, to compare its successive
states to a line in which the single sensations, or ideas, are
points. The so-called " stream of consciousness " may, not
inaptly, be compared to a river that at times widens and at
other times greatly narrows its bed ; perhaps it sometimes
also disappears underground, only to reappear on the other
THINKING AND KNOWING 145
side of some considerable extent of the territory measured
by objective time. But its unity is never, at any instant,
comparable to that of a point ; nor is the succession of its
states in the one life like the succession of points, or small
portions, of a physical line. The fact simply is that, in
judging, we are in a kind of conscious active process which
terminates in the positing of a unifying relation between two
consciously separable terms.
There is something very significant in the temporal char-
acteristics of judgment as an inseparable factor of cognition ;
and this is the slowing-up — almost amounting to a pause
— in the time-rate of consciousness, when the business of
judging takes place. Nor is this characteristic a mere effect
in the imagination of the subject. Psycho-physics shows
beyond all contradiction, what every unsophisticated observer
of men knew beforehand, that it takes time to judge. Un-
judged impressions flit rapidly, or troop in confused swarms
before the mind. " There they go," — we are accustomed
to say ; as though they were not of our mind and we could
not, therefore, detain them. But we " come to " judgment
more slowly ; we bring the sensations and ideas to some
common point of view, and we take a little time to pronounce
a synthesis between them. All this is, in some sort, capable
of measurement and of expression in so many one-thousandths
of a second. How many more
and-now as a not-me, the total cognition can be enlarged
only in terms of mind-life. Perceptive cognition is inter-
pretative of mind-life. What the Thing is becomes known
to us only so far as we are prepared to consider it as a man-
ifestation of the presence and power of mind-life.
Moreover, as perceptive cognition grows, by repeated and
intelligent applications to it of the power of reflective think-
ing, the sphere of the assured knowledge (or science) of things
increases. This knowledge becomes more and more concep-
tual. Things are more and more endowed with attributes and
powers which our enlarging perceptive experience of them
seems to require for its own most satisfactory interpretation
and remoter explanation. The problematical " somewhat "
KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF
O.O}.
which is primarily known as posited, felt to be irresistibly
believed in, and grasped upon by an act of will that finds itself
resisted, further defines itself as having an abiding reality
most manifold and full of content. But in all this growth of
knowledge there is a most important difference between the
knowledge of Things and the knowledge of Self. In the latter
kind of knowledge there is no transcendental limitation, or
merely figurative employment of abstract concepts which ex-
perience has no means of filling with the concrete and clearly
cognized reality. In the knowledge of Self " no distinction
can be made between a thing-in-itself and a phenomenon. . . .
I know reality as it is itself, in so far as I am that reality
myself." l Self-knowledge is always an envisagement of real-
ity, or an interpretation of some experience which is an
envisagement of reality. But the case with the knowledge
of things is far different. That the really existent is known
must indeed be affirmed in both cases ; and that the really ex-
istent is known as not-me is true of all cognitions of things.
It does not follow, thereupon, that the further qualifications
in reality, of Things and of Self, are known either to the
same extent or in the same way. On the contrary, all the
further qualifications of things are known only conceptually
and as the projections into things, so to speak, of the immedi-
ately known qualifications of the Self.
We sum up the long discussion of this very difficult sub-
ject in the following statement of truths which it is intended
by repetition to make clear. Knowledge, by its very nature,
validates in reality the distinction between subject and object.
Even in that form of cognition which is called the knowledge
of Self, this distinction is not to be overlooked or explained
away. Self-consciousness attains a knowledge of the Self,
as acting subject of changing states, and yet as objectively
1 On this whole matter compare the author's " Philosophy of Mind," chapters
iv. and v., and Paulsen, " Introduction to Philosophy," p. 367, from whom the
sentence above is quoted.
15
226 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF
determined otherwise than by its own conscious activity. It
is thus a cognition of Self as both active and passive, — as a
real being, in an objectively constituted and determined sys-
tem of beings. But cognition, by its very nature, also vali-
dates the distinction in objects between Self and not-self.
This distinction, too, must be accepted as valid in reality and
independent of our activity, whether in thinking or in any
other form of action. The distinction is given as belonging
to that diremptive process which is lost in the origins of our
conscious life, but which is so fundamental, incisive, and
insistent that it cannot be separated from the development
of knowledge itself.
On the basis of yet more complicated and doubtful infer-
ences, we distinguish that entire world of objects which are
not-the-Self into groups that either claim or are denied the
possession of the characteristics we know ourselves to have.
Thus, a coarse and doubtful, yet practically useful and, to a
large extent scientifically defensible, secondary distinction is
made ; and all the objects not recognized as our Self are
divided into other selves and other things. But both for
other selves, and for other realities that are not selves but
are things, no further conceptual qualifications are possible
but such as are derived from the same immediate experience
with the Self. These two kinds of beings are thus separated,
negatively, by denying to one of them certain likenesses to
the Self which we affirm the other to possess. But all posi-
tive knowledge, all the qualifications which can be interpreted
in terms of actual, concrete experience, are in both cases taken
from the same source. What other selves are is known only
because we immediately and assuredly know what our own
Self is.
But what things that are not-selves really arc, we can only
tell by a series of purely negative concepts, unless we are
satisfied to affirm that, in some respects at least, all things
are positively like ourselves. So that the truth of all human
KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 227
conceiving* of things depends upon the right to maintain some
sort of important kinship, as an accompaniment and off-set,
as it were, to a certain number of vaguely conceived and
shifting differences between Things and Self. To affirm a
complete identity between the two is, therefore, to contradict
the plainest content of all knowledge, whether as given in inter-
pretative perception, or in the scientific conception, of things.
But so to separate the two as to make the commerce of knowl-
edge between them impossible, is to set up an unwarrantable
dualism on the basis of a difference which the analysis of the
cognition of things shows not to exist. For, finally, while
the knowledge of Self may attain an intuitive penetration
to the heart of Reality, the knowledge of Things remains an
analogical interpretation of their apparent behavior into terms
of a real nature corresponding, in important characteristics, to
our own. The cognition of the world of things by the human
mind actually takes place with the passionate and determined
assumption of a right to know what things really are. The
admission of this right extends and validates our system of
concepts relating to things. It is, therefore, an assumption
of the highest epistemological value. We shall return to it
CHAPTER VIII
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
SEVERAL questions which, although they often constitute
the principal matter of heated epistemological discus-
sion, are really of only subordinate importance, may fitly be
gathered together under the title placed at the head of this
chapter. They all belong, indeed, to the fuller elucidation of
the one problem of epistemology ; and any light which is
thrown upon them will be reflected in such a way as to make
yet clearer the intrinsic nature of human cognition and the
extent and surety of the fundamental grounds on which the
structure of human cognition stands. For this reason a cer-
tain scrappy and heterogeneous character may be pardoned in
the appearance of the following thoughts.
Even to speak of Degrees of Knowledge will appear in the
eyes of many, at least at first sight, to imply a misleading
distinction or almost a misdemeanor. For, as is popularly
said, if a thing is so, it is so ; and if you " know " it to be
so, then you do know, and not merely think, or believe, it
to be so. It might possibly be added by the reader of the
previous chapters, — either with a mixture of fear that the
work of validating knowledge which has thus far been done
is about to be overthrown, or with the agreeable feeling of
the confirmed sceptic when he finds a champion of rational
faith about to contradict himself : " How can there be degrees
of knowledge, if it is the very nature of knowledge to have
the surety which has been ascribed to it ? "
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 229
In attempting the question whether " degrees " in human
knowledge are to be admitted, it is, of course, first of all
necessary to determine in what senses it is proposed to
understand the words employed. Not, by any means, that
this inquiry is a merely verbal inquiry ; but it is an ob-
vious fact that to speak of degrees always implies some
standard of measurement. The proposal, therefore, to dis-
cuss the degrees of knowledge implies the application of some
kind of a common standard to the different classes of cogni-
tive experiences. We are, then, in search of a thermometer
which will mark, however roughly, the rise and fall of the
feeling of conviction ; or of a rod and chain which will
determine the magnitude of the convicting considerations ;
or of a theodolite which will help discern the remoter fixed
points by which it is proposed finally to orientate ourselves ;
or, finally, perhaps, of a graded perimeter of magnificent
proportions which will enable the wise critic to measure
exactly the arc covered by any given cognitive judgment
upon the total sphere of human science.
If now the thoughts of men, as expressed both in their
language and in their conduct, be carefully regarded, it ap-
pears that there are two widely different meanings which
they consider themselves justified in employing, when speak-
ing of degrees of human cognition. One meaning has regard
to the strength of the conviction, as reposing on clearly recog-
nized grounds, with which any cognitive judgment is affirmed.
Here the standard of measurement is graded by the approach
made toward an ideal which is talked about — albeit vaguely
and often most ignorantly — as " absolute. " But if we in-
quire more particularly into the interior structure of this
ideal of absolute knowledge, we are led into considerations
of the most unexpected and portentous character. For the
word " absolute " is always a signal which sounds the call to
a long chase and a tedious hunt, if indeed any game at all
reward us by the close of the day. We shall, however, soon
230 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
indicate the direction in which such tracks are sure to allure
our quest, and also something as to the value of that which
may be gained by its successful termination.
The other meaning in which the ascription of degrees is
applied to human cognition signifies a quite different stand-
ard of measurement. According to this second standard,
different cognitive acts are arranged along a scale of higher
and lower gradations ; this arrangement, of course, implies
some means of vertical rather than horizontal measurement,
as it were. Thus what is called " scientific knowledge " may
be affirmed to be higher than ordinary knowledge ; and, per-
haps, philosophical knowledge gets credit for the merit of
having several degrees of still greater elevation along this
graded standard. On points of this sort, however, one must
always expect a wide divergence of opinion. Claims are
thrust in upon us from this side and from that, varying in
their cogency as they are presented by different claimants
and under the differing circumstances of the history of human
development. For example, by one person, at all times in his
estimate, or by the majority of persons at certain times in the
life of the race, religious and artistic knowledge (if the word
" knowledge " is allowed at all with reference to religion
and art) will be declared " higher " than any other sort of
knowledge ; but by other persons and at other times, scien-
tific or practical knowledge will be raised to the place of
superior altitude along the scale. We are not interested
just now to inquire whether religious and artistic knowledge
can, or can not, be rendered scientific ; or in what sense, if
any, it is to be distinguished from practical knowledge. But
certainly, this wide-spread habit of rating cognitions by
bringing them up, or putting them down, along an. ideal
scale of values is a most impressive phenomenon. Men, in
general, either boast themselves over their fellows because of
the claim to possess some more desirable and valuable sort
of knowledge; or else they lament their own constitutional
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 231
and educational restrictions which they regard as debarring
or hindering them from certain higher forms of knowledge.
The late Mr. Romanes, for example, at one time in his brief
but interesting life, appeared to himself to have lost both
knowledge and faith of the theistic order, out of his assured
experiences. Yet he always professed sincerely his regret
over an inability to retain, or to win back, something of
knowledge that possessed such a high degree of intrinsic
value. This inability he ascribed to an indisposition, not
wholly devoid of will, to leave the beaten tracks of the
scientific intellect for certain cognitions, or beliefs, attractive
to his feelings. Apparently, at the last, he thought of himself
as having regained a kind of rational hold on religion's great
postulate, under the impulse and guidance of feeling, by an
act of voluntary seizure, — in such way, however, as not to
violate his continued confidence in the fundamental principle
of all science, the objective validity of the law of causation.
Such an experience is popularly called " faith " rather than
knowledge. So, too, do we find a certain class of books —
in our opinion suggestive and practically helpful to many
minds, rather than profound and trustworthy for continued and
progressive reflection — like Mr. Kidd's "Social Evolution,"
and Mr. Balfour's " The Foundations of Belief," virtually
recommending the supremacy of intellect in the cognition
of certain kinds of truth, and the supremacy of feeling in
the faith of certain other kinds of truth. Yet the latter
truths as judged by sesthetical and practical standards, are,
conceded to be of the higher order. In all such cases the
assumption seems common that, so far as the defensible
grounds in reality, and the logical processes connecting con-
clusions with these grounds are concerned, " science" in the
narrower meaning of the word, is alone worthy to be called
cognition.
How much of truth there is in the above-mentioned as-
sumption, we shall discuss later on. The thing now to be
232 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
noticed concerns the import of any such discussion. Cer-
tainty the discussion itself implies some ideal standard of a
quite different kind from that which defines the degrees of
knowledge when these degrees are measured as differing in
surety based on recognized grounds. This inquiry assumes
the value of truth in its relation to life as constituting also
a fitting standard of measurement. Is a man's ideal of
value the exact correspondence of his mental representations
to the carefully formulated connections of objective phe-
nomena ? Then scientific truth is the highest kind of truth.
To such an extent may this be carried that the microscope,
telescope, crucible, and mathematics, may finally seem to
such a man the only means of arriving at a high degree of
real knowledge. But if one's ideal is rather that afforded by
a vivid feeling of the worth of self-conscious life in general,
and by the mental and practical grasp upon the principles of
conduct, it is evident that another kind of cognition, if attain-
able at all, will be ranked higher in degree than so-called
scientific cognition. But the one truth implied by both stand-
ards, and by all contest over the supremacy of any sort of
knowledge, is a certain doctrine of the teleology of knowledge.
This doctrine too, has its roots in psychology, which shows
us that every kind and degree of cognition involves all the
so-called faculties of mind in a living unity of action. The
epistemological conclusion follows, not as an abstract theory,
but as a recognition of the universal import of the language
and conduct of men. Cognition cannot be considered apart
from life. Whatever hind of value knowledge has, and what-
ever degree is attainable in any particular kind of value,
knowledge is also always means to an end that lies above itself
Whether one says credo ut intelligam or intelligo ut credam,
and whether one rates the satisfactions of faith or the satis-
factions of intellect most highly, the true state of the case
remains the same. All men set up in speech and in conduct
some ideal of a life that has worth ; and they rate their own
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 233
attainments, and the attainments of others, in the matter of
cognition, according to their ideal of the life that has supreme
worth. It appears, then, even at this stage in our inquiry
that the import of cognition is necessarily teleological, and
that sesthetical and ethical " momenta " cannot possibly be
excluded from the theory of knowledge. To these important
and fruitful thoughts we shall return again and again. For
not only are they portions of every well-considered philoso-
phy of knowledge, but they also serve to connect a theory
of knowledge with the philosophy of conduct, the philosophy
of art, and the philosophy of religion.
Men commonly distinguish, and often very sharply, between
opining, believing, thinking, and mere dreaming, on the one
hand, and knowledge, on the other hand. The character-
istics which mark this distinction are of two kinds ; yet
these two kinds are so related in the individual processes of
cognition, as well as in the growth of cognition, that they
are mutually dependent and mutually serviceable. They
are, first, the intensity and tenacity of the conviction which
belongs to the judgment terminating the mental process ;
and, second, the clearness and completeness of the conscious
recognition given to the grounds upon which this judgment
bases itself. Because both these characteristics can be tested,
or realized, in the consciousness of the cognizing subject, all
men make, more or less intelligently, a distinction between
knowledge and other allied mental states. Yet consider
what strange confusion of language and practice prevails in
this entire matter ! Many men affirm knowledge for them-
selves on grounds which would avail with difficulty to warrant
other men in pronouncing even a doubtful opinion ; and the
affirmation is " backed up " with a warmth and tenacity of
conviction which others reserve for only the most certain and
important of universally accepted practical truths. In some
minds this way of mental seizure upon the " stuff " of opinion,
with a view at once to convert it into the finished product
234 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
of cognition, appears habitual or even constitutional. But
other minds, especially those that possess the so-called scien-
tific bent and method and habit, scarcely venture to affirm
knowledge of any kind ; and would willingly give to all the
accepted categorical judgments in which the matter-of-fact
basis of science consists, the pale and sickly cast of mere
opinion. Is it time to forget how Dr. Bastian affirmed that,
"for a fact," he saw living forms spontaneously generated
in thoroughly sterilized fluid; and how Mr. Romanes wrote
to Darwin his intention to " believe " in pangenesis, whether
he could establish it by proof or not ?
It is generally admitted that " opinion " is a word to be
used for those of our judgments which cannot be so clearly
connected with grounds as to render them entitled to the term
" cognitive " ; and also that such judgments do not warrant,
and cannot rationally receive, the same degree of conviction
as that which attaches itself to genuine cognitive judgments.
By " belief " we oftenest intend to mark those mental atti-
tudes in which judgment is pronounced under the influence
of feeling, but with little or no satisfactory recognition of its
justifying grounds, and generally, therefore, with a weaker
degree of conviction. When men reason, however, and affirm
the judgment in which the process of reasoning terminates as
merely their " thought about," rather than their " knowledge
of" any subject, they usually mean to emphasize a distinc-
tion somewhat different from the foregoing. Thinking, as a
mental performance, is per se a placing of the judgment on
consciously recognized grounds ; no one can, therefore, prop-
erly say that he thinks thus and so about any matter of judg-
ment who has not really done some thinking — or tracing
out of the grounds of his judgment. The words " I think,"
rather than the words " I know," may be employed, how-
ever, either because the path of judgments, across which
the thinking lies, is not itself wholly clear ; or because
the path, although itself clear, does not lead to any ground
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 235
of the kind which can be called immediate or intuitive
cognition.
The distinction between knowledge and dreaming — or any
form of that merely reproductive or more constructive associ-
ation of ideas of which dreaming is the popular type — is of a
still different character. Doubtless, if the question as to the
amount of cognition possible in dream-life is seriously raised,
it receives from experience a somewhat doubtful and contra-
dictory answer. Most intelligent persons are accustomed to
regard their dreams as having, at best, little value in promoting
a growth of genuine cognition ; science, at any rate, does not
come by way of dreaming, and few, if any, are the contribu-
tions to the assured body of scientific truths which have been
made by the most florid dreamers. Other persons, on the con-
trary, go to the extreme of attaching a superior significance
to the impressions, the mental pictures of present or approach-
ing realities, which arise in the mind during its dream-life.
It is not our present intention to deny the existence of dreams
of anticipation, revelation, or prophecy ; or to dispute the ac-
curacy of the alleged facts on which the efficacy of this means
of attaining knowledge is affirmed. Perhaps Tartini did
actually dream out his " Devil's Sonata," and Yoltaire, one
version of his song to Henriadne. Dannecker's colossal
" Christus " may have first appeared to him as a dream-
image ; and Jean Paul may be reciting correctly facts of
experience when he maintains that in dreams he often saw
sights, especially countenances and eyes, incomparable, and
which remained of influence with him for a long time. Such
experiences, however, are scarcely to be called cognition ; or
if so-called at all, such cognition is certainly of a low degree
both of surety and of value. Prognostications of a definite
sort may also come in dreams : as in the case of the man of
whom old Galen tells, who dreamed his leg had turned to
stone, and awoke to find it paralyzed. Thus Aristides is said
to have dreamed in the temple of ^Esculapius that a bull
236 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
wounded him in the knee, at the spot where a tumor almost
immediately appeared. Arnold de Villanova felt himself
bitten by a black cat in the foot, where the next day a can-
cerous ulcer appeared ; and Gessner perished of a malignant
pustule which appeared in his breast a few days after he had
been bitten, in a dream, by a poisonous serpent. As to the
psycho-physical explanation of such artistic and premonitory
psychoses, the modern science of psychology is not greatly at
a loss. They only emphasize the natural and acquired talent
at construction and interpretation, of the human image-mak-
ing faculty, which sometimes hits it right in a. manner ap-
proaching the surest instincts of the animals, — but then, even
oftener, hits it wrong. What should now be remembered,
however, is that these forms of consciousness, for the most
part, incontestably lack just those characteristics that distin-
guish cognition from every other form of mental life. Hence
the wise Sirach declares : " Dreams deceive many people,
and fail those who build on them."
In this connection it should be noticed that even the most
vivid sense-perceptions in dream-life, as a rule, lack the
characteristics of genuine cognition by the senses. We are
not sure that the words " as a rule " might not be converted
into " universally," if only the distinction could always be
accurately drawn between the coloring which the act of wak-
ing, recognitive memory imparts to the dream and the coloring
which it actually had, as a dream, at the time of its occur-
rence. Generally, if not universally, nothing strictly resem-
bling cognition by the senses — perceptive knowledge of
things — takes place in dreams. But then, four fifths of
what is called perception in daily waking life lacks the char-
acteristics of a fully established cognition of things. For
example, I pass rapidly along the streets, thinking over some
topic which interests me, or intent upon getting somewhere
in the pursuit of some plan. The series of mental images,
objectly determined, to be sure, yet scarcely noticed and not
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 237
criticised or judged at all, cannot be said to amount to a fully
established cognition of series of things. If I afterward ask
myself, What have I seen by the way ? the question is a
challenge to that critical and judging attitude which was
lacking to the original series of mental images ; and the re-
sult may be the establishment now, by recognitive memory, of
a representative cognition of things. But it is precisely this
characteristic of critical judgment which is ordinarily lacking
to the sensuous impressions of dream-life ; the latter may
therefore have a startling vividness and intensity without,
for that reason, furnishing the characteristics of objective
cognition.
Occasionally, however, the critical process which thinking
brings to bear upon mental images, in order to test, as it
were, their fitness to become terms in a cognitive judgment
does take place in dreams. Oftenest this occurs while one
is moving along the border line between waking and sleeping.
Modern experiments have shown clearly that during the last
three quarters, or four fifths of the seven or eight hours of
healthy sleep, the curve which measures the depth of sleep
runs almost parallel with the line of waking. The stream of
consciousness then becomes a mixture of two classes of ele-
ments and two corresponding sets of considerations. Reality
beats its way in fitfully and spasmodically upon the fantastic
domain of dreams ; it colors the dreams without converting
them into waking cognitions, or it gets a momentary standing
in the stream of consciousness, from which to push back into
oblivion the dream-land itself. We, the conscious subjects
of the states (fitfully half self-conscious and half conscious
of a reality not-ourselves), are still, for the most part, sub-
jected to the reproductive and low-thoughted creative activity
of the image-making faculty. This activity weaves before us
beautiful and wonderful fabrics, and again patterns of most
absurd and monstrous shapes. But it does not tell us what is
true. And until we can " come to our self," can so get our
238 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
bearings as to criticise what we see, and to think whether it
will fit in to the entire structure of knowledge, we cannot tell
whether we are sleeping or waking ; whether what we behold
as not-me is some real thing or is the pure product of our
creative phantasy. Now, lo ! we are wide awake, and all is
changed. We have entered again into that form of soul-life
in which knowledge asserts its own characteristic differentia-
tion from mere opining, mere believing, mere having of sen-
suous impressions, or thoughts, or associated mental images.
We come down hard now upon our cognitive judgments,
stand ready to defend them as resting upon grounds which
can be given to the recognition of other men, and exercise a
sturdy, common-sense confidence in their validity for the
beings and relations of the really existent world. Armed
thus, we turn with cheerful and courageous spirit to smile at
our dreams and to face the actual beings and transactions of
the daily life.
But while the distinction between cognition and other
allied forms of experience has reference to an absolute stan-
dard, the distinction itself is not absolute. The rather is it
relative — to the standard. All men have some sort of an
ideal of knowledge, which is indisputable as to the strength
and tenacity of the conviction accompanying its grasp upon
reality, and indubitable in the full aspect of the reasons
which justify, by making rational, the attitude of feeling and
will toward its truth. To attain such knowledge is to be
wholly satisfied in one's own being by the character of the
commerce thus obtained with other being than one's own.
In the experience of such acts of cognition, one cannot rea-
sonably doubt, and one does not feel willing to doubt. Looked
upon from the side of intellection, the evidence for the truth
of the cognitive judgment is complete ; looked upon from the
side of affective disposition, belief is cordial, harmonizing,
satisfactory ; looked upon from the side of volition, the affir-
mation or negation is an act that is devoid of wavering, and
DEGKEES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 239
that appears as a grasping of the real being of the object
by the inmost being of the subject. Such an attitude of the
whole soul toward Reality is called absolute knowledge —
so far as the term " absolute " can be applied to human
cognition, regarded even as an ideal.
Now, however, it appears that different degrees of approach
to this ideal of an absolute cognition are classed together, or
apart, according to a variety of changing conditions. As to
evidence, the kind and amount required to warrant knowl-
edge, in distinction from opinion or belief, varies greatly, not
only in dependence upon the characteristics of the cognizing
subject, but also in respect of the character of the object of
knowledge, the kind of knowledge, the amount of evidence
obtainable, etc. The vague term " sufficient reason " affords
no help here. The rather is it one of several terms due to
Leibnitz and his followers, which has continued to seduce
certain minds, peculiarly liable to errors of formalism, into
supposing that logical formulas can afford satisfactory tests
of real knowledge. But no definition, not to say description,
can ever be given as to precisely how much, or as to what
kind of evidence is sufficient. Suppose, for instance, that
an appeal be taken to the evidence of the senses, with the
opinion that upon it alone, when clear and indubitable, the
rational confidence of an absolute cognition can be reposed.
And now we have to deal, on the one hand, with the man
who " thrusts his fists against the posts, and still insists he
sees the ghosts," and on the other hand, with the German phi-
losopher who declares that " he will not believe a miracle even
if he sees one with his own eyes." In such cases as these
there can be no doubt as to the relativity of knowledge, in
the form of dependence upon the total bent and entire past
experience of the cognizing subject, as well as upon the vary-
ing characteristics of the object of cognition.
Account must also be taken of the reciprocal influence of
the different principal factors of an act looking toward cogni-
240 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
tion, in determining whether it shall be accepted as a valid
cognition, or only be allowed the rank of an opinion, a belief,
a thought, or a product of imagination. Here one's experi-
ence is that of trying to bring about an adjustment of all
these factors so as to render the mind in harmony with itself,
and, so to speak, in agreement with the really existent that
lies "beyond" the mind. If we find evidence in perception,
or in thought, that the fact is so, the principle true, or that
the event will happen, then we feel a corresponding increase of
conviction, and firmness of will in laying down the cognitive
judgment, " It is so " ; or, " It is true " ; or, " It will happen."
But if the right kind of affective and voluntary attitude does
not develop in correspondence with a clarifying recognition
of the evidence, then the mind fails of knowledge in its own
estimate ; it feels " in reason bound " to remain in the state
of mere opinion or mere belief. In many cases, however, —
and, especially, in cases of so-called practical or religious
truth, — feeling, with its motive effects in the voluntary attitude
or tendency, takes the lead of intellection. We think, we
believe, we are of the cherished opinion, that it is so, and yet
we refrain from saying, " I know " ; this is because we cannot
bring into consciousness the grounds on which to justify
before our intellects a complete cognitive judgment.
What in doubtful and conflicting cases will the truly ra-
tional, the genuinely wise man do ? Will he disregard wholly
the impulse of feeling and the resulting tendency of will to
accept the desirable proposition, the longed-for u It-is-so " ?
By no means. Were this resolve firmly made by every human
being, it could not be carried into effect. Men will look about
for evidence to prove what they desire to know as true ; and
they will know to be true that which it pleases them to have
true, on less evidence than they require in proof of what the
affective, the practical, the sesthetical side of human nature
reacts against. To say this at all is simply to say that the
soul of man is not a mere intellectual mechanism, and that
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 241
it never reaches cognition simply by following the process of
ratiocination. It is to affirm again a true theory of knowl-
edge, and to take another step toward putting this theory
in defensible relations to the totality of human life. Nor
would it accrue to the benefit of the kingdom of knowl-
edge, if its subjects were to serve with less of warm interest
and hearty resolve as to the reward of service they are them-
selves to receive. For in the conquests which this kingdom
has made, human feeling and human will, enlisted in the
effort to procure room for settlement upon firm ground of
rationality, have, as a rule, taken the part of leaders and
guides. They are oftenest the scouts, the sappers and miners,
the trumpeters which sound the charge, or the call from sure
defeat and final discouragement, of the army which extends
this kingdom. This epistemological truth is not confined to
matters of conduct and religion alone. It is equally true in
matters of science and philosophy. We shall subsequently
show that considerations largely of an affective and quasi-
practical character not only stimulate the discoveries of
science, but also enter largely into the very body of scientific
knowledge. It is enough here to notice that the great leaders
in the physical and natural sciences have oftenest felt and
willed their way to the first approaches of truth, and have
then, so to speak, backed themselves up by searching out
proofs to justify them before others.
It must not for a moment be supposed, however, that igno-
rant and blind feeling, whatever degree of warmth it may
attain, can raise a belief, or an opinion, to the grade of an
assured cognition. One would not wisely consult the colored
" aunty," who " feels in her bones " that every word of the
Pentateuch came by divine dictation, in order to refute the
theories of Kuenen and Wellhausen. But even her feelings
may have no small value in connection with some sort of
belief, that is capable of being raised, by proof, to the rank
of a cognitive judgment. For knowledge and faith are not
16
242 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
really distinguished after the critical fashion which Kant
made so disastrous to the integrity of both. Nor is the dis-
tinction itself, fundamentally considered and as affecting our
epistemological theory, one that has reference to different
classes of objects.
It appears, then, that degrees of knowledge must be recog-
nized, not only in explanation of the subjective changes which
mark the approach to an ideal standard, but also as belonging
to the very nature of all knowledge considered as a growth
of experience objectively determined. This undoubtedly re-
quires, in some sort, a doctrine of the " relativity " of all
knowledge. But it certainly would not be justifiable, at this
point in our critical examination, to make one grand leap
over into the domain of dogmatic scepticism or critical
agnosticism. Even if no such prize as absolute knowledge
were attainable by man, the other part of the alternative
would not, as a matter of course, force the conclusion that no
real knowledge is attainable. For plainly the principle of
continuity must be used here in the same sensible way in
which it is used in other similar subjects of inquiry. For
example, an elm-tree is a plant and not an animal ; but an
elephant is an animal and not a plant. Thus much may be
known and affirmed without hesitation. But the elm-tree and
the elephant are, in several important respects, alike ; and
there are some beings possessing the most important of
these respects, common to elm-tree and to elephant, about
which biology is in doubt as to whether they are plants or
animals. Between these beings of a doubtful class and
both elm-tree and elephant, a continuous series of living
forms can be interposed. In other words, one is not forced
to deny the important distinctions between certain atti-
tudes of mind that are plainly cognitions, with all which
this implies, and certain other attitudes that plainly fall
short of being cognitions, because one can give no universal
rule for distinguishing cognitions, or because one finds one's
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 243
actual cognitions capable of being arranged in varying de-
grees of approach to a standard which measures them all.
The illustration just given, however, is not intended to apply
throughout. For the most important question of all still re-
quires a brief answer. Is there any experience possible for
man which actually answers to his own ideal of " absolute
knowledge " ? To this question one may answer unhesitat-
ingly, Yes. The completed act of self-consciousness, ending
in the judgment which affirms my own here-and-now being,
for myself, is such an absolute cognition. As involving in-
tellect, feeling, will, all in harmony and, when harmoniously
employed, reaching an envisage ment of reality that has noth-
ing more profound, or more complete, or more worthy (except
the extension of essentially the same cognitive process over
wider and wider areas), this immediate knowledge of the Self
by itself is, in actuality, the realized ideal of knowledge. In
grading other degrees of cognition we employ this ideal as
our standard. After this pattern alone can we conceive of
the Divine Mind as a fountain of absolute knowledge.
As a matter of experience, the possibility is afforded, and
the actuality proved, of a certain form of absolute knowledge
by sense-perception also. That my object is there, thus and
so determined for me, and by me, and yet as not-me, — this,
too, is a cognitive judgment which has all the characteristics
belonging to the ideal of absolute knowledge. But how far,
at this point and henceforward, the knowledge of Things falls
off from and drops behind the knowledge of Self, has been
discussed at length in the last chapter.
In respect of the essential characteristics of knowledge,
all other forms of cognition have only a relative degree, —
such as marks their nearness of approach toward an ideal and
absolute standard. This is true even of the knowledge of
our own past selves. It is knowledge which, at its best, is
guaranteed by the act of recognitive memory, and thought
into consistency with all the other experiences that seem to
244 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
have a bearing on the truth of the cognitive judgment. At its
poorest, what appears knowledge of the past is mere unjusti-
fiable belief or untrustworthy opinion. Back to these firm
points of standing in our so-called immediate or intuitive
knowledge of Self and of Things we keep referring all our
opinions, beliefs, and thoughts, in order to make between the
latter and the former that rational connection which is called
" proof." The principles that underlie this process of " mak-
ing rational connection" await detailed examination. The
picture gained as the result of exploring the realm of knowl-
edge, to discover in what respect it admits of degrees, is the
picture of a changing and developing life of the mind. This
is true both for the individual and for the race. Human
beliefs are constantly growing stronger or fading away ; they
are gathering to themselves, or losing from themselves, the
light of intellect needed to convert them into cognitions, to
fit them to become part of the body of human knowledge.
Thoughts are getting more or less abstract, are flying lower
or flying higher —
"In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and strife of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth."
But the lowest of human thoughts must make connection
with the highest, or sink into the mire ; and the highest of
human thoughts can soar toward heaven only if they return
frequently to rest upon the solid grounds of some kind of
fact. Imaginations constantly run far ahead of known
truths; but they vanish in the mist unless they prove the
forerunners of truths to be known, bearing beneath them the
sustaining limbs of experience and carrying on their backs
a good load of the choicest ethical and aesthetical interests
of mankind. Is this, however, a picture to make a brave
and thoughtful man sit down in the dust of scepticism, or
stick fast in the quagmire of a hopeless agnosticism? We
are " of opinion," that it is not.
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 245
The use of the term " degrees of knowledge," with reference
to some ideal standard of worth which enables us to rate
different cognitions as " higher " or " lower " than one
another, needs little further exposition at this point. It is
plain that the standard set up is not, in this case, the excel-
lence of the approach made by any particular cognition, or
set of cognitions, to some ideal which is itself of a cognitive
character. The amount and kind of evidence, the strength
and tenacity of conviction, the motif and firmness of will
in affirming or rejecting, are all integral parts of the cogni-
tive process itself. But the claim of different cognitive
judgments — for example, those of the man of ordinary ex-
perience, of the scientific man, and of the philosopher, or
those of the advocates of the supreme importance of conduct,
or of religion, or of " truth for its own sake " — to stand
above each other in excellence, must be taken to some court
of appeal that does not have regard merely to the quality of
the cognition as such. We have already declared that the
appeal is made in this case to the value of some kind of ideal
life. This fact may suffice to indicate the unreasonableness
of the alternative proclaimed by many writers 1 between per-
fectly clear, indubitable, and certain knowledge and no knowl-
edge at all. Such an alternative overlooks the very nature
of knowledge and the unavoidable conditions of its growth ;
to carry it out would oblige us to confine the word to the
immediate deliverances of self-consciousness and sense-per-
ception. Science would then not be knowledge. And, in-
deed, all knowledge would be impossible ; for this perfectly
clear, indubitable, and certain knowledge is itself a matter
of growth, a prize to stimulate achievement rather than a
ready-made and completed gift from the hand of Reality.
Probably no other branch of epistemology has led to so
much misconception as the inquiry into the Limits of Knowl-
1 For example, by Mr. Bradley in his " Appearance and Reality," chapter on
" Degrees of Knowledge."
246 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
edge. And not a little theoretical confusion, as well as no
small store of mischief in the practical life, has resulted
from this misconception. Yet almost all that can be said
respecting limits to human cognition, so far as the doctrine
of limits forms a legitimate part of epistemology, lies near
the surface and may be speedily brought to view. Strictly
speaking, to describe the limits of human cognition in general
would require that one should mark out the entire domain
of all the particular sciences, with the accompanying degrees
of evidence of various kinds which these sciences possess
and to which they defer. Such " geographiziug," however,
would add little or nothing to a philosophical theory of
knowledge. It would bear about the same relation to our
higher theoretical interests which the nautical almanac bears
to new discoveries in the science of navigation. It would
scarcely have the influence upon the advance of epistemology
which may be expected for astronomy from the modern use
of photography in mapping out and numbering the stars.
The discussion of the limits of knowledge, in order to be
illumining and fruitful even in the slightest degree, must
begin and proceed by holding fast to certain distinctions.
Of these, the first, both in time and in importance, is the
distinction between the limits of knowledge and the presup-
positions of knowledge. In some sort, to be sure, the latter
may be regarded as setting limits to cognition, because they
do mark out the boundaries within which the entire system
of human cognitions lies. This amounts to saying that, un-
less certain conditions are assumed as being fulfilled, no
knowledge is possible; but that these same conditions, being
actually met in all the origin and growth of cognition, defin-
itively settle the bounds within which the rise and progress
of all human knowledge takes place.
But now by a strange leap which is, logically considered,
a paralogism, and, practically considered, a mark of natural
perversity, these same conditions are spoken of as though
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 247
they cramped and hindered cognition. A man's skin, as
marking off the superficial area of the different members of
his organism in a smooth, continuous way, is the natural
limit of his body. Inasmuch as it has most important phys-
iological, nervous, and sesthetical functions, it is an indis-
pensable condition of the healthy existence, and even of the
existence at all, of the entire body. But it can scarcely be
spoken of with propriety as a hindrance to his larger and
freer development, as a bodily organism ; nor is it desirable
to attempt the problem of getting " out of one's own skin "
in order the better to realize what an unlimited extension of
the human body possibly may be.
In the case of that knowledge which comes through the
senses, we use the word " limits " with a possible application
in both of two directions. Each one of the senses has its
natural limitations of capacity, fitted to the peculiar function
which it is intended to perform. Indeed, each sense has a
number of limits of this kind, that depend upon certain
subordinate differentiations of its more general functions.
Further, these limits are variable for different human beings,
and also for the same human being at different stages of his
development, or under different circumstances. And yet these
limits are not indefinitely removable for any individual man
or for the whole race, so far as our knowledge of the charac-
teristics of individuals and of the race at present informs us.
The limits of tones, for example, are those corresponding to
between 24 and 24,000 vibrations of the stimulus in a second
of time ; but in individual cases, possibly, between 14 and
40,000 or 50,000. The limits of colors are for most eyes
between the deep red and the violet rays ; but for some, the
still lower red and the ultra-violet rays are visible. Pos-
sibly, a few eyes can see the halo around the magnet through
which an electric current is running, although to far the
greater number there is no halo to be seen. Yet, again,
have not all, of late, been made to see things, before sup-
248 DEGREES. LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
posed invisible to all, by the discovery of the Roentgen rays ?
But, alas ! there are some, on the other hand, who are tone-
deaf or color-blind ; and who, therefore, having ears, hear
not, and having eyes, see not — as we who are more favored
delight to hear and to see.
Not only is the range of the particular senses limited,
although thus indefinitely ; but also the number of these
senses in all may be spoken of as limited, in somewhat similar
way. Until recently the orthodox supposition in psychology
held that the special senses of man were in number five, —
no more and no less ; and we find even that free-lance and
credulous philosopher, named Schopenhauer, speaking sneer-
ingly of any assumption that other senses might possibly be
avenues of cognition for human beings, as of a " sixth sense "
for bats. But modern investigations have added to the five
senses formerly admitted several others ; for example, a
" temperature sense," a " joint sense," and perhaps an outfit
of " sensations of position " in space through excitation of
the semi-circular canals, — not to speak of the debatable
"muscular sense," and the centrally originated sensations
connected with the cognition of the Self as active and in-
tensely alive. Nor is it quite admissible for the psychologist
of fair mind to break off with this enumeration in such man-
ner as to announce his determination to admit no other
kinds of " sensation-stuff " (or, to use Kant's shifty expres-
sion, " that-which-is-given ") as belonging to the domain of
knowledge through sense. Believers in telepathy, clairvoy-
ance, necromancy, and all of that ilk, would probably for the
present most wisely have their claims to enter the clan of the
" scientists " pronounced' upon as u not proven." For our-
selves, we do not just now even "half-believe," not to say,
know that these avenues can bring to the human mind aught
regarding the Reality which is not-ourselves. But the phe-
nomena which fall under the various forms of " far sight,"
and u second sight," and extraordinary " insight," are of a
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 249
character not to allow of an off-hand dogmatic limitation of
the borders between the sensible and non-sensuous worlds.
They do show plainly, on the other hand, that these two
worlds so-called are really one ; the two are capable, there-
fore, of being bound into the unity of experience through
that commercio which is the essence of knowledge, in an
unknown variety of ways.
Our experience, considered as some sort of a totality de-
pendent upon racial characteristics and racial development,
suggests at this point a somewhat startling conjecture.
There is reason to surmise that the lower animals constantly
adjust themselves to subtile changes in their environment,
and carry out in that environment what appears to us a
system of shrewd plans, through their experience in the form
of obscure and confused impressions of a sensuous kind.
They are not, however, aware of themselves or of their ob-
jects, in all this, in such manner as to entitle the stimu-
lating and guiding acts of their consciousness to be called
acts of cognitive perception. Psychology, therefore, speaks
of such psychoses as instinct, feeling, tact, etc. But human
cognitive development is to be explained, for individuals
and for the race, only if recognition is made of a constant
relation of reciprocal involution and evolution between such
lower forms of psychoses and genuine states of cognitive
perception.
In every series of perceptive acts the grounds of the cogni-
tive judgment in which the acts terminate, as a matter of fact,
do not themselves appear in consciousness. In other words,
what determines the character of the judgment must largely be
spoken of, in every case, as unrecognized causes rather than
reasons, or " grounds " in the more appropriate, logical mean-
ing of the word. Yet the judgment is, on the whole, so
reached and, when reached, so found possessed of the neces-
sary characteristics, that the entire process is fully entitled
to be called an act of cognition. But, on the other hand,
250 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
the grounds of cognitive judgments, as they consist in char-
acteristic determinations of the " sensation-stuff," are brought
more and more clearly into consciousness, as a necessary
element in the growth of cognition by use of the senses.
Thus what resembles instinct, blind feeling, and tact is
constantly being taken up unconsciously into knowledge ;
and knowledge itself also consists in consciously recognizing
the presence and significance of a great number of factors
which, in the case of the lower animals, appear to remain as
instinct, blind feeling, and tact.
Now this process of reciprocal involution and evolution,
which is essential to the growth of perceptive cognition, ren-
ders it possible that the number of recognized senses pos-
sessed and intelligently exercised by man may be indefinitely
increased. And connected with this prospect is the sure
progress of the physical sciences, helped on by psychology,
in devising means of knowing what things are by use of these
newly discovered senses. A generation ago, the scientific
observer would have been much more disposed to fix rigid
limits, both quantitative and qualitative, within which all
things, so far as visible, must be known. But both microscope
and telescope have extended the limits of seeing the minute
and the remote far beyond the lines formerly drawn. The
spectroscope has made vision an apparent avenue for cogni-
tion of the more interior nature of distant bodies. And not
only this, as matter of chief surprise ; but all of a sudden, and
lately, we have had revealed, through use of the eyes, under
the action of a force which cannot at present be classified
with any known kind of force, new manifestations of matter
in hitherto undiscovered relations to the senses of man. How
many of yet more startling disclosures may not await the
future of the human race ! Even the discovery is not im-
possible that men have always used a score or two of senses,
instead of the five allowed by the traditional psychology ; and
the future may bring into recognized use, for largely increased
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 251
knowledge of nature, a score or two more that have been
hitherto so little used as scarcely to be entitled to the claim to
exist.
It should, of course, be said that, after all, our knowledge
of things through the senses will always be limited. It is
safe enough to predict that the number of human senses will
never be indefinitely large; and that the number of distin-
guishable sensations which rise above the threshold of our
human consciousness will never reach infinity. Moreover, and
quite as much a matter of course, all knowledge of this sort
will be limited to such sides, or aspects, or forms of the
activity of things as can be known in a sensuous way. In
reaction, therefore, against this limitation, from which no
reasonable or even conceivable means of escape suggests itself
in our case, it is customary to form the picture of beings that
cognize things in other and preferable ways. Even Kant, as
a kind of subjective correlate to his Ding-an-sich, admitted
the possibility of an intuition which should be non-sensuous ;
and this intuition, by escaping the limitations of all sense-
intuition, might furnish an immediate envisagement of the
nature of Reality itself.
At once, however, we are moved to inquire : Whence comes
this dissatisfaction with the seeming exterior character and
the irremovable limits of the human knowledge of things ? To
this inquiry our discussions have already provided the prompt
and incontestably true answer. The dissatisfaction arises
from the innermost cognitive nature of man. But whence
comes the fair picture of a possible kind of knowledge which
shall, at least in great measure, remove the dissatisfaction, —
a kind of knowledge that shall not leave things still external
to us and leave us feeling shut off from the true nature of
things ? To this inquiry also, the prompt and incontestably
true answer has already been furnished : It comes from the
depths of man's rational experience with himself. It is the
picture of a being that shall be so constituted as to know things,
252 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
perchance to know all things, as man knows himself. For the
Self is known with an intuition which, so far as it goes,
both furnishes and guarantees the correspondence of the
object of cognition with the reality cognized. But things,
as to their nature beyond the negative definition of a being-
not-me, are only analogically known. It is the recognition
of this fundamental difference and the conception of a being
that shall transcend this difference by having an experience
which gives the cognition of things to the Self, after the man-
ner in which the cognition of Self is given to us, that leads
men to speak of irremovable limits to human knowledge by
the senses.
It is more usual to discourse of the " limits " of scientific
knowledge in a meaning quite different from the foregoing.
" Science " is supposed to be knowledge par excellence, the
only cognition which will bear the tests that are necessary to
separate between the genuine, trustworthy metal and the
baser admixtures of opinion, belief, and mere abstractions.
But those who have most confidence in the validity of all
truly scientific knowledge, and most pride in its recent rapid
advances, are readiest to admit that its achievements hitherto
have compassed no appreciable percentage of what remains
yet for science to do. Its field is, therefore, thought of as
narrow and limited in comparison with the extent of nature
at large, regarded as a possible object for scientific research
and scientific discovery. Now, science lays emphasis on that
knowledge which has taken the form of the universal, in dis-
tinction from the particulars of individual acts of cognition,
whether of things or of Self. Science is knowledge of the
generic characteristics of large numbers of individuals and of
general laws, or of the uniform modes of the behavior of
the individuals under certain definitively fixed relations to
each other.
It is admitted, however, that in order to have a system of
judgments which states the characteristics and laws of things
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 253
and which may be considered as scientific knowledge, the
grounds of connection must be made more or less clear and
defensible between this system of conceptual judgments
and those cognitive judgments which are terminals of the
particular processes of perception and of self-consciousness.
The bearing of such a connection upon our view of the validity
and extent of human knowledge will become evident through
subsequent discussions from somewhat altered points of view.
From the present point of view it appears simply that the case
of that conceptual knowledge at which science aims is not,
so far as the application of the word " limits " is concerned,
markedly different from the case of perception through the
senses. The range of what is already known appears, in fact,
exceedingly small in comparison with the conjectured extent
of what may possibly yet be known. In fact, also, the amount
of that which is known constantly increases. But since first-
hand evidence in the form of immediate cognitive judgments
must somewhere be furnished, or else our so-called science
lacks a sure ground of standing in reality and becomes mere
thinking and imagining rather than assured knowledge, the
limits of sense-perception set certain limits to the science of
things.
Here emerges, however, a very important difference between
scientific knowledge and immediate cognition through the
senses. Science is not content with knowing enough about
things simply to use them cunningly. It aims at explaining
things. As has already been said, it claims to state its cogni-
tions in a system of judgments about universals, — about hinds
of things and about the laivs of their behavior in manifold re-
lations. Now the knowledge of facts, even when of the clearest
and surest, by no means carries with it the knowledge of the
explanation of the same facts. And men are constantly find-
ing out that the most frequent and familiar of facts, as
cognitively apprehended, become the most complicated and
mysterious when an explanation of them is demanded. To
254 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
know " that," and a little of " what," is not to know all of
what or any of " why." It is no wonder, then, that the limits
of scientific knowledge, although actually widening, seem to
be growing narrower in comparison with the boundless extent
of the scientifically knowable that is as yet unknown. Thus
we may, on the one hand, contemplate the fair prospect of
more rapid advance for the particular sciences in the future
than has been at any time in the past history of the race.
We may even expect the fulfilment of those aspirations
which, in germinal form, led Paracelsus to declare : —
' ' Thus I possess
Two sorts of knowledge ; one, — vast, shadowy,
Hints of the unbounded aim I once pursued :
The other consists of many secrets, — caught
While bent on nobler prize, — perhaps a few
Prime principles which may conduct to much."
And should this increased knowledge of facts and causes be
followed by a corresponding growth of skill and art, then dia-
monds may be turned out (no longer mere black pin-heads)
from crucibles filled a few hours ago with charcoal ; and
this charcoal itself may be no longer needed for fuel in an
age when the atmosphere yields freely its thermo-dynamic
resources.
On the other hand, this expected realization of the Tales of
the Arabian Nights, under the improved moral restrictions
of modern civilization, will itself be a limited affair. There
will still remain — so we are accustomed to say in mocking
self-pity or in childish complaint — the infinite ocean of undis-
covered truth ; and the greatest men in science will still be
little children gathering a few pebbles upon the shore. How
rarely is it remembered that, by this manner of looking at the
intellect of man and at the nature of the Reality with which
he supposes himself to hold commerce of an intellectual kind,
assumptions are being justified that reach even beyond those
for which science is wont to rebuke the theologian or the meta-
physician of the most dogmatic type !
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 255
As every student of the problem and history of episte-
mology knows perfectly well, the question of limits presents
itself in a yet more trying and dangerous form to our critical
thinking. In Kant's celebrated chapter, " On the Ground of
the Distinction of Objects in general into Phenomena and
Noumena " he compares the whole domain of " pure under-
standing" to an island "enclosed by nature itself within
limits that can never be changed." "A wide and stormy
ocean," full of fog-banks and of ice, surrounds this island ; it
is "the home of illusion," but the island is the country of
truth. If now we inquire of this critical explorer, who has
just surveyed the entire island and laid it out with his ana-
lytic spade after the fashion of a French garden in the last
century, what constitutes the unchangeable and hopelessly
fixed limits, the reply is somewhat remarkable. The " limits "
are the constitution of the island itself. But one might reason-
ably expect to be told the rather : The limits are the sur-
rounding u wide and stormy ocean." And, indeed, upon this
same ocean Kant, the great explorer, bravely sets sail with
the four tables of the categories for his chart, and the interests
of a faith which is to take the place of knowledge, when the
latter has been " removed," lying heavy on his heart. Thus
guided and ballasted, as it were, he discovers in the entire
exploitable extent of this ocean three will-o'-the-wisp ideas,
which, although they are not even to be spoken of as stars,
descried from the island through the ocean's mist, and set
there by the good God to guide aright poor mariners, must
nevertheless be followed and believed in as real ; and so, if
followed, they will lead to the practical faith which reposes
content within a recognized illusion as its " fictive " haven.
But perhaps sufficient fault has already been found with the
" Critique of Pure Reason " for its off-hand identification of the
presuppositions of all cognition — especially those of a for-
mal sort — with limits or barriers that mark off and exclude
cognition from the world of the trans-subjective. The exam-
256 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
ination given hitherto to the nature of knowledge has cer-
tainly not justified a premature confidence in warrants for
this leap into agnosticism. To refute it further, and to con-
firm a mature confidence in more positive and reassuring
conclusions, requires no little of remaining critical work.
The supposition that human knowledge cannot sufficiently
commend and enforce its own ontological implicates must
lead to the inquiry as to what these implicates are, and as
to the terms on which they are given to the intellect for its
acceptance or rejection. The denial of the power of experi-
ence to transcend its own limits must be met with a pro-
founder examination of the concept of experience, with a view
to see whether aught that is so self-limited corresponds to
our actual experience. When scepticism and agnosticism
challenge our cognition to recognize its limits, it is time to
send the challenge back, and to inquire what are the neces-
sary limits of scepticism and of agnosticism. And, finally,
the very doctrine of the " relativity of all knowledge " irresis-
tibly brings on the inquiry whether this term, too, does not
also imply the absolute nature of some human knowledge.
Only when these and kindred discussions have been con-
ducted to an issue in an unavoidable agnosticism can we con-
sent to consider favorably the merits of a doctrine which
speaks of knowledge as though its presuppositions, and even
its necessary objective implicates, could properly be turned
into fixed barriers of human mental activity. There is quite
too much apriorism to suit a genuinely critical student of the
epistemological problem in the off-hand assumption that the
so-called " categories " are hindrances to a cognition of Reality,
rather than forms of its truthful mental representation.
Meantime, the preliminary truth which has. been derived
from previous discussions may be stated in the form of a cau-
tion : Transcendent entities and principles, made use of in the
interests of explaining experience in general, must be derived
from a basis of concrete experiences with acknowledged actual-
^ DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 257
ities. Here the relation of content and form, of substantial
existence and mode of mental procedure, is such that the two
cannot be considered or criticised apart. The universal mode
of mental procedure by which we explicate the transcendent
that is implicate in our experience is a movement of cognitive
judgments under the principle known as " sufficient reason."
Whenever, then, a connection of judgments established in this
way leads us beyond the limits of individual experiences, the
advance thus gained carries with it the content that is impli-
cate in the form. This is a genuine advance of knowledge,
as distinguished from an endless wandering over "the wide
and stormy ocean " of illusion, in the vain attempt to convert
mere imaginings and abstractions into content of truth, —
after the fashion described in the Kantian "transcendental
dialectic. ,,
Any discussion of the Kinds of Knowledge, from the epis-
temological point of view and with the intention to make the
discussion yield fruit for the science of epistemology, must
constantly regard two very simple practical rules : The dif-
ferent species distinguished must all belong to the one genus,
— namely, knowledge ; and the principles of division accord-
ing4o which it is proposed to break up this genus into species
must be intelligently chosen and consistently maintained.
In violation of the first rule, Schopenhauer, after berating
Kant soundly (and, indeed, not without a show of reasons)
for exalting conceptual above perceptual knowledge, proceeds
himself to reverse the positions of the two so as virtually, by
some of his expressions, to deprive the former of all claim
to be called " knowledge." Indeed, it would seem to be by a
kind of non-sensaous intuition, such as Kant thought super-
human beings alone could possess, that Schopenhauer arrives
at the cognition of the essence of Tliing-in-itself as " Will."
But how can one speak of kinds and degrees of knowing
without admitting that, considered as to its essential charac-
teristics, there is only one kind of knowledge ? " Kinds " —
17
258 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
in this case, as in every other case — are only subordinate
species of the one genus or kind. What the essential marks
of this genus are, what is the genuine concept of knowledge,
has surely been discussed at sufficient length. The discussion
has shown that perception and intuition, without thinking,
never amount to cognition; but also that mere conceiving,
mere judging, and especially abstracting from all content of a
quasi-intuitive sort, can neither impart nor advance knowl-
edge. So that when cognition by intuition or envisagement
and cognition by abstraction and thought fall into a quarrel
over the question which of the two is entitled to stand highest
along the scale of surety or of worth, they are obliged in good
earnest to admit each other's claims, or they cannot rationally
even begin the quarrel. The same thought arises when men
of science are heard depreciating men of practical or artistic
insight, or the reverse ; and when men of firm faith denounce
the rationalism of those who do not reason as they do, or men
of active intellects decry the credulity of those whose belief
differs from their own. For cognition itself is impossible with-
out both insight and argument ; and all men must both believe
and think in order to Jcnoiv at all.
If, however, the fundamental facts as to the nature of cog-
nition are borne constantly in mind, several different divisions
of cognition may be made, according to different points of
view and changing principles of division. One of the most
important of these attempts at classification distinguishes the
pure — often called a priori — kind of knowledge from that
which is empirical, — sometimes called a posteriori. Of the
former, the science of mathematics is the accepted type ; and
other kinds of knowledge stand, in the scale of purity, nearer
to or more remote from the type, according to the degrees of
their approach to mathematics in the character of their rea-
soning and in the certainty of their conclusions. This entire
distinction, however, is usually carried out in a manner to
contradict or obscure a true philosophical doctrine of knowl-
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 259
edge. For just so far as mathematics and the so-called math-
ematical sciences constitute a body of cognitions, and not a
mere system of abstractions, they are built up as are all struc-
tures of a cognitive kind ; that is to say, they consist of a
number of connected judgments, which have their source and
their verification in a trustworthy commerce of mind with
really existent things. The view which regards mathematics
and the mathematical sciences as a sort of sensuous trans-
cript or copy of ready-made things, regarded as standing in
extra-mental relations to one another, and the view which
regards them as purely thought-constructions, having no need
of concrete self-consciousness or of perceptions by the senses,
are both equally untenable. Like all other cognitions, these
also are developed by the application of thought to our con-
crete experiences with ourselves and with things. And the
moment mathematical conceptions wander away from the
path in which they can make valid connection with these
concrete experiences, they cease to be cognitive in any defen-
sible meaning of that term.
One of the most valuable of the subordinate truths taught
by Kant in the " Critique of Pure Reason " is the necessity of
finding the source and verification for all our mathematical
knowledge in what he considers a priori activity of the con-
structive and synthetic imagination. If one wants to know
what a straight line actually is, then one must draw it, by an
act of constructive imagination. But Kant does not empha-
size the truth that such drawing of a straight line is quite
impossible for a mind that has not previously traced some
line, as seen or felt, actually limiting a thing perceived by the
senses. That is to say, the grounds for the conception of a
straight line, on which the foundations of all mathematics of
the geometrical order and all the mathematical sciences them-
selves are standing, are given only in the cognitive judgment
which terminates a series of sense-perceptions. This process
is an envisagement by thinking mind of the nature of the
260 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
really existent as given to it in the object of sense-percep-
tion. What is true of those processes that constitute the
actual experiences in which we come to the knowledge of the
properties of a straight line, is true of all the experience which
furnishes all the other primary conceptions and axioms of
geometry. As a science, a system of cognitions, it is not a
mere product of imagination or of thought, much less of
mere aggregated sensations or of associated ideas. It is
rather a product of the entire mind in its actual, living com-
merce with things.
Whenever Kant discusses the nature and origin of those
cognitive judgments which make up the science of arithmetic,
the other of the only two divisions of mathematics, he is more
than ordinarily unsatisfactory in his account of their episte-
mological character. Arithmetic is, in fact, from beginning
to end, nothing but counting. The activity of the mind in
the cognitive processes which enter into counting is, however,
exceedingly complex. It involves all the intellectual powers ;
it both promotes and implies the development of time-con-
sciousness ; it involves recognitive memory and self-conscious-
ness. As applied to Things instead of the successive states of
the Self, counting can at first be done only in connection with
and in dependence upon successive acts of the concrete cog-
nition of things through the senses. All the science of num-
bers, as well as the science of space relations, has its sure
foundations, as science (as knowledge and not mere imagin-
ings, or thoughts, or beliefs), in that commerce with Reality
which all men have through actual, concrete sense-perceptions.
What, however, shall be said of the claims of that mighty
and towering superstructure of mathematics, rising higher
and still higher with speculations so sublimated that only a
handful of initiated priests can even discern the meaning of
its mysteries, but which often makes claims to be a temple of
knowledge par excellence? In answering this question, one
must remain faithful to a critical epistemology, neither hiding
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 261
anything of truth by interposing the agnostic doubt, nor set-
ting down to the credit of mathematics admissions which
would annul all true conceptions of the nature of knowledge.
The truth lies in the middle path. Mathematics can increase
human knowledge, both in the number of its true judgments
and in the degree of clearly discernible evidence on which
they are consciously made to repose. But mathematical rea-
soning alone can never furnish us with truth ; because it can
never, of itself as it were, amount to genuine cognition. So
far as the system of judgments which it develops can connect
themselves with the known nature and actual relations of real
things, this system forms a part of the explanatory science of
things. But so far as it cannot make this connection, the
clearness and cogency of the arrangements which it produces
between its own abstractions give it no claim to be called a
form of " knowledge."
Here we may fitly raise again the question touched upon in
a preceding chapter (pp. 143 f.). What do I really know when
I affirm as true some relation of mathematical symbols which
I have reached as the result of days of hard work and pages
of figuring and plotting of curves ? Not necessarily more than
this : namely, that, starting from certain assumptions of
abstract relations between mere concepts, I have argued, in
accordance with accepted mathematical rules, to the conclu-
sion of certain similar relations between even more abstract
concepts. Thus much is true ; and I know it to be true. But
the instant I propose to apply this process of argument, or its
assumptions, or its conclusion, to any actually existent rela-
tions between real beings, I am met by the prior question :
44 How do you know that the nature of real beings admits of
their entering into these peculiar mathematical relations ? "
And even if the assumptions, in which the argumentative
start began, were known to be applicable to things, it by no
means follows that the calculated extensions of those rela-
tions admit of such an application. For things may not be
262 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
constructed mathematically all the way through (" according
tb Bsblid," or " to Gunter," as we might say). Indeed,
things do not appear to be mathematical throughout. And
there is probably no greater or more mischievous fallacy
current in scientific circles at the present time than that of
supposing that a knowledge of reality, or indeed any real
extension of knowledge, can come chiefly in this way. How
the failure to observe the difference between mathematical
abstractions and the reality of things has led to vain puzzles
and to important errors, from the conundrum about Achilles
and the tortoise down to the antinomies of Kant, we shall
consider elsewhere.
Some light is thrown upon the epistemological problem by
considering the effect of distinctions in time as present, past,
and future, upon the resulting kinds of knowledge. Undoubt-
edly memory and inference are necessary to the cognition of
what appears, in time, as present matter-of-fact. Indeed it
has been seen that memory and thinking necessarily enter
into all cognitive processes. But the knowledge of the object
here-and-now present, whether that object be the Self or some
Thing, differs from the knowledge of the same object by an act
of recognitive memory. Experimental investigation of the
laws which govern the fading of the memory image, and abun-
dant experience with errors of memory, combine to show that,
as respects its surety, cognition by memory is inferior to the
immediate cognition of self-consciousness and of sense-percep-
tion. It is, however, primarily with regard to the intensity of
belief in the reality of the object cognized that the difference
is noticeable. Not infrequently the cognitive judgment is
more discriminating when it is based upon memory than
when based upon the process known as immediate intuition.
Sources of error which arise in the affective consciousness
generally account for this. On the other hand, the fallibility
of memory is as much a commonplace as are the errors of
sense or the foibles of self-knowledge.
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 263
It is not in these subjective conditions alone, however, that
our superior confidence in present cognition is based. As we
project ourselves backward in time by an act of imagination,
we do not feel so sure that things themselves were not mark-
edly different in the past from what we now know them to be.
Nor does our own cherished and well-remembered Self escape
wholly from this doubt. Do I remember how I thought, felt,
and planned — what manner of one I was — in childhood or
in infancy, so that I can affirm knowledge on the basis of this
memory, even when I have apparent memory to bring for-
ward in proof ? All men, therefore, think it right to bolster
up even the clearest recognitive memories of what was,
especially if the time concerned was remote, by arguing as
to what must have been. Thus opinions of memory are helped
up to the rank of cognitions by the arm of rational inference.
The individual fact is thus certified to by an appeal to its
connection with the universal in experience. Yet, again,
the most assured scientific knowledge of things suffers from
the weakening effect of long stretches of time. Scientific
knowledge is, by nature, universal and so avowedly inde-
pendent of time. But he would be too bold a teacher of
science who should be just as sure of any principle when
applied to the physical realities of countless ages ago as when
applied to the system of things known to be existent to-day.
This certainly looks — does it not ? — as though the so-called
" system of things " might really be a Life, changing its modes
of manifestation or self-realization in accordance with imma-
nent Ideas, rather than a collection of rigid entities, blindly
subject in a mechanical way to unchanging laws.
In answer to the inquiry whether knowledge of the future
is possible, a negative reply rises most readily to one's lips.
But it cannot be admitted that the future is wholly unknow-
able without virtually destroying the foundations of all knowl-
edge. Indeed, all practical cognition, or all cognition put to
use in any way, implies the right and the power to predict.
264 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
As a mechanical engineer, after a thorough examination, I
may affirm, " I know the bridge is safe." The judgment,
" the bridge is safe," implies the prediction, " This same
bridge will not, the next instant, fall of its own weight." But
is it not, after all, possible that the bridge may go down ; and
do I surely know that it will not ? Now if one answers this
question by saying that, "abstractly considered," such a
catastrophe is possible, the retort follows that the question
does not concern abstract considerations, but concerns rather
the grounds of the possible cognition of what will actually be.
And if it is further said that, perchance, some error has crept
into the calculations, and therefore the bridge may fall, then
the reply is that such error vitiates the declaration, " The
bridge is safe," and converts it into a judgment of opinion,
instead of a truly cognitive judgment.
Even in the case of a judgment declarative of a fact of per-
ception, an implied reference to the future validity of the
judgment, if it is truly cognitive, cannot be avoided. u The
snow is white ; but the clothing of the man standing upon the
snow is black." Such a statement, in order to lay claim for
recognition as knowledge, must imply something more than a
merely subjective connection of forms of mental representa-
tion. It is understood to imply an objective connection main-
taining itself between the " momenta " and relations of really
existent beings: It follows that the judgment must bear
examination in order to be true; it must have enough of
stability in. the world of things to repeat itself in my mind
and in the minds of others. If now, when I look again,
the snow is no longer white and the clothing of the man
standing upon the snow is no longer black, why, then the
former judgment was not cognitive — unless, indeed, the
color of the snow and of the clothing has somehow been
changed. But this very demand for a " reason " why the
former judgment should not be withdrawn as erroneous, or
else the present change in judgment must be justified by an
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 265
appeal to some new grounds, shows the nature of the relation
between cognition in general and the distinctions of time.
Knowledge resting on grounds that cannot change is knowl-
edge once for all ; it is timeless cognition, and must imply
knowledge of the future as well as of the present and of the
past. But without some conscious recognition of grounds —
at least, hurriedly gathered and scanned, although perhaps
scarcely to be called " consciously recognized," after all — no
cognitive judgment can be laid down. And, as has been al-
ready pointed out, the more conceptual and scientific cog-
nition becomes, the more independent it becomes of the
gnawing tooth of time. Scientific knowledge is of the uni-
versal ; science boasts its power assuredly to predict and to
lay down truths that are independent of time.
And yet this claim of science to an established character,
and this boast of the power to extend itself into the indefinite
future, can by no means be made wholly good. For we are
only relatively sure of the unchanging truth of our most firmly
established scientific generalizations. The whole system of
things physical may possibly be completely upset to-morrow,
— " possibly" with an abstract possibility. But if one cannot
say one knows it actually will not be, one cannot claim an
absolute certitude for any system of scientific cognitions.
Here it is exceedingly important to notice that any doubt or
agnosticism which may afflict the mind does not refer to the
possibility of the laws of our intellects undergoing an im-
portant change. Neither is it due to a recognition of the
Kantian claim that human knowledge does not reach to
noumena, or to thing s-in-themselves. The rather is it because
men are sure they know Reality well enough to engender
reasonable doubt as to how far its self-imposed limits to
change may possibly extend. In other words, we know
noumena, or thing s-in-themselves, " too well " to trust them
indefinitely to confine themselves according to our rules as
to the way they absolutely must change in the future. But it
266 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE
is just this very independence of human wills which things
display that makes them known to human minds as realities
indeed.
Once more, then, by an indirect and circuitous path we
reach the discussion of certain questions left over in the very
distinction of knowledge from other kinds of conscious states.
Now we may the better inquire as to the significance of the
contention of Schopenhauer : " The given material of every
philosophy " (of all cognition in actuality, and so of all theo-
retical discussion of the problem of cognition) " is accordingly
nothing else than the empirical consciousness, which di-
vides itself into the consciousness of one's own self and the
consciousness of other things." 1 Conceptual knowledge, how-
ever, is the elaboration of this so-called empirical conscious-
ness, in such manner as to interpret and expand its
deliverances for the formation of a system of truths that
shall have a claim to represent the system of really existent
beings, the Unity of the World. But in some sort, the most
fundamental categories of Identity and Difference, of Process
and Change, of Relation and Causation, are one thing as
applied to Self and another thing when applied to physical
beings and physical transactions. Thus it is not the necessity
of logical determination, but the understanding of actuality,
which gives the law and the goal to our higher cognitions.
Thought is subject to logical necessity : oftener than not,
perhaps, actuality is what it is as a fact ; and that is the last
word on the subject. The actual points of starting for the
logical development of concepts of experience lies just where
the beginnings of experience itself lie — in the discriminat-
ing and integrating activity of mind, having commerce with
particular and concrete things. But logical thinking changes
these objects of self-consciousness and of sense-perception,
according to certain points of view, often arbitrarily chosen,
into logically differentiated objects of thought. These logical
i The World as Will and Idea, ii. pp. 258 f.
DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 267
entities it places in manifold relations to one another, under
terms of " classes," " laws," etc. Especially does it seek for,
and imagine that it finds, the formulas to express the causal
action of the beings which belong to these different classes
and stand under these different laws, one upon another, in
most manifold ways. If science becomes especially self-con-
fident and enthusiastic, it converts some of its most abstract
generalizations into primary realities and affirms an assured
knowledge of their inmost and unchanging character. For
example : Energy may be conceived of as an entity that can be
stored and transferred, conserved and correlated ; the law of
its storages and transferences, its conservation and correla-
tion, may be announced as having universal and unbroken
sway over things. This is, however, for science only a con-
venient abstraction ; it belongs to philosophy to tell what that
actually is can answer to this term.
The right to extend knowledge in this way — or, rather, the
right to convert a system of logically related conceptions into
a system of true cognitions, of judgments affirming laws in
reality — may well be questioned further at this point. This
question will lead us to consider, on the one hand, the funda-
mental and irrefragable modes of the functioning of intellect,
and, on the other hand, the criticism of those ontological
implicates on the basis of which we identify the modes of
thought with the modes of the really existent.
CHAPTER IX
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
THE sphere of experience is larger than the sphere of
knowledge ; but the sphere of knowledge is too large
to be completely compassed and, having been mapped out,
assigned in fee simple as the domain of thinking faculty so-
called. We have, therefore, narrowed our problem greatly
and denned its limits, when for the present we inquire : What
are the principles which validate and explain — so far as
validating and explanation are possible — the functions of
thought in all human cognition ? But this inquiry, as it is
proposed to the serious student of epistemology, is something
very different from the question which logic may propound in
nearly the same terms. The logician's point of view is one
from which no anxiety need be felt as to the answer obtained,
and at which no insight is gained into the deeper, ontological
import of the result. For what does formal logic care as to
the truthfulness of thought, in the fundamental and incom-
parably most important meaning of this word ? Logic under-
takes to show either how men actually do reason, or how they
may so reason as to convince those who hold by the common
axioms or postulates, — whether they are sceptics, dogmatists,
or agnostics, in their theory of knowledge. But epistemology
must, by pushing its rights of presuppositionless criticism to
their utmost possible limits, ascertain what is the final import
of the first principles of all thinking, and how far they seem
to carry in themselves, or otherwise to derive, their claim to
apply to the trans-subjective.
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 269
In the interests of gratifying that passion for unity which
human reason so persistently displays, as well as (one can
scarcely fail to suspect) in the effort to be original and to
announce some startling new discovery, the principles of all
thinking, as these principles enter into and conditionate all
knowledge, have often been reduced to a single formula. Such
a reduction has, however, never stood the test of an appeal to
our actual cognitive experience. At this point let us wait a
moment in reflection upon what the epistemological problem
really is. It is the problem of the possibility of genuine cog-
nition. But genuine cognition is impossible without thinking ;
it is dependent, therefore, upon the actual use of the princi-
ples of thinking. The constitutional forms of the functioning
of human intellect are the necessary presuppositions of all
human cognition. Yet again, cognition is not genuine, unless
the mental process terminates in an objective judgment, in a
form of psychic synthesis which carries with itself the claim
of a valid trans-subjective reference. 1 To say, therefore, that
the possibility of actual cognition depends upon the truth of
cognition amounts to the claim that the validity of all knowl-
edge implies the right to give to the fundamental principles of
human thinking a trans-subjective reference. So far forth, the
principles of Reality not-my-Self and the principles of my think-
ing must be the same. The temptation is accordingly very
great to seize upon some logical formula and convert it into
the one all-comprehensive, all-illumining, and all-supporting
principle of both Self and Things. To this temptation Fichte
and Schelling yielded ; Hegel also in his great work on Logic,
although in far less complete and disastrous form. But the fact
and the character of the growth of knowledge, through think-
ing, itself demonstrates that Eeality is no such simple affair.
It is not to be thus summarily known as the objectification
1 Nothing could well go wider of the mark, or wound philosophy in a more
sensitive and fatal place, than the random statement of Paulsen (" Introduction to
Philosophy/' p. 353): "No theory of knowledge causes the slightest change in
the stock and value of our knowledge."
270 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
of the logical principle of Identity, or of the syllogistic Pro-
cess by which the human mind climbs, through stages of par-
tial error and half-truth, to the heights of the Idea. On the
other hand, we repeat : No explanation or validating of cog-
nition is possible, except upon the presupposition that the
fundamental principles of my thinking are applicable to the
trans-subjective Reality.
Many centuries of reflective thinking upon the formal prin-
ciples of thought have reduced these principles to two ; they
are, the " Principle of Identity and Non-contradiction," and
the " Principle of Sufficient Reason." This result may well
enough be accepted as its own warrant. There is, therefore,
no one principle of thought which can be claimed as the only
source and guaranty of cognition. But there are two princi-
ples, both of which are fundamental (although, it may well be,
in different ways), neither of which is deducible from the
other, and both of which must co-operate, in order that ob-
jective cognition may result. Both of these principles must
also somehow obtain a guaranty for application to the world
of the really existent, both of selves and of things, or else all
human knowledge goes without explanation, import, or war-
rant of any kind.
It has been shown that thinking, so far as it enters into
cognition as a necessary constitutive factor, takes the form of
judging ; and that this cognitive judgment must itself be a
conscious, selective, feeling-full, and believing activity of mind.
It has also been shown how, although the greater part of
experience lies below the threshold of consciousness, and no
little logical or formally correct elaboration of experience is
possible without the consciousness of the reasons which jus-
tify it, yet so far as growth of knowledge is itself to be spoken
of, such growth consists in the conscious, selective, feeling-
full, and believing connection of judgments with one another
as " consequents " and " grounds." " I know this," or " This
is so and so," — such is the intellectual form given to a com-
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 271
pleted act of cognition. It is, therefore, a judgment. " I
know this, because I know that," or, " This is so, because that
is so," — such is the intellectual form of the conscious progress
from cognition to cognition. The knowledge of the connec-
tion is itself a new and most valuable cognition. It is called
reasoning, or a conscious connecting of judgments with other
judgments, as finding in the latter the supporting " reasons " or
so-called logical " grounds " of the former. Xow the " Prin-
ciple of Identity and Non-contradiction " is the necessary form
of every cognitive judgment. And the so-called " Principle
of Sufficient Reason " is the necessary form of every cognitive
connection of judgments, or process of the logical growth of
knowledge. The rather must we say that the former is
nothing else than the Self's full recognition of its own ut-
terly presuppositionless and inexplicable, but unquestionable
form of procedure in judging; and the latter principle sustains
the same relation to the Self's procedure in all reasoning. It
will quickly appear, however, that the discussion of this prin-
ciple from the point of view of a critical philosophy of knowl-
edge leads out into the vision of that broader and grander
ontological discussion which metaphysics and the philosophy
of religion require. How significant the perpetual recur-
rence of this fact in every topic assigned to the student of
epistemology !
It is customary for treatises in Logic to throw the Principle
of Identity into some such form as the following: Ada A;
and A is not, and cannot possibly be, non-A. This is true
whatever be meant by A ; and, indeed, whether any reality
be meant by it or not. Now it is at once plain that this
principle, as thus stated, cannot properly be made a subject
of argument ; nor can it, strictly speaking, be formally stated
without implying it several times over in the very simplest
form of statement. For if I do not hold fast to the judg-
ment, or belief, — call it what one will, — that the A of the
subject is A, I cannot affirm that it is identical with the A of
272 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
the predicate; neither can I negate its identity with the
non-A which forms the predicate when the principle of non-
contradiction is stated. The same thing is true of the A of
the predicate. And since in all actual and earnest work of
judging, some definite relation between subject and predicate
is affirmed or denied by the copula, the principle of identity
must be assumed as applicable in some sort also to the copula.
But, further, if I attempt to state my confidence in the iden-
tity with itself of either the subject- A or the predicate- A,
I can only state this confidence in the form of a judgment.
Thus subject- A is subject- A ; and predicate- A is predicate- A
And now I am ready to go the? whole thing over again from
the very beginning. The principle of identity in formal logic
appears, then, to be nothing but an abstract statement for
the presuppositionless form of intellectual functioning in
every act of judgment.
But consider, further, that if this logical formula is pressed
to give a full account of its own meaning and of its claims to
indisputable authority, it is speedily plunged into the most
distressing condition of doubt. And then critical episte-
mology appears as mocking, with an issue that leads to a kind
of demoniacal laughter, her twin sister, formal and uncritical
logic. This is the fate which the dogmatic assertion of infal-
libility, even of the most abstract, formal, and worthless sort,
customarily receives at the hands of the sceptic. Nor are we
merely jesting, or displaying an insane fondness for picking
flaws in the foundations of truth, when we call attention to
the following puzzle : A is not A, and no A can ever be
known as throughout = A, For the A which is the subject is
not wholly identical with the A that is the predicate ; it differs
from it, at least, in being subject, whereas the latter is known
as being predicate. And if I try to affirm the complete iden-
tity of the subject- A with itself, I find myself hopelessly
baffled. For in some respects, as first posited, it differs from
itself as posited the second time ; and then, as has already
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 273
been seen, the positing of the first-posited subject-^, as iden-
tical with itself, can never be made otherwise than in the
form of a judgment. And so we have to go over the whole
process in confirmation of the principle, from the very begin-
ning; but only to end in the same hard necessity at last.
Surely, this is a worse and more hopeless task than that
given to Sisyphus.
This crude mixture of sport and critical work with the
principle of identity may as well be made at once to teach
certain truths of no little importance. Criticism cannot ex-
pound, without implicating in the very process, the presuppo-
sitionless principles of thinking itself. And it appears that
however we may see fit to express this particular principle, it
belongs to the class of presuppositionless principles. It ap-
pears also that the principle of identity is not merely the
logical and formal, but the actual and vital, principle of the
judgment, as such ; for when I attempt to see how it is that
I do actually, and unavoidably, and, in the fundamentally most
necessary way, perform any act of judgment, I only exemplify
this principle. But when I attempt either to expound or to
criticise the principle, I come around to the statement of it in
the form of a judgment again. It is itself, as stated, nothing
but the pure and — as the old-fashioned language of philoso-
phy would warrant us in saying — a priori form of all judg-
ment. But as we prefer to express the truth : The Principle
of Identity is only the Self's recognition of its own presupposi-
tionless form of mental life, when in the act of judging.
On the contrary, however, it appears that the term " prin-
ciple of identity " is not well chosen, if one must understand
by identity a complete and wholly indistinguishable sameness.
Such identity as this interpretation of the term implies con-
tradicts the very nature of judgment itself. For differentiation
— actually performed, as the holding apart in consciousness
of two ideas, or thoughts, or other momenta of the judgment
— is as necessary to the actuality of any judgment as is the
18
274 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
synthesis in which the judging act consists. Indeed, the
boasted conception of Identity, as it has been made so much
use of, both in the interests of logical truthfulness and in the
behalf of certain unintelligible and mischievous ontological
philosophemes, is a merely negative conception. It may be
said to be the most barren and negative of all conceptions.
Even to attempt to frame it, one has to refuse to think at
all. Moreover, as will soon be shown with somewhat more of
detail (although the fuller exposition of this truth belongs to
metaphysics), no real being can possibly ever be known as
thus, strictly speaking, self-identical. For the A of the sub-
ject and the A of the predicate, in the formula of pure logic,
no reality can ever be substituted. Fichte was true to the
facts in the case when he posited Ego = Ego, as the original
and the crowning exemplification in experience of the mean-
ing of the principle of identity. But of all examples which
could be chosen, the experience of the Self in affirming, " I
am I, and not-you, and no other," is the best adapted to dis-
prove the vulgar interpretation of the word " identity." Prac-
tically, too, the mind has no interest in knowing that either
Selves or Things are identical in any such impossible sense.
Thus to find the Self identical with itself, if such finding
were not made impossible by the very nature of cognition,
would be the greatest of all misfortunes. What we want to
know, even of things, is that we may trust them (within cer-
tain limits which can never be strictly defined until the
knowledge of things is itself perfect) to behave, in their dif-
ferent individual behaviors, according to our ideas of them.
If, now, further inquiry be made into the psychological
nature and origin of the principle of identity, as it is actually
given and as it must be interpreted by the act of thinking
itself, it will be seen that this is equivalent to an inquiry into
the psychological nature and origin of cognitive judgment.
Sensation-complexes, ideas, thoughts, as such and considered
abstractly, are not objects of knowledge. In order to convert
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 275
them, so to speak, into objects of knowledge, they must get
recognized as belonging together in reality. Sensation-com-
plexes, ideas, thoughts, as such and considered abstractly,
appear either similar or dissimilar ; and it is by a primal and
original activity of discriminating consciousness that we rec-
ognize them as such and thus judge them to belong together
or apart. But the similar is not the same, and the dissimilar
is not the contradictory, — in reality. In order to call two
sensation-complexes, or ideas, or thoughts, merely similar,
they must be recognized as not the same ; the rather as being
different in respect of the time of their occurrence, or of the
place to which they are assigned in the system of space rela-
tions. On the contrary, two objects observed as existing in
different times and different relations of space QA and A : or
A and B : — A here and A there ; or A now and A then ; or
the B here-and-now that was A then-and-there) may be
known as the same. In these cognitive processes the same
intellectual activities have been displayed in apprehending
and putting together the similar and in recognizing and hold-
ing apart the dissimilar ; but the ontological belief which
posits the permanent in space and time must be reckoned
with in giving account of the origin and nature of the judg-
ment which terminates the intellectual process. Identity or
sameness, as distinguished from similarity, is the predicate
which cognition assigns to that which is judged really to exist.
If, now, the principle of identity be applied to our thinking
in a purely formal way, and as a guaranty solely of the logi-
cal correctness of thought, all the pith and marrow is taken
out of the principle itself. In merely having sensations,
ideas, thoughts as such, — if, indeed, the subject of conscious-
ness ever actually exists in states of such mere having, — no
application of this principle is possible. As has been clearly
shown, it is only in the act of judging that the principle of
identity is exemplified ; it is to judgments, as a vital relating
of sensations, ideas, and thoughts that the principle applies.
276 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
Nor would any conceivable series of mere sensations, mere
ideas, mere thoughts, if such series could be carried on with-
out affirmation or denial of a connection between its different
members, violate the principle of identity. I may have, first,
the idea of a man and then the idea of quadruped ; or, first,
the idea of an animal and then the idea of immortal gods ;
but there is no talk possible of logical correctness or real
truth in all this, unless I attempt to judge some relation be-
tween the members of these pairs of ideas. If, however, I
have the mental image of a man and call it quadruped, or of
an animal and call it immortal, then I judge. And now it
may be said that the principle of identity has been violated,
because it has been affirmed that man, a biped, is at the same
time a quadruped; or that an animal, a mortal thing, is at
the same time immortal. Such an exhortation as this, how-
ever, is equivalent to saying : " Do not use words in that
way ;" or, " Stick to your meaning through your sentence, at
least ; " or, " Be consistent in your affirmations and nega-
tions." In making judgments, one should hold to the same
meaning for the subject, the same meaning for the predicate,
and the same meaning for the relation affirmed by the copula
between subject and predicate. Indeed, one must do so if
one wishes the judgment to be true.
"One should," and "one must:" — as to the quasi-ethical
character of the obligation expressed by these words, we shall
refer in another connection. But who does not at once dis-
cover that exhortations like these are insignificant and even
absurd, unless an appeal is made to an objective standard of
judgment, to an order of connections in the reality known,
which is to be followed in human, synthetic mental operations ?
Why, indeed, should not all men use words as they please,
without holding fast to any chosen meanings, — affirming
with one breath what is denied the next, or even affirming
and denying in the coupled breaths of that conscious exist-
ence which is needed for the barest utterance of a single
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 277
judgment ? Indeed, other questions may be thrust yet deeper
into the centre of the cognizing soul of man and into the very
heart of Reality. Why should words have any meaning at
all ; and what gives them the meaning they are understood to
have ? Why should affirmation or denial, the very essence of
the act of judging, be possible at all ; or, if possible, why
should affirmation and denial be subject to any limitations
except those of subjective, momentary, and ever shifting ca-
price ? The only answer that can be given to these inquiries
restores its pith and cogency, as well as its significance and
dignity, to the principle of identity. The intellect's standard
of judgment is not found in the mere character and sequence
of sensations, ideas, and thoughts, as such. Its standard of
judgment is objective ; it has reference to the known nature
and relations of the Self and Things, and of things with one
another. The motif and the goal of judgment is, therefore, to
connect together in the terms of judgment what has been cog-
nized as being objectively connected together. He who does
this, correctly conforming his mental synthesis to the terms
of his objective experience, judges true. He who consciously
and intentionally affirms that to be connected which he knows
to be not really connected, is " a liar ; and the truth is not in
him." But he who, while intending to conform his mental
synthesis to the connections of reality, unconsciously and un-
intentionally fails of this, is in error ; the truth, formally con-
sidered, may be "in him" but his judgment is, nevertheless,
not true. Who, again, does not at once discover that such
common expressions assume a standard of judgment which
has reference, not only to connections in reality, but also
to a common nature for the judging Self?
If, then, the true interpretation of the principle of identity
be accepted and consistently carried out, the differences rec-
ognized by logic in the kinds of judgment do not alter the
epistemological significance or value of the principle itself.
Let, for example, the distinction into judgments predicating
278 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
condition or action, those predicating a property, and those
affirming a relation, be adopted. Among relations, let those
of identity, of dependent connection, etc., be recognized. In
each of these classes, judgments designated as purely subjec-
tive may be found described. It is an interesting view of
Wundt, 1 who advocates this division, that the relating of the
constituents of a judgment as conditioning each other, is one
of the forms of the judgment of relation which has gradually
" developed," in the use of the most abstract and universal
forms of thinking, through certain motifs of a scientific sort.
We may well doubt the application of any theory of develop-
ment to legitimate, fundamental distinctions in the kinds of
our judgments. But the one epistemological truth which is
important here to notice grows out of the psychological fact
that no perception of the actions, properties, or relations of
things is possible except in and through developed activity
of thinking faculty, terminating in cognitive judgment; and
that, on the other hand, thought and imagination, whenever
they " come to judgment" refer themselves back for correc-
tion and verification to the perception of real things and of
actual occurrences. Thus a certain validity for reality (a
Seinsgultigheit) 2 belongs to the very simplest judgments as
well as to the most elaborate and abstract. They all point to
a trans-subjective kingdom of human consciousnesses existing
in that commerce with reality which is called truth, the
verifiable knowledge of things, — what they are, how they
behave, and how they are related.
What, now, shall be said of this postulated, or cognized,
sameness of things, such as seems necessary to make the
principle of identity an accepted principle of cognition ?
What kind of sameness, or identity, is postulated in that
recognition of the principle of identity which every cognitive
judgment affords ? The more obvious answer to this inquiry
1 System der Philosophic, pp. 56 f.
2 Compare Volkelt, Erfahruiig und Denken, pp. 146 f.
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 279
is a negative answer. All we know about any form of reality
— selves or things, either as active or as passive, as possessed
of qualities, properties, and attributes, or as standing in
manifold relations to each other — shows us that whatever
identity realities have, is not the equivalent of an inability
to change. Nor, if one wishes to convert an inability into
a potency, can the identity of real things be thought of as
the equivalent of an ability not to change. The rather are
the essential terms, on which all cognition of things is given to
the mind, such as that it is compelled to affirm : " We know
that things really do change." On the other hand, however,
only as some sort of a limit is set by things to their own
changes, and as this limit is observed in the judgments
framed by the mind respecting them, can they be known as
the same things, in any conceivable meaning of the word
" same." The guaranty, therefore, for that application to
reality of the principle of identity which every cognitive
judgment makes, must be found in the nature of reality, of
its ability to change, and yet to set those limits to its own
changes which shall enable it to be known as a system of
beings that may be called " the same."
The fuller meaning of this postulate as to the nature of
Reality, as its nature is involved in the nature of the cogni-
tive judgment, it belongs to metaphysics to unfold. But
there is a truth or two, of a metaphysical order, which must
be stated in this connection before the fuller meaning of the
previous epistemological discussion can be grasped. To get
at this truth we must refer directly to the judgments which
express any fact of knowledge about the Self. All my states
of consciousness — whether present and known by immediate
self-consciousness, or past and known by recognitive memory,
or thought and inferred from grounds of self-consciousness
and memory — are known as mine; that is, they are referred
to one and the same Self. But I am no rigid, fixed, and
ready-made being, maintaining my identity by an inability to
280 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
change, or by an ability not to change. On the contrary, I
am the same being because of that limitation to the changes
to which I know I am subject; and I know myself as the
same because all these known changes are referable and
actually referred to the one Self. Indeed, the only concep-
tion which I can possibly form of the identity of myself is
given just in this life of self-consciousness, of. recognitive
memory, and of rational inference, which is the sum-total of
my cognition of Self. 1 And every cognitive judgment relating
to myself, whatever form of experience it embodies (an
action, a suffering, a property or capacity, a relation), is an
example under this conception.
But the self -identification which every cognitive judgment
having reference to Self implies and enfolds is itself inex-
tricably interwoven, as it were, with a process of discrimina-
tion ending in a judgment of self-differentiation. Things
which are the objects of my knowledge, even including my
bodily organism, piece-meal or throughout, are not to be
identified with my Self. And it needs only the expansion
of an argument into which we have entered at length else-
where, to show that the theory of psychological parallelism
with the philosophical doctrine of indifference or identity
which usually accompanies it, involves the denial of the
possibility of all knowledge. Psychologically considered, it
is out of the differentiation between Self and Things, as an
indubitable and " lived " opposition, that the possibility of
self-identification and of the identification of things comes
forth. All the foundations of ordinary knowledge and of
science are undermined and nullified by the identification
of Self and Things. These two realities, in the commerce
which is called knowledge, set limits to each other such
as prevent their being brought together under the principle
of identity. All experience sets the limits over which judg-
1 For the detailed discussion of the subject, see " Philosophy of Mind,"
chap. v.
IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 281
ment cannot climb so as to unite these two in any other
terms than those of irrational imagination, or wild fancy,
rather than of cognitive judgment.
Once more, however : What it is for things to be really
connected so that our judgments about them may be true,
may be judgments of cognition, — this is something which
can be known only analogically. How can things change and
yet be in any sort the same — with themselves, or with one
another as partaking of a so-called common nature ? The
identity of other selves must be conceived of, and is incon-
testably known as similar to the identity of our Self. But in
what does the identity of things so consist that they may
truly be judged to be the same ? To this question no reply
can be given whicli" does not draw, for its positive and com-
prehensible meaning, upon our experience with the Self. But
this "I know" to which all our theory of cognition constantly
refers backward, when having for its object ourself, has been
found to be no rigid unchanging, and once for all ready-made
affair. The Self is a life conformable to law, and maintaining
its identity by this conformity. Not as though, indeed, law
were itself some rigid and ready-made entity, that rules over
the Self as the inflexible walls of the prison-cell control the
prisoner. For knowledge can grow ; or rather, I can grow
in knowledge and in all the fulness of that life which belongs
to a Self. I seem, then, to be really one and the same, and
thus both self -identified and differentiated from other things,
because the series of my changes follows the ordering of im-
manent ideas. Shall we say, then, that judgments affirming
the identity and the differentiations of things can be true
only if the being of things is like this self-known being of
ours ?
The principle of identity, subjectively considered, is but the
life of the intellect following its fundamental law ; and thus
trying to put together in judgment what belongs together in
reality, and to separate in judgment what belongs apart in
282 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
reality. But if such an act of intellect can give truth, if the
forms of mental combining and separating can be genuinely
cognitive and representative of reality, then it would seem
that the constitution of Reality must be, in important ways,
similar to that of the Self. Here, again, we come upon a
thought which has occupied us already and to which we shall
return again. It is the thought crudely expressed in the
ancient saying of Chwang-Tsze : —
" The Tao is always One, and yet it requires change."
CHAPTER X
SUFFICIENT REASON
THOSE simpler connections of the different items of our
experience which are affirmed in the more obviously
true judgments of cognition are a small part of the entire body
of knowledge even as developed by the individual mind. But
the entire body of knowledge to which the spirit of inquiry in
the race has given life and growth is much more a matter of
correct and complicated reasonings from so-called " premises "
or " grounds.'' Scientific knowledge is pre-eminently con-
ceptual ; for it is given in that kind of intellectual function-
ing which sees the universal in the particular ; and then,
having seized upon the principle, or rule, explains and anti-
cipates the particular by connecting it with the universal.
The students of the physical sciences, by the modern methods
and in the modern spirit, sometimes boast of their devotion to
those facts which the intuitions of the senses can disclose
only to the trained observer. This they occasionally do as
though reasoning and perception were opposed as are the
grounds of error to the sources of truth. But every student
of the psychology and philosophy of knowledge knows that
what is called the " science " of external things is nothing
but a system of more or less consistent abstractions, devised
for purposes of practical or intellectual mastery, in depend-
ence upon favorite points of view. These points of view are
often rather arbitrarily selected and rapidly shifting. Is the
Reality such as to be represented in this way ? And what
postulate is needed in order to save the whole structure of
284 SUFFICIENT REASON
modern science from being perpetually imprisoned in the
" death-kingdom " of abstract thoughts ?
Now it is evident that whoever thinks with a view to know,
and ends by believing that he has thought so as to attain
knowledge actually makes the coveted postulate. For in
spite of its dislike to consider theories of knowledge or meta-
physical assumptions as, of inalienable right, seated in its
own realm, physical science is science only as it has already
come to unconsciously accepted terms with these theories
and assumptions. It aims, of course, to hit reality by its
conceptions ; and by its judgments respecting causes and
laws, when seriously determined and gravely pronounced, to
express the reciprocal relations of the really existent. If
scientific conceptions and judgments do not aim at this, they
are of little real value from any point of view. And if they
do not sometimes hit the mark at which they are constantly
bound to aim, then all scientific conceptions and judgments
are nothing better, from the epistemological point of view,
than dreams or other forms of illusion.
The naive theory of knowledge, or epistemological postulate,
which underlies the claims of science to be something more
than dreams, to be indeed a system of cognitions, however
fragmentary and incomplete, is neither far to seek nor hard
to find. So far as concerns our present purpose, it is simply
this : By reasoning from known facts of perception one may
reach known truths of a more or less general applicability.
Knowledge may be gained by ratiocination, if only one will
start from knowledge and pursue the course of ratioci-
nation in proper form. But, subjectively considered, the
" proper form " of reasoning is that which the very constitu-
tion of the intellect sets to itself. So that, in order to reach
the truth of things by reasoning, some sort of a metaphysical
assumption must be added to the epistemological postulate.
The nature of this assumption is so hidden, and its possible
sweep in application so far-reaching, that one may well hesi-
SUFFICIENT REASON 285
tate before the problem of giving it expression. Its final and
fullest expression is very far to seek and very hard to find.
Enough of it, however, may be brought to the surface at once,
to show how it is that, by the subjective processes of his own
intellect, man may follow, discover, and prove the changing
relations of the really existent world of things.
As to the nature of the reasoning process, an important
train of considerations may be introduced in the following
way. Students of the development of mental life in children
mark a notable change, which comes on either by stages that
cannot be readily traced or by more sudden leaps, and which
concerns the connections established between the different
portions of the stream of consciousness. Discontinuity, lack
of established relations of any description, a kind of lawless-
ness, characterizes the earlier psychoses of the human animal.
The first signs of continuity, the earlier relations established
so as to bring some sort of order out of this original hetero-
geneity, are not of a predominatingly intellectual kind. Mind
is undoubtedly active from the beginning ; for the conception
of a purely passive or receptive consciousness is unpsycholog-
ical and even absurd. Discriminating consciousness is neces-
sary even in order to have state distinguished from state, in
the flowing stream of conscious life. But, at first, the connec-
tions of the factors which fuse into the more complex states,
and the connections of the states with one another in the
series of states, are, as it were, dictated from without by the
character and successions of the stimuli which arouse sensa-
tions, volitions, and their motor accompaniments, and the
" cohort of attendant ideas." The next following connections
are chiefly such as emphasize the principle of " contiguity in
consciousness," in its power over the primary associations
of the ideas ; thought is now chiefly active in the fuller
perception of the content of the mental life by virtue of
established points for the recognition of resemblances and
differences.
286 SUFFICIENT REASON
In the progressive organizing of experience, conformity of
the subjective connections to law (something other than mere
generalized fact of established associations of the ideas) is the
notable change to which reference was made above. Estab-
lished " objective connection " is another term which may help-
fully be employed for this change. Because it has already
passed one judgment connecting its sensation-complexes,
ideas, and thoughts in a certain way, the Self finds itself
bound to pass one or more other judgments also connecting
its sensation-complexes, ideas, thoughts, in a certain definite
way. As yet it may not be that we consciously reason : If
A is B, then C is D ; or that we consciously point out to
ourselves why the judgment C-is-D should follow in con-
sciousness upon the judgment A-is-B. Let it suffice that the
connection between two judgments is simply noticed ; when
one is made, the other is observed to follow as a matter
of fact. This compulsion the mind comes to regard as a
privilege ; for in it lies all the mind's power of explanation,
and all its right to expect, to plan, to act, indeed to live
rationally at all.
Further development in the same direction of the conscious
life of the intellect consists in the more and more complicated
and yet, on the whole, firmer establishment of connections of
similar kind ; but, especially, perhaps, in increase of insight
into the number and character of the terms which mediate
between the different judgments already connected in fact.
Some of the earlier connections — not a few of them among
the most favorably considered and highly prized — become
broken up. But many new connections are formed. Some —
and these among the most valuable for the life of conduct and
of artistic endeavor — drop almost or quite out of conscious-
ness ; but only because they have become incorporated
into the bodily mechanism and into all the hidden and fun-
damental structure of the mental life. It may be said of
such connections of psychoses that they are the " acquired
SUFFICIENT REASON 287
constitution " for the individual mind in its particular
environment.
But as a matter of fact, reasoning is not understood to be,
and it is not, a blind, compulsory, or unconscious connection
of judgment with other judgment, however firm in actual se-
quence the connection may be. The whole of our conscious-
ness as we find it when we find ourselves already reasoning,
or consciously coupling judgments firmly together, is not
faithfully formulated by saying simply : " In the stream of
consciousness I find A is judged to be B ; and then (in the
temporal meaning of the word) C is judged to be i>." The
rather must the formula to express this experience run as
follows : " I know that C is D, because I know that A is B"
And the more one's system of cognitive judgments has been
made consistent and carried onward toward the ideal of
higher cognition, the more ready is one apt to be with an
answer to the further question, as to why any one judgment is
made dependent upon another. This consciousness of " the
Why " is the development of our knowledge through mediate
terms. When, then, we come to the consciousness of the en-
tire process which gives to the mind the satisfaction it feels in
the judgment (7 is Z>, as a truly cognitive judgment, and not
merely as a product of imagination or of abstract thinking,
we find this process depends upon a mediating judgment
which may be expressed : B is 0. And now the completed
act of reasoning, as justified in a terminal judgment of cog-
nition, stands before us: If — as I know — A is B, then —
as I conclude — O is D ; because — as I know — B is C. It
is this principle, which enters into all acts of reasoning, if
they are to result in the extension of knowledge, that, when
the full meaning of these acts is understood, is called " the
principle of sufficient reason."
The moment, however, the significance of such a procedure
on the part of intellect is brought to the vital test of actual
experience, it becomes evident that the procedure itself can-
288 SUFFICIENT REASON
not be explained as a merely logical and formal affair. Here
is not a simple case of intellect functioning under the laws of
its own objective activity, and so making these laws objective,
because it cannot function otherwise than according to these
same laws. It is not solely by conformity to any intellectual
law, whether of its own voluntary assumption or imposed
from some unknown outside source, that acts of cognitive
ratiocination are either tested or explained. Kant, indeed,
endeavored to show that the secret of the cogency which the
act of transcendental judgment (the rather, as Schopenhauer
correctly affirms, should he have said, the objective reference
of the act of reasoning) has, is to be found in the facts of
sequence according to a rule. 1 This was, perhaps, the most
pitiful failure in all the " Critique of Pure Reason ; " and the
failure was the more surprising because, as Kant himself has
assured us, it was Hume's sceptical analysis of the idea of
causality which aroused him from his " dogmatic slumber "
and stimulated him to the task of criticising thoroughly all
human cognition.
Something far other than mere conscious conformity to a
fixed order of objective ideas in time must be recognized in
our account of the origin, nature, and significance of the
principle of sufficient reason. The psychology of the subject,
if it had been profoundly considered and faithfully inter-
preted, would have led Kant to see the unsatisfactory char-
acter of his position as taken in the passage of the Critique
to which reference has just been made. For the wonderful
difference of the results for cognition between the connec-
tions of my ideas, when I perceive the successive portions of
an object known by the senses, and when I reason my way
to a conclusion as to the causal relations of things, depends
mainly upon the difference sustained by the two trains of
ideation to the activity of my will. This psychological truth
is, indeed, hinted at and even recognized by Kant. I can
1 Transcendental Analytic, Second Analogy.
SUFFICIENT REASON 289
determine by an act of will the order in which I perceive the
successive parts of the building over yonder, whether from
upper right-hand to lower left-hand corner, or across and
upward, or the reverse, or any other order, to suit my con-
venience or according to my subjective habits of perception.
But I cannot determine by an act of will the order of the
successive places in which the sailing-vessel, off there, shall
appear in the stream or on the horizon of the sea. The order
of the successive portions of the building may be perceived
as either A, B, (7, 2), to N; or as N through D, (7, B, to A ;
or, possibly as 2), (7, B, A, and then from D to iV, or Nto D.
Yet the statical relations of space between A and B, C and I>,
etc., remain, in the resulting perceptive judgment, independ-
ent in reality, of my will. And I sum up my different expe-
riences with the changing orders of the portions successively
perceived, in the form of a judgment affirming a fixed and
unchanging order of these portions in the totality of the
perceived object.
The different portions of the same building, so long as they
remain related without obvious change, are not ordinarily
thought of as doing anything to each other. If, now, I choose
to change my point of view, I may at once think of them as
sustaining very important reciprocal relations, which call
them into unceasing activity, each in dependence upon the
other. Indeed, from certain points of view, I must think of
them in this way. From below upward, A is "sustaining"
B, and B is " sustaining " C, and so on ; but from above
downward, B is " pressing " down on C, and C on B, and so
on. Or, enumerating sideways, B is " binding " together A
and 0; or this same B must also be thought of as " separat-
ing " its contiguous portions on either hand. The words
" binding " and " separating " may be used in two senses,
however, one of which coincides with the sense which is given
to the words " sustaining," or " holding up," and " pressing
down." To illustrate this, let us suppose that the order of
19
290 SUFFICIENT REASON
the different portions of the building is being perceived as
A, B, C, etc., up and down. That B must exist between A
and and bind these two together, whether the order of
their existence be read off from A to C upward or from O to
A downward, is a necessity which my intellect recognizes as
belonging to all material reality, since it is always known to
be extended in space and capable of being made the subject
of successive perceptive acts in time. In this meaning of the
words, "binding" and "separating" are services necessarily
to be performed by B for A and C, even if all three members
of the series stand in the same order as stones across the
building rather than as the same stones laid up and down.
Now suppose, however, that while getting a knowledge of this
building by sense-perception, I miss from its place a certain
large stone, B, which does not stand in its proper position
between A and (7, but has been dislodged from that position
and is lying on the ground. If I confine my reasoning
strictly to the conclusions following from the sensuous shock
of missing B from the order A, B, 0, etc., when read off in
lateral direction, I find this process results in a terminal
judgment of no new or startling kind. If B appears as
empty space, or is known to be only air, it will serve as well
as would a stone to bind and to separate between A and (7,
as long as the series is thought of as holding in reality,
under the conditions merely of Time and of Space.
But the sensuous shock which follows my missing B from
its place in the series of successive portions of a building of
stone read from A, B, (7, 2), up to JV, would undoubtedly lead
to reasoning that falls under a quite different rubric, and that
terminates in a cognitive judgment of a quite different signi-
ficance and value. To bring this into clearer light for our
recognition, let it be supposed that the same real building is
being inspected in vertical direction, and that attention is
directed to the importance of having the order complete in this
direction. And now we cannot spare B from its place between
SUFFICIENT REASON 291
A and C; to miss it shocks something more than the smooth
flow of the objective series regarded as determined by the in-
tellectual functions of perception, under the formal and purely
a priori presuppositions of space and time. Now there are
real interests at stake which cannot be conserved by logical
formulas or by an elaborate display of the immanent principles
of "pure understanding." Other trowels than those which
carry the cement of a syllogistic process, regardless of concrete
realities, are now needed. Epistemological architectonic
which relies upon an analysis of understanding, in a merely
formal way, to secure the safety of cognition's structure will
scarcely serve the purposes of the present demand for a con-
nection between the successive portions of this experience.
For all men believe that, in reality, B has been doing another
kind of " binding " and " separating " between A and 0. Empty
space, or thin air, will not suffice for this kind of binding and
separating.
Or, to make yet clearer the necessity for something more
than the recognition of a sequence of ideas that our will cannot
determine, and that is merely the objectification, as it were,
of the a priori forms of intellectual functioning, let a yet more
violent supposition be made. Let it be supposed that the
object of perception is a long steel girder, which appears
stretched from one massive wall to the other of a building.
The business of the beholder is inspection, — a business concern-
ing most important real interests, and not a dilettante affair of
formal logic or theory of knowledge. The agents in the busi-
ness, or parties to the controversy, are mechanical engineers
who are learned respecting the strength of materials, the me-
chanics of the girder, and other similar physical affairs, rather
than experts in the psychology and philosophy of cognition.
Under these circumstances it is difficult to exaggerate the
intensity of the shock which would be experienced on discov-
ering that so important a support of the building was inter-
rupted at some place, for a distance corresponding to B (we
292 SUFFICIENT REASON
will say, for four feet between A and (7). 1 Lo ! a piece of
matter, straight and faithful to its important function of sup-
porting an enormous strain without sagging, and yet with one
portion entirely gone. To see this, who would trust his eyes,
even if after repeated rubbings they continued to bear witness
to so great a miracle ? This kind of a shock, however, cannot
be explained as a purely nervous affair. Nor can the trains
of reasoning which it sets in motion and directs for the selec-
tion of their major and minor premises be dealt with, so long
as we continue to maintain for their explanation the merely
formal points of view. Its nervus probandi is neither merely
physiological, nor psycho-physical, nor purely an intellectual
affair. The rather is it an affair which requires all the ele-
ments of the growth of cognition, as a system of interconnected
cognitive judgments, to be taken into the account.
In the case just supposed, the inspectors of the building
were appointed for the purpose of forming, by use of the senses
in perception, a rational judgment that should affirm or deny
its proper and safe construction. The successive items of
their cognition gained by perception all involve thinking on
the basis of previous experience with things as existing under
conditions of space and time ; and they all terminate in cogni-
tive judgments affirming real connections of the same things
in space and time. Inasmuch, however, as this particular
structure is being examined with a view to determine some-
thing quite different from its conformity to the a priori rules
of time and space, all judgments respecting it take a turn ap-
propriate to this end ; the processes of reasoning which are
started and followed move along lines fixed by a peculiar class
of conceptions; and the terminal judgment is of a special
order in respect of its origin, its significance, and its value.
1 It was once my privilege to hear a vivid and detailed description of the feel-
ings, thoughts, and actions of an architect who, while inspecting a building, saw
the supports of the floor above his head in the cellar visibly yielding to their load.
The description was an excellent study for a theory in the psychology and
philosophy of knowledge.
SUFFICIENT KEASON 293
Now we contend without hesitation that all which chiefly in-
terests the mind in the explanation of such a transaction as
this is totally unaccounted for by Kant's doctrine of the three
" Analogies of Experience." " All phenomena," says he, " so
far as their existence is concerned, stand a priori under rules
which determine their relation to one another, in one and the
same time." x As to Kant's inadequate and lifeless account
of the principle of identity (Analogy A), when applied to ob-
jects of experience (his realitatis phenomena) nothing further
need be said. But his account of the nature and grounds of
rational judgment, as applied to the cognition of things in
relation, is even more inadequate and lifeless. This is be-
cause it is our apprehension of causes, and of the reciprocally
determining conditions of things which constitutes the ade-
quate and living picture of reality that genuine cognition
gives. When, then, one is told that "all changes happen
according to the law of the connection of cause and effect,"
one seems to listen with a kind of approbation which is,
after all, only a state of expectation, to familiar but as yet
unmeaning words. But when one is further told that the
meaning of these words, " being connected as cause and
effect," is this: "All that happens (begins to be) presup-
poses something on which it follows according to a rule,"
one's disappointment at the shallowness of the analysis breaks
all bounds. For here what is secondary takes the place, in
explanation, of what is primary ; the regularity of the sequence
in connection is made to assume the character of a potency
that shall produce the sequence itself. And when Kant, in
his following treatment of the Third Analogy, introduces the
same problem in yet more expressive terms, and declares that
the whole world of cognized objects is bound together by
rational judgment under the presupposition that "All sub-
stances, so far as they can be simultaneously perceived, are
in complete reciprocal interaction (in durchgangiger Wechsel-
1 Heading of the section in the first edition.
294 SUFFICIENT REASON
wirkung) ; and then proceeds to overlook the plainest meaning
and most obvious implications of his own terms, in the inter-
ests of architectonic formalism and pre-established agnosticism,
his most devoted admirer is tempted to accuse him of an un-
ethical juggling with words. 1
To recur to our illustration of the nature and validity of
cognitive reasoning once more : let us consider further that
second meaning of the words " binding " and " separating "
which, it was said, coincides with the meaning of the words
" supporting " and " pressing " down. The mere grammatical
significance of the fact that all four words have the same form
of ending (-ing) is not without its suggestions of a fundamental
truth. This ending is verbal and signifies that the forms of
predicating designated by the roots — bind, separate, support,
1 As Adickes says, the Third Analogy discusses the problem of causality, and is,
in a special manner, " the focus of the entire Kritik." It does not, however,
grapple with this problem in any such way as either to explain our experience
psychologically or to satisfy our epistemological inquiries. It is even less success-
ful, because more remote from actual life, than was the explanation of the scepti-
cal critic criticised by Kant, — namely, David Hume. In general, there is scarcely
anything, in the line of theoretical discussions, more inconclusive and wearisome
than what is current on the subject of causality. Physicists and psychologists
both know perfectly well what men really mean when they naively, and without
prejudice, talk of causes and effects. All men think of things as doing something
to each other, and as having something done to them ; and of themselves as doing
something to things. Less popularly expressed, everybody believes and must
believe, that both things and minds are real ; that both things and minds are
active ; and that both have the forms of their activity conditioned, in a limited way,
upon the activity of other minds and other tilings. The " laws " which science
discovers and announces are nothing but the known or conjectured, more or less
uniform, modes of the behavior of minds and things in their changing relations
to each other. But let once some precious theory — like that of the conservation
and correlation of a fixed quantity of an entity called " Force," or the psycho-
physical parallelism which, as a revived form of Spinozism, many psychologists (
have taken quite off its metaphysical base, in the attempt to defend it experimen-
tally — be imperilled, and this belief, at once "common-sense," scientifically
defensible and philosophically sound, deserts them. They begin, as professed
experts, to deal' with mere abstractions and empty formulas; as though these
could account for anything, least of all for the reasoning processes which deal with
them. And yet their very theories, thus falsely or inadequately conceived, sprang
from no other source than that very experience the validity of which the theories
would deny.
SUFFICIENT SEASON 295
and press — are applied to things because the things them-
selves are conceived of as in action. The words express the
mind's conceptions of the peculiar and appropriate mode of
that action of the being, A, or B, or (7, to which the words are
applied. But the series of judgments employed in such mental
acts of reasoning relates to more than one object of cognition ;
for what is affirmed is not simply that B is " binding " and
"separating," or " supporting," or "pressing" down, — in
loneliness of being, as a single Thing, isolated from all environ-
ment of other beings. But B is binding and separating between
A and C; or it is supporting C and is itself pressing down on
A. Nor could we conceive of B as binding and separating
between .A. and C, unless both A and C were conceived of as
at the same time pulling apart, or pressing together. If, too,
B supports (7, it is itself being pressed upon by C; and,
in turn, it is pressing down upon A ; but only with the
understanding that it is to be supported by A. All this is
popularly and naively expressed by such phrases as accuse
things of acting " upon " each other, or of " influencing "
each other.
Note, further, that the particular forms of doing and suffer-
ing which the mind conceives of as belonging to things, are
varied both by the relations which the same things sustain to
one another, under the conditions of space and time, and also
in accordance with what is called the " nature " of the things
themselves. Nor does this nature hinder things from acting
in a considerable number of differing ways, while maintaining
the same relations of space and time. The same stone B can,
without perceptibly changing its place in the structure, be
thought of as both binding and separating, and as supporting
and pressing down — all at the same time. Moreover, the
science of physics undertakes to show that each stone is
simultaneously, and without movement from its position
as a mass, undergoing a considerable number of hidden
and mysterious changes (thermic, chemical, electrical, etc.),
296 SUFFICIENT REASON
such as are reasoned about by the separate branches of this
science.
The thorough student of the mind's development can have
little doubt as to the kind of experience in which all naive
and instinctive reasoning has its origins and its justification : *
It is the primal and universal experience of man with the Self,
as consciously acting and having its activity resisted, while at
the same time observing the simultaneous and succeeding changes
which go on in the appearance of Things. This is the very
same experience as that in which our cognitions of Self and
of Things have their origins and justification. Its indubitable
concrete content is given whenever the self-conscious Self be-
comes aware of the terms of relation, so to speak, on which
the very activity of cognition takes place as a commerce of
Self with not-self. And this is just as often as it knows
things as standing in relation to itself at all. The original
connections along the lines of which the intellect proceeds,
and by which it constantly orientates itself in its widest and
most daring explorations of the entire domain of possible
knowledge, are established in the cognitive judgment. So
far as this is a judgment affirming real relations it has its con-
tent and its connecting bond in an experience which is more
than formal, — something other than mere thought. The
causal nexus is an abstraction from the nisus of the Self, as
its feeling-full will is found to change content in dependence
upon changes in the perceived and remembered forms of the
not-self. It is self-conscious activity, self-known force, as
evinced in concrete doing and suffering, while the correlated
changes in the states of things are observed, that is here most
fundamental, rather than any a priori law of intellect dictat-
ing changes according to a fixed rule in time. For finite
thinking, at least, what Goethe said is true. Deed, power,
are here the logical antecedent and basis of thought : —
1 For further detailed discussion and illustration, see " Psychology, Descrip-
tive and Explanatory," chapters xi. and xxi., and "Philosophy of Mind,"
pp. 212 f.
SUFFICIENT REASON 297
" In the beginning was the thought.
But study well this first line's lesson,
Nor let thy pen to error overhasten !
Is it the thought does all from time's first hour ?
1 In the beginning,' read then, 'was the power. 1
Yet even while I write it down my finger
Is checked, a voice forbids me there to linger.
The Spirit helps ! At once I dare to read,
And write : ' In the beginning was the deed.' "
Cognitive judgment, however, is not reached without think-
ing ; on the contrary, it is the terminal of a process of think-
ing. And further functioning of intellect is necessary to
attain those more remote cognitive judgments which mark the
termination of prolonged processes of reasoning. The nature
of this further functioning is essentially the same as that
manifested in the more primary of the cognitive judgments.
The processes of reasoning which connect together the judg-
ments involve no new law governing the intellectual operations.
Nor can they be explained by simply giving shape to an ab-
stract formula, and then calling it by either the logician's or
the physicist's favorite term. If in the name of logic we
affirm the meaning of " the principle of sufficient reason " to
be as follows, "The intellect demands in explanation of all its
conclusions some reason which shall be sufficient as a ground
for that, and no other, particular conclusion," no light is
thrown on the real procedure of the mind. Indeed, careful
examination shows such a formula to be for the most part
either unmeaning or tautological. For the important inquiry
returns: What is it for one judgment to be "the ground" of
another, or to " follow from " that other as its necessary con-
clusion ? And to this inquiry no answer can be given which
does not take us back of all mere reasoning activity, as a
purely intellectual affair, to an immediate cognitive experience
of the Self in its changing relations to Things.
Nor in the phrase " sufficient reason " can any meaning be
given to the word " sufficient " which does not involve the
298 SUFFICIENT REASON
entire doctrine of the criteria of truth and error ; and this is
altogether too elaborate and doubtful an affair to be involved
in the very statement of a primal and universal law of the
intellect. Moreover, it is not true to experience that the
intellect demands an explanation in grounds lying outside
of the particular, concrete process of cognition itself, for all
its conclusions. The rather does it strive to take all its
tentative and hypothetical conclusions back to original cogni-
tive judgments, with the understanding that tJiese, at least, are
to be received as having their " grounds," their " reasons " for
being held true, in themselves ; they are datum of fact. For
" that-which-is-given " is in no case an unclothed, naked " that,"
a mere somewhat unknowable but injected into the process of
thought, to give it some " stuff," or matter of content, to work
upon. " That-which-is-given " is always this actual and con-
crete not-me, cognized here and now as being in such and
such reciprocally determining relations with my Self. This
datum I do not reach, as a pure intellect, by projecting it into
a subjectively created a priori frame-work of space and time ;
or by reasoning my way to it as something alien to my intu-
ition, and needing to submit itself to intellect to see if it can,
forsooth ! answer the demands thus made upon it. 1 But I
1 It would be of incomparable value to science, even in its modern boastful
devotion to the truth of fact, if its students would, on the one hand, be somewhat
more cautious about elaborating trains of reasoning which contradict immediate
experience, and if, on the other hand, they would be somewhat more diligent
and unprejudiced in the work of reasoning out the conclusions to which experi-
ence seems quite clearly to point. I more than suspect that the observance of
these rules would quite undermine the " arguments " by which are supported such
theories as, for example, psycho-physical parallelism as applied to the causal
relations of the body and mind in man, or that determinism in ethics which, under
a cover of statistical data, or of materialistic psycho-physics, or of the evolutionary
hypothesis applied to human history and human society, really brings over from
physics its often inept and wholly figurative conception of the causal nexus, and
plumps it down upon the life of the Self. Is it not well to remember that the
business of intellect is not to explain facts by showing what can be or cannot be,
however isolated in appearance and mysterious, but to criticise alleged facts, and
to connect its own generalizations as to causes, and laws, etc., with the facts, as
finding in them their explanation and ground ?
SUFFICIENT REASON 299
find it there, present with an ever-increasing fulness of con-
tent, as I more attentively and shrewdly observe what it is ;
and as I, on the basis of such observation, reason to con-
clusions as to what further it may be or must be.
From the points of standing afforded by valid cognitive
judgments of perception and of self-consciousness, the intel-
lect proceeds in its work of generalization and abstraction.
It is in these latter processes that the form of its functioning
as reasoning faculty consists. Our experience with ourselves
as acting in ways partly self-determined and partly determined
in dependence upon our changing relations to things, and our
experience with things as acting in different ways when their
perceived relations to us and to one another change, becomes
itself the subject of thought, feeling, and volition. These
ways of the behavior of things, when remembered and re-
flected upon, are generalized ; they are abstracted from the
concrete things to which they are always observed to belong,
and are converted into classes of entities, powers, causes, that
may be thought of as related to each other in the form of
laws. This is, of course, that very procedure of thought
which produces conceptual and so-called scientific knowledge.
Let it be noted, however, that such a procedure is not, in its
simplest expression, a fully conscious syllogistic act. When
it is affirmed that the judgment " Adam Smith is mortal " is
a conclusion from the universal principle "All men are
mortal," through the mediate conception, or middle term,
"man" (because Adam Smith, etc.), the real procedure of
intellect is neither explained nor properly expressed. Un-
less the mere name of the individual — in this case " Adam
Smith" — means to me some man or other, the problem of
the mortality of the being designated by the name is no prob-
lem for reasoning at all. And, as has been pointed out with
infinite pains by logicians themselves, the real difficulty is
to understand the right to postulate the universality of the
general principle " All men are mortal," when as yet we
300 SUFFICIENT REASON
S
have not taken this particular man into the account. But
in case we admit this right, how can any advance in genuine
knowledge come by so-called reasoning ?
The formal difficulty vanishes as soon as we leave the
logical and assume the less trifling and more profound
epistemological point of view from which to regard the act
of reasoning and its claims to validity, when applied to the
actual relations of really existent things. Here two simple
but important considerations must be kept in mind. First,
there is evidently some firmly established expectation of a
continuity in the existence of things, and a belief in a con-
siderable amount of uniformity in the behavior of these same
things, under their ordinary relations to us and to one an-
other. But, second, this expectation is only a relative affair ;
it is not so firmly fixed that it cannot be shaken, and even
upset, by new facts of cognition ; nor can it be claimed that
the belief applies in a perfectly inflexible way either to the
particular events of experience or to the entire world of
things. To recur to the example brought forward in the last
paragraph : we do expect confidently that Adam Smith will
die ; and we believe that, in fact, he is at present so consti-
tuted as to be worthy of being called " mortal." This expec-
tation is in some sort an outgrowth of our general confidence
in the obedience (to speak figuratively) of tilings to laws, in
their fidelity to tolerably consistent ways of behavior. On
the other hand, we are by no means absolutely sure that
Adam Smith may not be an exception to the general rule ;
for, indeed, alleged cases of exception exist which, although
lacking in sufficient evidence to allow us at once to pronounce
cognitive judgment upon them as a basis, deserve to appear
in evidence. Nor can any one deny that the reasons, not
only in theory but in observation, for admitting certain ex-
ceptions have seemed "sufficient" to many of our fellow-men.
Still less warranted are we in affirming that any known law
of the behavior of things in the whole universe is of abso-
SUFFICIENT REASON 301
lutely universal application ; even still less in holding that
the system of laws which constitutes the body of modern
physical science has always been in the past, or will always
be in the future, an inflexible control over the beings to
which expanding experience may introduce us.
The sceptical criticism of Hume, in his treatment of the
principle of causation, is quite invincible in one particular.
No account of the terms on which this principle is applied to
the transactions that take place between things can be given
without admitting to this account the determining influence of
belief and expectation, as bred of psychical habit, and as con-
stantly confirmed by additional experiences. This influence
is positive matter of fact. As all critical thinkers now admit,
we never discover, either to sense or to thought, any extra-
mentally existent causal nexus between individual things.
Nor do we find in mere conceiving, or thinking, the warrant
for affirming that such a relation in reality exists between
them. Kant's formal analysis of intellect, taken on his own
terms, does not supply this needed warrant. On the other
hand, it is a fundamental law of our psychical existence that
repeated connections in its " momenta," actually established,
excite the expectation of further repetitions of the same con-
nections. Connections frequently and vividly impressed be-
come regarded as legal, as naturally and rationally to be
expected ; and if they are not met with, then both feeling
and intellect seem offended and violated. The offence and
the violation are primarily of an emotional and practical
origin ; but they are confirmed by those activities of thought
which have actually terminated in judgments respecting the
customary modes of the behavior both of Self and of Things.
One may safely go much further, and yet conserve all the
interests of the philosophy of knowledge, in one's concessions
to the claims of a sceptical empiricism upon this point. In-
deed, in fidelity to truths of fact one must go somewhat
further. Knowledge neither reposes upon, nor itself guaran-
302 SUFFICIENT REASON
tees the perfectly unswerving uniformity of natural laws, or of
the causal relations of things to each other, as a principle of
all valid reasoning about things. "The uniformity of na-
ture," so-called, cannot be strictly affirmed as an intellectual
intuition taking us straight into the heart of reality ; nor is it
known a priori as the reflection of the uniform mode of all
reasoning, the fundamental law of the intellect, projected into
a frame-work of space and time. It is itself, the rather,
a growing impression or conviction, built up on a basis of
conflicting experiences which can establish it, at last and at
best, only in the form of a general working postulate. We
say, " on a basis of conflicting experiences ; " for, in fact, the
very data which furnish the form for the belief in such a con-
nection of the different items of experience as makes it possi-
ble to reason from one to another, largely argue against any
rigid construction for the conception of uniformity. This is
easily explicable as soon as it is remembered how much of the
most interesting and fruitful human experience concerns the
impulsive volitions, the blind, unbidden desires, and irrational
strivings, of the Self. Thus does every man, at the beginning
largely, and to no small degree all the way through, act and
react upon things in his changing relations, in an irregular
and spasmodic way, rather than so as to emphasize a se-
quence of events objectively determined according to some
"fixed ruleP
What is true of the basis for reasoning, so far as it lies
chiefly in the consciousness of Self, is also true in a smaller
degree of the same basis so far as it lies in the perceived
relations of interacting things. To the untrained mind they
appear little more obedient to law, or unswervingly faithful to
the principle of uniformity, and so little better fitted to serve
as points of departure for assured processes of reasoning, than
does the Self when directing its observant and expectant eye
upon itself. Things, too, at the beginnings of mental develop-
ment, seem full of caprice, driven by desire, and moved by
SUFFICIENT REASON 303
conscious strivings, to reach certain particular ends. They
act, often enough, as though they had no respect for law.
But, none the less, in many most important and impressive
relations, all men are quickly compelled to learn that things
can be depended upon to behave in uniform ways ; and thus
the mind can construct formulas for the accustomed and well-
known modes of their behavior as premises, or fixed points
for starting, in its ratiocinative processes. ".All fire burns ; "
and, therefore, I expect tins molten mass of metal to burn me
unless I keep my skin well cleared of contact with it. But if
it be true that a certain royal personage once plunged his
finger into such a molten mass, with full confidence in the
word of a scientific friend that, if he would do this quickly,
no harm would come, he, by deed done in faith, contradicted
triumphantly the legitimate conclusion reached by sound
syllogistic argument upon premises established by his own
most familiar experience.
The growing accumulation of knowledge as to the custom-
ary behavior of things, under given relations to us and to
one another, forms the basis for those acts of reasoning which
enter most largely into life, and to which reference was made
above. They are general judgments which summarize the
experience given to us in those individual judgments that
terminate the process of thinking in recognition of the envis-
aged relation of Self and Things, as active and passive, and
thus bound together by the feeling-full and voluntary act of
cognition itself. In some sort, the leap to the individual
judgment, " This man is mortal ; " or " This molten metal
will burn me," may properly be called a conclusion. It is
a " drawing-out " of the meaning of what is included in
the general judgment, " All men are mortal ; " or, " All fiery
things will burn." But neither the reason nor the sufficiency
of the process is to be found in the merely formal connection
of the conclusion with the premises. The ground of both
is in the cognitive judgments which declare the original
304 SUFFICIENT REASON
experiences; and here the nervus probandi is sensitive to
stimulations from actuality in the form of fact. The law
of the intellect is to generalize the facts. In this work of
generalization, the intellect carries over to its concepts all the
potencies of feeling and will with which the Self knows itself to
be endowed, and which it analogically feels obliged to recognize
in Things.
The activity of the human intellect in enlarging the bounds
of knowledge by processes of reasoning does not, by any means,
stop with such relatively simple processes as have already
been described. Suppose, to employ illustrations which have
served our purpose before, I inquire : Why are all men judged
mortal in such way as that I can, with reason, affirm any par-
ticular man to be also mortal ? or, Why do I regard the
stones in any building, in spite of their placid and unchanging
appearance, as continually supporting and causing strains,
etc. ? In answer to the first question one must consider in
a more fundamental way what a " man " is understood to be.
He is an animal, a complex organism, a complicated piece of
molecular mechanism, generated by a pair in the species,
growing in subjection to physico-chemical laws by metamor-
phosis of physical materials ; and so coming under the most
general formulas for determining the probable destination
of those materials. This now is, largely if not chiefly, what I
wish to express by calling him a man, — namely, an animal
of the human species. And now I can affirm the mortality
of each particular man, because he is a man, with a quite new
meaning to my words. I now know in a complicated way
a great variety of reasons for the conclusion that "Adam
Smith " is mortal. These reasons are, in part, general con-
clusions already established along several different lines of
concurrent experiences. The number of major premises from
which I may now start my processes of reasoning to the con-
clusion is greatly increased. Such premises include not only
my individual cognitions about A, B, and G, whom I have
SUFFICIENT REASON 305
known as men, and known to die, but the accumulated cogni-
tions of centuries of experience respecting the nature of mat-
ter, the origin and duration of life, the cosmic laws and
cosmic changes, — in brief " the science," of the animal called
" man." Here certainly we have reasoning of a higher kind ;
both because it is based on a much enlarged system of cogni-
tive judgments, and also because it is more conscious of the
nature, number, and value of its middle terms.
The same aspect of the reasoning process is laid bare by
a further analysis of the other example which was chosen for
illustration. Experts in mechanical engineering, when sum-
moned to form a judgment affirming or denying the safety
of a building, bring with them, in their memories or in their
pockets, a number of general judgments already formed,
which may serve as major premises. The conclusion at
which they plan to arrive admits of statement either in cate-
gorical or hypothetical form ; and either as a statement of
present matter of fact or as a prediction. Thus they may
conclude, " This building is (or is not') safe ; " or " If this
building is not strengthened, it will fall " (or the opposite
judgment, " Even if it is not strengthened, it will not fall ").
The major premises for the argument leading to the conclu-
sion are numerous ; they concern the strength of materials of
various kinds ; the laws of strains, loads, and resistances,
and the practical principles for distributing them properly ;
the effects of weather, weights, and different chemical changes
upon the strength of materials ; — in a word, the mechanics,
physics, and chemistry of the day, so far as bearing on the
problem. These premises are themselves conclusions reached
by a vast amount of reasoning which has been more or less
successfully accomplished during scores of generations of
men. But the original points of starting from which it was
concluded to these premises, to this collective " science " of
safe and proper building, were certain cognitive judgments
representing known facts of relation. In all these cognitive
20
306 SUFFICIENT REASON
judgments A was conceived of as doing something to B (as
binding and separating, supporting and pressing down, pull-
ing or resisting, etc.), in a more or less uniform way.
If, however, any such act of reasoning is to proceed to its
desired accomplishment, and conclusive judgment is to be
passed, minor premises also must be supplied. These must be
got, chiefly, by observation of the actual facts of the particular
case. A — namely, that girder there — is strong enough ; but
B — to wit, that row of pillars yonder — is too weak or is not
properly placed; and C — the mortar employed — is dirt, not
gritty sand, and has not enough of good cement, and, " there-
fore," not enough of binding force. Scanty reflection upon
this work of collecting minor premises shows at once that,
what is expressly true of the last of the above-mentioned
three premises is true of all of those mentioned and of
all such premises as can possibly be supplied. They imply
the confidence of the reasoners that the building is itself
an extra-mentally existent being, composed of a vast collec-
tion of beings which are all reciprocally active and passive,
doing something and having something done to them, accord-
ing to their customary ways. This confidence is to be de-
rived and explained only in accordance with the primary
nature of the operations of complex cognitive faculty, as that
nature has been critically examined in the previous chapters,
especially in the chapter upon u Knowledge of Things and
Knowledge of Self."
What enormous assumptions! What boundless presump-
tion! What reckless and unjustifiable credulity — unless,
indeed, it be an activity of the most rational, feeling-full and
voluntary faith — is involved in all this ! But whatever the
implicates are, upon them, as upon its only justifiable basis,
does the entire structure of physical science repose. As-
sumption, presumption, credulity, — or rational, feeling-full,
and voluntary faith ? this, at any rate, is not of itself a
question to be decided by ratiocination ; for all reasoning
SUFFICIENT REASON 307
and especially all highly conceptual processes of reasoning
require just such premises as these. In such premises all
reasoning finds its justification or its grounds. But the
assumptions are themselves grounded, yet lower down and
further back, in the primary acts of knowledge ; they are
immanent in the cognitive judgments of our indubitable
experiences with Self and with Things. All major premises,
in themselves considered, are, then, judgments of relation
between hypothetical entities, such as can never be made
matters of self-consciousness or of sense-perception, and be-
tween abstractions of properties and powers, such as never
find a pure or unmixed realization in the actual intercourse
of things; and these entities, properties, and powers, are
affirmed to be connected under terms of formulas which are
known to be only approximately exact. The minor premises,
on the other hand, have just been seen to be shot through and
through with those constructs of thought and imagination
which are derived by the analogical projection into things of
the self-consciously recognized reasons for the Self's activity
and passivity, in conformity with its observed changes of
relations toward things. From the major premises, through
terms supplied by the minor premises, the mind " draws," or
" infers," or " concludes," the terminal judgment : " The
building is (or is not) safe ; " or, " The building will (or will
not) fall." But if, as is apt enough to be the case, the
major premises are complicated and somewhat conflicting,
or are not obviously applicable, and the needed minor prem-
ises can be only partially supplied ; or even if the theoretical
or practical interests of the reasoners are at variance as re-
spects the most " desirable " or " fitting " conclusion, then the
judgment terminating the ratiocinative process may be ques-
tioned, divided, or totally in doubt. Some will then say, the
building is surely safe ; but others will say, it is by no means
safe. One expert will predict with confidence that it will
fall ; but two other experts will offer to guarantee by a large
308 SUFFICIENT REASON
sum of money that it will not fall. Meanwhile there the
building stands, just as it is and no other, in a sort of silent
scorn of all human attempts to penetrate assuredly its entire
and most hidden nature. In despite of scientific predictions,
in reality it will fall or it will not fall — as it and its natural
environment " will" and not as the scientific experts wish,
or think, or conclude, respecting its appointed end.
It appears, then, that the goal of that cognition after which
the mind strives in its processes of reasoning is the establish-
ment of causal relations that have truth in reality. With this
we believe ourselves to be concerned, while conducting those
elaborate intellectual operations by which the real world
becomes known as a complicated system of interrelated selves
and things. In order, therefore, to understand the meaning
of the reasoning process, and of the confidence it implies, as
well as the limits of its possible achievements in the way of
adding to our knowledge, we must investigate the conception
of causation itself. This investigation leads us back to the
nature of those primary experiences of knowledge out of
which comes all systematic knowledge of the world in which
we live. Here we are reminded that in knowing any thing,
by the most fundamental and primary cognitions of sense-
intuition, the Self becomes aware of itself as active, and also
as resisted in relation to that which is not-self, which is
indeed other than Self. Will and other-being, my will and
other will, — these, observed, remembered, compared, subjected
to all the activities of a growing consciousness of discrimina-
tion, such as is called the development of intellect, or in a
word, thought, in the relation of commerce called cognition,
furnish the account of the causal conception. It is this same
experience which leads thought still further to frame the con-
ceptions of " conformity to law," of " a sequence of events
objectively determined according to a fixed rule," of the " uni-
formity of nature ; " and to the pet generalization of modern
physical science : u Every event happens only as an effect ab-
SUFFICIENT REASON 309
solutely predetermined by other preceding events which con-
stitute its cause." The experience itself is the presupposition
of the conception of law, or invariable rule, etc., — however
we may choose to phrase so abstract a summary. The formula
is only the more or less highly developed exhibition of repeated
and indubitable cognitive experiences of Self and Things as
known in various relations. The fact is indubitable, it is, in-
deed, matter-of-fact of every completed cognition. But the
establishment of uniformities, laws, and forms of general rela-
tion of an abstract kind, is always a relative affair, never
complete, but subject always to the possibility of doubt. Our
cognition of the particular reasons which must serve as middle
terms for the reasoning process is very often uncertain, vague,
meagre, and ambiguous, — no fitting representation of the
actual, indefinitely manifold, and yet precise causal relations
of nature. And, finally, this picture of known causal rela-
tions, as the only actual and possible relations, the picture,
namely, of a vast and self-contained mechanism, every part of
which is bound solidly together from beginning to end, and
from centre to circumference by unyielding laws, is itself no
a priori structure of the human intellect. It is not a wholly
defensible work of the artistic imagination ; it is not even a
creditable dream of what may possibly sometime be reasoned
out into a conception resting on grounds of incontestable cog-
nitive judgments. Much less is it God's final truth about the
whole matter.
The truth of our critical estimate of the use of reason in
the knowledge of nature might be elaborately argued and satis-
factorily established by an appeal to the particular sciences
themselves. This task, indeed, belongs, with all its details,
to the philosophy of nature ; and no other task cries out
more loudly for some masterful hand to undertake it. The
physical and natural sciences, in spite of their recent wonder-
ful advances (perhaps rather in consequence of these ad-
vances), were never before so full of abstract conceptions
310 SUFFICIENT REASON
that need a critical treatment by philosophy. Our present
purpose, however, requires only a glance at certain fields
covered with a mixture of flowers, grains, and weeds, that
await the efforts of the expert analyzer.
And first, it may be questioned whether there are any
physical laws so universal as not to be forced to recognize
wholly inexplicable exceptions in the very heart of the domain
over which they hold sway. For example, the law of gravita-
tion affirms that, without exception, all physical bodies attract
each other, directly as their mass, and inversely as the square
of their distance. But this law, or abstract formula, explains
only the movement of bodies near the earth, of the planets
around the sun, of the satellites around their planets, and of a
select few couples of the stars. It explains these movements
of bodies only if other considerations may be neglected, such
as never are in reality neglected by the bodies themselves.
All these bodies which most obviously fall under this law
are, however, moving together onward in space with an
apparent complete disregard of all other bodies outside of
their own system. The directions and velocities of the several
movements of the stars fall under no common principle that
astronomy can discover. And, to take an extreme example,
one of them (" 1830 Groombridge ") is flying through space
at a rate many times as great as it could attain if it had
fallen through infinite space, from all eternity, toward the
entire physical universe. What caprice of Will gave it the
initial fling that has enabled it so to flout at the principle of
sufficient reason in the form of the so-called " universal law
of gravitation " ? Again, it is a well-nigh universal law of
physics that both solids and fluids contract when cooled
and expand when heated ; but there is the startling well-
known exception of water at the degree of freezing. It
is a law of chemistry which affords one of the main props
for the atomic theory, that fluids hold in solution more of the
solids soluble in them, at a higher degree of temperature.
SUFFICIENT REASON 311
But calcium sulphate (or gypsum) dissolves to a limited extent
in cold water, but, on a rise of temperature to about 135°
Cent, it deposits ; and calcium hydroxid (common slaked
lime) is more soluble in hot than cold water. If the case of
the gypsum is " explained " by its passing from a hydrated
to an anhydrous form, such an explanation for the lime can
at present only be suspected. And then there is the case of
common salt, which, for reasons only known to itself, has
practically the same solubility in both cold and hot water.
But, however these and similar " exceptions " to laws of the
widest applicability may be explained, the fact of there being
exceptions is itself what carries the import of greatest use
to our present discussion. This import administers a crush-
ing rebuke to those who hold the " reign of law " (whatever
this may mean) in such manner as to contradict the concrete
internal and external facts by which the varied Life of Reality
is actually made manifest.
Another field from which to gather illustrations for our
present contention is afforded by entire bodies of scientific
truth, whole " sciences," so-called. We are not unmindful
of the fact that it is customary to speak of this " reign of law,"
and of the resulting uniformity of human nature, by students
of psychology and of the psychological sciences, of eco-
nomics, sociology, history, and even ethics and religion. But
here the distinction must be insisted upon between knowl-
edge and hypothesis, and between an hypothesis that conforms
to known facts for their better theoretical handling, and one
which is itself framed in the interests of yet more doubtful
hypotheses. One might even descend from psychology into
some of the physical and natural sciences to illustrate the
truth that alleged " uniformities," a " reign of law," and the
conception of " sequences objectively determined according
to a fixed rule," are themselves too frequently abstractions
unsupported by the facts, or even figments of imagination
most plainly contradicted by facts. It seems to us that the
312 SUFFICIENT REASON
time is fully come to recognize not only the truth of the frag-
mentary character of all science, but a far profounder and
more wide-reaching truth. How do we know that it is the
Nature of Things to be under " universal laws," if by this
term be meant fixed rules imposed from without, or lying
mysteriously immanent in things ? How do we know that
uniformity, in the sense of unceasing repetition of the old
relations according to unchanging formulas, is the funda-
mental principle followed by the Really Existent ? If now
an appeal is made to the past successes of this assumption,
the case is not at all so conclusive as it is customarily
represented to be.
In all of the physical and natural sciences, improved
methods of observation have recently extended the number
of inexplicable single facts, and of whole classes of such facts,
much faster than the reasoning faculty has been able to pro-
vide laws for them. The seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies were characterized by a few splendid generalizations,
which seemed to their discoverers and to the age destined to
reduce the entire universe to a mechanical system whose terms
should be strictly calculable. In these generalizations was to
be found the unfailing source of the " reasons " why things
behaved as they always did behave ; and also the " grounds "
of the confident predictions that they would continue unswerv-
ingly to behave in the same way. In the present century,
when the Darwinian hypothesis, in spite of the pitifully narrow
range of observed facts and of incontestable judgments of
experience on which it was " grounded," was placed by Mr.
Huxley and its other ardent admirers on a level, for certitude,
with the principle of gravitation, it seemed, indeed, as though
all life, even up to the life of the artistic, religious, and cog-
nitive spirit of man, was about to be formulated by similar
treatment. Nor are claimants for the name of " science " yet
wanting who neglect a truly scientific reserve, and are ready
to accept or reject, to interpret fairly or to sophisticate, the
SUFFICIENT REASON 313
facts according as they bear upon foregone general conclusions
confirming their particular theory of evolution.
On the whole, however, the nineteenth century — and
especially the last quarter of it — has been growing into a
distrust of glittering generalizations, with their high-sounding
claims to reign over the whole realm of the concrete, content-
full, and seemingly capricious and ever mysterious Being of
the World. Even astronomy, the most mathematical and
deductive of the applied sciences, has of late been multiplying
facts faster than it has been able to reduce them to the
uniformity of laws, by reflecting upon their connections
through either known or hypothetical middle terms. And —
to pass at once to the other extreme — he who has seen an
amoeba and a fresh-water hydra, after due preparation and
preliminary skirmishes, fight it out to a finish in truly heroic
and artistic fashion, is much more likely henceforth to con-
ceive of them as beings with appetites, passions, conscious
cunning, and no mean resources of will and intellect, than
as molecular mechanisms that may soon be served up as
examples of problems solved in thermo-dyn amies and the
lawful action of merely physico-chemical forces. So, too,
when one hears what is given out as a " science " of sociology
in terms of biological and mechanical evolution, with much
talk of " social forces," " social organism," and of inexorable
" laws " to which this organism is subject ; and when one
turns to face the concrete and life-like picture of the multi-
tudes of men in the present world and in the course of history ;
then, too, one inclines to believe that these souls are them-
selves the forces, and that their ever varying and self-chosen
relations to the world of things and to each other are the laws
which constitute the figuratively so-called social organism.
Forces are not existent, so far as the science of sociology
goes, until the souls are existent ; they are no more uniform
than are the souls from which the forces spring. And as to
laws of a " social organism," there are none, except those
314 SUFFICIENT SEASON
which are made by the action and interaction of the souls
themselves. But these are not ready-made laws, as it were ;
they are only the actual, but ceaselessly varying and, as we
hope, improving modes of the behavior of the individual
members of the so-called organism.
In brief, men reason about things for practical purposes,
and thus know them increasingly so far as getting along well
with them is concerned. Fortunately, those things that most
nearly determine human daily interests, the common weal or
woe, are found to be tolerably consistent in their behavior.
The solid ground on which men walk, the sources of their
support, the implements they handle, and in much inferior
degree, the animals of their customary intercourse are fairly
trustworthy. But sometimes out of a clear sky the light-
ning strikes ; or out of a sweet air the Russian influenza
falls ; the weather and the dependent crops are uncertain ;
all learn to be cautious in matters involving the behavior of
the lower animals and of their fellow-men ; and those who
reside in Japan know that, at any moment, the ground beneath
them may be lifted aloft or sunk into the depths. Neverthe-
less, further and more careful observation, helped on so far
as possible by experiment, gives grounds for reasoning to a
new and higher confidence in things. In a measurable de-
gree we discover middle terms, in the form of minute entities
(the molecules and atoms), or of hidden masses (the internal
fires and caverns underground), or of unsuspected properties
and relations (thermic, chemical, biological) which serve to
connect the seemingly contradictory experiences into a more
rational whole. Many of these connections, at first hypo-
thetical, lead to somewhat broad generalizations which, when
they are themselves employed as major or minor premises,
land the mind on the firm ground of verifiable cognitive
judgments again. Expectations are modified ; some are
strengthened and others abandoned. The courses of the
reasoning processes and of the concluding judgments are
SUFFICIENT REASON" 315
changed. The convictions which give them their special
cogency prove alterable, in respect of degree and of points of
application. Even the general conviction that by reasoning
man can find out the ultimate Being of the World, or extend
his cognitions of its actual nature and uniform modes of
behavior (if, indeed, It has such modes), is sometimes shaken.
But, on the whole, the conception of the World of Things as
some sort of a Unity is enriched and deepened.
Once more at this point, however, we must return to make
further examination of our knowledge of Self and of Things
as a basis for the general confidence in our reasoning processes.
It will be found that all " reasons," or " grounds," from which
conclusions are drawn may be divided into two quite dif-
ferent classes. Both these classes of reasons are employed
in every completed process of reasoning. Both of them,
moreover, when examined, quickly lead our thought to the
limits of what is immediately known ; and from there they
point it beyond to what must always be a matter of rational
postulating, or abstract theorizing, or fanciful conjecture.
These two classes of reasons are embodied in current con-
ceptions of the "nature" of things as both active and pas-
sive, and of the further conditions determining the modes
of activity or passivity, as found in the " relations " of things.
Thus the complete reasons for the behavior of things are
thought to reside both in their own nature and in their
relations to other things.
When, for example, I let a certain quantity of a gas
mingle with a certain quantity of a gas H, under determinate
relations of temperature, pressure, etc., = X, I find that a
compound of a totally new nature, TV, is the result. I therefore
express my knowledge of the chemical constitution of water
by the formula H 2 ; and my knowledge of the law of the
combination of hydrogen and oxygen gases, when brought
under the relations of X, to be a proportion of 2002 to 1000.
This is reasoned and conceptual, or scientific, knowledge. But
316 SUFFICIENT REASON
now if I press still further my inquiry after reasons, and de-
mand to know why this thing, 0, behaves in this particular
and no other way, when it is brought under these precise, and
no other quite dissimilar relations to this other thing, H', and
if I also demand to know as much with regard to the latter,
the H, I can hardly fall back on reasons at all. I can only
blindly say: It is the " nature" of and H so to behave,
under these and no other dissimilar " relations." But then,
the chemist can describe many other modes of the behavior
of both and H, under a great variety of relations besides X
to an almost endless number of other things, with natures of
their own. But why is it the nature of and of imprecisely
so to behave ; and why do these particular relations, X, have
anything decisive to do with the changing modes of the be-
havior of these things ? To such a question no answer can
be found ; in fact the things do so behave, and in fact rela-
tions of things do always have to do with how things behave.
The limit of all cognition by reasoning has been reached in the
unreasoning recognition of cognized facts.
" We have no answer to make," and " We have reached
the limit of all cognition," — but only if we are unable
to get the facts into our consciousness in another way, and
thus to regard them from a new and higher point of view.
For if the cognized facts are deeds done by a Self with a con-
sciously recognized end in view, then it is possible to explain
to its very centre the u reason" for the facts. If I simply find
myself to be acting and suffering in certain more or less
uniform ways, with relation to observed changes in the active
and passive condition of things, but without any conscious
discrimination or choice of aught to be gained as a good, or
avoided as an evil, I have no further reason to give, or to
seek, for such facts. They are so, and that is the end of the
matter. To ask, further, why they are so is to ask an
absurd and unanswerable question. But in experience this is
not the case with all deeds of cognition. Certain items, and
SUFFICIENT REASON 317
those not a few, in my experience do, indeed, end in this
way. Thus I act and thus I suffer, without any conscious-
ness of a "why," of a reason for acting and suffering thus
rather than in some totally different way. That is to say,
out of the dark and incomprehensible " ground " of my own
nature in its unintelligible relations to the dark and incom-
prehensible nature of things, these states of my being seem
to proceed. Such procedure in reality makes necessary the
ending of my own reasoning processes in that which is not a
subject for reasoning. On the other hand, certain other items
of my experience — and these not few in number, but of the
greatest practical and aesthetical as well as cognitive import
— involve the consciousness of activity and of passivity as
determined by chosen forms of intercourse with things, in
the pursuit of conscious ends. This part of my experience,
when made the subject of further reflection, throws a new
light upon the meaning and the limits of reasoning. It leads
to a consideration of the teleology of all knowledge, and of
the corresponding immanence of final purpose in the really
existent objects of knowledge.
Nor can the consciousness of an end be separated from the
explanation of the nature, and the defence of the validity of
any act of reasoning. This consciousness is operative in the
determination of the primary cognitive judgments from which
all reasoning takes its start. This consciousness itself forms
a part of the original experience with the causal conception ;
and it gives characteristic coloring to the " connection," to
the "bond," which is assumed to exist between Self and
Things, as well as among things themselves. We are not
unaware of the present wide-spread denial of this fact ; and
alas ! of the sometimes monstrous and mischievous conclusions
derived from this denial. It is enough at present to stand by
those facts which are indisputable and inseparable " momenta "
and presuppositions of all knowledge. The "grounds" on
which all acts of reasoning repose, so far as they can possibly
318 SUFFICIENT REASON
be explored by an analysis of knowledge itself, are laid bare
when we behold the nature of the Self revealing itself in the
pursuit of some conscious good. This is the final answer to
the question " Why ? " And the answer cannot be divorced
from the conception of that causal relation which all reason-
ing assumes as binding together, in reality, the things of the
physical world. For it is in the same experience that the
answer to the question " By what cause determined ? " has
its origin and its import.
A sleeping postulate, therefore, underlies all our account of
the principle of sufficient reason. The explication of this
postulate belongs to metaphysics as ontology. But we must
recognize it as implicate in a satisfactory theory of knowledge.
Two somewhat opposed directions, however, seem indicated
for this theory, if it would conform itself to the facts
of cognition considered as falling under the principles of
identity and sufficient reason. One direction follows the lines
of thinking rather in opposition to those of the actual being
of things ; the other seeks to demonstrate that the forms of
thought are the forms of the being of things. One teaches
us to consider how much of an antecedently unthinkable sort
seems necessary in order to give full recognition to the nature
and the limits of our reasoning processes. The particular,
the unique, even the perverse and contradictory, interpene-
trates the content of knowledge. 1 Every act of cognition is
a problem, and the problem cannot be solved by reasoning
alone. The very Being and the Becoming of the World, as
given to the human mind, seems full of contradictions. It
is the great riddle itself ; and there is none greater to be sus-
pected behind it. The extreme apriorism which maintains
the absolute universality and objective necessity of those
inner modes of apprehension that are employed upon the
world of things may fitly be criticised by showing to how
1 Compare Uphues, Kritik des Erkennens, p. 106. Lasson, Der Satz vom
Widerspruche, Philosophische Vortrage, 1885, pp. 208 f.
SUFFICIENT REASON 319
low and pitiful a condition this alleged universality and
necessity may fall. Even the logical and mathematical prin-
ples upon which the advocate of this extreme apriorism bases
his claims may in certain cases show unmistakable signs of
being " shaky " or of entirely giving way.
And further, if the attempt be made to exalt either of the
most primary principles of all human thinking to the place
of an autocrat or irresponsible creator of cognitive judgments,
and to hypostasize either of them as a formula representative
of the complete being of the world, the reward for the attempt
is not a knowledge of Reality, but a delusive mistaking of
formal abstractions for the real content of things. In the
name of the " Principle of Identity " the innermost essence
of Reality has often enough been proclaimed as Absolute,
changeless Being, whose conception cannot be constructed
further without self-destruction. A = A is, indeed, a prop-
osition which appears to have a demonstrated simplicity and
clearness; or rather, an indisputable a priori character which
puts it beyond all need of demonstration. But A = A is
nothing but an empty, meaningless symbol, to which no
known reality corresponds or ever can be conceived of as
corresponding. In our self-consciousness, where all cognition
begins, and to which it ever returns for fresh sources of a
vitally renewing kind, the abolition of the fundamental oppo-
sition between subject and object is a return to nescience so
complete as to be quite unable to state itself even in negative
form. And when the doctors of philosophy have put to sleep,
or quite annulled, the living process of a self-realizing Cosmos,
they can never restore what is gone by uttering over the
corpse incantations in the name of a mystical Principle of
Identity. Moreover, every concrete application of this prin-
ciple must be made only on grounds of actual cognitive judg-
ments ; and critical examination must test each application.
For the processes of thinking and the actual connections of
Reality cannot be, off-hand and without a sceptical and
critical process, identified.
320 SUFFICIENT REASON
The same cautions must be observed with regard to the
Principle of Sufficient Reason, objectively applied as a so-
called universal law of causality. The abstract conception of
causality is itself no ground of explanation ; there is no
sufficient warrant for its being raised to the place of supreme
adoration and hypostasized as embodying the whole essence
of the really existent World. Especially inept is that pro-
cess of reasoning which, after having based itself upon this
very conception of causality, proceeds to divide the world
of reality into two unrelated halves, two disconnected pro-
cesses, that run on eternally as it were, side by side. 1 But
without employing again the causal principle to connect
together thoughts and things, we are never able to get one
glimpse of a reason why the processes should be two rather than
more, or even infinite in number ; or why thoughts and things
should run parallel rather than at right angles ; or how out
of this diversity of actually disconnected processes the unity
of experience and the Unity of the World can come. Is it not
an astonishing outcome of the tenderness shown this principle
of sufficient reason, as employed for the interpretation of
Reality, that it should be so hardened as to become unable to
depart from one of these two lines of process and thus bind
together into one the physical and the psychical World ? But
no less surprising and self contradictory is the outcome of
every attempt to vindicate an absolute logico-mathematical
necessity for the really Existent, in the name of the principle
of sufficient reason or of its objective correlate, the principle
of causality. The suppositions of eternally unchanging uni-
formity of mass, or of force, and of complete similarity of
conditions, with rigid bonds of law binding together the
entire mechanism, are abstractions which are neither derived
from the sum-total of experience, nor do they accord with
this sum-total.
But the result of a critical examination of the principles of
1 As, for example, Paulsen does ; Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 87 f .
SUFFICIENT REASON 321
^identity and sufficient reason is not such as to let the entire
structure of human knowledge dissolve, at this point, in the
caustic of hopeless contradictions, or disappear in the soft
mists of an equally hopeless agnosticism. The mind of man
retains its undying confidence in the possibility, by reasoning
processes, of gaining an increasingly large and true cognition
of Reality. It will bear chastening, but it will not lie down in
despair. And it need not do this in order to vindicate its
confidence in the rationality and validity of its own procedure.
For Causality is itself no invincible bond thaU in a quasi-exter-
nal way, seizes hold of things and forces them into a Unity.
Neither is it necessary to go out of experience to realize that
causal nexus, in the confidence of which our reasoning about
things continually proceeds. This nexus is, after all, when
profoundly inspected and analyzed by critical reflection, not
so much like the external connections of a machine, which
lay themselves bare before the eye of sense, as it is like the
interiorly recognized and felt connections of a conscious and
reasoning Self.
This, then, is the conception which is suggested as the pos-
tulated truth of the nature of the Being of the World. It is,
after the analogy of the Life of a Self, striving forward to a
more and more complete self-realization under the consciously
accepted motif of immanent Ideas. This conception, we say,
is suggested. It appears as the sleeping postulate whose pres-
ence and potency must be recognized if we would understand
and validate the employment of ratiocination for the increase
of our knowledge of the World. The postulate implies, (1)
some sort of unitary Being for this really Existent ; (2) that
this Being is Will ; (3) that the differentiation of the activity
of this Will, and the connection of the differentiated " mo-
menta," — the separate beings of the world, — is teleological
and rational, like that of our own Self. But it is the task
of metaphysics to criticise and develop such statements as
these.
21
CHAPTER XI
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
THAT man can, in no manner and under no conceivable
circumstances, transcend his own experience is custom-
arily thought to be a proposition so self-evident as to stand in
need of neither argument nor explanation. But the history
of the controversies which have raged for centuries between
extreme empiricists and their opponents shows clearly enough
that explanation, at least, is imperatively demanded for the
proposition itself. Indeed, the shifting meanings, which are
given by the contestants to such terms as " experience," " cog-
nition," " the transcendent," etc., and to the concepts of rela-
tion embodied in the various judgments that affirm or deny
the possibility of effecting a union between these terms, are
the most significant thing in the greater part of the contro-
versy. It is important, then, for every attempt at an episte-
mology to raise such questions as the following : What is to be
understood by the term, " experience " ? What is the relation
of knowledge to experience ? and, What would it be to tran-
scend experience by cognition, or in some other way, if only
such a thing could be conceived of as possible ?
The history of epistemological discussion discloses a sur-
prising characteristic group or set of fallacies. They are of
such an order as to awaken one's shame and distrust respect-
ing the power of the human intellect to treat fairly its own
most familiar modes of activity. For the most part, they
seem to be connected with the misapplication of a single,
easily apprehensible figure of speech. Empiricists generally,
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 323
and their opponents quite too frequently, argue about " Ex-
perience" as though it were actually some material thing,
having a fixed or a changeable and expansive area, as spread
out in space. Certainly, if experience is like a circle which
includes only what is within its own area and by virtue of its
very nature excludes all else, then, by defining experience in-
clusively enough, the necessity of its being absolutely exclusive
of what transcends its own limits may easily be shown. Or, to
bring up again the figure of speech which Kant so effectively
employed : — and now experience is an island, surrounded by
a boundless ocean of impenetrable mists and fogs. Moreover,
since this island has its circuit eternally fixed by the unchang-
ing laws of pure understanding, it can never make advances
into the surrounding ocean. And since the critical philosophy
lias made a finality of the exploration of this island, all its
inhabitants should cease to delude themselves with the hope
of some day passing beyond its rocky coast-lines. Only, since
they are possessed of reason as well as of understanding, they
will doubtless keep on turning the spy-glass of an " illusory
logic " toward the paradise over-seas, where God, Freedom,
and Immortality are imagined to be, and whence comes the
attractive, siren-like song of the transcendent ideas. Even
Kant will allow — nay ! he will by and by demonstrate —
the necessity of a faith which shall overreach the limits so
inexorably fixed by experience to human scientific and spec-
ulative cognition.
Now, by all the most primary concepts of geometry, it is
forbidden that circles, laid out on flat surfaces, shall include
and exclude at one and the same time. For is not the very defi-
nition of a circle, — so much of space only as is included within
a curved line that is drawn through points equidistant from a
central point, until it returns upon itself? And circles con-
structed according to the modern " higher geometry," with
their inconceivable qualities contradictory of the plainest re-
quirements of the mind that imagines a la Euclid, may fitly
324 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
be denied all likeness to " experience." For is not experience
supposed to have something to do with actual existences ? And
actual circles are never known to behave in any such contra-
dictory fashion. Islands, too, although exceedingly change-
able as to boundaries in certain cases, and sometimes even
disappearing in the depths of their surrounding ocean or ris-
ing into mid-air on the wings of submarine volcanic forces, do
not include and exclude the same territory at one and the
same time. Thus far, at least, they submit to the funda-
mental principle of identity ; and if they ever change the
limits of their territory, they do this in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason.
But, after all, is the total experience of man precisely like
a geometrically correct circle, or like an island with fixed
boundaries ? Is it even enough like either to allow us to pro-
claim, as a self-evident proposition, that it cannot include and
exclude at one and the same time ? May it not, at least, in-
clude in one sense what it excludes in another sense of these
two words ?
Doubtless, the origin and nature of all language is such
that, even when we are employing terms current among think-
ers acquainted with the very highest critical philosophy, the
spatial and " thing-like " meaning of words is exceedingly in-
fluential. It would be awkward, indeed, and we fear practi-
cally useless, to attempt so to express ourselves on this subject
as to escape all influence from this meaning; indeed, the
meaning itself reveals a considerable number of important
truths connected with the philosophy of knowledge. For the
present, then, we shall continue to employ words which carry
with them the influences inseparable from the figure of speech
they embody. In succeeding chapters, where the attempt
will be made to analyze more critically and in detail the con-
clusions somewhat crudely and plumply affirmed in this chap-
ter, other terms may be substituted that are better adapted,
perhaps, to reveal the real truth of the case. But here our
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 325
main purpose is simply to expose the problem, and the char-
acteristic fallacies which have so frequently embarrassed its
solution. Preserving the same language, with its figurative
meanings, we affirm, then : Hoivever extensive in its meaning
we make this word, " Experience" critical examination shows
that experience is always and necessarily transcended by cog-
nition. The answer to the question whether man can trans-
cend his own experience is this : If man did not transcend his
own experience, he could, as a man, have no cognitive expe-
rience. This is what makes some of our experience rational, —
namely, that it does, in a peculiar manner and to a most mar-
vellous extent, always transcend itself. Indeed, the immanent
and the transcendent, the inclusive and the exclusive, the
merely subjective and the trans-subjective, the mental and the
extra-mental, are not contradictory of each other, or opposed
to each other in the facts of human knowledge. The rather
must it be recognized that what corresponds to both these
classes of terms equally belongs to, and is equally necessary
to, the explanation of the very concept of experience.
For let this concept of experience be examined with a view
to see what it necessarily implies. In beginning the examina-
tion, the term may be considered in its widest possible signi-
fication. When employing the word " Experience " in its most
inclusive meaning, we are wont to think under it everything
in any way concerned with human consciousness, — whether
as fact, condition, law, or implicate. But in forming the very
conception of itself, experience has already transcended itself.
The fact of consciousness — or rather, consciousness considered
as fact, as being just what it here-and-now is for me, and no
other — is, from one point of view, all that there ever is of
my present actual experience. Let this fact be exalted to the
highest pitch of excellence, extended so as to embrace the
widest possible content, and suffused with the intensest and
most potent objective conviction, still it is a fact of conscious-
ness — here, and now, and mine — and no more. The next
326 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
fact of consciousness will, in its turn, be the sum-total of my
actual experience regarded as an empirically indisputable fact ;
and so will the next, and the next, as long as the stream of
consciousness I call myself continues to flow. And as to the
" experience of the race," so long as the same point of view is
maintained, it is but a fact of my imagination — another fact
absorbing the entire experience of an individual consciousness,
somewhere and at some definite time. Now, from the point
of view of the advocate of empiricism, strictly limited and
consistently retained, this is all that can ever be made out of
the concept of experience. But this is not at all the concept
of experience as formed and contended for by the empiricist ;
and he is as quick as any one to see, when it comes his turn
of advantage, that such a concept is self-contradictory and
obviously and scandalously absurd. For such a concept of
experience can not so frame and hold itself together as to
maintain its integrity for a moment in the field of philosophical
contention. Even the concept of ghosts has more of flesh-
and-blood reality, and is better worth fighting for than is such
a concept as this. For, in truth, to say " concept" — just that
and nothing more — implies the continuity of the conceiving
subject, some sort of continuity and conditionated existence
for things, and some standard of judgment and authority in
other conceiving subjects. But here is a mighty host of tran-
scendent beings already intrenched in the empiricist's camp. 1
No class of men, among psychologists or philosophers, in-
sists more upon carefully observing and studying the con-
ditions of experience than do the empiricists themselves.
Ordinarily, too, the particular kind of conditions which they
think it best worth while to study are of the most recondite
and unapproachable kind. With the critical epistemology of
Kant and the neo-Kantians, they will have nothing to do ;
1 For a concrete instance of the desperate condition to which such empiricism
reduces one, see the examination of M. Flournoy's case, in Philosophy of Mind,
pp. 28 f.
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 327
indeed, they cherish for it secretly, if not openly, no little
contempt. As to the uncritical apriorism of Hegel and the
neo-Hegelians, they are quite unable to speak contemptuously
enough. As empiricists, they propose to confine themselves,
and all of us, to a study of experience, as actual matter of
observable fact and as reposing upon matter-of-fact condi-
tions. 1 These conditions, however, are only such as physio-
logical and physical science can handle and verify ; they
consist in antecedent and concomitant brain-states, or in
other physical changes which, flowing in upon man's stream
of consciousness, if not wholly accountable for its existence
as a conscious stream, determine what the factors and the
direction of it all shall be. Who does not see, however, that
the very assumption of any sort of conditions for our experi-
ence, which are not present in the concrete and actual ex-
periences as conscious facts, shows the mind to itself as already,
transcending experience ? Let no one fail at this crucial point
to comprehend the question at issue and the significance for
its answer, of the procedure of every mind, whether it be com-
mitted to the baldest empiricism or to the most high-and-dry
apriorism. This question does not refer to the admissibility
or adequacy of any particular order or kind of the conditions
of experience. The question refers rather to the significance
and validity of the assumption that the present experience has
any conditions at all. That some of the conditions of human
experience are physiological and physical, or even that all of
them are such, may be admitted by the opponent of a con-
sistent empiricism as cheerfully and safely as by its most
determined advocate. No psychoses without antecedent or
concomitant brain-states ; or all psychoses are only epi-
phenomena, mere successive steam-clouds " thrown off " from
and floating above the brain, — if you now will. For this is
1 Among other significant failures due to the effort to get the necessary as-
sumptions while refusing to reckon with their origin or significance, see Pro-
fessor Fullerton's Address, Psychological Review, January, 1897.
328 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
not the question at issue ; namely, What are the most impor-
tant and effective conditions of human experience ? The
question is rather : Why does the concept of experience, for
all men, itself include conditions that transcend the individual
experience ? Why is the concept of an unconditioned experi-
ence, of an experience containing all its grounds within itself,
an absurd and even impossible affair for the human mind to
attempt to contemplate ?
Of course, it may at once be claimed, and correctly, that
these assumed conditions of every present experience, as facts
of consciousness, have in some form themselves previously
been matters of present cognitive experience. Last of all
men would the most thorough empiricists be, to place the
conditions of experience where they could themselves, in no
sort, be verified by experience. In the particular case under
consideration, some of our past experiences have themselves
consisted of conscious facts appertaining to the brain and' to
its states, and to the other physiological and physical condi-
tions of human experience. Fortunately, moreover, not a few
of these conditions admit of being repeatedly observed under
such circumstances as to provide checks for mistaken specu-
lative inferences ; some of them admit of frequent or occa-
sional experimental determination. So that the inference
of other conditions, which are not obviously implicated in the
presetit experience, is very far from being an effort or a
claim to transcend all experience. On the contrary, it is
sticking fast by the lines, and dealing with the facts, of ex-
perience only : it is mental consistency within the fixed lines
of our empirical destiny.
Now, such a view is, we suspect, not really all that, or pre-
cisely what, the empiricist originally meant when he proclaimed
his confidence in brain-states as affording the conditions of this
and of all human conscious experience. It is likely that no
one would more quickly resent the charge of proclaiming a
theory of materialism, or of psycho-physical parallelism, or
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 329
indeed any other theory merely in the interests of his own
mental consistency. The truth is, that the epistemological
view of his own meaning and intention comes to such a thinker
only when he finds himself driven into a corner by the pres-
sure of questions for an explanation of experience itself in a
thorough-going empirical way. Really he means that an
actual system of things, a brain, etc., most of which never
has got, and never will get, into his own or any other man's
experience, must be assumed in order to explain every fact
of his experience in particular, and in general, all human
experience. But this is just the meaning upon which we are
insisting at the present time. And the same searching
question recurs : Why is a conditionless experience absurd ?
Why does experience, in order to explain itself, need to tran-
scend itself as mere fact? And if the very nature of experi-
ence is such as to render it incapable of realization as a mere
fact, tormented with the actual limits set for it and unable to
conceive of itself without transcending itself, why should we
compare it to a closed circle or to an island in an impenetrable
ocean ? If one must employ spatial and " thing-like " figures
of speech, would not one speak truer to the facts if one said :
The very nature of experience is perpetually to transcend
itself, both for its own explanation and for its fuller realiza-
tion ? In cognition always, as soon as we inquire critically
into its grounds and its significance, we see the mind leaping
beyond its present limits into the real world that is unseen
and unrecognized by any present act of consciousness.
Suppose, now, that the effort be made to construct a sci-
entifically defensible conception of the conditions of all human
experience, both that of the entire race of men now in ex-
istence and also that of the race of men (and, if it please
you, of their ape-like ancestors) since its first origins upon
the face of the earth. Can this effort be made in any wise
successful without freely bringing what is properly trans-
cendent within the circle ; or without overleaping the circle,
330 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
and so, by some act of belief, inference, or postulate, reach-
ing the embrace of the transcendent ? By no manner of
means. And the more bold in the use of its resources, and
rich in content, the scientific treatment of man's nature and
history becomes, the more does the concept of human experi-
ence, taken as a totality, include factors, faiths, inferences,
postulates, which transcend all present experience. The cry
of physics to beware of metaphysics, and the wailing of an-
thropology to free itself from ontology, have their answer in
the facts of science as dependent upon the nature of all knowl-
edge. There is no science of physics without metaphysics ;
there is no anthropology without ontology. A purely " em-
pirical " science is not a ne-plus~ultra but a nonentity and an
absurdity. For science itself consists in the discovery some-
how of the " conditions " upon which the present facts of ex-
perience may reasonably be supposed to have come to be
facts at all ; nor is the most scientific concept of experience
itself different as respects its origin, character, or obligations,
to the transcendent. Tracing this concept steadily backward
and outward, we are obliged, in the interests of that very
science which boasts itself to be founded only upon experi-
ence, to pursue the path of the following assumption : My
present experience, as a fact, has its conditions lying outside
of itself. These conditions are partly in my bodily organism,
and, especially in that part of it of which I have had no ex-
perience, — in my brain and central nervous system. They
are also, partly, in my past mental operations as productive
of tendencies and habits ; and these conditions, too, very
largely lie outside of any experience which I have ever had
or can ever hope to have. What is true of my present ex-
perience is emphatically true of the totality of my experi-
ence. Its conditions are physical, and belong to the great
world of nature which lies outside my experience ; they are
also biological and sociological, and so dependent not only
upon the collective experience of the race but also upon many
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 331
conditions of which this collective experience has afforded no
mental representation to any member of the race. This col-
lective experience of the race, together with all its concom-
itant conditions, whether physical or psychical, and with
its so-called laws of heredity and variation and of modify-
ing relations to environment, etc., is still further scientifically
conceived of only as having conditions which transcend itself.
And no one is more forward and confident in the matter of
transcending present facts (this charmed circle of human
experience) than is the ardent defender of the mental propri-
ety of sticking fast by the facts. But he evinces on that
account the more forcibly the truth of our position : The
concept of experience itself cannot be framed without includ-
ing within itself, " momenta " which transcend its bounds.
In other words, what sets out to be a purely empirical theory,
with reference to the nature of experience, cannot explain
itself without passing out of, and so confuting, itself.
Shall we, then, admit this self-contradictory nature of all
experience in proof of the fact that we cannot critically ex-
amine and so know what we are really about in having cog-
nitive experience without discovering how much actually
enters into it, of blind inference, of unexplained faith, of pos-
tulating of unexperienced entities, etc. ? Precisely so, for this
is, in part, what we desired to make clear. But only in
part. The real trouble with the advocate of an empiricism
which tries to conceive of human experience as a closed cir-
cle, from which the transcendent is forever excluded, is this :
he does not understand himself. He would have a sci-
ence, if he had his own way epistemologically, which involved
no real thinking and no completed perception or self-con-
sciousness, — not science at all, but scarcely a logically con-
sistent dream, or a vision of an insane mind. 1 But if " science "
1 As Volkelt truly says (Erfahrung und Denken, p. 75, note) in criticism of
Goring, "one of the most radical of the defenders of pure experience" (see
his articles in the Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie ; 1877, iv.,
332 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
means knowledge, then it is necessarily not of the merely
subjective, but of the trans-subjective, too. And the logically
established system of existing beings, actual forces, and real
relations, conceived of as occurring in time and space, and so
forming necessary conditions of all human experience, is the
transcendent. Modern empirical science is certainly far
enough from reducing all this to the " trans-subjective mini-
mum" as a sort of postulated plus lying outside of experience.
On the contrary, it goes on heaping up its tremendous de-
mands upon faith to the verge of a most irrational credulity,
and postulating its own grounds in a speculative scheme of
entities whose very nature is fast reaching the utmost stretch
of imagination this side the grotesque and the absurd. Who
would not undertake to remain within the limits of experi-
ence and believe in angels rather than in ether ; in God rather
than in atoms ; and in the history of his Kingdom as a
divine self-revelation rather than in the physicist's or biolo-
gist's purely mechanical process of evolution ? But why should
students of science express themselves as though Kant had
never written, or critical philosophy exposed the nakedness
of their own most cherished metaphysics ? Why should they
not rather see that, if thinking enters into experience to con-
vert it into a system of cognitions, experience must somehow
involve the transcendent ? For thinking, as a function, when
it demands assent to itself as valid for reality, is eo ipso a
postulating of what is not concrete matter-of-fact experience.
The concept of experience which was presented by the
great critic and destroyer of empiricism is itself, however,
inconsistent and inadequate. The "island" of Kant is as
mythical as is the circle of the modern empiricist. For let it
be supposed that universal objective validity is imparted to
experience only because all experience comes under the con-
352 f., and 1878, i., 108, 114). in this meaning of the word, " I may twist and turn
experience as I will, and yet I can never get anything else out of it alone, ex-
cept that it shows to me processes in my own consciousness."
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 333
structive or regulative influence of the a priori, or constitu-
tional forms of the functioning of understanding; and that
from this critical discovery the conclusion is drawn of man's
inability to reach the transcendent. Experience is now, in-
deed, rendered objective; and sure tests are supplied by
which to discriminate between dreams and cognitions. Now
the limits of knowledge, although no longer set by sense, but
by the unchanging and necessary laws of human intellectual
faculty, are all the more close-fitting and irremovable. Em-
piricism is forever rendered hors du combat ; and to the object
of our thought is given, so that it can never be taken away, a
" phenomenal reality." But a real reality — if one may be
pardoned for finding one's self forced to a coinage of such
uncouth inscription — lies still beyond all limits of experi-
ence ; nor are these limits the less, but rather the more in-
flexible, because they now have their source in the intellect
itself rather than in any of the physical or biological condi-
tions of sensuous intuition. How now, indeed, shall this
caged bird, " knowledge," escape from its cage " experience " ?
— since the material of the cage is the more impassable and
entangling because invisible to the prisoner.
We maintain that the concept of experience which empha-
sizes its internal laws rather than its exterior conditions,
is equally inadequate, quite as self-contradictory and absurd
as the concept of the empiricist. For how am I — or if I
am too poor a thinker, how is the stalwart critic Kant —
to know, or even to conceive of " laws " as a priori forms of
experience, without transcending experience ? The impossi-
bility is so patent as scarcely to need detailed exposure.
Only by reflection can the mind form any conception of itself
as subject to laws set fast in its own constitution. Laws
are only the more or less frequently repeated and uniform
modes of the behavior of things. In this case the particular
thing, upon whose customary modes of behavior reflection is
required, is the Self as consciously known to itself. But how
?34 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
large an amount of the transcendent (the " trans-subjective
minimum ") is involved in the origin and growth of the cogni-
tion of Self has already been made the principal subject of our
epistemological inquiry. A critical science of mind, compe-
tent to speak of " laws," etc., cannot escape the necessity of
including at least this trans-subjective minimum in its con-
ception of human experience.
But, indeed, the Kantian conception of experience included
much more. For it was not Ms experience, not the experience
of the local celebrity of the little town of Konigsberg, which
Kant thought of as giving laws to itself. This profound and
patient thinker attempted to discern the immutable laws of
all human experience, the very God-given or otherwise orig-
inally fixed constitution under which all human selves have
done, are doing, and will continue to do, their work of thinking
and cognizing one another and all external things. But how
can such a conception be framed unless experience is of itself
inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the transcendent ?
Here, again, it is vain and quite misses the true significance
of the question to reply that, after all, Kant was only ex-
plaining his own experience in terms derived from itself.
For in this case, too, the original inquiry recurs, and with
redoubled force : Whence comes the impulse and the felt ne-
cessity thus to explain my experience by appeal to a standard
of universal authority ? And how does it happen that this
standard, not only is found, but in order to explain my
experience must be found, in the existence of a system of
interrelated beings whose minds eternally and necessarily
function as I discover my own mind to function ? The only
possible answer to these questions involves an inference, a
postulate, a faith, that transcends all experience in order to
explain, to control, and to validate it all. For knoivledge, as
such and essentially considered, implies the existence of uni-
versal rational consciousness, as an objective standard of truth.
The " laws " of intellect can no more be accounted for than
EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 335
can its conditions, without the ontological assumption of
other intellect which can never come into my experience
except as my experience transcends what are, strictly speak-
ing, its own bounds.
It is time, however, to drop from our argument the figure
of speech that has hitherto been employed in order to correct
the very fallacies to which it so persistently gives rise. Cer-
tainly enough, I cannot know without knowing. I cannot
know aught that is not somehow implicate — either as fact,
condition, law, or entity — in my experience. But these
truths do not at all warrant the critic in regarding experience
as constructed after the pattern of a closed circle, or of an
island with rocky barriers raised toward an ocean of impene-
trable fog and mist. For the real relations of experience to
the transcendent are not of this order. The rather, if we
preserve the figure of speech, must the truth be expressed by
representing the mind, in all its cognitive activity, as perpet-
ually leaping beyond itself, and somehow transcending its
own circuits by discovering within them the potent presence
of other-being than its self-closed Self. Or, if we prefer the
Kantian figure of speech, we must regard each inhabitant of
the before-mentioned island as finding that the surrounding
fog and mist lift upward and sweep backward, and as discov-
ering in the ocean only another and larger home for his own
cognitive soul. For the true meaning of both figures of
speech is this : without actually reaching and grasping, by all
those potencies of the soul which cognition involves, the real
conditions, universal laws, and related entities of the Self
and of Things, toe cannot even form the concept of human
experience. What these conditions are, psychology and epis-
temology unite to discover, describe, and criticise. What
these laws are — how they arise and get validity of applica-
tion, and what we mean by them — the two chapters preced-
ing this have already partially discussed. Further discussion
will bring before us the nature of Truth and Error, the alleged
336 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT
Antinomies of Reason, and the Limits and Justification of
Scepticism, of Agnosticism, and of Criticism in Epistemology.
The ontological Implicates are now about to be examined.
We pause a moment to snatch a practical suggestion from
this study for an epistemological theory. It seems that he who
would be so cautious about knowledge as not to trust himself
beyond the strictest limits of his own little mental domain,
may end by becoming the most credulous and childish of men.
To think that " cock-sure " confidence in empirical science
alone should end in complete despair of all science ! To find
that, when we hedge in so carefully our laboratory, and light
it with the latest electrical apparatus of the highest candle-
power, it should still, to the spiritually enlightened eyes, seem
full of fanciful sprites, thick with the ghosts of a metaphysics
which nineteenth-century positivism and agnosticism have
pledged themselves to expel ! Shall we then steal, silent and
despairing, into the dark forests of a total agnosticism, or
run shrieking to the mad-house where untamed imagination
and irrational feeling hold their riotous sway ; or shall we
set our teeth and button up well our overcoats against the
cold and go about our business, resolutely believing what we
know to be untrue ? Perhaps we may find a yet " more
excellent way." For it may be that faith and intellect,
feeling and thinking and willing, can all be combined into a
right attitude of our cognitive souls toward truth, life, and
all Reality.
CHAPTER XII
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
HITHERTO we have been occupied with a critical exam-
ination of human cognition, — its nature, laws, and
grounds, — with a view to test the validity of its claim to be a
system of mental representation framed and connected after
the pattern of a really existent World. In other words, we
have sought guaranties for Knowledge in general ; and the
search has been conducted in the most presuppositionless way
possible. It is now time to reverse the terms of inquiry and
to ask ourselves : What does human knowledge guarantee ?
What sort of Reality is validated for all men, in the un-
changing nature, necessary laws, and fundamental grounds
of their own cognitive activity ? Any detailed answer to these
questions would furnish an elaborate system of ontology, a
metaphysical structure in the narrower meaning of the word
" metaphysics." But epistemological discussion aims at ruling
out ontology so far as the process of exclusion is possible, or,
at most, convenient. The truth of the admission made early
in our discussion has been growing constantly more apparent ;
the philosophy of Knowledge and the philosophy of Reality,
epistemology and ontology, offer problems that cannot be
kept wholly apart; for these problems are only different
aspects or stages of one and the same problem.
No one need fear, however, that the standpoint of free
criticism is now wholly to be abandoned, or that a system of
ontological metaphysics is about to be introduced under pre-
22
338 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
tence of having already sufficiently guaranteed the power of
our cognitive faculties to construct such a system. This task
we wish, as far as possible, to reserve for another time. For
the proposed change, in our point of view, is here introduced
in the interests of the thoroughness of our criticism. This
will appear clearly as soon as the bearing of the conclusions
already reached upon the further pursuit of epistemological
problems is considered. It has been shown by a searching
criticism of the very act of cognition — of that fundamental
datum, " I know," in which the problem of epistemology orig-
inates — that no guaranty of a character external to the
act itself can possibly be produced. All the validity that
knowledge can attain, theoretically, consists in its being what
it actually is, namely, knowledge, and not a mere having of
states of consciousness, of whatever sort or howsoever
arranged and combined. But, then, it has also been shown
that knowledge, ultimately considered, validates itself ; and
that it does this in such a way as to leave nothing further to
be desired or even to be conceived of as possible. It does this
so as to guarantee, for the cognizing Self, its own real existence
and nature as a Self ; and so as also to guarantee that other
beings, actually known as not-selves, exist, and what they
are ; but this latter, only if we may accept as valid the
assumption that things share in the qualifications which the
Self knows itself to possess. Now, plainly, it is a legitimate
and indispensable extension of the epistemological doctrine
already established, when we enter a little way into the fur-
ther critical examination of these qualifications themselves.
This, then, is the problem now before us. What sort of a
being is guaranteed for the really existent World by our
exercise of cognitive faculty in its own constitutional and
supremely self-confident way ? What, in brief but more pre-
cisely than they have hitherto been distinguished, are the
Implicates of all Knowledge ?
In answering this question, it is our aim to remain as cau-
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 339
tious and even austere toward all claimants to a title to
a-priority as we have all the while been. We are, indeed,
the advocates of a certain " faith-philosophy, " and determined
opponents of the unwarrantable Kantian separation of faith
and knowledge ; but we are not unmindful of Schopenhauer's
sarcasm as directed against Jacobi, " Who only has the tri-
fling weakness that he takes all he learned and approved
before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the human mind."
Nor can Kant himself be cleared of the charge of multiplying
unnecessarily the formal factors and laws necessary to give
an account of the origin and nature of cognition. Let us aim,
however, at moderation. It is not the farthest possible
extension of ontological implicates of human knowledge
which seems alluring just now ; it is rather the critical esti-
mate of what has been called the " trans-subjective minimum."
Such implicates as appear of this order will certainly be
amply able to bear those final attacks of scepticism and
agnosticism to which they will then be subjected.
That the trans-subjective — some being other than the here-
and-now being of the state of consciousness, objectively de-
termined — is implicated in every concrete act of cognition, has
been found to be both postulated and proved, or evinced by all
actual examples. On the one hand, phenomenalism belongs to
the very nature of knowledge ; for " we can cognize any object
only as it manifests itself in our consciousness, or as it appears
to us to be." On the other hand, the ontological nature of
knowledge is equally apparent : it is even much more appar-
ent ; for it is the peculiarity of cognition, that what is not con-
sciousness, what transcends the mental act of representation,
appears in consciousness as inseparable from this act. The
critical doctrine of the ontological implicates of knowledge is,
therefore, a necessary part of the theory of knowledge. This
doctrine may be established in the form of an attempted
answer to a problem ; and to borrow from mathematics a
figure of speech, the nature of this problem may be sugges-
340 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
tively expressed in the following way : What is the value of
the X (the real Being) which is actually found implicate in
every act of knowledge ?
Students of Kant are well aware that he vacillated and gave
different and doubtful answers to the ontological problem. In
a general way he attempted its answer in terms of a concep-
tion answering to the words " Ding-an-sich" or " G-egenstdnde
uberhaupt " (" Thing-in-itself," or " Objects in general " and
not specifically determined as concrete objects of actual cog-
nition). But the Kantian conception of " Thing-in-itself "
admits of no satisfactory description ; neither can it be made
to agree with the terms of the fundamental and unassailable
formula, " I know," as this formula asserts and vindicates
itself in every actual performance of the faculty of cognition.
No negative and merely limiting conception can be substi-
tuted for the X of the problem, in such a way as to solve the
difficulties which the X of actual experience offers. The
being of the X of experience is not an abstraction ; nor is it
a bare so-called " act-of-positing," or a mere law of intellect
functioning under the categories of substantiality and caus-
ality. The refutation which every cognitive experience brings
against this interpretation of the Kantian formula has already
been sufficiently provided. In our cognitive experience, the
reality, X, does not stand as the hypostasis of a limitation,
actually experienced by the intellect in every attempt to
transcend its constitutional limits.
What Kant (especially in the first edition of the " Critique
of Pure Reason ") attempted to show as true of the transcen-
dent reality imagined to be in consciousness was true only of
Kant's own imagining and of its abstract and unreal product.
For there is an unmistakable fallacy involved in converting
the proposition " All objective cognition has its source in our
mental representations " into the proposition " All objective
cognition consists of our mental representations " as worked
up into abstract forms by the intellect functioning according
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 341
to its twelve constitutional forms, the so-called categories. 1
This actual, concrete presence of the Being X, which cannot
be resolved into a mere mental image, or into an abstraction,
or into a dialectical process striking against a limit, like the
nose of the blind fish in a small pool running itself into the mud,
creates a demand, which epistemology must meet, for its own
further explication. The trans-subjective is implicate in cog-
nition ; it is implicate, of necessity, as positively there in all
cognition. It is the transcendent Heal, 'present in experience,
whenever the life of consciousness becomes a completed act of
knowledge.
Much has already been discovered, in the course of the fore-
going critical discussion of knowledge, which is rightly
alleged in answer to the question, What is the Being of X?
But what has already been discovered only appears to make
more desirable the task of gathering together the scattered
remarks and weaving them, if possible, into some consistent
whole. No other task is more important for the student of
epistemology than that of examining further the character and
determining the final value of this X; it is this task which
builds for him the bridge upon which he may safely cross into
the otherwise forbidden domain of ontology. To drop the
figure of speech, the implicates of all knowledge must be dis-
covered, critically expounded, and defended both circum-
stantially and by harmonizing them with one another ; for only
in this way can the theoretical interests of a philosophy of
knowledge and the practical ends of conduct be attained and
conserved.
A preliminary inquiry, which is largely of a psychological
character, but which has never received the attention it de-
serves in psychological investigation and literature, fitly pre-
cedes the criticism of the ontological implicates of human
knowledge. This inquiry concerns the meaning of the word
" implicate," in so far as it can properly be used in this con-
1 Compare Wunclt, System der Philosophic, pp. 184 f.
342 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
nection and authenticated by our actual experience. How is
it, in fact, that Reality is caught and enfolded, so to speak,
within the ever flowing stream of man's conscious life ? Here
we are forced to raise again the sceptical question. No fact
is surer than that this " stream of consciousness " is in a con-
dition of perpetual flux. It is itself a series of conscious
facts, each of which is particular, circumscribed, and always
ascribable to some individual Ego, which is itself known as
existing at all only while this same stream flows ever onward.
In the largest conceivable significance of the words, " my ex-
perience " must comprehend, within some particular portion
of this flowing stream, all the Being that there is for me, —
whether envisaged or ideated, or believed in, or postulated, or
willed, or thought. Now the scepticism which follows from
the reflective consideration of this truth is no new doctrine ;
it is found in every age of the world and in every race that
has reflected in any age. It appears as the doctrine of Maya
in the ancient East, and as Spencerian agnosticism in the
modern West. The facts will continue to breed such scepti-
cism until the end of the last of all the ages.
Just as certain is it, however, that certain facts exist, in-
dubitable and eternally potent and effective, within the stream
of consciousness, which check, limit, correct, and finally re-
verse the tendencies to scepticism and to its termination in
agnosticism or other doctrine of illusion. Such are all the
facts of knowledge. These must, indeed, be received as facts
in the flowing stream of consciousness, — as a part of the series
which is a perpetual flux. But as facts, they must be received
in their entirety and with their full, actual significance ; and
when this is done, it becomes once for all obvious that, if facts
of consciousness, as such, are always empirical, some facts of
consciousness, as facts of knowledge, are always also " super-
empirical.' , Or, to state the truth in terms made more ex-
pressive by the discussion of the last chapter : It is quite
impossible even to frame the conception of experience of the
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 343
human sort, without introducing that which is for us extra-
mentally real and which is actually related to us, and to itself,
in a variety of effective relations.
Somehow , therefore, Reality is indubitably known to be im-
plicated in knowledge. But may we know " how," more par-
ticularly, this implication takes effect ? Or, to change the
form of the question : On what precise terms of conscious
recognition, or appropriation, so to speak, is that which exists
beyond consciousness discovered to be " part and parcel " of
man's conscious and cognitive life ? Is it as " envisagement "
or as " inference," as a leap upon the staff of the principle
of sufficient reason, or as a climb by more considerate pro-
cesses of ratiocination of a speculative order, as an act of
faith in God, or a rational postulate, as a blind instinctive
grasp, or a deed of free self-assertion, that I, the conscious
subject, reach my object, the actually existent, which is be-
yond my subjective state and which is not to be identified
with my self-conscious Self ? The true answer to this in-
quiry has already been given in detail. But in recalling
that answer, it will be helpful to consider briefly how the
same question has been answered by others who have dis-
cussed it in more or less unprejudiced fashion, whether as a
matter chiefly of psychological research or as a concernment
of their philosophical systems. And here the significant fact
of history is that the answer has been given in all the above-
mentioned different forms ; and in each of them, over and
over again. Upon this question the great critic of cognitive
faculty is, as has already been said, vacillating and quite gen-
erally unsatisfactory. When expressing himself naively, and
yet under the influence of his extreme doctrine of the separ-
ability of form and content as respects the dependence of
knowledge on reality, Kant has only to say, " It is given."
Elsewhere he would seem to wish that we should believe ;
nothing is given but this — that " It " really is. That is to
say, the bare Being of Xis received as an act of blind instinc-
344 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
tive belief by the soul of man. Curiously enough, agnostic
modern science is accustomed to declaring, first of all, " We
know nothing as to what Matter really is ; " and then to pro-
ceeding with volumes of instruction about this Unknown, and
to speaking deferentially of it as a " that-which." Yet, again,
Kant teaches that Reality is implicate in cognition as a nega-
tive terminal of a process of abstraction, or as an " Idea "
which is speculatively pursued by the employment of an illu-
sory logic, in the mind's effort to unify the totality of its
experience.
On this one point Schopenhauer is undoubtedly much
superior to Kant, because nearer the indubitable and common
facts of experience. According to the former, the intellect
proceeds upon the a priori principle of sufficient reason to
a kind of envisagement, or seizure, of the concrete reality in
the act of perception ; but of this act of the intellect no
other account or vindication is possible. Reasoning, he thinks,
never gives the knowledge of reality. Confusion and even
self-contradiction, however, afflict the different statements of
Schopenhauer in answer to this question : In what form of
conscious experience is reality given to man ? Especially
is this true of his doctrine of the will, as immediately appre-
hended somehow without intellect's aid, and yet as the true
essence and real being of the individual Self. In Hegel's
system, reality is assumed to be known — both that it is
and what it is — in a dialectical process which is, happily,
the very opposite in character from the illusory dialectic of
the Kantian epistemology ; this process is, when it under-
stands itself, seen to be the complete and only truly Existent,
as revealed in the consciousness of the individual man.
Sully, James, and some other modern psychologists, have
agreed rather with the thought of Augustine and the Early
Church Fathers, and of the ecclesiastical writers of the
Middle Ages. It is in the form of " belief " — not blind and
irrational but, as of the very nature of reason and, perchance,
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 345
leading the mind out toward the higher realities, whose fuller
revelation awaits the attitude of trust — that reality finds
entrance within the stream of human consciousness. Yet
others (as, for example, Riehl) lay down the doctrine that,
somehow, knowledge = thinking + reality ; but no clear infor-
mation is afforded by them as to how the second member of
the right-hand term of the equation gets any place in the
equation at all. And, alas ! if we may regret the absence of
opinions which would probably only add to the confusion, the
multitude of minor writers on psychology pass the problem
by in silence ; or perhaps they even think, by skilfully manip-
ulating sensations and " fainter images " of sensations, and
by combining them under psycho-physical formulas, to suc-
ceed in hiding the fact that there is a problem after all.
X is there, however; and, " How did it get there?" is a
question which can neither be summarily dismissed nor over-
looked by a generation scientifically disposed.
The instructive thing to notice about all these views is
that so long as they are positive, and yet confessedly partial,
they are unanswerable. They meet with effective opposition
only when they claim to be complete and so undertake to
deny or to explain the facts upon which are founded rival
views. The truth is that Reality is implicated in our cogni-
tion in all these different ways. First, it is manifest that
the operations of the intellect imply and actually involve a
trans-subjective world of real things and real minds, stand-
ing in actual relations. The cognitive judgment affirms it ;
this is, indeed, precisely what it concretely and actually does
in order to terminate in knowledge any process of thinking.
All exercise of intellect implicates reality, in every effort to
give an account to itself of its own origin and laws as an
activity. Why should I judge the elm-tree to be over
there ; and the star to be up yonder above my head ? No
answer can be given, or suggested, for any question like
this, except the answer : — Because it is, and is, in some true
346 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
meaning of the words, not in my consciousness, but actually
" over there " or " up yonder." The idealism which denies
the truthfulness of such judgments, by so reducing their
terms that they involve no reality other than the states of the
judging subject, convicts the intellect of a fundamental ab-
surdity. The intellect cannot, and will not, endure the
insult of that. So, too, as has been abundantly shown, all
conceptual knowledge gets validating only as it finds the
relations of reality involved in the processes of conception
and of reasoning. The last " grounds " of all intellectual
endeavor are reached in the intellect's self -justification of
this answer to its own everlasting, Why ? — Because it is so,
and this is an end of the controversy. Moreover, this is all
the truth there is in the Kantian or other agnostic doctrine
that the X, the Real of cognition, is a negative and limiting
concept. It is negative in that it positively denies the right
and the expediency of further sceptical questioning; it is
limiting because it forbids the vain effort to discover a
merely abstract Bing-an-sich behind the reality which is
actually involved in its own life.
But, second, they are also clearly in the right who find all
the most fundamental feelings of the soul committed to the
tenure of reality as known by it. Nor are these feelings
exhausted by speaking of them as " faith," or " belief," of
a metaphysical or ontological kind. Feeling does, indeed,
attach itself to the Xin such fashion that it cannot be re-
moved or shaken off. I believe in my little real world, with
all my might. It is indeed little as compared with that
great world whose vague conception floats alluring before
my mind, — beings physical and psychical, rank above rank,
in manifold now inconceivable relations, and the great God
in, and through, and over All. Now whether there be any
such Great World or not, I may doubt. But rny world is
very real to me ; and I believe in it with an invincible and
passionate faith. For, as a real world, it has in it those
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 347
with whom my most quick, vital, and supreme interests are
concerned, — the things I own and hope to gain, and above
all, the persons whom I fear, or hate, or trust, or love. And
I do not wish it reduced to a dream ; even if it be a very
logically consistent and scientifically constructed dream,
after the pattern of an " If-this-is-so — then-that-is-so," but
without anybody's knowing what is really so. The plain
truth is that men generally, however sceptical in regard to
a theory of knowledge or to an ontological system they may
be, have all their feelings in view of what they regard as
reality. That is to say, — Reality is somehow implicate in
the feelings of man, as a cognitive soul. And if we recog-
nize a peculiar form of ever-present and effective feeling,
and call it a general " belief " in reality, a sort of ontological
faith, convincing in every concrete act of cognition, we do
not even then seem to be misstating the case.
Nor can one fail to notice that it is almost impossible to
express the belief of the cognitive soul in the reality of its
own cognitive products without using words which turn the
attention away from the merely affective aspects of experience.
We will have it so ; and this is, partly, because we know
that it would be quite useless to will otherwise ; for there
is that " other-will" always to be reckoned with. To know
the really existent World — the trans-subjective beings in
their actual matter-of-fact relations — I must will, indeed ;
but I cannot know this world purely as I will. Hoiv I
know it, then, depends always upon felt and known relations
between my will and that real X which is not-my-will, but
which may be the will of some other Self or non-self Thing.
Thus the question as to how Reality is implicate in con-
sciousness, when consciousness takes on the form and assumes
the rights of completed cognition, leads to the same truth
which is reached by an analysis of the nature of cognition.
It is not as an intellectual leap or well considered conclusion
simply, nor as any kind of feeling merely, nor as a deed of
348 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
will, more or less intelligent, alone ; but it is as all of these
combined, that the real existence of this Self and of Things
is implicate in cognition. Or, to invert the statement, the
entire complex condition of the Subject, in the act of cogni-
tion, involves and guarantees the Being of the trans-subjective
existent. As envisaged, judged, postulated, believed in, felt,
made object of active will and respondent in the form of
reacting will, the Being of X is " given " to me, when I have
that commerce with this X which is called knowledge.
What, in particular, are the implicates found guaranteed
by knowledge, — not as critically and speculatively treated
so as to form a developed ontology, but as enumerated in
the constitution of that " trans-subjective minimum " without
which knowledge, as a universal experience, is unintelligible ?
This question might be put into the language of critical phi-
losophy, after the Kantian fashion, as follows : To what
categories, in accordance with the very nature of all cogni-
tion, must transcendent application be assigned ? Here the
true position reverses the conclusions of Kant. Since all
human knowledge has a certain necessary form, therefore a
body of metaphysics, as ontology, is guaranteed as involved in
this knowledge. For, without admitting certain ontological
implicates, the most primary and universal of our cognitions
are rendered absurd. Something as to the content of the
really existent is interwoven inextricably with the conscious
life of the cognitive subject.
In explicating what of an ontological character is thus
implicate in all the subjective processes of cognition, we
come first upon the Being of the Self. No language can
possibly state the absurdity of the agnosticism which, start-
ing from the conscious facts of knowledge, attempts to deny
reality to the self-conscious subject of knowledge. A hidden
core of changeless existence, a " thing-like " substrate, at
which self-consciousness can never get, and which must be
supposed to lie dormant and incapable of ever making itself
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 349
known beneath the so-called phenomenal Ego, may well
enough be denied. There are, indeed, no facts of self-knowl-
edge to guarantee a Kantian Ding-an-sichheit for the con-
scious subject of those processes in which the facts consist.
But that I am, that I was, and that I have been, — a con-
scious, living Self, — are ontological propositions which are
involved in all my present cognitive experience. Some sort
of merely sensuous or ideational existence, some dream-
like being with a certain show of shrewd intelligence, might
be had without establishing a right to posit its own reality.
Were this the sum-total of man's accredited experiences, his
metaphysical postulates and beliefs would, no doubt, be ex-
ceedingly meagre, — if, indeed, any postulates and beliefs
arose, for critical examination, above the horizon of his
conscious life. Beings that have only a sensuous and image-
making experience have, probably, no " threshold " of an
ontological consciousness. The metaphysical credo of the
most intelligent of the brutes is, at longest, very brief. But
the Self is a being that knows — itself, and various truths
about other selves and, as well, about so-called material
things. Moreover, the cognitive life of the Self is an histori-
cal development. The knowledge of the individual man is
a growth ; and each new cognition is dependently connected,
by the principles of identity and of sufficient reason, and by
acts of recognitive memory and of rational inference, with
antecedent cognitions. Thus this Life implicates and guaran-
tees its own real existence, as that of a Self developing
according to the modes of its own constitution and in ac-
cordance with immanent ideas peculiar to it, in a continuous
life-history.
If, moreover, the question arise, What is this Being of
the Self, thus implicate and guaranteed in the unfolding life
of cognition ? no answer can be given except that which
points out the characteristic modes of doing and suffering
known as belonging to the Self. They involve the " trans-
350 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
subjective minimum" of every man's consciousness, so far
as this consciousness has reference to his own reality. Fur-
ther speculative inferences, or rational faiths and hopes and
fears referring to the future being of the soul, may find
ground for their standing in this primary and universal ontol-
ogy of the Self. But all such inferences and faiths must
validate their rights by doing battle with contesting theories,
and with that spirit of doubt and of nescience which attacks
our metaphysics of the phenomena of soul-life. Whoever
confines his metaphysical views to the reflective and har-
monious treatment of the universal and unchanging impli-
cates of the life of cognition, may feel obliged, indeed, to
move in a somewhat narrow circle. But within that circle
he is impregnable. So far as self-cognition extends, the
reality of Self — that it is and what it is — is guaranteed
beyond the possibility of sceptical invasion. The metaphysics
of mind is to this limited extent involved in all the mental
experiences of a cognitive order. 1 So much and such Being
I have, as I know myself to have had. What lies below or
back of this may be matter of legitimate inference or of
merely doubtful conjecture. What lies above, or in the
future, must be got at through knowledge of the present
and of the past, by reaching out, perchance, along the lines
of persistent faiths and hopes. But what lies within this
circle is known to be true; and "truth" means here, what
truth always means to serious minds, — the mental repre-
sentation that accords with the really existent.
My real existence is an undeniable implicate of my self-
knowledge ; and, indeed, of all my knowledge. This is a
proposition from which all metaphysics takes its rise ; and to
which it returns, as to an impregnable stronghold, as often as
it is assailed, or to an all-illuminating centre, as often as it
1 It is this ontological doctrine which, with only a few extensions beyond
the sphere of the known, the author has tried to present in systematic form in his
" Philosophy of Mind."
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 351
finds itself astray. To deny the ontological significance of the
primal fact, " I know," is to deny the possibility of all knowl-
edge. For it is always 7 that know; and if this "I" lose
itself, or become subjected to complete aberration of self-knowl-
edge, then it becomes incapable of being longer the subject of
any kind of knowledge. What is true for the individual is true
for the race. Let the entire multitude of men be conceived
of as losing this Being of the Self, — whether by complete
aberration of self-consciousness in " double consciousness," or
by attaining to an identification with " the Other " in " intel-
lectual intuition," or by the enjoyment of Nirvana, or otherwise,
— and, then, the knowledge of the race (practical, scientific,
etc.) is gone. Some one must " come to himself " — signifi-
cant phrase ! — before cognition can return to man. And if
" that Other " lose his Being-for-Self , or be supposed never to
have attained it, and thus share at the same time the sad fate
of a race of men that have lost themselves ; then all cognition
is gone. And what would remain ? Nothing of which one
could even say : —
" Jch habe Jceinen Namen
Dafiir. Gefuhl ist A lies."
We could then neither posit the existence of phenomena nor
of noumena. The agnostic 6e6s apprjTos would then as surely
vanish as would the idols of the South Seas. For feeling,
imagination, thought, cannot of themselves guarantee the bare
existence of the otherwise Unknown ; cognition must accom-
plish this, by union of all the powers of the self-conscious
mind.
All attempt at a theory of knowledge — no matter how scep-
tical or agnostic — starts from, and returns to, the firm centre
of the Being of the self-known Self. Just as, however, this " I
know" is not a rigid, fixed, and ready-made formula, but the
characterization of a living and changing relation of subject
and object, so is the Being of the Self, which is implicate in
the formula, not a rigid, fixed, and ready-made existence.
352 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
The substantiality and the causality of this Being are ever
repeatedly affirmed afresh in every cognitive judgment.
Throw this affirmation into the form of an " existential judg-
ment " and it reads : " I experience that I am ; I live and
know I live " — an indubitable positing of the here-and-now
being of the subject of the state. But the same affirmation
involves also a transcendental judgment, which reflective
thinking is obliged to read thus : " Out of this present con-
scious state, I was and I have been " — independent of my
own present being as the subject, too, of those other states.
Interwoven with the very texture of all cognitive processes,
and with an almost equal intricacy of relations and firmness
of manifold connection, is an implicate of the real existence of
other minds like my own. We are not concerned just now
with the psychological theory of the processes by which this
interweaving takes place. The detailed descriptive history of
these processes would not alter the epistemological and onto-
logical significance of the facts. Other beings exist, in whose
streams of consciousness somehow occur cognitive facts which,
in their conditions, laws, and postulates, resemble my own :
I am not the only one who can say, " I know ; " there are
others, and many of them, who have their own experiences of
a cognitive order. This, however one pleases to state it, is an
assumption inseparable from the very experience we have
with ourselves as cognitive ; and it is so implicated in this
experience that, strictly speaking, no sceptical or critical
examination of the facts of human knowledge can even be
entered upon without it.
It may doubtless be pointed out that Descartes, and all who
have wished to push to its extremest limits a sceptical inquiry
into the foundations of knowledge, have assumed as the only per-
fectly unassailable proposition : " I know." Whether any one
else knows, or not, and indeed whether there be any one else, to
know or to be known, is thus held in suspense as a matter of
legitimate doubt. Moreover, all knowledge of other minds —
THE IMPLICATES OE KNOWLEDGE 353
both that they are and that they know, and also what they are
actually engaged in knowing — comes by the interpretation of
physical signs. But since the reality of the very beings whose
changing relations to us are given in the form of physical
signs of conscious states may itself be doubted, there would
seem to be two great gulfs of nescience dug between each self-
cognizing Self and the other selves that are to be known as
self-cognizing, too. The psychological history of the way in
which the individual mind comes to know that other minds
really exist, must, indeed, be accepted : We know other selves
only as we learn to interpret into terms of our own experience,
more or less skilfully but always with much chance for error,
the physical signs which have become connected with the
different kinds of that experience. No other being, besides
myself, do 1 know so fully and confidently as I know my
dearest most familiar human friend. Other visions may be
shattered, and the world seem not so much actually changed ;
for still, "I am T" . . . and "thou art thou."
But this very psychological history introduces into episte-
mology one of its most interesting and fruitful paradoxes, —
not to say practical self-contradictions. For what men know
in this doubly complex and doubtful fashion is, after all, seen
to be most firmly, simply, and indubitably implicated in all
their knowledge. Let not the point of the present contention
be missed. The being of other cognizing minds, like the being
of one's own mind, seems to lack the stability and permanency,
in the order of the real world, which unconscious things
appear to have; and in the mental construction of the his-
torical conditions of all human knowledge, modern science
is wont to posit an elaborate system of "thing-like" beings
existing through countless ages before the first process of
knowledge actually took place. This may all be warranted,
or it may not be ; it is of no interest to us to dispute just
now about the warrant for so-called anthropological and bio-
logical evolution. But from the point of view of the critical
23
354 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
philosophy of knowledge — and this is our chosen point of
view — how different does such so-called science appear !
For let one attempt now to call in question, to doubt, or even
to criticise this postulate. One can only do this by assuming
it to be quite valid and even indisputably true. Or, since one
naturally prefers to be on the side of one's convictions and
where one is sure of winning, let one defend the implicate of
another's real being against that other, who assails the general
postulate of which this particular implicate is an example.
It is now proposed to argue the matter ; and to get arguments
adjudged as true or false, probable or improbable ; and to see
if the contestants cannot get together upon some common
grounds.
Plainly, now, all proposal, argument, or effort to reach a
conclusion, and all the clothing given by the symbols chosen
for these otherwise incommunicable mental states, themselves
imply the real being of many minds. One cannot even propose
one's sceptical idealism, or solipsistic agnosticism, as a view
to be considered by one's self, in the deepest solitudes of one's
most retired chamber, without being guilty of the extreme
of absurdity. In vain does one soothe the consciousness of
such guilt by the claim that the search is, after all, in the
interests of a self-consistency ; for what is that which it is
proposed to render self-consistent ? Ideas, opinions, thoughts,
conceived of as mere psychoses or portions of the ever-flowing
stream of consciousness, are not entities that need to be har-
monized with each other, lest they actually quarrel and fight
it out with one another, to the death. Shall it be claimed,
however, that it is consistency with one's self which the inquir-
ing defender of solipsism seeks ? But this is to be had only
by being of the same opinion all the way through — unless,
indeed, it is something more than mere self-consistency which
is sought. Is the proposal, then, to test the truth of the doubt,
or denial, of the reality of other selves than one's Self? But
what is truth ? The question is now more puzzling than it
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 355
was in the mouth of Pilate, unless it be admitted that some
standard for the judgment of one mind exists in the structure
of other minds.
It is customary with those who take their solipsism most
seriously to whip themselves around the post, and reach, as
the conclusion of this painful self-discipline, the periodic affir-
mation that, after all, they are sure of nothing except the cir-
cular character of their own motion. For what, they continue
to ask, are these other beings to me, but just my own percepts,
mental images, and abstract conceptions, — mere moments in
the flux of that stream of consciousness I call myself ? Such
a conclusion, however, seems to neglect the very pertinent fact
that, somehow, the post is still there ; and that the satisfac-
tory completion as a fact, and even the valid description of
the circular character of the motion has a meaning only as it
assumes the extra-mental existence of the post. The criticism
of percepts, mental images, and abstract conceptions, with a
view to see how much of truth is in them, even as a bare pro-
posal to one's self, implies some standard to determine the
justice of the issue. This standard is not found in the mere
fact " I think," as a purely subjective phenomenon ; but it is
found in those implicates of '" I know ," which refer my think-
ing to the universal terms of cognition really existent in the
laws and operations of other minds.
But if the bare proposal to reject this ontological implicate
of all our cognitive processes ends in absurdity, much more
obviously is the actual discussion of the question as to the
validity of the implicate a supreme height of absurdity.
Higher, indeed, up the rocky and dangerous ways of agnos-
ticism, by attempting the path of self-contradiction, it is pos-
sible for no mind to climb. This feat is itself a demonstration
of the wondrously ambitious athletic quality of unchastened
human reason. And one can scarcely avoid suspecting the
triumphant advocate of the solipsistic hypothesis of leaving
his vanquished opponent with the secret feeling that, in the
356 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
eyes of their common mistress, The Truth, he has made him-
self a being of little account. For plainly, if the dogmatic or
sceptical denial of the reality of other minds is capable of
being held consistently by any individual Self, it is quite in-
capable of being made a matter of communication to other
selves. If one knew it to be so, one could not tell another
this truth, without assuming and affirming that it is not really
so, is not truth. The principles of identity and of sufficient
reason, by their combined and most strenuous efforts cannot
hold one to a proposition more self-evident than this : Com-
munication of knowledge, or even, and not less surely, of
doubt and of nescience, assumes the reality of at least two
minds, like constituted, as well as the actuality of certain rela-
tions established, in the very act of cognition, between them.
Try to tell me that this is not so, and you imply that, verily
and beyond all doubt, it is so. Try to inform me that you
doubt my view on this point and are preparing to contest it
(with an elaborate article, we will say, in the " Journal of
Sceptical Philosophy " ), and you only avow its incontestable
truth many times over. For, however the implicate of other
cognizing subjects, like the cognitive Self, gets into the struc-
ture of every cognition, the implicate is there; and it is there
in such fashion that not only all philosophical discussion, but
also every thought and deed looking toward the communica-
tion of any form of knowledge, is solemnly pledged to its
continued existence and support.
Nor would it be difficult to show that the existence and use
of language, or of any other symbols for the communication of
knowledge between men, also involves the same ontological
truths. The proof of this truth does not depend upon doubt-
ful inferences as to the origin and value of human language,
or as to the nature of those means of intercommunication
that are employed by the lower animals. In man's case, at
any rate, we know that knowledge is, as we figuratively say,
" conveyed " by language. This does not mean, of course,
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 357
that knowledge is some sort of vendible or otherwise disposable
goods, which can be carried over from one warehouse in the
mind of A and deposited, little changed or injured in transit,
within another place of safe-keeping, the mind of B. But
the existence and actual use of any means by which, within a
second stream of consciousness, cognitive processes may be
set going, that resemble the cognitive process in a first
stream of consciousness, implicates the real being of a number
of " like-minded " minds. When it is considered that nearly
every cognition 'for the individual, and all the growth of learn-
ing, science, and philosophy for the race, depends upon the
communicability of knowledge, the solid depth and wide-
reaching extent of this implicate are apparent. For me, and
for all men in all ages of the world's history, knowledge is a
growth. The roots of each individual cognition penetrate
and ramify through the entire existence of the human race.
The individual's knowledge draws its vital sap and receives its
form of manifestation from the common life. The substance
and the morphology of cognition, the form and the content of
every cognitive act, are generic and social affairs. Remove
all this, whether it appear as the uncritical and instinctive
or as the critical and developed metaphysics of the human
mind, and little or nothing is left to make my knowledge dis-
tinguishable as mine.
These considerations bring us face to face with the fact
that the entire solid mass of human feelings and convictions
is found at this place to resist all attacks from scepticism and
agnosticism. The influence of ethical and sesthetical con-
siderations upon the very structure and suretyship of human
knowledge affords a theme to which detailed reference will
be made later on. If there were only this to rely upon in
resistance to such attacks, there need be no fear for the cita-
del of truth, or for the region it immediately defends. Men
will never credit the statement that indubitable knowledge of
the real existence of other minds is impossible. The guar-
358 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
anty of this would be sufficient, if it were to be placed among
those truths whose final evidence, according to Lotze, 1 is not
logical at all, but rather sesthetical — not the impossibility of
not thinking them, but the unseemly absurdity of their disproof.
The feelings of every individual commit him too unalterably to
a belief in the reality of his fellow men to allow of much more
than spending an idle hour of speculation in the effort to see
if he cannot persuade himself that they are but the projec-
tion, upon a subjectively constituted background, of his own
mental images and experiences of an affective type.
In the fact of cognition, however, and in the defensible
theory of knowledge, the implicate of the reality of other
minds belongs to the very structure of experience. Every
factor of my cognitive life — thought, feeling, and will ; and
however expressed, whether as inference, blind belief, rational
postulate, instinctive or determinative action — pledges me to
the reality of other beings, that are known as selves like me,
but are not-me. The reality of such beings is an ontological
implicate that admits neither of denial nor of disproof. It
does not even admit of question or statement in the form
of doubt, without revealing at once the intrinsic absurdity of
contradicting it.
Once more, the reality of a system of things which have
some sort of separate being, and yet are connected together in
some kind of unitary way, and to which I find myself related
in varying terms of reciprocal activity and passivity, is an onto-
logical implicate of all human cognition. Undoubtedly, this
very complicated statement of the truth of experience will
be contested by not a few reflective thinkers upon the problem
of knowledge. But, here again, even in contesting, they will
admit it ; for thus much of known reality is inextricably bound
up in, and guaranteed by, the fundamental experiences of
every mind in cognition, and the most ardent advocate of
the extremest form of solipsism is unable to free himself from
1 Logik ; the last part of the chapter, Die apriorischen Wahrheiten.
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 359
the charge of absurdity in proposing to argue this implicate.
Further critical examination of this epistemological truth
reveals the fact that in defending it, we are only affirming
the validity, for all known Reality, of the most fundamental
of the so-called " categories." And this is the inevitable
conclusion from all the analysis of knowledge which has
been accomplished up to this point in the discussion of the
epistemological problem. The simple truth is, then, that we
must either abandon all claims to knowledge, in any meaning
of the word which can get recognition by the facts of human
experience, or else we must admit the claims of some such
implicate as this.
The detailed discussion of the separate categories discover-
able in this ontological implicate, the complicated affirmation
as to the Being of X which is involved in the totality of hu-
man cognitive life, is a treatise on metaphysics, — if only the
discussion be combined with a criticism of those bonds which
are held by all men to connect the differentiated things to-
gether into some sort of a Unitary Reality. Such discussion
is, of course, reserved for another essay. But a few words
upon several points seem necessary to bring the epistemologi-
cal discussion to a satisfactory conclusion at this point.
All human knowledge both assumes and guarantees the
validity of the application of the category of Relation to the
really existent world. This category has, not inaptly, been
called " the mother of all the others ; " 1 only it must be remem-
bered that categories are not the breed of one another, after the
pattern of biological entities. This concept is derived from the
self-observed form of the intellect as operative in every cogni-
tive process of whatever character. Relation applies to phe-
nomena and other phenomena, to phenomena and the realities
of which they are phenomena and to which they are phenomena,
to thoughts and thoughts, to thoughts and things, and to things
and things. No other category is so universal ; and, there-
1 A phrase of Giinther's. See Klein, "Die Genesis der Kategorien," p. 32.
360 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
fore, no other is so impossible of definition or even of descrip-
tion. It cannot be made clearer than it is in itself. It gets
its most immediate and indubitable application to reality, in
the actual concrete cognitions of self-consciousness. And if
we say of things that they have such qualities, and stand in
such relations, as matters of our cognition, we can attach no
meaning to the words " have " and " stand," unless we trans-
late them into our experience, as self-conscious selves, with our
objects of cognition. What is it really to be related ? What
relates ; and what is related ? A critical metaphysics shows
that no answers can be given to such questions, unless things
are conceived of as self-active beings, with their various modes
of behavior interdependent and yet united under a frame-
work, so to speak, of immanent ideas. Unrelated Being is,
indeed, unknowable ; but, then, this is not the fault of human
knowledge, which forces it to become hopelessly agnostic
because it cannot rise above its own inherent faults. It is
rather due to the fundamental truth that knowledge is a
grasp upon reality, and that unrelated being is unreal ; it is
no Being, but only the figment of an ill-disciplined imagi-
nation which, having got loose from the facts of experi-
ence, is trying to " cut capers " in air too thin for its own
healthy existence.
The valid application of the connected categories of Change
and Causality to the really existent world is also implicate in
all human cognition. The real Being of Xis given to human
knowledge not as an Eleatic One and Unchangeable but as a
Principle of Becoming. It has, indeed, its own Unity, or
Oneness, the nature of which the human mind may eagerly
strive to apprehend. It has, too, its regulative principles,
from which it never swerves, and which stand, themselves
unchangeable, amid all the changes of finite minds and finite
things. But to deny or to doubt the reality of change — of a
system of interdependent changes constituting a connected
and unitary process of Becoming — is to deny or to doubt
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 361
the possibility of knowledge. And why some huge mon-
strosity of an ontological sort, a great all-embracing death's-
head of a Dlng-an-Sioh, should have superior attractions for
metaphysical philosophy, it is difficult to determine. At any
rate, change is here, in the real world as men know it ; and
it is so bound up with the life of human knowledge that its
removal sacrifices the life itself.
Without further specifications, - — lest the task of epistemol-
ogy be too much burdened and the task of ontology be made
correspondingly too light, — we close this chapter with two re-
marks. And, first, the philosophy of knowledge, when its criti-
cal analysis is extended and made more penetrating, comes to
regard the categories as, above all, those forms or determina-
tions in which the spirit, in its process of becoming self-
conscious, finds itself by its own constitution compelled to
apprehend itself and its own life. All the so-called categories
are but the forms which reflective recognition gives to the
facts of self-consciousness. This they all are, epistemologi-
cally considered. Ontologically considered, they become forms
of being, as " implicate " in self-consciousness. But that
" Self" which, as a concept, is the spirit's own construction,
embraces other being, and other life, in its own cognitive and
self-conscious development. Therefore, a true and full knowl-
edge of Self is the prime condition of a valid and ever larger
knowledge of all Being.
Strangely enough, that great reflective genius, Kant, failed
here, and introduced all the modern fashion, so far as it has
followed him, of treating the categories as dead or merely
formal modes of the functioning of mind in judgment. When,
however, these same categories are seen to be the indubita-
bly trustworthy modes of the soul's life of cognition, in its
immediate and yet growing apprehension of its own Being
and its justifiable and necessary but analogical apprehension
of the Being of the World without, the face of the critic
of cognitive faculty begins to wear another look. The real
362 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
trouble of modern epistemological theory has been with the
Kantian formalism, and not with the facts of experience.
The facts, indeed, lead to moderation in theory and to
caution in life. For the island of the human mind has
not, as yet, been thoroughly explored by any critic ; and there
are, indeed, unknown and, perhaps, unknowable stretches to
its limiting ocean. But if I will begin by knowing myself,
not in a merely formal and logical way, but as a concrete,
active, and free rationality, having valid commerce with the
world of the really existent — however restricted that com-
merce may be — I need not forever approach with despair
either the woods and jungles of the island or the mists and
fogs of the surrounding seas. For I am thus empowered to
make certain affirmations and certain denials with regard to
the Nature of all Reality. Positively, its nature is, so far
as known, like that of my own Self. This conclusion does
not take the form of a command to declare the complete
and unalterable impossibility of a valid cognition of Reality ;
the rather is it the discovery of Reality, as it actually is,
implicate in my cognitive consciousness. Cautiously inter-
preted and correctly understood, so much is true of that
most complicated and obviously anthropomorphic of all the
so-called categories, the concept of causality. When it is
seen how this category, in all its concrete richness of content,
as developed by the mature self-consciousness, is but the as-
sertion of the Self's valid experience in its cognitive commerce
with things, the necessity becomes apparent of regarding the
principle as something more than merely formal, as rather a
true mental representation of the Being of the extra-men-
tally Existent. Under this category is obtained a valid cog-
nition of real things, actual transactions, true relations, etc.
Just as all our formal thinking reposes, for its formal cor-
rectness, upon certain cognitive judgments of perception and
of self-consciousness, so does our varied knowledge of the
beings, transactions, and relations of the real World, ground
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 363
itself firmly in the immediate knowledge of ourselves as
really existent in actual relations of reciprocal dependence
to the objects of perception through the senses. 1
But certain current conceptions as to the nature of Reality,
instead of being confirmed, are quite distinctly disproved by
this view of the way the categories get application to objec-
tive experience. We cannot so apply the principles of iden-
tity and non-contradiction, or of sufficient reason, as to affirm
that the entire Nature of the World's real Being is given to
us in conceptions answering to terms such as these : " The
reign of universal Law ; " " The unalterable Cosmic Order ; "
• The dominion of universal Reason," — meaning by " Law,"
" Order," and " Reason," what is customarily concealed in the
words. True, the principle of identity and non-contradiction
cannot be gainsaid ; and under it there is given to cognition
a really existent World that must be known as some sort of
a self-consistent whole. But when it is asserted, in the words
of another, 2 " The contradictory is a category which can only
belong to the combination of our thoughts, but not to any
actuality," we must beware of the temptation illegitimately
to reduce all things to the terms of a perfect logical and formal
consistency. Actuality, as known, is full of the most baffling
contradictions, when it is approached with the determination to
throw a halter over its neck and tame it completely with reins
and whip of the " pure understanding." But, then, the Self,
in terms of whose own life we, analogically and by application
of the categories, gain a knowledge of that other Life, is not
mere law, or order, or pure understanding.
1 Again attention is called to the effects upon the philosophy of knowledge
which follow from that most mischievous and absurd of all the current psycho-
logical heresies — the theory of psycho-physical parallelism. It should by this
time he apparent that this theory is not only scientifically quite indefensible
and void of support in facts, but inextricably connected with the most complete
and hopeless agnosticism of an epistemological sort. Moreover, it totally destroys
the foundations upon which is based the conception of the whole of experience —
the World — as founded in a real Unity.
2 Diihring, Cursus der Fhilosophie, p. 30.
364 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
The Being of the World need not be any less real, or less
validly and indubitably known, if it is conceived of, in part, in
terms of the passionate feeling-full, ethical, and aesthetical
nature of man. Such anthropopathie cognition need be not
one whit less true to facts than the cold-blooded anthropo-
morphism of physical science. Especially does the scientific
observer of nature require caution as to the use he makes of
the category of causality. In the current scientific use of
this term it has, indeed, absolutely no warrant for a complete
and inexorable application to the Being of the really Existent.
As Riehl has correctly said, 1 this conception and its accom-
panying conviction " is obviously wanting even to-day in the
majority of men, and appears to have been wanting to the
philosophy of antiquity down to the time of Democritus. ,, And
when the conception of causality is itself confined to the law
of the conservation and correlation of energy, and the wiiole
World is reduced to a problem in mathematical mechanics,
the state of our knowledge, and the hope of it, become meagre
and pitiful indeed. It is, then, in point to call attention to
the fact that, really, there is no such thing as mathematical
Space or mathematical Time ; no such reality as a sum-total of
Physical Energy ; and that we have no such assured knowledge
of its entities or actual relations as is needed to validate the
preposterous claim that the world of Things and of Minds cor-
responds to the conception of a machine.
But, second, we may venture, even in the name of the
philosophy of knowledge and by a permissible extension of
the speculative privileges which belong to its serious student,
to suggest another and much more admirable picture of the
real Being of the World. This X, which is the Being of the
World (the "World-Ground" or the " Absolute," as metaphys-
ics is accustomed to call It when developing the doctrine of it
speculatively), must be further conceived of so as to be a true
explanatory principle for all our varied cognitions of Things.
1 Der Philosophische Kriticismus, II., ii., p. 80.
THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 365
It must exhibit the meaning of the world, as known to man,
by throwing its radiance upon all particular beings, particular
events, and special relations. That X cannot be made to do
this work as a task performed in deduction under strictly
logical formulas, follows from the way in which the principle
itself is found implicate in all concrete, individual cognitions.
It may do a similar work, however, as a kind of epistemologi-
cal postulate so constructed by reflective thinking as to be
itself guaranteed by these concrete cognitions, while, at the
same time, shedding the light of its radiance upon them all.
But it can perform this task only if it is conceived of both as
a principle of manifoldness or differentiation, and as a prin-
ciple of unity. It must be a principle of explanation for the
actual manifoldness of the one real World. Now the reality
of a system of inter-connected changes has been found impli-
cate in all the life of the cognitive subject. It would seem,
then, that the fundamental principle must serve as the Ground,
the Law, and the Final Purpose of this system of changes.
Moreover, this system is known as a sort of unity that has
centres of self-activity which are not complete in themselves,
but which are bound together into a formal whole, because
they are existent in Space and Time, whose characteristics
they all share, and are also bound together in more vital ways
by the actual operation of what we call a causal connection.
It would seem, then, that some kind of an Absolute Being
must be postulated for that final summary which shall ex-
press the full force and meaning of the ontological implicates
of all human knowledge. For, as has been said, Xmust serve
as a principle both of differentiation and of unity.
This generalization from the ontological implicates of knowl-
edge, under one term, must be further criticised and expli-
cated by metaphysics. For here, if anywhere, is discovered
the sacred bridge over which ontological philosophy may pass
to conquer as much of the region on the hither side as its
forces can, by combined and prolonged effort. Just now it
366 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE
does not appear as though a long campaign were necessary to
establish, at least, several impregnable strongholds in this
region. For our cognition of what is real has been shown
to be all, either of the Self, or of the not-self, — the latter
known assuredly, but only after the analogy of the Self.
Human experience indicates, then, that the one postulate of
its system of cognitions must be stated somewhat as follows :
The Being of the World is a Unity, self -differentiating in accord-
ance with immanent Ideas. Translated into terms which are
nearer to daily experience and have a more positive content :
The system of interrelated beings, which are objects of man's
knowledge, is known only as it is a manifestation of Intellect,
Feeling, and Will. The Being of the really Existent must
include all these qualifications, for they are all implicates of
that life of cognition which the Self knows itself to have.
CHAPTER XIII
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
THE attitudes of men's minds toward the different forms
or sets of cognitive judgments, as well as toward the
nature and validity of all cognition, admit of a considerable
and most instructive variability. Practical considerations do,
indeed, always draw a tight rein over the neck of " pure un-
derstanding " and of "rational faith," in their efforts to
afford to a merely speculative or emotional regard for truth
and reality its fullest satisfaction. One may adopt and
adhere as consistently as possible to the most extreme form
of a sceptical idealism, but one must behave as though other
minds and other things were existent in a reality of which
their appearances to us are in some sort a correct and trust-
worthy copy. He who attempts to act, with a strict logical
consistency, according to the hypothesis that the world of
objects known to him is merely his " idea," runs no small risk
of pursuing his dream-like life in the confines of the mad-
house. It is, indeed, confessedly difficult — perhaps impos-
sible — to lay down rules for the infallible distinction of a
great variety of illusions and hallucinations from the plainest
facts of normal perceptive experience. Every observer knows,
moreover, that the most completely logical systems of a scien-
tific or philosophical order are most apt to encounter invincible
opposition from the concrete facts of nature and of human
life. But the alternative, if one wishes to " get along " at all
satisfactorily in the world, is certainly not to be found either
in the confusion of all limits between the normal and the
368 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
hallucinatory in sense-perception, or in the refusal to take
pains to think with theoretic clearness, or in the rejection of
all guidance from reason in so-called practical affairs. Espe-
cially true and noteworthy is the fact that in matters of con-
duct, scepticism and agnosticism meet with exceedingly firm
and comprehensive resistance. He who even expresses a com-
plete nescience, or an unlimited doubt, as to the surrounding
body of judgments about the right forms of behavior, although
his mental attitudes may not lead him to the practice of his
scepticism or agnosticism, is isolated from the community of
his fellows by their distrust and scorn ; and he, too, may end
his days in some cell of a prison or mad-house.
So-called practical considerations influence cogently the
tendencies toward a sceptical or agnostic attitude of mind
in respect of certain objects also, which are more fitly re-
garded as belonging to the realm of faith than of " pure un-
derstanding." No one can doubt that, in fact, it is the needs,
desires, hopes, and fears of men which so largely stir and
guide them in the mental relations they assume toward God,
freedom, and the immortal life. As Tolstoi makes one of his
characters affirm, it is in life rather than by processes of rea-
soning that men find God. Most men — and, perhaps, in the
last analysis, the most argumentative of them — refuse to be
satisfied with the statistics and mechanical formulas of the
determinist ; because these do not accord with their ideas of
value rather than purely because they do not harmonize with
the details of the world of fact. And " ideas of value " are
allurements and helps to conduct first; only afterward, and
then somewhat vaguely, do they yield themselves to scientific
and philosophical treatment. The forlorn and lonely soul
who has just seen lowered away — " earth to earth, ashes to
ashes," and dust to dust " — what was but yesterday so really
present and so tenderly dear to him, finds little enough of
logical stuff for a demonstration of immortality in the earth
beneath, the sky above, or the sad mortals around him ; but
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 369
perhaps he cannot bear, and will not bear, to have it so as
that this is the end of all.
Yet scepticism and agnosticism remain legitimate and valu-
able (even indispensable) attitudes of the human mind toward
all the objects both of knowledge and of so-called faith. Their
legitimacy is proved by the obvious experience of the individual
and of the race. This experience plainly shows that the phe-
nomena represented by the words are not incidental, abnormal,
or superficial in the mental and moral development of man.
On the contrary, they belong to the very deepest things in the
life and growth of reason. To doubt and inquire, to refuse
to affirm, and to deny, whether applied in the interests of con-
duct, of science, or of speculative thinking, are as essential to
the processes of cognition as are faith and affirmation of the
most positive and undisturbed kind. Moreover, the attaining
and holding of our most assured products of cognition are de-
pendent upon those mental attitudes which fall under the terms
" scepticism " and " agnosticism " ; and the history of science
and philosophy — yes, also, and not less abundantly, the his-
tory of ethical and religious opinions and faiths — shows the
indispensable value of these dubitating and negative states of
mind. It is not simply that in this way only can error be con-
stantly discerned and separated from truth ; but it is also and
chiefly that the very life of the mind, in its most eager and
successful pursuit of truth, necessarily follows the same path.
The dignity and worth of the Self, as known to itself, and so
the dignity and worth of all that really existent World which
can be known only analogically, as implicate in and correlated
with the knowledge of Self, depend upon the ability to pause,
to withhold judgment, to check the tendency to a rash dogma-
tism, and even to remain in intelligent and avowed nescience
where knowledge is denied. Although there remains the inde-
structible confidence of the soul that the world of fact and the
world of values is somehow one and harmonious, and although
we can never divorce knowledge from its own teleological con-
24
370 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
struction and import, it is better for the present to doubt and
suffer, or to acknowledge a discontented and hopeless igno-
rance, than to believe a lie or to prostitute reason for the
satisfaction of a lust after pleasure, or a longing to escape
from pain.
At the same time, experience is one ; and the effort of
thought is to explain in its totality what must be taken in its
totality. A human soul, divided against itself, cannot stand.
And woe to the generation which, while affirming a scientific
or philosophic knowledge of one thing, keeps up its courage
by exhorting faith and conduct " as though " another and
opposite thing were true. For that generation is doomed
either to reject the exhortation or to become a generation of
weaklings and hypocrites. Neither can we believe that natu-
ral science and philosophy on the one hand, and conduct and
faith on the other hand, are so different in either their
sources, their nature, or their ultimate principles, insights,
and imports, that they admit of thus being divorced. What
retribution is visited upon those who continue to preach as
right in conduct what they make no attempt to practise, and
who hold fast to dogmatic tenets and credos in religion which
they are sure science has transcended or removed, there is
history enough to show. But here is one of those rules which
are poor indeed if they do not work both ways. And dog-
matic tenets and credos in science or philosophy do not, in
the long run, and when judged by the ultimate standards,
fare much better, if they claim for themselves an immunity
from scepticism and agnosticism which they will not grant to
so-called ethical and religious faiths. Human nature will not
forever bear to be arrayed against itself. If Kant failed of
success in removing knowledge in order to make room for
faith, the original effort of Mr. Spencer, in his " First Prin-
ciples," to reconcile science and religion upon a basis of
complete agnosticism, has been a ten-fold more conspicuous
failure. Nor will the wise student of the history of man's
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 371
development place much confidence in any of the current pro-
posals for a " reconciliation " which is to be effected by as-
signing one set of faculties, as it were, to science, and another
to conduct and religion ; or by proposing that one attitude of
mind shall be turned toward the world of things as natural
science sees it, for six days each week, and another contra-
dictory attitude toward God and immortality, for, at most, an
hour and a half of the remaining day. For the simple truth
is that, sooner or later, men will walk all the way through
their experience ; they will try to survey it on all sides ; and
as they walk and look, they will be human natures still, —
thinking, feeling, planning, full of interest, not only in the
world visible and present, but in the world unseen, and in
the world that is ever about to come.
It is not our intention, however, in this chapter to attempt
a historical or a critical estimate of the sources, nature, and
value of the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind. Nor
does the present purpose require that any particular form
of truth should be defended against assaults made by those
who persistently assume either of these attitudes. The latter
and more restricted of these two inquiries would, if thoroughly
pursued, lead to a detailed examination of the nature and
limits of the evidence and proof which may be demanded by
each of those special groups of cognitions and opinions toward
which it is possible for the individual mind to be either dog-
matic, sceptical, or agnostic. And here Aristotle's view seems
as wise and fitly applicable as ever. We must not expect the
same kind of proof or evidence for all kinds of subjects. For
although our experience is one and cannot be discerned except
as illumined from the full-orbed and central light of the self-
conscious Self, yet the different objects of that one experience
get themselves accepted as real, or are denied place in the
world of reality, in widely differing ways and upon terms
that are by no means precisely the same.
For example, those concepts of all physics with which the
372 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
most mathematical branches of astronomy deal are as truly
mental products, that cannot be understood without a correct
doctrine of the feeling-full and voluntary nature of the cogni-
tive judgment, and of the presence and influence of ethical
and aesthetical " momenta," as are the concepts of ethics and
theology. At the same time, no one would think of affirming
that truths about the movements and physical constitution
of the solar system are discovered and expounded or de-
fended with precisely the same methodology and emotional and
volitional accompaniments as are truths of duty and religion.
From such irremovable differences it follows that the province
and values of the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind are
very different in physical science and in matters of conduct,
faith, and worship. Indeed, it is largely upon this difference
that we have elsewhere * divided the whole subject-matter of
science and philosophy into that which concerns what is, the
Heal, and that which concerns what ought to be, or the Ideal.
The critical estimate of the scope and validity of sceptical
inquiry and of an agnostic outcome, as concerned with these
two great kinds of material for reflective thinking, and also
as concerned with all the particular subdivisions of these
kinds, is a theme for a more special inquiry than that of the
present treatise. 2 On the other hand, a history of scepticism
and agnosticism is not a part of epistemology, however valu-
able a propaedeutic it may be.
1 Introduction to Philosophy, chapter viii. : H The Divisions of Philosophy."
2 There are few more alluring and promising fields for a critical use of the
reflective powers in which philosophy arises than those afforded just now by the
physical and natural sciences. I have several times already expressed my con-
viction that these sciences are more than ever before full to the brim, and ready
to burst, with ontological conceptions and assumptions of most portentous dimen-
sions and uncertain validity. Surely scepticism and agnosticism, now nearly
sated with feeding upon the ancient body of alleged truths in ethics and religion,
will soon turn their devouring maw upon the structure generated and nourished
by the modern scientific spirit as dominant in chemico physical and biological re-
searches. And if the strength of their appetite and the vigor of their digestion
remain unimpaired, must we not fear that even the bones of this structure will
disappear from our view ? Consider, for example, what would be left of the liy-
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 373
Some critical estimate of the sources, nature, and value of
the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind toward cognition,
as such, has already been implied in all the previous discus-
sions. For it is possible to doubt and to deny, or to profess
ignorance, respecting the ^raws-subjective validity of cognitive
faculty itself. This is, indeed, a part of the supreme activity
of the self-reflective and critical human mind. It is not
simply as to the truthfulness of particular judgments and the
verisimilitude of particular concepts, but as to the possibility of
attaining truth at all — as to the trustworthiness of all mental
representation of the being and transactions of the really
Existent — that the extremity of scepticism and agnosticism
raises our doubts. In raising and pursuing these doubts the
mind makes its own cognitive processes its object of cognition.
It is this very thing which critical epistemology proposes to do ;
and for this reason it has been called " science of science, ,,
" theory of knowledge," or Wissenschaftslehre. It is the em-
ployment of a certain amount of scepticism which is com-
mended by the declaration that epistemology is the " most
presuppositionless " of all branches of philosophy, the one
exercise of the human mind in reflective thinking which in-
sists upon starting with a rt metaphysical minimum" That
is to say, nothing is to be assumed as true respecting the pro-
cess or the object involved in the primitive act of cognition,
except what, as we immediately discover, is inseparable mat-
ter-of-fact belonging also to the very proposal to undertake
such sceptical examination. It is this very plan which we
have been following ; and the result has been to show that all
scepticism and all agnosticism are, even in their most active
and extreme forms, self-limiting and self-destructive.
pothesis of biological evolution, if a thorough critical and sceptical treatment
were given to its metaphysical basis, its postulated ontological conceptions and
assumptions. Surely, the way in which many students of these sciences vacillate
between the most comprehensive professions of knowledge as to what the world
is, and how it came to be, and the most abject confessions of ignorance, is little
better than scandalous.
374 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
The sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind must not be
conceived of as once for all fixed and unchanging. If to
these attitudes we add the dogmatic and critical, we have the
picture of a ceaseless shifting of what may perhaps be called
the " temper " of affective consciousness toward the proposi-
tions in which men express their cognitive judgments. The
dogmatic attitude of mind accepts these propositions without
previous sceptical or critical inquiry into the grounds on
which they rest ; it, nevertheless, holds them with the warmth
and tenacity of conviction that are made thoroughly rational
only as a result of such inquiry. The sceptical attitude be-
gins by doubting the propositions, and by proposing to
examine the grounds of their alleged truthfulness, while
maintaining meantime a temper of non-assent toward them.
The attitude which avows nescience, or no-knowledge (a-
knowledge), toward these propositions may be called agnostic.
By the critical attitude little else can be meant than that fine
and intelligent balance in the action of cognitive faculty
which is sceptical before the grounds of judgment are ex-
amined, and agnostic when the alleged grounds turn out
mistaken or insufficient ; but which is equally ready positively
to affirm, or positively to deny, when the process of inquiry
has justified the required cognitive judgment.
Now it is obvious that there is no kind of knowledge, and
no particular alleged cognitive judgment, toward which it is
inconceivable that all of these attitudes of mind should be
assumed at different times. As a matter of fact, different
minds do manage to differentiate themselves on occasions
where the feelings and practical interests as well as the
amount of evidence " in sight " seem to warrant such differ-
entiation, in accordance with all these types, although respect-
ing the same propositions. It is scarcely possible to throw
any cognitive judgment into the form of such a proposition
that all men will either accept or deny it ; or, perhaps, will
consent to regard its truthfulness as doubtful. And the very
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 375
growth of knowledge, in the individual and in the race, de-
pends upon the possibility of every individual, and of each
generation, changing somewhat freely its " temper " of con-
sciousness toward propositions current in the past. We are
especially fond of boasting that the present age is predomi-
natingly critical. It is, indeed, sufficiently sceptical and
agnostic toward many ancient and important truths (or al-
leged truths), — especially those of ethics and religion. But
it is also commendably anxious to weigh fairly the evidence ;
and if this evidence seems sufficient, it is willing not to per-
sist unreasonably in the merely sceptical or agnostic position.
How often do we hear the Zeitgeist sincerely and pathetically
lamenting its inability, on rational grounds, to affirm knowl-
edge, or to act in the full faith of truths that, nevertheless,
appear to it to have a high ideal value ! Or else it attempts
that divorce of faith and knowledge which we have already
declared to be as mischievous as it is, in the final issue, im-
possible. Thus it comes about that, as never before, the
multitude of men are sensitive to all the rapid changes of
objective temperature ; they either feel themselves cooling off
toward some truth to which they have formerly been most
warmly attached, or else unable to resist the heating effect of
the atmosphere of opinion which, for the moment, has made
certain other propositions glow and shine like the sun in the
centre of the solar system. What use, for example, nowa-
days in expressing one's thoughts upon any matter without
frequent phrases, largely meaningless, taken from the theory
of biological evolution ? How many " scientific " minds can
be found who are daunted as quickly by the mysterious and
contradictory attributes of the " ether," as by the difficulties
attaching themselves to the current theological conceptions
of a Supreme Being?
What is true of the attitudes of scepticism, agnosticism, and
criticism, with reference to particular forms of the cognitive
judgment, is true of the same attitudes toward knowledge in
376 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
general. Yet the course of our discussion has most clearly
shown how, when assumed toward the activity and the prod-
uct of the mind in all knowledge, these attitudes are self-
limiting and self-destructive. That is to say, it has been
demonstrated by a critical examination that complete and con-
sistent scepticism and agnosticism, with reference to man's
power mentally to represent the being and the transactions
of the really Existent, are impossible. The whole inquiry,
then, becomes one respecting the limits of scepticism and
agnosticism, — with respect to the propositions laid down in
the course of a critical epistemology.
It is evident that in dealing with epistemological prob-
lems, scepticism quickly reaches a position in which it is
strictly limited, on the one hand, by a perfectly clear and
indubitable cognition, and on the other hand, by a quite
irremovable and impenetrable agnosticism. Agnosticism, in
its turn, now appears as an attitude of mind toward episte-
mological inquiries which can arrive at no conclusion; and
which cannot even posit its own existence without assuming
both the validity of knowledge and the rights of an untram-
melled but by no means nescient function of scepticism.
Moreover, all this is just as fundamentally true and impor-
tant where the sceptical and agnostic attitudes are the posi-
tions of a mind that proposes to transcend, by following the
critical path mapped out by Kant, the dogmatism commonly
concealed under both these attitudes. For the more candid
and thorough our use of criticism becomes, the more clearly
does it appear that epistemological scepticism and agnosti-
cism have their fixed and impassable barriers in the very
nature of cognitive faculty.
To illustrate the statements just made, let us suppose that
the so-called " immediate " cognition of things by the senses
is being made the special subject of a thoroughly sceptical
and agnostic treatment. We have " on hand," so to speak,
the common-sense view of the nature, significance, and valid-
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 377
ity of the perceptive act. This view assumes that things
really (that is, extra-meiitsilly) are what they seem to all
men to be. Or in other words, things perceived and apper-
ceived, things as known by me when I exercise my normal
powers of cognition through the senses, under fairly favorable
circumstances (as respects degree of stimulus, concentration
of attention, freedom from temporary impairments or perma-
nent unfitness of the organs, etc.), are given to me within con-
sciousness w about as " they really exist and actually behave
in the world that is out of my consciousness. [We have
designedly been thus indefinite, because the most dogmatic
advocate of common-sense realism will admit a certain in-
definite range of inaccuracies and non-correspondences be-
tween things and their mental copies.] Now scepticism
makes short work of this easy-going common-sense view as
it is held only by the unreflective mind, and yet as it consti-
tutes the practical hypothesis of the most sceptical of episte-
mological inquirers. In the name of both psychology and
physics, it first attacks the so-called " secondary qualities " of
things. Their color, feel, sound, smell, and taste, are all
resolved into subjective affections which, as described by
psychology, bear not the faintest resemblance to those causes
of the affections that, as physics demonstrates to its satis-
faction, reside in the massive or molecular structure and
functions of the physical world. If, at about this point,
psycho-physics and physiological psychology take " common-
sense " in hand, and subject its clearest deliverances to their
critical testing, nothing is left of the common-sense view of
perception. For science shows that perception is not a sort
of fairly accurate " copying-off," brought about in conscious-
ness through the action of ready-made external things. And
when a more critical psychology, helped out by the meta-
physics of physics and (though often without much clear
recognition of what it is about) grown sensitive to considera-
tions derived from a sceptical epistemology, has discussed the
378 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
origin and nature of the " primary qualities " of things, not
a vestige of standing-room seems left for the most obvious
declarations of the " plain man's " consciousness as to his
sensuous knowledge of things.
It is to be noticed, however, that psychology, psycho-
physics, and physics, while they have united in a sceptical
attack upon the ordinary view of the cognition of things, as a
valid representation of trans-subjective qualities and relations,
have all the while been indulging themselves in a dogmatism
of their own. It is altogether likely that they have done this
with some unseemly vociferation against the presence in these
" sciences " of the least taint of metaphysics or of episte-
mology. Yet no writers have, on the whole, been more
crudely dogmatic in respect of their noetic and ontological
conceptions and assumptions than have those whose avowed
aim has been to treat psychical phenomena from the stand-
point of a science that is sceptical as to all the ultimate prob-
lems. Let, now, the sceptical inquiry be pushed forward into
that mass of alleged cognitions as to the constitution and be-
havior of things which modern science has substituted for
those sense-percepts that men, in general, find given to their
mind. The imagination of the most myth-making of the
ancients, or the untrained fancy of the most superstitious
of the savages, has never resulted in so marvellous and sur-
prising a picture of the " unsenscd " reality of things. It is
confessedly impossible to recognize in these things, as they
are, the prototypes of things as ive know them in our work-a-
day life. Yet this world of scientific discovery is the pro-
posed substitute for the world of common-sense. That very
sceptical process, which has resulted in the destruction of our
confidence in so-called common-sense, has been accompanied
by a more or less dogmatic construction of an eatfra-mentally
real world, which is now relied upon to explain the world of
common-sense, and at the same time to serve as a barrier
against the march of scepticism forward to a completely agnos-
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 379
tic outcome. From a world which all men immediately know
and believe in, we have been led by scepticism to a world
about which we * indirectly know and believe in anything
whatever only as we trust the intellectual processes of others,
under the principles of identity and of sufficient reason. What
now if scepticism, recognizing that it has been cheated of its
full rights, attacks the validity of these principles, and so
threatens the reality of the world which imagination and
thought have constructed by following them ?
And now the destructive work of sceptical inquiry begins
over again. But its field of inquiry is changed to that
realm of lofty imaginings, abstract conceptions, and gen-
eralized formulas, for which science holds itself responsible.
Its structures, although built by a community of stout hearts
and skilful hands and noble purposes, are even frailer on
some sides than are those products of sense which have
been, often so inadvertently, called " illusory " and " unreal."
Once more, however, as has already been shown, a limit
is reached beyond which scepticism cannot go. There is
in my perceptive consciousness that which, somehow and at
some first time, I have come, indubitably and with the clear-
est cognition, to recognize as not merely the state of my
consciousness but as known certainly and immediately to be
" not-me" Here scepticism meets the insuperable barrier of
a positive Somewhat that is in consciousness but is not the
mere product of consciousness, — that is subjective, because
it is an object of my cognition, and yet is trans-subjective,
because it is the cognized " opposite " of the Self. That such
a limit is actually set to the sceptical treatment of the knowl-
edge of things by the senses, and that it is applicable to all
both normal and abnormal processes of perception, has been
shown to be true, over and over again.
But it is equally plain that the sceptical inquiry must be
accompanied, from its point of starting to its final issue, by
confessions of ignorance or nescience that cannot, all of
380 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
them, be considered as temporary or unimportant in respect
of the nature and growth of knowledge. For if I stop at any
stage of the sceptical inquiry to ask after* explanations for
all that I seem to know, or for all that I know I doubt, the
only answer which can be truthfully given must often be,
" I do not know." And at the end of the most candid and
thorough criticism of cognitive faculty, it must be replied to
a vast number of particular questions, though falling under a
few general classes, that such things are not given or per-
mitted to man to know. From this it follows, as a matter
both of theoretical economy and of practical wisdom, that the
mind should recognize the unreason and the absurdity of even
attempting to answer certain inquiries. Both science and
scepticism — however paradoxical the statement may seem —
appear to be constantly limited by nescience. The very
nature and the laws of the development of knowledge itself
require us to learn to say, " I do not know." And where
the experience of the race is sufficiently clear and cumulative,
the spirit of philosophical criticism is not violated by saying :
"I do not think that any man will ever know, or that the
human mind is capable of knowing."
For example, something of this sort seems necessarily to
be true in respect of all human knowledge of things, whether
immediate through the senses, or indirect and inferential as
a body of accumulated information about things in terms of
physical science. This is true of the dicta of the most ordi-
nary common-sense. " Sugar is sweet ; " but " lemons are
sour : " " The grass is green ; " but " the heavens are blue,
with whitish or blackish clouds scattered here and there."
But why is the sugar sweet and the lemon sour, the grass
green, and the sky blue, but the cloud white or gray ? Com-
mon-sense is nescient in answer to these inquiries, and must
ever remain so. Or it may substitute teleological reasons for
causal action, and thus explain further from another point of
view ; but nothing characteristic of the constitution of these
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 381
objects, which shall determine the effects they have upon our
consciousness, appears to the observer who maintains the
point of view of ordinary perception. Science, however,
attempts the answers to such questions. For one of them it
proposes an elaborate theory of optics with measurements of
wave-lengths in the hypothetical substrate called ether (a
most marvellous being) ; this theory it joins on to a more
doubtful theory of the chemico-physical value of pigments
in the retina of the eye ; and it then finds its way fur-
ther by the path of an even more doubtful theory of nerve-
commotions in certain cerebral centres, where, alas ! every-
thing disappears from the view of the scientific observer in
a bottomless pit of metaphysics concerning the "relations"
of matter and mind. And as to the scientific explanation
of the ordinary sensations of taste, nothing is known worth
seriously taking into account.
Suppose, however, that we had all such mysteries cleared
up, and a straight and traceable path laid from the centre of
the solar system, or from the piece of matter put into the
mouth, to the psychoses of visual or gustatory sort. This
would indeed be a splendid and highly desirable extension of
scientific knowledge ; but it would also extend correspond-
ingly the sphere over which the darkness of an impenetrable
nescience would reign. Why should a particular wave-length
of luminiferous ether, after getting itself translated in the
form of definite determinations of chemico-physical processes
and specific kinds of nerve-commotions, be finally correlated
with sensations of blue, green, white, black, etc. ; while other
disturbances of the molecules of ordinary matter, after excit-
ing similar chemico-physical and neural changes, appear in
consciousness with representative psychoses of the quite dif-
ferent olfactory or gustatory order ? To questions of this
kind the growing science of sense-perception offers no an-
swer; and there is little or no prospect of any successful
attempt, in the remotest future, at any answer. Or, at least,
382 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
if these or any other more precise terms in which the prob-
lems are proposed for explanation should receive light from
the discovery of new facts, the expanding domain of certified
knowledge would still be given to us as covering a bottomless
abyss of unexplained and inexplicable facts. All answers to
the question Why ? as applied to the correlation of particular
facts, leave us in the agnostic attitude as to the ultimate rea-
sons for the correlation itself. We know that so it is ; but
why it is so, we neither know nor discern any prospect of
knowing. Indeed, as there has already been occasion to re-
mark before, the progress of modern science is extending the
realm of accepted but unexplained facts far faster than the
correlation of those facts under either old or new princi-
ples of explanation. And thus the very nature of knowledge
is such that the limit of all sceptical inquiry is set in the
confession of mystery and of nescience, as well as in the pro-
fession of formulas under which the facts may be regarded
as sequences from some common ground.
When, too, attention is turned from the particular facts to
those generalized modes of the behavior of things which are
called " natural laws," the most sceptical inquiry appears lim-
ited, on the one hand, by assured and trustworthy cognitions,
and, on the other hand, by a complete and seemingly perma-
nent condition of nescience. This appears the more strange
from the point of view held by science as to the nature and
signification of the causal principle. Why violets should
emit one characteristic odor, and the reddish-brown substance
obtained from a bag behind the navel of the male of a certain
species of deer should emit a quite different but equally char-
acteristic odor, is not a question that science can at present
satisfactorily answer. Scientific curiosity would be gratified,
however, if these facts could be brought into connection with
others, and if some so-called law of the chemical constitution
of odors could be brought to light.
When we ask why the arrow shot from the bow, or the
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 383
stone loosened from the coping, or the meteor caught within
the magic influences of this terrestrial sphere, all agree in
falling, although by very different lines, to the ground, the
law of gravitation is the answer to the inquiry for all three.
And not only so, but also does this law embrace in its com-
pelling folds the planets and their satellites, and even some
of the remoter stars. But why should masses of matter
attract each other at all ; and why directly as the mass and
inversely as the square of their distance apart, rather than
in accordance with any one of an indefinite number of other
different formulas ? In spite of the many and persistent
efforts made to answer this question, there is still only one
answer possible : " We do not know ; and we have not the
least glimmer of a reason why." Just such a confession
of nescience must always limit that knowledge with which
science puts us into possession in the shape of its so-called
laws. Concerning the causal explanation of the most assured
and triumphant generalizations of science, our agnosticism
is as complete and invincible as it is concerning the most
startling and unique exceptions to those laws. The law
of gravitation is as mysterious as is the exceptional be-
havior of "1830 Groombridge " in apparent contravention
of that law. The expanding of water at just the degree of
32 Fahr. is actually no more an incomprehensible puzzle in
etiology than is its contraction all the way from 212° Fahr.
down to that degree.
Common-sense — it was said some time ago — "may sub-
stitute teleological reasons for causal action, and thus explain
further from another point of view." Science is accustomed
to proclaim that it cannot take this other point of view. It
must confine itself to asking why, in a way to indicate the need
of complicating further the mechanism, unless the new fact
can be brought into terms of harmony with the formulas gen-
eralized from other facts. Common-sense is often satisfied
with the naive suggestion that, perhaps, some good end may
384 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
be reached by departing from the strict and unswerving appli-
cation of the general formula. It may be, for example, that
the ideal purpose of the universe will be better served if all the
members of the solar system do, for a very long series of ages,
obey the law of gravitation, and if 1830 Groombridge does
not. Or if water follows the law of contracting down to about
32° Fahr., and then — "He knows why" — all of a sudden
departs from that law, the earth will be more fit for the habi-
tation of man, etc. And here a flood of light upon the physi-
cal constitution of things, as it is actually known to exist,
seems to burst in upon the sensitive mind. Such anthropo-
morphism the strictly scientific construction of the nature of
Reality refuses to accept. Science has its own limits to its
own anthropomorphism ; and these compel it to avow an
agnostic attitude of mind toward the ultimate reason and
significance of all natural laws. But, here again, it has been
clearly shown that the conceptions employed in the statement
of these laws, as well as the relations affirmed in the several
combinations of the conceptions, are all patterned after the
analogy of the most fundamental experiences of the self-
conscious Self. The only way, then, to validate these laws
for a really existent World of things is to accept the postu-
late that its being and transactions are somehow truly repre-
sented in human experience.
In this way, then, does the weary dove, sent through that
window of the senses which opens toward the endless expanse
of unexplored waters, return to its own ark within the soul
of man. The so-called illusions of the world of sense are
known as illusions only if our sceptical examination of the
sensuous deliverances is constantly accompanied and justified
by a faith in human cognitive powers. And after this faith
itself, and the grounds on which it reposes, and the springs
from which it proceeds to enlarge the sphere of science, have
been subjected to sceptical inquiry, the barriers that are a
combination of indubitable cognition and irremovable nesci-
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 385
ence, are only pushed a little way further back. Thus the
final state of the case is reached, and the last word which a
critical philosophy of knowledge can utter is spoken. The
soul knows itself with an increasing clearness and fulness of
content ; and it knows that somewhat not itself is given to it
to know, with all its own powers sharing duly in the activities
of sense-perception. Such are the limits of its scepticism both
by positive cognition and by nescience. The limits of its positive
knowledge are extended only upon these terms, — that it accept
these objects of its knowledge as somehow forming a unitary
system for the communication of this other and larger Self
with its own Self.
After what has been said in the preceding chapters * it is
scarcely necessary to discuss in detail the self-limiting nature
of scepticism and agnosticism as applied to the epistemologi-
cal problem of self-knowledge. Here the sceptical attitude
very speedily receives a check to its progress in any direction.
Do I raise and maintain a doubt as to the here-and-now
being of my Self? Whatever my general epistemological
position may be, and whatever interpretation I may give to the
conceptions current in every form of metaphysical discussion,
— even the most agnostic and scornful, — there are fixed
limits for this region within which doubt cannot even lift up
its head. Whatever you mean by " knowledge," in that
meaning, at the worst, I know that I here and now am.
Whatever your conception of " being," you cannot deny the
validity of the proposition, I here and now am. The same
thing is true concerning the remembered existence of Self.
Meaning for the word " knowledge," or material for the most
meagre conception of any sort of " existence," cannot be had
without admitting so much of indubitable self-cognition as
this. But this is itself, at one and the same time, the indubi-
table affirmation of a positive knowledge, and the setting of a
limit of nescience to the process of sceptical inquiry.
1 See also "Philosophy of Mind," chapters iii.-vi., and xi.
25
386 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
The limits of both indubitable conviction and of nescience
must, so far as we have any present information, or prospect of
information in time to come, be recognized as absolutely irre-
movable. They belong, indeed, to the very nature and growth
of cognitive faculty. The cognitive judgments in which are
expressed the answers to the questions, " Do I here and now
exist ? " " Did I exist in that yesterday, when, as I remem-
ber, I thought, felt, or acted in such a manner ? " " Have I,
in any sort, been one and the same Self from the remembered
' then ' to the self-conscious ; now ' ? " — are so clear and posi-
tive that no higher standpoint, or profounder and more compre-
hensive view of truth and reality, can possibly be gained from
which to gainsay or dispute these judgments. They fix the
irremovable barriers to scepticism in its attack upon the
truth of self-knowledge. But as we contemplate these ques-
tions and their indubitable answers critically, we find both
questions and answers freighted with a great load of mys-
teries, which psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics are
by their combined efforts quite impotent to lessen or to
remove. Nothing remains for us but the answers " I do not
know," and " Knowledge here seems denied to all men," when
these questions are proposed.
How is memory at all possible, — that present phase of con-
sciousness which carries with it the unique guarantee of an
existence of Self and of Things in the past, and so itself
makes possible a continuity both of cognitive development and
also of the being of the objects of cognition ? Psychology is
destined to remain agnostic in answer to this question. The
wisest students of mental phenomena are the readiest, not to
place its ultimate solution in " brain-memory " or in experi-
mental determination of the " laws of association," but to
confess nescience when problems of this order are proposed
for scientific treatment. How, indeed, in the last analysis, is
knowledge possible ; and who will vouch for the extra-mental
validity of that primitive and fundamental conviction which is
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 387
furnished by the mental process of knowledge itself ? From
the point of view of genetic psychology we may expound and
glorify the descriptive history of cognitive faculty. From the
point of view of epistemology we may analyze and discuss criti-
cally the maturing functions and the necessary implicates of
this faculty. But the results of all this must be expressed in
a series of propositions : " I know," or " I do not know ; " "I
think or opine this ; " or " I do not think, and guess not, that."
Such is the nature of the science of psychology, and such is
the nature of the philosophy of knowledge. Nor does psy-
chology differ in this respect from other sciences, or episte-
mology from other branches of philosophy. Yet the more
intense and thorough scientific inquiry becomes, the quicker
does it pass over the road that leads at last to the veil through
which man cannot see. The only answer now left to the
causal a Why ? " is a confession of nescience. " I do not
know " is all that science or philosophy can say to inquiries
after further explanations under this principle. But if we
will admit to the confidences of our speculative thinking the
question of the teleological " Why ? " we may perhaps frame a
rational hypothesis as to what lies beyond that veil.
Epistemological agnosticism, like sceptical inquiry, is by
nature self -limiting ; it is also encompassed by the limits on
the one hand of assured cognitions, and on the other hand of
reasonable and helpful faiths and practical postulates. In-
deed, in pursuing the course of sceptical and presupposition-
less inquiry through all the chapters of this book, we have
been setting positive and invincible limitations to epistemo-
logical agnosticism. More than once has it appeared that the
alternative reached by a course of reasoning which is conse-
quential, and which goes to the heart of the ultimate prob-
lems, forces this alternative : Either an agnosticism which
amounts to complete philosophical nihilism, and which ends
in absurdity so absolute as to be unstatable, or else the ad-
mission that human knowledge guarantees the transcendental
388 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
use and validity of the categories and of the ontological im-
plicates which analysis shows to be necessary " momenta " of
all knowledge. As the ultimate outcome of epistemological
criticism it has appeared that the extremest form of the
agnostic proposition itself assumes a whole World of Reality,
— Self and not-selves interrelated in quasi-systematic fashion,
which may be truthfully represented by the human mind.
For let us now briefly reconsider the different meanings
which it is possible to give to the " cognitive judgment " of the
agnostic. Certainly his judgment bears a distinctly cognitive
form ; since its proposition is, not merely " I doubt," but in its
minimum of trans-subjective reference, " I do not know." But
this " I-do-not-know " is itself an experience which is preg-
nant with meaning only as it carries within itself all the life
from which springs a world of transcendent reality. For
the " I " which avows itself to be in this state of nescience is
as truly a self-known Self as is the confident Ego of the most
credulous dogmatist. The state of nescience, or wow-knowl-
edge, in which it knows itself to be is meaningless except
as contrasted with the memory-image of previous states of
knowledge. Indeed, so far as epistemology, in distinction from
psychology and logic, is concerned, the judgment " I-do-not-
know " is not to be distinguished, with respect to its grounds
or its implicates, from the judgment " I-know." Now, it has
been explained in great detail that all cognitive judgment
necessarily implies the existence of a number of beings other
than the Self, to some of whom — namely, the other selves —
it always appeals, as furnishing in their nature common char-
acteristics with our own, and thus as acknowledging with us
some objective standard of truth ; so that the " I-do-not-know "
is an affirmation of an experience which is as truly transcen-
dent, in a legitimate sense of that word, as any cognitive
experience can possibly be.
" I do not know " may be a sincerely modest and truthful
affirmation of the experience of the individual cognitive soul ;
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 389
and it may be accompanied by the proper feelings, and made
in a commendable spirit, when applied to problems of episte-
mology. It may signify a state of nescience, out of which the
soul may reasonably expect to emerge, if only it will follow
good guidance along the path of self-criticism. Even if any
individual agnostic prefers to plunge sideways out of this path
of careful inquiry, in the faith that he may somehow " feel "
his way to shelter from the gathering storm, his case is not
hopeless. For, as will soon be shown clearly, all cognition
has its teleological aspect and its ethical and sesthetical
factors ; and, although self-knowledge is the only sure path
to the truth about all knowledge, many men are, by constitu-
tion or by habit, not of robust frame and steady head enough
to climb the heights of assurance by this path. So, then, the
experience of all alike, when the narrative of that experience
is finally made up and fully disclosed, teaches the same truth
with regard to the limits of agnosticism.
Suppose, however, — and this is for the most part the case
of the avowed agnostic regarding epistemological problems, —
that the judgment affirming nescience means somewhat more
than appears upon its surface. Now, this " I-do-not-know "
may mean also " You do not know," and even " Nobody
knows, or ever will know, or ever can know." This is nesci-
ence venturing into the field of epistemological philosophy,
and laying down a universal proposition. But it requires no
critical insight, or work of analysis, in order to show that such
nescience is the most self-confident and comprehensive kind
of knowledge, if only it be regarded from certain perfectly
unprejudiced points of view. Such an agnostic may always
be asked, with the most complacent of countenances, " What
is it that you and I and all men are constitutionally doomed
to remain ignorant about?" The reply, if it is to be stated
in terms that can be defended, cannot possibly include any of
those laws, factors, implicates, or faiths and postulates, which
our previous critical discussion has shown to belong of invin-
390 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
cible right to all human knowledge. Indeed such an agnostic
assumes to know even more than our presuppositionless theory
of knowledge undertakes to guarantee : Other minds exist, and
are subject to like limitations with the mind of the agnostic ;
the laws of these minds, and the cognitive relations they bear
to that Reality wiiich even the Unknown, the X, is assumed
to have, are going to remain forever unchanged ; the nature
of these minds and of their cognitive processes, together with
the appropriate feelings of doubt and despair, have already
been explored so deeply and tested so thoroughly that no
more of latent vital capacity for cognition is even to be sus-
pected. Moreover, there is assumed a positive and conclu-
sive knowledge that the common mental representation of the
reality of the world of things is not indeed what it claims to
be, — namely, cognition ; it is mere sensation, mere ideation,
mere abstract thinking, and cannot be the truth in the sense
which men usually attach to that word. But who does not
see that so much nescience as this involves a vast amount
of the most positive and comprehensive propositions, which,
instead of confessing a sceptical attitude of mind toward
Truth and Reality, the rather manifest an attitude of extreme
dogmatism concealed under agnostic guise ?
If, however, the more absolute and universal agnostic for-
mulas are understood as limited in relation to the positive
content and proper implicates of all knowledge, they take on a
totally different character. That not a few questions may be
asked about knowledge and reality to which the reply must
always be an unequivocal declaration of nescience, few
students of epistemology and metaphysics would think of
denying. Epistemology and metaphysics concur in showing
that this is necessarily so. But here again these very scepti-
cal inquiries and their agnostic answers are based upon a
foundation of assured, positive knowledge. Some things I
know indubitably in answer to the sceptical inquiry as to the
Being of the really Existent ; some things also as to what
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 391
Knowledge is, and as to what of Reality my knowledge impli-
cates and guarantees. Without recognition of these fixed
points, as it were, in the flux of the cognitive processes, the
agnostic answers to other questions could neither be reached
nor even stated.
To return now to the illustration of which Kant makes, for
his theory of nescience, such telling use : It appears that the
case as between our cognitive minds and the transcendental
being of the world is not at all as this great thinker made it to
be. The island of our cognition is not a well-defined amount
of ready-made " stuff," already completely explored by episte-
mology and mapped out in unobjectionable and unalterable
outlines, within which no increment of extra-mental existence
can, as it were, enter. Nor does Reality stand related to this
island of cognition as a boundless and wholly impenetrable
ocean, forever covered with a veil of mist and fog. What
Kant means by " the island " is an ever-expanding life of the
Self ; and this life may — it is, at least, conceivable — extend its
self-knowledge indefinitely ; but it always knows itself as real
and as standing in actually experienced relations to a system
of other beings, that are known as not-itself. Instead, then,
of the island being impenetrable to Reality, its very life and
growth consists in processes of the absorption and assimila-
tion, so to speak, of the real with the expanding Self. And
the surrounding ocean is thereby more and more cleared up
for vision from that island, if only one will take the loftier
and more cloudless points of view. For the ocean and the
island are, indeed, not throughout to be identified ; neither do
they run parallel to each other, like the two tracks of a rail-
road bed. But they are parts of one World ; and they are
known in one experience as belonging to the unitary Being
of that one world. And what the nature of the ocean is,
beyond the many inlets and bays with which it interpenetrates
the island, and beyond the line where the fog and mist re-
treat on the sunniest of our days, may be conjectured, bravely
392 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
and rationally, from these better points of view. For the
faith which takes us through the fog and the mist is not of the
nature of an irrational plunge into a tide where no swimmer
can hope to survive ; it is only, after all, of a nature common
to the postulate of an analogy between the Self and its
World, — by confidence in which all the particular sciences
progressively make conquests of this one world.
It appears, then, that the sceptical and agnostic attitudes
of mind toward truth in general, as well as toward those par-
ticular truths in the establishment and critical reconstruction
of which the very growth of the body of science consists,
belong to the life of the cognitive soul; but they are not
attitudes in which the soul may rest and be satisfied with
conclusions that follow upon the view of experience from
these attitudes alone. Scepticism, or that inquiry which
originates in the spirit of doubt before the propositions of an
uncritical dogmatism, is the fit incitement, the rational priv-
ilege, and the seal of dignity, for human knowledge. It is
limited both by that fuller and more certain cognition, and
also by that enlightened agnosticism to which it points out
the way.
"It is man's privilege to doubt,
If so be that from doubt at length,
Truth may stand forth unmoved of change,
An image with profulgent brows,
And perfect limbs, as from the storm
Of running fires and fluid range
Of lawless airs, at last stood out
This excellence and solid form
Of constant beauty."
Agnosticism, as distinguished from scepticism, is either a
truthful confession of a temporary and curable condition of
the individual mind, or else it is a positive and universal
proposition which itself aspires to the position of a well-
grounded and comprehensive cognitive judgment. In the
latter case, however, it cannot possibly deny for itself the
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 393
ontological significance which every universal denial, and,
indeed, every negative cognitive judgment, necessarily pos-
sesses. Here the principles of non-contradiction and of suffi-
cient reason, of the transcendental use of the categories in all
universal propositions, and of the ontological implicates that
inhere in those processes which terminate in the cognitive
judgment, have their most rigid and complete application.
All such principles set invincible limits to agnosticism, which
are of positive and supreme epistemological value. But, on
the other hand, all human knowledge is, not so much rigidly
encompassed and limited by the unknown as interconnected
with and based upon presuppositions, postulates, and unanalyz-
able data of fact, concerning the origin and causal explana-
tion of which no answer whatever can be given. As all
science explains only by reference to the unexplained and the
inexplicable, so a theory of knowledge is philosophically
grounded only as it admits that much of its critical effort ends
in nescience. In view of this it is customary and appropriate
to say that the process of explaining by giving reasons, and
by connecting one " moment " of experience with another,
cannot go on forever. But what we have been trying to show
is something more fundamental than this. The human mind
does not refuse the effort to explain because it gets tired at
some point or other in moving along the line of that effort ; nor
is the task of epistemology like that of milking a he-goat into
a sieve. The rather is our conclusion this : The positive char-
acter and indubitable ontological validity of human knowledge,
but also its limited character and inevitable failure to frame
the full and perfectly clear picture of the extra-mentally existent
World, must both be recognized and combined in an epistemo-
logical doctrine which shall claim the warrant of all our experi-
ence. A "trans-subjective minimum" is always found, left
over, as it were, from the most corroding tests of a sceptical
and agnostic criticism. This remnant, " which shall be saved "
from the fires of doubt and the frosts of nescience, has always
394 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM
enough of life in it to generate anew a system of confident
cognitions touching the nature and meaning of Reality as
given to men to know. And when the higher life of conduct,
of art, and of religion, is breathed into this remnant, it soon
takes on a diviner and more clearly recognizable shape. But
the revelations which it then makes of its own nature are only
for eyes that have been touched with another Spirit than that
which fitly rules over the course of a critical epistemology ;
although such a critical epistemology, if it reaches a point
near the goal of the fullest and worthiest self-cognition, pre-
pares the way for such revelations. Nor is there any so very
marked break in the course, when we pass from knowledge of
Self and of Things to so-called faith in the Supreme and Ulti-
mate Reality.
At this point, it is not only interesting, but suggestive of a
truth which merits and will receive further examination, to
notice again that scepticism and agnosticism receive most of
their needful correction in the life of feeling and of action.
The rights of philosophical criticism must never be discredited
or denied ; and after having taken so much pains to think our
way through the clouds of doubt and nescience, we are not
going to fall back again upon the refuge of mere feeling, or of
a doing that is irrational and does not strive, as far as possible,
at self-understanding. But knowledge itself has been seen to
be something more than mere thinking. The rather is it an
attitude of the entire cognitive soul toward the reality with
which the soul has commerce in the act of cognition. If those
who " dabble in the fount of fictive tears " and thus " divorce
the feeling from her mate the deed," fail of the highest truth,
so also do those who forget the question and answer of Goethe,
" How can a man learn to know himself ? By reflection never,
only by action." It is by having actual transactions with, by
handling, as it were, ourselves and other things, that we
know that we and they are, and what we and they are. 1 From
1 Compare Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, pp. 512 f.
SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 395
this point of view it is not mere juggling with words, when it
is claimed that the practical confidence of men in their cogni-
tions of themselves, of other men, and of the world of things,
gives the lie to all professions of a sceptical idealism or of
a complete and consistent agnosticism.
" There is no Unbelief!
Whoever says to-morrow, the unknown,
The future, trusts that power alone
Nor dares disown."
Nor is such faith to be spoken of as though it were a foreigner
that can find " room " in the mind only after knowledge
has been " removed." It is the handmaid of knowledge.
And the deed which it motives, and the reward which follows
only upon the deed, are the fitting expression and appointed
adjunct to the growing life of cognition.
CHAPTER XIV
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
INHERE is only one conceivable way in which the most
-*■ thoroughly sceptical examination of the problem of
knowledge could end in complete agnosticism as to any
trans-subjective value for the functioning and the products of
our cognitive faculties. To follow that way one must demon-
strate beyond doubt the existence of genuine " antinomies "
in the very heart of reason itself. Perhaps, however, the
theoretical outcome of the employment of reason as compelled
to be self-critical, but doomed to reach so unhappy a con-
clusion, would better be described as a peculiar kind of scep-
ticism. Dogmatic universal agnosticism it could not well be ;
for, as has been shown in the preceding chapter, such agnos-
ticism affirms a vast amount of assured cognitions, although
in a quasi-unconscious and self-contradictory way.
But suppose that the ultimate result of our critical inquiries
— incited, urged on, and guided by a restless and determined
spirit of doubt — is the discovery of fundamental and irre-
solvable contradictions, both of an epistemological and of an
ontological reference. Suppose, on the one hand, that we find
the very laws of our own cognitive life compelling us to think
or believe true what they themselves, when considered from
other and equally tenable points of view, show cannot possibly
be known to be true, or what must even be held to be false.
Suppose, on the other hand, that the Reality which appears to
be given to us, with clearness and self-consistency, by certain
forms of cognition, shows to the more searching analysis of
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 397
philosophy certain inherent and irremovable contradictions.
For example, It must be known as both " One " and " Many,"
— in meanings of these two words which are carefully adapted
to make them positively inapplicable to the same subject. Or,
It must be known as never changing or in any way subjected
to the differentiations which the phenomenal reality of things
displays ; and yet also known as ceaselessly changing and
as itself the subject and ground of all change. Or, again, It
must be known as Absolute in the sense of being wholly
unrelated to aught else and quite incapable of any self-differ-
entiation which shall bring it into a system of self-relations ;
and yet also known as the subject and ground of all relations.
Or, once more, It must not be known or thought of as personal,
because personality is essentially limitation ; and yet every
applicable conception which we can possibly form in our most
happy moments of insight and aspiration, as a matter of fact
is, and as sound doctrine of epistemology must be, taken
from our experience with our own self-known Selves.
Now, it is tolerably plain that any issue to the process of
sceptical inquiry similar to the several conclusions given
above might possibly force this alternative upon the mind
experiencing it : either resolutely to maintain the sceptical as
distinguished from the dogmatically agnostic attitude, or else
to get over into the attitude of affirmation in some other than
the critical way. It is a fact of no little epistemological sig-
nificance in the history of philosophy that most reflective
thinkers have preferred to espouse the latter member of this
alternative. Reasons for this fact, which lie deep in the na-
ture of man, are not wanting. It is not a pleasant or satisfac-
tory condition for the human mind to be consciously turning
over and over the problem of knowledge, — like a squirrel
pawing a revolving cage, and looking through the bars upon
tempting fields outlying, but with the conviction that cage,
and outlying fields, and the being who is ceaselessly turning
and looking are all alike parts of one phantasmagoria. Both
398 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
the heart and the mind of man revolt at this. But nothing
else is strictly logical for one who discovers " antinomies " in
his own cognitive faculty — in the most appropriate meaning
of that much abused and ambiguous word. Just here, there-
fore, the influence of practical considerations is apt to become
very strong. The way out of the cage seems, in some sort,
to open for " faith ; " or else the necessity, if not the ration-
ality, is discovered of acting as though the truth were on one
side or the other of the still unyielding antinomy. This prac-
tical solution of the alleged antinomies of reason is apt to be
accomplished either with considerable show of violence and
some scornful reference to the futility of metaphysics as an
ontological affair ; or else it puts forth the sweet assumption
of superiority to all considerations of a merely reflective
kind, and poses as an attainment of great ethical and
religious value.
It scarcely need be pointed out to any one who has thought-
fully followed the course of our critical investigations up to
this point that we cannot accept such an alternative without
abandoning all the best results attained by these investiga-
tions. To speak truth, we have scant respect for the alterna-
tive. We do not find ourselves forced to take it, or to adopt
any other form of a similar alternative. For we believe that
all such " antinomies " — that is, all alleged contradictions in
the fundamental laws of cognition, or as between those " cate-
gories " whose ontological application is necessary to the con-
struction of a conception of the really existent World — are
fictions of the critic's imagination. In other words, they are
only spurious antinomies. This negative conclusion, with its
justifiable scorn, in answer to the agnostic scorn for meta-
physics, or to the weakly sidling out of the difficult path
of criticism into the refuge of a merely emotional and practi-
cal faith, is defensible on grounds of history. As to the
" family of faith," we, too, claim an inalienable right to be
counted among its members. As to " confidence in reason,"
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 399
it is a reasonable and prudent confidence of this sort which
has been confirmed and expounded by following the course of
a presuppositionless criticism. As to a proposal to " divorce "
the two, we will hear nothing of it. No irreconcilable quarrel
has yet been discovered between faith and reason, but rather,
their indissoluble union in the very nature of the cognitive
process itself. And the history of human reflective thinking
shows that the mind of man, both in the actual development
of knowledge and in its maturer judgment respecting the the-
oretical outcome of a criticism of knowledge, does not rest in
this alternative.
The full historical disproof of the existence of real antino-
mies in the cognitive functions of the human mind, or in its
reasoned conception of the really Existent, cannot, of course,
be undertaken in this treatise. We shall, however, make a
somewhat careful testing of several alleged examples as pro-
posed by two writers on this subject. Of all critics who have
discovered antinomies in human reason as the result of a
critical examination of its nature, Kant is undoubtedly at once
the most thorough, subtle, and seductive, if not convincing.
It would be difficult to put the doctrine of antinomies into a
more defensible form, whether as regarded from the theoreti-
cal or from the practical point of view, than that given to it
in the "Transcendental Dialectic" (the "logic of illusion,"
Die Logik des Scheins). The recent work of Mr. Bradley on
" Appearance and Reality " propounds a similar doctrine in
even a more unmistakable, but cruder and less elaborate form.
One or two of the special examples brought forward by these
two advocates of irreconcilable contradictions in the faculty
of cognition as applied to extra-mental Reality will suffice for
illustration and enforcement of our negative position toward
all antinomies.
The examples both of Kant and of Mr. Bradley are not anti-
nomies at all ; they are, rather, spurious contradictions which
can always be got up when abstract conceptions of more or less
400 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
doubtful empirical origin and of perverted or mutilated con-
struction are hypostasized and brought into relations that are
themselves either fictitious or abstracted inconsiderately from
the relations of real individual things. Of other examples that
might be culled from history, — for they grow thick enough
along either side of the path of epistemological criticism, —
there would seem to be no need. Conclusions like those found
in the unhappy and largely absurd attempt of Dean Mansel to
recommend faith in God by involving the conception of Him
as Absolute in hopeless contradictions may well enough be
left to feel the force of the treatment accorded to this particu-
lar example by John Stuart Mill ; for, although this quondam
positivist left a posthumous declaration of his personal faith
in God, he freely and indignantly consigned himself to eternal
perdition rather than believe in such a Divine Being as the
juggling of ecclesiastical agnosticism had commended to him.
But before illustrating our unequivocal denial of all alleged
antinomies, it is necessary to review briefly the affirmative
position to which the critical process has led us. It has been
made clear that while, from the psychological point of view,
every cognition is a process in consciousness, and subjective
both as to content and function-wise, no cognition is merely
subjective ; on the contrary, the very nature of cognition, epis-
temologically considered, is tfr^ms-subjective and ontological
in its reference and its implicates. Speaking with a broader
and more inclusive view before us, experience is indeed always
capable of being represented as, for every individual mind, its
very own and no other. And yet, in every cognitive experi-
ence, it — that is, the experience considered as a single "mo-
ment " in the flux of consciousness — is itself transcended.
No cognition is of itself as a mere momentary state ; it is of
some existence which must be regarded as not dependent for
its being upon that state. The possibility of transcending
experience by knowledge can be denied only if we refuse to
enlarge the meaning of experience itself so as to include both
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 401
the implicates which criticism of the processes of knowledge
discovers, and as well the legitimate conclusions, as to the
nature of the Self and of Things, which result from the think-
ing that enters into all cognitive experience. So that when
scepticism seems about to bring us to the position of complete
agnosticism, or of the positivism which denies the possibility
of transcending experience, it always destroys itself in the
depths of absurdity to which it has sunk.
In connection with this critical result, the transcendental
use of the so-called " categories " is vindicated. Among these
categories Relation and Change are, in some sort, supreme.
We know that relations really are, and that changes actually
take place. Indeed, this proposition is not itself debatable
and matter of argument ; but to dispute it is to enter upon an
absurd attempt, by an affirmation of nescience, to overcome,
in making the affirmation, the constitutional forms of cog-
nition itself. What it is " really to be related," and what it
is " actually to change," is given in the indubitable experience
with the Self, as really changing its own states in dependence
upon immediately cognized or reasonably inferred relations to
things. But if to dispute the trans-subjective reference and
validity of these categories is absurd, to explain them in terms
that are simpler and more intelligible is impossible. All expla-
nation, in other words, assumes and makes use of the same
categories ; and all explanation makes use of them with the
assumption that they are valid in reality. Now, this concrete
reality, really related and actually changing, is the reality
which we immediately and indubitably know. Reality — in
general, and spelled with a capital R — may be a mere ab-
straction ; and to oppose it to the known reality, after the
latter has been degraded by calling it "Appearance," may be
equivalent to an act of highway robbery. Such an act is no
less indefensible because the proceeds are subsequently handed
over to some ethical or religious Reformatory. But if the
question be pressed, What further is this Reality, thus known
26
402 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
as really related and actually changing ? we can only answer :
" It is the Self and that which the Self knows, both negatively
as not-self and positively in so far as it appears analogous to
the Self, — in an indefinite variety of relations and an endless
series of changes."
The detailed reconciliation of this transcendental use of the
categories of relation and change with the conception of some-
thing permanent and unchanging, belongs to a critical meta-
physics. But the detailed examination already given to the
principles of identity and of sufficient reason, not only in their
logical and subjective aspects but also in their ontological and
trans-subjective references, forbids that conceptions of Sub-
stance, Law, Identity, Unity, Causal Nexus, etc., should be so
constructed as to create antinomies between them and the con-
crete facts of the life of cognition ; that is, valid conceptions
of substance, law, identity, unity, causal nexus, etc., must be
framed upon the same basis of cognition as that in which are
employed, so to speak, the categories of relation and of change.
Speaking in a more general way, contradictions cannot be the-
oretically introduced that do not actually find themselves
resolved in our cognitive experience with ourselves and with
things. This known world is known ; it is known really to
be. Antinomies between it and the world of abstract think-
ing — whether conceived of as oppositions and contradictions
between "phenomenal reality" and "noumena" (Ding-an-
sich), or between "Appearance" and "Reality" — are not
genuine antinomies. And if agnosticism is to return upon
us in the shape of rational antinomies, then, as was said of
the unfortunate into whom an increase of demons entered,
" the last state of that man is worse than the first."
This brief resume, however, is quite sufficient to remind us
how the appearance of irreconcilable contradictions may
emerge to a criticism that is one-sided, and that fails to
grasp the essence and the significance of knowledge in its to-
tality. For here, it may be said, is the very hearth and source
ALLEGED ''ANTINOMIES" 403
of antinomies : Knowledge is subjective and yet trans-sub-
jective ; it is infra-mental phenomenon, and yet it implicates
extra-mental reality. The categories, or modes of the function-
ing of mind in all knowledge, are capable of being regarded as
purely formal; they afford themes for psychology and logic
to discuss, just as though no question of a real world were
anyhow implied in the discussion. Yet some at least of these
so-called categories are the very essential and inescapable
forms of all the reality about which aught can be known or'
even conceived.
We may not indeed affirm off-hand that the Reality is just
as we find ourselves compelled by the laws of our understanding
to think it ; but what that is unthinkable and inconceivable
can lay any claim, at the door of either our understandings
or our hearts, to a place in our world of real beings and of
actual transactions ? Now, if the terms for such oppositions
as these are correctly understood, they suggest different
modes of regarding our one cognitive experience, instead of
irreconcilable oppositions in the very nature of that experience.
The antinomies which they suggest are solved practically, up
to the limit which marks off the agnostic attitude toward
the foundations of all experience, by every special act of cog-
nitive experience. To know anything is to solve these antino-
mies. For every act of knowledge may — nay, must — be
regarded as both subjective and trans-subjective, intra-mentul
phenomenon, and e xtr a-ment&\ly referent. Each cognition is
an individual, concrete experience which transcends itself,
regarded as individual and concrete. It gives to conscious-
ness some portion of the world as its idea ; and also as other
and more than its idea, — as Reality in action over against
the ideating Self.
Now, if certain abstract statements or laws seem to follow
from the facts of cognitive experience, which appear to be
contradictory or " antinomic " in the deeper meaning of that
latter word, we shall do well to remember : " Actuality has
404 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
ways and means to make that possible which looks to us as
though it were afflicted with irreconcilable contradictions."
This practical solution of seeming contradictories is actually
accomplished by the human mind for itself every time it pos-
its, in a feeling-full and voluntary way, a cognitive judgment.
Body and soul, the Self (as it were, intellect, feeling, and will),
takes possession of the extra-mentally real, and makes it its
own. Hence the agnosticism of the idealist or positivist who
denies the actuality of this reconciling experience must be
satisfied to place its own alleged antinomies upon a basis
of logical abstractions which, in their turn, have no other
ground than these very acts of cognition that afford the prac-
tical solution of all such antinomies.
Ordinarily, however, the antinomies proposed by the scep-
tical critic are not the products of so deeply seated a disease.
They are not even to be considered as " antinomies " at all in
the sense in which their discoverer would have us believe he
uses this word. This observation fitly leads to a brief dis-
cussion of the several possible kinds of contradiction which
may be found lurking in the alleged cognitions of men. That
facts of cognitive experience, quoad facts, can contradict each
other, no one would think of claiming seriously. Statements
of alleged facts may well enough be found in irreconcilable
opposition to each other. But this is the opposition of truth
of fact to error in matter-of-fact, or of one error in matter-of-
fact to another, rather than an antinomy properly so-called.
Science encounters innumerable such contradictions, as does
also our ordinary practical knowledge ; and the smooth prog-
ress of knowledge is much embarrassed, while its solid and
matured growth is fostered, by them. Conceptions, too, when
framed by different minds upon the basis of fundamentally
similar and yet, after all, exceedingly various facts of experi-
ence, may contain opposed or contradictory elements. So
that not only may men, without conscious lying or error,
affirm, the one, " It was so," or, " So he did," and the other,
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 405
" It was not so," or, " So he did not," but they may also
express their most deliberate judgments as to the consti-
tution and behavior of familiar things in quite squarely
contradictory terms. Nor does the recent rapid progress
of the physical and psychological sciences seem to diminish,
but rather to multiply and to intensify these opposed concep-
tions. The highest and most comprehensive conceptions,
the most general and demonstratively assured laws, of these
sciences are all capable of being filled with apparent contra-
dictions, if only the limits of their accuracy in application
and the tentative and fluid nature of their constitution be
disregarded. Indeed, if one choose to look at the matter
thus, — and this is a permissible and even fruitful manner
of regarding it, — all growth of knowledge depends upon the
principle of contradiction being active in a very comprehen-
sive and lively way. I do not conceive of anything now in
such manner as to escape all contradiction of my conceptions
of twenty or thirty years ago. " When I was a child, I spake
as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but
when I became a man, I put away childish things." Of every
individual and of the race it must now and always, we doubt
not, be said : " For we know in part, and we prophesy in
part." Not once for all, but always and continuously, is the
hope of the individual and of the race : " When that which is
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be " — con-
tradicted partially, and largely transcended, and so — "done
away."
In some sort, all specific orderly arrangements of the
results of the observation of facts are liable, and even cer-
tain, to be contradicted by similar arrangements of other
facts, or even of the same facts looked upon from other points
of view. No law (or nomos) gets realization in the world
of experience without limitation, opposition, and contradic-
tion from other laws (or nomoi). Laws, when set into actual
operation by the behavior of real beings, inevitably reveal
406 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
their inherent oppositions (are anti-nomoi). For real beings
do not actually divide their qualities according to the terms
in which we describe them ; nor are their transactions actually
separable according to the forces and laws which we speak
of as " seated in " or " ruling over " them. Why, for example,
does not the projecting part of the coping stone fall, in obedi-
ence to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building ?
Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting
under quite different laws, thwart and oppose, for the time
being, the law of gravitation. In the reality itself, the law
of gravitation and the laws of cohesion exist as antinomies
(nomoi that are anti-nomoi}. But now, after a frosty night,
the coping stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the
ground ; for that unique law which makes water expand
forcibly at 82° Fahr. has contradicted the laws of cohesion
and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily
suspended rights over this mass of matter.
As science rises in its observations and generalizations from
the relatively simple and more massive forms of the being
and behavior of real things to the more complex and molecular
or atomic, it is obliged to posit a great variety of new forces
which act against the unrestricted reign of those laws that
suffice to express what belongs to the simpler and more
massive forms. The picture which the chemico-physical view
of the world presents to us is an indefinite exemplification of
the antinomic action of various forces so-called. Indeed, the
specific qualifications of those elementary physical beings, the
atoms out of which chemical science gets the orderly con-
struction of actuality, consist — to the extent of fully one half
their entire content — in just this : they can, in accordance
with laws of their own, contradict each other in their common
strife after fitting partners with which to make a temporary
combination. But molecules and atoms are all constantly
united in contradicting the more primary. laws of physics.
Chemical laws and physical laws, in actuality, are antinomies.
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 407
The pitiful failure of the modern effort to make out of biology
a purely chemi co-physical science affords numberless other
illustrations of the same truth. And the effort to establish
a theory of mental life in terms of the combination and
differentiation of sensations and ideas is, even now, giving
tokens of a yet more pitiful failure. Whenever I do anything
with a conscious motive in view, I put myself in opposition
to the uninterrupted action of the merely chemi co-physical
and the psycho-physical mechanism.
He, however, who denies the possibility of knowledge, or
the possibility of the existence of a unitary system of things,
because human knowledge of things is an unceasing recogni-
tion of the immanence of many conflicting forces acting under
laws of opposition and resistance (laws, that is, which when
brought face to face seem to be antinomies), reasons falsely
and goes quite wide of the true state of the case. For it is
just in the recognition of the facts of opposition and of the
modes of the actual behavior of things under conflicting laws
that quite one half of all our knowledge consists. Moreover,
it is only while maintaining their own specific being, and
refusing to. be identified throughout with one another, that
these many Things make up the Unity of the World.
If now any one is offended because this fair and orderly
cosmos has just been accused of being full of antinomies, he
may perhaps be appeased by thinking out more clearly what
is meant by " laws," and in what sense laws can be " opposed "
to one another ; in what sense, that is, " antinomies " can exist
for critical discovery and recognition. At present it is suffi-
cient merely to note that the word " law " simply means a
more or less uniform mode of the behavior of things, as looked
at from one chosen point of view. But, in reality, no thing is
so mean or so restricted in its equipment of capacity for doing
and for suffering that it can ever be satisfactorily considered
from one point of view simply. Every Thing — according to
the very terms of the hypothesis — i$ one thing ; and what
408 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
it is now doing is one specific transaction under definite terms
of relation to many different things. Bat the real being of
each thing is infinitely complex ; and its actual doing may be
considered under an indefinite number of relations, from an
indefinite number of points of view. What falls into con-
tradiction is our abstractions ; and this they always do if we
inconsiderately plump them down as though they were the
sole measures of the real, even as it is known to us. The
fact that antinomies thus emerge does not discredit human
knowledge ; the rather is it proof of the richness and variety
of human knowledge. Nor does it show that there can be no
reality answering in any way to our system of cognitions ;
the rather does it show the infinite richness and variety of
content belonging to Reality, as not simply answering to, but
far surpassing the terms under which it is known by man.
The further exposition of this subject, too, must be left to
the details of a critical metaphysics.
When, however, the question is raised whether antinomies
exist in all knowledge, and so in all reality as known to us, the
answer must assume a different form. Yet the form appro-
priate to this answer has already been suggested. When-
ever antinomies of this sort and extent in their applicability
are propounded as a result of the criticism of cognitive
faculty, the exercise of this faculty by the critic himself must
be subjected to a careful revisionary criticism. For it may
turn out that the alarming noise is merely the result of the
petrified abstractions of the critic which are meeting in mid-
air and exploding each other ; and this surely may take place
without great actual damage either to human knowledge or to
the world of the extra-mentally existent which is given in this
knowledge. One may then return more calmly to the belief
that truth is to be had by right exercise of human cog-
nitive faculty. One may even get increase of conviction that
no truth has anything to fear from other truths ; while illusion
and error — no less in the higher regions of philosophical
ALLEGED » ANTINOMIES " 409
criticism than in the denser air of ordinary sense-perceptions
— have every truth to fear. Then, too, Truth may come to
mean again what it always has meant to minds undisturbed
by epistemological scepticism or agnosticism, — namely, men-
tal representation which affords a valid cognition of the being
and transactions of Reality. Such re visionary criticism of
the antinomic conclusions of a previous sceptical criticism
we shall now briefly attempt — as was promised above — in
the two following cases.
The claim made by Kant that the purpose of his critical
examination of man's cognitive faculty was the removal of
knowledge (rather the illusory pretence of knowledge) in
order to " make room " for faith (in God, Freedom, and Im-
mortality) has not, of late, been sufficiently credited. The
sincerity of this claim is, however, beyond reasonable ques-
tion. It is proved by his own declaration, by the many indi-
cations in the " Critique of Pure Reason " which look forward
to the " Critique of Practical Reason," and in the latter work,
which look backward upon the earlier work, and also by the
very bulk and chosen method of the " Transcendental Dialec-
tic." The "Transcendental Logic" is, indeed, that part of the
" Critique of Pure Reason " which has excited interest and
promoted hermeneutical discussion, far out of proportion to its
size. But the relatively condensed form in which Kant left
it, and the changes which he made in the second edition for
the avowed purpose of increased clearness and of defending
its doctrine against the charge of sceptical idealism, indicate
that Kant himself regarded this part of his "Transcendental
Logic " as only subsidiary to his main critical intent. This
intent was chiefly, then, to establish beyond controversy the
doctrine " of a logic of illusion " (eine Logik des Scheins). It
is in this doctrine that the resolve of its author to " make
room " for faith comes to a culmination with the sceptical
conclusion : All cognition of noumena is, by the very consti-
tution of the mind, forever rendered impossible. Here the
410 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
critical examination of those processes by which the mind
thinks to gain a knowledge of Reality shows that these pro-
cesses are, in their essential nature, deceptive. The " dialectic
of pure reason " is declared to be " natural and inevitable ; "
its illusion is " inherent in, and inseparable from, human
reason ; " and " even after the illusion has been exposed," it
will " never cease to fascinate our reason." But such dialectic
is an illusion, utterly and forever incapable of telling us any
truth about the real Self, or the actual World of things.
The reality we know is but an appearance of reality (phe-
nomenal reality) ; the actual reality — if so uncouth a phrase
may be pardoned — is unknown and unknowable, whether
our minds strive toward a satisfactory knowledge of Self or
of Things.
It is not our purpose here to discuss thoroughly the general
positions of the " Transcendental Dialectic." Indeed, the
most important of them have already been considered, either
with or without direct reference to Kant. But whatever view
may be held as to the other significant aspects of the episte-
mological problem, the success of the critical effort to estab-
lish antinomies, in the Kantian sense, would have the effect
which their original proposer intended that it should have ; it
would destroy forever the possibility of knowledge in the
sense which we have found ourselves compelled to give to
that term. According to Kant the reason of all men is
afflicted with a constitutional and incurable tendency to start
from something which is known, and by false syllogistic pro-
cesses conclude " to something else of which no conception ever
can be had, but to which, under constraint from an inevitable
illusion, there is, nevertheless, attributed objective validity."
Thus do all cheat themselves who suppose that they know the
truth about the real nature of their own souls, of the world
of things, and of " a Being of all beings," whom faith calls
God. All these phrases stand not for concepts based, in a
valid way, upon a real cognitive experience ; " they are
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 411
sophistications, not of (individual) men, but of pure reason
itself, from which even the wisest of men cannot escape."
Kant's main object is to show that they are indeed sophistica-
tions ; and that the syllogisms by which these conceptions
are reached, form a species of juggling rather than a trust-
worthy activity of reason (eher vernunftelnde ah Vernunft-
schlusse zu nennen). Both reasoning and conceptions, as estab-
lished by the reasoning, are involved in hopeless internal
contradictions.
For our present purpose it is not necessary to distinguish
between the epistemological and logical standing of the
"paralogisms" and that of the "antinomies " of pure reason.
Both are given as instances under the agnostic conclusion of
Kant's sceptical examination of human cognitive faculty.
The knowledge which the soul has of its own real being, or
rather fancies itself to have, is reduced to an " inevitable
illusion " of reason " which drives us to a formally false con-
clusion ; " because we are continually substituting a concep-
tion of the soul derived from the mere form of thinking,
under which it appears to itself, for its nature as really exist-
ent. Thus the application to the soul of the categories of
substantiality, unity, and relation to things, is a work of illu-
sion. But the contradictions which Kant finds inherent in
these so-called paralogisms are all put there by him ; they are
the products of his own tendency to substitute formal and
seductive abstractions for concrete and content-full realities.
Such substantiality, unity, and relationship to possible objects
in space, as he declares that reason attributes inevitably to the
soul, may well enough for the most part be denied. But the
real illusion, on the part of both Kant and of the theologians
whom he controverts, consisted in attributing their arguments
to a necessity of reason. It is not, therefore, a criticism of
all reason which is needed, with a view to detect its in-
destructible, illusory dialectic ; it is only a criticism of cer-
tain awkward and self -contradictory conceptions, as applied
412 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
to the soul, which shall result in substituting for these concep-
tions others that are formed upon the basis of our actual
cognitive experience.
The alleged contradictions of reason to which Kant him-
self gave the name of " antinomies " have been so often sub-
jected to criticism and their fallacies pointed out, that it
would be threshing straw already many times under the flail
to criticise them in detail over again. Let it not be forgotten,
however, what precisely is the conclusion which Kant wished
to prove from them. Not only must both Thesis and Anti-
thesis of each antinomy appear plausible and even true, but
both must spring up ever afresh and alike inevitable and con-
vincing, so often as the attempt is made to square our cogni-
tions with the reality of Things. For what the proof pledges
itself to accomplish is precisely this : Thesis is irresistibly
concluded by a constitutionally fixed ratiocinative process
embedded in the very faculty of cognition ; antithesis is con-
cluded in the same way ; thesis and antithesis are evenly-
matched contradictories ; therefore — reason is honeycombed
with antinomies, and knowledge of Reality is impossible.
Now, in no one of the four Kantian antinomies can either one
of these pledges be made good. In two cases both thesis and
antithesis are only probable at best, but with varying degrees
of probability ; in two cases the thesis and the antithesis are
not fairly opposed ; in no case can both be said to be proved
as inevitable illusory conclusions of reason ; in no case, there-
fore, is the doctrine of antinomies established in a form to
justify the accusation of a transcendental illusion inherent in
all human knowledge of the world of real things. Indeed,
the admissions of Kant himself with regard to the third and
fourth examples virtually abolish their character as contra-
dictions of a rational kind.
In the case of the first antinomy, if by " World " (Die Welt)
be meant the stellar universe as at present known to us, the
thesis is much more probable than the antithesis; but for
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 413
neither is there any a 'priori proof. Properly speaking, pure
reason tells us nothing upon this problem sufficient to demon-
strate QBeweis) either thesis or antithesis. But our growing
knowledge of the system of things seems more and more
clearly to indicate that " the World," as known, is now in such
condition as to imply that its extent is limited, and that it began
to be, although an indefinitely long time ago. Against this
conclusion, our ignorance of how the world began to be is no
" proof " ; neither is our inability to conceive of past time in
which the World was not (eine here Zeit) a ground of legiti-
mate inference. Indeed, this very inability is something
that Kant himself seems to call in question, when, in the
" Transcendental ^Esthetic," he declares that " we can well
take away phenomena out of time." Oar inability to repre-
sent things as existent out of space and time, instead of being
the source of an illusion, is the result of the fact that our
positive cognitions of things are in space and time. What it
is really to be in space and time, and how a world of things
can be conceived of as beginning to be in space and time, are
questions of speculative metaphysics, the answer to which
must be made to depend upon concrete and valid cognitions
of things, if answer is to be given at all. Nor, if it should
be found that agnosticism is the only attitude toward these
questions, does it follow that reason is full of antinomies,
and that the knowledge of things, in any respect as they really
are, is impossible.
The second example of the " antinomy of pure reason " is
so far-fetched and inconclusive that it seems as though Kant
must have invented it purely in the interests of a spurious
architectonic symmetry. Its obvious fallacies are its author's
own ; they cannot be fathered upon the productive energy of
" reason in general." The conflict is one which results from
confusing our perceptions and corresponding mental represen-
tations of concrete experiences about things with abstract
and purely mathematical concepts of the formal conditions of
414 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
space relations — abstractions treated as though they were
realities. " The entire antinomy," we agree with Adickes in
saying, " has originated solely out of a confusion of concepts."
Space, abstractly considered, may be theoretically treated as
though it were indefinitely divisible ; indeed, it must be so
treated. When space is treated in this way, our sums in
the pure mathematics of space "prove" themselves in accord-
ance with the principles of such proof. But that things are
not infinitely divisible is the present conclusion of those
chemico-physical sciences which are based upon observation
of the actual modes of the behavior of things.
The thesis and the antithesis of the third example of an
" antinomy of pure reason " are so full of faulty conceptions
and inconsequent argument as to require a detailed treatment
of the doctrine of causation in order properly to criticise
them. It is well known to students of Kant that his own
conception of causation was ambiguous and changeable. As
a mode of the functioning of pure understanding the concep-
tion gets (as has already been pointed out) a wholly unsat-
isfactory treatment in the table of the categories. But
" other " causation than that which is here denominated
" according to the laws of nature " is assumed as the source
of " that which is given " in Kant's own account of the origin
and nature of sensuous experience ; while his theory of the
nature and grounds of the life of conduct, and of the teleo-
logical interpretation of the world, finds itself obliged freely
to postulate such other causation.
There is little doubt, however, that discussions of the so-
called " self-determining power " of the Self (eine Kausalitdt
durch Freihei£) are particularly fruitful of apparent antino-
mies. Here theology discovers its irreconcilable contradic-
tion between the divine foreknowledge and predestination,
on the one hand, and the imputability and spontaneity of
human personality, on the other hand. No small part of the
most persistent difficulties which philosophy finds in its en-
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 415
deavor so to construct its conception of the " Absolute," the
"Ultimate Reality" (or whatever other term it may choose
for its final attempt at synthesis) as not to impair the legiti-
mate grounds of ethics, first appears in connection with its
analysis of the causal principle. Indeed, the experience of
every individual man, as well as the experience of the race,
involves both sides of this so-called antinomy. The tragedy of
life, its conflicts, defeats, and victories, is fraught with the
same experience. The outcry of humanity is this : " I find
then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with
me ; " and — "I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind." This is the great antinomy,
or conflict of laws (the nomoi that run anti), under which the
moral development of the individual and of the race takes
place. And according as the Self, aroused and enlightened,
throws the weight of its choice, and of the influence resulting
from choice, upon the side of one law or the other, the issue of
the antinomy is actually decided. On the one side is a law,
or a system of laws, that binds the Self within the confines of
what we call Xature, — working blindly and in fixed mechani-
cal fashion along a seemingly endless chain of causes. On
the other side is another law which, with an equal absolute-
ness of imperative, sets before the Self a course of conduct,
to follow which demands breaking over the limitations of the
former law, in the effort to realize its own destiny through
conscious fidelity to an ideal. Between the two laws, as it
were, and under perpetual limitations from them both, stands
the Self and exercises its choice. Thus it becomes, from the
ethical point of view, either more and more enslaved by the
one law, or more and more free by habitually choosing to
follow the other law. This is, indeed, a picture of actual
experience ; perhaps no one else has more forcefully pre-
sented it than has Kant himself. It is undoubtedly, by its
very nature, a description of a conflict — and, even, in some
sort, of a contradiction — of ruling principles which forces us
416 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
to the agnostic position in respect of its satisfactory under-
standing, but which is practically solved by all men in the
courses of conduct which they pursue.
But this is not, as Kant claims, an Antinomy of Pure Kea-
son, an irreconcilable contradiction of thesis and antithesis,
which spring alike out of the very nature of cognitive faculty,
and yet are both equally invincible in their appeal to " proof.''
The appearance of this sort of an antinomy is removed, when
the origin, nature, and legitimate applications of the concep-
tion of causation are correctly understood. It is thus shown
that our conceptions of " causality, according to the laws
of nature," and of " another causality, that of freedom," both
originate in one and the same experience of the reflective
Self. 1 Both are true, in so far as they are formed in recog-
nition of the fundamental facts of that cognitive experience
in which they originate. They become apparent contradic-
tions, inherent in the very life of reason itself, only when one
(or both) of the two conceptions has been framed in disre-
gard of our total experience, has been hypostasized, and
then illegitimately extended for the explanation of what re-
quires them both to be kept in mind. Here, too, as every-
where else, explanation is limited by the inexplicable ; the
analysis of cognition leads to inquiries before which the ag-
nostic attitude is alone reasonable.
In the fourth example of "the antinomy of pure reason"
both thesis and antithesis are products of such complicated and
doubtful speculative efforts that, in the form in which Kant
here states and " proves " them, they can no more be charged
to the account of human cognitive faculty in general than can
the a 'priori system of physics which, in the Transcendental
Logic, he also takes for granted as rationally necessary truth.
How much confidence in the Absolute it is necessary to attrib-
ute to reason, and to make use of in the very structure of
1 See Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, chapters xxi. and xxvi.,
and Philosophy of Mind, chapters vii. and viii.
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 417
knowledge itself, will be briefly considered later on. Indeed,
from this point on the entire " Critique of Pure Reason " be-
comes, more than before, a series of doubtful speculative pro-
positions of a negative and sceptical kind, set over against
other speculative propositions, rather than a genuine criticism
of human cognitive faculty.
The recent work of Mr. Bradley follows the method of
Kant in one important respect. It is an acute and deter-
mined attempt to set forth the inherent contradictions that
afflict our mental processes in their claim to form true, as
distinguished from merely logical, judgments. Unlike Kant,
however, Mr. Bradley does not avowedly aim to " remove
knowledge " in order u to make room " for faith — in God,
Freedom, and Immortality. The rather does he strive to
destroy confidence in all human cognition of things as they
" appear " to us, in order to make room for a theoretical and
speculative construction of Reality, of a highly scholastic
sort. Under the title of " Appearance," the whole world of
minds and things, as actually known to man, is discovered
to be a collection of irreconcilable contradictories. The solu-
tion of these contradictions is to be found in a certain con-
ception of Reality. This conception is supposed to be framed,
not on a basis of confidence in the truth of experience, —
whether cognitive or practical, whether of knowledge or of
faith and conduct, — but in the speculator's power to absorb
the contradictions into the structure of an abstraction. " Ap-
pearance " is made a term to cover all the realities of which,
or about which, we have knowledge ; but appearance is denied
reality because it is, eo ipso, self-contradictory. " Reality "
is then speculatively constructed, with the utmost disregard
of all our actual cognitions, either of or about any known
realities. It seems then that, while Mr. Bradley in his de-
structive effort agrees with Kant, in his constructive result
he only sets up one of those very products of speculation as to
" Reality," which Kant deemed mere negative and problemat-
27
418 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
ical concepts and intended to render forever " hors du com-
bat " for all truly critical minds.
Again, a protest is entered against this entire way of con-
ducting mixed epistemological and metaphysical discussions.
If the work of criticism ends by dismissing man's cognitive
faculty from the front door, by reason of a complete loss of
confidence that it can give us the truth of Reality, no valid
idea corresponding to this term can be surreptitiously intro-
duced by the back door, either in the name of faith or of
philosophic speculation. If knowledge is not for all men
something other than an " appearance," then all academic ab-
stractions are forever prejudged ; they present an absolutely
worthless claim when they mark themselves with the label of
" Reality." If the common categories, in that fundamental
use of them which every cognitive judgment illustrates and
enforces, are in no wise valid for the really existent world,
then all the criticisms of scholastic epistemology and the
speculations of scholastic metaphysics are no better, " truth-
wise," than a madman's dream.
But, as has already been declared, we do not admit the ex-
istence of antinomies, or contradictions either of fact or of
law, so inherent in the very life of cognitive faculty as to
destroy its power to present us with a trustworthy picture of
Reality. So far as alleged antinomies are actual, they belong
to the very nature of human knowledge as positive and worthy
of confidence ; they enlarge the true picture of the nature of
the actual World. But, for the most part, they are only
alleged and spurious ; they are due to the faulty abstractions
of the critic ; and this seems to us to be eminently true of
Mr. Bradley's doctrine of antinomies.
The most convenient example, perhaps, to select for testing
Mr. Bradley's agnosticism with reference to the ontological
applicability of the categories is that afforded by his chapter 1
on " Relation and Quality." The antinomy which he here
1 Appearance and Reality, chapter iii.
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 419
wishes to establish is stated by him as follows: "Relation
presupposes quality, and quality relation. Each can be some-
thing neither together with, nor apart from, the other."
While, then, they are the necessary forms of all our knowledge
of " appearance," — a term which covers, in the author's use
of it, the entire field of all concrete realities, both Self and
Things, as we seem to know them in their actual relations,
— " the vicious circle in which they turn is not the truth about
reality." If we may throw this inherent contradiction into
somewhat more definitely antinomic form than Mr. Bradley
himself has given it, we may put the sad case of our cognitive
faculty thus : — Thesis : qualities are unintelligible, are nothing,
without relations ; antithesis : qualities, taken together with re-
lations, are equally unintelligible and incapable of giving the
truth of reality. Therefore, our cognitive faculty, which, con-
fessedly, must know the Self and all things as having qualities
and standing in relations, is shown to be afflicted with such
inherent and irremovable contradictions that it can give no
"truth about reality." Thus is accomplished the object of this
chapter, as of every other chapter in the first Part of the entire
work (Book I. Appearance), — namely, "to show that the
very essence of these ideas is infected and contradicts itself."
Now we unhesitatingly contend that the thesis of this an-
tinomy, when its language is rendered intelligible by being
adapted to express the facts of our actual cognitions, is neither
metaphysically unintelligible nor infected and self-contradic-
tory in respect of the essence of its ideas. But the antithesis
is unintelligible, either because its terms must be left as
barren abstractions that have no ground of standing in our
actual experiences, or else because they are made to be in-
fected and self-contradictory by having a meaning put into
them which they need not bear. Both thesis and antithesis
are faultily expressed. For while the naive and common-
sense meaning of their terms has been transcended, the
meaning which those same terms come to have to a con-
420 ALLEGED " ANTINOMIES "
sistently critical epistemology and metaphysics has been
either obscured altogether or expressed unhappily. " To find
qualities without relations is surely impossible," says Mr.
Bradley ; and to the truth of this proposition one may assent,
while demurring at the abstract form, with its implication
that qualities and relations might be conceived of either as
themselves realities, or as some sort of appendages or super-
ficial qualifications of reality as it appears to us.
By the term " Quality," as applied to things, men always
mean to designate certain facts of cognitive experience which
require, and admit of, further analysis. The qualities of
things are those immediately known or inferred modes of
their behavior, both active and passive, by which we classify
them (sort them out according to the ways in which they
answer the question, Qualis?), recognize them when we
meet them again, and so adapt our conduct with respect to
them. This conception of qualities — not as themselves ex-
isting, either " together with " or " apart from " relations, but
as the modes of the being and doing of realities — is a com-
plex conception. It summarizes, in fact, a number of the
so-called categories. To argue about it as though it were some
simplex, stuck to the thing or inherent permanently in it as in a
core of abstract reality devoid of qualifications, is true neither
to popular impressions nor to critical metaphysics. When
we have analyzed the conception of quality, we do find that
it, like all those conceptions which enfold the concrete facts
and ultimate laws of knowledge, involves much that is mysteri-
ous, — much before which, unless we can rise to the higher
and more ideal points of view, we have to maintain the agnos-
tic attitude. But this is a very different thing from accusing
this idea of being, in its "very essence," infected and self-
contradictory.
The complex conception of concrete things as variously
qualified involves the category of " Relation." But this
category does not admit of further analysis. The idea of
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 421
" relation in general " is but an abstraction derived from a
cognitive experience which always gives us reality as actually
related in some concrete and definite way. On the epistemo-
logical side, then, we only recognize the very nature of the
thought-process, as it enters into all knowledge, by saying that
"to know is to relate." On the ontological side, we only
describe the most fundamental and positive characterization
of all known beings, when we affirm that they are all, in as
far as known or conceivable, actually related. To deny either
of these truths is theoretically to render that commerce
between the cognitive subject and the cognized object, in
which knowledge itself consists, quite impossible. The fullest
and most ultimate experience in which our consciousness of
these truths originates has already been sufficiently described.
If by calling the description, or any of the ideas involved in
it, " unintelligible " Mr. Bradley means that nothing more
simple and ultimate than that which is stated in terms of
these ideas can be said about knowledge and reality, this is
true. But this is quite a different charge to bring against
the activities, forms, and content of human cognition, from
that of being, in their very essence, " infected " and " self-
contradictory."
That " qualities are nothing without relations " is, then,
true as tested by the nature of our actual concrete cognitions
of things. But when Mr. Bradley undertakes the proof of the
antithesis, that " qualities taken together with relations are
equally unintelligible," he begins to labor heavily. In fact,
his entire so-called argument seems here to go quite wide of
its aim. That "nothings cannot be related, and that to turn
qualities in relation into mere relations is impossible," no one
need hesitate to admit. But what the critic himself makes a
show of doing, is to turn the mere abstract idea of relation in
general into an entity, in order to set up some kind of a
deadly quarrel between it and the equally abstract and more
unjustifiable hypostasis of the conception of quality. Indeed,
422 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES"
is not this the " vice in procedure " which clings to all the
so-called antinomies ? The actual forms of the most indubit-
able cognition of all realities are treated as though they were
themselves realities ; and they are then set into a position of
contradiction which arises from the attempt to find in some
one or more of them, separately, a complete account of all the
forms in which the concrete realities reveal themselves to the
mind. Surely this procedure ought not to be so easily pos-
sible after Kant's treatment of " the Amphiboly of Reflective
Concepts " and of the unsatisfactoriness of all merely con-
ceptual views of the World. 1
The outcome of the discussion of this chapter has a certain
quasi-ethical significance, to which fuller consideration will
be given in other connections. For human reason, even in —
and especially in — its work of self-criticism, must recognize
its own inherent responsibilities and its undiminished regard
for teleological considerations. To the critical use of reason,
in some sort, applies the rule which it is so ready to call to
mind, in the case of less important individual differences :
Falsus in uno,falsus in omnibus. This must not, however, be
held in such way as to deny that error may mingle with truth;
much less to affirm that truth is not to be attained at all if
any risk or taint of error seem to threaten all human inquiries
after truth. But if the entire cognitive faculty of man is, by
1 With Mr. Bradley's aims, and with many of his most important positive
conclusions, we find ourselves not only in full sympathy hut in large measure of
agreement. But no ontological conclusions whatever, whether largely agreeing
with, or wholly dissenting from, those at which the author arrives in his second
Book (on "Reality "), can possibly be trusted, after the sceptical and agnostic
outcome of his first Book (on " Appearance ") has been accepted. When
once the constitutional forms of human cognition have been shown to be ideas
that have mere seeming, and that are in " their very essence " " infected " and
"self-contradictory," there remains nothing further to be done in the way of
establishing a rational ontology. Any ontology thus constructed is prejudged ;
it is already twice plucked up by the roots, dead and withered, before it can put
in the " appearance " even of a truly rational life. And if the critic does such
things in the case of the green tree of his own metaphysics, what will not the
next critic do in the case of that same tree when it has already become dry 1
ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 423
its constitution, compelled to think and to accept the truth of
squarely contradictory principles, or to frame ideas which
implicate correlated forms of the being and behavior of the
really existent World, so that they shall " in their very
essence " be " infected " and " self-contradictory," it is some-
thing worse than intellectual vanity to elaborate systems of
metaphysics. Nor do we believe that faith will ever come to
occupy the room made vacant by the removal of knowledge in
this way. For experience is some sort of a unity ; and unless
what appears to man as reality can somehow be known as
" true reality " (Mr. Bradley's strange phrase) we, as critics
of the cognitive faculty, are " of all men most miserable."
CHAPTER XV
TRUTH AND ERROR
TT may seem to some readers that the trustworthiness of
-L our cognitive judgments, the value for the transcendent
of our experience, and the validity in general of human
knowledge, have been over-emphasized. The preliminary
survey of the nature of knowledge showed that its problem is
proposed to philosophy in the form of a question: How can
cognition, which is, psychologically considered, a subjec-
tive affair, a mere process in consciousness, be also trans-
subjective or ontologically referent, so as to put the mind
in possession of truth respecting Reality ? From a sceptical
beginning, and following carefully the critical method, posi-
tive and comprehensive conclusions have been reached.
In all cognition, the reality of the Self — that it is, and
what it is — is immediately and indubitably given; and the
reality of Things is also given, — that they are, immediately
and indubitably, and what they are, if we accept in good
faith the postulate of their being and behaving after the
analogy of the self-known Self. To doubt thus much is
theoretically to deny the possibility of knowledge. When
subjected to critical analysis the very denial is found to be
inherently contradictory and absurd. All knowledge is, in-
deed, on the one hand, limited by barriers of accepted and
experienced fact, and, on the other hand, by the necessity
of responding with an agnostic answer to many question-
ings after reasons and causes. He, however, who, because
he must often say, "I do not know," refuses to accept and
TRUTH AND ERROR 425
live by the positive truths implicated in the affirmation,
"I do know," will never attain to intellectual peace. He
may even commit the unpardonable sin against the spirit
of truth.
Moreover, the nature and growth of human knowledge is
such that truth, as contrasted with error, must always be
the fundamentally positive and more inclusive thing in
human experience. Critics of our common faculty of cogni-
tion are quite too much accustomed to pessimistic conclu-
sions. To take Schopenhauer's estimate of the negative
results of Kant's criticism for an example : "Kant discovered
the subjectively conditioned and therefore entirely immanent
nature of knowledge, that is, its unsuitableness for trans-
cendental use, from the constitution of knowledge itself;
and therefore he very appropriately called his doctrine the
4 Critique of Reason. ' " 1 Now, to translate this statement
into the terms which our analysis has shown to be descrip-
tive of the exact facts of the case, it amounts to saying : The
only trustworthy outcome to a thorough examination of
human cognitive faculty is the discovery that, although its
trans-subjective reference and " transcendental use " is im-
manent in its very constitution, we are somehow forced to
call this aspect of it an illusion or a lie. But the very
terms "subjectively conditioned," "immanent nature,"
"transcendental use," "constitution of nature," etc., are
either pregnant with conclusions that contradict the scepti-
cal outcome of the Kantian Critique, or else they are them-
selves utterly empty and meaningless. Ultimately, even the
words "illusion" and "lie" are found to derive all their
meaning from conceptions of truth and reality which remain
unimpaired by the sceptical process. And the fundamental
illusion of the critic himself may be said to consist in the
impression that he can thus give the lie to the common con-
sciousness, with its undying, warm conviction, of the truth
l The World as Will and Idea, iii., p. 27.
426 TRUTH AND ERROR
of Self and of Things, and yet save the results of his own
criticism. This is indeed the Trpcorov tyevSos of epistemo-
logical agnosticism.
The amount of Truth in the present possession of the
human mind may always be looked upon as small indeed
compared with the conceivable extent of truth. What this
means so far as concerns the truth that is in present posses-
sion, has already been made sufficiently clear in treating of
the nature, kinds, degrees, and limits of human knowledge.
A becoming modesty will always characterize the genuine
spirit of science and philosophy, in view of the smallness of
the field of present attainment, as compared with the incom-
mensurable magnitude of the still unknown. And since the
growth of scientific and philosophical knowledge has always
so largely consisted in the correction of mistakes of fact
and errors of conception, there is more than sufficient reason
to suspect that large admixtures of the untrue still remain
with what now appears to be true. The compatibility of
this experience with a positive confidence in present posses-
sions of truth, and in the validity of the distinction between
truth and error by reference of both to Reality, is a subject
for epistemological inquiry. But we are now interested in
inquiring whether the valid claims of scepticism and agnos-
ticism have not, of late, been greatly overestimated. A
generation ago Mr. Herbert Spencer 1 set out to establish an
elaborate doctrine of nescience; but he began with the
announcement of his conviction that there is "a soul of
truth in things erroneous." Since then, this original con-
viction appears to have been quite too much overlaid with
the great mass of dogmatic agnosticism accumulated by both
the master and his more or less confiding disciples. Even
Mr. Spencer's more positive conclusions as to the possibil-
ity of knowing the Ultimate Reality have suffered unwar-
rantably in the same way. We, too, believe that there is
1 First Principles, chapter i.
TRUTH AND ERROR 427
a " soul of truth in things erroneous. " Indeed, we believe
that all errors " live and move and have their being, " only
in and by the possession of this warm and active principle
of truth. And as the soul of truth that was originally in
things erroneous is recognized and developed into its due
characteristic form and proportions, the husk of errors falls
off and perishes.
To state the same experience in another way : We actually
find much more truth than error in all those judgments of
men which seem to them to embody their most assured cog-
nitions. He who would accept them all for true, rather
than false, and would diligently seek so as finally to dis-
cover the " soul of truth " in them, would thereby gain a
much more satisfactory and valid picture of Reality, than
would he who should content himself with the negative and
agnostic results of epistemological criticism. To win truth,
it is better to present a genial than a repulsive side toward
the common opinions and beliefs of men. For truth is a
mistress who does not like a sour and distrustful counte-
nance, however resolute and masterful. Her chosen favorite
is courteous as well as persistent; trustful toward his mis-
tress, while not being, on due occasion, without jealousy for
her honor. In every field of truth — practical, scientific,
philosophical, religious — trust is more productive than dis-
trust; and certain positive conclusions are usually more jus-
tifiable and better worth the making than are any negative
and agnostic conclusions. The great brain and the big
heart of the multitude of men are the seats of true thoughts
and of fitting emotions; they give birth to the important
truths with reference to the being of man and to the all-
embracing Reality, however frequently they go astray in some
of their functions. Human science, no matter how doubtful
about its facts, and faulty in its generalizations, is much
more to be credited than discredited as regards the truth of
its total message when that message is rightly understood.
428 TRUTH AND ERROR
Nor was there ever propounded a system of metaphysics so
recondite, illogical, or fantastic, that it did not embrace
more of fundamental truth than of falsehood. And that
portion of human cognitive experience in which arise and
grow, as in a fruitful soil, the mental and emotional atti-
tudes of men toward God, Freedom, and Immortality can-
not be torn out by violence or excised by the keen knife of
sceptical criticism, without leaving in unrecognizable frag-
ments the whole body of such experience.
It is, then, in some respects a harder task for epistemo-
logical doctrine to determine how error arises, to show its
reality in experience, and to furnish the means for testing
and detecting it, than to perform the same offices for truth.
This task cannot, however, be shirked or set one side on
account of its inherent difficulties ; nor, because truth is the
more abiding and inclusive thing in human experience, can
we assign to error only a negative meaning and a wholly
subordinate significance. Not a few students of the episte-
mological problem have chosen to regard all error as either
partial truth, or else as the merely negative limit of truth
on its way from lower to higher stages of expression and
degrees of development. There are certain important con-
siderations implied in giving this turn to our phrasing of
an answer to the epistemological problem. Error is essen-
tially not-truth ; but one can scarcely reverse this proposition
and declare that truth is essentially not-error. Moreover,
as has already been implied, no erroneous proposition can
be posited, and no false judgment can be framed, except with
reference to some positive correct proposition as express-
ing a true judgment. So that there is a. certain justification
for the paradoxical statement : he who blunders most miser-
ably is nearer the absolutely correct than the absolutely
incorrect announcement of a real cognitive experience ; and
he who lies most outrageously tells more of what is true
than of what is false, in the very terms of his lying propo-
TRUTH AND ERROR 429
sition. Only Satan can be "a liar from the beginning;"
and of the manner of his accomplishing this remarkable
feat of escaping all truth, one can scarcely form a defensible
conception.
Still further, many — perhaps we should not go too far in
declaring, that all — of the most important truths dawn
upon the consciousness of the individual and of the race in
the form of half-truths. In the history of scientific progress
few things are more instructive than to notice how the most
wonderful classes of new facts, and the strangest discoveries
regarding the classification and formulation of these facts
under laws which express the relations they sustain to the
present system of scientific cognitions, have their anticipa-
tory stages and fitful periods of obscure apprehension.
Seldom, indeed, is the earlier recognition given to the
truth at which science aims, other than very fragmentary
and partial. Similarities and differences are not defini-
tively marked out ; and even the most fixed terms of relation
to the fundamental existences of nature are expressed in a
faltering and changeable way. An interesting example of
this progress in knowledge may be found in the history of
bacteriology.
Nor does the more "finished" form of science feel that
it is capable of expressing the full and final significance
of a single fact in human cognitive experience ; much less
that any of its laws are the complete and unchangeable
expression of the being and transactions of that part of our
experience which we call "Nature" (whether regarded as
naturans or naturata — to borrow a distinction of long stand-
ing). Now, from this fractional character belonging to all
the truth we know, or think we know, it seems to follow
that the other fraction necessary to complete the totality of
the apparent sphere of human knowledge, is entitled to be
called error rather than unknown truth. This would appear
to justify the epistemological conclusion that all our truth
430 TRUTH AND ERROR
is half-error (more or less). Such a conclusion might, in
turn, be converted into the proposition that all error is
partial truth; because it is solely due to negative limita-
tions inherent in the very nature of truth itself. For,
finally, how shall ignorance and error be distinguished,
since men are perpetually bound to assume that they know
what they are only entitled to believe or to opine, and since
all the truth actually known is, after all, not more than
fractionally true ?
We have little taste for the dispute over " poles of opposi-
tion," over "negatives " and "positives;" or for the debated
question whether all truth can be reduced to a kind of illu-
sion or error, and all error to a partial or limited truth.
As in the more purely ethical realm, sin and wrong-doing
are not mere negations or limitations of righteousness, so in
the more purely intellectual realm does the case stand with
error and truth. Error is not merely the negative of truth ;
mistaken judgment is not always to be defined as simple
failure to express correctly the whole of one's cognitive
experience. Every cognitive judgment, from the epistemo-
logical point of view, is just as positive when it negates as
when it affirms ; and there may be, of course, quite as much
error in denying what is true as in affirming what is false.
Moreover, to affirm of " all " what is true only of " some "
is an erroneous proposition, — a judgment not only logically
faulty but also metaphysically false. But to fall short of
affirming of " all, " because, although the universal truth of
the proposition may be clear to other minds, the judgment
has not yet become cognitive for our mind in this universal
form, is to be " true " in the noblest sense of the word
applicable to the functioning of a human intellect.
On the one hand, the ethically wrong has respect to
matters of conduct more purely. Judging, and propounding
the results of judging, are indeed matters in which will
takes part. Our analysis of the nature of cognition has
TRUTH AND ERROR 431
shown this to be true. Much human error, too, is mixed
up with more or less of wrong-doing; and the relations
between "conduct," in the ethical meaning of the word, and
false and erroneous judgment are far from being loose or
remote. Nor can these relations easily be confined to any
particular kind of truth, so as to exclude from the observa-
tions and experiments of physical science the moral defects
of self-conceit, insincerity, and selfishness, while admitting
that so-called religious faith or metaphysical speculation
may easily be corrupted in this way so as to destroy the
fractional "soul of truth in things erroneous. " On the
other hand, the so-called laws under which the two kinds of
action take place are not, by any means, precisely the same.
Wrong-doing, as distinguished from going wrong in judg-
ment, stands in quite a different relation to righteousness
from that in which error, as distinguished from wilfully
sophisticated or slovenly judgment, stands to truth. The
intellectual conditions which determine that form of action
we call the cognitive judgment are more strict and inflexi-
ble than are those forms of conception under which moral
conduct in general takes place. Here we discover the
sphere in which differences in the kinds of truth become
most important.
The main principle of differentiation now to be recognized
is the relation which the alleged truth sustains to the emo-
tional and practical life of man. Every court of justice
brings out the fact that errors of sense -perception are fre-
quent in all matters of observation by the senses. The
same thing every psychological laboratory also can easily
demonstrate. What the court of justice shows more clearly
than does the psychological laboratory is this : such errors
are most frequent in the direction of interests of an emo-
tional and practical sort. But every director of a physical
or chemical laboratory knows how many mistaken induc-
tions have in the past been built into the body of so-called
432 TRUTH AND ERROR
"science," and how difficult it is to exclude such inductions
from the constant edification of that body. When " experts "
meet to testify on different sides in the same court of justice
we learn, in larger measure, one set of reasons why so-called
scientific conclusions do not agree. Moreover, the attitude
of cognition toward Reality is necessarily such that the
cognitive judgment feels the fuller force of the inescapable
and seemingly rigid character of concrete entities. Con-
duct, although under such control from the really existent
World of things that it cannot be determined in disregard
of its being and behavior, is itself a much more flexible and
fluid thing in its relation to that world. My pleasing and
willing undoubtedly have much to do with my knowing
at all ; and also with what I know, if I know at all. Yet
men do not say that it pleases them, or that they will,
to frame their cognitive judgments thus and so rather than
otherwise; but they affirm that they conduct themselves,
within much wider boundaries, as they please or as they
will.
The fuller explanation and significance of such considera-
tions as the foregoing best become manifest, so far as
epistemology requires, in connection with the theory of
knowledge thus far adopted. Detailed discussion of the
means for establishing truths and detecting errors, theory
of method in general, and the technique of investigation
and proof belonging to the particular sciences, offer many
interesting problems into which we cannot enter. Our present
aim is simply to show what meanings are properly attached
to the terms by which men distinguish truth and error;
how the distinction originates in accordance with principles
determining the growth of knowledge ; and what are some of
the more general criteria that may fitly be employed for
making and defending the distinction. In a word, the
epistemological problem under discussion is: How is the
fact of knowledge consistent with the existence of both error
TRUTH AND ERROR 433
and truth ? Here, too, as in the discussion of every episte-
mological problem, reference must be constantly had to
Reality ; and thus the problem is not merely epistemological
but is also ontological. For who shall arbitrate in the
friendly game or bitter fight between so-called truth and
so-called error ? It is only in the somewhat contemptible
arena of the ancient sophist, or in the mildly inane " debat-
ing society " of modern times that men appeal to rhetoric or
to logic alone to adjudge the case disputed between them.
In what is significantly called " real life " the issues at
bottom, however their presence may be overlooked or con-
cealed, have regard to something other than the judicious
ordering of persuasive arguments or an apparently strict
conformity to the rules of the syllogism. These issues
submit only when Reality itself decides the appeal made to
it. For the question at issue reads best as follows : What
is true, and what is false ? — not, Who has stated his case
most judiciously and convincingly ? Now, in fact, this very
appeal embodies the entire theory of knowledge as it has
already been stated and defended. Mere arguments submit
to the arbitrament of the logician or the rhetorician. They
ask for judgment framed by the mind that moves methodi-
cally and smoothly from accepted premises to derived con-
clusion. But alleged cognitions make an appeal to the
being and transactions of the really existent world ; and they
are often obliged to carry this appeal through lengthy and
tortuous processes of ratiocination (as, for example, in the
case of an inquiry like that concerning the " localization of
cerebral function," or "the origin of the synoptic Gospels ").
But "rough and ready," if only it will enable the mind to
envisage and interpret what is actual, is a most acceptable
motto for him who aspires to know the truth.
It is obviously the correct doctrine of the cognitive judg-
ment to which one must turn in order to discover the pro-
founder meaning of the words "truth" and "error." It is
28
434 TRUTH AND ERROR
admitted by all, even by those who take the merely logical
or psychological points of view, that truth and error can be
affirmed or denied of judgments alone. He who simply has
sensations, ideas, feelings, conative impulses, as such, —
whatever the characteristics of these psychical phenomena in
themselves may be, — cannot be either commended for truth-
fulness or condemned for falsehood. To a second being
who affirms or denies the existence of these psychoses in the
consciousness of the first being, the term "true " or "false"
may be applied. For epistemology, however, it is important
to go beyond this point: only alleged cognitive judgments
can properly be called either true or false. Truth and error
belong to the attempts of men at knowledge. We think
correctly or incorrectly, if we may conceive of ourselves as
merely thinking ; we act aptly or ineptly, whenever we can
isolate action from the cognitive judgments which it so
frequently expresses or applies ; and we feel appropriately or
inappropriately, if we regard merely the affective aspect of
consciousness in its relation to other subjective factors.
But it is when we think, feel, and will, in such manner as
to set the total Self into those relations toward Reality
which the cognitive judgment embodies and expresses, that
we become capable of apprehending truth or of committing
error. He who affirms "I know, etc.," must either have
truth on his side, or error against him ; and the testing of
the affirmation is always made in the form of an appeal to
that which men call "actual " or "matter-of-fact."
By Truth, then, all men understand such a judgment,
affirming cognition, as corresponds to the being and the
transactions of the really Existent. By error they under-
stand such a judgment as lacks this correspondence. And
since any alleged cognitive judgment may partially corre-
spond and partially fail to correspond, they recognize that
"fractional validity" of many cognitive judgments to which
attention has already been called. Now, at this point there
TRUTH AND ERROR 435
is, of course, a very tempting opportunity for the confirmed
epistemological sceptic and agnostic to enter his old-time
objections and protests. For is not every alleged cognitive
judgment itself as thoroughly subjective as are mere sensa-
tions, ideas, and the most primary impulses ? And what
can be meant by "the being and transactions of the really
Existent," that is not a complex and abstract product of the
subjective processes of imagination and thinking ? How
can an appeal be taken to Beality, as though reality could
get into the mind in some other way than as " appearance "
in the form of alleged cognitions ? What there is of
substance in these very objections and protests has already
been examined at great length. After we have finally
parted from him who doubts or denies the very possibility
of knowledge, we cannot consent to tread again with him
the same worn and weary path through the darkness of
nescience and doubt toward the light of assured and intelli-
gent cognition.
What, however, shall be said in answer to those who,
like Mr. Bradley, 1 deny that any truth is given in the judg-
ment, so far as it is cognitive and categorical, and on the
contrary affirm: "Any categorical judgment must (the italics
are ours) be false. " " The subject and the predicate in the
end cannot either he the other." "Quality either adds
nothing or adds what is false," etc. Strictly understood
and accepted, such a view of the cognitive judgment would
seem to place us in the position of the man who, having all
his life long implicitly believed in the truth of dreams, at
last dreamed that he was infallibly assured of the falsity of
all dreams. Thus was he doomed to the perpetual circle in
arguendo: "If all dreams are true, then this dream is true,
and all dreams are false. But if all dreams are false, then
this dream is false and some dreams may be true." What
a prospect is this, of forever grinding at the mill, while
1 Appearance and Reality, pp. 361 and 362 (note).
436 TRUTH AND ERROR
starving for lack of some small grist of truth ! Understood,
however, as its author seems to intend, these statements give
a self-destructive form to the attempt to unite the outcome
of a sceptical epistemology with a rational system of ontology.
But men do not mean to identify the " being " of subject and
predicate, whenever they pronounce categorical judgments;
neither do they understand that the truth of their thinking
is dependent upon the metaphysical identification of this
thinking and what is real. Nor do they, any more than
does Mr. Bradley himself, regard Reality as a rigid Entity,
totally independent of all change, movement, and Life, which
must be known completely and as it eternally is, if it is^to
be known at all.
The further qualification that judgments are to be con-
sidered either true or false only in so far as they assume to
be cognitive, enables us much more clearly to distinguish
the nature and to define the limits of both truth and error.
Here another consideration respecting the nature of all
actual judgment becomes important. For every judgment
exists, as a realized product of the Self, only after it has
been both framed and pronounced. So far as psychological
analysis can throw its light, whether derived from introspec-
tion or from experiment, into the very centre of this subject,
judgment is dependent for its very realization upon some
form of motor activity. Men universally incline to assev-
erate with one kind of motor symbolism and to deny with
another. They posit, plant, ground their propositions; or
they withhold, uproot, and withdraw them. They detect
themselves as setting into some form of action, often in
talking over with themselves, the series of judgments which
leads up to the terminal judgment; and this they love to
"establish" and make clear and impregnable to themselves
by repeating it over and over again. Whether such motor
expressions of the judgment must be accounted essential for
the individual in order that he may recognize and adopt its
TRUTH AND ERROR 437
truth as his very own, or not, it is obvious that one man's
cognitions can be made the subjects of another man's judg-
ments only as they are set into reality by some motor ex-
pression. The acceptable human form of expression for the
cognitive judgment is language. That is to say, truth and
error are customarily predicated of alleged cognitive judg-
ments as expressed in verbal propositions.
And now in considering the nature of truth and error, and
in endeavoring to determine defensible limits between them,
the task becomes twofold. The question as to the truth or
falsity of any judgment is thus always connected with, and
generally much complicated by, this question: What does
the judgment, as propounded, actually mean, both to the one
judging and to others who are asked to pass judgment upon
it ? For what a judgment really is cannot be known apart
from what the judgment, as expressed, means to the inquirer
after its truth or falsehood. So that theoretically the ex-
perience becomes necessary which we find to be actual in
our every-day intercourse with men: We cannot, from the
primary point of view of epistemology, pronounce any judg-
ment either true or false until we know tuhat such judgment
intends to affirm or deny as understood by the mind that makes
the judgment. It has been seen, however, that cognitive
judgments are not perfectly rigid and unchanging connec-
tions, established once for all between concepts which are
themselves conceived of as unchanging entities. Nor do the
words in which men's judgments are announced have a fixed
and unchanging meaning. Far from it; each one of them
embodies the attempt to catch and formulate an indefinite
number of doings of the really existent world of Self and of
Things. Reality is much too varied and agile in its life-
expressions, as well as lofty and profound in its principles
of behavior, to be caught, firmly held, and fully encom-
passed, by as many words as the average man can master the
meanings of. Moreover, each one of these words changes
438 TRUTH AND ERROR
its meaning — on the one hand, gaining a richer content,
and, on the other, being more precisely delimited ■ — as the
growth of knowledge goes on in the individual and in the
race. Still further, all words, in those meanings which
afford the most direct and inviolable expressions of the
reality known, are apt to be employed figuratively. Every
student of language knows how children and childish peoples
express the truth as it is revealed to them, and indeed often
most fitly and beautifully, in figures of speech. The highest
abstractions of science and philosophy can find words in
which to embody themselves only as they consent to be
more or less artistic and indefinite in the meanings assigned
to those words. Has it not been proved, indeed, that the
truth of our most assured cognitive judgments concerning
what the world of things really is can be vindicated only by
regarding it as being and behaving like the Self ? Its quali-
fications are known as they really are, only on the supposi-
tion that the analogies embodied in our language are justifiable
figures of speech. We are far, indeed, from holding that no
distinction is to be made between so-called "real truth"
and error, or that all contentions for the truth are best
resolved by the acknowledgment that, after all, the dispute
is only a logomachy. On the contrary, there are not a few
subjects where contest for the truth against error is a war
to the knife; and the ongoing revelation of Reality to the
human mind will practically annihilate one party to the
strife. Yet, in general, a most fruitful way of helping our-
selves and others into the truth, and of eliminating error,
is to bring about an understanding as to what each alleged
cognitive judgment actually means to the one propounding
it. Socratic midwifery alone will never rid the woods of
all manner of daemons of falsehood, sprites of untamed fancy,
and unsubstantial ghosts of doubt; but it will much improve
and multiply the regions held by the family that derives its
lineage from essential truth, the faithful mother of a chosen
race.
TRUTH AND ERROR 439
Truth and error, then, are most fitly attributed to judg-
ment, but only in so far as it is cognitive, and is under-
stood according to the meaning given to its expression by
the judging mind. He whose only failure consists in the
misemployment of terms for announcing his cognitive judg-
ment commits, indeed, a serious fault. His judgment, if
adopted by others as their own, in accordance with the
meaning they are forced or deceived into giving his terms,
may be wholly or largely false. But if, with the meaning he
gives the terms, the judgment announces a fact or a remoter
relation in reality as known to him, it is more properly
called incorrect in expression than false or erroneous as
tested by a standard of truth. This limitation of the episte-
mological significance of the terms "truth" and "error"
enables us to understand two classes of subjects that stand
farthest apart, as ordinarily considered. We are accustomed
to beins; told that the most certain and unassailable of all
truths are the truths of mathematics ; but that the senses of
men move in the peculiar realm of illusion and error. Yet
are not both truth and error always defined with reference to
realities ? And what student of the purest and highest
mathematics is so ardent as to claim that his formulas
represent the real being and actual transactions of things ?
On the other hand, where do men come face to face with the
reality of things, in such way that all human knowledge of
them depends ultimately upon the validity of this inter-
course, except in the field of sense-perception ? Must it,
then, be admitted that the most assured truth gives no
knowledge of reality; and, on the contrary, that all seem-
ing knowledge of the reality of things is mere " appearance "
or sheer " illusion " ?
What is the nature of the truth which mathematics
imparts; and what is the relation in which this truth stands
to actuality, whether of Self or of Things ? The correct
answers to these questions confirm instead of contradicting
440 TRUTH AND ERROR
the theory of knowledge which we are advocating. For
the premises, reasonings, and conclusions, of the "purest"
mathematics are properly called true only so far as they are
known to correspond to the real being and actual behavior
of our world of cognition. And yet, of all kinds of knowl-
edge mathematics and formal logic are remotest from reality,
— most " pure " in proportion as they are most unreal,
imaginary, and abstract. Nor is this an occult truth which
needs the assistance of epistemology to disabuse the mind
of the mathematician or logician of his erroneous pretence
of knowledge. For example, let us suppose that the conclu-
sion of some course of algebraic reasoning might be correctly
expressed by the formula x = ^/y% _ \ ; in what sense can
the judgment of such a formula be said to be known to
be true ? Only as reference is made to the being and
transactions of something really existent. If it is proposed
to test the truth or falsity of the conclusion, appeal may be
had to a series of mathematical terms united by signs of
equality and inequality, of addition and subtraction, etc.,
upon a sheet of paper, to see if repeated inspection by the
senses will reveal any "error" in them; or some other
series of other terms, based upon the same premises, may be
employed in order to test, or prove, the correctness of the
suspected series. But the truth obtained in this way is not
expressed when it is satisfactorily shown that two little
black marks crossed (#), and two short lines parallel (=),
and a v with a long arm extended on its right side (V ),
etc., are placed precisely in such an order, rather than some
other, upon this particular real sheet of paper here dis-
played. Surely, this is not the meaning for reality which
such a series of algebraic judgments possesses. But neither
is it meant that any really existent thing has its being, or
its behavior, correctly represented to imagination or to
thought, either by the statical relations of these symbols, or
by the movement of the argument through which the state-
TRUTH AND ERROR 441
ment of the relations is reached. The " purer " and " higher "
our mathematics becomes, the less conceivable does it
become that any thing or number of things should " realize "
the truth of such processes in its own real being and actual
behavior. Even if the supposed case be one of applied
mathematics, the truth of any conclusion such as x = ^/y3 _ \
does not depend upon some real thing being discovered, to be
called x, and some other real thing to be called y ; and then
upon these two going through exceedingly complicated but
mutually dependent processes in order actually to arrive at
a sort of statical agreement with each other — after the
pattern of the successive strifes and partial reconciliations
in the thought of the mathematician which end in peace
being declared on terms of x = */y3 __ ]_. The truth of
mathematics, indeed, gets an approximately exact realiza-
tion whenever things, being taken quantitatively and measured
and counted, as ail things may be, undergo changes in size
or in spatial relations, corresponding to those symbolized
by algebraic and geometrical formulas and demonstrations.
But it must not be overlooked that the truth in reality of the
formulas and demonstrations, as thus regarded, is always
only approximate and conditional. That is, so-called mathe-
matical judgments are held to be true for things only in case cer-
tain presupposed conditions continue to be fulfilled by the things;
and even then only in so far as the things are quantitative
and quantitatively related. But what the actual conditions
are under which things exist, and act, and change, can
only be known by our experience with them; and this expe-
rience bases itself upon cognition of the actuality only so
far as cognition takes place through the senses.
What now, however, shall be said as to the truthfulness of
the axioms and demonstrations of "pure " mathematics, both
arithmetical or algebraic, and geometrical ? The answer to
this question depends upon understanding how the funda-
mental conceptions of mathematics originate, and why it is
442 TRUTH AND ERROR
possible to arrange them in satisfactory form. This answer
may be given in the form of a paradox. The pure mathe-
matics are so undoubtedly true, because they are so inde-
pendent of, and one might even say so false to, the real
being and actual transactions of things. For things always
are much more and other than merely quantitative ; and the
behavior of things is determined by many other considera-
tions than those of the mathematical order. Water is, for
example, approximately described in terms of quantitative
analysis, by the formula H 2 0. But both oxygen and hydro-
gen gases, and the compound resulting from their combina-
tion in terms of this formula, are, and are able to accomplish,
infinitely more than this formula describes. When, then,
mathematics becomes perfectly pure, the truth it tells con-
cerns nothing more than the way in which a certain kind of
our thinking enables, or compels, us to relate its own abstrac-
tions. For, so far as pure geometry knows, its space is a pure
abstraction ; and so far as pure algebra knows, its numbers
and symbols stand for pure abstractions. The truth here is
the truth known as determined by a certain thinking and ide-
ating activity of the Self. I not only know that I can regard
things as capable of being counted and as actually extended
in space, but I also know that I can abstract from all the
concrete qualities, definite dimensions and space relations,
which things as known by the senses have; and I can then
treat the concepts of number, and of space qualities and
relations, as though these concepts were themselves real
objects of knowledge. The truth thus immediately known
belongs to the actual behavior and real life of the Self ; it
can be carried over into the world of things only upon the
bridge of that analogy to which reference has so frequently
been made.
We sec, then, that the truth of mathematics is twofold
in its aspects; but in both of its aspects it looks toward
Reality for its sole testing and justification. In so far as
TRUTH AND ERROR 443
experience shows us that things actually obey the laws of
number and of quantity, our mathematical judgments may be
cognitive of things. Truth and error are not abstractions
here. Every building that falls, every bridge that goes
down, because of miscalculation as to amount of strains or
strength of materials, is a terribly real proof of this. But
when sophists deny motion or change in reality, because
the mind can so juggle with mere abstractions as to show,
with logical satisfaction, that the arrow cannot really fly or
Achilles actually overtake the tortoise, they are more
ingenious in needless self-deception than either knowing or
wise. For human cognition affirms that the arrow does fly;
Achilles and all the spectators know that he soon overtakes
the tortoise. The puzzle which arises when it is asked,
How can this really be ? does not require any alteration of
judgment as to the nature either of knowledge or of reality.
For the puzzle consists in the sceptic's foolish effort to
make that true for the actual world of things which is only
conceivably possible even when abstractions, recognized as
such on one side, are, on the other side, identified with
realities in a false and illogical way.
How far Reality follows human mathematical conceptions
and imaginings as to what It might be and do, if things were
only a system of merely quantitative beings, we have no off-
hand means of saying. The appeal must be made to cogni-
tions of sense. We learn a little more about this as our
knowledge of things grows. But the complete failure of
mathematics to describe and to explain the actual World
is increasingly apparent. The theoretical ass of Buridanus
could not move toward either bundle of hay, so subject was
his "being" to the dominion of mere quantity. But then
there really is no such ass anywhere, — not even among the
most primordial and undifferentiated of the forms of pro-
toplasm, or the atomic subjects of the law of chemical
equivalence. We ourselves are governed by various other
444 TRUTH AND ERROR
considerations, and have many other ends to realize, than
those of pure mathematics. How far this is true of the
Other Self, man can scarcely be said to know ; but there are
certain reasons in human experience which lead to the ap-
prehension that It cannot be bound strictly by the axioms
and formulas of the most speculative mathematicians.
From time immemorial the illusory and hallucinatory
nature of that knowledge of things which comes through the
senses has been celebrated, not only by reflective students of
the phenomena of perception from psychological and philo-
sophical points of view, but also by poets, essayists, and
religious enthusiasts. This epistemological conclusion has
generally been more or less closely connected with ethical
and practical interests. Thus the " sensuous " side of things
has been held to be the seducer of the mind into paths of
error, and of the spirit into ways immoral and prejudicial to
the interests of the higher good. Modern physical science
has naturally felt no little repugnance toward such a view
of the nature, the limits, and the tendencies of the cognition
of material things. It has aimed to establish the superior
claims to exactness and certitude of this kind of cogni-
tion ; and even to extend its method by using mathematical
formulas for the expression of quantitative qualifications
and relations, over all the fields of human knowledge. It
has pointed with justifiable pride to the recent extension of
the dominion "ruled over" by known laws; and it has
expressed high hopes that the barriers to its further almost
inconceivable advances would even be overcome. All this,
it has held, is happening so as greatly to benefit rather than
to injure the practical and ethical interests of man. Of late
there has been a growing disposition to admit that " scientific "
knowledge would somehow be found to be not wholly incom-
patible with religious faith and emotion, even if the ancient
basis of accepted truths of religion were quite removed.
A certain curious inconsistency of opinion has seemed,
TRUTH AND ERROR 445
however, to characterize the modern defenders of physical
science as respects the truthfulness of the plain man's cogni-
tive judgments touching the reality of things. On the one
hand, the scientific attitude toward sense-perception is that
of confessed confidence and even of deference amounting to
homage. No one more excites the scorn of the " scientist "
of to-day than does the speculator who, like certain quondam
disciples of Schelling or Hegel, evolves a JVatur-philosophie,
or elaborate system of metaphysics of physics, from his own
higher consciousness in accordance with a preconceived
theory of "Ultimate Reality." "Back to nature," and —
in all cases of disputed conclusions — again " back to
nature," is the inspiring and promising call of the scientific
Zeitgeist. But, of course, there is no other way to get back
to nature than that of regarding the facts, as they appear to
the trained and careful observer through his bodily senses ;
and while modern instrumental equipment furnishes an
enormously increased range of perceptions within which
thought may inquire as to what is true and what is false,
it contributes no wholly new order of facts from which to
derive a new standpoint for testing the truth and falsehood
of our preconceptions touching the nature of Reality. The
highest powers of telescope and microscope, the most deli-
cately sensitized photographic plates or cunningly devised
apparatus for spectroscopic analysis, the startling new exhi-
bitions of " Roentgen rays " afford, after all, no less an " ap-
pearance" to sight, a mere visual phenomenon, than does the
naked eye of the unscientific man, as he moves about among
things visible for the transaction of his daily business. In-
deed, new doubts and wranglings over what is actually
observed constantly accompany the exploration of these
new fields. And the most cautious and thoughtful of ex-
plorers are coming to confess that the same frailties and
bias from intellectual and emotional prejudices must he
guarded against, with even increased diligence, if truth
446 TRUTH AND ERROR
and error are to be separated in the scientific observation
of things. 1
On the other hand 5 it is constantly more apparent that the
underlying strata of hypothetical metaphysics are quite as
extensive in the domain of modern physical science as are
the cultivated fields of fact, open to the inspection of all
observers. These facts afford the witness of a general con-
fession that truth or error about things is not wholly a matter
to be determined by sense-perception; and when joined to
other facts and inferences, they may lead the student of
epistemology to inquire whether, after all, a defensible
theory of knowledge and of metaphysics are not equally
necessary to save both the scientific and the ordinary
cognitions of things from being convicted of complete in-
validity.
Meantime, certain advances in the psychological science of
perception have brought the epistemological problem before
the age in a somewhat new and more emphatic form. The
"new psychology" has devoted itself with commendable zeal
and industry to the scientific investigation of illusions and
hallucinations, as mental phenomena. No doubt, it has
sometimes conducted these investigations with a blameworthy
forgetfulness that certain epistemological truths must be
assumed in any investigation. Whenever, for example,
any theory of possible errors of self-consciousness ("double,"
"triple," or otherwise hallucinatory) threatens the funda-
mental cognitions of Self, — as real, unitary, ancf existing
in relation to other realities, both selves and not-selves, —
it is approaching the limits where all its own claims to scien-
tific character must be let slip into the bottomless pit of a
self-contradictory nescience. Whenever, too, the psycho-
logical theory of illusions and hallucinations in sense-
perception assumes to involve in doubt all knowledge by the
1 See, for example, the instance referred to ; " Psychology, Descriptive and
Explanatory,'' p. 511, note.
TRUTH AND ERROR 447
senses, it becomes itself involved in those same primary fal-
lacies which afflict every species of sceptical idealism.
Our previous critical examination of the nature and certi-
tude of human knowledge authorizes and compels the view
that the terms "truth " and " error," with their full epistemo-
logical significance are properly applied to sense-perception.
Even to speak of illusions and hallucinations of sense im-
plies, in such manner that the implicate cannot, so to speak,
be separated from experience or from the terms chosen to ex-
press it, that in sense-perception men reach cognitive judg-
ments which are truly representative of the nature and the
relations of things. Indeed, from almost equally justifiable
and serviceable points of view, one may proclaim the appar-
ent paradox : Cognitive judgments, as based upon immediate
perception through the senses, are in general both true and
also more or less illusory and hallucinatory. This paradox
follows from the nature of perception as a form of knowledge,
and from the nature of the reality known by perception.
For, on the one hand, perception is a complex cognitive
process that is dependent subjectively upon an indefinite
number of factors, which are different for every individual
perceiving mind, and which change in the very event of every
individual perception. But, on the other hand, the reality
known in sense-perception is no rigid and unchangeable
somewhat; it is not a thing, or a system of things, that is
precisely one and the same for all perceiving minds, or for
every individual perceiving mind in all of its perceptions.
Perception, on our part, is an actual process of change, a
living and moving achievement of mind, resulting in cogni-
tive judgment. Nor is the cognitive judgment to which the
very terms of truth and error must be applied a rigid entity,
with its two parts, or poles, bound in an adamantine way to
one another under the logical principle of identity. Even
far more abundantly able is the reality of things to lend that
infinitely varied Life which displays itself diversely (and all
448 TRUTH AND ERROR
the more wonderfully and beautifully thereby) to the percep-
tive consciousness of every man. He commits the funda-
mental error, from which he must retreat with shame and
confession before he can know the highest Truth, who denies
that the world of the really Existent is actually rich enough
in content to correspond to the varied cognitive judgments of
all perceiving minds.
This correct view of truth and error in sense-perception is
not an esoteric mystery, but is something habitually con-
fessed by the language and action of men ; nor does it render
unessential and inoperative the distinction between truth
and error in this realm of cognition. On the contrary, it
validates the distinction and also gives it value in the place
where the teleology of all cognition is most apparent, —
namely, in our use of things. To illustrate this, let us take
an example. You rise in the morning, and glancing hastily
from the window declare that it has been snowing in the
night ; or, having put on hat and coat, you go out into the
open air and soon affirm, " It is colder than it was yester-
day, and the temperature must have fallen in the night."
But in the one case an error of inference may be corrected
by pointing out that the judgment " The ground is covered
with snow " was due to the glister of the pavement under
the reflected light; in the other, consulting the thermom-
eter may convince you that the truth would be expressed by
simply affirming, " I feel colder than I remember to have felt
yesterday, probably because of a poor night's sleep." Such
mixtures of what men call truth and error are, as every one
admits, frequently found in the cognitive judgments of men.
In cases similar to the former of these two, an error of
fact, due to hasty observation, has led, by otherwise legiti-
mate inference, to an erroneous conclusion; in the latter, an
indisputable truth of fact has been assigned, by illegitimate
inference, to a wrong cause. In neither of these cases, nor
in any similar cases, is there any element of the experience
TRUTH AND ERROR 449
which contradicts true epistemological doctrine touching
human knowledge of Self and of Things, as it has already
been defended against a sceptical idealism or agnosticism.
Nor, as a matter of universal experience, does the admix-
ture of illusion with truth impair the confidence of man-
kind in the possibility of some assured cognition through
the senses.
Suppose, however, that two observers, equally confident in
the trustworthiness of their own senses and equally mindful
of the necessity of care in the use of the senses, pronounce
opposed judgments as to any real thing or actual event. The
final issue of their self-criticism, as well as of their argu-
ment with each other, is the conclusion, on the part of X,
that A is B ; and on the part of Y, that A is not B. Now
any one of several suppositions — which, if needed, are satis-
factory to men in general and actually often employed — will
save the situation from the agnostic conclusion that no
assured truth whatever is obtainable by the senses. Grant-
ing that both X and Y are communicating to each other the
exact state of their case, — that is, are expressing their
respective judgments of an alleged cognitive order so as to
represent their actual experiences, — the following supposi-
tions are possible : either one or both of these subjects may
be abnormally defective in respect of the particular sense
chiefly involved ; or the intellectual and assthetical culture of
X may make it possible for him to perceive in A certain
qualifications (B) which are denied to Y, and therefore
denied by him as belonging to his A ; or, again, it may be
that A actually is both what X and Y understand by B and
also by not-B. Our examination of the nature of cognitive
judgment, as falling under the supreme controlling prin-
ciple of identity, has shown us that it is only the particular
judgment, as made at this time and by this particular cogniz-
ing mind, to which the principle of non-contradiction in its
absolute form is properly applied. The principle of identity,
450 TRUTH AND ERROR
in other words, does not limit the rapidity of change, or the
multitude of the phases, of which any real things are actually
capable. But upon either of the foregoing assumptions, the
truth of both the cognitive judgments that seemed contradic-
tory would much outweigh the error that could be fastened
upon either. In other words, true knowledge of real things
by the senses is understood by every one to be knowledge of
them as they appear through the senses. And when it is
admitted that the same real things appear differently to
different minds, and even to the same mind at different
times, this is only affirming the correct epistemological view;
for this view makes the perception of things dependent upon,
and relative to, the perceiving mind. This view is also en-
tirely compatible with the true metaphysical doctrine, which
finds the ground of the different appearances, not solely in
the differing mental processes, but also in things themselves.
For cognition, however gained, is of the nature of a com-
merce between conscious mind and the really existent ; but
in this commerce both the mind as cognitive and the really
existent are, so to speak, all alive. And my truth is not
the less truth, because it is mine ; nor is truth any less cor-
rectly described as a correspondence between the cognitive
judgment and the being and transactions of the really
existent, because the details of the form of this corre-
spondence are so indefinitely varied. My perception of
things may be as true as yours, although it contains factors
which yours lacks or lacks factors which yours contains.
Nor does it follow that both of us are partially in error, or
even that one of us is wholly in error, because we squarely
and honestly judge seemingly contradictory attributes to
belong to the things perceived. For you and I are still two
judging minds, although perceiving the same thing. And
no Tiling is so mean and poor in content that it cannot re-
veal itself to various minds in an unknown variety of ways ;
while the limitations of all knowledge by the senses may
TRUTH AND ERROR 451
very easily cause that to appear as contradictory to you
which is a matter-of-fact qualification of my cognition.
When, then, I correct a so-called error of sense-percep-
tion, whether in myself or in some one else, I effect a
partial readjustment of the cognitive attitude of some mind
toward reality which brings it nearer to the standard of the
common judgment as tested by the most approved means of
determining that standard ; but I neither make a confession
of the untrustworthiness of sense to afford any knowledge of
reality, nor do I afford any new kind of truth regarding the
relation in which the reality stands to the sensuous experi-
ence of men. The fundamental positions of epistemological
theory are left unchanged. The conclusions warranted in
the interests of psychological science may be stated, on
both sides, in the following language. "Looking first at
the side which disparages our knowledge of things as they
really are, the following considerations present themselves :
All mental activities are involved in common acts of percep-
tion. ... In this complex process (perception of the quality
of weight) the data of sense are profoundly modified by cen-
tral states and activities. . . . What we call normal percep-
tion involves many illusory influences — not only those of
physical and physiological origin, but even more so those
due to the functions of ideation, memory, and imagination.
Indeed, suggestion and imagination control all our percep-
tion by the senses. . . . But on the positive side, confirming
us that somehow we perceive things as they are, several
important facts may be observed. Illusions work according
to laws which may generally be determined. As these
become known we may gradually learn how to rule out the
illusion. The known physical and physiological illusions
do not necessarily delude us, because we may make allow-
ance for them. Similarly, we may now make an approxi-
mate allowance for the illusions of weight and for all other
illusions, due to intellectualized feelings, as they become
452 TRUTH AND ERROR
recognized. The view that illusions and hallucinations do
not act according to law is as wrong as the view that mind
in its normal capacity is lawless. The more thoroughly we
become acquainted with the laws of illusions the more
accurately will our sense-perceptions fall in consensus." 1
Once more, the way in which the emotions, interests, and
plans of men, as well as the limited and imperfect nature of
their mental activity, lead them to blend remoter inferences
with the content of apperception as immediately given, affords
much of the needed explanation for the illusory and halluci-
natory character of many sense-perceptions. Here again,
however, a partial relief is found, and an added justification
against the conclusions of unlimited scepticism, in the doc-
trine of the aesthetical character and the teleological import
of all human knowledge. Indeed, what we properly call
illusory and hallucinatory from the psychological stand-
point, may itself become a guide and a helper to an enlarged
and nobler growth of knowledge. This is, in part, the real
truth involved in Kant's doctrine of an illusory logic,
natural and unavoidable for all human reason. But, "in
part," only; for truth given in emotional and figurative form
is still truth. And the being and behavior of the Self and
of Things, when mentally represented by art and by religion,
may be quite as faithful to the Reality as when cognized only
from other and lower points of view.
The existence and significance of truth and error in all
forms of science is to be explained in accordance with the
same principles. But the peculiar nature of so-called scien-
tific cognition involves special combinations of these prin-
ciples. All science may, from the epistemological point
of view, be considered either as chiefly descriptive or as
largely also explanatory. As merely descriptive, if the term
" science " is to be applied to such forms of knowledge, the
1 From an article by C. E. Seashore, Ph. D., in " Studies from the Yale Psy-
chological Laboratory," iii., pp. 66 f.
TRUTH AND ERROR 453
truth or error belongs to the cognitive judgment when
understood to be affirmatory of the facts of self-consciousness
and of sense-perception ; as a form of knowledge, then, the
epistemological theory of descriptive science has already
been sufficiently considered. In general, however, no cog-
nitive judgments offer themselves for critical discernment of
the truth or error which is in them that do not admit of
some sort of express or implied reference to grounds. Both
the psychological and the epistemological doctrine of judg-
ment agree in affirming that thinking and inferring enter
into those propositions about the truth or falsehood of which
men inquire and debate. But science is pre-eminently
conceptual knowledge; and thus to it, as explanatory, the
considerations which have been taken into account, in refer-
ence to the valid application to Reality of the principle of
sufficient reason, especially apply. The effort of scientific
research, as well as the reward of scientific discovery and of
reflective thinking, consists largely in the improved and puri-
fied conceptions gained, and in the more accurate and well
certified bringing of these conceptions together as terms in
cognitive judgments of general validity.
In order better to understand what kind, and how much,
of truth science affords, and what is the nature of its errors,
one may consider the subject in the following way. The
general form of the purely scientific judgment is, as has
already been pointed out, the hypothetical : If A is B then
Cis D. As employed in the extension of that knowledge
which scientific classification embodies and advances, this
form of judgment means: If any newly perceived being or
event is like another already conceptually known being or
event in certain particulars (if the perceived A has the
attributes B), then one may, with a good degree of safety,
expect that it will be like in certain other particulars ; and
one may put all such beings or events into a common class
bearing the same name (then one may affirm that, as being
454 TRUTH AND ERROR
0, it has not only the attributes B, but also the attributes
D). But as employed in the extension of explanatory
knowledge, this hypothetical judgment is affirmative of
influential connections or causal relations. It may then be
interpreted, somewhat crudely, as follows: If anything or
group of things is behaving in a certain recognized way (if
A is acting according to the well-known formula B), then,
looking backward, one may infer, that something else has
furnished the reason for this, by itself previously behaving
in a certain way ; or else, looking forward, one may expect
that the behavior of something else in its own way will find
its reason in the observed event (if the perceived event is a
case of A-is-B, then either the ground, or the result, or
both, may be inferred as a case of (?-is-D). But the hypo-
thetical judgment, considered as in any sense explanatory,
may itself be thrown into the categorical form: "A-is-B"
and " C-is-D " then become judgments dependently connected ;
but, after being united in the hypothetical judgment, "If
A is B then C is D," they remain cognitive judgments only
in case a connection in reality is somehow established for
cognition between them. The truth of the hypothetical
judgment, then, like the truth of every other form of judg-
ment (like all " truth ") must be referred to the test of reality.
And this reality, like all that reality in correspondence to
which every alleged cognitive judgment is tested, is neither
a merely formal correspondence of the judgment to the bare
rules of our understanding, nor a super-cognitive entity (a
hypothetical and abstract Ding-an-sich) ; but it is the reality
given in experience. How such reality is given in experi-
ence has already been explained in detail, both with reference
to Self and to Things.
So-called scientific truth has, then, only the same founda-
tions to stand upon as those upon which all truth reposes.
It is truth verified by experience in the properly guarded
and well-trained use of cognitive faculty, — especially, of
TRUTH AND ERROR 455
course, on account of the nature of its objects, if it be the
science of things which is under consideration, in the use
of the senses in observation, and of thought in elaborating
the facts gained by observation. Errors arise in science,
as certainly (however less frequently, if even that can be
maintained) as in perceptions of the ordinary, unscientific
kind. To certain forms of error, which depend upon the
remoteness from that testing of the concrete and more imme-
diate cognitions of sense to which thinking must carry its
processes, science is peculiarly liable. But this very liabil-
ity is the price science has to pay for its superiority in the
height and breadth of its conceptual knowledge. And its
final aim is to eliminate progressively those sources of error
which arise in the unguarded and untrained or ill-trained
use of cognitive faculty ; while at the same time, by a sort
of organic growth, in which many vital elements under the
influence of common vital forces take part, and by preserv-
ing the sound portions of the building of other generations
and adding to them from age to age, it proposes to outgrow
many of its old mistakes and to improve the quality and
certainty, as well as increase the number, of its valid cog-
nitive judgments.
What theory of knowledge and what conception of the
nature of Reality are needed in order to validate the cogni-
tions of science ? How shall our minds escape the doubt
whether it be not all — this goodly temple of modern knowl-
edge with its foundations upon the bed-rock of fact and its
stones inspected by skilled and critical eyes as they are pains-
takingly built into the structure — no more truly valid trans-
subjectively than is a fair and stately dream ? That I am
not the whole of this world, that things other than myself
exist, I can by no possibility doubt. But what is there that
my science gives me which is true as corresponding to this
Other Being and to its actual Transactions ? We see no way
to answer, and no prospect of the discovery of any way, that
456 TRUTH AND ERROR
neglects the faithful use of the fundamental postulate to
which reference has so frequently been made. The " scien-
tist " who does not accept the validity, and the value, for
Reality, of the conception of things as a system self-organiz-
ing after the analogy of the self-known Self, can only com-
fort his doubts with the beauty and formal consistency of his
own dream. Knowledge would seem, somehow, to be denied
to him except on terms of repentance and of faith.
The more fruitful discussion of the Sources of Error
must be in the main psychological and logical. But the
philosophical theory of knowledge enables us to see how
errors naturally and necessarily arise in the employment of
cognitive faculty under the conditions of human life and
human mental development. For knowledge is not an affair
of presuppositionless and "pure" thinking; or of immediate
insight with a clarified and full-orbed vision into the inmost
mysteries of Absolute Being; or of disinterested and dis-
passionate ratiocination from indubitable premises, along
clear and unobstructed dialectical lines, to an absolutely sure
and universal conclusion. Only the immature Paracelsus
dare say : —
" I saw no cause why man
Should not stand all-sufficient even now,
Or why his annals should be forced to tell
That once the tide of light, about to break
Upon the world, was sealed within its spring."
Grown wiser and more experienced in both truth and error,
the critic of human faculty from the highest attainable point
of view discerns how the case really stands with man, ■ — a
case to be pleaded, in the interests neither of an unrea-
sonable transcendentalism nor of an equally unreasonable
agnosticism.
" Power — neither put forth blindly, nor controlled
Calmly by perfect knowledge ; to be used
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear :
Knowledge — not intuition, but the slow
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil,
Strengthened by love."
TRUTH AND ERROR 457
As arising out of the nature of cognitive faculty the
sources of error may fitly be considered under two heads :
first, such as spring from the inevitable, natural limitations
of cognitive faculty ; and, second, such as come from a par-
tially remediable but universal lack of energy and of balance
in the use of cognitive faculty. The doctrine of the limits of
knowledge, as it is connected with the doctrine of degrees of
knowledge, has already been sufficiently discussed. But the
inherent weaknesses of man's mind in its efforts to attain
and to enlarge its system of assured cognitive judgments, not
only necessarily result in setting limits to his knowledge,
but they also inevitably conduce to an admixture of error in
these judgments. In saying this, we must not be under-
stood as retracting our former contention that partial truth
is not to be identified with error; nor do we revoke the
more recent claim that the variety of the cognitive judg-
ments which different men pronounce respecting their most
immediate experiences with the Self and with Things is, to
a large extent, an enlargement of the total sphere of truth
rather than of error. But these same limitations do also,
in some sort, commit the most carefully guarded and finely
trained minds to no small amount of positive error. So
that the complaint of being not only bound to know little
truth, but also destined to accept as knowledge much not-
truth, is by no means without foundation in the very nature
of the cognitive subject. Here again, however, there are
reliefs to be gained from taking the higher and more com-
prehensive points of view; from these are discerned the
teleology of all knowledge, and the more fixed and important
relations between knowledge and what men call "Reality."
The natural limitations of the human mind, in respect of
each one of those various forms of functioning which com-
bine in cognition, and in regard to each kind of the objects
and fields of cognition, are undoubted. In the use of all of
the senses for the attainment of that knowledge of things
458 TRUTH AND ERROR
which comes in this way, the more precise qualification, the
intensity, the time -rate, and the field or content possible
for one "grasp of consciousness," are limited. And since
sense-perception essentially consists in interpretation of
sensuous data into terms of ideation and thought, misinter-
pretation may result from any one of the several kinds of
limitation. When the intensity of the sense-consciousness
is stronger or weaker than a certain indefinite and variable
limit, the cognitive judgment is, as we say, il more or less
sure " to be erroneous. The same thing is true of the time-
rate of sense-consciousness; errors increase in the cognitive
judgment as this rate rises above or falls below a certain
limit of best results. Be as honest and faithful in the use
of the senses as one possibly can, one is thus doomed to
many so-called mistakes. For attention itself, the indis-
pensable condition of the accuracy of our discriminations
and of the truth of our recognitions cannot possibly be kept
at a constant strain. But all men, to some commendable
degree, succeed in correcting, or at least, in making rough
but practically fruitful allowances for most such errors. In-
deed, it is in acquiring just this sort of skill that the train-
ing of the senses, and of mental faculty through the senses,
so largely consists. More particularly, the modern experi-
mental study of psychology is trying — and with some suc-
cess — to investigate these errors of sense, to point out their
causes, and to discover their laws. What has already been
ascertained shows that errors of sense are not nearly, even
in the average and untrained mind, so numerous as they
might be, if the adaptation of the senses to the truth of cog-
nitive judgment were less firm and obvious. For example,
there are few more uncertain mental processes of the sensu-
ous order than those concerned in the localization of sound ;
yet the average person, when as attentive and discriminating
as he can be, makes a relatively small percentage of serious
errors ; and some of the more serious possible errors he never
TRUTH AND ERROR 459
makes at all. So that, if one were at liberty to say that
man's cognitive faculty, as employed in the localization of
sounds by the ear, is given to him in order that he may, by
a fair amount of care and cultivation, get along well with
things acoustic, one would have no reason greatly to blame
the author of this faculty.
The more definitively and elaborately intellectual pro-
cesses, by reason of these natural and unavoidable limita-
tions, lead the mind into not a few errors. Because one
cannot think more than so quickly, or so intensely and
clearly, or about more than so many things, what thinking
one can do when at one's best, not infrequently goes wrong.
Memory, too, in its most definite and trustworthy manifesta-
tions, cannot be implicitly relied upon to give accurately the
details of our own past experiences with ourselves; and
when it is summoned into the court of self-consciousness to
bear witness to the truth as to past experiences with things,
the errors of the original observations may become more
important. In all such matters, no clearly marked and
fixed line can be drawn between ordinary and scientific
knowledge. More or less careful observation, and more or
less careful thinking, enter into both. And into both may
enter the errors resulting from the unavoidable limitations
that hedge round all observation and all inference. But
the presence of many errors, now more or less heartily con-
fessed and more or less completely abandoned, in that body
of scientific knowledge which has been growing through past
generations, is undoubtedly the more impressive fact in
proof of the unavoidableness of human error.
Indeed, the more complex forms of conceptual knowledge
are peculiarly liable to certain kinds of error. To those
who justly value such knowledge highly, the temptation is
almost irresistible to make the clear and the logical the
measure of the true. If the advance line of science did not
yield to this temptation, and so constantly maintain that
460 TRUTH AND ERROR
what the minds of explorers, unrestrained by the control of
other and seemingly contradictory facts, think ought to be
true is true (the general postulate that Reality is throughout
rational), then science itself would not advance so rapidly as
it does by the aid of hypothesis and of experimental testing.
On the other hand, in this way the body of accepted scientific
truth is itself always so constructed as to retain within
itself a certain amount of material in the form of erroneous
conceptions. But in time, the facts plainly refuse to validate
many of the most rational conceptions ; and the saner minds,
first, and, finally, the multitude of the students of the par-
ticular science either greatly modify or wholly abandon
them. Here, indeed, the error may be said to be — abstractly
considered — avoidable. For it is conceivable that all men
should hold the valid application of as yet unproved hy-
potheses as to the reality of things, in a hypothetical ivay.
A most interesting example of this may be seen in the his-
tory of the table by which Mendele'eff undertook the orderly
and regular grouping of the chemical elements. This con-
jectural arrangement resulted in two correct predictions
which elements have since appeared to observation to verify ;
but it also resulted in even a larger number of mistakes.
It is often exceedingly instructive to see how, when
pressed hard with questions from the seeker after only
well-verified knowledge, the most ardent advocates of favored
scientific hypotheses admit the necessary distinction. For
example, some years ago, in his pleased recognition of the
significance of certain Western "finds," Professor Huxley
is reported to have publicly proclaimed the still doubtful
hypothesis of biological evolution to be on a par, for its
undoubted truthfulness, with the law of gravitation. But
did this man of science actually know, not to say sincerely
believe, just that ? Even the law of gravitation is, so far as
the greater number of the physical masses in the universe
is concerned, itself still an unproved hypothesis. In this
TRUTH AND ERROR 461
connection it may be well to refer to those indubitable facts
of our cognition of things in which all confidence in even
the limited action of human intellects as applied to things,
has its foundations : These are sufficiently summarized by
Wundt 1 as (1) the independent variation of the material and
the formal constituents of perception; and (2) the constancy
of the general properties of the formal constituents. But
there is ample reason to suppose that the natural limitations
of cognitive faculty prevent us from representing, without
large admixture of error, both the variable constituents and
the formal constants of things, precisely as they really are
and actually behave.
At this point there enters into the doctrine of error another
important consideration which is unavoidably due to the
natural limitations of cognitive faculty. We have seen
that all positive and detailed knowledge of other objects than
the self-known Self is analogical. This would seem to
render our alleged cognitive judgments more sure and defen-
sible within certain middle grounds. What is here meant
may be illustrated as follows: In the cognition of one's Self
there is a certain region where all seems clear and undoubted.
Here I, with a perfect assurance, know myself as I really
am. When discussing the degrees and limits of knowledge
(pp. 243 f. ) it became perfectly evident what is this region of
most clear and indubitable cognition, But surrounding this
region, and separated from it by no fixed and indelible lines,
are regions below, above, and on either side. There blends
with this well-known life of mine a being that I know only
much more indefinitely and doubtfully or not at all; it is
characterized by obscure instincts, by animal impulses, by
vague, inchoate, and unmeaning ideas, by unanalyzable and
fitful emotions and sentiments. I may speak of this as the
"lower self," if I choose. That of which it is apparently
the analogue may be observed in the lower animals, or in
1 System der Philosophie, pp. 116 f .
462 TRUTH AND ERROR
childish and savage human minds, or in the subjects of
hypnotic trance, the insane, etc. Moreover, when I try to
understand the earlier developments of the Self I call my
own, I find my observations most often baffled, and always
somewhat sorely in doubt whether my own mental represen-
tations correspond to the reality there. In this lower region
of obscurity and confusion, my cognitive faculty is likely to
be, on account of its natural limitations of adaptation to
what appears as a higher sphere of being, largely at fault.
Again, above the region of greatest clearness and certitude
there seems to be another region of possible cognition, into
which I enter with more or less of confidence as borne thither
on the wings of analogy, but where I am not alike sure of
being free from erroneous conclusions, — do the best I can
do. In my own Self I find certain insights, anticipations,
aspirations, confidences, and sublimer hopes and fears, to
which I give signification in proclaiming the cognitive judg-
ment : " I am something more and higher than my present
weak and erring human self." I, too, have a divine Being;
the higher life of the Supreme Reality is actually present
and operative in my life. This is, indeed, what I cannot
understand or make intelligible to others as I can the judg-
ments which affirm the facts and laws of the middle region
of my experience with the Self. Possibly — nay, probably,
and even assuredly — there is more of not only incom-
pleteness but of positive error in the precise forms of those
judgments by which concepts formed on the basis of such
experience are united in a totality of mental representation.
And now I look wonderingly toward the heavens and
listen to the marvellous tales of the modern astronomer ; or
I peer through the microscope at the indefinitely small, and
hear the biologist discourse concerning the mysteries of
bacteriology or of the physiology of plants. To the huge
masses overhead I ascribe force, obedience to law, and all
the equipment necessary to playing their part appropriately
TRUTH AND ERROR 463
in the drama of the universe. To the micro-organisms, too,
I give an important place in the later acts of the same great
drama, and speak boldly of their being and their perform-
ances in terms that are meaningless unless they imply some
controlling principle from a sort of all-embracing Life.
But it is chiefly when I contemplate the phenomena of
human development, the ethical, political, social, and re-
ligious evolution of mankind, that I feel the impulse and
the need to construct my conception of Reality, as a whole,
in terms to satisfy this higher Self of my own. Let it be
noticed, however, that, on the one hand, I am always bound
in the interests of clear thinking to make this construction
with a consciousness of an increasing danger of error as I
get further away — using the same principle of analogy —
from the clear, middle regions of my own experience as a
Self. But, on the other hand, I am at no time really for-
saking the guidance of thought or making a blind rush into
the by-paths of an irrational faith. I am simply extending
the one principle of all cognition into regions which, while
they are never to be separated by a fixed and unalterable
barrier from those of our most assured cognitions, are,
nevertheless, regions where the principle must be more
doubtfully applied.
This, however, is itself a conclusion derived chiefly from
the more purely intellectual considerations that bear upon it.
There is need that it should be supplemented and possibly
modified by considerations derived from the doctrine that
all knowledge, judged from the point of view of its worth,
is teleological ; and that ethical and sesthetical " momenta "
enter into all the higher forms of knowledge.
The metaphysical factors, or ontological functionings of
mind in cognition, are natural sources of error. This is,
of course, true only when these factors are themselves
required or allowed to take part in that cognitive judgment
whose truth or falsity is under consideration. All truth —
464 TRUTH AND ERROR
such is the nature of cognition — flows from a sort of trans-
subjective compulsion ; but we do not satisfactorily account
for this compulsion when we follow Kant in ascribing it
solely to the constitutional forms of the functioning of
our own intellect. The rather is it also a necessity which
has its source in the nature of eatfra-mental Reality.
When, however, the attempt is made more carefully to define
the character and the extent of this necessity, and to
describe the laws or universal forms of its operation, we
enter the realm where error is almost certain to mingle
with truth. Some of such error, too, is due' to the natural
and unavoidable limitations of human cognitive faculty.
For it is not possible by thinking alone, to know completely
the grounds of one's own being, or to put into incontro-
vertible form, for knowledge, the laws which we actually
follow in our cognitive commerce with the real being and
actual transactions of things. We are here — in the em-
brace of Reality ! But how we got here, no man may be able
to tell ; and in the attempt to tell, one is quite sure to com-
mit not a few errors. Indeed, not a bad case might be made
out for the apparently paradoxical statement that in those
subjects which seem simplest and clearest to all men, most
error is likely to be committed in every attempt to give to
vague impressions the form of assured cognitive judgments.
What other books have ever been written that contained
so much which would not stand the test of the truth of
Reality, as books on formal logic or demonstrative systems
of general metaphysics ? In the course of this treatise, we
have had occasion to show how erroneous, in reality, are
current conceptions regarding the principle of identity, the
principle of sufficient reason, the essential nature of things,
the principle of causation, etc., etc. 1
1 According to Caspari (Grundprobleme der Erkenntnissth'atigkeit, i.,pp. 156f.)
three pseudo-concepts result from "overdriven" individualizing: (1) the X of
the Democritean concept of absolutely empty Space ; (2) the Xoi the Leibnitzean
"Pre-established Harmony;" and (3) the X of the Herbartian "quiescent Cau-
TRUTH AXD ERROR 465
In the development and use of cognitive faculty, the
judgments made may approach ever nearer to, and may
finally become, a species of conduct. Thus some judgments
are held to be, like every species of conduct, not simply cor-
rect or erroneous, but also commendable or blameworthy.
For in the thought and practice of men, the possession of the
power to know carries with it an obligation, under the
recognized natural limitations from which no man can
escape, to make our judgments true and not false. From
this point of view also, actual errors are graded, in a rough
way, from those into which the wisest man might be almost
completely excused for falling, down to the most inexcusable
and blameworthy of falsehoods and lies. Here ethics joins
hands with psychology and logic for the execution of a work
in which all have a common interest, — namely, the purifica-
tion of judgment. But epistemological theory explains all
such errors sufficiently for its purposes by simply pointing
out that they may be ascribed in general to the unbalanced
action of those different forms of functioning which are
combined in the formation of every judgment. This view
scarcely needs more than a single illustration or two.
Thus in the use of the senses, under the control of will,
undue haste may lead to the formation of judgment on
insufficient data ; but undue sloth and tardiness of movement
in the Blickpunht of attention may cause a similar erroneous
result. Lack of emotional interest may at one time be a
source of errors similar to those for which excess of emo-
tional interest, at other time, accounts. In the expressly
guarded and more refined observations of the physical and
sality." As pseudo-concepts arising from excessive generalizing, he instances the
"mathematical Indeterminate," the " Absolute" — whether as Ding-an-Sich, Ab-
solute Idea (Hegel), Will to Live (Schopenhauer), or " the Unconscious " (Hart-
mann.) The source of about all metaphysical error is the attempt to explain
light out of darkness. Thus we have Stoff-an-sich in one place and Form-an-sich
in another. (This, we remark, is the really delusive dualism, and not that of our
concrete experience, as it actually exists between mind and body.)
30
466 TRUTH AND ERROR
natural sciences, judgment takes up into itself the charac-
teristics of the affective tendencies and forms of bias
belonging to the investigator. The investigations of the
psychological laboratory confirm what the most obvious
experiences lead us to suspect; hour by hour, and respecting
the simplest and plainest of matters, men judge wrong
under a great variety of not wholly unavoidable influences.
Thus the shrewd observer is always on his guard against
being deceived by his own changing emotional tendencies,
as well as by his more settled habits of conviction, and by
the lower but always pervasive physiological and physical
conditions. But this very shrewdness, when itself exces-
sive and full of natural suspiciousness, has prevented many
a man from knowing in a satisfactory way much of which
he would most gladly have been assured. Indeed, the higher
wisdom often leads one not to be too nice about details, lest
one commit the graver error of misjudging or neglecting
the important matters. And just as we are congratulat-
ing ourselves that we have thus escaped mistakes and have
gained a firmer and more comprehensive grasp upon the
truth of reality, we find some seemingly trivial oversight
has revenged itself by convicting of error our entire care-
fully prepared case. Neglected trifles have succeeded in
throwing many a scientific brief out of the highest court of
appeal.
It is with such experiences in mind that men often most
eagerly and hopefully inquire after some universal Criterion
of Truth. Surely, they think, the Spirit of all veracity
should have provided them with a conclusive standard, a
general infallible judgment regarding the necessary and
universal characteristics of all valid cognition. If this can
only be discovered and carefully applied, it will preserve
them from every error. But a more seductive will-o'-the-
wisp than this was never proposed. There is no single,
infallible means of testing truth — known, conceivable, or
TKUTH AND ERROR 467
possible. If a criterion of truth were discovered, we should
indeed have all honest souls paying any price of industry
and self-renunciation to possess so great a treasure. But
the very nature of truth as dependent upon the characteris-
tics of the cognitive judgment is such as to render absurd
the conception of a single and universally applicable crite-
rion. The nearest approach one can make to the bare
conception of such a criterion of truth is that evidence
which is found in our clearest, most feeling-full and content-
full, voluntary self-consciousness. But the attempt to apply
such a criterion to all human cognitive judgments would
defeat itself in a most annoying, or amusing, or disastrous
way. The very attempt would render all growth in knowl-
edge impossible; it would bring upon one the charge of a
ridiculous and monstrous egoism, and would prove quite
impotent to tell one anything worth knowing about the real
being and actual transactions of things. Moreover, the
mind that demands such a criterion needs to be brought, in
no gentle fashion, up against the chastening reminders that
life consists in something more and other than sitting down
to test judgments by a cunningly devised scale of absolute
values. Better be happy and effective in action that is full
of intellectual blunders, than be miserable and inactive
through the effort to conform the intellect to so machine-
like measurements.
Criteria for testing, in a more or less satisfactory way,
the various kinds of judgments which their makers esteem
cognitive, are not wanting, however. They are as abundant
as are the different main forms of corrective discipline
which human life affords for all who share in it. The
whole course of infantile development consists in getting the
understanding and application of these criteria better in
hand. The practical test of the child's early judgment that
the lighted candle or burning coal is a species of good, to
be made further acquainted with by taste and touch, is the
468 TRUTH AND ERROR
experience which follows the effort to set that judgment
into realization. Of all the so-called criteria of the false-
ness or truth of judgments, such practical tests, if obtain-
able, are most valuable. So that there is really no demand
made which is out of the natural order when alleged truths
of politics, ethics, or religion are recommended to a similar
criterion. The well-known tests of scientific hypothesis
and induction are not, in principle, markedly different.
All criteria are included in the persistent effort of the indi-
vidual and of the race to arrive at an harmonious and satis-
factory experience. Such an experience necessarily includes
all that can be gained, by growth of knowledge, toward an
harmonious and satisfactory explanation of experience.
But, as we have already seen, experience is much larger
than cognition. And the sphere of cognition is larger than
the sphere of judgment, even when the judgments are estab-
lished by proof most satisfactory to the intellect. Knowl-
edge itself is a vital body, a vital growth.
When, then, any particular alleged cognitive judgment
is pronounced, it appears in consciousness, by virtue of its
very claim to be cognitive, as the solution of some problem
respecting the real being and actual transactions of things.
It carries within itself, for the mind pronouncing it, a
demand for the acceptance (" Belief ") either of some object
of sense-intuition so-called, as a really existent other " not-
me," or of some truth about objects, regarded by the mind
as resting on such or such grounds. It is this " reference
for proof (in the wider and looser meaning of the word) to a
somewhat separate from us, and not possessed by us, which
gives their peculiar significance to the expressions of cer-
tainty and logical compulsion. " l Thus the criteria of the
first order for the testing of the truth of every cognitive
judgment are properly thought of as an integral part of the
judgment itself.
1 See Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken, p. 283.
TRUTH AND ERROR 469
Any cognitive judgment may, however, have its truth
challenged and the further demand made that it shall submit
itself to a process of critical examination or testing. This
demand may arise from within the judging mind, and thus
constitute a proposal to apply the criteria furnished by
other outlying factors of the individual's experience; or it
may arise from without and because the alleged cognitive
judgment is not found harmonious and satisfactory to other
judging minds. In either case the pronouncing of the judg-
ment is held suspended, as it were, until this particular
alleged cognitive factor in the sum of experience can be
submitted to a process of testing. Here not only will other
judgments, more or less firmly established and built into
the very texture of the mind, exercise their influence under
the general demand for a conscious intellectual harmony,
but also will the emotional prepossessions and voluntary
tendencies of the individual mind contribute their share to
the process. Nothing is more instructive on this subject
than to notice how men, as an obvious matter-of-fact, apply
tests to those new forms of judging truth which disturb the
harmony of their mental life. In the last resort, no crite-
rion lies further back or lower down than this same sense of
harmony. But alas ! there are few minds, indeed, which
succeed in bringing into such an harmonious and satisfac-
tory condition the various items of truth which their total
experience seems to present.
In the larger life of the race the testing of truth, for the
elimination of error and the confirmation of the truth itself,
goes on through the ages in essentially the same way. Only
here there is no wider and more inclusive experience to
which the individual minds of any age may make their final
and most convincing appeal. For, even if one admit the
fullest reasonable claims that can be made in the behalf of
revelations of truth that break in upon the race from the
Source of all Truth, these revelations themselves can ulti-
470 TRUTH AND ERROR
mately get accepted only as they are able to submit to essen-
tially the same criteria; and being accepted, completely or
partially, they become integral parts of that experience of
the race which is itself the. ultimate test. But to admit
this statement is a very different thing from accepting the
tenets of either the current empiricism or the old-fashioned
rationalism. The depth and height and breadth of this
difference can be appreciated only by recalling all that has
already been said concerning the transcendent in human
experience, and concerning the wealth of assured content
which belongs to human knowledge, beyond anything that
mere ratiocination can supply.
It appears, then, that there is no cause for overweening
confidence in man's cognitive powers to afford insight into
the complete interior nature of Reality, as it were ; but even
less cause for despairing of all knowledge and for resorting
to either a sceptical or a dogmatic doctrine of universal
nescience. The plain man's consciousness, in his simple
work-a-day transactions with things and observations of him-
self, cannot set itself up as the measure of all the truths
of science and philosophy. It affords no so very penetrat-
ing insight into the real nature of things, and no systematic
and well-reasoned cognition of Self. But it has in it the
everlasting truth of the Ego's self-active Life ; and it enables
its possessor to make his own the ancient mystic saying of
India, "That too art thou." The feeling of the unity in
difference of the Self, and also of its oneness with the
World, are present as the abiding truth of all such knowl-
edge. " Cock-sure " science and arrogant philosophy, claim-
ing either a perfect immediate insight or an irresistible
apodictic, cannot vindicate themselves in the presence
of a correct doctrine of human cognitive faculty; they
contradict the experience of the race with both truth and
error. But he who brings against science and philosophy
the railing accusation which Milton more fitly brought
TRUTH AND ERROR 471
against the makers of civil law, that they are perpetu-
ally "hatching lies with the heat of jurisdiction," can-
not speak the few words of his accusation without
implying an excessive confidence in his own science and
philosophy.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
OUR critical examination of the epistemological problem
has constantly brought us nearer to the place where
it seems to merge itself with, and be lost in, the larger prob-
lems of all human life in its relations to Reality. And,
indeed, what is more obvious than that knowledge cannot be
considered as a phenomenon separable from the entire com-
plex existence and development of the race ? It cannot be
explained as a kind of mechanical combination resulting from
the fusion, under predetermined forms, of merely sensational
and ideational factors in the individual consciousness. Other
theories of cognition, too, which, like that of Kant, include an
enormous amount of the purely formal a priori, but fail to
admit the affective and voluntary aspects of the mind's life to
a share in the cognitive attitude toward reality, are surely
destined to show this original deficiency, either by theoretical
inconsistencies and contradictions or by failing to afford a
practical and ethical satisfaction. Men must live, and strive,
and die, in the use of their minds. And to put the case in
a superficial and popular but expressive way : If our mental
faculties are not " made to live and die by," to guide us in
our striving after every manner of truth, then either so-
called knowledge, or the larger conceptions which we desig-
nate by Life and Reality, are vain and illusory. For the
cognitions which men have, or think they have, and ever
strive to get, they insist shall serve some purpose in relation
to the higher and more comprehensive good.
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 473
In brief, all inevitably regard their own cognitive faculties
from the teleological point of view. In the higher realms of
ethics, art, and religion, men are generally prompt enough to
ask, " What is the use of trying to know ? " How, then, can
the student of pure science or of philosophy regard the teleo-
logical question when applied to his own favorite studies as
unmeaning or impertinent ?
And, indeed, the question of use, the attempt to bring
knowledge itself under the conception of worth, is never
unmeaning or impertinent. For every individual cognition,
as well as the entire body of human knowledge, not only may
but must be regarded from the teleological point of view.
The very structure of cognitive faculty is subject to the
idea of final purpose ; and if knowledge is to be validated
as a mental representation of the real being and actual
transactions of things, then the idea of final purpose must
somehow find its place in Reality, so far as known or know-
able to man. Now, as to the illustration of the teleological
idea in the very nature and development of all human cogni-
tion, there can be no doubt ; for the facts and data for analy-
sis exist where they can be approached and studied. But
as to any corresponding application of the same idea to
extra-mental Reality, our way of approach is over the bridge
of that same analogical postulate, which has been found
necessary to give validity to all knowledge " as to what "
things really are. The necessity of escape from that ex-
treme of sceptical idealism or agnosticism which has been
found intrinsically absurd is, however, just as great in this
case as in the case of any other form of the inquiry after the
validity of human knowledge.
The nature of human knowledge, as revealed especially by
a study of its origins and earlier developments, shows the
indispensable part which action takes in the first apprehen-
sion of things. Only as the child does somewhat to things,
and has somewhat done to him by things, can he come to
474 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
know that they are, or what they are. Genetic psychology
places this beyond doubt. It is matter of universal observa-
tion that the inactive child is backward in his apprehension
of concrete physical objects ; and that the " dreamy " man is
most apt to doubt the real existence of such objects, as well
as least aware of how they are to be handled in order to " get
the good of them." It is action that, moving along organic
lines in the pursuit of ends, secures growth of positive cognition
and banishes doubt. For, as has just been indicated, action,
as soon as it becomes conscious volition guided by ideas, is
teleological in its attitude toward the objects of sense. In
the attempt to use anything, the child gains new knowledge
of that thing; and the success or failure of his attempt,
starting from the advanced cognitive point of view already
gained, is a stimulus to the strife after yet more knowledge
about the same thing. Thus does knowledge grow by use, in
order to the end of improved and larger use.
From the point of view of psychological analysis, every
mental event of a developed order appears as an illustration
of the idea of final purpose. This is the scientific truth
which leads to the epistemological position : No cognition can
be considered as the mere equivalent of its psychic factors or
psycho-physical causes. As Wundt * has said, even quanti-
tatively considered, every spiritual event surpasses its causes.
Perceptions, regarded as mental constructs out of composite
psychical factors, can never be explained by, or deduced
from, their sensational and ideational elements. But, on the
contrary, when we begin by considering what they are as con-
cerned with the appropriation of things to our uses, and with
the adjustment of all our changing relations to reality so as
to live, and to live more abundantly, both as individuals and
1 So enthalt ein raumliches Bild ausser den Empfindungsqualitdten, die in dasselbe
eingehen, die specif sche Qualitat des Raumlichen, und diese Qualitat fuhrt exten-
sive Massbeziehungen mit sich, welche zu den intensiven Grossen der Empfndungen
hinzukommen. — System der Philosophie, p. 345.
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 475
as a race, the completed perceptions, in the light of final pur-
pose, impart a new meaning to their own sensational and
ideational elements. If, from the more mechanical point of
view, psychology is warranted in describing the perceptions
as what they are, because of the sensations and images of
sensations which enter into them, and even in maintaining
that perceptions exist at all only as the sensational and idea-
tional basis is laid in the psycho-physical mechanism, still from
the teleological point of view, epistemology also is warranted in
holding that the active mind, in order to secure its own good,
has selected and combined these particular elements into the
totality of the perceptive construct.
Only as the full force of the teleological principle is admit-
ted, can the fact be satisfactorily explained that percepts of the
same things by different minds are so different. On this point
it would better accord with a true doctrine of knowledge to
say that only the teleological view of all perception by the
senses shows us why things are so different as they are known
by different cognitive subjects. For every man is forced to
know things according to his capacity for receiving impres-
sions and retaining and reviving ideas ; but every man also
consciously strives to know things according to the relations
in which they seem to him to stand to his own purposes for
attaining a good. Things impress one according to one's sen-
suous and ideating faculty ; but one also knows them for
what they seem worth to one in the carrying out of one's ends.
To the man who cares to know nothing further, a Stradi-
varius is "no thing" but a fiddle. To the modern violin-
maker it appears a model replete with lessons as to the
selection and disposition of various materials, the shaping
and combining of parts, the soundness and texture of belly,
back, and bridge, the curvature of sides, etc. But to its art-
ist owner it is an instrument of his musical ideas and feelings,
— an instrument, and something much more ; it is a tried
and sympathetic servant, a beloved and comforting compan-
476 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
ion. To the mind's eye of the physicist, however, it appears
as a collection of molecules and atoms whose acoustic prop-
erties come under the laws of his science ; or whose wonder-
ful performances may furnish new problems to that science.
But which of these — and if none of these, what — is the
real violin ? The very question, in connection with the expe-
rience out of which it arises, shows that all perceptive cog-
nition of things is teleological ; for perceptions themselves are
mental constructs depending upon the selective action of will
as guided by ideas in the conscious pursuit of some end.
The same truth may be maintained with reference to the
construction and development of those abstract mental pic-
tures which, speaking from the psychological point of view,
constitute our means for the classification and recognition of
things. The schemata, or general images of sensuous objects,
are mental constructs whose very nature embodies and illus-
trates the principle of final purpose. Men's perceptions of
things differ, according to the selective action of will in pur-
suit of ends ; but their ideas of things differ in the same way
more abundantly. One's mental image of a thing cannot
contain sensational elements of which no sensuous experience
has ever been given ; but one's mental image of any class of
things is even more dependent upon what one wants of those
things ; that is, upon one's perceptions. What is called a con-
cept must be regarded as a mental construct ruled over by the
principle of final purpose. It is described by logicians as a
complex of marks that have been abstracted from a num-
ber of objects and combined into a totality which is valid
for application to any one of those objects in as far as it
belongs to the class. The concept of a " man " will tell you
what X is, as a man, simply ; but it will tell you nothing as
to " what sort of a man " he is ; in order to know that, you
must know X.
But I am no more set free from the rule of the teleological
idea when I fall back upon the general conception of man,
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 477
and agree with myself not to take the trouble to know X in
particular, than I am when, equipped with this concept, as it
were, I deliberately enter upon a " plan-full " course of proced-
ure having for its conscious purpose the detailed acquaintance
with this individual. For I may be forced at once to raise
and answer the question : With what end in view have you
formed your conception of a man ? And to which one of the
many possible sorts does this conception of yours answer ? Is
it the mere exterior semblance of an erect biped man ; or the
man scientifically defined from the point of view of biology
and anthropology ; or the business man's man, with whom
one may barter, and whom one may estimate, for purposes of
trust, by referring to the lists of some Commercial Agency ?
Is it the man as he constitutes a possible constituent of some
domestic or social combination ; or man with an immortal
soul to save or lose, according to the theologian's point of
view ? In any and every case it will appear that the concept
must be regarded as a construct which has been framed from
elements more or less consciously selected with particular ends
in view. Its so-called " general " character is, indeed, sup-
posed to be framed after the pattern of certain eatfra-mentally
existent characteristics of a similar kind possessed by a num-
ber of individuals. And from this metaphysical point of view,
the concept appears causally determined, irrespective of any
use to which it may be put by a conceiving mind. But from
the tora-mental, or rather the psychologico-social point of
view, the truth appears, that all men want certain ends to be
served for them by their fellows ; therefore, they agree in
forming a so-called general concept of " Man," which may be
regarded as established and made compulsory in its accept-
ance, quite irrespective of individual ends. Even this restric-
tion to the limits of the control exercised by the teleological
principle in its application to the conceptions of the race is
only apparent. Indeed, the restriction itself illustrates the
truth of teleology. For one finds one's self compelled to clas-
478 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
sify men as both knowers and known, according as they have
it in mind to be scientific, or commercial, or social, or reli-
gious, etc. And if one thinker feels bound to know no man
after the spirit, but only after the flesh, others may side with
the Apostle and declare : " Wherefore henceforth know we no
man after the flesh." In which case it does not seem to be
determinable a priori that one point of view will be any more
arbitrary or unproductive of genuine knowledge than the
other. The question may still be raised : Which is the real
man to whom the true concept rightly applies ?
In fact, however, both psychological and philosophical
study of the nature of cognitive judgment has shown that
neither perceptions nor conceptions can be understood as
mental entities which exist in some sort of separateness from
reality. For it is this judgment which creates them both ; it is
cognitive judgment which makes any of our psychoses capable
of being brought to a standard and pronounced either false or
true. It is continuity in the growth of the faculty of forming
such judgments — more clearly, with richer content, with
firmer and more unassailable reasons and corresponding con-
victions, under the control of developed will and in the ser-
vice of higher and purer emotions — that binds together into
a spiritual unity the entire life of the soul. Such judgments,
however, always affirm some sort of relations as existent in
reality. These relations, as the judgments affirming them
become connected together into so-called chains of reasoning,
are thought of as connections which actually exist between
the different real beings and actual transactions of the world.
Thus the connections themselves become a problem for the
thought of man to solve ; and in solving this problem it is
necessary to consider them not merely as falling under the
principle of sufficient reason, but also as subject to the idea of
final purpose. This teleological necessity arises from the very
nature of thought as leading up to the terminal judgment of
cognition. Indeed, both the principles of sufficient reason
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 479
and of final purpose originate in the same root of experience,
— namely, in the consciousness of a Self which mentally de-
termines its ends, in the view of certain fixed relations
already known to be sustained toward other beings, and
which directs its actions toward these chosen ends, while it-
self existing within a system of beings on which the results of
its action are dependent.
In the work-a-day life of the multitude of men — that
which is so significantly called " real life " as distinct from
the pursuits of the mere student or scientific inquirer — they
think only in order the better to carry out their purposes.
Thought, in its effort to put the thinker into correct relations
with Reality, is definitively and consciously practical; that is,
teleological. There is certainly something sublime about the
way in which the meanest of human beings regards all other
selves and other things. " What is it good for, to serve
me ? " — this is the chief object of human inquiry and re-
search. The multitude are made indignant or aggrieved by
the immense and fundamental forces of nature when these
forces so elude their insight or calculation as to thwart, or
even fail to further, their final purposes. Why should winds
blow, except to swell the sails of their ships ? Why should
science discover new means of mining and reducing ores, of
smelting and hardening metals, of driving and controlling
carriages, except for the increased comfort of themselves and
their families ? Even the cold, calm stars, so far beyond the
influence of human passions and so remote from the more
obvious connections with human interests, must needs be
thought of as set to light and to guide their way by land or
sea. All these things, and all other things, they will think
or inquire about, only to know how better to realize some
final purpose in the obtaining of good for themselves.
When considering the nature of all reasoning faculty as
coming under the general principle supposed to control every
process of reasoning, we discovered that the end of every such
480 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
process is set by some terminal judgment. The particular
judgment sought is knowledge valid for the relations of really
existent beings. To quote (p. 308) : " It appears, then, that
the goal of that cognition after which the mind strives in its
processes of reasoning is the establishment of causal relations."
That is to say, Reality in its different interrelated manifesta-
tions is a problem to be solved, if at all and however partially,
by consistent and persistent thinking. To reverse this state-
ment, — and it certainly admits of being reversed without
impairing its truthfulness, — all our more deliberate thinking
is essentially teleological ; it is thinking toward the end of an
improved solution of some proposition placed before the mind
in the form of a problem. Is the case really thus or other-
wise ? What do you judge about it ? But if one's judgment
is not already formed, or prepared to leap into consciousness
with that firmness and warmth of conviction which indicates
a readiness also to allege satisfactory grounds for itself, one
must still think about the matter ; and one will think soundly
and successfully, indeed, one will think about this matter at
all (instead of merely letting thought run wild), only if one's
thinking be suffused with conscious final purpose.
It is true that many of the " best thoughts," both of the
individual and of the race, " occur to," or " spring up in," or
" flash upon," the mind when it is not consciously directed
toward the solution of any definite problem ; or, at any
rate, they do not seem to be born of thought directed upon
particular problems. In his strong despite of the work of
intellect, that baser tool of Will which is indeed only a func-
tion of the brain, Schopenhauer exalts the function of intuition
and the province of insight. Place yourself before the con-
crete image of the thing in Nature or in Art, and, without
thinking, but the rather carefully abstaining from all that
making of distinctions which is so fatal to the apprehension
of the Idea, let the higher truth arise within you : such is his
exhortation. We, too, admit the value of the contemplative
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 481
as distinguished from the scientific attitude of mind toward
Reality. We are prepared to maintain the validity of the
judgments often largely arrived at by this method of cognition.
The artistic and religious views of the world, or of any single
meanest thing in the world, are not to be despised, either in
the behalf of common-sense or in the name of science. But
this way of using an alleged cognitive faculty only affords
another kind of illustration for the correct epistemological
theory of all cognitive faculty. Artists and seers, men of
insight of every description, seek to interpret the meaning of
the real things and actual transactions of the world ; and all
interpretation of meaning is peculiarly a teleological affair.
So that art and religion — like philosophy in this respect,
which, however, transcends both by comprehending them in
harmony with the standpoints of science and of the ordinary
work-a-day consciousness — habitually tell us the truth they
have to tell, in its adaptation to promote the interests of the
total life of man. The fact remains, however, that there is no
such way open to truth as that which Schopenhauer, in his
superabundant and ill-regulated use of figures of speech,
describes and commends. Artists or religious seers, and
men of so-called insight generally, must do a bit of clear
thinking now and then ; or others must do it in their behalf,
if artistic and religious representations of truth are to enter
into the organism of human knowledge. Every judgment
which seers pronounce must still appear before the human
mind as a problem demanding thought for its better solution.
Indeed, every announcement of a new truth or of a largely
modified form of an old truth, is pretty sure to illustrate the
teleology of all cognition, twice over, as it were. For it is
likely to be set up, in the first instance, as entitled to recep-
tion because it gives new meaning and serviceableness to the
organism of accepted truths ; and then, by a process of test-
ing, it finally becomes clear that this particular truth is
entitled, on grounds of the valid connections it can establish
31
482 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
with that organism, to be considered one of its useful members.
The test of adaptation to the ends of truth never fails, in the
long run, to be pretty rigidly applied.
The right to insist upon the inherently teleological nature
of thought itself might be indefinitely illustrated and con-
firmed by appeal to the procedure of all the particular
sciences. All the sciences are full of unsolved problems, and
these problems are being perpetually " investigated " by
devotees and experts in these sciences. He who does not
know what the problems are, and how in general goes the
approved method of attacking them, is little likely to increase
the body of cognitions which constitutes his particular science.
But investigation means a " following in the tracks of," a
hunt after, some cognitive judgment or set of judgments in
which the problematical attitude of mind may come to a
settled and peaceful termination. And, however much of ex-
periment and mechanism may be used as a means of the
investigation, all this is merely a matter of convenience,
which is wholly external to the epistemological doctrine con-
cerned. For the experimental method and the mechanical
helps only furnish the guides, the checks, the fixed points of
attainment, for the thinking process. Investigation is not a
matter of the smooth running of machinery ; nor are discov-
ery and verification always most abundant where appliances
are most numerous and costly. The thoughtful mind must be
supplied, in order to follow the tracks of fact and of accepted
law, in the hunt after valid and appropriate cognitive judg-
ments* Thus does thought itself show most obviously in con-
crete form its immanent teleological character.
Few things about the development of human knowledge,
as illustrated from the history of the particular sciences, are
more impressive than is the multiplication of problems
brought about by every solution of a problem. The more men
know about the world of things, the more do questions present
themselves about which they must investigate further in
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 483
order to know. In these further investigations the answers
already obtained to the older problems may be used as known
quantities ; but this very use either reveals a large number
of quantities still unknown, or it throws the previous solu-
tions into doubt, so that the old problems recur in modified
form. Never before did the picture which human knowledge
enables us to draw, of the real beings and actual transactions
of things, itself present so many features that require for
their clearer delineation yet further and more complicated
investigations. So often as we feel at liberty to substitute a
and b for some x and y in a problem, because what was an
unknown quantity has now been reduced to terms that we
can comprehend, new and hitherto unsuspected unknown quan-
tities appear (z, etc., advancing in number toward n) . Not
infrequently some coefficient must be added to our a and b
which converts them into terms much more difficult to handle
than the original x and y appeared to be (perhaps even into a
/y/- # 2 )- Thus is all growth in scientific knowledge com-
pelled to regard itself as dependent upon the use of past
thoughts in order progressively to enlarge and purify the
body of such knowledge. Each single cognition appears not
to have its end in itself ; the rather is it of use to suggest
new problems to thought and to aid in the solution of those
problems. But as these, in their turn, being at least partially
solved, become incorporate with the body of cognition, they
also must be made to serve a new day and a more exacting
generation of explorers.
This teleological connection of the truths which constitute
the body of scientific knowledge, regarded as mere knowledge,
might be further illustrated by considering how the different
particular sciences admit of arrangement under the idea of
final purpose and as respects their reciprocal relations. The
very nature of the cognitive judgments with which they re-
spectively busy themselves, is such that the sciences serve
each other's ends, as those placed higher in a roughly graded
484 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
ascending scale of values come nearer to the most complex
and important interests of human life. Note, here, how
eager the students of each particular science are wont to be
in the defence of the claims of their own science to a high
place in this scale ; how jealous of its honor in answering
the demands to display these claims before men; and fre-
quently how grasping and mean in the spirit shown toward
the students of some other and rival form of science !
Thus is one compelled to listen to the arrogant demand that
all assured forms of human cognition shall be reduced to
physical or chemical phenomena; and we who are students
of psychology as the science of mental phenomena are sum-
moned to acknowledge unquestioning allegiance to " authori-
ties " — too often self-erected and the more disposed to be
domineering — in biology or anthropology.
But even the weaknesses and vices evinced in such con-
tentions are instructive. More and more obvious and indis-
putable is it becoming that no one of these great departments
of human knowledge is going readily to absorb the others.
The strength of every piece of wood or metal, the behavior
of a twisted wire or of a bit of magnetized iron, the con-
struction and use of any simple machine, require much more
than mathematical physics can furnish, in order that they
may become objects of scientific cognition. But the prin-
ciples of mathematical physics may be regarded as the indis-
pensable means for the attainment of this cognition, and
for reaching one of the ends for which these principles are
fitted in the service rendered to such cognition. The chemi-
cal constitution of the simplest compound substances, and the
laws of the behavior of the elements which enter into this
constitution, afford problems which physics is entirely unable
to solve. But physics affords a species of knowledge which is
essential in order to solve the problems of chemistry ; its study
is subsidiary and auxiliary to the end which a knowledge of
the atomic structure and atomic qualifications of things real-
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 485
izes. Many heroic attempts have been made to convert biol-
ogy into a purely physico-chemical science ; but they have
all been baffled hitherto, and the progress of the more com-
plex study of living beings is constantly outstripping the
increase in the outfit of means which such physico-chemical
science supplies. Not an amoeba, however obviously undiffer-
entiated even as respects endosarc and ectosarc, and not a
germ of any lowest order of plants, that does not offer prob-
lems before which the combined efforts of physics and chemis-
try are forced to acknowledge their impotency. Yet the
scientific biologist must study physics and chemistry in order
even intelligently to approach the study of biology. If, now,
we go on from this point of view to arrange the remaining
branches of the scientific tree in accordance with any of the
current schemes, we only illustrate and enforce the same
truth : All the particular sciences may be looked upon as
necessary and serviceable to the completer and more satisfac-
tory knowledge of the history of human development.
If, however, a scheme for the arrangement of the sciences
should be constructed from some other point of view than
that for which the understanding of the unfolding life of the
race is the final purpose to be served, this altered scheme
could not be free from obligation to illustrate the teleo-
logical idea. Such are the connections, in fact, amongst the
various cognitive judgments that, in order to test and im-
prove or enlarge any particular group of such judgments, we
have to make use of means derived from other groups. Tf the
body of human knowledge be not considered as built after the
likeness of the human body, where, from one point of view,
all the other members may be regarded as serviceable to the
supreme and controlling portion of the nervous system, still it
must be regarded after the analogy of some sort of an organism.
A system of cognitions that sustain no relations of reciprocal
dependence and ministration to the whole body of cognitions
can scarcely be conceived of as existing within the horizon
486 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
of human thought. If the vertebrate be not a favorable type
for our fittest figure of speech, let it be the radiate or the mol-
luscan. These, too, are plans of structure, and thus evince
the immanent teleology of human thinking. Lower forms of
knowledge in order to higher forms ; or one branch of knowl-
edge running in one direction away from a common centre
in which other branches, radiating differently, take their rise ;
or a hard shell of external fact, which seems lifeless but sur-
rounds the mysterious and vital " pulp " of truth, — use what
analogy one will, the thought of the different sciences is so
related that no student in any one of them can free himself
from the necessity of serving them all.
Thus far the teleology of knowledge has been considered as
immanent, so to speak, in the very nature of knowledge itself.
Each partial activity or stage of cognition has been regarded
as serviceable to some other cognitive attainment or advanced
stage of cognition, — a certain knowledge to the end of more
knowledge. The particular bodily activities in commerce with
things, the acts of attentive perception, recognitive memory,
and ratiocination have been explained as looking to something
lying beyond themselves ; and the systems of cognitive judg-
ments grouped together into the so-called sciences have been
regarded as serving to advance each other's interests. Thus
does knowledge exist, and grow, for knowledge's sake ; but we
cannot, however, regard this as a satisfactory statement of the
final purpose most obviously served by human cognition.
Is knowledge ever — whether one has in mind some partic-
ular cognition or the entire development of cognition for the
race — an end in itself ? This is a question to which neither
an offhand affirmative nor an unqualified negative affords a
satisfactory answer. The schoolboy, whining over his tasks
and rebelling against the limitations thus enforced upon the
joyful exercise of his powers, angrily inquires as to the use of
what he is about. How much of all " the stuff " he is set to
learning will repay him any form of good in his future life ?
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 487
Observe that the request, however disrespectfully made, is
reasonable : he will have his knowledge serve his Self. But
if his present point of view seems to be selected too much in
the interests of selfishness, let him be inquired of, whether he
does not think that his knowledge should also serve other
selves than his own. It is not unlikely that a fair answer may
be obtained to this suggestion, and that the boy's investigations
into the teleology of knowledge may be so modified as to shape
the question thus : Of what use to my Self, or to any one else,
will it be, that I should acquire this particular knowledge ?
Now before the profoundest student of epistemology undertakes
the discussion of this question, even as it is asked from the point
of view of the most ignorant tyro, he must take his choice of one
of two possible epistemological positions. Either he must
affirm, or he must deny, that knowledge is rightfully to be
held responsible in the demand to show its usefulness for any
end lying outside of itself. Confusion upon this point is by no
means confined to those whose nearer relations to the petu-
lant schoolboy force them into unthinking answers to his
inquiry. For example, the biologist may defend the tenet that
the very existence of cognitive mind in man is satisfactorily
explained by showing the usefulness of the more primary
stages and subsequent developments of mind in the struggle
for existence. Mind is of use to the end of life, — mere life,
and more and more of life. But now let the biologist be asked
this question : Of what use is your own theory respecting the
evolution of life (Lamarckian, Weissmannian, or other) in pro-
moting the fuller and higher life of man ? Can he then con-
sistently fall back upon the alleged truthfulness of his own
theory to justify it in its seeming attacks upon those faiths
and hopes which are good for men to live and die by ?
When the question of the teleology of knowledge takes such
shape as the foregoing, we begin to realize the awkwardness
of our mental situation. On the one hand, we cannot satisfy
our total consciousness with the unqualified claim that knowl-
488 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
edge is an end in itself ; and that it may therefore rightfully
be sought and, when found, promulgated to others without the
slightest regard to its ministrations in the service of a higher
and more comprehensive good. On the other hand, we feel
it unworthy of our rational manhood to regard the use of the
cognitive faculties of man as having merely an instrumental
value ; and we shrink from the estimate of the efforts and
attainments of science and philosophy solely according to the
services they render to the material advantages of humanity,
or even to the increase of their pleasures and the alleviation
of their miseries, as though it were a narrowing and degrading
estimate. This is an apparent antinomy of a practical rather
than of a purely theoretical sort. It admits of solution only
if the limits of purely episteinological discussion be some-
what transcended, and the philosophy of ethics be taken into
account as furnishing a possible standard for the required
estimate. In other words, the question has now become so
comprehensive in its bearings that it requires light to be shed
upon it from one's view as to the total nature and supreme
ideals of the Self. But surely there is nothing introduced
which is intrinsically foreign to the answers already given to
the epistemological problem, now that the question has been
definitively raised as to the meaning and final purpose of our
total personal Life. For these answers themselves showed
that this same Self is all concerned — intellect, feeling, and
will — in every concrete cognition. Nor can the development
of the individual Self, in its total being, be divorced in theory
or in practice from the growth of knowledge ; and the same
thing is true concerning the evolution of that complex organi-
zation of selves which is thought of as the human race. But,
further, the world of things — NATURE, " writ large," and
made imposing by the use of capital letters — is known only as
revealed upon conditions furnished by the development of the
Self, and as actually possessed of qualifications analogous to
those which we know ourselves to possess. How, then, can it
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 489
fail to be true that the question as to the meaning and the
final purpose of all human knowledge becomes merged in the
question as to the total nature and ideal ends of Selfhood ?
The epistemological problem is answered by reference to the
aims of the Being that realizes the highest and best conception
of Life. Cognition is part of the very life of the Self ; but it
is not the ivhole of that life ; it serves that life in its striving
after the realization of, its ideals.
The complaining schoolboy is told that he must acquire
knowledge in order to be happy, respectable, influential, suc-
cessful in life. For it would be disgraceful for him to remain
in ignorance ; uneducated, he could never succeed with his
fellow-men ;. and " knowledge is power." So far as all this is
true and has a bearing in the direction of a defensible answer
to his complaints, it means that knowledge is an indispensable
instrument to a better and more content-full life. Those
sciences, like chemistry, botany, zoology, physiology, bacteri-
ology, psychology, and the so-called science of sociology, which
stand in closer relations to the practical interests of men, are
fond of showing how much they have done, can now do, and
hope to accomplish, for making the existence of men more
tolerable and happy. Meteorology has helped to make the
farmer surer of his crop and the sailor of his craft ; and do
we not all. thereby know, at least a trifle better, when it is
safest to go without umbrellas or overcoats ? The world of
manufactures has been built up, and the world of finance con-
vulsed, by the rapid increase of knowledge in metallurgy.
Even the student of the higher mathematics and the wakeful
watcher of the stars put forth a less boisterous claim that
somehow — very indirectly oftentimes, to be sure — the happi-
ness and prosperity of the race has been increased by their
discoveries.
And, indeed, the history of the physical sciences shows that
those truths which at first seem most remote from the lives
of men not infrequently become closely connected with their
490 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
very ordinary but important interests. In bacteriology and
physiology, for example, it is not unlikely that to the theoreti-
cal interest in the problem of life, rather than to the benevo-
lent desire to benefit mankind, must the recent helpful appli-
cations of these sciences be ascribed. But this only illustrates
how man, in the conscious and deliberate pursuit of knowl-
edge, most often actually serves the end of improving the con-
dition of mankind. The discoverers in physical science are
thus justly to be reckoned among the great benefactors of
humanity. Psychology, too, having withdrawn its long-stand-
ing offer to theology of an " apodictic " proof for the imma-
teriality and immortality of the human soul, has recently
promised to render invaluable services to pedagogy and to the
therapeutics of the insane and of the criminal. While an
indefinite number of groups of empirical data, some of which
have hitherto received only a very vague speculative treatment,
are now, under the name of " sociology," striving to attain a
high grade of approbation from the public, by offering the
services of the science into which they have been agglomer-
ated, for the improvement of actually existing social condi-
tions. What if, for the present, the will must be taken for
the deed ? All these branches of knowledge virtually con-
fess that they have not their end in themselves, as knowledge
merely, but that they exist and grow in order to enlarge and
ameliorate the total existence of man.
Science, however, is not satisfied with so much of such
service as it has already furnished or can hope to offer in the
future. It spends months with the microscope over diatoma-
ceous deposits or volcanic ash, examines, describes, and classi-
fies the wonderful minute forms which it discovers, publishes
the results, to the credit of the investigator and perhaps in the
name of learned societies ; and then all minds interested in
science agree that such work is admirable and worthy to be
done. Who would not be justly indignant at the suggestion
that the benefit of all this expensive work is to be measured
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 491
by the possible discovery that deposits of the one kind may be
employed as polishing powder or as a non-conducting packing
for steam-pipes ; and that deposits of the other kind have their
most important use in the manufacture of soap ? But, after
all, why should science go into such matters ; and of what
real use is much of the knowledge of this kind ?
At the other end of the line from this infinitely detailed
description of natural matters-of-fact stand those forms of
knowledge, or those attempts at knowledge, which are most
purely abstract and speculative. We have already referred to
the case of pure mathematics in another connection. It was
there shown that the truth it discovers is not the truth of
things, but the truth of possible connections between abstrac-
tions derived from the quantitative aspects of things. More
deeply considered, it appears as truth concerning certain forms
of the perceiving and thinking — the actual transactions — of .
a reality called mind. In other words, in no other specula-
tions is thought dealing so purely with its own abstractions as
in mathematical speculations. But now let the question as to
the final purpose of such cognitions be raised ; and to repeat the
answer which is usually given to the schoolboy groaning over
his first sums in arithmetic, or to the academician struggling
with the new geometry or with calculus, — namely, that the
acquiring of this kind of knowledge is in the interests of
" mental discipline," — is to subscribe, in almost too easy-going
fashion, to the supremacy of a narrow teleological idea. No
one likes discipline or seeks it for its own sake. All, however,
like activity, enjoy being alive in some way ; and all discipline
is to the end of a fuller, richer, and higher life. If, now, we
declare that the enlarged capacity of human life, — not only,
and perhaps not chiefly, intellectual, but aesthetical and quasi-
ethical, which these studies in mathematics and the natural
sciences bring —is the end to which the discipline of acquiring
such cognitions tends, we surely shall not be so very far
astray. It is not vapid sentimentality, but the application of
492 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
truths forced upon us by our entire epistemological inquiry,
when it is said : Such knowledge is worth while if it makes
human souls stronger, more beautiful, and more happy. Like
all other knowledge, it exists and grows in the interests of the
Self, and for the better progressive realization of the con-
sciously accepted ideals of the Self. But in saying this the
essence and the meaning of knowledge have been absorbed in
the sphere of conduct.
There are certain cognitions, or attempts at cognition,
which belong more definitely to the moral and religious sphere.
With regard to the realities corresponding to these classes of
judgments when they assume a cognitive form, the actual atti-
tudes of men are exceedingly various. The average man, who
has neither great store of scientific knowledge nor gift of
reflection and speculative thinking, seems to hold a position
toward the alleged truths of ethics and religion that belongs
to a sort of middle ground. These truths are not so sure for
him, nor are they given in the same way to his cognitive
faculty, as are the ordinary accepted truths about material
things. He has a different conviction, and a larger assured
content of knowledge, when he is talking or thinking about his
material surroundings, having just left off talking and think-
ing about facts and principles in morals or about the existence
and attributes of God. But he may be readier to assent with
heart and head, to take the attitude which he identifies with
that of knowledge, toward the fundamental truths of morals
and religion, than toward the speculative mysteries of atoms,
or of ether, or of fourth-dimensioned space, etc. Moreover,
he is disposed to be liberal in his demands upon things for a
perfectly constant and intelligible behavior ; if only his newer
and more surprising cognitions will minister to a longing for
the unfathomable, and to an interest in the world as a possible
home for human Selfhood in its infinite capacity for life and
for development.
We are not just now writing a treatise on Ethics or the
THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 493
Philosophy of Religion. We are not even discussing what, in
special, are the foundations and the criteria of truth con-
cerning these subjects. We believe, however, that such truth
originates in and is rendered objectively valid by, the attempt
to harmonize our total experience substantially as all truths
originate and are rendered objectively valid. What is now
to be noted is that the more plain teleological import of the
truths of ethics and of religion is, in itself considered, greatly
to their advantage. To think on Freedom, God, and Immor-
tality, and to attain such items of knowledge — such facts,
conceptions, and judgments although involving large possi-
bility of mistake and even no little error — as may be had by
a diligent, judicious, and prolonged endeavor, is best worth the
while. For in their relations to that final purpose which all
knowledge serves, and which has been somewhat vaguely de-
fined as the enlargement and elevation of the total life of the
Self, these subjects are of pre-eminent final purpose. Knowl-
edge of diatoms, and of the bones of extinct animals, of the
probable order of the strata as affecting the possible arrange-
ment of the biological series in accordance with the Darwinian
hypothesis, is a good to be obtained, if possible. But one
ounce of knowledge as to how the soul of man shall attain the
better realization of its own ideal is worth tons of informa-
tion as to fact, or of speculative theory, as put forth by the
researches of the foregoing forms of natural science.
The statement just made is true, however, only in case one
is tempted to sever the vital ties which are meant to bind all
human knowledge into the greatest possible organic unity. If
the eager advocate of the value of scientific knowledge for its
own sake is also disposed to depreciate the alleged truths of
morals and religion because of their uncertainty and uselessness
from his own standpoint, he may be reminded of the following
two epistemological principles : All human cognition implies
a willing, believing, and sympathetic Self ; and all cognition
has its end in the enlargement and elevation of the Self. But
494 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
it is time to consider another important aspect of the teleology
of all knowledge. To state this aspect as it now appears in
its most obvious and extreme form : The particular cognitive
judgments, and the sum-total of cognitions present at any
particular time in the history of the individual, or of the race,
must be considered in the light of the principle of final pur-
pose ; but knowledge itself has been seen to be a certain atti-
tude of the mind which implies a correspondence between
mental representations and the being and transactions of the
really Existent; it follows, then, that the principle of final
purpose must be immanent in all Reality, so far as known or
knowable to man.
The conclusion just announced may be arrived at and stated
in a somewhat different way. Human experience, when it
becomes cognitive, becomes essentially £r
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