^-^^0^ v> Xf. " • • • A* ^ o -^^^^ •i.:^'* > ''*• '-.T.' ,^-^ ;♦ /\ "^^.' /^^- "' °o ^* V. .V ^ o " • ^oV" 40. %* ^ ■• %.^ ^ .0^ o«-'-. '^o. * .^y .'^''^ ^^^ .0^ **»-•- '^c 4^ ..• A tP-^^. o_ * 'bV li '^(y o_ •■ ^►"•^<*i. °, '-Tr,.' ^0' '^*.'';^'\«* "^ tj:^'* *'^ ^ #' V /^-^ V ♦ r RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT OR MATERIAL LOGIC A SHORT TREATISE ON THE INITIAL PHILOSOPHY, THE GROUNDWORK NECESSARY FOR THE CONSISTENT PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE BY WILLIAM POLAND, S.J. PROFESSOR OF RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY IN ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY Loyola University Press chicago, ill. 1916 .T7 Imprimi potest A. J. BURROWES, S. J. Praep. Prov. Nihil obstat John B. Furay, S. J. Censor Deputatits Imprimatur George W. Mundelein, D. D. Archiepiscopus Chicagiensis / m -2 ISI7 COPYRIGHT, 1916 By Loyola University Pbess Chicago, 111. ©CI,A453417 PREFACE. This volume aims at presenting the testimony f nature and humanity on the reality and reli- ibility of knowledge. Philosophy is scientific icnowledge. It is the knowledge of things in their causes. It tries to answer the questions, what! whence? how! why! whither! Now, before apply- ing ourselves to the acquisition of philosophical knowledge, special or general, it is well for us to make some inquiry into the philosophy of knowl- edge itself. Whilst thus preluding our researches we shall be providing ourselves with a certain mental equipment which we shall find to be in- valuable in our future study. We require for our present purpose no other data than those universal convictions which have ever been found to be absolutely necessary for human existence both congregate and individual ; and which are as strong and as well grounded in the forest-dweller as in the academician. No labor has been spared to make the termi- nology here used what a philosophical termi- nology ought to be. Whilst it harmonizes with 3 4 PREFACE. the terminology that has been consecrated by twenty centuries of usage, from the days of Ar- istotle and Plato, and whilst representing the most approved terminology of the modern foreign languages ; it is, besides, in keeping with the best English terminology — the very earliest. The can- ons of language make it eminently unlawful that every one who chooses to write on philosophy should be privileged to change the terminology as he pleases. The bewildering vagueness of phil- osophic thought now so lamentably noticeable amongst us is due to the very great and unjusti- fiable liberty that has been taken with the mean- ings of Avords. Such liberty is not lawful in let- ters, in chemistry or in commerce. No more should it be countenanced in the highest spec- ulative studies, where ever;^i;hing depends upon the most scrupulous nicety and precision, and where the slightest shades of difference between what are called synonyms may not be overlooked. The absence of such close discrimination may be tolerated in fervid oratory and in the flight of poesy: but not in cold reason. Philosophy is as rigid as mathematics: its terminology should be as rigorously exact. It might perhaps be subject for remark that the author seldom mentions philosophical writers except when he finds occasion to disagree with them. This he would explain by stating once more that he is writing the philosophy that has been acted upon practically by all men from the begin- PREFACE. O ]iing. To all, then, since their authority is en- grossed upon the open scroll of time, let general tribute here be rendered. Particular mention is reserved almost exclusively for certain leaders amongst those, who, whilst as careful as the rest of men to live according to their practical good judgment, have, nevertheless, raised the standard of speculative revolt against the common sense of humanity. CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter I. The Name and General Scope of the Treatise. A Distinction — Name and Object of the Treatise — The Initial Philosophy — Spirit of the Inquiry 11 Chapter II. The Question Again Stated. Subtle Questions — Two Manners of Reply — A Strange Fact — The Older Writers — A Sceptical Tendency — Sources of the Tendency — Matter of the Treatise 17 Chapter III.— A Chapter of Discord. Bacon — Hobbes — Locke — Berkeley — Descartes — Kant — Fichte — Schelling — Hegel — A Summary — Comte and Positivism — What have we to Offer? — Course Outlined 25 Chapter IV. Consciousness and Evidence. A Plea for Method — Is the Act of Consciousness Simultaneous with Thought? — Memory and Personal Identity — Object of Consciousness — Some Leading Facts — The Ground or Motive for the Declarations of Consciousness — Importance of Evidence ... 50 Chapter V. The Affirmation of an Object That is Not Self. The Great Question — To be Conscious is to Know — Transit to Non-Self — Example — General Inference 60 8 CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter VI. Scepticism. Dogmatic and Non-Dogmatic Scepticism — Partial Scepticism — Inconsistency — A Practical Considera- tion — An Advantage Gained — The Work Before Us •. 65 Chapter VII. The Truth of Thought or Logical Truth. Truth: Ontological, Logical, Moral — Truth, a Cer- tain Correspondence or Conformity — Logical Truth — Logical Falsity — Logical Truth: in what Mental Act is it Found — The Radical Reason 74 Chapter VIII. Certitude. Three States of Mind: Ignorance, Doubt, Certitude — Object of Certitude — Three Orders of Ontological Truth: Metaphysical, Physical, Moral — Metaphysical, Physical and Moral Certitude — Objective Certitude — Certitude: Immediate and Mediate; Direct and Re- flex; Philosophical — Probability . 84 Chapter IX. Means we Possess for Acquiring Knowledge: Perceptive or Knowing Powers. The External Senses. A Difficulty — Unity of the Human Person — The Outer Senses — The Formal Objects of the Outer Senses — Taste — Smell — iHearing — Sight — Touch 97 Chapter X. Imagination. Imagination — Imagination and Intellect — External Senses and Imagination — Error in the Judgment — The Normal State — Uses of the Imagination . . 116 Chapter XI. Intellect and Thought The Intellectual Act— The Principle of Unity— Acts of Intellect or Mind — Mediate and Immediate Knowl- edge — The Idea as a Sign — The Universal Idea: Nominalism, Conceptualism, Realism — Thought . . 125 CONTENTS. y PAGE Chapter XII. Error. Error — Error is not Physically Necessary — The Savage and the Sun — Error and the Will — Error and Opinion — Normal State — Objections Raised — An Idealist Difficulty 146 Chapter XIII. Criterion and Evidence. The Word, Criterion — Some Answers — Evidence — Descartes and Reid — Objective Truth — The Word, Evidence — Evidence: Immediate and Mediate; In- trinsic and Extrinsic — The Beginnings of Knowledge 164 Chapter XIV. Human Testimony and Belief. Some Terms: Witness, Testimony, Belief, Authority — Testimony: Divine and Human; Doctrinal and His- torical — Witness: Immediate and Mediate — Belief and Life — Dogmatic Testimony — Sensus Communis — Historical Testimony — Conditions Postulated — Ar- gument in Brief — Contemporary Events — Past Events — Oral Tradition — Writing — Monuments — Note . 184 Chapter XV. Conclusion. Summary of Method — The two Extremes and the Middle — What is Evident — A Quiet Process — Sensus Communis 220 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT CHAPTER I. THE NAME AND SCOPE IN GENERAL. A Distinction — Name and Object of the Treatise — The Initial Philosophy — 8pirit of the Inquiry. 1. A Distinction. In a preceding volume, The Laws of Thought, the writer judged it wise to state, by way of preface, that the book was not a psychology. The same remark may well be prefixed, with significance, to the present outline work. This book is not a psychology. Neither, again, is it, even in the most diluted form, a physiology. We cannot insist too strongly upon the determination and characterization of the sep- arate departments of rational philosophy as dis- tinguished from one another, and as divided in their scope from material or experimental sci- ences which may furnish them with data. Physiology, as referred to man, is a study of the human body. Its formal object is the fitness 11 12 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of the various parts of the organism for the vital functions exercised in and through the body. Psychology studies the nature of the human soul, the invisible vital principle; and its varied vital activity, whether as exercised through the organs of the body or as free from direct co- operation of the material organism. The facts that we shall have to refer to, here and there, belong without doubt to the complete data upon which psychology and physiology are constructed. We need, however, for our pur- pose, only a few very elementary and patent ones which are the common knowledge-property of all minds. Hence we draw a marked line of dis- tinction all around our present treatise. Truly, all that the present treatise can legiti- mately contain within its rigid boundary must be known, at least implicity, before any other science can be seriously entered upon. Nay, its great, final conclusion we must have even now in our minds before we begin; otherwise it were folly for us to proceed. 2. Name and Object. The subject we have in mind has been called by various names. It is not seldom called Applied Logic. With what jus- tice this name is given to it, it is not easy to see. For, outside of the Formal Logic, all rational philosophy is Applied Logic, namely, an applica- tion of correct methods of thought to special sub- jects. THE NAME AND SCOPE IN GENERAL. 13 It is also called Material Logic. This name is strictly correct. As the Formal Logic was oc- cupied with the ^jcorm or structure of correct thought, so the Material Logic is occupied with the material that is found, so to say, in that form or structure, or mould. It does not discuss the intimate constituent nature of the act of thinking. This discussion belongs to psychology. But it considers the thought in reference to what is thought about. It asks, what may be the value of those ever changing thought-contents in the way of constituting knowledge. Formal Logic studies only the manner of progress of thought from judgment to judgment in the process of drawing conclusions. But this mere form of argument is of no avail to go forward in knowledge, unless we can accept the matter of the separate judg- ments as true. What is meant by the matter of these judgments being true, makes up the burden of this book. Material Logic, then, discusses the truth of thought. It is concerned with the gen- eral question of the "content of thought — ^any thought or train of thought, any idea, judgment, argument — as having a representative value. Sometimes the treatise is called Critical Logic, because it judges of (examines and passes sen- tence on) the representative value of thought in general; and because its purpose is to establish the Criterion, that is, the standard, the test, the last court of appeal in determining such value. 14 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. 3. The Initial Philosophy. A very expressive name for the treatise would be **The Initial Phi- losophy, ' ' because it deals with the rudiments, the very first beginnings of all philosophy, specula- tive and practical. It is, in sum, but a presenta- tion of the axioms of knowledge. Upon the com- pleteness and correctness of such presentation will depend the extent of the range that shall be conceded as belonging to thought; and the con- viction of the value of thought as knowledge. The value, therefore, of this initial philosophy can not be over estimated. Yet, in direct propor- tion to its value for human thought and life, is it all the more easy of acquirement. And naturally so. For, because of its very necessity, we are taught it, by nature, at the proper stages of child- hood and youth, even as we are taught to inflate the lungs, to seek for food, and to go to sleep. To the learner, we believe the name. Initial Philosoph}^, will carry a very definite meaning; and it may commend itself to adepts, as express- ing the search for the initmw, pMlosophandi, that is, the beginning, the first word, the start, the whence of philosophic thought. 4. Spirit of the Inquiry. The whole story of this book might be briefly told by any one who could record what nature taught him, in her pri- mary lessons, about knowledge being knowledge. To some who have spent long years of toil over philosophical speculations, such a record might THE NAME AND SCOPE IN GENERAL. 15 perhaps, prove beneficial. For, just as one may be brought, by habit, to grow into a bodily state which abhors the laws of hygiene, courts the poisoned atmosphere, craves for unwholesome food and defies the clamor of the brain for rest ; so, too, in matters philosophical one may, nnder the influence of surroundings and a mistaken view of personal capacity, become filled with a rash spirit of discovery and, spurning the tender guid- ance of nature as the child flings off the nurse, may set out, over-confident and half-taught, by paths which are not paths (since nature has not trod them), to grope, at length, in a maze from which there is no exit without the kind guide whose services have been rejected. Our work must be undertaken in a spirit of simplicity and sincerity. Unfounded prejudice and mental conceit can have no place in it. We are not in quest of '^views'' or ^ theories," but, now, in the fullness of reason, we ask to have shown to us some of those ways which, in blessed confidence, we traversed with nature as our guide. And, as philosophers already formed, nature's unconscious pupils, we turn, now, with minds stored and developed, and we dare to ask the question — is there a reason why we shall not look upon all this mental store as mythical? And the response which nature gives {i. e., which we our- selves give to ourselves inquiring) is, that were it mythical, nature must, long since, have pro- nounced it so; else Avere nature not herself, and 16 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. we, not ourselves, self thus being resolved into a pure contradiction, an absolute nothing, or into not so much of anything as to be capable of being deluded. CHAPTER II. THE QUESTION AGAIN STATED. Subtle Questions — Two Manners of Reply — A Strange Fact — The Older Writers — A Sceptical Tendency — Sources of the Tendency — Matter of the Treatise. 5. Subtle Questions. It is due to out inquiry that we hide none of its difficulties. It is only by the repetition of those difficulties that we can keep our minds directed to the solution of our problem. We have, therefore, to ask ourselves, what do we mean by thought in the sense of its constituting knowledge f And is there, indeed, such a thing as knowledge? Can we, really, rely upon thought, as* being, at any time, knowledge, in the strict sense — that is, as having an objec- tive value, as being representative of something which is or was or may be, independently of the thought which we possess! Can we possess knowledge in such a way as to rest secure that the content of the thought has an object, a cor- responding something which is not the thought itself? In other words, can we have certitude? If so, w^hat is the basis of this certitude? What is the last reason we can give that the thought is, indeed, a knowledge-thought, that its content answers, as representative, in the way of thought, 17 18 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. to something which is not the thought! What, in other words, is the Criterion of knowledge, of logical truth? 6. Two Manners of Reply. Thought would be uninviting, irksome — sometimes, perhaps, exas- perating- — were it never possible for us to confide in it as a truth-teller. Still, we have all made satisfactory, affirmative reply to the above ques- tions. They are all so very primary that every human mind settles them for itself very early in life, altogether unconsciously and with the in- stinct that impels to self-preservation. But, when we come to philosophize upon them, to argue, we find that they are, indeed, so very primary as to lead us back beyond the processes of deductive demonstration. And, if we are not quick in our analysis, keen-sighted to detect the limits of de- duction, open-minded to infer from the uniform conduct of mind the natural starting point of thought — we shall be ver^^ prone, with our philos- ophizing, to go round and round in a circle with- out ever coming to an end. For, when we have given ourselves a definite reason wh^^ we regard any individual thought as tenable, when we are secure that the .thought stands for and truly rep- resents something w^hich is not the thought itself, we have here a second thought about the first thought. Here, again the whole question is re- newed. This second thought, this second judg- ment, Avhich declares the first to be knowledge, to THE QUESTION AGAIN STATED. 19 be true — is this second thought, this second judg- ment, true I Is it, verily, knowledge that the first is knowledge? How shall we answer! Must we say that by the very admission of knowledge we involve ourselves in an endless series of ques- tions, or commit ourselves to an indefinite repe- tition of the same question, "why may I say that I know?" and thus, as the question may go on forever, that w^e repudiate in the same breath what we have just admitted! No ; we do not thus reject the possibility of a reliable thought. On the contrary, we determine the ultimate, universal standard of the truth of thought, a standard which verifies itself and stops the question. 7. A Strange Fact. It is, indeed, a strange fact that, at this stage of the world's history, w^hen we are in possession of the accumulated experi- ence of the ages, when libraries are teeming with the undoubted record of past ages, when men whom we recognize as intellectual leaders think their time well spent in deciphering relics of civ- ilizations which have left us no chronology, when the principles governing the movements of the forces in matter have been combined to produce the material civilization that is the characteristic mark of this our era, when the age makes so much of facts, calls for facts, facts, facts, and builds the wonderful pyramid of the natural sci- ences with visible, tangible facts — it is strange enough that, just now, rational philosophy should 20 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. be called upon by the very philosophers of fact to add to philosophy a new treatise whose purpose would be to uphold that there is such a thing as a fact and that we can know it as a fact. 8. The Older Writers. The Older Writers did not deem it necessary to put into rational philoso- phy a special treatise to expound the fact of loiowledge, the possibility^ and grounds of certi- tude, and the conscious possession of certified knowledge. Here and there they have touched on these questions and have, indeed, in this way, presented all the maxims of certitude as well as all the principles for the solution of difficulties. They did not think it any more necessary to write special treatises on the fact of knowledge and the reality of the object of thought than upon the fact of hunger appeased by a real object called food. 9. A Sceptical Tendency. There were, in the schools of ancient Greece, sceptics, doubters, who professed to doubt about everything — ^even to doubt about their doubt. But, with the wane of those wonderful schools — the market place for every novelty and contradiction in thought which the mind of man could devise — the professional universal doubters disappeared. Within the last two centuries a doubting dispo- sition has been revived, not indeed under the title of scepticism— V for that is a name of reproach — but under various new names which, from dif- THE QUESTION AGAIN STATED. 21 ferent standpoints, are thrown out as challenges to the certification of loiowledge. How this should take place in our day, when the intellect of the world is anything but practically sceptical of its own power and of the objective value of its knowledge, would seem to be, as we have said, a paradox beyond hope of resolution. 10. Sources of the Tendency. Still, it is well for us to try to discover some of the circumstances which have tended, at least, to foster the estab- lishment of this incongruous intellectual position. We shall always deal best and most justly with mistakes when we try to acquaint ourselves with the state of affairs in which the mistakes have been made. One disposing circumstance towards the mental attitude we are speaking of has been, no doubt, a method of study that has been very widely pursued in matters philosophical. Phi- losophy has been very extensively treated during the past forty years as though it were history, a record of opinions. Often, the chief intellectual labor involved has been to determine the process, presuming that there was such process, by which one opinion developed into another. A much worried method of connecting — not always by substantial joints — the external events that make up the annals of the human race, of weaving them together with some supposed thread of hidden causes, thus adding to the interest of plot,- has received an unimpeachable name, the philosophy 22 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of history. But the same method has been ap- plied to the chronicle of the speculations of men^ Hidden relationships have been imagined to exist between the thoughts of writers who, very prob- ably, would have shuddered at the suspicion of such affinity, and these supposed relationships have been used as links to join together chapters on the history of philosophy. Now, seeing the very contradictory statements that have sometimes been made thus to develop one out of another, we can understand how the method, when pursued with more energy than prudence, may readily be accepted by young minds as a very urgent invita- tion to theoretical scepticism, as a plausible plea for the identification of contradictories, the re- jection of certitude. There hovers about the whole process the spirit that is most potent to captivate the attention of man, the story-spirit; and the philosophy is made to go ahead in the easy trot of that book which to-day carries nearly all the burden of communication between the minds of men — the novel. Like other things mun- dane, philosophy is made to respond to the watch- word. Evolution. And we must not forget that the sweeping march of physical science, right under our eyes, from the condition of a plaything to that of an indispensable instrument in art, agriculture, commerce, government, exerts over minds a strong predisposing influence to make them more ready to look with favor upon theo- THE QUESTION AGAIN STATED. Z6 lies of evolution, in whatsoever connection pro- pounded. Another thing, too, we nmst make some ac- count of: it is, the very general habit of men to follow a leader. If we take this in connection with what has been said, w^e shall not wonder at seeing disciples gather around bold and brilliant men who launch new theories. And this, all the more especially, when these theories are in spec- ulative matters and when, though in direct op- position to the needs and deeds of daily life, they can be held with impunity in speech and writing. Finally, it may be observed, untenable theories gain a more concentrated attention by being couched in an obscure diction which is, of course, necessary to hide the weak points. Obscarity is a prime element of the mysterious. Mystery has its charm. Hence it is not to be wondered at that many should devote themselves to the luxury of a solution. 11. Matter of the Treatise. Possibly, we may be well guided as to the amount of matter to be put into our treatise, if we view the difficulties that have been felt or created by certain writers, who are still given places of honor and who thus have a direct influence on philosophical thought. The manner of treatment, too, arising herefrom may be the better adapted to present needs in the subject under consideration. Not, indeed, that we propose to consume our time in tiresome 24 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. refutations. But we can, in this way, so direct the affirmative treatment of the subject as to en- able the student, in after readings, to note the in- exactness or positive error of some views ad- vanced by writers who are even distinguished for their sagacity and are recognized to have been gifted with no ordinary degree of philosophical CHAPTER III. A CHAPTEE OF DISCORD. Bacon — Hohhes — Locke — Berkeley — Hume — Descartes — Kant — Fichte — Schelling — Hegel — Summary — Comte and Positivism — What have we to Offer — Course Outlined. 12. Bacon. In the presentation we are about to make — one which has its inconveniences by reason of the brevit^^ we must consult and by reason of the need we have of bringing our char- acters into a common field of view — we may open with a noted scholar of the sixteenth century, Lord Bacon, of Verulam, who was born at Lon- don in the year 1561, and died at Highgate, Eng- land, in 1626. His chief writings, as bearing in a way upon our subject, are a treatise De Aug- mentis Scientiarum, on the advancement of learn- ing, and another entitled Novum Organum Scien- tiarum, a new method of science. These are practically Parts I and TI of a great work on Method in the Sciences. Bacon started with what we shall find to be a very true principle, that the data for intellectual action are furnished, pri- marily, til rough the senses. He rendered great ser\dce to natural science by the stress he laid upon sensible observation and experiment. But he 25 26 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. laid so niucli stress upon it, he pushed the experi- mental part of induction ('^Laws of Thought,'' No. 125) so far as to seem to drive out deduction from the methods of thought. He appeared to have no regard for analytical principles, without which, indeed, his own inductions would have no value in that very scientific method of which he assumed the championship. He is called the father of induction. Not that he discovered it ; for it is a natural process, known even to the child and pursued by every human mind. But he exag- gerated. He w^as wrapped up in his prospective vieAV of what might be accomplished — and, as we see to-day has been accomplished — through ob- servation of material phenomena by the outward senses ; and his enthusiasm has borne deleterious fruit in the field of philosophy side by side with the growth of sensible or material experiment which it stinmlated. The world has known few minds so versatile and ingenious as that of Francis Bacon. But those who followed him, ac- cepting with dangerous exclusiveness the method of which he was enamored, as sole and absolute in the acquisition of knowledge, ended by reject- ing the mental phenomena which are not per- ceptible by sense, as well as the immediate intu- ition of analytic or a priori principles which is performed without a series of experiments. 13. Hobbes. The first example of what we have been saying is found in the writings of A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 27 Thomas Hobbes, who was born in Malmesbnry, England, in 1588, and died in Derbyshire in 1679. Hobbes was the friend of Bacon, and, like Bacon, nsed the Latin, the universal scientific language of the day, to bring his writings before the schol- ars of his time. His chief works are, Elementa Philosophica de Give (The Philosophy of Citizen- ship), JJe Corpore Politico (On the Body Politic), a treatise on "Human Nature,'' and '^Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Common- wealth." Bacon's advice, to observe the phe- nomena of the material world by means of the senses for the purpose of collecting data, Hobbes perverts into the principle that all perception is sense perception. But sense perceives only mat- ter. Plence, he concludes, we can affirm nothing but matter. He carries this into personal con- duct and politics, making good and evil merely the pleasure and pain of sense, and declaring govern- ment to be simply a despotism holding in check the purely sensual nature of man. We may ob- serve, in passing, that Hobbes spent twenty years in a controversy endeavoring to show that he had found the quadrature of the circle. 14. Locke. John Locke was born at Wrington, England, in 1632, and died at Gates, in 1704. He was, by education, a physician; by profession, a gentleman. His w^ork, "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding," has been much read, by reason of its straight-forward, business-like ut- 28 THE TRUTH . OF THOUGHT. terance, and by reason of the unhesitating manner in which it assumes to lay down a complete class- ification of our cognitions, and to determine their origin and connection. He is very affirmative; and this has contributed to his popularity. Still, as his philosophical studies were not wide, we must, withal, pronounce his isolated Essay as necessarily superficial. His classification- of ideas, or objects of ideas, is more strictly in the line of ontology than of a treatise on understand- ing. From our present standpoint, notwithstand- ing the apparent clearness of the ^* Essay," it is difficult to say what is really the mind of the author. For, he adopts a terminology which does not explain itself in the accepted meaning of terms, and he lands himself in a region which to the critic seems, at one time, to be the materialism of Hobbes, recognizing the knowledge of matter, only, and, at another, to favor idealism, admitting the certified knowledge of mind, only. His un- qualified use of the word idea (which strictly be- longs to intellect) when speaking of sense-per- ception, leaves the way wide open to the identifi- cation of sense-perception and intellectual percep- tion, with a resultant of sensualism or idealism according to the bias of the reader. All this is attested by the widely different paths pursued by those who have accepted his ^^ Essay" as a basis for their speculations, some denying all knowl- edge of such a thing as matter, others affirming that we have knowledge of matter, only. A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 29 15. Berkeley. George Berkeley was born at Killcrin, Ireland, 1684, and died at Oxford, 1753. He published ''A Treatise Concerning the Prin- ciples of Human Knowledge," which he popular- ized in his ''Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.'^ Berkeley had studied Locke. Like Locke, Hobbes and Bacon, he was an experimen- talist. But he found Locke to be a materialist. Locke had allowed to pass the hypothesis that matter can think. Berkeley justly argued that if this were allowed, we could not affirm the imma- teriality and perpetuity of the thinking principle in man. For, with the disintegration of the mat- ter there must be an end to the individual. If it be allowed that matter can think, then, as Locke offers no proof to the contrary, it might be in- ferred that our thinking principle, the substratum of our thoughts, is but matter. This, Berkeley undertook to combat. But how did he do so ? By trying to establish that there is no matter, that we can not affirm its existence; and, hence, as something, at least, is^ as we do exist, that the thinking principle in us, the soul, must be imma- terial. Berkeley's intentions were good. He thought he was lajdng a firm philosophical basis for the existence of revelation. Locke had said that we have no idea of substance except that it is an unknown reality; that we know only qual- ities. He laid dow^n, that extension and impene- trability — imphdng bulk, figure, number, etc. — are in bodies, in that unknown reality, material 30 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. substance. Other qualities, color, sound, taste, odor, beauty, etc., are in ourselves. They are ideas, perceptions, occasioned by we know not what, pertaining to the unli:nown reality. Here Berkeley began, saying that if there is no ground to affirm an objective reality corresponding to the ideas of color, odor, taste, etc., neither is there any ground to affirm an objective reality corre- sponding to the ideas of extension and impene- trability. Hence, if we can not affirm the objec- tive existence of qualities, we can not affirm the existence of that unknoAvn reality, material sub- stance, whose existence was postulated by Locke in order to have something in which the primary qualities, extension and impenetrability, might exist. Hence we can not affirm matter in the sense of Locke. Real things, then, for him (Berkeley) are ideas: '^I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things. '^ He assumed that what we perceive is simply the idea, that this perception is our knowledge, and that we may not make knowledge to consist in ideas being true representations of originals. For, as the supposed originals, he says, are in them- selves unknown, it is impossible for us to know how far our ideas resemble them at all. We can- not (could not), therefore, if we insist on knowl- edge being representative, be sure that we have an^^ real knowledge, since the presumed originals must remain unknown. The result of all which is that we are (would be) thrown by this suppo- A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 31 sition into the most hopeless and abandoned scep- ticism. How, then, according to Berkeley, do we get these ideas'? That does not matter for onr present treatise, bnt he is satisfied even with the supposition that they may be formed in ns di- rectly by the divine mind. He is as confused in his terminology as is Locke. But let us see how another writer has driven his admission into that ^'most hopeless and abandoned scepticism'' which Berkeley in his unmetaphysical gentleness was steering into, when he thought he had left it be- hind. 16. Hume. David Hume was born in 1711 at Edinburg, where he died in 1776. His chief work touching our present subject is the ''Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,'' the princi- ples of which are applied in the ''Enquiry Con- cerning the Principles of Morals." He starts from the speculations bequeathed by Berkeley, whom he pronounces to be the best guide to scepti- cism. He modifies slightly the terminology of Berkeley, as Berkeley had slightly modified the terminology of Locke. Accepting Berkeley's dic- tum that we can not know material substance or Diatter, and that we know only our ideas or im- pressions, he continues that for the same reasons we can not know immaterial substance or soul. For, if we could know it, this knowledge would (•ome only through ideas or impressions, through the states in which we find ourselves of seeing. 32 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. hearing, feeling, willing, etc. Now these impres- sions conld tell ns of substance only in as much as they resembled substance. But not being them- selves what we assume to be substance, in fact, being quite different from what we assume as substance, they certainly do not resemble sub- stance, and can supply us with no knowledge of it. Hence, we can know nothing but a succession of ideas or impressions. Is there any reality corresponding to these ideas! We know not. Hence, he concludes, we have always equal reason to affirm any fact or its contradictory; for we can have ideas equally well of both. He will ad- mit the truth of thought about abstract quantity and number, as, that two and two being four, two and two cannot be five. But that any one thing exists, this he will not allow can be known. Hence for all history he says, '^commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Yet he spent much time over his History of England. Was he more consistent than Berkeley, whose declining years were devoted to enhancing the good will of men towards the use of tar- water in therapeutics ! Think of curing an ailing body with tar-water when there is no body to ail! 17. Descartes. Eene Descartes was born at La Haye, France, in 1596; and died at Stockholm, Sweden, in 1650. His chief works, as pertinent to our present inquiry, were *^A Treatise on the A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 33 Correct Method of Using our Reason and Seeking for Scientific Truth/' (in French) ; and ''Medita- tions on the Fundamental Philosophy" (in Latin). Descartes was a man of naturally tran- scendent genius. Only the mind of genius can make a great mistake, create a following and stir I the intellectual world to combat. Bent upon se- curing a firm basis for knowledge, he put as his foundation the calling in question all that he had I previously accepted by reason or authority. He tried to put himself in the state of a universal doubt. What had he, then, to begin with! The I fact of the doubt as a mental act of which he was conscious. Upon this doubt the whole superstruc- ture of knowledge is to be reared. Affirming the doubt he has to affirm his own existence, because I the doubt is his. As with Bacon all knowledge was to be arrived at by induction; so with Descartes all is to be obtained by deduction. A clear idea, the clearness of an idea is to be the test of the objective value of such idea. He has a clear idea of God ; it is the idea of a Being necessarily exist- ing. From this idea he concludes to the existence of God. From the truthfulness of God, bestower of the faculties, he deduces the veracity of our faculties perceiving objective truth. There is an inconsistency at the beginning of the method of Descartes. For it is precisely the veracity of the mental affirmation that he calls in question ; and yet he assumes this veracity in the verv affirmation of the doubt. 34 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. He also takes a very disastrous assumption as the lirst principle upon which to build np certified knowledge after he has torn away everything be- side the affirmation of his doubt. He says that he affirms his doubt, or thought, or self thinking, because he has a clear and distinct idea of it. Thus, if Ave are to take him at his word, the basis of his theoretic explanation of the reliability of thought is pure idealism. And, in fact, the very ]iext step is to affirm the existence of God out of his idea of God. On the whole, the method of Descartes goes around in a circle; if, indeed, Ave alloAv it to get out of the doubt and into the circle. For he affirms the A^alidity of the mental act in the per- ception of the doubt, basing the affirmation on the clear perception of the doubt. C'lear and distinct concept or idea, then, he makes the test of ob- jectiA^e truth. Forming a clear idea of God, he affirms the existence of God. Finally, on the truthfulness of God, the bestoAver of the cognitiA^e faculties, he bases the truthfulness of those facul- ties and hence the truthfulness of that original mental act wherein he was conscious of his thought and his existence, upon which mental act, however, assumed too early in his process as valid, he has built his A\^hole system. 18. Kant. Immanuel Kant was born at Koe- nigberg, in Eastern Prussia, 1724. He died in the same toA\m, 1804. He Avrote the Critique of Pure A CPI AFTER OF DISCORD. OO Ileason, Critique of Practical Reason, Introduc- tion to Metaphysics, Critique of the Judgment, etc., etc. Kant was endowed by nature with a liigh degree of the speculative genius. Bold like Descartes, like Descartes he attacked the problem of knowledge in a novel way. He made a desper- ate attempt to steer a clear course between the pure deductions of Descartes and the pure sen- sisni of experimentalists. It was particularly a desire to correct the sceptical influence of Hume which drove him to the task. He formulated a theory in which he introduced both the objective perception and the innate idea, intuition and con- cept, as he calls them. The two combined form knowledge. The idea or concept without some object to apply it to is valueless ; and equally valueless is the perception of an object, the intui- tion without a concept or idea applied to it. Thus in the intuition of the objects that come under sense, since they are all aifected by the conditions of space and time, and as space and time can not come under sense perception, and as nevertheless, the objects are known as in space and time, space and time must reside in the sense power as a priori '^forms'' which are applied to and not received from the object. Similarly, for Kant, there exist in the mind a priori concepts which do not depend for their existence upon experience, yet which are awak- ened by the experience of that to which they are to be applied. Such mental forms are cause. 36 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. substance, unity, plurality, etc. Finally, Kant divides judgments into 1, Analytical or purely a priori, which exjoress merely the signification of a term, the subject and predicate being identical in their total comprehension, as, a triangle is a figure formed by three sides enclosed so as to exhibit three interior angles; 2, judgments purely a posteriori, or Synthetic, experimental Synthetic judgments, as he styles them, where the idea of the predicate in no wise enters into the idea of the subject, and the judgment can be formed only by the individual experience of the synthesis, as, this liquid is green: ?>, judgments which he calls Synthetic a priori These last judgments he calls: Synthetic, because he can not find the idea of the predicate in the subject; and a priori, because they are universal and, being once understood, are, without further experience, seen to be uni- versal. Kant's whole theory of knowledge is based upon the explanation of the possibility of the Synthetic a priori judgment. For this pur- pose did he invent those innate concepts or ^^forms. " Such judgments are the following: Five and two are seven; every effect demands a cause. For a brief discussion of these judgments see ^^Laws of Thought," nn. 54-57. In regard to all the a priori ^ ^forms'' of Kant and his Synthetic a priori judgments this is to be said: they can all be formed and are formed very readily from a very few experiences. The general idea of space is a deduction. The first A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 37 perception of an extended thing gives an idea of limit. Two or three such perceptions will wake any mind to the deduction of a possible indefinite space. It is the same with the idea of time. In the unity of our being, consciousness supplies us with the data to deduce the general idea of simul- taneity; and memory, that of succession. Kant was a man of books, not of men. In the eighty years of his life he was never one hundred miles from the town in w^hich he Avas born and where he died. His life Avas spent without con- tact with the rude intellect. He does not recog- nize the budding and blossoming of knowledge as found in the individual life of every child. There are many deductions which are made very readily and are made ver^^ early in life, and which are thus found ready made, and just as habitual as the most elementary first principles, at the time when we arrive at the stage of life where the mind gives itself to philosophic reflection. This Kant did not recognize. His study seems to have been made upon his own mind in a day of ma- turity when it was already arrived at a point of philosophic development which few minds, in- deed, do over reach, and where he assumed, as innate ^^forms," certain ideas that he had become possessed of by the process of an unconscious but entirely natural deduction. 19. Fichte. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born at Rammenau, Upper Silesia, in 1762, and died 38 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. at Berlin, 1814. His cliief work that concerns us, here, is the ^'Groundwork of the Science of Knowledge." Fichte accepted the Kantian as- sumption of innate ideas or ''forms." But he went further than Kant. He wished to derive all knowledge from the "forms." Kant had al- lowed two elements in the x:>roduction of knowl- edge, the stimulation coming from the object and the form or concept applied by the mind. Fichte wishes to work up everything from a single prin- ciple. For his single principle he assumes the act of consciousness, "I am I." Yet this is not any individual act of consciousness, but a general principle of equality as A=A with consciousness attached [sic Fichte]. But this implies that "I am not not-1. ' ' Thus we have established the dis- tinction between the ego and the non-ego, between self and not-self [sic] . But this ego and this non- ego are not any individuals in particular; they are indeterminate, universal. However, they are contradictory, and there cannot be two universal contradictories, for the one destroys the other. Yet there they are, and what are we to do? The very fact of each one must necessarily impose the idea of limitation upon the other. And thus we come to it that I am my own limited self, ego, I ; and you become your own limited self, another ego; and the things around us become for us the limited non-ego. I am a part of the not-I, for you ; and 3^ou are a part of the not-I, for me. But enough of this for our present purpose, which is A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 39 simply to show the variations that have been executed npon the theme of the ^^ Theory of Knowledge." For my own poor self I can not find or feign within myself any experience of Fichte's proposed solution to the great problem. 20. Schelling. Hegel. F. W. von Schelling was born at Leonberg in 1775, and died in Switzer- land, 1854. George W. F. Hegel was born at Stuttgart, in 1770, and died at Berlin in 1831. Schelling and Hegel are sometimes mentioned in connection with the theory of knowledge, but their writings have practically nothing to do with it. They start from Fichte's position. Schelling had been a pupil of Fichte and Hegel began as a dis- ciple of Schelling. Their writings are rather con- cerned with the ontological order, tending from Fichte 's knowledge-theor}^ to pantheism, assert- ing the identity of all that is, under a new title, the *^ Philosophy of the Absolute." From Fichte 's ^ thought producing object" Schelling passes on to ^'object producing thought," and, from this, asserts absolute identity of the ego and the non- ego. Hegel presses on to evolve everything out of thought and to identify even contradictories in what he calls the absolute, Avhich is an idea or thought. Hegel added the finishing touch to Kant's confusion of philosophical terminology. If Ave have mentioned Schelling and Hegel, it is to show how serious coiisequences may follow in ontology or metaphysics from the principles 40 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. which one accepts as undeiiying the theory of knowledge, and how careful we must be in phi- losophy to confine ourselves to discovery. There is still plenty of room in philosophy for discov- ery; but we must avoid invention. Invention be- longs to the romance. In philosophy we do not want merely to find out how things might he ex- plained if they were as we will romantically sup- pose them to be; but we want to know what we can of things as they are. 21. A Summary. In the above list of writers we have every shade of hesitation, oversight and denial. One will admit no perception but sense- perception. Accordingly, as sense can reach only matter, we must limit our affirmations to matter. Whatever else there may be, we dare not affirm it, because sense cannot reach it. Another denies all perception of matter, assuming that we per- ceive only our ideas and thus cannot affirm the existence of an outside material world. A third, adopting the negations of both the first and second, hesitates to admit any ground for the affirmation of either matter or mind. A fourth, steering between the first and second and wishing to admit both matter and mind, individual ex- istence and general principles, thinks to gain his end b}^ assuming the existence, in the mind, of a store of innate ideas and judgments, which are drawn upon, as occasion requires, to be attached to certain indefinite perceptions that are waiting A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 41 to be thus transformed into knowledge. Others^ finally, captivated by the simple method of as- suming innate ideas to account for knowledge, go on to the length of asserting that innate ideas constitute the root and source, the sum and con- tent of all knowledge. 22. Positivism. We can hardly pass on with- out some reference to a name which has been used, in our day, to advertise as philosophy what is, in reality, a dogmatic, unfounded denial of all philosophy — the name, ^'positivism." The ap- pellation, ''positive philosophy," was first em- ployed by Auguste Comte (b. Montpellier, 1798; d. Paris, 1857). AVith it he labeled six volumes, Cours cle PhilosopJiie Positive, published in 1842. The six volumes gather dust upon the shelves. But the word, "positive," had a charm about it. Comte, a mathematician, who boldy styles mathe- matics the basis of all science, starts out by de- claring that the human mind, in regard to knowl- edge, passes through three stages, the theologi- cal, the metaphysical and the positive. Accord- ing to him, the first two stages have been passed and hence religion, as men understand it, and rational philosophy must be regarded as by- gones. Thus we have ceased, if we are fully de- veloped in mind, to ascribe anything to a supreme being or to any reason-discovered, hidden some- thing which can be called cause; we are said to have arrived at the highest sta^e, which is that of 42 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. positive science. This positive science embraces only what can be gotten at immediately and di- rectly by the senses. These facts or phenomena perceived by the senses are classified; and it is this classification that constitutes science ! There is thus no science except of what can be seen, heard, touched, etc. Even in our classification of facts we may not affirm cause and effect; we may affirm only, what the senses reach, i. e., sensible facts, phenomena, appearances, which are per- ceived as following one another, or in sequence. So that the very laws of nature will come simply to this : that we have observed a sequence of phe- nomena in the past; and as for the future, well, we must merely assert that what has been ivlll be, whilst refusing to admit the reason, the reality of cause and effect. (See ^^Laws of Thought,'^ Nos. 123, 124, 125.) It is these last assumptions of Comte, taken, indeed, from Hume, that are, to-day, styled posi- tivism, the positive philosophy. Narrowing it- self down to limits that preclude the dignified labor of thinking, it brands everything outside of itself as insolubly dubious. What an attraction there is here, what inducements of repose for those w^ho are tired of the muddy speculations of idealism! And what bright hope for the ma- terialist! It gives him a new name for his old one of which he has grown ashamed. He can, now, style himself a positivist. Positivism, alone, is science. Positivism, alone, is philosophy. And A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 43 who may not now be a philosopher f I am a chemist, a geologist. I am classifying facts that come under my eyes. Positivism, will I but adopt its name, offers me the title of philosopher. For it is the only philosophy; and I have but to declare myself, to become one of the ^'only^' phi- losophers. I have but to repeat tenaciously that I admit nothing but what I perceive directly by, my sense — and — I am a philosopher. There is but one thing to be w^ondered at in this connec- tion. It is, that men, such as J. S. Mill and Her- bert Spencer, who had genius enough to immor- talize themselves in writing true philosophy, should be so ensnared by the caption, that their works have now to be read with the accompani- ment of a glossary of their errors. Positivism denies the intellectual, immediate perception of what we call a priori truths. These are the truths which, upon their presentation, are seen to be universal, if the meaning of the terms be known. Such, for instance, are the following: * ' The same thing cannot both exist and not exist at the same time," ^^Two parallel lines produced will never meet." These principles we are told by the ^"positivist" are not evident. If they are known, it is only by repeated experiences of past facts which we generalize for the past, and assert somehoiv for the future. Mr. Mill will allow that one person can make the generalization for him- self. Mr. Spencer throws himself out of the reach of argument by asserting that the general- 44 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. . ization, for the past, has been going on in the ex- pediences of countless ages, and comes to ns ready made. We are denied the power of perceiving tlie universal value of a priori principles, and are allowed at most to say that we do not know whether there are any such absolute, universal, invariable truths. Let Mr. Mill speak: ^^We should probably be able to conceive a round square [ !] as easily as a hard square * * * if it were not that, in our uniform experience at the mo]nent when a thing begins to be round it ceases to be Ksquare * * * We can not conceive two and two as five, because an inseparable association compels us to conceive it as four." (Examina- tion of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, second edi- tion, pages 68, 69.) Thus, in positivism, we have really no rational ground for holding that to- morrow our two debts of tw^o dollars each shall not make a sum total of five dollars. This doing aw^ay with the possible knowledge of the meta- physical or universal anahi:ical principle sweeps deduction from the process of thought. (See '^Laws of Thought," Nos. 55 and 123.) But it also renders induction impossible, for induction requires the admission of at least the principle of causality (^^Laws of Thought," Nos. 123, 124). Thus the power of reasoning is explicity repudi- ated, and knowledge is left to contain merely a disconnected series of facts perceptible to sense. A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 45 23. What have we to offer? To all these ' ' sys- tems" we have to oppose only some very simple teachings of our nature in regard to human thought and action, without denying what is plain- ly put before us, and without affirming what we have no warrant for. It is well to note that the essentials concerning this question of knowledge enter into the stock of information that is common to human kind. The conviction of the objective value of thought is a necessity of our very exis- tence. If, then, we have mentioned all these the- ories or systems, which in one way or another stand opposed to the sum of the facts which nature presents, it must be kept in mind that these same theories are the respective personal fictions of so many individual thinkers, each one in con- flict with all the others, and all of them in conflict with the convictions of the rest of mankind. This double discord is already the strongest presump- tion against them all — which presumption is en- hanced by the acknowledgement that no one of the originators would have deemed it less than folly to give the test to his own theory in the most insignificant matter of practical (wery day life. We have not mentioned all who have contributed to the discord ; but we have named some leaders ; and, amongst leaders we have selected for our brief, yet wearisome, and nevertheless important review, those whose ** systems" would seem to cover, as has been said, every shade of denial or hesitation in the matter of the realitv of knowl- 46 THE TRUTJI OF THOUGHT. edge. And we have mentioned these theories, be it again stated, also because many a student, upon espying a theory that is new, startling and shrouded in the mists of an obscure terminology, has deserted his good judgment to run after the novelty. And many there are who will cling to the pursuit because they regard as deep and learned whatsoever they do not understand. They are ever ready to abandon what is evident in favor of what is obscure and unintelligible. It makes them think, they say. Yes, indeed; and it keeps them thinking. 24. Our Course Outlined. We follow a middle course. But it is not a middle course in the sense of being eclectic. It recognizes something with each of the theories in the discord. But it is not made up of selections from them all. It is the original whole of which they are exaggerated parts. It is *' middle," only because they are wandering departures from it. It is ^'middle" because it embraces on both sides and still keeps its equilibrium; whilst the ^^ systems," intent up- on tlie view^ at one side, let go their hold upon the other, and topple over to the right and left upon the course. We take our stand with mankind at largo; with the ablest as w^ell as the humblest minds of peoples past and present. We put ourselves in accord with that magnificent harmony of human consent which has persevered invariable amid A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 47 all the variations of time, clime, race, education and language; and which, hence, must be based upon the fundamental note of truth entoned by the voice of nature. We do, therefore, recognize, as indubitable, the following: 1. We are aware, each of us, of an individual personality which constitutes for each of us a ^^self,''an'^Ego,"an'*L^' 2. Each individual self knows self as distinct from a vast university of things which are not that self. 3. Each self remains constant as a distinct individuality amid the great university of things not self. 4. Through channels belonging to self, that is through what we call external senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, we come to know of the existence of matter which is not self and of a body or matter which belongs to self. 5. By imagination, imaginative memory, we can hold before us, in picture, what has been per- ceived by an outward sense, and this even when the outward sense has been shut off from com- munication with the outer world of matter. And by this imagination, which is also constructive, we can put before us, in picture, combinations which we fashion from the varied store of mem- ory. 6. By a power which we call mind or intellect we can perceive, as connected with the things that sense perceives, something that cannot be 48 thp: truth of thought. taken in by sense-perception; that is to say, we can generalize. Sense can get at the individual, concrete thing, only: this triangle, this orange, that triangle, those oranges, etc. By considera- tion of the individual, the mind can form an idea, a concept, a notion, triangle, orange, which does not specify this or that individual, but fits to any individual triangle or orange, and embraces in its application every triangle or orange past, present and future, and even the possible orange that never shall be grown. 7. There are general a priori principles (^^Laws of Thought,'' No. 55). These the mind can perceive to be incontrovertible and of uni- versal application, by mere reflection upon the signification of the principles and without going into the applications. 8. The mind can combine general principles, or individual facts and principles; and, in the combination and comparison of them, it can per- ceive other facts and principles. 9. All these perceptions constitute knowledge in the strict sense. All have an objective value. Admit knowledge in one case, and you will be forced to admit it in all others. The reason why we admit that self exists, that this book exists, that two and two make four, is, ultimately, one and the same. 10. Certified knowledge is not a prerogative of the philosopher. It is found in every conscious self. The philosopher applies himself specifically A CHAPTER OF DISCORD. 49 to the consideration of the grounds of certitude. The rest of men, otherwise occupied in acting up- on knowledge in which they are secure, meditate less upon the ultimate ground of their security. And thus we have put an end to this long and wearisome chapter. CHAPTER IV. CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVIDENCE. A Flea for Method — Is the Act of Consciousness ISim- ultaneous with Thought? — Memory and Personal Identity — Object of Consciousness — Some Leading Facts — The Ground or Motive for the Declarations of Consciousness — Importance of Evidence. 25. A Plea for Method. We trust we sliall not be charged with doing an unwarranted thing in entering upon our subject in a new way. We have chosen to begin with a few remarks on Con- sciousness. Our reasons for so doing are these: In the first place, it is inconvenient to assume, at the outset, without a word of explanation, a point which, later on, may be seen to have been so admitted and may, thus, cause confusion, and even give rise to distrust in an inquiring mind. Now, every treatise upon thought must begin by recognizing that we are conscious of the exist- tence of our thought. W^e must, therefore, accept as facts certain acts which are within us, and which are accepted by consciousness as being within us. Remember that we are, here, speak- ing solelv of that which is within us. 50 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVIDENCE. 51 In the second place, when dealing with erron- eous theories, it is of great service, for the sake of correcting them gently, to have found some common fact upon which all agree. But it is an absolute necessity with every one who theorizes upon thought, to admit the testimony of his own consciousness declaring to him the fact of Ms oivn thought. All the strange philosophies of the last three centuries do agree upon the fact of consciousness and upon its testimony to the ex- istence of thought as being a modification of the existing self. And so agreed are they on this as to make its acceptation an absolutely essential condition for not only the philosophy of the value of thought, but also for all philosophizing. Why should we not, therefore, begin where we shall have all parties in concord? The method will have, besides, a twofold advantage. It will provide the key for the correct reading of much erroneous or incautious writing on the subject of knowledge; and it will offer a way out of laby- rinthine problems, to those who have been seek- ing an exit by wrong roads. It will not even be necessary, here, to take up the psychological question as to whether con- sciousness is or is not distinct from any or all of our knowledge powers or faculties. We have simply to recognize that we have the power of knowing ourselves and the fact of our thought. We may, of course, distinguish consciousness as 52 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. power, act and state, though all go by the one name — consciousness. When you say ^ ' I am conscious of my thought, ' ' you imply both a power of self-perception, and an act by which you have perceived yourself to be thinking, and also a condition or state of mind, which may be described as repose in the posses- sion of a given item of knowledge regarding self. We call them all consciousness. The word, from its termination, ^^ness,'' does strictly denote only a state ; but, by reason of a deficiency of language, we are obliged to use the same word to express the power and the act. Considering consciousness as a power, there is no reason to distinguish it from intellect, but it specifies the more general term, intellect, as pos- sessing a special capability of directing its cog- nitive act to self, to the ego, the human personal- ity, which it perceives together with the acts of cognition through which the self, the ego, the human personality may be passing. 26. Is the Act of Consciousness Simultaneous with Thought? This is regarded as a very subtle question by all who have interrogated their own consciousness for an answer. In every act where- by the human person knows, there is, if not an absolutely' simultaneous, at least a quasi-simul- taneous accompaniment of consciousness whereby the same human person recognizes the cognitive act as belonging to self. When I know, I know coNSCiousiirEss and evidence. 53 that I know. Althougli this act by which I know that I know may not be very explicit, it is difficult to see how it can be separated in time from each individual act of knowing. Whether it be abso- lutely simultaneous or not, it is so indescribably close upon the present act of knowledge that it has received the name of direct, or simultaneous, or concomitant consciousness, to distinguish it from the act of consciousness whereby a distinctly past act is recognized as being a past modifica- tion of the still present self, such recognization of the past self being correspondingly styled an act of reflex consciousness or of after-conscious- ness. The terms, direct and reflex, are employed originally to indicate two diverse characters in the act of perception. In the direct perception the faculty goes direct (straight, so to say) to the object, which is not-self. A reflex perception, then, will be one whereby the intellect, in virtue of its peculiar efficiency, reflects (bends back, to use the material expression, since we have no other) upon its own previous act, taking that act as its object for perception and perceiving the same. Thus the consciousness accompanying each act and recognizing it as here and now belonging to self, comes to be called direct; and the con- sciousness accompanying the reflex act and recog- nizing the prior act perceived as belonging at some distinctly previous time to the present iden- tical self, comes to be called reflex. For the sake of a distinction we might, when speaking of con- 54 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. sciousiiess (which brings the self-element into the perception), use the term, simultaneous or con- comitant, instead of direct ; and we might say con- tinuous consciousness or after-consciousness in- stead of reflex consciousness. To guard against misunderstanding, it may be well to note that the expression '' reflex act of consciousness" has a wider signification than the expression ' ' reflex act of intellect. ' ' In the strict meaning of terms, intellect is said to reflect back upon a prior act of intellect. Consciousness, whatever consciousness may be, goes back to any prior perception, sensitive or intellectual, that may have existed in the totality of the ego. This may not be clear just now; but it is well to have the distinction recorded. 27. Memory and Personal Identity. We hold, and we must hold, that the human person is a unit. Self, the ego, the me, is the same self to- day, yesterday, to-morrow. The continuous iden- tity of the same self is manifested to us in the repeated states of consciousness. It is memory, mysterious memory, that links together in knowl- edge, and thus preserves in consciousness, the identity of self to whom successive acts of self- knowledge and states of consciousness belong. Memory is the power ^ve possess of laying by knowledge and bringing it up again. It is the po"wer of reviving, so to say, a past state of con- sciousness. It might be objected to this assertion, CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVIDENCE. 55 that when we remember, we very rarely call to mind a past state of consciousness. True enough, when we remember, we do not always make an explicit consideration of some past state of con- sciousness. Nevertheless, in every act of mem- ory there is an implicit reference to a past state of consciousness. You may say that you re- member things that are altogether outside of con- sciousness and have no relation to it ; as the pur- chase of Alaska by the United States, an eruption of Mt. Aetna, the first expedition up the Congo. Still, consider what you w^ish here to signify in saying, ^^I remember." You wish to state that, at a certain time past, you possessed certain items of knowledge regarding what was outside of you and that the knowledge was bound up with a self which was conscious of its knowledge and itself at that time past. You mean also, that the past conscious self is identical with the present conscious self, and that this identity of self, the human person, is proclaimed by memory. You imply, that, knowledge, possessed by past self, may be revived in present self. Finalty, you use the expression, ^^I remember" and not ^^I know," for the purpose of indicating the identity of pres- ent self and past self, the continuity of conscious- ness, and the linking by memory of that prior consciousness of knowledge to the present self, conscious of its own past state of conscious knowl- edge. All this you ni^an. And this process you go through, implicitly; nay, perhaps, even ex- 56 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. plicity; — the process, like all others that are es- sential to human existence, having become so rapid and spontaneous as to elude observation. At all events, nature puts the whole proceeding into a formula for you: ^'I remember.'' 28. Object of Consciousness. The object of a faculty is that upon which the faculty exercises itself. The object of consciousness is self, I, the individual human personality, as undergoing some modification of self. These modifications are, first, all cognitions or perceptions; secondly, all modifications with which cognition is inti- mately connected and necessarily associated. In this way we bring under the object of conscious- ness all volitions, or acts of will, which are, neces- sarily, accompanied by thought ; as also pain and pleasure, which are perceived as being departures from the normal condition of self: and we ex- clude such things as the regular circulation of the blood and the normal bodily temperature, which we do not perceive as modifications or changes of self. 29. Some Leading Facts. Some leading facts reached by consciousness and included in its ob- ject, are: 1. The existence of self, of the me, the human person, perceived in every act of consciousness. 2. The fact of thought : that is, judgment, men- tal assent or denial; ideas, the elements of judg- CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVIDENCE. 57 meiit; and reasoning, the combination of judg- ments. 3. Certain states of self which consciousness inevitably connects with body-belonging-to-self, and perceives as impossible without that element of body-belonging-to-self. Such are the states called seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Consciousness, also, links these states, by inevit- able connection, to separate parts, respectively, of the body-belonging-to-self: to eyes, ears, nostrils, tongue and palate, body surface. 4. A twofold representation by idea: the idea sometimes relating to but one individual, and sometimes embracing all the individuals of a class ; as, the idea of this man and of man in general. 5. Finally, consciousness testifies to an irre- pressible tendency of the conscious self to regard its states, which are states of cognition, as indica- tive, sometimes, of realities in self, and some- times, of realities out of self. 30. The Ground or Motive for the Declarations of Consciousness. This is something to be deter- mined very accurately, for upon it must rest the whole of our treatise. Why do I declare, without hesitation, the fact of my thought and of myself! Because I am conscious of it. But what do I mean by saying that I am conscious of it ? I mean that I know it. But, how or why do I know it! I know it because being something knowable, and 58 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. as knowable being within the scope of my know- ing power, it is presented to me in such a way as to allow me to exercise my power of knowing upon it — or, more correctly, it is presented to me in such a way that I am forced to exercise my know- ing power upon it, that is, to know it. What is there, then, in the fact, in my thought and the existence of self, which constitutes the reason, the ultimate reason, w^hy my knowing power must start into activity, upon the presence of the fact — and know the fact f This something we call the evidence of the fact. The fact is evident, visible (mentally), perceptible to me; and my knowing power (consciousness), which acts spontaneously upon the presentation of evident truth, must know it. I must hold to the objective value of the fact or truth so perceived as evident. I hold to it without any fear of error, that is to say, with certitude: and this I do, because it is evident to me. In assigning reasons for my certitude, I cannot go beyond this evidence. 31. Importance of Evidence. Upon the admis- sion of the value of evidence as a motive of certi- tude, as the final motive, depends the whole ques- tion concerning the objective value of knowledge. Admit evidence as a sufficient motive for certitude in the assertion of self and the thoughts and vari- ous modifications of self, and you must admit it to be a sufficient motive for affirming with certi- tude the objective truth of existences and general CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVIDENCE. 59 principles that are neither self nor modifications of self. And if yon will not admit evidence to be a sufficient motive for certitude regarding self and its modifications, you cannot affirm even your own existence and must therefore be considered to be outside of our audience. CHAPTER V. THE AFFIRMATION OF AN OBJECT THAT IS NOT SELF. The Great Question — To he Conscious is to Know — Transit to N on- Self — Example — General Inference. 32. The Great Question. We have seen how all the theorists agree with the common sense, the common judgment of mankind, in admitting the value of the testimony of consciousness for the existence of self and the modifications of self. The great question, now, is : Can we in any way secure a certified conviction of the reality of something that is not self? Consciousness testi- fies that we do seem, at least, to perceive that which is not self and that we are thus inclined to affirm something that is not self. All the theorists admit this ; but they fear to affirm, uniformly, the objective value of these ^^seemings." Thus we seem to perceive a material world as if it were objectively true, as if it really existed — as really, indeed, as self itself. We seem, also, to perceive certain general principles such as ^Hwo and two are four,'' as if they had an objective value inde- pendently of the perception. These are not-self. May we affirm them with the same security with which we affirm self? The answer is, Yes. 60 d AFFIRMATION OF NOT-SELF. 61 33. To be Conscious is to Know. Let us for the time being rid ourselves of the expression, to be conscious, and use its equivalent. To be conscious is to know self. It is, then, an act of knowing with this special feature that the object known is self. To be conscious {conscire), then, is noth- ing more than to know {.scire). The special term made up by compounding with the prefix con, indicates* that the object known is self. And ^ why is self known! Because, being knowable, it comes with its evidence within reach of our knowing power. It is merely a knowable some- thing that hap jp ens to be self. And I affirm that something, solely because it is evident to me. And I affirm it to be self, because it presents itself to me with its credentials, that is, with its evi- dence as self. 34. Transit to Non-Self. How, then, can I know and affirm as objectively true, that which is not self? In the very same manner and for the very same reason that I affirm self; that is, be- cause something which is not self, being in itself knowable, presents itself with its evidence to my knowing power to be known; and I am forced to know that w^hich is so presented to me, as I am forced to know myself. And as self is known to be self because it presents itself as self, so not- self is known to be not-self because it presents itself as not-self. So that if we will not affirm 62 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. iion-self upon its evidence, neither have we any right to affirm self upon its evidence. 35. Example., Let me be conscious of a thought. I am thinking of a deep, dark sky spangled with brilliant stars. I loiow the thought as mine. Yes, but the bright lights upon the dark canopy! I open and close my eyes. This action I know, also, as mine. I repeat the opening and closing of my eyes. There appears and disappears and re-ap- pears a brilliant vivid counterpart of my thought. Whilst my eyes are open, it is there; when my eyes are closed, it is gone. This brilliant splendor presents itself to me, not as something which is a modification of me, not as mixed up with the existence of myself; but as a something whose existence is distinct from and independent of myself. I know it as not-self; and I know it as such by the evidence of not- self wherewith it pre- sents itself to me. And just as in the perception or knomng of self I affirm self, so also, for the same reason, evidence, I affirm, with inevitable conviction, the objective value of non-self. I have a thought or a headache. The thought or head- ache presents itself to me as mine. I thereupon have a con^dction that it is mine. Of this con- viction, certified in the perception of what is evi- dent, I can not rid myself ; and I hold to it. The midnight glory of the stars presents itself to me as a something which excludes the element of myself. T have, thereupon, a conviction of that AFFIRMATION OF XOT-SELF. 63 somethiiig, as strong as the conviction of my own thought; and simnltaneonsly I have a conviction that that something is distinct from me. Of this conviction, certified in the perception of what is evident, I can not rid myself ; and I hold to it. Yes, you may say, but how do you know that these external objects are at all? I will answer you if you tell me how you know you have a head- ache. For your headache is, certainly, something distinct from your perceiving power. You will admit the existence of the headache, because per- ceived with its evidence of being in self. So you must admit the existence of that something which we call the golden glory of the stars, because it is perceived with its evidence of being out of self. If you deny the second you must deny the first, and, thus, put yourself in the bleak region out- side the pale of reason. 36. General Inference. What we have just said of vision, applies with strict universality to all the knowing powers, and justifies us in affirming, upon evidence, the objective truth of the world of matter as perceived by sense; of the analytic principle, as reached by the intellect; of self, as reported by consciousness. In fact, to turn the tables upon our adversaries, we can make it harder for them to explain the affirmation of self than the affirmation of non- self. For, the affirmation of self, of my own thought, requires a reflex action whereby my 64 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. thinking power turns upon itself; whereas the affirmation of non-self does not demand such re- flex action. CHAPTER VL SCEPTICISM. Dogmatic and Non-Dogmatic Scepticism — Partial Scep- ticism — Inconsistency — A Practical Consideration — An Advantage Gained — The Work Before Us. 37. Dogmatic and Non-Dogmatic Scepticism. It is necessary, for a further advance, to clear the ground of scepticism. We are in position, now, to do so. We can have no hesitation hanging over ns. We are looking for the positive in rational philosophy. There are two kinds of scepticism, dogmatic and non-dogmatic. The dogmatic sceptic holds that the mind is and can be in the state of doubt, and of doubt only, in regard to all things except- ing the fact of the doubt. Of his doubt he claims to be certain; in this he is dogmatic. The non- dogmatic sceptic is not ready to assert even his doubt. If you question him, he will reply that he doubts whether he doubts; and he will doubt, again, whether he doubts that he doubts of his doubt — and so on ad indefinitum. You can have no argument with a non-dogmatic sceptic. For, he will doubt whether you are speak- ing to him. He will doubt of your existence and of HIS OWN ExiSTEN^CE. You cau hope, therefore, 65 66 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. to convince him of nothing. Happily, the sceptics of this class have been left behind in ancient Greece ; and are, now, spoken of only in amusing stories. The dogmatic sceptic offers ns a starting point for argument. This is his tenet, that he does doubt, that he is sure of his douht about all things, and that he is sure of nothing else. He also gives us a hold when he makes his inconsistent attempt to prove the necessity of his state of doubt. For in affirming his doubt, he affirms his own exis- tence ; and in trying to prove his doubt he assumes the objective value of reasoning, of judgments and of ideas. Dogmatic sceptics, open and avowed, in the universal sense just mentioned, we wdll hardly meet with. 38. Partial Scepticism. But if we look back to Chapter III, we shall see that it is nothing less than scepticism that is concealed in the writings of Kant, Hume, Descartes, Spencer and others there mentioned ; a scepticism adorned with a new name, idealism, materialism, positivism, etc., in all of which there is a professed doubt (if not an open denial) of the objective value of certain acts of cognition. With the very same reason at hand for admitting the objective value of all acts of cognition, these writers admit the evidence in one case, and, very inconsistently, reject it in an- SCEPTICISM. 67 other. In this sense, then, are they sceptics, and very dogmatic, too. Hence, the name of sceptic is very justly appli- cable to any man who rejects the testimony of any of the knov^ledge-faculties. In practical life, none of the writers referred to were sceptics — ^neither Kant nor Descartes, nor any of them. Even Hnme, called the father of modern sceptics, avowed that, in practice, he thought and acted as other men. But the mistake which all these writers have made is, that they have tried to explain the fact of knowledge by leaving out one or more of the knowledge-faculties. The idealist tries to explain cognition, without a veritable perception through the senses ; all cognition, as such, orginat- ing, according to him, purely in intellect. The materialist and positivist, on the other hand, try to explain cognition upon the assumption that all is matter, or that we can rely upon sense percep- tion, only. Hence, they practically deny intellect, reject the perception of a priori truths, and dis- card the intellectual process of deduction. 39. Inconsistency. The whole mistake of the partial sceptic lies in his accepting one knowledge power and rejecting another; in admitting evi- dence in one case and repudiating it in another. Why, I ask, should he trust to nature's guidance in one instance, and not in another! He puts himself in a very awkward predicament. He can not advance a step without being inconsistent. 68 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. Fads perceptible by sense, and a priori principles perceptible in their universal character, are, both, necessary for argument with men. For, he who will not admit perception by sense, must simply assume without warrant the existence of men like himself, since their existence can be reached by real sense-perception only. And he who will not admit the purely intellectual perception of purely a priori truths in their general and universal character Avhich is not perceptible to any sense, deprives himself of the very basis of all argu- ment, of the general objective value of the princi- ple of equality, i. e., that two things which, in a respect, are equal to a third, are, in the same re- spect, equal to one another. He even deprives himself of the chance of holding *to any single judgment. For, to him, there is no absolute value in the x>riiiciple of contradiction, taken generally, i. e.y tliRt the same thing cannot both be and not be ai the same time. Hence, he must always be prepared, at the outset of his argument, to affirm and deny the same thing at the same time. In this way, then, is materialism reducible to the most hopeless scepticism. The great argument agaiiist the sceptic consists, then, radically, in forcing upon him his inconsistency in admitting one evidence and rejecting another; his incon- sistency' in trusting one cognitive faculty and doubting the fidelity of another; and his double inconsistency, when he begins to reason, of as- s'mnirig, in his argument, a cognitive power and SCEPTICISM. 69 an evidence which he has rejected at the start. For, as we have seen, every attempt at argument amongst men demands and assumes the objective value of both sense-perception and intellectual perception ; perception of the individual fact of an- other man's material body by means of sense, and perception of general, universal truths by intel- lect. 40. A Practical Consideration. No valid argu- ment can be brought forward to discredit the ob- jective value of either sense perception or intel- lectual perception. Every argument advanced by the whole range of theoretic sceptics, assumes as a certainty the very thing which it wishes to prove uncertain or unknowable. When we take up a book which proposes to manifest to us that we can have no certified conviction of the outer world such as we accept it, what do we find! We find the writer assuming not only the existence of his own intelligence, and of his own body with its various organs, but also the existence of his pen and paper, and of a power of vision to guide him in faithfully transcribing the thought of his intel- lect. We find him assuming iny existence and your existence, my intelligence and 3^our intelli- gence, my organs of vision and your organs of vision, and the capacity of these organs to trans- mit, faithfully, the words upon the paper. We find him assuming the reality of the printing press, and we discover him reading the proofs 70 THE TllUTH OF THOUGHT. very carefully so as to have the bound volume objectively correct. And when that book comes to him from the publisher, he will turn over its leaves with complacency at the thought of having proved to us that we have no right to affirm it to be what he himself so clearly holds it to be. Now, if this is philosophy, the life of the phi- losopher is a very idle sort of a dream. Besides, if you eliminate the conviction that any objective verity is what it presents itsel:^ with its evidence to be, you, at that moment, make practical life an impossibility. But the philosophy that makes human life an impossibility is not the philosophy for man. Howsoever it might suit certain ficti- tious existences that we know nothing of, we shall not undertake to inquire ; but it does not suit the real human existence, with which, after all, it purports to be occupied. Carried out, it makes that life an impossibility: therefore it is a false philosophy. In accounting for cognition, it is no more lawful to deny or ignore a knowledge power that evi- dences itself than it would be to introduce arbi- trarily and without any evidence some new kind of a power and to insist upon all men admitting that they possessed such a power whilst each man's consciousness testifies to him that he does not possess it. The one position is as unreason- able as the other. Yet our theoretical sceptics in- sist upon the one, whilst they would blush at the other. J SCEPTICISM. ■ 71 When a great problem presents itself — like that of the twofold character of knowledge, the knowl- edge of self and not-self — it is far more manly to face the whole problem and to acknowledge the limitations of our analysis, than to deny the intricacies of the solution, take half of the prob- lem as already solved and on the assumption build up an arbitrary ^^ system'' which all men must then call philosophy or be regarded as lacking in- telligence. Yet this is the method pursued by every form of theoretic scepticism, call it ideal- ism, phenomenalism, materialism or agnosticism. The theoretic sceptic, nevertheless, in practical life, acts up to his conviction of the objective truth of both facts and principles. He goes to dinner and to bed. He pays and collects his bills. Though he lectures in the university and writes books to prove to you and me that we must not take things as they seem to be, he himself does, all the time, take them to be as they seem to him to be ; and he would not for a moment dare to do otherwise. So do Berkeley, Hume, Kant, J. S. Mill, H. Spencer, whilst writing books (which are very hard reading) to show that any one else who should presume to do likewise would be pursuing a course for which reason grants no warrant. 41. An Advantage Gained. The advantage which we hope we have gained by the method of treatment which we have thus far pursued is not an inconsiderable one. We have tried to rid the iZ THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. following pages of that constant warfare which we should, otherwise, find ourselves obliged to keep up with conflicting theories. We are follow- ing what may be called, in a sense, the middle course, inasmuch as we are not dragged over to the extreme of either idealism or sensualism. AVe are trying to indicate the entire philosophy of the convictions that govern and have ever gov- erned the practical life of men, and which are the essential condition of thought, of civilization, of progress, of human existence. In the pages which are to come we should find it very tedious were we obliged at every paragraph to make a refer- ence to what had been said by one or another of the theorists mentioned in Chapter III, and to in- dulge in a refutation. To avoid this inconvenience we have massed the opposition into one chapter: In the discord we have found that all the theories are built upon the same foundation, evidence. But tlie theorists did not take into their field of view the whole foundation, the whole evidence. Each, arbitrarily limiting himself to one particular evi- dence, to half the foundation (ignoring the other half), and having built thereupon his structure, has no way left him to complete the edifice of knowledge but by building on top of what he al- ready has — a castle in the air. This superstruc- ture has no stability. Thus, for instance, the idealist affirming self upon the evidence of self, tries, out of this affirmation and without evidence, to affirm not-self and the outer world in general, SCEPTICISM. 73 or declares,' at least, that there is no other basis upon which to establish the conviction of not-self, if, indeed, we will insist upon having snch a con- viction, lie ignores the other evidences, the other parts of the foundation. He has bnilt a castle in the air. To affirm it to be real is to put npon the partial evidence the whole weight of the entire objective truth, and, in this case, the partial evi- dence, itself, must crumble, for it is not destined to support the mass ; and there is left the chaos of nescience. We opened upon a common ground, conscious- ness, for the reason that when dealing with one or another of the multifarious vagaries of philo- sophic thought upon the question with which we are occupied, we shall always find it more easy to lead an inquirer forward from a common ground than to seek him in every by-way of his wanderings and guide him back constantly to the starting point : besides, when we proffer safe con- duct to the meeting of the ways, a wanderer may be ill disposed to submit to our guidance. 42. The Work Before Us. We could not go on with the rest of our work by the pure analysis of inquiry, for we should never come to an end. Recognizing, now, the entire scope of evidence as presenting to us that which is knowable, we are prepared to see what is held regarding the truth of thought by the human race, taught from the beginning in the great University of nature. CHAPTER VII. THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT, OR LOGICAL TRUTH. Truth: Onfologival, Logicat, Moral — Truth, a Certain Correspondence or Conformity — Logical Truth — Log- ical Falsity — Logical Truth; in what Mental Act is it Found^Tlie Radical Reason. 43. Truth: Ontological, Logical, Moral. If we consider the various uses of the words, true, truth, we shall find that there are three orders of truth. We say of a man that he is a true orator, mean- ing that he contains within himself, that he pos- sesses the requisites of an orator; that he corre- sponds to the ideal which we figure to ourselves as the pattern to which the real must conform to be truly an orator. This correspondence of real with the ideal is called ontological truth. It is the truth of the thing, the truth of heing {ovTo^i). Whatever is, has ontological truth; for, it con- tains all that is required to make it what it is. Again, we may say of our orator, that his thoughts are true, meaning that his notions, judg- ments, conclusions, correspond to certain things, principles, which are not his thoughts. This sec- ond correspondence, namely of thought with thing (meaning by thing, whatever can be thought of) 74 I LOGICAL TRUTH. 75 is called logical truth, truth of thought, of the Aoyos. Finally, we will say that the orator's words are true, meaning, in general, that they correspond Avith his thoughts — presuming, of course, that the thoughts correspond with things. This correspondence of words with thought is called moral truth. It is called moral truth to indicate the free will that motives the correspon- dence of the words with the thought ; and the opposite of moral truth, that is, falsehood, is said to exist then only when by free will the words are made to disagree with the thought. The thought may, indeed, disagree with thing, there may be logical error; but provided the words are not wilfully made to disagree with the thought, there is still moral truth. The falsehood in such case is purely material, that is, there is simply matter for falsehood. But there is no formal falsehood, because there is absent the form or characteristic of falsehood, that is, the wilful deviation from the correspondence which words should naturally have with things through thought. 44. Truth, a Certain Correspondence or Con- formity. From this we discover that, in the uni- versal acceptation of terms, truth is understood to be a certain correspondence or conformity. And we would remark, in passing, that in matters phil- osophical a positive value is to be attached to the constant, universal acceptance of the meaning of words — words being the natural medium for the 76 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. communication of thought. Hence, though it is easy to err when one too broadly assumes the conditions of the oral word as the measure of the conditions of the mental word; nevertheless, when due discretion is used, we can, from a uni- form, constant, universal usage in speech, be sometimes guided to the discovery of an impor- tant general principle regarding truth. 45. Logical Truth. This Treatise has to do with logical truth, exclusively. Logical truth is the conformity of thought with thing. By thing we mean anything whatsoever ; any fact, event or abstract principle; any thought, even, that is) made the object of another thought. In what, precisely, the conformity consists, we are not called upon to declare further than that the thought answers, as thought can, to the thing thought of. Some new writers have been too ready to reject this term, conformity, as expres- sive of logical truth, though our definition is founded upon and drawn from the uniform con- sent of the human race and the practical needs of humanity. The reason why the definition is op- posed by these writers is this: to be able, say they, to discover such conformity and thus to be able to know that we have logical truth, it would be necessary to be able to stand of¥, as it were, so as to survey thought and thing and thus judge whether there existed a likeness between them. But the objection is not reasonable. Thought has LOGICAL TRUTH. 77 its own natural representative-value, as words have their arbitrary representative-value. Whilst reading the interesting page or listening to the vivid discourse, you are carried to the thing rep- resented without adverting to the arbitrary sign, the written or spoken language. And why so? Because of the conformity between the language and the thing written or spoken of. Look at your page and, then, at the blooming valley which it describes. They present no points of similarity to the eye. You will find between them no such conformity as that which exists between portrait and sitter. Yet the printed page conforms to the landscape. Now, if there can be a conformity be- tween language and thing, how much more perfect will be the conformity of thought for which speech is but a poor delegate! And those very writers who object to our definition will still appeal for the truth of their own words to the conformity which they hold those words to have with thought and thing. To admit a conformity, then, it is not necessary to set the thought down beside the thing and compare the two. In listening to the w^ords of another, without reverting to those words we catch the thought of another : and without revert- ing to that thought we form our own thought ; and without reverting to our own thought we perceive thing, we know thing. We have here a series of conformities, going round like the seamless links of a circular chain from object to the speaker's thought, from his thought to his words, from his 78 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. words to my thought, from my thought back to object. Thought is an exercise of mental activity : it is, at the same time, representative; and in it and by it we perceive the object of the thought, with- out perceiving the thought itself. Now, when the thought is such that in it and by it we really perceive what we believe we do perceive, the thought is said to be true, and we have logical truth. It is not necessary for logical truth that the thought embrace the entire object: to what extent there is conformity, to that extent is there logical truth. 46. Logical Falsity. Any positive disagree- ment betw^een thought and thing is logical falsity. A mere absence of agreement or a total absence of all thought about the object is not falsity or error. Neither is the mere not knowing more about the object — the mere limitation of the scope of our knowledge — error. Our thoughts about a thing may be true and only true, and, yet, fall short of the whole truth. I may not know that the square of the hypothenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides. This is a mere negative or privative condi- tion of my knowledge, and does not constitute log- ical falsity. But if I believe that the square of any side in any triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, there is here LOGICAL TRUTH. 79 a positive thought disagreeing with the objective or ontological truth : there is logical falsity, error. 47. Logical Truth: in what Mental Act is it Found? In the " Laws of Thought ' ' we described, briefly, three mental cognitive acts or perform- ances : the simple apprehension, the judgment, and the argumentation or reasoning. The de- scription there given is amply sufficient for the purposes of this work, since we are not occupying ourselves with the essential distinction between the ]iOVv^ers of sense-cognition and the power of purely intellectual cognition, though we have to insist, even here (and more fully a little later), upon their being individually distinct. The com- plete discussion of their essential distinction be- longs to psychology. The simple apprehension was described as the mental act considered in so far only as it contains what corresponds to an oral term, as man, zebra, tree, blue, red, redness, virtue, hope— without any affirmation or negation connected therewith. The judgment was described as the mental act whose oral expression is a proposition containing an affirmation or a negation, as, man is intelligent, hope is a virtue. Argumentation or reasoning was described as the mental act which compares objectively the content of two judgments, so as to formulate ex- plicitly a third judgment, whose content was im- plicitly perceived in the act of comparing, — the 80 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT.' oral expression of the act of comparing being the syllogism. Thus : All virtues are desirable; Temperance is a virtue; Therefore, Temperance is desirable. In each of these, apprehension, judgment, reas- oning, we have a mental act which is, in its own way, representative, conformable to thing. But which of them is comformable in such a manner that it may be said to contain logical truth — consider- ing the universally accepted meaning of words? We insist upon the universally accepted meaning of words. Man has always tried to use words in a definite way to express his thought; and we are considering the humanity that is and has been and will be ; not an imaginary and impossible hu- manity. And language, when in universal accord, is, even though of a different order, a very good auxiliary when we have to pass judgment upon thought. In which act, then, is the logical truth? It is not easy for us to tell whether we might so manage the mental act as to hold the apprehen- sion, pure and simple, without formulating a judg- ment. But whether we might be able to do so or not, no one mil venture to say that there is a complete truth contained in the apprehension. If you utter merely a term that stands for an appre- hension, or even a list of terms, as temperance, desirable, virtue, no person will credit you with a truth or charge you with an error. d LOGICAL TRUTH. 81 But take a proposition, which is the oral ex- pression of the judgment. Take an analytic prop- osition, such as parallel lines produced will never meet; or a synthetic proposition, such as the sky is dark. According to the universal usage of words either proposition may be regarded as con- taining a complete truth; the analytic proposi- tion, at all times ; the synthetic, whenever the sky happens to be dark. Anyone will always be ready to declare that a proposition is necessarily either true or false; whilst a simple apprehension or a term will never be called true or false. Now the proposition is nothing more than the oral expres- sion of the mental act of judgment. Hence the mental act of judgment, parallellines produced will never meet, will always be regarded as mentally true, that is, logically true ; and the mental act of judgment, the sky is dark, the synthetic judgment, will always be regarded as necessarily either true or false logically. Hence we say that logical truth is found complete in the judgment. 48. The Radical Reason. The radical reason why we say that logical truth is found complete in the judgment and not in the apprehension, is because a complete conformity is found in the judgment and not in the apprehension. That which is represented by the simple apprehension or the term is never found out of the mind, iso- lated and by itself, as it stands in the solitary ap- prehension and term, but it is found necessarily 82 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. connected with something else which is also ex- pressible by another apprehension and by another term. For example, that which we call red, objec- tively, and whicii is an object of apprehension and can be expressed by the term red, does not exist objectively by itself, but naturally conjoined with a something which is red. The objective or ontological truth is not merely red, nor merely something, but the two conjoined, something red. And the apprehension of these two conjoined as conjoined, is the work of the mental act which is expressed orally by the proposition, that is red. This act is the judgment. We do not say, we repeat it, that there is no element of logical truth in the simple apprehen- sion, since the simple apprehension is, after all, an element of the judgment ; but we do not know that we ever make a direct perception and thus form an individual, solitary, isolated notion. The fact is, that, as far as our observation can go, we find ourselves making what I might call a duplex or triplex or quadruplex apprehension. A^Hiatever formality (Laws of Thought, 20), we apprehend directly, we spontaneously attach to it objectively j some other formality which constitutes material for another simple apprehension. We apprehend it at least as actual or possible or past or present™ or future, as a something or that something, or even as impossible. There is a dispute among philosophers as -to whether over and above the perception of the objective agreement or disagree- I LOGICAL TRUTH. 83 meiit of two concepts, the complete judgment re- quires a new act, which consists in the formal affirmation or denial; or whether the perception of agreement or disagreement does not in itself constitute judgment. The reason for holding that this perception constitutes what we call judgment is, that there is here a complete conformity : there is knowledge. When we see a rose which is red, we take in directly the objective combination of rose and red; we have knowledge ; we affirm men- tally. A new act of mind introducing the con- ventional is or is not of human speech seems to be superfluous. We call the concept a mental liwrd and we call the judgment a mental affirma- tion. But this terminology is adapted from names applied to spoken language. Now, when we have a concept we do not speak a mental word after the act of mental apprehension. So, also, when we make a judgment it is not necessary to per- form a new act of affirmation after we have ap- prehended the objective agreement. Finally, we may remark that as logical truth can exist complete in the judgment, so there can be as- many complete logical truths in an argu- mentation as there are simple judgments con- tained therein. Our remarks upon error or logical falsity we reserve for a later chapter. CHx\PTEK VIII. CERTITUDE. Three states of Mind: Ignorance^ Doubt, Certitude — Object of Certitude — Thi^ee Orders of Ontological Truth: Metaphysical, Physical, Moral — Metaphys- ical, Physical and Moral Certitude — Objective Certi- tude — Certitude: Immediate and Mediate; Direct and Reflex; Philosophical — Probability. 49. Three States of the Mind: Ignorance, Doubt, Certitude. We have determined upon what we mean by logical truth. We have now to con- sider certain states in which the mind can be in regard to the affirmation of objective agreement of concepts. There are three such states: ignor- ance, donbt, certitnde. Take two contradictory propositions, ^^The number of the stars is odd," "The number of the stars is even." One or the other of them must be true ; but we have no evidence, positive or neg- ative, for or against either. This leaves us in absolute ignorance with regard to each. Hence when, in contemplating a given proposition, the mind finds no reason whatever to affirm either it or its contradictory, the state of the mind with regard to such proposition, such judgment rep- resented bv the proposition, and hence with re- 84 CEKTITUDE. 85 gard to the possible objective or ontological truth corresponding, is said to be ignorance. When, however, the mind sees positive reasons for affirming each of two contradictories, that is, for affirming and denying the same thing, but dares not adhere to either because it cannot reject the evidence on the other side, it is held in sus- pense between the two, and is said to be in a state of doubt. When, in this state of suspense, the mind does, for grave reasons, incline more to one side than to another, yet fearing all the while that the truth may be on the other side, it is said to hold an opinion. Thus, two minds looking at the same proposition with different degrees of in- formation may, as we so often see they do, hold different opinions upon the same subject. And the same mind, holding one opinion to-day, may, for new reasons perceived, hold the contradictory opinion to-morrow. When a proposition is seen to be true, to rep- resent an evident ontological truth, and the con- tradictory to be evidently false, the mind is es- tablished in a state of certitude with regard to the evident truth. Certitude is, therefore, a firm as- sent of the mind to one of two contradictories, without any fear of error. It may, indeed, happen that two persons may claim to have certitude: the one, of a certain proposition ; the other, of the contradictory. This only indicates that one of the persons is judging on insufficient motives : for one of the contra- 86 THE THUTH OF THOUGHT. dictories must be false. Hence the person holding it must be judging without sufficient considera- tion. 50. Object of Certitude. It is to be remarked that in rational philosophy we speak of natural certitude only, and not of certitude by divine faith founded on divine testimony. Natural cer- titude embraces in its adequate object whatever may be known by the natural powers of mind — whether it be concrete fact or general principle. This object, then, is not to be understood as com- prising the entire ontological truth, but only that ]30?'tion which can be naturally known by the hu- man mind. It thus excludes every truth the knowledge of which is absolutely beyond the natural reach of the human mind. Not that any human effort of any mind or of all the human family Avill ever reach more than a very small fraction of the truths contained in the con-natural adequate object of human certitude; the object embraces, nevertheless, all that lies absolutely within the natural reach of human intelligence. 51. Three Orders of Ontological Truth: Meta- physical, Physical, Moral. The con-natural ade- quate object of human certitude is divisible into two classes of ontological truths. In one class we have all general truths: these are expressed by universal propositions. In the other class we have all truths not general, — facts or possibilities CERTITUDE. 87 past, present or future: these are expressed by singular or particular, propositions. The general truths are again divisible into two classes: the absolute and the hypothetical, or conditional. The absolute are of the metaphysical order. The hy- pothetical are further divisible into those of the physical order and those of the moral order. Special attention is called to the characteristics of the general truths. When we affirm any truth, hold to it, that which we affirm and hold to is the objective connection between the subject and the predicate. Hence, it is precisely this connection that is absolute or hypothetical. When we affirm this general truth, '^The same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time," we declare a truth in which the connection between subject and predicate is absolutely necessary: it is free [ahso- luta) of all condition, and must hold permanently and invariably in time and eternity. When we say, ''The earth turns on its axis regularly, bring- ing da}^ and night," we again have a certain permanent and necessary connection between sub- ject and predicate. But the connection is not absolutely necessary. It is hypothetical. It is conditioned by the existence and continuance of the present order of the material universe. Still further, if we say, ' ' Man commonly speaks truth- fully," we have a certain permanent and neces- sary objective connection between subject and predicate. But it is not absolutely necessary. It is hypothetical. It is conditioned by the existence 88 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of man, and by his continuance in the common ways {mores) of men. The first of these truths is absolute and of the metaphysical order. The second is hypothetical and of the physical order. The third is hypo- thetical and of the moral order. In a truth of the metaphysical order the con- nection between subject and predicate arises from the very essence of the things in question, from the nature of the content of subject and predicate ; so that the opposite is objectively an absolute im- possibility and its affirmation is necessarily un- true. Such truth is, therefore, called metaphysi- cal, that is, beyond all dependence upon the ex- istence or conditions of the physical universe. It is absolute or unconditional, free (absoluta) of all condition or limitation. Its application to par- ticular cases is universal and without possible exception, because the connection arises from the very nature of things. The idea of the subject involves the idea of the predicate; and the idea of the predicate can be evolved from the idea of the subject. The connection is necessary by an absolute necessity. It is metaphysically neces- sary. It is metaphysical, outside the conditions of the ph^^sical order. Of this character are all arithmetical and geometrical truths, as, ^Hwo and two make four,'' ^^ parallel lines cannot meet," 'Hhe three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles''; also all fundamental laws of thought, as, 'Hwo things which in a certain re- CERTITUDE. 89 spect are equal to a third thing are in the same respect equal to one another ;'' ^'the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time ; " also all essential definitions, complete or incomplete, since the predicate is here only a fuller declara- tion of the subject, as, ^^man is a rational ani- mal, " "all animals have life. ' ' In a general truth of the physical order the connection between subject and predicate is not seen to arise from the very essence of things, from the nature of contents evidently inevitably linked together. The connection is held, however, as being universal objectively; but it is so held simply by reason of an observed uniformity and constancy of fact or effect. From this we con- clude by induction to the uniform, constant action of a given agent in given circumstances, which we enunciate as a physical law of nature. These laws are the general truths of the physical order. They are not absolute. They are hypothetical, conditional. The condition is the existence and perseverance of the present physical order of the material universe. The connection between sub- ject and predicate is said to be physical. There is nothing in the evidence to indicate, and hence we do not hold, that the opposite is an absolute impossibility. When we say that light travels at the rate of more than ten million miles a minute, we do not mean to imply that the Maker of the universe could not make light to travel regularly with less or greater speed. Nevertheless we have 90 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. certitude regarding the truth of these physical laws : the laws of physics, chemistry, mechanics, of light, heat, motion, electricity, gravitation, co- hesion, affinity, etc. Our daily life proceeds with- out hesitation and with security in the conviction that they are not going to fail us. We have evi- dence enough to see that the Maker of the uni- verse has put into matter certain constant forces to enable us to advance with certitude in the af- fairs of life and not be in a continuous state of bewilderment as never knowing what is to come next. Finally, there are the general truths of the moral order. They are so named because they relate to the common ways (mores) of men. The connection between subject and predicate is not metaphysical It is not even fixed by the will of the Creator, as in the physical laws. Still it is seen to follow with a certain constancy and uni- formity in the free conduct of our f ellowmen, with whom and in dependence upon whom we have to go through life. From our own instinct, from the study of our own actions and motives and the actions and motives of those whom we have known, from a universal and unhesitating agree- ment concerning normal conduct, upon the pre- sumption of which the social life of the human race has been and is now founded and without which there could be no human society, we come to recognize this other class of general truths. CERTITUDE. 91 AVe take it as universally true, for instance, that men will give some consideration to their temporal interests, that parents will have some regard for their own families, that the citizens at large desire laAV and order, that in certain circum- stances men will speak the truth, etc. Yet, the connection between subject and predicate is not absolute. An exception is possible. This ex- ception is, moreover, dependent upon the free will of man. These truths of the moral order, as uni- versal, are therefore hypothetical. The hypothe- sis, the condition postulated, is the constancy of the action of the human will under given motives. The exceptions, however, are comparatively so rare in the sum of deliberate human acts that they are practically negligible, and the acceptance of these truths as practically universal is a necessity of human existence. What is to be said concerning the objective con- nection between subject and predicate in the other class of truths, the individual facts 1 A fact whilst it is a fact cannot be otherwise. The same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time. Hence tlie fact, though it might never have taken place, has, when once accomplished, the firmness of a truth of the metaphysical order. For the rest it may be either an individual case under a general truth of any of the three orders ; or it may be a thing in which the connection between subject and predicate can be broken and re-established, as, **I write — I do not write — I write;" or it may be 92 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. a truth which could not be affirmed before and which can never be affirmed again, as, ^^It is now midnight between 1915 and 1916.'^ 52. Metaphysical, Thysical, Moral Certitude. These terms — metaphysical, physical, moral — are used primarily to indicate degrees of necessity existing objectively in the connection between subject and predicate in the ontological truth. The same terms, however, are applied to certitude. It is denominated metaphysical, physical, moral, according to the order of ontological truth ad- hered to. Certitude is thus qualified by what is technically called an extrinsic denomination. The terms indicate, each a degree of necessity. Certi- tude is an attitude or state of mind following the apprehension of that necessity, and it is denomi- nated from a characteristic of the truth appre- hended. 53. Objective Certitude. Just as we qualify the state of the mind knowing, by terms belonging to the object known; so, also, do we sometimes find the term, certitude, which expresses the state of mind knowing, applied to the object known. The truth or object known is then called objective certitude, to distinguish it from the state of mind knowing, which by way of distinction is called sub- jective certitude. We shall find it more conveni- ent to limit the name, certitude, to its original signification of the state of mind. We shall thus CERTITUDE. 93 avoid a possible ambiguity in philosophical termi- nology. We have, besides, a well understood term to express what is meant by objective certitude, the word certainty. With the word certitude to express the state of the mind knowing, and cer- tainty to express the truth known, much confu- sion may be avoided. A certainty will thus al- ways signify a truth known, and, certainty, in the abstract, will signify ascertained truth in general. And though we do find the word, cer- tainty, employed in common speech to signify the subjective state of certitude, as in the expres- sions *^to have, to obtain, to arrive at certainty,'' this need not affect the limitation which we give to the word in philosophical terminology. It may be added that the word ^^ certain," employed as a predicate, has in common language obtained use in the subjective and objective sense as well as in the indefinite (impersonal) sense. We say ^^I am certain," ^Hhat is certain," ^4t is certain that 54. Certitude: Immediate and Mediate; Direct and Reflex; Philosophical. Certitude is called im- mediate when we assent to a truth Avhich is per- ceived as presented to us in itself and not through a medium. It is called mediate when the assent is given to a truth which has been perceived through a medium, through a demonstration, for instance, or the testimony of a recognized au- thor it v. 94 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. Certitude, whether immediate or mediate, when first arising, is called direct certitude, to distin- guish it from what is termed reflex certitude, which is the state of the mind following the satis- factory investigation or "proof" of the motives upon which the direct certitude was based. This investigation may, of course, be made in a more or less elaborate manner; and it is as a rule made in a degree by all men, upon the ap- prehension of truths that are new to them. We say in common language that we look or think or listen tivice to be certain. AVhen this investiga- tion is carried into details so as to consider the nature of the truth presented, the kind of neces- sity existing in the connection between the predi- cate and the subject, the precise perceptive con- ditions of the faculty through which the truth is first ushered into the domain of knowledge, and also of the other faculties by which it is elevated into the spiritual regions of thought, and finally the point wiiere investigation must cease if we will not quench all light of knowledge in the mists of absolute scepticism — then we arrive at what is dignified by the name of philosophical certitud-e. 55. Probability. We have spoken of doubt as a hesitation of the mind between two contradic- tories; and of opinion, as a leaning of the mind to one of the contradictories for reasons which seem more cogent, but which do not, nevertheless, refute the aro:uments for the other contradictorv. CERTITUDE. 95 Probability is the capacity for proof or demoii- stration, the plea for acceptance in a doubtful case. The probability of a proposition is the weight or value of the sum of argument that can be brought forward in an endeavor to establish the proposition. Of course, if the proposition can be logically established and its contradictory can- be logically shown to be false, we then have a true proposition representing a certified onto- logical or objective truth. But if we cannot es- tablish the falsity of the contradictory, then the proposition remains only probable; and' its prob- ability will vary with the weight or argument that can be advanced for it. Thus we can hold only an opinion as to its representing an ontological truth. Hence, according to the weight of argu- ment, we will say that a proposition is hardly probable, simply probable, very probable, ex- tremely probable. Probability, strictly taken, refers to that which is to be proved. But, by a transfer of terms, we apply the word, probable, to the opinion itself — that is, to the state of mind inclining, for reason, to a probable proposition. We speak of a prob- able opinion, a very probable opinion, etc. Moreover, as the proposition stands for the judgment, and the judgment and proposition stand for the ontological order, we also employ the terms, probable and probability, when speak- ing of that which the probable proposition is in- tended to represent. We speak of a probable 96 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. cause, a probable effect, a probability — meaning that there are for said cause, effect, etc., argu- ments weighty enough to justify one in forming an opinion. CHAPTER IX. MEANS WE POSSESS FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE — PERCEP- TIVE OR KNOWING POWERS— THE EXTERNAL SENSES. A Difficulty — Unity of the Human Person — The Outer Senses — The Formal Objects of the Outer Senses — Taste — Smell — Hearing — Sight — Touch. 56. A Difficulty. It is necessary for us to say something, in this treatise, about the means with which nature has provided us for arriving at knowledge. But in determining upon what to say, we are forced to put the balance of our dis- crimination to the most exquisite test. It is of the very last importance that we do not introduce into our treatise what does not belong to it. Yet, as we face the present subject, we find ourselves upon the borders of sciences that require, each, a distinct and separate treatment. When we touch upon the knowledge of the abstract, the percep- tion of universal truths, and the power of com- paring judgments for the sake of drawing con- clusions, we are apt to run into rational psychol- ogy and to institute inquiries into the nature of the principle that can know the immaterial, as 97 98 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. distinct f loiii, or discriminated, in some way, from the principle that can know only the individual, the concrete, the material. And, when we touch upon sense-perception, we run the risk of extend- ing our remarks into mutilated treatises upon anatomy, physiology, optics, acoustics, etc. In beginning this book we made up our mind that it should not be written from what w^e may call the point of view^ of the specialist — from any out- side technical standpoint. We stand upon the common ground of humanity. However, in steer- ing clear of the Scylla of exuberance we are in danger of striking the Charybdis of barrenness. We must, therefore, try, at least, to be careful; and it may be useful for us to bear in mind what is contained in the following paragraph. 57. Unity of the Human Person. Let it be un- derstood, once for all, that in this treatise we are not called upon to prove the nature of the soul or the nature of the body. But we are called upon to hold what consciousness presents to us, namely, the unity of the totality of man. The unit. Ego, 1, is the subject of each individual predication and of the sum total of all the predications made by consciousness. If there is thinking, it is / that think, not the mind ; but I think by the use of the power or faculty of thinking which belongs to me, and which we call mind, intellect, reason. When there is judgment, I judge. When there is hear- ing, I hear. The hearing belongs to me, not to EXTERNAL SENSES. 99 tlie ear. The ear is nothing in the perceptive order except in so far as it belongs to the vital me. So, also, it is not the eye that sees, but I see. And so it is Avith every predication of every exercise of a capacity for action belonging to the human person. T think, I will, I see, I walk, I hope, I sleep, I fall, etc. 58. The Outer Senses. We have previously said enough about consciousness, the power we possess of knowing self and the modifications of self. The study of self, by this power of consciousness, shows us that we are put into communication, per- ceptive communication, with the outer world of matter by means of five distinct organs or sets of organs which form parts of the body belonging to self. These organs are eyes, ears, nostrils, tongue- and-palate, entire-body-surface. These organs, Avhen vivified by that ever identical unit, the prin- ciple of life that is within us, are constituted senses ; and in them and through them the vital principle becomes first perceptive of the outer world of matter. The five senses or perceptive powers, thus constituted, are called, respectively, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. This is a very old division of the outer senses ; as old, indeed, as man. We find the exercise of the five senses re- corded in the first chapters of Genesis; and we find no new outer sense discovered up to the pres- ent time. It is true the sense of touch has been subdivided as to the qualities perceived, temper- 100 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. atiire, movement, resistance. The power of per- ceiving resistance and movement is styled muscu- lar sense, and the sense of touch proper is limited to the perception of mere contact. Howsoever the case may be, the distinction is sufficiently vague even to physiologists, and we are justified, for our present purposes, in including all the subdi- visions under the single name of touch. The power of exercising sense-perception is called, in general, sensibility or simply sense. 59. The Formal Objects of the Outer Senses. We may very well marvel when we come to con- sider how the vast stores of knowledge accumu- lated in the minds and the libraries of men have been built up, manufactured, as it were, to use a material expression, out of what is provided by the exercise of sense-perception. And the wonder only grows when we find upon investigation how very, very limited is the object upon which each sense is privileged to exercise itself. The formal object of any sense, as of any perceptive power, is that form, formality, determination, peculiar- ity, something, which the sense perceives immedi- ately and directly, without which it could not ex- ercise its percejjtive power, and which, as resid- ing in concrete matter here and there (material object), is the reason why the sense is said to per- ceive the object in which that form or formality resides. It is out of the perception of the formal objects of the faculties that we construct, so to EXTERNAL SENSES. 101 say, the stores of knowledge which we lay by. We shall here consider briefly the formal objects of the several external senses. 60. Taste. Though we know sufficiently well, for the practical purposes of life, what we mean when we say that an object has a taste, yet, when we come to speak philosophically, we find it hard to define accurately what we mean by the formal object of the sense of taste. We certainly do not taste light or sound or extension. As far as we know, the formal object of taste is a certain vari- able quality which some bodies possess, when in solution, of affecting the tongue and palate in such a way (chemically, perhaps) as to put the tongue and palate in that condition in which they are when we say we taste. This formal object we should be inclined to call sapor, in order to give it a distinctive name. It is commonly called taste, for we say that things have a bitter taste or a sour taste; but thus we are using the same word for the sense and the object. We might call it flavor or savor; but these too readily suggest the ele- ment of agreeableness from which we must ab- stract when we wish to express in one word that character in matter which can furnish, whether as agreeable, disagreeable or indifferent, what is essential for the exercise of the sense of taste. Taste and smell are closely allied : and, in swal- lowing, sensations of smell may be mistaken for sensations of taste. The word, taste, is sometimes 1D2 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. incorrectly used for touch, as when, for instance, acid is said to have a burning taste. In the same way we speak of a nauseous taste or a nauseous smell, whereas nausea is a revolt of the alimen- tary canal. The knowledge derived through taste is very slight. It is, indeed, held very generally that the sensation of taste is purely subjective — that is, that by the act of taste we do not perceive objec- tive reality, do not get at the not-self, but per- ceive merely the modification of self. And it is said that were it not for the exercise of touch or sight upon the object tasted, from which, after repeated experiences, we infer the existence of something objective whenever there is a sensa- tion of taste, we should get from taste no knowl- edge whatever of objective realit}'. However the case may be, we are not willing to spend our time, here, upon mere theory, be it ever so plausible. If by the aid of sight and touch we can, through inference, assert the objectivity of the formal ob- ject of taste, we are ready to let the matter go at that. Nevertheless, we may very well ask whether there be not here, as in the exercise of every ex- ternal faculty whose exercise is intimately con- nected with the preservation of human life, some perception of the not-self character of the object. Take the case of an infant of six months. It will try to rid itself of a disagreeable taste remaining in its mouth, though it has no perception whatever beyond mere taste, and there is nothing in its EXTERNAL SENSES. 103 mouth upon which touch might seem to be to be exercised. Shall we say that the infant is draw- ing an inference from the experience it has had of taste being exercised upon that which touch has revealed as not-self, and is thus somehow de- ciding that there is now in its mouth an object w^hich is of the character of not- self and which may be removed to a convenient distance! Or has it direct perception of not-self through taste alone? I should very much like to know. Could we obtain a history of the first developments of child knowledge, we should fmd therein the simple solution of some problems of psychology Avhich have baffled the genius of all philosophers, and which still remain an open challenge to the phi- losophers of the rest of time. One thing we may note. Remarkably meager as is the direct knowledge we get from taste, no less remarkable is the wide adaptation we make of the variations in the formal object of taste in order to enrich our vocabulary, when wishing to characterize objects (howsoever perceived) that influence the emotions. Thus we have now almost lost sight of the metaphorical origin of epithets in such expressions as, a sour look, a bitter retort, a SAveet child, an insipid story, etc. 61. Smell. The organ of the sense of smell is the membranous lining of the nostrils. The formal object of smell is that variable qual- ity in bodies, which we designate bv the common 104 THE TEUTH OF THOUGHT. term, odor. In order that the sense of smell may be exercised upon a body, particles of the body possessing the quality we call odor must come in contact with the organ. The minuteness of the quantity of a body required for the sense of smell to exercise itself upon is seen in the well-known case of the grain of musk, which will for years emit particles perceptible to smell, and yet will not show any diminution of weight when tested by the most delicate balance. The sense of smell is very closely allied to taste. It acts as a valu- able companion, a guide. It goes before taste with its discernment to warn and to encourage. It thus plays a directive part in the conservation of animal life by giving a preliminary hint for the choice and rejection of food. It also sub- serves the office of taste by saving the latter from many disagreeable experiences. As the particles containing the odor perceived are carried to the organ of smell by the atmosphere, smell wdll, evi- dently, enable us to reach further than will taste, in detecting, at least by inference, the existence — though distant — of an odorous body from which the particles come. Of course, the same difficulty confronts us here that we met with in the case of taste. Does smell directly perceive external reality, or have we, in it, simply the consciousness of a peculiar modi- fication of self? The general sentiment is that there is no direct perception of external reality, but that our judgment of the existence of an odor- EXTERNAL SENSES. 105 ous body which we can neither touch nor see, is an inference drawn from a general law which we have established after varied experience. If this be so, we are thrown headlong into that unfathom- able question: How soon does the infant draw inference from personal experience? We are left in the abyss without light for exploration. Yet if, under the supposition, we will deny to the in- fant this power of drawdng an inference from its own experiences, even before it is a year old, we shall have no little difficult 37- in explaining many of its actions. We may even have to fall back upon the direct perception of external reality by the sense of smell. Why does the infant turn its head away from a substance that has a disagree- able odor? Why, even with its eyes closed, will it turn its head away? May it not, perhaps, by the sense of smell perceive directly some exter- nality ? On account of the close alliance between smell and taste we find the same epithets applied to the objects of each. So closely, indeed, are the two allied in the economy of life that it is sometimes not easy to say whether the sensation experienced is one of taste or of smell. 62. Hearing. The formal object of the sense of hearing is that something which we call sound. Outside of us, in so far as we know, sound is a vibration of matter. These vibrations of what we call the sounding body are communicated to the 106 THE TRUTH 01^ THOUGHT. surrounding atmosphere, thence to the tympanum of the ear, from this to the series of small bones in the middle ear, from these to the liquid in the labyrinth of the inner ear, and thence to the aud- itory nerve ; then we hear. Our notion of vi- bration and our notion of sound are two quite different things. We do not hear those vibrations which we find so essentially connected with the sound. It is only in the study of physics that we have learned of the existence of such vibrations. Whether there be outside of us something accom- panying the vibration, caused by the vibration and distinct from it, and which is the object, sound, which we hear, or whether sound is purely the manner in which the vibration of external mat- ter affects the sense of hearing, we do not know. We perceive differences of sound. Some of these are differences of pitch, which depends upon the rapidity of the vibrations in the sounding body. The pitch is said to be lower as the vibra- tions are fewer in a given time, and higher as the number increases in the same time. We designate as noise, a sound whose pitch cannot be deter- mined. There are, again, differences of timbre, which depends upon the material or construction of the vibrating body. By hearing we can also perceive that variety in the succession of sounds which we call melody, and that combination of sounds which we call harmony. The organ of hearing acts with great rapidity. EXTERNAL SENSES. 107 A¥e can recognize as many as sixteen distinct successive sounds in a second. The great value of the sense of hearing in the economy of life lies in its perception and discrim- ination of the articulate sounds emitted by the human voice. It is by the perception of these, more than by anything else, that we are put into communication with our fellow men. A certain few articulate sounds which, taken singly and in groups of various combinations, are called words and are accepted as signs for things, give us the marvellous vehicle of speech upon which so- ciety rides. Do we perceive distance and direction by hear- ing 1 It may be said safely that we have no direct perception of distance by hearing. When we can- not see or touch the object producing the sound, our estimate of its distance must be purely a mat- ter of judgment based upon our experience of the variation in the intensity corresponding to the known variation in the distance of the object from which the sound proceeds. Yet, even in this case, we should be able to judge of that sound only whose intensity is invariable at a given known distance and which is known to be unmodified by accidental circumstances such as the humid state of the atmosphere, the presence or absence of re- flecting surfaces, etc. On the other hand, it may be positively stated that we have some direct per- ception of direction by hearing. This, however, would seem to arise from the independent action 108 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of the two ears. We judge very accurately whether a mosquito is playing his overture at our right ear or at our left. This species of percep- tion seems to be in the kind economy of nature, and manifests itself very early with the develop- ment of the organs of hearing. 63. Sight. The organ of sight is the eye. The formal object of sight is light. We see light ac- cording to the various modes in which it is par- tially or entirely reflected to the eye after falling on material substance. When the light (sunlight) is perfectly reflected to the eye, we perceive what w^e call white. AVhen the light is divided on strik- ing the substance and only part of it is reflected, we perceive what we call color. When there is absolutely no reflection of light rays, the percep- tion is of black; or, to speak strictly, there is no perception. As a pure white is so rare upon the objects we see around us, the formal object of vis- ion is frequently said to be colored surface. Take the whitest piece of paper you can find and hold it up between you and the new-fallen snow, and see how dark the paper is. The varied perception of what we style color is due to the varying effect of the divided light rays on the optic nerve. Of course, we are speaking broadly, as we cannot enter into the details of the organ of vision. When substances having different powers of absorb- ing and reflecting the component elements lof white light are mixed, they assume a compound EXTERNAL SENSES. 109 power (so to say) of absorption and reflection and give us the opportunity to perceive new shades of color. This composition of reflected rays may be said to correspond in a way to the composition of sound vibrations that occasions for the ear the sensation of harmony. As light is spread over surface we perceive the light as extended. Hence by sight we perceive the outlines of figures. But here there is some- thing to be remarked which is not generally known : By sight we perceive extension merely as if it were the extension of a plane, fiat surface, perpendicular to the axis of vision. This may seem very strange ; but it is true. Sight gives us no knowledge of distance except as on a plane per- pendicular to the axis of vision. The whole world lighted up outside of us is perceived by the eye as though it were a purely flat surface. The beauti- ful landscape you look upon — the broad meadows, the parks and villas, the sw^eep of waters beyond and the background of deep forest and receding mountains — are for you, in so far as the eye is concerned, simply as so many flat outlined sec- tions with shades of color, all as though on one flat surface of canvas hung up before you. The knowledge of distance — except of distance on the flat surface perpendicular to the axis of vision — the knowledge of the practical effects of perspective, of the relative size and of the nearness or remoteness of objects which re- flect light (or do not reflect it) is supplied 110 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. altogetJier independefitly of vision. It is supplied originally by touch and locomotion. When the infant first opens ' its eyes and dis- tinguishes between the brightness of colors re- flected to its eye, all is as on a flat surface. In thinking of what is herein implied we may well marvel at tlie education of nature. The infant is carried about in the arms of its nurse. It is taught to reach out its hand for an object pre- sented to it. It is carried to the window and sees the objects in the room disappear behind it. It is brought out into the street for a long prom- enade. Objects that seemed to be on a flat surface are found not to be so. They are reached one after another. Objects that seemed to be small are found to be large when, after some locomo- tion, they are reached and the hand can be placed upon them. What at first seemed to be onN a dark shade on a flat surface is found by touch and locomotion to mark a recess, and what seemed to be only a brighter spot upon the surface is recognized to mark a prominence. The converg- ing lines of perspective in the rows of houses are found not to be a reality. It is discovered, after locomotion, that the lines do not converge. And thus, gradually, under the tuition of nature, the child is led to draw inferences regarding distance. From its knowledge acquired through touch and locomotion and with its very primary perception of time — a before and an after held by memory — whilst moving from place to place, it comes uncon- EXTERNAL SENSES. Ill sciously to combine shades and converging lines m such a way as to judge of relative distances and depths and sizes. Look at a well-made photo- graph of the rows of columns in an arcade or a gothic cathedral. You have the perspective per- fect, though you are looking at a flat surface. Or take the case of a stage-setting. When we have not an experience to guide us we may often find it difficult to say where the reality ends and where the painting on the canvas begins. All this knowl- edge, then, of distance and perspective is a pure inference drawn with that rapidity to which na- ture trains us in everything that concerns the needs of human life. 64. Touch. Under the general name of touch we here include not merely that by which we per- ceive the contact of external matter, but also that by which we perceive temperature, as well as what is styled the muscular sense by which we are said to perceive resistance, movement, degrees of elas- ticity, etc. We do not here consider these as dis- tinct senses. The distinction of senses should be based upon separate organs as clearly discrim- inated as the eye and the ear, and upon formal objects as readily determinable as light and sound. Physiologists are working tow^ards a dis- tinction, but as yet they are able to give us only a theory; so that we are fully privileged to include the sense of contact, the sense of temperature and the muscular sense under the common name of 112 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. touch. Besides, for our present purpose, which is only to indicate some of the externalities which we perceive by means of our bodily organs, it will not matter whether we reduce the sense of touch even to the single name of the sense of con- tact, and divide and subdivide the object per- ceived according to modes of contact as we divide and subdivide colors ; or whether we make twenty different senses out of what we here designate by the one name, touch. We are not making phys- iological investigations. First of all, it is well understood that we can have by the sense of mere contact a tactual per- ception of the existence of matter external to the body belonging to our own personality — that is, of matter distinct from the matter of our own bodies. The organ of this sense of contact is understood to be the system of papillse distributed over the en- tire surface of the human body between the dei mis, or under-skin, and the epidermis, the scarf-skin or outer-skin, which covers and protects the whole system of papillae. These papillae are connected by the nerve apparatus through the spinal column with the brain. By the same sense of contact, by a double contact, as when placing one hand upon the other, we have also a tactual perception of body-belonging-to-self. Through this double con- tact, aided by sight, we come to a knowledge of the external conformation of the human body. By this sense of contact we perceive distance in three dimensions. The localization of the part of the] EXTERNAL SENSES. 113 body at which there is contact with external mat- ter is learned chiefly by experience, and the de- gree of precision to which this power of localiza- tion can be carried, or, at least, is carried, differs in different parts. Thus, it reaches a high degree of accuracy at the tip of the tongue, while the dis- cernment of the exact spot at which there is con- tact upon the back is not so easy. We can dis- tinguish simultaneously different points of con- tact, as on the hand and on the foot. The palm of the hand, by reason of exercise, and, perhaps, by some natural adaptation not easy to explain, is the best tactual instrument we have for the perception of figure outlines. We perceive extension by mov- ing an extended object over a point on the sur- face of the body, or by passing a point of the sur- face over the extended object. It is not very clear what may be the peculiar -t)paratus we possess for the perception of tem- perature. The power of perceiving temperature is spread over the w^hole human body. Moreover, the sensation of temperature may exist when the tactual sense or power of perceiving contact has lost its vigor, and vice versa. Our perception of temperature is very relative. An atmosphere that will feel cool to one human body may feel warm to another. If we have habituated ourselves to an atmosphere of 50° and pass to one of 60°, our experience, other things being equal, will be about the same as when we pass from 60° to 70°. Of two persons entering an atmosphere of 60°, the 114 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. one from oO"" and the other from 70°, the first will feel warmth; and the other, cold. Intense heat and cold when fully communicated to the surface are not appreciated as heat and cold, but only as a source of pain. The perception of strain, as in lifting, of resistance and of movement is as- cribed to what is called the muscular sense, be- cause the muscles play so great a part in these perceptions. The physiology of the matter is not, however, very clear. Hence, for our present pur- poses, it has sufficed for us to include this per- ceptive power under the general name of touch. It is through the movements of the body and its members, combined with contact, that we get at our most precise notions of time, space and vel- ocity. Sight, also, plays a great part in furnish- ing material for these notions, and, of course, comes to be relied upon, as it reaches farther than touch or the muscular perception. In the life of the child, the education of the sense of touch, taken in its broad meaning, is the most wonder- ful of all the processes of nature's training of the senses. The exquisite capacity for cultiva- tion residing in touch is manifested in the educa- tion of the blind who have to rely so much upon it. Touch supplemented by sight puts before us the panorama of nature in all its beauty of outline, perspective and coloring. We ma}^ add here that we have a sense-percep- tion of certain facts lying wholly within our bod- ily organism, and which we do not refer to outside EXTERNAL SENSES. 115 matter. However, we do not perceive all that takes place within the organism. We do not per- ceive the regular circulation of the blood; but an abnormal circulation may produce a perceptible effect which we will denominate a headache. Thus we also take cognizance of certain symptoms of disease ; of hurts ; of hunger, thirst, etc. CHAPTER X. IMAGINATION. Imagination — Imagination and Intellect — External Senses and Imagination — E7Tor in the Judgment — The Normal State — Uses of the Imagination. 65. Imagination. To complete the list of or- ganic faculties engaged in the work of knowledge, we shall speak briefly and separately of the im- agination. The imagination, as the name indi- cates, is the power of imaging anything of which the reality is perceptible to some sense, that is, perceptible to a faculty w^orking necessarily with a material organ. We commonly associate the name, image, with the visible representation of a visible object. But if we are to keep the name, imagination, for the faculty of which we are now speaking (and the use of the name is universal), it would be just as well to employ the word image to signify the object which is perceived by the imagination after being produced by the im- agination. This object which terminates the ac- tion of the imagination is sometimes called the phantasm, that is, phantom-object or appearance. Here again we are using terms that are commonly appropriated to the sense of vision; and this shows us how^ widely vision enters into the econ- 116 IMAGINATION. 117 omy of life. Any fictitious perception of that which is the object of any sense is the work of the imagination. Yon can imagine to yourself a sound, a color, figure, odor, taste though there be at hand no object upon which ear, eye, smell, etc., are being exercised. That image or phantasm or fancy is at once the product of the imagination and the object upon which the imagination exercises itself when making the image stand proxy for a reality. 66. Imagination and Intellect. Confusion of Terms. One of the greatest sources — if not the greatest source — of confusion in philosophy as we find it, is the failure which not a few writers have made to draw a broad dividing line between imagination and intellect. Consequent upon this, of course, is the failure to mark off very distinctly the separate terminology belonging to the two to- tally distinct faculties. Since the days of Locke the term, idea, has been widely employed to ex- press the representation produced by the imagi- nation. But we have said that the imagination is limited to the imaging of that which can be the object of sense-perception. The term, idea, on the contrary, has been long consecrated from the days of Aristotle, to signify the intellectual rep- resentation, something quite different from the phantasm or image, and embracing in its scope not only that which can be the object of sense- perception, but that also which does not fall under the perception of any sense ; embracing in its 118 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. scope whatsoever can be known; and, even when it is concerned with things that do fall under sense, differing in its make-up from the sense- representation of the same object. Look at the house across the street. Now, close your eyes and see it without looking at it. This is the work of the imagination. Call up in fancy the fragrance of the heliotrope, the strain of music, the soft touch of velvet. This fiction of the sens- ible object and of the sense-perception is the work of the imagination. Place before you in image (with your eyes closed) a triangle. This is the fancied image of a triangle, not the idea of a tri- angle. The image is always limited to something that is perceptible by some sense; and it is also limited, as the object of sense, to the individ- ual. But the idea, which belongs to the intel- lect, need not be limited to this or that par- ticular case. Your idea of triangle may become so broad as to embrace all triangles and be applicable to any particular possible triangle. Such universality cannot belong to the image or phantom object which is each time as limited as w^ould be the real material object for which it is made to do service. Besides this, we can have ideas or intellectual representations of many things that cannot be reached by sense-perception and imagination, of things that are incapable of being materially represented. Thus, cause, jus- tice y hope, etc., cannot fall under sense-perception, and yet we can have ideas of them. Moreover, the IMAGINATION. 119 idea of a thing that can be perceived by sense and reproduced by the imagination or fancy in image, is something distinct from the image of the same thing. In the idea — even the most primitive idea — we catch, at once, relations as of fitness, propor- tion, beauty, things which as such cannot make a material impression; and as these relations grow the idea develops and grows, whilst the sense-per- ception and the image in the fancy remain ever the same. The idea is also called notion and con- cept. The idea is the primary element in intel- lectual knowledge. Pure sense-perception and im- agination do not rise above mere brute animal life. They give the bare picture as presented here and now in matter. But the intellect to which the idea belongs does not work with a material organ such as the brain, the eye and the ear. Even when it forms its idea of a particular triangle, that is put before the eye or is pictured in the imagina- tion, it goes through a spontaneous and instan- taneous process of analysis and synthesis, picking out the essentials of three lines and the enclosed space with three, angles. In sense-perception, wliother directly by the external senses or by the supplementary work of the imagination, we re- ceive and perceive only individual, present mani- festations of matter ; in the idea we have, at once, the attempted reply to the question, ^Svhat is it?" Tlie complete discussion of the distinction be- tween the intellect and the ima.s^nation and be- tween the idea and the image or phantasm belonp;s 120 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. to psychology. But the distinction is of such prime importance and the knowledge of it is so essentially necessary to a correct appreciation of the meaning of conclusions in any department of philosophy, that attention should be called to it very early in the course of philosophical studies. 67. External Sense and Imagination. Illusions. There is no difficulty in distinguishing between perception by the imagination and perception by external sense, between the reality of the object as perceived by the external sense and the phan- tom character of the object set up and then per- ceived by the imagination. The object as figured by the imagination is less vivid, less definite and detailed than the object as perceived by the outer sense. Besides, the work of the imagination is subject to the control of the will; you can, even at midnight, imagine a sunset. But you cannot see a sunset unless it be really before you, and if it be there and you open your eyes to it you cannot help seeing it. As for illusions and hallucinations, we make no account of them in this treatise. From these as well as from hasty judgments passed without suf- ficient evidence a great show of argument is some- times made to invalidate the testimony of the senses. The following objection we believe to be the strongest that is made ; and the solution of it supplies the principles necessary for the solution IMAGINATION. 121 of all difficulties that are brought forward with the intent of fostering sceptical tendencies. The whole objection is put briefly thus : A per- son whose leg has been amputated at the knee may and does sometimes feel pain or experience the contact of external matter at the foot. Now the foot is gone ! Hence, if the senses fail in this case, they may fail in any other case and no re- liance is to be placed upon them. What is to be said to this! We must simply take all the facts. In the person spoken of there are certain nerves w^hich before the amputation had their terminals in the foot. Through the foot — and through the foot only — did these nerves reach out to be ex- ercised in the perception of external matter by contact. But we must not forget that it was chiefly through vision and double contact that the person learned very early to refer the point of con- tact to the proper part of the body — to the foot, by seeing the contact made with external matter or with the hand or with the other foot. Thus it was that a given nerve-excitation which always answered to contact at a given point came to be associated with and referred for its origin to a particular locality where these nerves had their terminals. Now, it comes to pass that these nerves are severed at the knee. The whole stretch of nerve from the knee to the foot disappears. The nerves have new terminals at the knee. WHiat may be the result? The result may be that when there is contact with external matter at the new termi- 122 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. nals, as the signal that there is contact will be carried to the nerve centres along the very same lines as from the old terminals, thus affecting the nerve centre in the same way and occasioning the same reaction as before the amputation, the per- son, if not very watchful, may, at the beginning, refer the point of contact to the locality of the old terminals, forgetful for the moment of the new. It is done through the force of habit, and it will be necessary to acquire a new habit of referring the stimulus to the new locality of the terminals. In fact, to explain the whole case in a sentence, if the process of amputation and healing could have been gone through, and the person have been kept absolutely ignorant of what had taken place, an external contact which should stimulate only a new terminus of a nerve which had its former terminus for example in the heel, would neces- sarily be referred to the heel until the person had come to know that the heel was gone. Precisely the same thing will have to be said with regard to the referring of sensations of warmth, cold, pressure, pain, etc., to localities which do not ex- ist, but which did formerly contain the termini of the nerves at present stimulated. 68. Error in the Judgment. It will be readily seen that the error just spoken of is an error of judgment. The expression that our senses deceive us, that our eyes deceive us, is philosophically false. The senses, the eyes, cannot deceive us. IMAGINATION. 123 The senses testify to just so much as is presented to them, to just so much as they receive. But very often we presume upon our experience and judge things to be what they are not, concluding hastily and rashly from that which we perceive to that Avhich we do not perceive. 69. The Normal State. Of course, then, it will be understood that we have been speaking of the senses in the normal condition of the body. The discussion of the peculiarities of nerve-action in abnormal conditions of the body or of any par- ticular organ, belongs to medicine, to therapeutics, to physiology, to the art of diagnosing disease from its symptoms. Here we have merely to de- clare and to hold fast that in the normal condition of the system the testimony of any sense and of the imagination is, just as well as that of the intellect, thoroughly reliable for the truthful and infallible recognition of its respective formal ob- ject. 70. Uses of the Imagination. Each individual sensation would be as nothing for the growth of knowledge if it simply came and went and left nothing behind. But each individual sensation is re-enforced by the work of memory and imagina- tion which grow in activity and readiness by ex- ercise and throw around each new sensation a host of recollections and associations. In all art the imagination is invaluable, indispensable. It 124 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. enables the composer to put his work before him in image and to judge of its figure, color, pro- portion, etc., to reject, to substitute, to modify, to add, etc., without touching or even providing the material. Thus he can, by setting up the phantom- object of the imagination, make, in a moment, the constructive experiment which, if made in the reality, would cost him months, nay years of very unsatisfactory toil. CHAPTER XI. INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. The Intellectual Act — The Principle of Unity — Acts of Intellect or Mind — Mediate and Immediate Knowl- edge — The Idea as a Sign — The Universal Idea: Nominalism, Conceptualismj Realism — Thought. 71. The Intellectual Act. All that has been hitherto said merges as subsidiary into the mat- ter of the present chapter. The perceptive ac- tion of the human being, man, differs from the perceptive action of the purely animal being in this, that the purely animal being has only sense- perception, that is, perception whose working is tied down to the use of a material organ, whilst man has, over and above this, a perceptive action which he exercises free from the trammels of eye, ear, nerves, brain, etc. This supra-sensitive knowing capacity, capability or power, is called intellect. The very name intellect (from intus leg ere J to read within) declares the character of this higher power. A sense, that is, a power whose working is strictly limited to the working of a material organ, reaches only to its formal object which is some particular outward quality of matter, and each time that the sense does act it has perception merely of the individual quality 125 126 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. Jieie and now present to it ; its action is as limited, tiiough vital, as the action of a mirror reflect- ing the various objects that pass before it. The sense, though its actions (like the reflections of the mirror) are successive, takes no cognizance of time as such; and though it may perceive that which is extended, it takes no cognizance of space as such. Though it represents all the points in the figure of the triangle it does not cognize the no- tiire of the triangle; it cannot cognize even its own formal object in the abstract and in general, but only as here and now^ limited to the actual individual case presented to it. It cannot cognize, at all, such things as justice, hope, temperance, causality, possibility, patience, etc., things which are not to be reached by mediate or immediate contact with any nerve terminus. Since, however, A\ e have knowledge of these things, which yet are incapable of acting upon or of being perceived through a material organ, there must be in us a faculty which acts without an organ and which even excludes the intrinsic concurrence of mat- ter in the performance of its peculiar supra-sen- sitive cognitive act. We say that there is no in- trinsic concurrence of matter in the execution of this act. We do not deny the extrinsic concur- rence of matter, that is, the prior or simultaneous act of some sense necessarily working with a ma- terial organ as sense always does. For there is a sensitive act associated at least remotely with every intellectual act, just as there is an intel- INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 127 lectual perception following every sensitive act of knowledge. The imagination, too, a sensitive fac- ulty, keeps up a simultaneous working whilst the thought goes on. It draws its pictures as an aid to the easy sequence of the thought, even rest- lessly trying to image things that cannot be pic- tured. But all this object building of the imagina- tion is the work of sense, since it involves neces- sarily^ in the very act the concurrence of the cere- bral organism. The extrinsic concurrence of sense is a prior necessity to all thought. We can have no intellectual idea of color, for instance, unless we shall have first perceived color by the sense- perception of sight. We hold that all knowledge begins through sense, and we deny even so much as one innate idea. Yet sense-perception is not tjiought. The act of sense is an act totally dif- ferent from the act of intellect which accompanies and follows it ; and in the intellectual act, the con- cept, the judgment, the reasoning process, there is no concurrence of matter as there is in the act of e^ense. 72. The Principle of Unity. We must here hint at a great vital truth of psychology, namely, the bond of unity that exists between the acts of the Individ aal person, in that th^y all proceed from and are all predicated of, attributed to the one identical subject, the ego, the me, self. There must, for this reason, be some principle of unifi- cation. There must be a certain one something 128 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. pervading the whole of each individual human being, a something which besides being one and identical in every atom of that human being (since the temperature of head and of foot, the walk, the thought, etc., all belong to the same iden- tical me) is also the primary agent or principle in each and all of the acts attributed to self (for I think, I walk, I am warm). This primary prin- ciple we call the spiritual soul. In its permanency and continuity it primarily constitutes the per- manent, continuous self. This soul cannot be mat- ter, for it does w^hat no mere material agent can do. However, it can act with matter as with an instrument. It vivifies the body; and with the body, with the material sense-organs whose life it supplies from its higher domain, it reaches out to the external, material world. But its other acts, the intellectual idea, the judgment, the argu- ment, do not admit matter into their working. Still, it is the one same individual ego, self, that claims all the acts. This one self has a permanent root or principle by which it continues to be itself, ever the same. This permanent root or principle is the soul. Some speak of soul as mind. But the term, mind, is not purely s^aionymous with soul. It is not adequate; and hence, its use as synony- mous is not philosophically correct. Mind is the power or capability of purely intellectual action w^hich is possessed by the soul. The soul, the prin- ciple of unity and permanency in the human com- pound, has the power of seeing with the eye, of INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 129 lieariug with the ear, and of exercising diverse ac- tions with the other organs respectively. But it possesses, moreover, the power of understanding , the power of exercising cognitive action without employing any material instrument or bodily organ, — and this power w^e call intellect or mind. Mind is the general term for the power the soul possesses of exercising cognitive action without the use of an organ in the act. The soul possesses also another purely immaterial and spiritual power, the rational will. The discussion of the will, of the appetitive power, does not enter into our subject. We are occupied solely with the cognitive powers, with cognition. Neither do we take up, at this point, the ques- tion of the soul. The discussion of the soul is in the domain of psychology. But Ave have had to speak of soul in order to indicate the root of unity in the human compound; and to divide off two sets of cognitive faculties possessed by the soul, the one whereby through the body it puts itself into communication with the world of mat- ter, and the other whereby from material thus gained it builds up the structure of intellectual knowledge. It is very easy to deny the existence of such a thing as a spiritual, immaterial soul and of im- material thought, offering as a plea that they cannot be investigated by means of the eyes and the ears and the sense of touch. There is never any other ground upon which they are denied : but 130 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. tho denial of them on this ground always clearl ! indicates the lack of philosophical acumen and ( philosophical education. V3. Acts of Intellect or Mind. The chief acts < the intellect are : 1, simple apprehension, that i > tlie formmg of a concept or the catching of i iaea; 2, judgment, which is the objective co] , pan son oi laeas and the consequent affirmatii ^c- or denial of any given relationship between the *- objectb as perceived; 3, reasoning or the cor purison of the objective content of judgments, ai the consequent affirmation or denial of new r iX> lationships perceived. The judgment, when fi '^ ished, becomes practically an apprehension of relation, thus giving a composite concept or ide fel and the act of reasoning w^hen finished gives t practically a complex idea or concept or notion. ' For the defining of its concepts the intelk brings its activity into play under those phas ) which we call attention and abstraction. I '^ means of attention it can concentrate itself up< ^r one note or characteristic or quality in the obje considered; and by the force cf the will, even tl outer sense may be made to subserve this concei tration. Look, for instance, at any object. You ge a visual perception, a sense perception of its color figure, dimensions. Fix your attention on its color only, and you will find the eye following the mind and seeming not to notice the figure. Fix youi attention on the figure, and you will find the ey I INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 131 pparently noticing not the color, but subserving le concentration of the mind upon the figure. We ave here the beginning of abstraction — a thing ) necessary in the formation of the idea — by hich the mind abstracts from the total object firceived some one note, character or quality; id this abstraction is eventually carried so far at the mind neglects even the individuality of t e color, figure, etc., as existing here and now a particular object, and forms its universal iea of the given color or other quality as capable ^ being found concreted in many objects. ( <' 74. Mediate and Immediate Knowledge. Medi- e knowledge is that which is obtained through e medium of the process .of reasoning. We are t' t speaking here of knowledge obtained through e medium of human testimony. Immediate ^ lOwledge is that which is obtained without the adium of the process of reasoning. This im- i^diate knowledge may regard either an indi- dual fact gotten at by direct sense-perception, ; ''the sky is dark^' ; or it may regard a universal priori principle such as ''that which exists not annot bring itself into existence.'' Immediate :nowledge is obtained by what is called intuition, )y merely beholding the truth. In reading cer- tain philosophical works we must be on our guard not to be confused by the very indefinite way in which the term, intuition, is employed. It is well give it one meaning, its real meaning, and to XS2 THE TRUTH OF THOITGMT. adhere tenaciously to that ineaning: the behoJd- iiig, perceiving, of a truth, whether individual fact- or general principle, directly upon its presenta- tion and without the aid of the reasoning process. 75. The Idea as a Sign. A very ancient ex- pression employed in connection with the part which the idea plays in knowledge has been so extensively misused as to cause a very widespread error concerning the process of knowledge. The expression is this, " signnm quo.'' It was in use when Latin was the universal language of the educated, and before any of the modern languages were even aspiring to a literature. The misunder- standing regarding the meaning of the expression lias arisen from the manner in which it has been carried into our modern languages, that is by a mistake of translation. The idea {idea) was called a signum quo ohjectum cognoscitur, that is, a sign by ivhicli the object is known. But there are different kinds of signs. A sign is something that stands for something else. As we take the word sign in common discourse it means some-'^ thing by the perceiving of which we are led to think of something else. A sign may be a natural sign as being naturally connected with some- thing else : thus smoke is a natural sign of fireJ- A sign may be purely arbitrary: thus the painted •• letters Washington indicate to us a great historic personality. These two kinds of signs are signs which being seen first lead us to think of that fot--' INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 133 which they stand. But when the idea was origi- nally called a sign, signum, it was not so called in the sense that it was something that had first to be perceived so that from it we should be carried to think of something for which it stood. Re- member that the idea is an act of the mind. Now this act is truly representative of something. But we do not first get an idea, then gaze mentally at that idea and out of the knowledge of it come to know the object of which it is representative and for which it stands. This would make knowledge an impossibility. For by perceiving the first idea we should simply get a second idea which would only be an idea or a sign of the first. We should have then to gaze mentally at this second idea to get a knowledge of the first. But what would happen then? We should simply get a third idea Avhich would be a sign of the second. In gazing mentally at this we should get a fourth idea which would be a sign of the third. And thus through a lifetime we would not get through with one idea. What, then? Two things must be kept in mind. 1. The idea is a cognitive act; it is an act of the intellect; hy it the object is known. 2. But, moreover, just because it is a cognitive act it is in its entirety representative somehow of the object known. Since it is a cognitive act it is that hy which {quo) we know the object ; and since it is representative it can be called a sign (signum): so that thus it is really ^^a sign by which" (signum quo). But it is 134 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. not a sign in the sense of the signs described above. It is also a sign in quo, in which. In the very act we know the object ; and it is called a sign simply because that cognitive act must be in its entirety representative. The other kind of sign, the smoke, for instance, is a sign ex quo, out of which, from which being known we know or infer the fire. The smoke as a sign has first to be known as an ob- ject, and from it we pass to the knowledge of an- other object, the fire. But we do not have to know the idea as a sign from which to infer the ob- ject of the idea; the idea is itself the act of knowledge. In fact, in an act of direct knowledge we do not advert to the idea. We advert to it only when by a reflex act of the mind we turn to the consideration of the idea as we would turn to the consideration of any other object of thought. Had the true original meaning of the idea as a sign been preserved, namely, that it is a signum in quo and not a signum ex quo, the philosophy of thought would have been spared many a charge of un- certainty and confusion. 76. The Universal Idea. Nominalism; Con- ceptualism; Realism. It is proper for us to call attention here to another confusion introduced in- to philosophy concerning the objective value of the idea that we denominate universal. In the book on Formal Logic (Laws of Thought, No. 19) we said, ^'When several objects are expressed by an idea, but in such a way that the idea not only INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 135 embraces them all, but is applied to them dis- tributively and individually, we have what is called a universal idea. Thus: Man, horse, gold. I can say, Man is a living being, meaning that all men are living beings; meaning also that each in- dividual man is a living being, A plain exposition of what is meant by the universal idea, direct and reflex, will be found in the *^Laws of Thought'' (Nos. 20; 28). The special reason for introduc- ing here once more, the subject of the Universal in so far as it is a matter of logic is, that the meaning of the expression has been confused by not a few writers who are given places of prom- inence. We may classify these writers as Nom- inalists, as Conceptualists and as Ultra-Bealists. Those whom we call Nominalists say that uni- versality is only in the name, in terms, in words. Certainly, we do all admit a certain universality of signification attached to and belonging to words. But here, say the Nominalists, all universality of signification stops. When the term man, the word man, is used in the general sense, they say they can find no universal object, man in general, cor- responding to it ; hence, neither can there be any universal idea, because the idea is only represen- tative of the object, and as there can be no such thing as a universal object so can there be no universal idea. It remains, therefore, according to them, that what is called universality of sig- nification consists simply in the arbitrary use of one word or name to express a certain similitude 136 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. which may have been perceived in various objects. Amongst Nominalists we might range Hobbes,, Hume, Berkeley and J. S. Mill. Conceptualists are those who, recognizing, of course, that there is a certain universality of meaning attached to words, add, very justly, that words are valueless except in so far as they are the faithful record and sign of ideas; and that, hence, whatever universality of signification at- taches to the word or term, must necessarily at- tach to the idea or concept for which the word stands proxy, in the interchange of thought ; nay that the universality accorded to the word — writ- ten or spoken — must necessarily belong primarily to the idea of which the word can never be more than an arbitrary representative appointed by the free will of the thinker. The Conceptualists, with the Nominalists, and alleging the same rea- son, den^^ all objective universality; but they as- sert that the universality of signification belongs primarily to the concept, and that it is onh^ trans- ferred arbitrarily to the w^ord which happens to be chosen for the purpose of giving external ex- pression to the concept. Kant's theory of know^l- edge is pure Conceptualism. Kant, not recogniz- ing that we obtain true knowledge directly from objects, assumed that the intellect was supplied with a set of ideas which it applied to impressions received from without through the senses ; that it : instinctively applied the same idea (which he., called '^form,") to similar impressions, thus, in INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 137 fact, building up the external world out of the mere idea. All '^ systems" of philosophy which begin by accepting Kant's assumption are easily reducible to Conceptualism. The Ultra-Realist assumes that there is an ac- tually existing universal something corresponding to the universal idea. The plea for Ultra-Real- ism we present briefly and with all its force as fol- lows : It is agreed that an individual word can have a general or universal signification, the same word standing for the whole class and for all the objects of the class taken distributively. Now the Conceptualist has shown that this universality of signification in the word must necessarily belong, even previously, to the idea of which the word is only the appointed vicar. Following up his own line of argument the Conceptualist must logically admit that as even the idea itself is nothing more than the representative of the object, the intel- lectual vicar of the object, so, if there be a truly universal idea, there must also be a truly universal object of which the idea is only the intellectual representative. Thus, for example, besides the individual man known by the individual idea, there Avill be a universal something, a humanity-in-gen- eral-existing-as-one-object, represented by the general or universal idea, man. In so far as the theory of knowledge goes we may say that no writer of to-day thinks of directly advancing this ultra-realism. It was held by William of Cham- peaux in the twelfth century: and Aristotle, per- 138 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. haps not too correctly, lays it to the account of Plato. Fundamentally, nevertheless, an ultra- realism is assumed by all writers of pantheistic tendencies. What are we to hold! If we will be consistent we most hold to a certain realism. But if we will not reject experience, we must make this a real- ism that is not ultra. Nominalism and concept- ualism both stop short of the truth ; ultra-realism leaps beyond it. We must avoid the defect and the excess. We must admit the signifying power which a word has to stand for many objects of a kind; and the same must be allowed to the con- cept, since the word is only the external expres- sion of the concept. Yes, but term and concept are only the expression (oral and mental) of the object. Hence, the concept, whether individual or universal, must have its object. Hence we must say with the realist that not only the individual idea but also the universal idea has its object. However, we do not with the ultra-realist jump immediately to the conclusion that to the one idea of man in general, for instance, there corresponds a certain object which is man in general, in the same manner as an individual object, Christopher Columbus, corresponds to my individual idea. Here we part with the ultra-realist ; and yet we remain realists, thus going beyond the nominalist and the conceptualist. Truth afd consistency oblige us to hold to a certain realism which by some is de- nominated moderate to distinguish it from ultra- INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 139 realism. What this object of the universal idea is, has been sufficiently explained for present pur- poses in that part of the '^Laws of Thought'' re- ferred to above. The following example may per- haps serve to determine the meaning that is to be attached to the name realism or moderate realism. Set yourself to thinking. Let your thoughts be these — ^^A triangle is a space enclosed by three straight lines; the three lines form three angles; the three angles added together will make 180° or two right angles; a line drawn parallel to one of the sides of the triangle and across the two other sides will divide these two other sides according to same ratio; etc., etc." Y\^hat have you been doing? You have been using the concept or idea ''triangle," in the universal sense; and if you have been speaking your thoughts, you have been using the term 'Hriangle" in the universal sense. You have been using idea and term in such a way as to embrace any and every triangle. Yet there is no such thing as a universal triangle exist- ing or capable of existing in nature as the one ob- ject of this one idea or term which is universal in its application. We need not even claim that there is a triangle existing at all. Where, then, is the object of your universal idea? That is the question. The idea *' triangle" which you have been using is applicable to any triangle whether actually existing or even only possible in the past, present or future — in eternity. Your idea is, therefore, fully universal. Nevertheless, it has 140 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. not been directed to any one of them in particular. Whilst thinking, you did indeed use your imagina- tion to picture to yourself some kind of a triangle. But this you did only as an aid to thought; and the picture was very vague and perhaps changing shape every few seconds, showing indifferently any sort of triangle-image, which, nevertheless, of whatever kind, was felt always to correspond to your idea of '^triangle,'' this idea embracing simply the essentials common to any triangle pos- sible in an eternity. What corresponded as an object to this ideal Not that ever changing im- age formed by the imagination, but a certain some- thing which you threw out mentally before you as containing the essentials of the triangle and thus forming by a fiction of the mind an object which would stand you in the place of any and all tri- angles when you wished to think of triangle in general. This sort of object, the object of the universal idea, is called an ens rationis, a being of reason, since it is a creation of the intellect. Of course, as we have said, whilst you are think- ing, the imagination will not be quiet but will keep on forming vague pictures of individual triangles ; but these are not the object of the universal idea, — they are only material aids with which the imag- ination kindly supplies you whilst you are think- ing. Now, here, in this object, this ens rationis, which the intellect fabricates for itself, we have, nevertheless, a realism. These essentials of tri- angle, collected from any triangle, are looked at INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 141 as representative of the essence of any triangle whatsoever, — the individual peculiarities of said triangle and the individual triangle itself being- thrown away and forgotten. The object is uni- versal, as universal as the idea. Where does the realism lief In this, that such object of the uni- versal idea can be formed from any triangle in the possibilities, and that it can be applied to and stand for any triangle. The object, the fiction of the intellect, has its ground in reality wherever that reality does or even- may exist. Though a creation of the mind, it is firmly grounded upon and legitimately formed from any and all the in- numerable individual cases that do or may exist. It is to be remarked of Nominalists that their Universal term, and of Conceptualists, that their universal concept is not truly a universal. With very shallow philosophical insight they say that they simply use one word or concept to stand for many things in which a similitude is perceived. This absolutely destroys all claim to universality of signification in the term and concept; and it destroys, at a stroke, all science which is built upon identity, not upon similitude of significa- tion, in the application of the terms that enter into general laws. Our universal idea has one object : this object relates to many; it can be formed, iden- tically the same, from any one individual case ; and its application back again to the individuals is not by Avav of similitude but bv wav of identity. 142 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. 77. Thought. An idea is not commonly spoken ot' as thought ; but as an element of thought. The term, thought, is usually presumed to imply predi- cation, a judgment; and an idea is an element of the judgment. It is not even clear that we can have a solitary idea without simultaneously for- mulating some primary judgment in which it is contained either as subject or predicate. We have said a great deal about the universal idea because it is an absolutely essential element in continuous thought. If we had no universal ideas, our thoughts, our judgments would follow one another simply like shooting stars, each and every judg- ment reducing itself to an individual affirmation™ Each judgment would reduce itself to the formula 'Hhis is this" and could not pass beyond. We could not so much as say, water is liquid, because we should thus be using the subject in the univer- sal sense. If there were not universal ideas it would not be lawful for us to combine the thing here present to us with other things absent or possible which we would designate by the same term, w^ater. And in applying the designation, water, to the present thing under" consideration we should have to apply it individually as we appl}^ the name G eorge Washington to a one some- thing. After applying the name, water, to one thing, with which we slaked our thirst by the road- side, it would be absu]'d to apply the same name, water, to another thing near by in which we washed our hands, unless we admitted the univer- INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 143 sal both in the idea and in the term. If there were no universal idea combining even these two in an identical intellectual representation it would still be more ridiculous, when words are so easily made, to employ the same word, water, ten thou- sand times over, to characterize as many separate liquid things met with in the course of a lifetime. . Then, the same difficulty arises with regard to the use of the term, liquid, in the various judgments. Have we or have w^e not a general notion, which we express by the term, liquid? If we have not, why should we create such confusion by employ- ing the same word to express so many things? But if there is no universality of ideas, what do all judgments become? Merely '^this is this'' and **that is that," and science is brought down to a list of predications regarding some individual thing that can be thought of. Science can be no longer a simultaneous predication for all the in- dividuals of a class. The science of gravitation must be expanded to a list of predications sepa- rate and distinct for each individual atom of matter. We have here, then, clearly enough manifested I to us by the very needs of life the objective value of the universal judgment. The truth of thought consists in the correspondence of thought — in its ^own native representative way — to object. By object is meant not merely that which is the object of sense-perception. Object means what- soever can be thought of, whether it be in itself 144 THE TRUTH GF THOUGHT. perceptible to sense or not. Thought itself can be made an actual object of thought; and such we are making it in our present consideration. Thought, judgment, must necessarily correspond to object when we make no declaration beyond what is objectively presented to us. Is argument thought ! Yes. Is there argument in the object or objects reasoned about! No. How, then, does argument correspond to object! In this way. Argument is nothing else than the natural human mental method of acquiring knowl- edge, in which the universal idea is used as a step- ping stone from one judgment to another. Each individual premiss, major and minor (excluding the case of error), has its own correspondence. The premisses are, equivalently at least, a com- posite apprehension, in which a common notion is: perceived to be, objectively, either identified with each of two other notions, or, identified with onei of them and excluded by the other. The two judgments are thus, therefore, treated as a com- posite of ideas and are put together to form a new judgment just as two simple ideas would be combined in a simple judgment. When the two judgments are approached to one another and are seen by means of the common part, which is rep- resented by the middle term, to merge into one, objectively, the result perceived is expressed by the affirmative conclusion, which is the mental expression of what has been thus objectively per- ceived just as clearly and as surely as in the sim- INTELLECT AND THOUGHT. 145 pie judgment ; but if only one of the notions is seen to be identified objectively with the notion expressed by the middle term, whilst the other is excluded by it, the result perceived is expressed by the negative conclusion. CHAPTER XII. ERROR. Error — Error is not Physically Necessary — The i^avage and the Sun — Error and the Will — Error and Opin- ion — Normal State— Objections Raised — An Idealist Difficulty. 78. Error. What was said of logical truth is to be said of logical falsity or error, namely, that it is to be found in the strictly defined judgment, only; in the mental act which associates two ob- jects of apprehension by affirmative predication or dissociates them by negative predication; in the act which affirms or denies. There can be no error in the simple apprehension or in the sense- perception. For as Ave cannot apprehend what does not come before the mind for apprehension, nor see, for instance, what is not presented to the eye to be seen, there is no possibility of error be- ing committed in the execution of these acts. We do, indeed, often hear and read the expres- sions, ^^false ideas,'' "false notions;'' but there cannot be a false idea or notion, because the idea or notion, though an element-of-the-judgment, must be considered as simply an element and as independent of all affirmation or denial. The ex- pressions "false ideas," "false notions," are, 146 ERROR. 147 then, really intended to indicate false judgments, false definitions, which have been unwarily ac- cepted. Thus, when a man is said to have a false idea of justice, or honor, or education, what is meant is, that he has accepted a false definition of justice or honor or education, that he has formed a false judgment, that he has coupled with the idea of justice or of honor or of education other ideas which do not belong to it at all or which do not belong to it in the way in which he has judged. 79. Error is not Physically Necessary. Error, then, attaches to the judgment. It is the non-con- formity of the judgment with the object upon which the judgment in its representative char- acter passes sentence. But here arises a diffi- culty. The act of judgment is the perception or affirmation, or if 3^ou will, the perception and affirmation of the objective agreement or dis- agreement of two concepts. When there is an error, the judgment does not conform to the ob- ject. But, how can this be? The intellect per- ceives simply that which is presented to it. How, then, can it affirm that which is not presented to it, and hold to this affirmation as though it had perceived what it affirms? How can it commit an error? The intellect, certainly, cannot choose to perceive that which is not presented to it ; neither can it be forced to such act of perception. For, such act is an impossibility. By the physical law 148 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of its nature the intellect is necessitated to the perception of that, and of that only, which is pre- sented to it with evidence, jnst as by a physical law the eye, in good condition, must see by the light and cannot see by darkness, and just as mat- ter must gravitate towards matter and cannot tend from matter. Hence, should we admit that error could be, in any instance, physically neces- sary, this could be only on the ground that a truth presented to the intellect should shine not with its own evidence but with the evidence of some other truth, even of its own contradictory. How, then, can an error be caused? What is its origin or source? Error, we have said, is the non-conformity of the affirmation or negation with the object. But this cannot come from the object; because the object has nothing but its own evi- dence to present. It cannot come from the nat- iiral activity which the intellect exercises of it- self ; because the intellect by itself simply accepts the evidence and reproduces mentally the objec- tive truth. The cause of the non-conformity is to be found elsewhere. It is to be found in the will. Whenever there is an error, th6 re are two judg- ments. There is the natural act of the intellect by which a certain evidence is received and a cer- tain objective truth is affirmed; and besides this> there is a pure affirrhation made undef the im- pulse of the will be^^ond the evidence and, there- fore, without evidence. Let us try to explain this by an example. ERROR. 149 80. i The Savage and the Sun. A savage sits all day at the door of his hut looking towards the south. In the morning he sees the snn to his left and low upon the horizon. In the middle of the day it is above him. Just before the night sets in it is again low upon the horizon, but to his right. What is really evident to the savage 1 One thing; a change in the relative positions of him- self and the sun. What might be the cause of this phenomenon, to-wit, the evident change of relative positions? It might be movement on the part of the sun. It might be movement on the part of the savage and his hut. It might be movement of both the savage and the sun. There is evidence to the savage of a change of relative positions. By the physical law of his intellect he has to receive this evidence; and in the act of thus receiving it, passes his infallible judgment upon the relative change. But perhaps he does more. It may be that he goes beyond the evidence. Whilst he has been sitting at the door of his hut he has seen the flight of birds across the sky, and he has seen the path of the arrows which his fellow savages sent after the birds. He did not move ; but the birds did, and so did the arrows. There was a change of relative position between himself on the one hand, and the birds and arrows on the other ; and the cause of this phenomenon presented to him with evidence was the movement of the birds and of the arrows. He has found an actual cause in one case. It would be a sufficient cause in the 150 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. other case. He goes no further, but affirms: the sun moves around the earth. This is a pure affirmation, a mock judgment made without evi- dence under the impulse of the will. There is evi- dence, indeed, that this would be a sufficient cause; but there is not evidence that this is the cause. However, the natural inquisitiveness of the intellect being satisfied, the will interferes and orders to be taken for granted this false declara- tion which quiets the tendency of the savage in- tellect. Under the same impulse the savage might declare the moon to be flat. We can secure plentiful parallel illustrations without going to the extremity of providing our- selves with a savage. 81. Error and the Will. Error, then, always implies an act of will at its source. It is the ac- ceptance of a false declaration which is not forced by evidence, since there is no evidence. The ac- ceptance, therefore, not being spontaneous, that is, necessitated by the very nature of the intellect, must be brought about by the will. There is an element of will entering somewhere ; there is some good perceived which motives the will to the ac- ceptance of the declaration as satisfactory. The erroneous declaration satisfies some present crav- ing of the human person. It satisfies some ap- petency which happens to be manifesting itself. The appetency may be of the speculative or of the practical order. It may be a thirst for knowledge ERKOR. 151 in the way of sufficient causes; or it may be a longing to which there is held out a hope of being satisfied through a conclusion drawn without a consideration of many modifying circumstances. There is, indeed, just enough to calm the present tendency. The will steps in: it stops the investi- gation. For, the will is a blind power ; it does not see for itself : and the craving is clamoring against delay. Or, the will, under the same restless de- mand, even turns the intellect to the contempla- tion of favoring analogies and of arguments which in their incompleteness make for the jus- tice of the desired end. Under the impulse of the will, then, the attention of the intellect may be arrested or it may be so directed as to be given no chance for reflex consideration, the will forc- ing it here and there to skip an evidence and to take in any plausible appearance that may suit the present emotion. The vehemence of the ap- petition by which the will is moved may be re- enforced by special conditions on the part of the intellect; by prejudices, incautious acceptance of testimony, forgetfulness, confusion of previously received knowledge and of the meaning of terms, by want of capacity, etc. It would be difficult, and it is certainly out of place here to attempt to enumerate the thousand inclinations, the bewildering complexities of mo- tives that lie at the root of erroneous judgments. We may be simply in a hurry, and we leap at con- clusions. We may, perhaps, be a little lazy, and 152 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. only too glad to shirk the searching investigation. How readily this may happen in things which are not of vital importance ! With the knowledge we have gained by experience of the general correct- ness of certain judgments made upon certain data, we plough ahead through decisions for the sake of gaining time and saving labor. Sometimes, when a correct conclusion can be drawn no otherwise than by the combination of the evidences of numerous data and there happens to be a lack of memory or instruction or a lack of skill in composing the various evidences, vanity and presumption may strongly solicit the will of a false declaration. New evidences of further truths are always pre- senting themselves to the mind as education ad- vances. At the same time, by graduated practice, constantly increasing skill is acquired for the combination of evidences in complicated proc- esses. An excellent illustration of this and of the possibilities of error may be found in the progress of a game of chess. Both players have the game entirely open before them. The begin- ner does not see the distant complication that is evident to the expert. And even if both players are equally matched, it may be that whilst one is announcing his own victory in the next move,— :- he is mated b}^ his opponent. Although, as w^e have said, error can never be a physical necessity, since this would imply the beholding of evidence where there is no evidence^ ERROE. 153 still error may sometimes be morally inevitable. When we say that error is morally inevitable or morally necessary, we mean, that, considering the way in which men do (not must) use their free will, we may rest satisfied that in given circum- stances they ivill (not must) use it in such a way as to accept a false declaration. It is on a clever application of this principle that the success of the marvelous tricks of jugglers is based. It is morally impossible that the savage should not accept with the quiet of certitude his decision in regard to the movement of the sun. Nothing had ever been said to him and no thought had ever occurred to him which might lead him to suspect the rotation of the earth. He thought of but one sufficient explanation for the phenomenon of change of position. This explanation was a move- ment on the part of the sun. He accepted his conclusion as a manifest application of a prin- ciple which he had drawn by induction from his life's experience. His error was a moral neces- sity. 82. Error and Opinion. We must be careful not to confound opinion with error. The adhering to an opinion merely as an opinion, is not an error, even though the opinion be what we call the wrong opinion. Of two contradictory statements, one person may hold the one as an opinion, and an- other the other. This means only that the ar,2:u- ments for one statement seem the more wei^htv 154 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. to the first person, and that the arguments for the other statement seem the more weighty to the sec- ond person. One of the statements is undoubt- edly false ; yet neither is evidently so. The quite general acceptance of an opinion does not indicate that it is held with certitude nor that its contradictory is denied. It is held as very highly probable: and its contradictory, as hardly or very slightly probable. Though a very highly probable opinion does not rise to the degree of certitude, still men will often act upon it without hesitation, recognizing all the time that it is only an opinion; and indeed many of the benefits of civilization owe their wide extension much to the fact that in the material affairs of life men are often content to act upon a very strong proba- bility. 83. Normal State. We have to repeat here, once more, that we are speaking of the normal man — of man in what is recognized to be the nor- mal state of the human body. The organ of hear- ing may be so affected that there is no perception of sound; and the organ of vision, so that there is no visual response to the emission of light-rays from external objects. The sensory nerves may be in such condition that what we call contact-per- ception by touch ceases absolutely to manifest it- self. But these are not normal states. Hence, in discussing the general principles of cognition in the normal man, we are not obliged to introduce ERROR. 155 the discussion of the various abnormal conditions of the nervous organism. Taking this necessary stand — necessary that we may be able to speak of the human race in general, — we rid ourselves at once of a thousand and one objections which are to no purpose but which can be brought in at inopportune moments to arrest the progress of our study. The man born blind will form judg- ments of color as of something that can be reached by touch ; and the man born deaf will form judg- ments of sound as of something that can be reached by sight. Of course, the error, here, starts in the will urging the intellect to strive after a vague concept, and the judgment is formed, under the impetus of the thirst for knowl- edge, without sufficient grounds. The same is to be said of all false judgments formed upon sense- perceptions made through organs partially de- ranged. Therefore, all cases out of the normal, as well where the perceptive organism is partially deranged as where it is totally and hopelessly dis- ordered in any particular, are outside of the gen- eral discussion entirely. Those who have what are termed hallucinations, who seem, for example, to see what they do not see, or to hear sounds that do not exist, are to be classed with the hopelessly disordered, so long as these hallucinations exist. That their perceptive organism is affected under the hallucination in the same manner as when there is real perception with an object perceived cannot be denied, as we 156 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. may learn from those who suffer in this way and who recognize, afterwards, that they have been under the hallucination. Once they become cog- nizant of their affection they may, by suspending judgment for a while in particular matters, do much to avoid false judgments. But the case of the erroneous judgment made in good faith under the hallucination does not belong to the normal human condition which we are considering. It is a case where by the influence of some particular disease the sensory organ is modified from within just as it would have been modified from without in normal sense-perception. 84. Objections Raised. The great objection raised against the truth of mere perception is that even when the organs are normal, the ap- pearance in many cases is always contrary to the fact. This objection is brought particularly against the trustworthiness of perception by vi- sion. What we have already said about vision will be remembered. The eye does not see dis- tance except as on a plane perpendicular to the axis of vision. The eye merely receives varia- tions of light and shade (of brighter and darker) in color, which are separated from one another only as on such a plane. Hence the impression of the landscape is no other than it would be if the same lights and shades in color came from the flat surface of the canvas; and these lights and shades are sometimes reproduced upon the canvas ERROR* 157 with such imitative skill that the imitation cannot be distinguished from the reality. A special difficulty may be that of the direction of lines even on the perpendicular plane. You are sitting in a small boat which rests upon the bosom of a clear lake. The oars are hanging idle in the water. You look down, and lo! the oar seems to bend at the water's edge. And yet it is not bent. Here is a presentation that differs from the reality. Not at all. You are receiving light rays from an object (the part of the oar under water) through two mediums of different densi- ties, the water and the atmosphere. The light rays change direction when passing from one me- dium to the other. If you want to pass judgment upon the straightness of the oar you must take the fact of refraction into consideration. Again, you are traveling over the prairie on a train. The rails run out behind you in straight parallel lines. You know that the rails are parallel, because the train has run over them safely. Yet they are pre- sented to the eye as coming together in the dis- tance. The presentation contradicts the fact ! In no wise. You must see and judge according to the law of vision. Sight will not give you every- thing. Sight will not give you the odor of the violet. In the case of the rails you are not making account of what is known as the angle of vision. Take a rod ?s long as the width of the rails, say six feet. Hold it up before you a foot away and parallel to the line running through the two eyes. 158 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. The rod will cross the whole field of vision. Let the rod be carried away from you, and you will find that it crosses less and less of the field of vision as the angle of vision decreases. When the rod is at the point where the rails seemed to meet, it will not seem to cover more than that one point. All this is to be taken into account; it is the law of vision. If you are not satisfied at having the vanishing point so near to you, provide yourself with a telescope. Another difficulty sometimes presented is this, that in the physical sciences a law may be held for a while as certain, and then be rejected as false. AVhat reliance can be placed upon the value of the second, even contradictory, law that has been substituted in its place? Witness the belief through ages of the Ptolemaic assertion that the sun revolved around the earth. With regard to theories in the natural sciences, this is to be said in general: We must remember that they are theories and that they are to be held only as theories. As theories they are always on trial. With regard to Ptolemy's assumption, we must know that it was never undisputed. But for working purposes it served the astronomer to assume that the sun moved around the earth. His calculations were made longer in many cases ; but, in many other cases, they Avere made shorter than they would have been upon the now accepted fact that the earth moves around the sun. We must always be cautious about theories. When ERROR. 159 that which is only theory is laid down and upheld as certain and ascertained law (a thing that hap- pens too often today with regard to geological and archeological theories) the error in ninety- nine instances out of the hundred is one of pre- sumption ; it is an error starting in the will which is moved by the vanity usually found close upon the heels of superficial knowledge. It is only an illustration of the old saw, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. 85. An Idealist Difficulty. The one really great difficulty which the idealistic or theoretic sceptic proposes to himself and in face of which, as some- thing impassable, he begins to build up his theories of idealism, is this : he does not see how the mind can possess the outer world without going out of itself — a thing which the mind certainly cannot do. He seems to talk of the mind and the object as of a gun and a target. When we say that the gun has hit the target we mean that a projectile has gone from the gun to the target. Similarly, the idealist would seem to imply or conclude that when we say that the mind apprehends an exter- nal object distinct from itself, we mean that the mind goes out to seize upon the object : and as he does not find this strange circumstance in his ex- perience, he is content to deny the true objectivity of knowledge. If he would but admit in theory, as he does in practice for very life 's sake, and as he should do in theory to have his theory of con- 160 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. sciousness consistent, — if he would but recognize his own experience, w^hich is that of mankind, that the outer object stimulates the animated organ and that this organ is animated by the principle of life (the same principle that sees by the aid oi the eye as it grasps by the aid of the hand and perceives its own thought), he would have no dif- ficulty. Of course your mind cannot make an e..- cursion away out to the planet Jupiter; neither can the great planet with all his satellites come right into your eye. The senses are, as it were, so many living doors at which the outer' world of matter knocks, so to say, for admission into the realm of knowledge without going in itself, anu through which, we, thus wakened to the demand, stretch forth to the object outside and possess it by knowledge without going out ourselves. When the landscape projects itself upon the retina and we turn the eyes to give every detail the best op- portunity to present its individual petition to be known, the landscape does not enter the power of vision, nor does the power of vision go out to the object. The object and the power meet, so to say, half way. Consciousness is wakened in the modi- fication of the living organism. In that wakening the object becomes sufficiently present; and, through what takes place in the modification of the organism and the wakening of consciousness, the knowing power seizes the outer object at once in knowledge. Take an illustration from the work of the camera — though no illustration is the true ERROR. 161 counterpart of that which it is intended to illus- trate. There is a picture outside, and there is a sensitized plate inside. The light-rays work their way tlirough the lenses and are caught on the sen- sitized plate within. Suppose the camera to be a ]iving thing, and the lenses and the plate to be its visual organ, — what happens! The visual power is- feimply directed along the lines of the light-rays as to something outside. In the power of sight i'n man there is a real living plate, the retina, which is a part of the man. It does not, like the plate which we call ^^ sensitized,'' catch a dead image. But the living spirit which animates, vivifies, the organ, cognizes the variations of brightness and shade and color, — directing itself out along the line of the rays. It cognizes the individual pic- ture, and with its recuperative capacity, it washes away the picture so soon as the object is gone; but it has stored up the picture in memory and it has universalized it in the idea. There is simply a result. That result is knowledge. That the object has something to do in the process, I Imow; "for I can close my eyes and oppose to its entrance an impenetrable wall of exclusion. The outward material object has efficiency as a real cause to put the organ of perception into the state re- quired for the perceptive act. To deny this is to deny the very principle of causality; and to d'^ny the principle of causality is to land oneself in absolute scepticism. • > 162 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. To refer again to the number of the senses, the ancient division into five is sufficient for ns in this treatise on the general truth of thought. Should we possibly discover a new sense whose work we have been crediting to one of the five, such dis- covery would be but the most powerful confirma- tion of all that we have been saying; it would show that the physical laws of human nature had been regularly executed and that sense-perception had been exercised in spite of the much or the little that we knew about it. Such discovery would only corroborate the truth, that by those very physical laws of human nature the human person takes possession, by knowledge, of the outer world with the same necessity and spontaneity that ac- company the conscious recognition of the inner thing of thought and the existence of self; that there exists in man for the perception of the ma- terial non-ego the same natural fitness which he possesses for the perception of the ego and its modifications, and that the two perceptions are performed with the same ease and security. As we have previously noted, if only the same reflec- tion be made upon self perceiving the outer world that is made upon self thinking the inner thought, it will be seen that there is the same testimony in the conscious self for the existence of matter as for the existence of mind. The idealist or the agnostic sceptic cannot appeal, for the reality of his thought or what he may choose to call his state of consciousness, to ami:hing which will not serve ERROR. 163 as an equally valid testimony for the reality of the outer world which is reached by sense-per- ception. CHAPTER XIII. CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. The Word, Criterion — Some Answers — Evidence — Des- cartes and Reid — Objective Truth — The Word, Evi- dence — Evidence: Immediate and Mediate; Intrinsic and Extrinsic — The Beginnings of Knowledge. 86. The Word, Criterion. A criterion, {kpltt^plov) is a standard by which to judge {Kpiveiv). We speak here of the criterion of logical truth, of the standard by which to test the representative value of a given judgment. Is this, my judgment, a true judgment? If so, why! How do I know that it is true? In assigning a reason, I will, at once, say that I have seen, heard, understood, etc., mentioning one or another perceptive act according to the peculiar subject-matter of the judgment in question. Thus, I appeal to the ver- acity of the various cognitive faculties. I appeal to their testimony, which I hold to be worthy of trust, as to a test, a standard. I thus admit the fact of a criterion, in the physically necessary truthfulness of the perceptive faculties. But the question presents itself: in each of these cases and in similar cases, is there an assignable reason beyond? What is the final reason, the final cri- 164 CRITEKION AND EVIDENCE. 165 terion in each case? And then another question presents itself : is the final reason the same in all cases ? Is there a final or ultimate criterion which is also universal? Is there one final universal basis for certitude T one final test to which we must appeal in all cases and beyond which there is no appeal? Is there one universal and ultimate criterion, and if there be, what is it ? The answer is a very simple one, indeed. Yet the very simplicity of the answer has made the question a puzzling one to philosophers. We must necessarily meet here the same difficulties that are encountered in every question concerning knowledge when one pre- sumes to inquire beyond the limits of inquiry, that is, beyond the limits of immediate evidence. The criterion must be in the judgment itself or outside of the judgment. If it be outside of the judgment or mental act to be tested, it will be either in the particular objective truth of which we are judging or it will be somewhere else. 87. Some Answers. All pure idealists put the criterion in the subject thinking. For, they hold that knowledge comes from within ; and thus they are forced to appeal to the thought itself for what- ever value they may wish to give to it. The traditionalists, for whose doctrine w6 inay signalize De Lamennais (1782-1854; Essai sur ^indifference) as the modern exponent, say that the final criterion is outside-authority. De 166 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. Laiiiennais, affirming a primitive revelation of truth to the human race, contends that this truth has passed down from generation to gen- eration; and that the ultimate criterion of truth and of certitude can thus be nothing else than the authority of the human race manifested by the general consent of mankind. It is easy to see that the authority of all men existing at a given period could not be used as a criterion : for what lifetime would suffice to take the testimony of all men on a single question! We shall allow him, then, to mean the testimony of the majority of men. But neither could this be a criterion for us ; since, were we obliged to appeal to the majority of men for the certification of but half a dozen acts of knowledge, we should be landed in utter scepticism — such an appeal being an impossibil- ity. Blind instinct is sometimes advanced as the ul- timate criterion. We are conscious that we are forced to believe, it is said, and there we must stop all inquiry. But we cannot take blind in- stinct for a last criterion. We cannot appeal to it for the reality of objective truth. Such a cri- terion would lead us to the Kantian dogma that knowledge comes out of the mind and not into it. It would, moreover, reduce us eventually to a blind scepticism, allowing us to affirm no objec- tive reality with reason. The fact of the blind instinct would have to be affirmed by another movement of the blind instinct; and so on in- CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 167 deliiiitel}^ The holding of this criterion has been ascribed to Thomas Reid and the Scottish school. But whatever the Scottish philosophers may have written, we believe they did not intend to hold to this as the ultimate criterion. We shall have a word to say about them later on. The sentimentalists, with J. J. Rousseau, say that the ultimate criterion is mere feeling. This has all the difficulties of the preceding. It does not certify the reality of the object. And, besides, it makes certitude a very uncertain thing, change- able regarding the same thing with every chang- ing mood. As a criterion, it is characteristic of the sceptical school which advocates it. It allows room for a denial of everything according to the mood of the hour, and, at the same time, affords a specious pretext for the admissions which the sceptic is obliged to make when he lives amongst men. We place the ultimate criterion in the object, in the objective truth upon which judgment is passed. What we mean by this we shall endeavor to make plain in the following number. Under- stand, first, that we are asserting a criterion for every kind of judgment, the analytic and the syn- thetic, the universal, the particular, and the sin- gular. Be the judgment what you will, — ^^That field is green," '* Parallel lines always remain at the same distance from one another," etc., the criterion will be ever the same : objective evi- dence. 168 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. 88. Evidence. Understand well where the great difficulty lies. It lies in this: in deciding whether, for the determination of the truth of a judgment and of the motive of our firm adher- ence to it, we are to rest in the clearness of the judgment itself, or w^hether we are to make an appeal to the objective truth enunciated by the judgment. The force of the difficulty will mani- fest itself as we proceed. We are here at the last issue of philosophy. Perhaps some examples may enable us to understand a very fundamental truth which many have failed to recognize by reason of its most patent simplicity. You are seated by the window with a friend; and there is a plant upon the sill. As you look out you form in your mind the following judg- ment: '^That rose is red." You then give ex- pression to your judgment in words. But, a mo- ment later, w^hilst you are about to turn your attention to some pictures in your hand, you be- gin to doubt the truth of the judgment you have just made, or, your friend calls its truth in ques- tion. What do you do to settle your own doubt, or, if you have no doubt, what test for the cor^ rectness of your judgment do you oifer to the one who has contradicted your assertion? You appeal to the object; and you require your friend to do the same. You look again at the object,- and you request him to look again at the object. You and your friend do not merely close your eyes and appeal to the judgments you have CRITEKION AND EVIDEITCE. 169 formed. But what does this mean practically? It means that neither of you expects to find in the judgment itself the test of the truth of the judgment. Each one of you goes to the object for the test, for the Criterion. That which you ex- pect to find in the object is the ohjective-shining- oiit-of-the-truth, which you accept as the final test of the correctness of your subjective expression, of your judgment. If the judgment happened to have been made upon a passing object which has ceased to be present, you will have to appeal as well as you can to memory. But how will you appeal to memory? You will not appeal to the mere judgment or enunciation as it remains in the memory; but you will appeal to the image of the rose and its color, as these are objects of the memory and imagination. Suppose, again, that you were to find a person who w^as laboring under an hallucination of vision and who professed to see something which was not present— what would you do, what final method would you adopt, to convince him of his error! Would you ask him to appeal to some- thing subjective, to that erroneous judgment which he has already formed? No, you would recognize the utter futility of such appeal. You would try to discover some way of making him apply to the object. You would invite him to try the test of touch upon the supposed object. And what does this signify to our present purpose? 170 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. It signifies that you recognize the criterion to b something objective and not subjective. It may be retorted that we are here appealing to something purely subjective, since the sensa- tion of touch is purely subjective. Yes; in its individual entity as an act, not only the sensation of touch, but the sensation of vision and every other sensation is purely subjective. That is to say, it belongs to you as subject perceiving. If it were not thus purely subjective, that is, alto- gether in you, you could not claim it as entirely your sensation. But consider what is implied in a sensation and in the judgment accompanying or following. Every perceptive act is a subjective modification or mood. This mood is an utterance, a declaration of the existence of something which is not the mood itself. The mood, thus, as an ut- terance, is relative. It is of its value as relative that there is question here. To discover this, you must go to the term of the relation, to the object which is referred to, which is declared. Once more: in making the test of a judgment, you always repeat the judgment. But you do not merely repeat the declaration as you find it in your mind. You repeat the whole process : you go through all the conditions necessary for the original forming of the judgment. One of these original conditions is always that the power be put in communication with the object. Why do you put the power in communication with the ob- ject? To see if the power will be forced to render I CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 171 the verdict, to see if the same testimony will be wrmig from it. By what? By the inevitable light with which truth is illumined, and whereby it coerces the faculty to its recognition. This power which truth possesses by reason of its own light and whereby it forces its representation upon, the vital faculty is called its evidence. This is objective and cannot be subjective; for it is the shining of the truth in its own light. There are some who are ready to quibble here, saying that the criterion is the evidence as per- ceived; but, that, the perceiving is something en- tirely subjective; and that, hence, the criterion must in the end be regarded as subjective. This is a sophism. We have been showing how the search for the general or universal criterion of logical truth must lead us ultimately to the evi- dence of the objective truth, to something out- side of the faculty. Now if you take up any par- ticular, concrete judgment, or act of knowledge, will the criterion be the evidence as perceived! Certainly, it will be the evidence as perceived; but the evidence is perceived as objective, not as subjective. Objectivity of truth is the condition sine qua non of the act of judgment; and objec- tivity of the evidence of that truth is the final formality to which we must have recourse to test the truth of the act of judgment, the truth of thought. Sometimes we find evidence distinguished into objective and subjective ; by objective evidence is 172 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. meant that of which we have just spoken and which we shall term '^evidence'' without any qualification; by subjective evidence is meant the corresponding clearness and distinctness in the judgment passed. But evidence belongs to ob- ject ; and not to intellect as expressing object. It is important that we should hold to this applica- tion of the term ; — and we lay stress upon it as we laid stress upon the necessity of limiting the term, certitude, to the state of the mind and of not transferring it to the object. It is I who am cer- tain, it is I who have certitude; it is the object which is evident. 89. Descartes and Reid. Descartes tried vainly to work out a complete theory of the process and progress of knowledge and of certitude on the basis of a fundamental truth, the conviction, the affirmation and acceptance of which he found in- evitable, when all else had been called into doubt. This truth was the fact of his own thought, which he expressed in the jud.2:ment, '^ego cogito'' — I think. But the last, the ultimate motive which he assigns for certitude in this declaration, is the *^ clear and distinct perception '' he has of that thinking ego. Though the writings cf Descartes are certainly very incoherent and very ambiguous whenever he touches this question, we should be pleased to be able to profit by his ambiguity for the sake of interpreting him as being in accord with rather CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 173 than in opposition to the mind of humanity. But explain him as we will, we find him always escap- ing us and retrenching himself in the idea as his last security for the assertion of objective reality. When we say that the last criterion cannot be subjective, the term subjective applies to the par- ticular act of judgment made; and we mean that the particular act of judgment cannot be taken as the ultimate basis of certitude regarding the object upon which the judgment is passed. Your existence, your self, your thought, your feelings are certainly subjective to you. But they are all objective, object, to your perception of them and to your judgment passed upon them. Now, if we follow Descartes down through all his doubts, and doubts of doubts, to the point where he finds himself at a primary fact of which he feels he cannot doubt, the fact of self thinking, upon which he pronounces the judgment ^' I think,'' we see plainly that he is making the doubting or thinking ego the object of a second perception or judgment in which he declares ^*I think." Had he recognized here that the motive of this declara- tion was the evidence of the thinking ego which presented itself as object to the second or reflex perception, he might have found his way back to reality. Instead of doing this he turns to the second or reflex mental act to seek therein a ** clear and distinct perception" of the original thinking ego taken as object. Now, who is there who does not see that for the perception of this 174 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. ^* clear and distinct perception" in the second act there is required a third mental act! But is the third mental act reliable? Yes; if it contains a ^^ clear and distinct perception'' of the other ^^ clear and distinct perception." How shall we know this! By making it the object of a fourth mental act. Thus we are led farther and farther away from objective reality deep into the depths of idealistic reflection. Descartes, in his attempt at an explanation, is perpetually appealing to the true criterion, the evidence of the object and the objective truth ; and by his confusion of terms he forces us to conclude that he had not a very ^^ clear and distinct idea" of his own profound secret. The Scottish school of philosophy, of which we may regard Thomas Reid as the proper exponent, has been charged with making the sensus com- munis (the general and uniform consent of the human race) the court of appeal for truth and certitude, to the extent that when we question the authority of this court we are thrown back upon the blind instinct of men to believe. As for the keen Scottish philosophers, we should find it dif- ficult to class them as a school, since they differ so widely on very essential points. But concern- ing the matter here in question we shall say that they spent so much time in searching for and classifying those fundamental truths universally accepted by men, that they failed to investigate to its depths the basis of this acceptance. Of CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 175 course, universal acceptance is a criterion beyond which we need not go to feel secure in certain judgments that regard the necessities of human life and action. But it is not a universal nor an ultimate criterion. In his printed w^orks Eeid does style it an ultimate criterion; and by his printed works is he judged in critical philosophy. But it is pleasant to note that in manuscripts still extant Eeid makes the following declaration: *' Evidence is the sole and ultimate ground of belief, and self-evidence is the strongest possible ground of belief, and he who desires reason for believing what is self-evident knows not what he means.''* Studying the mind of writers and not merely random declarations scattered through their printed works, we believe that both Reid and Stewart put the criterion where it ought to be, in evidence. 90. Objective Truth. We have said that there may be many criteria of truth or, what comes to the same, many motives of certitude. I may be set at rest by the testimony of my own eyes, by the relation of a friend, by a document, by an argu- ment, etc. But we have, here, been looking for a last reason, a last resort, which will be the same in every investigation, when we go on asking why, why, why. This last resort, we have seen, will be the evidence of the objective truth. Attention is called once more, and separately, to the meaning *(Dr, James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, citing from manu- scripts of Reid in the possession of Francis Esmond.) 176 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. of the expression, objective truth. By objectiv truth we mean any fact or principle whichj ^ known or can be known. Even the act by whj;^' said fact or principle is known can become ^ j^^ tive truth with reference to another act of know- ing. Whatever there may be which will not imply contradiction in its statement, be it abstract priur ciple ; be it concrete fact, past, present or futu"* . , or neither abstract principle nor fact that was or will be, but only a mere possibility that shall never be realized but is only conceivable as not in- volving a contradiction in itself; — all this is in- cluded in the expression, objective truth. Whatever is knowable, in so far as it is know- able, does, by the fact that it is knowable, present itself in its character of knowable when it is en- countered by a knowing power which is adequate to the perception of the peculiar know^ability pre- sented. This capability in the knowable, in the objective truth, of presenting itself, we have called its evidence. The act of self-presentation cannot be exercised by every objective truth in reference to every knowing power. Linear meas- ure cannot present itself as such to hearing. The harmony of a musical chord cannot present itself as such to toLich. Odor cannot present itself to vision. The truth that parallel lines produced will never meet, cannot present itself to taste. But sound can present itself for perception to hearing ; and linear measure can present itself to be perceived by sight and touch. , CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 177 91. The Word, Evidence. Evidence is the shin- -1. J of the truth in its own light ; it is the neces- $k^ - y visibility of the truth. It will be noticed that tix^, 'Ords, evidence, shining, light, visibility, are all taken from what belongs to the visible and to the power of perceptibility by vision. So won- derful a part does sight play in perception as a v."/ql matter in the economy of human life, that ! we come to use the word see for every kind of perception. We say that we see how justice is a virtue : but we do not see it, we understand it by the perception of the intellect. We are told that one of the voices in a quartette is false ; and, for proof, we are told to wait until the quartette ) sings — and we shall see. In this case see is used ■: instead of /^ear. We use it also for taste : ^^You (•do not know the taste of the strawberry! No! •Well, take this and see!'' Thus we employ the 5 word, see, to express every kind of perception; fiand we also transfer the words that relate to I" vision, to express like relations of other kinds of I' perception. This is what happens with the words, evidence and evident. Evident (evidens) and ! evidence (evidentia) are from the Latin e-videre, Ho see out of. A thing is evident when it is seen out of (out from) itself. Evidence is the capacity a thing has to be seen out of itself, by itself, from itself. So, whatever presents itself — be it fact, principle, possibility or argument — whatever pre- sents itself to any knowing power so as to be per- ceived by that knowing power, is said to be evi- 178 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. dent to that knowing power ; and it is perceivable by reason of its evidence which is its ability to present itself for cognition to the knowing power that is adapted to the perception of it. 92. Evidence: Immediate and Mediate: Intrin- sic and Extrinsic. A truth is said to be immedi- ately evident w^hen it is perceptible directly in its own evidence without the medium of the evidence of other truths to make it perceptible. Thus we can have immediate evidence of contingent truths, such as, that a fire which is close to us is warm, or, that one of two lines is shorter than the other; and we have immediate evidence of certain gen- eral analytic truths, as, that parallel lines pro- duced do not meet. But when a truth requires the medium of the evidence of another truth to make itself perceptible, its evidence is said to be medi- ate. Thus we may not be able to see which of two lines is the longer, but by the medium of a movable measure w^e shall discover it very read- ily. The evidence of a truth which we arrive at only through argument, that is to say, the evi- dence of a conclusion, is mediate; it is perceived by means of the. light that is thrown upon it by the evidence of the premisses. Attention is called to the meaning of the word "proof. It is said very justly that in philosophy we must admit nothing without proof. Now, as ** proof '' is very widely used in the sense of ** ar- gument,'' an inexperienced person may be caught CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 179 in the disastrous fallacy that nothing is to be ad- mitted without being ^Droved by an argument. If this were so, we should never be able to establish the existence of anything, whether of self or of not-self. Be it remembered that proof is the same as evidence; and as evidence is immediate and mediate, so also is proof immediate and mediate. It is not necessary to prove everything by argu- mentation, by mediate evidence. There is a bet- ter because a speedier proof than argumentation, namely, immediate evidence. Immediate certifi- cation is of a higher order than mediate certifica- tion and should be used when it can be had. Why do Ave agree to an argument? Because its con- clusion is evident to us as seen through the prem- isses. Why, then, may we not agree to a truth which is evident to us when we perceive it in itself without looking at it through premisses'? The absurdity of rejecting certain truths which we can perceive by their immediate evidence only, will appear from the following illustration. With the aid of glasses, single, double, triple, I recog- nize some object that is beyond the range of un- aided vision. My friend who is standing beside me can also with the aid of glasses recognize the same object. But my friend, himself ! Is he here beside me? I take the distance glasses, and with them I am unable to see him. He, too, tries the glasses, and with them he cannot see me. With- out the glasses we see one another. But because we cannot do so with the glasses which are in- 180 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. tended for distance, we agree each to deny the presence of the other. Those who wish to prove everything by means of an argumentation act in this manner. Self-evident truth they will not ad- mit, just because it is self-evident, just because it is so close and apparent that it will not bear the interposition of the medium, of an argument. Every form of scepticism, plenary and partial, is guilty in this particular: it seeks to wedge an argument in between the power and the object, even when the power and the object are separated by nothing more than the geometrical line — which has no breadth; and to w^edge it in, forsooth, in order to connect the power with the object. Evidence is also spoken of as intrinsic and as extrinsic. It is said to be intrinsic when the truth is perceived or perceivable in itself whether im- mediately or mediately. Immediate evidence is, therefore, always intrinsic because the connection of subject and predicate in the truth that is im- mediately evident is perceivable from the known nature of said subject and predicate. The evi- dence of a conclusion in an argument may also be intrinsic although mediate, for the truth of the conclusion is made manifest in the evidence of what is knowm regarding the subject and predi- cate; it is made manifest in the evidence of the premisses, and the premisses are nothing more than the development of the subiect and predi^ cate of the conclusion. Now, if the evidence of both premisses be intrinsic, the evidence of the CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 181 conclusion will likewise be intrinsic, though mediate. What, then, is extrinsic evidence! We often hold to truths which are not evident to us in themselves whether immediately or through the medium of a demonstration. We hold to them on account of the evidence of an outside truth which, whilst linking together predicate and subject, still does not put before us the evidence of the bond. This is what happens in our assent to all truths which we accept solely on the word, on the au- thority of our fellow-man. We have no evidence of these truths in themselves; but we have evi- dence of the existence of the testimony and evi- dence of the value of the testimony on the matter in question. Such truths are not evident in them- selves. They are evidently credible. The facts of history which we accept, we accexjt not upon their own evidence, but upon the evidence of their credibility. This is something outside of the con- nection existing between the subject and predi- cate of the fact stated, and is called extrinsic evi- dence. We shall devote a special chapter to the value of historical testimony. 93. The Beginnings of Knowledge. In our search for the beginnings and groundwork of knowledge we cannot go beyond evidence and the nature of our knowing faculties which are necessi- tated to the admission of evidence duly presented. It may be in place for us to call attention to three primary truths, the recognition of which is 182 THE TRUTH OF THOUGHT. implied in every act of knowledge. These three truths are commonly styled the first fact, the first condition, the first principle. They are evident in themselves, and so primary that they cannot be made the subject of a direct demonstration. The first fact is the fact of the existence of self. The first condition is that of the possibility of knowledge. The acceptance of this condition is involved in every act of knowledge and lies at the base of human life and action. The first principle is the ^* principle of contra- diction" which stands guard over certitude in every mental declaration. This principle may be formulated in various ways. Sometimes it is an- nounced as follows: ^^A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time;" or ^'The same thing cannot both exist and not exist at the same time. ' ' It may be more fully stated thus : ' ' The same cannot be (truthfully) affirmed and denied (cannot be true and false) simultaneously under the same respect." Thus stated, the principle covers the whole range of truths, the concrete and the contingent as well as the abstract and the necessary. The admission of this principle is a necessity to thought. You cannot deny it and hold to your denial. For, if you do, you proclaim the principle, namely, that w^hat you have denied cannot be affirmed. Tt would not be easy, nay, it would be impos- sible to say how these three, the cognizance of the condition, the acceptance of the first fact, the CRITERION AND EVIDENCE. 183 mental grasp of the first principle, follow one another or coalesce in the primitive acts of per- ception. To understand this we should have to secure a child's account of what happened when it first began to know. We can see — now that we are forced to the admission of the condition by the inevitable impulse of the mind to know — that the first fact always shines with its own unmis- takable evidence in every conscious act; and that the first principle is stamped with its application upon every truth according as such truth is known in its contingent or necessary character. This we can see looking back at the distant courses through which our life-thought has cleaved its way; but we are now so far from the starting point to which we shall not return, that the record of the first flight of thought shall never be written in the books of men. CHAPTER XIV. HUMAN TESTIMONY AND BELIEF. Some Terms — Witness, Testimony, Belief, Authority — Testimony: Divine and Human; Doctrinal and His torical — Witness: Immediate and Mediate — Belief and Life — Dogmatic Testimony — Sensus Communis — Historical Testimony — Conditions Postulated — - Argument in Brief — Contemporary Events — Past Events — Oral Tradition — Writing — Monuments ^— Note. 94. Some Terms. There is a simple fact that plays a marvellous part in the planting and the growth of human knowledge. It is, that man ac- cepts the testimony of man. If all men were to refuse absolutely and in all cases to believe upon the testimony of others, society would be an im- possibility. Thus, for the human race, testimony is raised to the dignity of a criterion whereby to pass sentence upon objective truths concerning which those who accept the testimony either can- not or shall not have any immediate experience. The truth is simply believed upon the authority of the witness giving testimony. A Witness is one who communicates his knowl- edge. 184 HUMAN TESTIMONY AND BELIEF. 185 Testimony is the actual communication of that knowledge. Belief is the assent given to testimony. Authority is the sum of motives which the testi- mony of a witness possesses to urge assent. These motives are, evidence of logical and moral truth on the part of the witness. To believe him we must have evidence of his knowledge and ve- racity; evidence that he is not deceived himself, nor deceiving us. Thus, we do not believe on the evidence of the truth proposed. We do not per- ceive its evidence. The truth proposed is the matter, the material object of our faith or belief; but the formal object of our belief, that, namely, w^hich we assent to upon its own evidence, is the knowledge and veracity of the witnesses, whether mediate or immediate. We believe upon the evi- dence of the credibility of the w^itnesses. This credibility of the witnesses attached to the objec- tive truth, stands to us extrinsically for the evi- dence of the truth testified to. In this treatise we are not speaking of the case w^here witness, testimony and authority are divine and where by divine faith or belief we accept supernatural revelation. We are speaking of purely human testimony and of human belief upon the authority of the human witness. The object of this human testimony, the truth testified to, may be doctrinal, as a principle of science proposed for acceptance by belief; or it 186 THE TRUTH