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Collected Essays, Volume II.
By F. H. Bradley
Chapter XXI. In What Sense are Psychical States Extended?
Mind N.S., iv, No. 14, pp. 225-35, April 1895.
The question asked above may be met by a general denial. Psychical states, we may be assured, are not extended in any sense or at all. But this denial, if taken absolutely, could not be sustained. It seems open to an objection such as the following: If what is psychical is not extended then nothing is extended, for in the end everything must be psychical. And at least in some quarters it appears doubtful if such an objection could be met. But, to pass by this argument in its more sweeping and more assailable form, I will go on to urge it in a shape which to me seems conclusive. The psychical existence of extension may be wholly denied, yet the idea and the perception of extension must at the same time be affirmed. And any such position, I would submit, is inconsistent with itself. For the perception and idea are admitted themselves to be psychical, and, if this perception and idea in no sense possessed extension, in what possible way (we must urge) could they represent it? And, since to this question I have not yet found a reply, I must conclude that in some sense the psychical can be extended.
But ideas and perceptions, I shall be told, are not what they signify. It is true, I reply, that their meaning and their existence are different. But if this difference is taken to preclude sameness, the statement would become false. For a thing, though the same, becomes different also when diversely applied. And a feature of content, which makes the meaning of an idea, must, I presume, in order to do this, be present psychically. Thus, for example, the idea of my horse in a sense has extension, and this idea also is a psychical state. And when you ask me to believe that a psychical state may have somehow extension, while in no
1 Compare here E. xix. 3345.
2 Whether extension is here a primitive or an acquired perception seems a consideration not relevant. For in any case it exists, and that existence is all that need here concern us.
There is an obvious difference between extension as it is in the soul and extension as it is in the physical world. For the movement and the collision of material things is not present in the soul, or, rather, is not present in its full and complete nature. And we find this at once if we endeavour a priori to demonstrate about matter. So far as mere space is concerned we appear to possess its nature inwardly, and hence to be able within ourselves to control and to develop its essence. But clearly no such claim could be upheld with regard to body, and to anticipate or even to demonstrate the various qualities of nature seems quite impracticable. Observation and experiment have taught us connections which internally we repeat, and which partly we can combine and can rearrange. But we are not able (as with mere space) to experiment internally, for we do not possess the complete nature of the
On the other hand to deny that in the soul we have at all the extension which meets us in nature would be mistaken. We certainly have this same extension and can repeat the process of its happening, but we can do this only within limits, partially, and up to a certain point. For when we perceive a sequence in nature we perceive in this but one feature of a whole. The result observed does not follow really and in fact except from the complete conditions, and to experience these complete conditions is quite impossible. The essential process, so far as known by us, is gathered piecemeal, constructed ideally, and put together in the abstract. And hence our essential process, as such, is not that actual process which produces the perceived result. Or rather it is the actual process but so incomplete as to be actual no longer. In this sense we may deny that the physical extended moves and happens in a soul. For it happens there not integrally but merely in certain fragmentary aspects. And we possess it not bodily but only in schematic outline.
Now to object that in the psychical world also we, sometimes or always, have sequences the full conditions of which we cannot experience would be irrelevant. For in any case in the soul we find no world or order of spatial happening such as we ascribe to nature. And, however many psychical sequences may remain incomprehensible, our conclusion remains. We are right to deny that the physical extended in its full process has psychical existence. Let us pass from this to another doubt which concerns us more.
One may reasonably deny that the physical extended essentially consists in its extendedness. The properties of the physical world follow, one may contend rather, only
1 I of course cannot raise here the question of the ultimate nature of the physical world, and ask whether and how far it exists outside souls. And whether in the last resort unperceived nature is even actually extended I again cannot here discuss. For the purpose of the text I have felt bound to assume that unperceived nature is extended.
With this we
But if psychical states are extended, I may be told, absurd consequences will follow. For these states will then collide, if not with outer things, at least with each other. Nothing of the kind, I reply, need really take place. For even if we can assume of physical extensions that they are all comprised in and form parts of one extended world, such an assumption evidently becomes false when we carry it further. The extensions in the soul need have no spatial relation to the physical world, nor again amongst themselves need they be spatially related to one another. When any phenomena are related spatially they are ipso facto parts of one spatial whole—so much is certain. But that all things spatial must be spatially related to each other is not certain but false. It is in fact a prejudice without any rational basis. The worlds of the Arabian Nights and of the Pilgrim’s Progress have no spatial connection either with each other or with the room in which I write. These worlds have a common unity, that is certain, but they are not contained in one space. And whatever may be the case with Nature, in the soul there is an indefinite number of extensions between which no spatial relation exists. Each of these states so far, we may say, has a world of its own. And to urge objections based on the infinite or the finite character of space would once more here be idle. For the assumption of spatial unity would not help us to dispose of any one of such difficulties.
1 On all these questions I may refer the reader for some further discussion to my Appearance and Reality, Chapter XII.
The soul contains extensions and it contains many extensions, but the soul is not extended. We have here in principle, I believe, the answer to our main enquiry. For a thing may have qualities that are spatial and yet itself need not enter space, and the denial of this truth once more would rest on mere prejudice. Certainly to be extended cannot mean merely to own an unrelated spatial adjective. It must mean on the contrary to have a spatial relation beyond oneself, and hence oneself to pass into and
Now in the physical world, rightly or wrongly, extension may be taken as primary and predominant. And, if so, Nature will all be extended, and also, perhaps, will have to be viewed as enclosed in one space. The position of such qualities as, say, smells and sounds will remain irregular, for, though localized, they are not properly extended. Still extension, rightly or wrongly, has been given a superior standing. It is not one adjective on a level with others, nor can its connection with nature’s
But when we pass to the soul the position and rank of extension is altered. It cannot any longer be taken as predominant or primary, but has on the contrary to accept a secondary, if not an occasional place. It is, we may say, undermined and overpowered by other adjectives. And hence the psychical whole is not extended. It merely has extension here and there, indirectly and as a quality of some its states, between which states there need be no spatial relation at all. The psychical field of struggle is no space except by a metaphor, and the weapons of the contest are not velocity or mass. Nay the extended itself, so far as psychically it competes, does not compete primarily by means of and through its relative extension.
1 So far as they are related spatially extensions in the soul can struggle for the same place. The basis of the struggle is here the partial identity of their content. It is in short a case of ‘contraries.’
And this distinction between what the soul has and that which it is—the distinction between what the soul is itself, as a whole or directly, and what again it is indirectly and merely in respect of its parts—this distinction I take to be the solution of our chief problem.
1 Even if the idea of unity which is applied is spatial, it remains doubtful how far the several extended objects become part of one extension. If, for instance, I am asked to think of a number of bodies each of a different colour, these bodies being scattered in space or divided also in time, and then am asked to think of these bodies as close together in space—what, I suppose, happens is this. I apply a more or less abstract spatial scheme of diversity in unity, and I identify the coloured bodies with the diversities of this spatial scheme. Now, if my thought is rapid and remains abstract, need it imply the mental juxtaposition of the various colours? And, if not, how far and in what sense have the coloured objects become parts of one new extended state? We must reply, I think, that, so far, the bodies have not become parts of such a state, for they have come together spatially only from one side of their being. On the other hand this abstract unity tends naturally to become more concrete and to pass into actual mental juxtaposition of the colours also.
Let us suppose that, besides perceiving the place where I am, I think of other extended objects both present and past, objects some real and some imaginary. Now I may have several of these objects, I presume, at once, and may also consider them together. But where things in any sense are taken together that unity is of course a psychical state, and in the present case the question is whether we are to call this state extended. It is probably not extended always, but, with some persons at least, it always tends
The result of our whole enquiry is briefly this. The unity of the soul is not spatial, nor as a whole is the soul extended. But here and there, without any doubt, it has features which are extended. And the soul is extended in respect of these features, while you consider it merely so far and regard it fragmentarily. But to predicate extension of the soul, when the soul is taken together and as one, is quite impossible. That is no better than it would be to term the soul acid or salt or fragrant. For in the soul extension is not a universal head or law under which all adjectives fall; and, as an adjective, it is not all-pervasive. It is really but one among a number of predicates, its possession is partial and its rank is secondary.
I may be allowed perhaps to append some remarks on ‘Extensity’ and on my difficulties with regard to it. I was long ago convinced of two things. (a) We cannot, I believe, understand how the perceived spatial world arises (if it does arise) from what is quite non-spatial; and (b) the spatial perception, however it arises, cannot have at first the relational character of developed space (E., xii. 222-3). Hence it seems to me proper to postulate a mode of perception which gives, on the one hand, more than mere volume and, on the other hand, less than space. And yet extensity, as it is offered me, I cannot accept for the following two reasons. (i) I am not able myself to find
(i) Whether extensity can somewhere be observed is perhaps a question of little moment, and on my own failure I should certainly not venture to stand. But since my own difficulty may be more than personal, I will endeavour to state it. And my experience is this. Whenever I observe I either get something which seems to imply space right out, or else I get something which seems not to have even extensity. I can find volume everywhere—that I do not doubt—but not all volume appears to me to come possessed of side-by-sideness, or even to have features joined and divided by any fixed order of relations. When on the other hand I dwell on my perception, it tends to become distinct spatially, without, so far as I see, becoming merely extensive. And my perception thus grows not spatial merely but spatial even visually. A compound smell or a confused organic sensation, nay, any kind of diversity and every possible distinction, in the end, when I dwell on it, becomes localized somehow in a visual field. And in short, while I observe, I find no way from an awkward dilemma. I must hold that all observed diversity and every distinction involves a character which is spatial right out, and in my own case visually spatial, though the elements themselves (e.g. smells) need not be extended. Or else, if I may take this character as but imposed by the process of my attending, and if I may deny that my mere perception of volume possesses it, then extensity itself seems gone with this justified removal. Or at least, while I keep to the observed facts, I myself cannot find it. I
(ii) From this I pass to the second objection. Extensity, it seems to me, is a special kind of volume, nor could I deny the existence of volume without extensity. To such a denial I am in principle perhaps not opposed. Nay, if I had to assert that no diversity could be anywhere perceived without the help of spatial marks of distinction, that would make but little difference in principle to any views I entertain. But I think such a doctrine is mistaken, and in the same way I must decline to identify volume with extensity. If I take for instance my whole condition at some one moment, or if I take some group of organic sensations, or again for example some complex smell, I am led to a very different result. In these cases I am aware of volume, of an uncounted plural whole, I certainly perceive a muchness but on the other side I cannot predicate extensity. I cannot find side-by-sideness nor can I find a fixed interrelated arrangement of any kind. There are qualitative differences within a whole, but these differences seem, not even as qualities, to have an ordered position and situation among themselves. They are neither continuous in this sense, nor are they continuous again as showing indefinite internal divisbility. They are no serial field in and on which motions, if only they could supervene, would find positions and so generate space. I at least cannot observe these characters given everywhere as fact, and I am therefore forced to suspect one of two things. Either these characters have been transferred from elsewhere into the facts, or I, as is likely enough, have not understood what extensity is to mean.
And since where one does not understand it is better not to insist on criticism, and since some obscurity seems to beset the use of ‘volume,’ I may perhaps do best if I attempt to indicate what I myself mean by it. In the first
Now it does not seem to me that this mere perception of an uncounted plural whole need imply side-by-sideness or fixed interrelation or serial arrangement, or, in any proper sense, continuity external and internal. Space, in short, has volume, but volume need not be spatial or even have ‘extensity.’ And, if I am wrong in this, yet the question calls, I think, for some enquiry.
With that enquiry perhaps might go a more careful treatment of the connection between amount and degree. And as a possible help, and by way of supplement to a former paper (E., xix.), I will venture to add some remarks not original nor perhaps all relevant.
Now it is not uncommon to speak of intensity and of extent as being aspects quite diverse. And when a greater extent of a quality, such as warmth, is in fact taken wrongly for a higher degree, we are told that volume and intensity are here confused or are not distinguished. But this explanation, though not untrue, seems partly incorrect. The real mistake lies, I think, not in failure to distinguish between extent and degree, but in failure to distinguish between two degrees or two amounts of different kinds. And I will endeavour briefly to make this clear.
Every perception of quantity, whether it is a perception of amount or degree, must possess the two aspects of extent and intenseness. Even in the case of degree the perception must contain an internal plurality (E., xix). There is a difference in the two cases, but the difference lies in the ‘that’ of which we have amount
Volume itself is most certainly capable of degree. If you have a coloured surface which is red, that, even if you disregard its redness, has volume, and corresponding to that volume the surface as a whole has a quality. And if the coloured surface is increased by an addition which is not red but green, you will have an increase in volume and also in quality. Your perception will grow in intensity as it grows in volume, though neither this volume nor this intensity will belong specially to red or green. And then, coincident with and superimposed on this double growth, may come an increase in redness or greenness also two-sided. And all these changes, which partly are independent, partly must influence one another, and result often in confusion or even in positive mistakes.
I do not know how far such remarks are relevant to the question in hand. They may serve at least to suggest that the connection between quality, quantity and degree is not simple, and cannot be disposed of easily. On the positive nature of extensity I have indeed said almost nothing. It has to be postulated and is not observed, and, while less than space, it is certainly more than mere volume. I have said no more because I doubt if I have more to say. And with what class or classes of sensation we have to postulate this character, is an important question which I have not touched. Nay even that which I have laid down I am prepared to find mistaken. Every sort of diversity, after all, and every distinction may imply
1 Professor Sully (Human Mind, i. 95) seems to accept extensity only as hypothetical. If so, I do not understand what position he gives to volume and massiveness. In rejecting extensity wholly (A.R., 30=35) I had in mind solely the fact as supposed to be observed. The remark was not intended to exclude a hypothetical form of space-sensation (Cp. E., xii. 222, note 1.
Volume without extensity may in short turn out to be an error. But whatever conclusion on these points may prove true in the end, the way to it, I am sure, is not short or easy. The introduction of extensity, in brief, I think has been useful, but extensity would be more useful if it were more thoroughly explained and discussed. By such an explanation I at least should expect to profit.
Chapter XXII. A Defence of Phenomenalism in Psychology
Mind, N.S. ix, No. 33, 26-45. January 1900.
The object of this paper is to defend ‘phenomenalism’
1 {“Phenomenalism [is] a philosophical theory of perception and the external world. Its essential tenet is that propositions about material objects are reducible to propositions about actual and possible sensations, or sense data, or appearances.”}
You in particular may be sure that in metaphysics
1 I must notice here an attempt to limit the scope of psychology by defining its standpoint as ‘individualistic’. I have remarked elsewhere (A.R. 273 = 309) that this attempt is in principle mistaken. It would be absurd to suppose that metaphysical questions cannot be raised from an individualistic standpoint. Hence, whatever the phrase may be meant to mean, it as it stands is useless. And I cannot think that Dr. Stout is successful so far as he adopts this formula, or generally in his definition of the sphere of psychology (Analytic Psychology, i, pp. 1-12). He, in my opinion, fails to demarcate psychology from metaphysics, which latter he defines in what seems to me an erroneous manner. It is indeed possible that Dr. Stout’s view and mine may be really the same, but, if so, I cannot think that his view has been clearly formulated. Psychology, he says, investigates the history of the individual consciousness, and it is not concerned with validity or worth, but with existence, and with what appears to the individual mind. But I cannot see how that by itself is enough to divide it from metaphysics. The real question surely is as to how it is to study the history and processes of the individual mind. Is psychology limited to phenomenalism in the sense which I have given to that term, or may it go beyond this, and if so how far? Dr. Stout, it seems to me, fails altogether to answer this vital question.
I will briefly illustrate my meaning. I may wish, for instance, in studying the history of the individual mind, to ask fundamental questions about the relation of its plurality to its unity, and also to discuss the ultimate reality of its time-process. Is anything of this kind to be permitted in psychology? Or I may wish to maintain the doctrine that the history of the individual is in a sense explained by a fundamental underlying volition or conation. Are we as psychologists to debate this? One man again may propose to reduce all Association to Redintegration, and another may seek to stop him by arguing that really there is no identity in things but only resemblance. Is this plea to be admitted in psychology and discussed there, or, if not, on what ground? Now to reply that psychology is not concerned with the validity of cognitions would, it seems to me, be idle. If you mean by cognitions the cognitions of that individual consciousness, which we are studying, that surely would be irrelevant, for we are not, presume, supposing that this particular consciousness is entertaining these special cognitions about itself. But if on the other side you possibly meant that psychology is not to judge of truth at all, that would be obviously untrue, and certainly no one could maintain it. It is quite true that psychology has not to investigate the truth of the cognitions of the mind which it studies, as such, but I wholly fail to understand how, with this, we have divided it from metaphysics. But I should add that I probably have not understood what Dr. Stout means by metaphysics.
The vital question seems to be this: Does Dr. Stout mean to confine psychology to events and the laws of events? Does he mean to assert that, since psychology is not concerned with more than this, it is at liberty to use fictions, and that the question of truth is not to be raised in it except so far as truth means whatever serves best to explain the course of mere events? I cannot understand how it Is that, if Dr. Stout really holds these doctrines, he should not have expressed them more clearly. But if Dr. Stout does not hold them, what alternative does he offer? To me it remains unintelligible, and I must therefore persist in repeating that there is no alternative between accepting the view which I advocate and having in principle no boundary at all between psychology and metaphysics.
I will at once endeavour to explain this further by defending it briefly against a series of objections. I will not try to take these in a systematic order or to keep them wholly distinct, and I shall for the most part state them in my own way.
(i) It may be objected, first, that the soul really is one, and that on the view of phenomenalism it has no unity. To this I reply that it has all the unity which is wanted for our purpose. I do not indeed say that its continuity in time is unbroken, nor is there any need for me to say this; and again the history of the soul as a whole is of course not immediately experienced by it. But the soul has certainly an identity in quality which appears in the series and the nature of which can be studied.
1 The possibility of an entire defect in this I do not discuss. I do not myself care what answer psychology gives in this case to the question of unity and identity.
2 Under this head of relations will fall any piece of psychical duration, beyond what is immediately experienced, that psychology may have occasion to consider.
1 If we recognize native psychical dispositions, a point on which I wish to say and to imply nothing, these again will qualify the soul. They will be something, the real nature of which psychology does not discuss, but which it expresses as tendencies—statements as to what will happen under certain conditions. It is better to understand that these are not to be taken to exist before there is a beginning of actual psychical fact. Anything before this will be not a psychical but a physical disposition. It is, I should say, not convenient to assume a soul there, where there not only is (as we assume) nothing psychical now, but where that has not existed and may not be about to exist. The inconvenience is less in a case where we suppose a temporary but complete ‘suspension’ of psychical life. But even in this case, if any one insists that we have no right in psychology, during such a suspension, to speak of an actual psychical disposition, I cannot say he is wrong. At any rate, if we do this, we should not forget that we are making use of a certain licence.
I will try to put the same thing in a different way. In
1 I think that it is perhaps best to call this thing the soul, but I have no objection to the use of ‘subject’ or even of ‘self’ so long as it is clearly understood that you are not at once from these terms to draw certain conclusions, which I think quite false, about ‘object’ or ‘not-self’. Another kind of mistake would be to refuse to recognize any psychical subject other than the body.
(iii) ‘But in the experienced’, it may be said, ‘there is more than events, for there are ideas and judgements about objects, and these surely are not events.’ But we must, I answer, here distinguish. To say that ideas and judgements do not happen at a certain time, and that in this sense they fail to be occurrences, seems clearly contrary to fact. And again it would surely be once more contrary to fact to say that, when they happen (since they do happen), they are not also felt to happen in the soul and are not experienced as my states. But so far clearly they are events. The reality to which the ideal content is referred, that ideal content and its reference—everything in short is present in my feeling. Everything is thus so far an event which has a place in my history and is predicable of me. That which is not so predicable is the mere connexion of the ideal content with the reality, so far as that connexion is taken by itself, and so far as abstraction
1 If I speculate psychologically about myself, it may be said in this case that psychology is concerned with my judgement in every sense, both as it exists and as it is true or false. Certainly this is so, but this once more would be irrelevant. Psychology is indeed interested here in the truth or falsehood of my judgement, as well as in its personal history and existence. But, so far as concerned here with truth, psychology is concerned with it not as as mine, but abstracts wholly from that side of it. And the truth therefore will so far not be a fact on object to psychology at all, but part of its any impersonal attitude towards its object and part of its own way of dealing with that.
A truth, we may say, is no truth at all unless it happens in a soul and is thus an event which appears in time. As it there exists, and as by existing there it influences the future history of that soul, it is a matter for psychology, and for the psychology that confines itself strictly to phenomenalism. But as anything less than this or anything more than this it does not fall within psychology, that is, if there are to be any limits set to psychology at all.
‘But’, it may be further said, ‘let us take such a case as the following: A mind may make the Deity its object and may so, as we say, be “converted”. Now the Deity is not an event, and is not so thought of, and does not in that character influence the mind. But yet this influence, whatever else it may be, is clearly psychological, and at the same time falls outside your psychology.’ But no, I reply, this is once more nothing but misunderstanding and confusion. The Deity is not a mere event of course, and of course the Deity is really present in the mind that makes
(iv) But a further objection has been made that there may be ‘an unanalysable element in every psychical event’, and yet that this is not an event. I must confess that I do not know what this objection means. It seems obvious that any aspect of any event will itself happen in time and will occupy time, and will thus itself, whenever it happens, be an event, however identical and however unanalysable it may remain, and whatever may be its duration. And, as I have replied elsewhere, ‘changes in the intensity of the element would of course be events, as would be also the changes in the relation of that element to others’ (E., xii. 205, note 2). And without attempting further to understand I must leave the matter thus. If this ‘element’ comes into the experienced at all it is certainly an event; but, if it is not in this sense an event or a phenomenal relation between events or a law of events, then it has no place within psychology. Let us pass on to a new objection.
(v) ‘On your understanding of it,’ it will be said, ‘psychology is not true. We want to know the real truth about the soul, and we do not want to be put off with a set. of events which are abstractions and laws which in part are fictions.’ Well then, I answer, by all means betake the
(vi) ‘But psychology cannot’, I may be told, ‘be a separate science, because these sciences each study separate compartments in the nature of things. On the other hand psychology has no such compartment, since there is nothing which falls outside the mind, and psychology therefore is not and cannot be a limited science.’ Now what conclusion really should follow from the premise, if that were true, I will not discuss, for the whole premise in my opinion is radically false. A limited science is not in principle made what it is by having a compartment to itself, but by studying whatever it studies with a limited end and in a limited way. If you ask for instance unconditionally what are matter and force, that is a question for metaphysics. It becomes a question for physics if you ask what they are for certain limited purpose and in a certain limited sense. And exactly the same thing in principle holds with the science of mind. If you ask about the soul unconditionally, what is the truth about its nature, the inquiry is metaphysical. But if, on the other hand, you confine yourself to a limited kind of question about the soul, that limitation keeps you within empirical psychology and is the boundary of your science. And this in principle seems as clear as it is evident and visible in practice. It is evident in
(vii) I will consider next a further objection, which possibly may be raised, in order in my reply to it to define my position more clearly. ‘We admit’, it may be said, ‘your contention as to the object and scope of psychology. Its object, we agree, is to study the mere course of psychical events as such. It has to observe facts and to classify them, and then to seek to explain them—to explain, that is, not their ultimate nature, but their origin and the course which they take. It has to find, so far as is possible, the reason why they happen as they happen, and not the truth as to what they are. It seeks to discover the reason why we find this one rather than that one, and it does not study the real nature of all or of any, but only their nature so far as they qualify the history of the soul. But,’ it may be added, ‘agreeing with you so far, we are then driven to dissent very widely, for we think that more than mere phenomenal laws of happening is admissible, and is necessary for explanation, and we do not see on what principle you should object to more if it works.’ Now, I reply, if this were said, and if this really were meant, I should be satisfied on the whole, because I think that the issue once raised in this way must be decided in favour of the cause which I adopt. But I will venture to add a few words in order to make the issue still clearer. If the end and scope of psychological explanation is defined as above, I do not object to anything that is offered, so long as and so far as it works, and so long as it is offered merely as something which works. But I must insist that nothing does work except so far as and so long as you use it as a mere law of happening. And hence I object to your ‘more’ because it is most certainly useless and almost certainly hurtful. Even if you had the absolute truth about the soul you could not for our purpose, so far as I see, use it as the
The question of ‘dispositions’ will furnish, I think, a good illustration of my meaning. A disposition, I should say, in psychology is a mere way of stating that when somethings have happened, there will be a ‘tendency’ for other things to happen—we may expect them to happen, that is, under favourable conditions—and, so far as these tendencies are reduced to rule, they are used properly to explain the occurrence of particular facts. On the other hand, a psychologist may think that he knows what a disposition really is, and may be prepared with a more or less elaborate theory of its nature. Or again, without asserting knowledge, he may propose to use an avowed fiction. In either of these cases the test to be applied is the same. So far as the ‘real truth’ or the fiction serves as a law to explain the phenomenal sequence, it is admissible within psychology, and beyond that it is illegitimate.
1 This attitude of avowed ignorance would of course by some psychologists be considered improper. Professor Ward (Psychology, p. 48), for instance, appears to assume it as self-evident that a disposition is an actual mental state, into the nature of which as psychologists we are bound to inquire. The account which he himself seems to give of it I have never found to be really intelligible. Mr. Stout (Analytic Psychology, i. 24-6) has criticized this account, but I could not say whether he has understood it rightly or not.
2 A conation, that is, which is not actually experienced. To reduce a disposition to an actually experienced conation would of course, if practicable, be perfectly legitimate.
Now if and so far as by this identification we can better bring the particular facts under their laws of happening, the use of conation would be an explanation and would therefore
You can only explain events, I would repeat, by the laws of their happening, and it does not matter for your purpose, so long as these laws work, whether they possess ultimate truth or are more or less fictitious and false. And anything other than these laws is useless at best, and therefore probably mischievous. And if the object and scope of psychology could be agreed on, and could be limited explicitly to the mere study and explanation of phenomena, I believe the rest of this conclusion would be readily evident. What in short we want in psychology are explanations that truly explain, and above all things we do not want true explanations.
1 I was glad to see that Wundt, in the fourth edition of his Physiologische Psychologie, ii. 283-4, appears to state definitely that his ‘Apperception’ is to be understood in psychology merely as the name of a class of psychical phenomena with its laws of happening. How far, so understood, Wundt’s doctrine is tenable, and how far again his practice has been wholly consistent with his present statement, are questions I do not discuss.
I have now tried to state in general what is to be understood by phenomenalism in psychology, and I have replied to certain objections as they have been made or as they have occurred to me. But there remain two other objections, more or less connected, which I will now proceed to notice. These objections are directed against a false view of phenomenalism, and themselves seem based on a radical misunderstanding of that term. They in fact rest in great part on doctrines which I should regard as wholly indefensible. These objections may be stated as follows: ‘You have taken’, it will be said, ‘no account of a fundamental difficulty. In the first place mere phenomena are quite discrete and lack all continuity: and in the second
1. On the mere discreteness of phenomena I need say very little, since truer views seem now steadily making their way. What is immediately experienced is not a collection of pellets or a ‘cluster’, as it used to be called, of things like grapes, together with other things called relations that serve as a kind of stalk to the cluster. On the contrary, what at any time is experienced is a whole with certain aspects which can be distinguished but, as so distinguished, are abstractions. Now each of these wholes is an event, and each of its aspects is an event, but that does not make them discrete. Every whole and its aspects as experienced has a certain duration and so some continuity in time, and it has some qualitative identity through different times actual and possible. And the duration that is experienced at one time is continuous with that which is experienced after it and before it. For, without our entering on any difficulties here as to the outward limitation of the experienced,
1 I refer here to the difficulty of drawing a line at which it ceases. The immediately experienced of course has limits, and it has very narrow ones. It is the same as the ‘present’ in the sense of what is directly felt in any one ‘now’. To confuse this with the ‘present’ which is formed by any ideal content, so long as that is taken to endure unbroken, would be a very serious error. Cf. here Appearance and Reality 463-6 = 523-6.
And if they were merely discrete in and by themselves, then on the other side I would urge that the disease could have no possible remedy. The idea of a self or Ego joining together from the outside the atomic elements, and fastening them together in some miraculous way not involved in their own nature, is quite indefensible. It would be the addition of one more discrete to the former chaos of discretes, and it would still leave them all discrete. The idea of anything being made wholly from the outside into something else, whether by an Ego or by God Almighty, seems in short utterly irrational.
2. And as phenomena are not discrete, so phenomena are certainly not all objects.
1 If ‘object’ were understood in abstraction as mere object, then we may say that in strictness no psychical phenomenon would be an object. But the point need not be considered here. If I am asked what we are to call the experienced so far as it is not the object of a perception or cognition, I should say that the words ‘feeling’ and ‘to feel’ are obviously suggested. If we take the words in this sense we follow both the common usage and the literary associations of the English language. We violate both of these if we try to confine feeling to mere pleasure or pain, and a violation of this kind in the end must produce confusion. I think it was certainly ill-judged when instead of ‘feeling’ I used ‘presentation’ (Collected Essays xii), for that term tends, I presume, to suggest the presentation of an object. In fact, in Mind [o.s. xii. 564-75, ‘Mr F. H. Bradley’s Analysis of Mind,’ by James Ward] a laboured criticism of many pages was produced mainly to show that, presentation being so understood, what I had written was something like nonsense. If, on that understanding, it had not been nonsense, this would have been certainly something like a miracle, and certainly nothing to my credit. But in the present unsettled state of our terminology to assume of any writer that he uses words in the sense which we think the proper one seems likely to lead to waste of time.
So understood it becomes a gross error which, if not now in
We have (according to this view) on one side the experienced, and that, if for the moment we disregard pleasure and pain, consists in the perceived, in objects given to and before the self. This forms the whole content of the experienced. The experienced in short is but one aspect of experience, and the other aspect consists in the activity of the self. This activity is itself not perceived and does not itself enter into the experienced content, and is not and cannot itself be made into an object. But beside these two sides of experience, one experienced and the other not experienced, we have also feeling in the sense of pleasure and pain. The position of this is to my mind so obscure that I cannot venture to state it. It is not an object, and cannot possibly be made into an object, it cannot be remembered, nor can we have an idea of it. Whether we are to say that it is not experienced I, however, do not know and must leave uncertain. Now this whole view, or any view which is like it, I venture to consider quite untenable and even absurd. Far from thinking the worse of genuine phenomenalism because it conflicts with such a view, I regard that conflict as a sign of truth and as a point in favour of phenomenalism.
The view (i) in the first place is in my judgement contrary to plain fact, and (ii) in the second place it refuses wholly in the end to work, (i) The position of our original awareness of pleasure and pain, for we somehow are aware of them, is to me so lost in obscurity that I can but point to it and pass on. But, when I am told that I cannot make
1 There are some remarks on the question of ideas of pleasure and pain at the end of this paper.
2 For some further remarks I may refer the reader to Mind N.S. ii, No. 6 [TR., 192-8].
1 I was taught early that there was a most important test to be applied to every doctrine. Supposing a doctrine true, is the fact of its truth consistent with the fact that I know it to be true? This test I have always found, whether in metaphysics or in psychology, to be one which should never be neglected, and I do not hesitate to urge that in these studies its importance is really vital. On the other hand I readily admit that I am not competent to give any opinion as to what is to hold good within ‘Epistemology’.
I would venture to illustrate the above by a reference to a late work by Professor Andrew Seth. In his interesting volume, Man’s Place in the Cosmos, Professor Seth takes up a position against phenomenalism in psychology, and I should like to point out that in that position he finds it impossible to maintain himself. The phenomenalism which he criticizes appears to involve the view that phenomena are all objects or perceptions. Now this view Professor Seth himself appears to endorse, and he does not seem to find it, so far as it goes, in the least mistaken. In fact I understand him to insist himself that all the content
But the second part of the article becomes to me very interesting and instructive. In this Professor Seth is concerned with the positive knowledge which we have of our own activity, and the conclusion at which he arrives seems to me to introduce a wholly different principle. Feeling becomes now for him no longer mere pleasure or pain, but it is the immediate awareness on the part of the self of its own being and activity. And this view of feeling, so far as I can judge, is in radical discrepancy with the first view, or at least would be so if its meaning and its bearings were developed. For this deliverance of feeling now surely cannot be denied to be matter which is experienced. You can surely no longer refuse to reply when you are asked as to the nature of its ‘what’; and when inquiries are raised as to the variety of aspects within its content, you can hardly treat them as unmeaning. In short, the identification of content with the ‘object’ side of experience seems to have been tacitly given up, and with the abandonment of that prejudice the way has been cleared for quite another kind of doctrine. But I do not understand how Professor Seth himself fails to perceive that he has here two different views as to feeling, and that, if he accepts the second of these, he can no longer make use of the first.
1 I do not know on what view of feeling Professor Seth stands in that portion of his instructive review of my book in which he touches on the subject (pp. 168, 213). I should like to say once more here that the essence of the view which I adopt—whether that is right or wrong—is that feeling does give us a positive manifold content.
And I will
1 ‘With the elimination of real causality from the course of things’, Professor Seth remarks, ‘the world is emptied of real meaning’ (p. 125). But, without raising here any discussion as to the sense in which causality is to be taken, I should like to emphasize a question which Professor Seth, it seems to me, too much ignores. If you eliminate something, as he seems only too ready to do, from the experienced world, have you not in fact banished it from the world altogether? Is there in short any other world in which it could exist?
Since the above was written I have had the advantage of consulting Dr. Mellone’s Philosophical Criticism, but I cannot see that his position is really in advance of that taken by Professor Seth. It appears to me that what is true and what is false are still left standing side by side. But why the true view is not from the first laid down and without scruple worked out, while the false view is thrown aside, I am quite unable to understand. But Dr. Mellone, I trust, will do this some day.
It is only for a false view, then, that phenomena consist merely of objects. The experienced contains in itself very much more than these. And it is the whole content of the experienced which, when regarded in a certain way, becomes a coexistence and succession of events and forms the subject-matter of empirical psychology.
I should like to append to this paper some remarks on a point which I have noticed already, the question, that is, as to whether there are ideas of pleasure and pain. And, since a separate question may be raised about pain, it is better for us here to confine our attention to pleasure. My object in what follows is not to attempt in passing the full discussion of a large subject, but to mention some difficulties which, so far as I have observed, have not been properly recognized. I shall say no more here on the strange paradox that I cannot attend to a pleasure; and the general doctrine that Association holds only between ‘objects’ I of course do not accept. I follow here the more
This view considers that we have ideas only of that which was pleasant, but that its pleasantness is in no sense recalled in idea. The mutilated residue which actually is recalled may create a fresh reaction of pleasure or not, according to the conditions now present. And as the residue provokes or does not provoke this reaction, it becomes or does not become what we commonly call an idea of pleasure.
1 I may perhaps be allowed to mention that the reader will find this view stated in my Principles of Logic, 442-4 = 408-10.
2 I do not think that it is ‘almost impossible’ to produce a conclusive instance of ‘purely affective memory’ (Ribot, Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 170). It seems to me that from the nature of the case such a thing could not exist. The required abstraction cannot be made, and hence any proof or disproof of this kind seems out of the question. The issue must be decided in one way or the other according as one view or the other is found in the end to strain the facts more or less, when all the facts are considered.
(1) The memory and thought of a past pleasure may in fact now on the whole be pleasant or be indifferent or be painful, while it yet may remain in each case the actual and positive idea of a past pleasure.
1 I am forced to dissent from much in the following passage from Dr. Stout with regard to association in the case of pleasure and pain. ‘In order to see that the law of contiguity does not apply to pleasure-pain as it applies to presentations, we have only to Recall some very common experiences. The sight of food awakens pleasure before eating; but after we have eaten to satiety it gives rise only to indifference or disgust. This is inexplicable by the law of contiguity. If the pleasure of eating became associated with the sight of food by repetition, it ought easily to be revived whenever we concentrate attention on a well-furnished dinner-table. The pleasure depends on the satisfaction of an appetite, and when the appetite has disappeared it disappears also, and cannot be revived by mere association’ (Analytic Psychology, i. 271-2). On this I would remark first that the facts are not quite as Dr. Stout has described them, and in particular I would call attention to one point among others which he has here ignored. In the clear absence of appetite or in the clear presence also even of disgust, I still may remember that I was pleased. And an apparent fact of this kind is surely something to be reckoned with. And in the second place Dr. Stout’s remarks seem to rest on the assumption that, wherever there is an association of which one member is present, the associated element must under all conditions come up, and perhaps even come up easily. But does Dr. Stout himself really accept this principle? His argument, if I understand it rightly, would prove of the ideas say of mastication and deglutition, or say again the idea of vomiting, that, unless these always are aroused by the sight of some food, they cannot be associated with it at all, but in every possible case, where they arise, are fresh and further resultants. But is not, I would ask, such a principle false, and does not the application of it bring us into collision with fact?
Dr. Stout’s general view as to pleasure and pain is, I think, on the whole stated admirably, and it is perhaps in consequence of this that he is driven at times into a fatal impasse, and, as it seems to me, tries to extricate himself by arguments that will not bear examination. In illustration of what I must be allowed to call the paradox that all pleasure involves conation, he adduces the fact that if a cat is resting comfortably, it resists interference (ii. 304-5). But this seems precisely the old fallacy about pleasure and activity which I once before tried to refute (E. xiv. 264) in the form in which it was offered by Dr. Bain. You surely cannot, because under altered conditions a thing becomes this or that, treat it as actually being so now and without those conditions, except of course by a licence. And it is, I would venture to add, one thing to postulate, on what rightly or wrongly seems sufficient evidence, the existence of conation everywhere where we find pleasure, and quite another thing to undertake actually to verify the presence of this conation everywhere in fact. But on this point I may probably have failed to interpret Dr. Stout rightly.
If indeed we consider
1 There is a difficulty here, I admit, which attaches itself also to the view which I think the true one. In order to have an idea of pleasure I consider that we must to some extent have an actual pleasure, for I accept it as a principle that to some extent an idea must be what it means. But on the view which I adopt we have here an associative bond to unite specially the two elements, in addition to whatever original union there may be apart from that bond. And I consider this to be a very great advantage on my side.
An interesting but very difficult question arises here as to our perception of the different strengths of pleasure and pain. We indubitably in fact do perceive these degrees, and we at least seem to have ideas of them. In fact I should say that we can without doubt actually have a strong idea of a weak pleasure or a weak idea of a strong pleasure. A question, however, must be raised as to whether we can perceive different strengths of pleasure as such. It is necessary, I think, to say that we can even do this. I do not of course mean that we can have a ‘more’ of pleasure without a ‘more’ of what is pleasant, but that we can, beside a ‘more’ of what is pleasant, actually have a moreness of and in pleasure. If we follow the facts we must, I think, suppose a scale of degrees in pleasure as such, a scale which can be attended to and made into an idea. On this ground again the paradox that we cannot attend to or have an idea of pleasure would seem not easy to maintain.
(2) The next question I should like to raise is a difficulty about the requisite lapse of time. In ideas of the
In asserting the law of Association to hold of pleasure we must of course remember that, unless there are distinctions in pleasure of such a kind and to such an extent as most certainly seem wanting, the connexion cannot be taken to hold from the mere aspect of pleasantness to this or that pleasant thing in distinction from other things. The bond will hold from the side of pleasure but generically. On the other side, however, from the thing to the pleasure, the special association will hold. But such a one-sided arrangement does not seem to me to be really exceptional or to create any real difficulty.
These points which I have mentioned may perhaps have been discussed satisfactorily and may very well, I admit, have been so discussed without my knowing it. But if this is not so, I venture to think that we have difficulties here of which some serious account should be taken.
Chapter XXIII. Some Remarks on Conation
Mind, N.S. x, No. 40, 437-54. October 1901.
{Conation is the mental faculty of purpose, desire, or will to perform an action; volition.}
In the following paper I intend to remark on certain aspects of conation. I hope to supplement it with others which will discuss some further questions about volition and desire. But I cannot even in the end attempt to treat these subjects completely, and in these pages especially my object is very limited. I find myself with a view more or less definite about desire and conation, a view which in the main I accepted long ago, and which I have seen no good reason to abandon. I find on the other hand certain doctrines taught by some writers whom I sincerely respect, doctrines which at least appear to be incompatible with that view which I have adopted. And I am confident that none of us has ideas so absurd that, when understood, they should have no truth. Hence I am going to set down about conation some things which to myself appear to be true, in the hope that some one will explain how and why to him they are not true, or how being true there is perhaps no one who in the end holds views in collision with them.
The main contention of this paper is that conation is something which we experience, that it is complex and has in itself some inseparable aspects which therefore are experienced, that apart from these experienced aspects conation has lost its true meaning, and that the use of it in another meaning, if not illegitimate, is in psychology at least dangerous. Certainly I do not deny that there is experience below the level of conation proper. And I do not deny that this experience has features which survive at a higher level, though in part more or less transformed there, and that these features go to constitute that which we call conation. An inquiry into the nature and limits of such a lower experience would in its own place be
Confining ourselves then to conation where it exists at its proper level, we discover there in every case some inseparable characters. These essential features are the aspect of a ‘not-myself’ and of a ‘myself’ hindered by this, together with an idea of a change containing the removal of the hindrance, an idea with which the ‘myself’ feels itself one. And all these aspects must be experienced at once if conation is to exist. The appeal is of course made to the experience of the reader, and it would, I think, be useless to attempt a long exposition.
The first question is whether we can experience conation at all. I am not concerned here to define conation accurately and to ask whether, for example, we could properly apply the term to all desire. But taking conation here as a general head under which fall desire, striving, and impulse, our question would seem to admit of but one answer. When I strive or desire I certainly can feel and be aware more or less distinctly that I am striving or desiring. This seems plain, and no one, I believe, could deny it except perhaps in the interest of some theory, nor indeed do I see how to make it plainer. Whether we may ever use conation as the name or some state of which I am not at all aware as conation, is of course another point to which I shall return. But for the present I shall assume that conation can be experienced as such, and it is about this conation of which we are aware that I am at present
When I am conscious of striving, there is an existence, a ‘not-myself’, to be altered, and I find that I am aware of this existence. The point is to me so clear that I cannot try to make it clearer. But the objection may come that what I strive to change may at times be my own self, and therefore that this existence cannot properly be called a not-self. I however reply that whatever is felt as an existence opposed to the self is for this purpose a not-self, and that in conation such an opposition is always experienced. And, as I shall come back to this point, I will at present deal with it no further. But in conation I am not only aware of a not-self, but I am aware of it also as something to be changed. In conation I therefore must possess and use an idea of the change. I have in other words an end, however vague, and I have it also in my knowledge; and if so, I must have an idea of a ‘to be’, and without this idea there is no conation. This second point once again seems to me almost too clear for exposition, but it is necessary here to guard against two fatal misunderstandings.
(i) It will be objected first that we may have conation, and may even experience conation, without any idea of an end. There are impulses (it will be said) instinctive and acquired which are indeed directed on an object and directed to an end, and yet in these no idea of the end need be present to the mind. And there are again the facts of felt need and dim desire where want and impulse are experienced, but where we certainly do not know the goal in which we seek satisfaction. Now (it will be urged) there may fairly be a difference of opinion here as to what and how much we in each case experience, but in some of these cases at least it is clear that we have no idea of an end, and on the other hand it is equally clear that conation is present. And the existence of blind conation, it will thus be said, cannot possibly be denied. But in answer to this objection I must insist that if there is a conation it is not wholly blind, and that where we have real blindness we have something which is not really a conation.
1 I would once more here remind the reader that I cannot in this article attempt to explain how much of conation in the proper sense can exist outside conation. My object here is merely to insist on certain features without which there is really no conation.
2 I am not attempting in this article to show where conation is and is not experienced as such. I will only say here that there are assertions about the omnipresence of this experience which I am quite unable to reconcile with fact. Cp. E., xiv. 260.
Be sure that
(ii) ‘But’, it may be said, ‘there remains a difficulty about the idea. If we admit that conation cannot be experienced without an awareness of something “to be”, yet in many cases where really this genuine feeling exists you cannot show an idea. We may for instance have a perceived thing and a desire for that thing, and may yet have no image at all.’ This objection, however, would rest on a common prejudice about the nature of ideas.
1 I am here taking no account of those who, while more or less assenting to the substance of what is urged in the text, would nevertheless wish to confine the use of the word ‘idea’. This is a difference merely with regard to terminology. It seems to me all-important to extend the application of the term ‘idea’ and to keep any restricted use under the general head. I am, however, far from denying the value of distinction here.
It is
If our wants could be satisfied at once as they arose, should we know what appetite means? I do not discuss this question, but I think it turns on what we mean by ‘at once’.
The perceived existence there is qualified in a way incompatible with itself, and yet it cannot simply accept this new qualification and so cease to exist as at first perceived. On the contrary it persists as before, and yet is modified also in an incompatible manner. And in the awareness of this qualification of the perceived fact, a qualification discordant with the perceived fact, we gain our first experience of the nature of an idea. An obvious instance is a perceived fruit which I cannot reach, while yet I feel it, as we say, in my hands or in my mouth. The fruit itself is qualified here at once actually and ideally. The ideal qualification does not or need not consist in separated images, and yet it is an idea and is the end which is desired by me. If I may be allowed
It is by this principle that we can distinguish between appetite and the mere feeling of need or want. In the last phrase I must be permitted once more to remark on the fatal ambiguity of the word ‘of’.
1 M., o.s. xiii, 23 [E. xiv. 269]. I would refer the reader further to the context of this passage, and again to my Appearance, 547 = 606. It is possible to object to the presence everywhere of an idea in conation and will on the ground that, if this were so, we could not will to have an idea without already possessing it. But the objection is met by insisting in these cases on the genuine presence of an idea of the idea. I have referred to this point on p. 270 of the above article, and had previously discussed it, M., o.s. vi. 313 and 319 [E.,. x. 190 and 197].
2 Cp. E., x. 197.
How, it may be asked, can this hindered self be experienced unless it is experienced as something concrete, and how can it be anything concrete when, as we saw, the self can even oppose itself in desire to its self? Where the self is experienced as a concrete hindrance, how can we also there have a concrete experience of the self as hindered? But the self, I reply, never can make an object of its whole self at once. It can at any one time so attend only to certain elements of its content. These are distinguished from it and so being distinguished make a not-self, but the whole of feeling from which they are distinguished remains and still is felt. This whole is concrete, and only because this concrete substance is actually experienced is it possible ever to experience a self or a not-self at all. I at least do not know what is meant by the experience of an object or a not-self, unless the self is also at the same time experienced inseparably with it.
1 I do not mean that the self must be experienced at the same level, that, e.g., as against a perception the self must be perceived. This would be a very serious error.
And I do not know what is meant by such an experience of the self, unless that self is something concrete and is so actually experienced. The same remark applies to our state when we merely perceive an object as given to us. Unless the ‘us’, the self, is here experienced as a concrete content, I cannot myself imagine
1 Usually and, perhaps it might be contended, even normally, the self to some extent does thus enter in. I have an idea of myself for instance as already touching or eating the fruit which I desire. The more prevalent doctrine, I believe, is that in desire this must always be the case. I am not, however, able to accept this view as correct (see E., xiv. 267). I hope in a future article on volition to return to this matter.
‘But’, it may be further objected, ‘my self is something which goes beyond the moment. It is the unity of my life, and how can this be felt as the mere content of one experience? It is more than one single experience and therefore it cannot really be felt within one.’ But it seems possible, I reply, so to feel it when a man stakes here and now his entire being on the accomplishment of some end. And the whole objection seems in fact to rest on a misunderstanding. Certainly it is desirable to ask about the real nature of that self which goes beyond the moment, and to inquire how far and in what sense it is identical, and is felt to be identical, with that which at one time is experienced. But this task, necessary in its own place, is here not necessary, and, however important these questions are, I may pass them by. For my contention was that in conation the self in fact is experienced against a not-self, and by urging that the self is more than this experience and goes beyond it, you obviously do not disprove that contention. You do not disprove it unless you are prepared
‘But’, I may further be asked, ‘may we not have an outbreak from some tendency in the subject or self, and may not this outbreak produce a characteristic experience? May it not be directed to a certain end, and yet, as experienced, not contain the element of a hindered self?’ Yes, I should reply, in the main I agree that this contention is sound. But, on the other hand, I must urge that it is irrelevant and a mere return to the confusion which I have already pointed out. Such an experience is not a conation for the self which feels it. It is not experienced as a conation, and therefore it is not properly a conation at all. For, I would repeat, it is conation as experienced which at present is in question.
We have seen that in conation or desire we have the aspects of not-self and self and an idea of a ‘to be’. I wish now to insist that all these aspects must be experienced together and must be felt as one whole, and that, failing this, the experience of conation is destroyed. I have not to ask here if any felt state can precede and can be experienced without any consciousness of a not-self or self, nor have I to ask whether the practical attitude is prior to the theoretical attitude, if indeed either is prior. Such questions, however important, may here be disregarded. I am urging that as soon as conation is experienced, whenever that is, it must contain certain features and must also be felt as one whole. Now ‘feeling’ I use for experience, or if you will for knowledge, so far as that experience or knowledge does not imply an object, and I should myself give as a very obvious instance a simple pain or pleasure, or again those elements of our Cœnaesthesia {Cœnaesthesia, or cenesthesia, (psychology) the aggregate of impressions arising from organic sensations that forms the basis of one’s awareness of body or bodily state, as the feeling of health, vigor, or lethargy.} to which we do not attend.
I am myself averse to the use of the term
1 A difficulty is caused here by the ambiguity of the term ‘knowledge’. This is used on the one hand as equivalent to ‘experience’ or at least to ‘familiarity’ in the widest sense of these terms, and on the other hand it is restricted to a theoretic state and to what may be called the cognition of an object. I cannot of course ask here in what cognition consists, and whether beside an object it does not also involve an idea and judgement. But, passing this by, we may say that knowledge is used either in a very broad sense for experience or in a narrower sense as limited to knowledge of or about an object. And hence on the one hand it sounds absurd to say that we do not know pleasure and pain or conation, and it sounds absurd again to speak of these states as being states of knowledge. The fact is that we naturally pass from the state in which we merely, for instance, feel a pleasure or pain to the state in which we feel it and also make it an object. The view that we cannot make an object of a pleasure or pain, I may remark in passing, is to my mind quite indefensible. Hence, because I can and do make these things into objects (as indeed I am able to do in the end with everything), and because there is a natural tendency to confuse our state when we do this with our state when we merely feel, it sounds absurd to deny knowledge in the case of an experience of pleasure or pain. But when we speak strictly I think it is better to deny, and, when we realize what we mean, the absurdity disappears.
But everything that in any sense whatever we know or experience must, so far as it enters into our experience, be felt as ours. The most abstract thought, for instance, of the most remote thing must also and as well, while I have it, be an element in my felt self. The thing is not a mere feeling of course, and, so far as you regard its content as referred to a subject (so far, that is, as it is thought of and is taken as a thing), it is so far not a feeling at all. For you have got it now as abstracted from that immediate whole into which, taken otherwise, it enters, and enters as a mere feature. And an experience or knowledge of any kind which is not thus felt as now and mine, is in my opinion a mere illusion. Everything, we may put it so,
1 I do not discuss this last point here. It will be taken up in other articles. It is a matter which in one sense I agree is inexplicable, but at the same time I may hope to convey to the reader my meaning with regard to it. This may be done, perhaps, briefly in the following way. We And in conation both the theoretical and the practical relation of self to an object. And for the purpose of this article we may take these relations as existing and as really inseparable, and we need raise no question either as to any priority between them or as to anything that may have preceded one or both. But while taking them here as really inseparable, let us by an abstraction separate and consider first the theoretical relation by itself. In this experience there is an object for me, let us say a fruit. This object is in the first place (a) felt as mine, as an element, that is, in my whole felt state, and it is also in the second place (b) felt as something other than myself. And my self, so far, it will be understood, is not an object at all. Let us now, however, add and restore to our abstraction the practical relation and let us note the difference. There will be here also an idea, let us say of eating the fruit. This idea is itself an object beside and against the first object, or more correctly, perhaps, we may be said to have a new complex object containing both. Now the idea, being an object, is like the first object felt (a) as an element in my whole state, and (b) again, like the first object, it is felt as a something not myself. But the idea is also (c) as against the first object felt as mine and one with me. My self feels that this idea (which, so far as it is an object, is an other) is in its opposition to the first object not an other to myself. On the contrary, the idea is felt as the expression of my self against the first object, which is now in two senses something alien to me. If the reader will consider this brief statement with attention, he will I hope realize the meaning of that special sense in which in conation the idea is felt as one with myself. I will add that even in the practical relation I do not myself consider that the self necessarily enters into the content of the idea and so becomes an object to itself. This is, however, a point to be discussed in a future article.
These several aspects are all felt, and they are each not felt as separate but together in connexion with one another as
1 So far as the conation remains a conation, it still must be felt as such. So far as it is made a mere object it is not a conation, and the making it an object may under some conditions destroy it. To make an object of a conation may even be said, if this is taken in the abstract, to tend to destroy it. But, the conditions being complex, the result will of course always vary with them, and the general effect may be to intensify the conation. I cannot, however, discuss this subject here.
We have seen that conation is experienced and has a complex content, and we have noticed the elements of that complex. We have further seen that conation must be felt as one, as a single whole with certain aspects, all of which must be experienced if conation proper is to exist. And I would recommend this result not as a theory but as a fact to be observed by the reader, and I am even confident that, if the reader will observe disinterestedly the thing for himself, he will find it to be very much as I have described it. He may consider that what I have set down has been more or less mal-observed and misinterpreted, but I think that in the main perhaps he will agree about the facts, if, that is, he does not come to the work with a theory to save. And since the result which I have stated is on the whole not mine and is far from being novel, it seems to me strange that some psychologists should treat this result, altogether or in part, as being something unknown or non-existent. And yet the outcome of a failure to notice such an apparent fact as we have described, and the outcome of a further insistence perhaps, on the part of some, that the self itself is not experienced at all, and itself does not enter as an element into the content of the known—seems not satisfactory. Any such doctrine seems not only in itself contrary to fact, but in its working also it appears to break down. For in the end no one, even to save a theory, can
1 In much, of the above I am once more urging what I had to urge long ago in my Ethical Studies. I have always, I hope, been at bottom faithful to that cardinal truth which I was so fortunate as to learn early—the truth that what matters is the self that is experienced, and that there is nothing else whatever which matters. Between a self outside the experienced and no self at all there is in the end really no difference.
We have seen that conation, if experienced, must possess certain aspects, and that apart from these it is not experienced conation. And taking this as shown, I will go on to deal shortly with a further point. Why, it may be asked, even if conation is not in fact experienced except as you contend, should we not for some purposes employ the term when taken otherwise? Now if this question is asked with respect to metaphysics I wish to say nothing here. And if the question were asked with regard to some branch of natural science I should not venture to say anything, because all that I could say would be that whatever ideas, however fictitious, best work there I believe to be best and right. But if the same question is raised about psychology I may answer briefly as follows. If you take a term like conation which stands for an experienced fact, and apply it to something else which is not so experienced, you clearly so far are making use of a fiction. (I am not objecting to the general employment of fictions in psychology. On the contrary I think them necessary, and justifiable so far as they are useful and not injurious.) And about this fiction we must ask a twofold question which is vital. Is it in itself a good way in which to explain some psychical facts, and does it when so used entail mischievous consequences? Now I would not deny that this fiction can
1 I find it hard to believe that a writer clear as Dr. Stout usually is distinguishes always between an experienced conation and what he would call a ‘quasi-conative tendency’. I venture to think that he is himself at times thus led into ambiguity. We may agree to his statement (Manual, II. viii, §§ 5, 6) that ‘a pleasing process is a process which tends to maintain itself’. But when we hear that ‘it will not be denied that there is at least an unconscious tendency to continue a pleasing experience until we have had enough of it’, we may be forced to protest. It is far from certain that these two propositions are the same. I should myself agree to the first, though as to its meaning there is much to be said (Collected Essays, 14). But I must deny the second until at least I have been told what it does and does not involve. I cannot admit the assertion that pleasure is always the result of a satisfied conation, or even that it always implies a conation—if, that is, conation stands for what we experience as such, or even for an unconscious striving of our whole nature. But if on the other hand the unconscious conation is that of a mere element in our selves, Dr. Stout’s language concerning it would hardly be defensible. If in short conation is used for an unconscious tendency, I think ambiguity will most probably follow.
If then we admit that the feat, if actually performed, may in some ways be useful, on the other hand the attempt to perform it on the part of your readers and yourself would probably result
It may naturally be asked whether the objection, which I have raised to the use of ‘conation’ in any sense other than that of experienced conation, applies equally in the case of a term like ‘activity’. Is this term to be confined in psychology to the activity which is apprehended? I have long ago stated that in my opinion it need not be so confined.
1 See E., xii. 225-7, and E., xiv. 281-3. 1 have also more recently touched on this distinction in A.R., 545 = 604. I was led to speak there of ‘the question. What is the content of activity as it appears to the soul at first, in distinction from it as it is for an outside observer, or for the soul later on?’ I observe that in making an extract from this passage for a controversial purpose Professor Ward (Naturalism, ii, p. 244) has made his extract end before and short of the words I have now italicized, and has thus himself actually caused the passage to ignore a distinction which it really contains. Professor Ward, I must presume, was not aware of the meaning attached to the above words, and indeed his misapprehension with regard to my meaning may be described as general. With regard to this extract the reader may perhaps agree with me that the result, if unfortunate, is instructive.
I am very far from condemning
If we observe the above distinctions, and if we do not try to transcend the region of psychical events and their laws (cp. E., xxii), I think we may safely use the term activity within psychology. On the other hand I do not see how psychology can rightly ignore the question of the origin and nature of our apprehension of ourselves as active and of course also as passive.
1 A question naturally may be raised as to the minimum which is involved in such an apprehension, and as to whether we can be aware of activity and of passivity in a lower sense, a sense which does not involve agency proper. I have discussed this question at some length in a later article of the present series.
The term ‘conation’ is however, I think, in a different position. Its application to the state of a thing which is not aware of any striving, though not new, is, I presume, not established in psychology. And ‘conation’ does to my mind suggest naturally an actual awareness of the fact of striving. If, however, we cannot abstain from a different use, we should at least attempt in some way to guard ourselves throughout from ambiguity and confusion. We should, I submit, have some way of distinguishing clearly a conation which is not experienced at all, or not experienced
The great importance of the matter on one hand, and on the other hand my apparent failure at least in part to convey my meaning, may perhaps excuse my offering some further desultory remarks on the topic of activity. Some writers wish to build on this as an ultimate fact, and this is the position taken (as I understand) by Professor Ward in his book on Naturalism. I recognize, as we all must, the great merit of Professor Ward’s work, but with regard to this fundamental point I am unable to see that he has made any serious attempt to explain and to defend his view. I venture to think that he has even failed at least in part to understand the objections to which it is exposed. And though I readily admit that there may be some misunderstanding on my side, I cannot suppose that Professor Ward’s position does not call for further explanation.
(a) In the first place, however much activity is ‘a fact of experience’, a question may still be raised as to the ultimate truth and reality of activity. Apparently Professor Ward would consider that any question of this kind is inadmissible, but I have been unable to ascertain what his position on this point really is. He does not of course say that activity, having no sense or meaning, therefore cannot have a meaning which is unsatisfactory, and that we therefore cannot be called upon to state the sense in which the term is used. Professor Ward does not again (as I understand) claim that the content of activity is simple, and that in this it is like, for instance, the aspects of mere pleasure or mere sensation, and is a simple experience which we define not by internal analysis but by designation. And in short with regard to the objection raised against the internal inconsistency of activity I am unable to find in what Professor Ward’s answer consists. On the other hand I have been unable to discover how, if such an objection is not met, his doctrine can be sustained.
(b) And the objection which can be urged from the side of our apprehension of activity has not, I venture to think,
1 I presume that I should be wrong in taking the footnote on p. 44 of the article on ‘Psychology’ to be an attempt to deal with the subject. In the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for October 1882, p. 378, Professor Ward has himself noticed the above question as one which requires an answer, and has gone on to indicate what that answer might be. But if in the year 1900 I tried to show that the brief indication was unintelligible or untenable, I might well be accused of serious unfairness. It is to be presumed, I imagine, that Professor Ward must have modified his opinion as to the objection’s force, or as to the answer which could be produced to meet it. I at least understand him now to proceed as if his foundation were no longer threatened by any such objection which, if not met, would be fatal. In fact, if this were not so, the reader, I submit, would have just ground for complaint.
For no one until otherwise informed can know what such
(c) It is, at least in the interest of philosophy, a matter for regret that, before attempting to build Theism or anything else on such an ill-defined principle, Professor Ward should not have given us a serious inquiry into its nature. It is unprofitable surely to assert of the subject that it ‘only is, as it is active’ (p. 245) when not even the meaning to be given to such a formula is accurately fixed. It would, for instance, be one thing to affirm that there is no being as apart from activity, and another thing to attempt to deny the distinction between them. To assert the mere identity
Chapter XXIV. On Active Attention
Mind, N.S. xi, No. 41, 1-30. January 1902.
My object in this paper is naturally not to attempt a complete treatment of its topic. I was led to write it because, in endeavouring to make clear the essence of volition, I found myself embarrassed constantly by the claims of attention. And rightly or wrongly I resolved to remove beforehand this recurring obstacle. I am therefore going to try, so far as I can, first to fix the meaning of active attention in accordance with the ordinary usage of language, and next to deal with a certain number of questions concerning it. That the usage of language to some extent varies I readily admit, but this variation is on the whole, I think, consistent with one central meaning. And in psychology to employ words in a sense opposed to their everyday signification is surely most ill-advised. It is difficult to suppose that the established use has no reason behind it. It is hard to imagine that the reader and the writer could ever wholly free their minds from the influence of association even if that were irrational. And in short, if we cannot employ terms in something like their ordinary sense, it is better to make new ones than to abuse and pervert the old. In the case of attention the abuse has even been carried to such a point that attention has been used to include and cover what every one does and must call a state of inattention. Such an attempt must naturally be short-lived, and we need not trouble ourselves to discuss it. It will repay us better to ask what is the ordinary meaning of our term and what that meaning implies. In this article I shall take attention always (unless the reader is warned) in the sense of active attending.
In this and in some other points I am departing to some extent (it seems not worth while to ask in detail how much) from an article in M. xi. No. 43 [E. x]. I must beg the reader also not to forget that throughout the present article I am assuming that volition consists in the self-realization of an idea. There is obviously no space in which to discuss this question here. I may refer the reader provisionally to M. xiii [E. xiv], and again to M. [E. xxiii]. But I propose to deal with the question in future articles.
I will at once proceed to consider the facts in the light of ordinary language. If I am sitting at ease with my mind not dwelling, as we say, on any subject, but wandering aimlessly as I regard some well-known scene, I am what every one would call inattentive generally. If we keep to ordinary language I am not attending here to anything at all. I am occupied by no one object, and even that mode of sensation and feeling, which maybe said to predominate, is both diffused and feeble. Let us suppose now that a sudden and acute pain shoots through me, or that without warning a gun is fired close by, my state at once is altered. These things at once occupy me—there is no doubt of that—but am I to be said at once therefore to attend to them? If we use attention strictly for active attention we are unable to say this unconditionally. My state becomes attention if I go about consciously to get rid of my pain, or again if I begin to wonder what it is; and the same thing holds, of course with a difference, in the case of my hearing the shot. And I naturally and probably under the conditions do so go on to attend. But suppose that at once, recognizing the sound as the report of a gun, I throw myself flat on the ground, have we, with merely so much as that, got active attention? I should deny this, and I should deny it again even if my act has proceeded from the idea of escaping danger and has thus been a real volition.
1 For the justification of this see the references given above. The arbitrary limitation of volition to acts of choice is in my view quite indefensible.
For attention in the first place, if we follow the usage of language, must have an object, and in the second place it must involve some dwelling on and maintenance of that object, and so by consequence some delay. If an
The mere having of an object or objects is by itself not attention. If I am sitting listlessly, as described above, it cannot be said that I perceive no object. For I certainly have objects before me though I attend to none of them. There may even be some prominent object in my visual field, or there may be some predominant object of hearing, such as the sound of a machine, and yet I need attend actively to neither. And I may be assailed by ideas which are certainly objects, and which maintain themselves, as we say, even actively, and yet I need not attend to them. I may succeed in not attending to them if and so far as, whenever they recur, I do nothing to maintain them but turn instinctively to something different. Thus to treat attention as the state generally where I have an object would be at least to come into collision with language. I do not attend by the mere perception or thought of an object. I begin to attend when in a further sense I go on to make this my object.
To attend in the proper sense I must by my action support and maintain an object in myself, but we have attention only so far as I maintain it theoretically or at least perceptively. Attention alters something, that is clear, and it is so far practical, but in the sense of altering the existence of the object it is not practical at all. If I turn a handle and so keep up a sound, that by itself is not attention and it need not even in any way imply it. If I turn the screw of a microscope, my act is not in itself attending, and it need not involve attention to the object, though in most cases in fact it does so. If again I move my eyes or my hands and so gain knowledge about an object, that action in the first place need not involve attention. And in any case, so far as I alter the actual thing, that alteration will fall outside of the attention itself. So far as in general
In more familiar language we may say that my end in attention
1 More accurately ‘my end so far as attention is concerned’. My main end may be practical and may seek to alter the thing itself, and the ideal development of the thing in me may be a mere means involved in and consequent on this. See more below.
2 So far as the pleasure or pain coming from an object qualifies as an adjective this object for me—or again is taken as an adjective qualifying my self—I can of course attend to it. Otherwise, and if the object merely gives pleasure, I can of course attend to the object, but so far not to the pleasure or pain since that is so far not ‘objective’. Even if (to pass to another point) an object remains unaltered and does not change when maintained by attention, we may still properly call this permanence the ideal development of the object. The object preserves its ideal identity through the process of time and the change of context, and qualifies itself by that process. When Dr. Stout (Manual, p. 65; ed. 2, p. 71) makes attention aim at ‘the fuller presentation of an object’, I quite agree with him, if, that is, I may interpret ‘presentation’ in the sense of my text. I am not sure, however, that lower down in the same paragraph Dr. Stout does not teach a divergent doctrine. On the subject of attention I am indeed forced in some respects to dissent very strongly from some doctrines that have been urged by Dr. Stout, but I need not enter on that here.
The object preserves for me
It may be objected here that in attention more is really done than to develop the object ideally. The object (it may be said) is always made more prominent and is strengthened by the process, and attention therefore alters the object as well as maintains it. To this I reply that I will ask later whether in attention the object is actually strengthened, and if so in what sense. But any such strengthening, even if it exists always in fact, is none the less, I would urge, accidental. It is an alteration of the object’s psychical existence which falls outside the character of attention itself, and is as external to it as are again its physical effects. The only change in psychical existence which really belongs to the essence of attention is the maintenance in and for perception of the object itself. And the object itself, though developed by the process, cannot be taken as changed by it. And, if it is altered otherwise, its alteration must be regarded as accidental.
Attention is thus negative of any mere psychical interference with the object and its knowledge in me. And it might be said that attention therefore is directed not at all upon the object, but simply on myself. The essence of the process (it may be urged) is not to maintain the ideal development of the object, but merely to keep open my self to its appearance in me. Attention will thus consist in the suppression of any psychical fact which would interfere with the object, and its essence therefore is not positive at all, but merely negative. But any such view, though it perhaps might not take us wrong in practice, is really one-sided and in the end inconsistent with itself. And a true doctrine about the general nature of negation would
1 Where not itself the direct end, it is included in the end as means and is so the indirect end.
Attention implies (we have seen) the ideal presence of an object, but it is not confined, we must remember, to thought in the narrower sense of that term. In what we call pure thought the object is not merely in some way developed without loss of identity, but it must itself seem to develop itself by a movement which, if not intrinsic, is at least ideal. On the other hand attention and knowledge are obviously not limited to this. For their result may come from observation and it may be given by sense-experience, and it may depend upon matter of fact without us or within us. At the same time we saw that an ideal synthesis is involved in attention, and the process may therefore be certainly said in a sense to involve thought. When I attend to a sequence of mere fact external or internal, there must be for me in the process a unity which
But attention in the sense of active attention means more than any kind of mere knowledge. It implies (as we have seen) also a volition on my part, and we may with advantage once more here consider the actual facts. Suppose that I am sitting either listless or absorbed,
1 These states are very far of course from being the same, and it would be a serious mistake for some purposes to confuse them. I think that they have been so confused with a bad result in connexion with the words distrait and distraction.
2 My attitude towards the perceived activity of my own thoughts may in fact be often felt as disagreeably passive and as anything but active. There are statements made on this point which I read with astonishment. And to urge here that a feeling of my passivity must to some extent imply a feeling of my activity would in my opinion be indefensible, at least apart from an inquiry into the meaning of these terms. We want on this whole subject, I will venture to add, less prejudice and dogma and more inquiry, and I believe that in time we shall get it. The appearance of Mr. Loveday’s interesting article, since these words were written, has tended to confirm this belief. See M., N.S. x. 455, ‘Theories of Mental Activity’, by T. Loveday.
We cannot hold that in every such case my active attention must have been present, when nothing (as we should say) has excited and arrested it. Something necessary to make attention has been wanting, and that something is certainly not here the ideal identity of the object. For this may have been present, and may have been present even in a purely logical form, and yet attention itself may have been absent. And thus the reason why I have not actively attended cannot be that I have not
1 Cf. here E., xiv. 272-4. It may indeed be contended that all thinking does in the end imply will in this sense. Without pausing to discuss this view I will state in passing that I certainly cannot accept it. Of course, to pass to another point, I should agree that at first in the main the moving ideas in will are practical. The idea of myself, for instance, catching a beast causes me under certain conditions to keep still and to watch the movements of the object. And it can be argued that in the end every theoretical interest is thus ultimately practical. I cannot discuss such a large matter in passing, but I do not think that such a contention in its crude form is defensible. It is one thing to hold that no theoretical or aesthetic interest is in the end barely theoretical or aesthetic. It is quite another thing to propose to subordinate such interests to what is barely practical, without even asking whether a mere practical interest is not itself also in the end incomplete.
Since writing the above I have had the advantage of reading Professor Royce’s interesting book, The World and the Individual. I hope that at some future time I may be able to discuss the doctrine there advocated with regard to the internal meaning and purpose contained in all ideas. As I understand this view, I however find myself unable to accept it. I cannot see how in the end and ultimately it is an idea which makes the selection which takes place in knowledge, and I have not succeeded in apprehending clearly the relation of thought to will as it is conceived by Professor Royce. I hope however to profit by further study of this volume.
And where this feature is absent we assuredly have no active attention. In every observation and in all experiencing, if it is indeed actively attentive, we have, in however vague a form, the idea of my perceiving that which is to happen to the object, or we have at least an end which involves as means the ideal development of the object, an end which is felt in
1 The doctrine of an attention contrary to will, which is advocated by, for instance, Mr. Shand, in M., N.S. iv. 452, seem to me quite indefensible, if at least attention is to mean active attention.
But in what sense (this is now the question) does active attention imply will? We must here on each side be on our guard against error. In the first place attention is not the same thing as will. We have noticed already that in its absence volition may be present, and I shall hereafter return to this point. I shall therefore dismiss it here and ask how attention, itself not being will, implies will in its essence. I will begin by dealing with a mistake of a different kind. Attention certainly does not imply volition in the sense that all attention is willed directly. The attention itself is not always the aim of my will. It may or it may not be itself my end, according to the circumstances of the case, and the facts, as soon as we look at them, seem to put this beyond doubt. I may often of course have an idea of attending to this or that, and so go on to attend to it, but no one could say that apart from this there is no active attention. For, in carrying out some purpose without me or within me, I may be undoubtedly attending, and yet, having felt no tendency to wander mentally from my aim, I may as undoubtedly never have directly willed to attend. In short attention is a state which may itself be willed directly, but which certainly need not be so, and which far more usually is not so willed. Its essence is not to be itself an end and object of volition, and it is enough that it should be implied in an end and object which as a state of mind it subserves.
Wherever an end, external or internal, practical or theoretical,
1 These distinctions, the reader should remember, are not the same.
If I will to capture an animal, this purpose may imply the keeping of its movements, and
Active attention, we may say roughly, is the dwelling ideally on an object so as to do something practical or theoretical to that object or with regard to it. But this dwelling is certainly not always itself included in the idea of my end, it is certainly not always itself the direct aim of my will. If you take a state such as observation and active expectancy,
1 The reader will not forget that for me there is no will at all without an idea, and that volition is essentially the self-realization of an idea. Dr. Stout (Manual, pp. 248-51; ed. 2, p. 258) holds that we may have attention and even search without an idea of the object. I cannot agree that in any such case we have a right to speak of active attention, and if I agreed to this I can see then no reason why I should not descend even lower, and speak of attention being present even there where there is perhaps not even so much as perception. The pathological case, as Dr. Stout reports it, does not seem to me to show that the subject had in each case no idea (in fact I think it shows the contrary), but merely that his ideas were exceedingly vague and exceedingly restricted. But, if the opposite could in some way be shown, I should without the least hesitation refuse to admit the presence of either mental search or active attention in such a case.
2 The assertion that all expectation implies will is in my opinion indefensible. What we call active expectancy and a sustained attitude towards the future does certainly imply will, but expectation is used also. I should have said, with a wider meaning in which no will is implied. Expectation certainly need not always involve what we call observation. A mere suggestion as to the future or an anticipation of it on which I do not dwell, and again even a judgement about the future, need, I should say, none of them imply attention or will, and they clearly need not involve desire. Expectation, as containing essentially attention and a will to know, is used, in short, in a sense which is artificially narrowed (cf. E., xiv. 261—2). I have already mentioned that I cannot accept the doctrine that all interest is practical.
that state will without doubt always
Active attention may therefore be defined as such a theoretic or perceptive occupancy of myself by an object as is due to, and involved in, a volition of some sort directed on that object. The ideal development of the object in me is thus, directly or indirectly, the realization of my will. And whatever psychical support, positive or negative, is required to maintain this development, issues therefore from my will and must be regarded as my work. Wherever, on the other hand, an ideal content is so interesting in itself as of itself to produce, apart from my will, whatever is required for its own psychical maintenance, that maintenance is not active attention and cannot be taken as the work of myself.
The meaning so far given to active attention will, I think, be found in the main to agree with the ordinary employment of that term. The various divergent senses,
1 It would be a reasonable proposal to limit this wide use of ‘passive attention’, and to apply the term only in cases where I am occupied by an object before me. The fact that my organs and my mind are given a certain ‘direction’ towards an object, may perhaps be taken as implied in the ordinary use of ‘attention’. To such a limitation I should not be averse, so long as two points were kept clear, (i) In the first place the aspect of exclusive domination is (we must remember) quite essential, and this aspect is not contained in the mere fact that my mind possesses an object. We have seen that, where I have a variety of objects before me, I may be inattentive to some of them or even to all. (ii) In the second place, even where an object occupies me and so I passively attend to it, if its control over my mind comes from the activity of the object itself, this control is not my work and there is no active attending. Now these two essential features, first of domination and next of maintenance by my activity, will tend, I fear, to be obscured by the proposed limitation of ‘passive attention’. For always, in having an object before me, my mind naturally may be said in a sense to be ‘active’ and, if so, this mental state naturally will tend to be called active attention. And it will be called so where my mental state could not be fairly taken as my own work, and it will be called so even where we have not the domination which is involved in passive attention. Hence, in the presence of this misleading tendency with all the confusion which it entails, I think it safer to take the line which is followed in the text. But the limitation, I agree, would keep us nearer to everyday usage.
A sensation or a feeling or an idea, if these are sufficiently strong or sufficiently influential, may be said to dominate me or engross me, or also perhaps again to move me, in an eminent sense. Attention here, it will be seen, may be intelligent but is not so essentially, and if, following this line, we make active attention to be the willed procurement of such an occupancy or domination, the element of intelligence, of ideal dwelling on the object, if present, is once more not essential. The article which some years ago I published in Collected Essays, x. did in fact follow this line, and in the sense which it
1 I shall touch on this subject again lower down, and in the meantime may remind the reader that the activity here and the subject of it are taken by some psychologists to be simply physical.
I will now go on to show briefly how the main senses of attention pass naturally one into the other. If we begin with attention in the low and perhaps improper sense of psychical domination or occupancy, such a psychical fact must normally tend to become the object of a perception. And a prominent object of perception, even apart from its practical side, must tend naturally to become a thing to which I actively attend. It will probably, if it lasts, be
1 It may be asked whether that ideal development of the object, which is a means to my end, may not in itself become so interesting as of itself to engross me, and whether in this case we any longer have active attention. Any difficulty in answering this question arises, I think, from the difficulty of making in fact the abstraction required. So long as and so far as we take the end to remain dominant and controlling, we must speak, I should say, of an active attention. For, so long and so far, the repression of competing psychical factors is taken as coming, not from the mere idea itself, but from the end willed by me.
Active attention is not the same as thought or will, but in its essence it implies each, and it therefore possesses the characteristics of both while identical with neither. I will proceed at the cost of some repetition to enlarge on this thesis, using thought as before in a wide sense so as to cover the entire theoretical attitude.
(i) In the first place attention is not wholly identical with thought, and thought can certainly exist without active attention. Even if thought implied attention, the attention itself would be but one aspect of the thought,
(ii) Active attention (to pass to another point) is not the same as will, though it involves will in its essence. Will can undoubtedly exist in the absence of active attention, and, even where that is present, will must still in a sense be superior to it and prior, (a) Let us first take the case where, without pausing to think about my suggested action, I act at once. We are to suppose that there is present here an idea of what I am about to do, for without such an idea we should certainly not have volition. But in the case supposed the idea realizes itself forthwith without any further ideal development, and in such a case we have in the proper sense no attention. I certainly perceive an object, and that object may, as we say, violently strike me, and I may also be dominated and overpowered by the idea of my action on the object, but with all this, if I go on to act at once, I do not actively attend. My attention will under certain conditions, it is true, follow as a consequence, but it has so far had no time in which to develop itself, and so far in fact it is not there, (b) We may do well in this connexion to consider also the case where my attention is willed actually and as such. There is here a special will; a will, that is, to produce the state of attending. We have therefore present here the idea of myself attending, and this idea carrying itself out into existence is the special will to attend. But if any one maintained that this idea also itself must be actively attended to, he would be surely opposing himself to the evidence of fact. And if we keep to the facts, we must admit here the presence of a will which is itself certainly not attention but which on the contrary conditions it. The idea of myself attending dominates me, and the idea so produces the existence of my attention, but clearly I do not at the same time actively attend to my idea. That would require a
(iii) We have seen that attention is not the same as either thought or volition.
1 If we believe that there is will and active attention without the presence of an idea, of course in that case the argument of the text does not apply; but I have already dismissed this doctrine. What in such a case the fact of a will to will really would mean I do not know, and it would be unprofitable for me to consider.
2 The reader, I hope, remembers that apart from a special warning he is to take attention as active attention.
(a) Attention, we have seen, involves thought, if thought is taken in the general sense of the perceptive or theoretical attitude. Attention has always, in other words, an object qualified in me by ideal adjectives. And this attitude implies on my part a certain passivity. In attention I must be passive first in the sense that I do not go about to alter the object, but receive and accept it. And there is again beside this a further sense in which in attending I am passive. My self must more or less be occupied and affected by the object, and I (we may say) must suffer this object as mine and in me. And more or less clearly I must also feel and be
(b) Attention, being will, must of course give us, beside the sense of passivity, a sense also of being active, though this sense again can under certain conditions be weakened. And, as will, attention involves naturally the more or less clear awareness of my active relation to the object of my attention. The practical attitude implies always within what is experienced the opposition of my self to the not-self, and I must also be aware of these terms and of their relation. The same thing holds with a difference in the theoretical attitude, for there the relation and its terms must again be experienced, though not quite in the same sense.
1 I cannot enter on this matter here.
2 I think that Mr. Shand is more or less exaggerating when (in M., N.S. iii. 459) he speaks of ‘a clear awareness’ in all attention. The awareness certainly always is present, but in what sense and to what degree can it be always called ‘clear’?
I will before proceeding lay stress on a point which I have mentioned already. We have, I presume, undoubtedly a sense and an experience of being active and passive, and I mean by this that we have an actual awareness of our selves in both these characters. But unless both self and not-self and their relation are actually experienced—and I mean by this are present within the experienced as parts or aspects or features of its content—I cannot see how a sense of activity or passivity, in attention or in anything else, is to be either explicable or possible. To be aware of activity and passivity without being aware of that which is active or passive, and without this also entering itself into
1 Compare here the remarks in M., N.S. x [E., xxiii].
Others perhaps may understand how this is possible or at least may know that it happens, but in this understanding or knowledge they fail to carry me with them. And in their dealing, so far as they can be said to deal, with this fact of experienced activity, too many psychologists excite in me an astonishment which does not end in admiration. There is doubtless here, as we are told, a familiar distinction. There is the activity of a thing which is aware that it is active, and there is again the activity of a thing which has no such feeling and experience. We all in this latter sense should speak of the activity of a volcano or of a pill, and in this latter sense we may also in psychology make use of the term ‘active’. And I might claim, even myself, without any very prolonged struggle to have possessed myself of this distinction. But having perhaps risen so far there remains a point at which I am still left behind. I fail to perceive how this distinction, even when we have attained to it, can either rid us of the fact of experienced activity or can entitle us to treat such a fact with neglect. I still do not comprehend how the knowledge on our part of this distinction—I do not even see how the ignorance of it on the part of others—can excuse us when we make apparently no attempt to find out what experienced activity contains. Such neglect still appears to me to be in short inexcusable, even though apparently its consequences with a little good will may conduct us to Theism.
In attention then I am practically related to an object, but this practical relation (I would once more repeat) is of a limited kind. Attention, being will, must involve the alteration of existence, but on the other side, as attention, it must not alter its object. The object, we have seen, is not changed by me, but develops and reveals itself within me. What then is that existence of the object which really is changed by attention? It is, we answer, the psychical existence which belongs to the ideal development of the object. In all perceptive knowledge there are these two
It is for this latter reason that we are not said to attend to anything except what is ‘presented’. Mr. Shand (M., N.S. iii. 467) has noticed this usage, which appears to be well marked, but he has not, I think, pointed out the principle and the reason which underlies it. But the reason is that, being will, attention, like all will,
1 I may perhaps once more be permitted to remind the reader of a vital point. That alteration of my psychical existence, which is involved in the maintenance of the ideal development, must not, where we have active attention, come direct from the object itself. For, wherever this happens, it is the object which is taken to be active and not I myself, and naturally with this we can speak no longer of my actively attending. In active attention the ideal development issues from and is implied in my will, and its maintenance also is thus taken to be willed and to proceed from myself.
2 Mr. Shand would, I understand, not admit this. He adduces (M., N.S. iv. 463) the fact of intention and resolve as a proof that will is not always an action on immediate existence. But except so far as intention and resolve are or imply such an action, I cannot agree that they are volition, and I think that when they are defined so as to exclude this aspect no one would call them will, or would call them anything beyond mere intention and mere resolve. I have touched on this subject in my Appearance and Reality, 410 = 463, and I shall have to recur to it in a future article.
We cannot, as Mr. Shand remarks, properly attend to another man’s thoughts or to what is happening at the antipodes. And yet obviously I can attend to an idea, say the idea of attention. I can attend to it so far as it is taken as an idea existing now in and for me, and is therefore in this sense ‘presented’. But if on the other hand you abstract from this side of the idea, I can attend to it no longer. And in speaking of another man’s thoughts or of an event at the antipodes, you are naturally taken for the purpose in hand to abstract from
(c) I will now briefly indicate another feature which belongs to attention in its character of will. Attention may itself vary in strength, while its object either does not vary at all or becomes indifferently more or less.
1 On the excessive ambiguity of a psychical ‘more and less’ see M., N.S. iv [E., xix].
1 When Mr. Shand (M., N.S. iv. 464) says that, though attention does not arrest a disappearing sensation, will on its side may do so, I find the statement extremely ambiguous. If the will is simply to observe what happens within a certain field, the attention does not alter, or at least it ought not to alter, any one element in that complex. But on the other hand if the will is directed to an end which in itself involves a continued attention to some idea that naturally wavers—surely here the attention both can and often does arrest. From my point of view there would of course be no meaning in saying here that will can do that which attention cannot do. And so far as Mr. Shand understands by will an action that takes place without any idea of it, I radically dissent from any view of this kind. Mr. Shand’s very interesting article is pervaded throughout by that ambiguity as to the nature of the ‘object’ which I am shortly to discuss. With regard to attention strengthening and not strengthening, the reader will find some instructive hesitation in Wundt, Phys. Psych., chap. xv.
And, if this conclusion seems
1 I cannot discuss here the meaning of ‘clearness’.
I will now proceed to an inquiry into the meaning of attention’s ‘object’. We can attend, as will presently be shown, to but one thing at a time. Except under certain abnormal conditions we may say that attention never really is divided, and before explaining this I will very briefly state why the fact must be so. There would be much more to say here if I had space at command, and I must content myself with giving what seems the main reason, while ignoring other aspects of the matter. Attention is single, we may say in a word, because will is single. And will is single not in the least because it is a faculty—there is too much of this kind of ‘explanation’ still on hand—but, we may say, because, if it were not single, it would have perished with its owners. Without the habit, and so in the end the principle, of doing and attending to one thing at a time, no creature could have maintained its existence and its race. This, I would repeat, is not offered as being by itself the whole reason, but it seems enough to show
The object of attention, it will be said, is in fact very far from being single. And, it will be added, the object is so far from being one and not many, that authorities have differed and have even experimented about the extent of its plurality. And if the object really has all the time been one, this seems not possible. But it is more than possible, I reply, if the term ‘object’ is highly ambiguous, and if some psychologists have taken no account of its ambiguity. And I will forthwith state the main conclusions to which we shall be led. (1) There is in attention never more than one object, the several ‘objects’ being diverse aspects of or features within this. (2) Within the one object the unity is of very different kinds. (3) The nominal object and the real object may be very far from being the same, and the latter may contain within itself the former as a feature which is subordinated and even negated.
(1) The first of these heads I may pass over rapidly, since I can refer the reader here to the works of Professor James and Dr. Stout.
1 Professor James, Psych., i. 405, ii. 569, teaches the right doctrine that there can be but one object. I do not know if it is quite consistent with this when, p. 409, he speaks of a plurality of ‘entirely disconnected’ systems of conceptions. Professor James’s use of the word ‘object’ is however (i. 275 following) to the very last degree loose. As to oneness of attention, Dr. Stout teaches the right view throughout. Anal. Psych., i. 194, 21 1-12, 260.
(2 and 3) Attention, we all know, may in various degrees be diffused or be concentrated, but we may fail to perceive that this concentration and diffusion itself falls within the object and qualifies that. The extreme of diffused attention
There will in the first place be features of our scene, or in other words of the total object before us, to which we give really and in fact no attention at all. Our object is thus so far divided into two fields, one of inattention, we may say, and the other of attention. And passing by the first let us look at the second, the field and object of attention. Will all the details of that object be without exception attended to equally? Is none relatively neglected
We have in attention (a) that part of the whole object to which we do not at all attend. This must be distinguished on one side from all of the moment’s feeling which is not even an object, and on the other side from that part of our whole object to which we attend. We have next (b) this real object of attention with all its internal detail. And we have last (c) the nominal object. The nominal object is that part of the detail, or that aspect of the whole process, which for some cause we select and call the object of attention. And there is a tendency here to confuse, and to put this nominal object, this mere fragment preferred mainly for the sake of convenience, in the place of attention’s real and entire object. And from this origin rises a whole train of more or less disastrous mistakes.
1 The metaphor of the visual field and focus, which in Wundt and his followers appears as a doctrine, has, I venture to think, in its results been decidedly mischievous. The metaphor appears in Lotze’s Med. Psych., p. 505, and I should presume that Wundt owes the doctrine to Fortlage’s Psychologie, but he himself is, I suppose, responsible for its prevalence so far as it has prevailed.
The bearing of this whole question is so wide and its
1 In the end it takes us back to the question of the true essence of negation, and I think that wrong views as to this have in certain points injured psychology. The possibility of a negative will and the real nature of aversion are points to be discussed in a future article. For the second of these see M., xiii. 21 [E., xiv. 268-9]. The doctrine of our text will be shown in another article to have vital importance also with regard to the question of mental conflict and of imputation.
I may fix my mind on the pain as a thing which
I will now briefly touch on a point which I have noticed already, the meaning which should be given to a ‘permanent attention’. We should all say naturally that perhaps for weeks we have been attending to something, and it is of course obvious that through all this time we cannot actually have attended. And in the same way we ‘keep watch’ where through all the time we have not been actually watching.
1 See here Professor James, Psychology, i. 420. There is no doubt that sustained active attention generally means a succession of willed acts, but it is not dear what are the limits of such an act. There must be an idea which realizes itself, and, when that is over, the act is over until again we have an idea, either the same or another. But suppose, e.g., I have willed to occupy myself with a subject and the occupation goes on, at what point does that occupation cease to be the realization of my idea and so to be my act?
We mean, I presume, that we have had throughout a constant will to observe, and the sense to be given to a constant or permanent will can be best discussed further in a later article. But here as elsewhere, whenever we speak of attending, we mean a special attention with regard to a certain particular purpose. And if through any period our amount of actual attention has been sufficient For that purpose, we naturally express this by asserting that through all the time our attention has been there. It From this I will go on to offer a few remarks about the fixation of attention. If we remember that active attention involves will, and that will is the self-realization of an idea, we can at once reply generally to the question how attention is fixed. Active attention is fixed always by the idea of an end. The idea, we have seen, may be the idea of an activity which is no more than theoretical, but in some form the idea of an end is essential. Wherever it is absent, there at least for the time we are without active attention. We may be in a sense occupied and engrossed, we may be in such a state that whenever we deviate we are brought back, and hence, as we have just explained, attention is present in such a state conditionally. But, apart from an idea which realizes itself, we are not actively and in the proper sense attending. We may say, then, that always and in principle attention, in the sense of active attention, is fixed by an idea. And if we endeavour to pass behind this idea to a more fundamental attention, we are led either to a fresh and more remote idea, or to something which certainly is not active attention and will. We may doubtless ask a further question as to how ideas themselves become fixed, and this question is doubtless as important as it is wide and difficult. But I do not think that such a problem falls within the limited scope of this article, and at any rate it is impossible to deal with it here. A question which involves difficulties such as would be raised, for instance, by any discussion of what are called ‘fixed ideas’, deserves to be treated with some respect.
I will conclude with some observations on a point which bears on the foregoing, the connexion between attention and what is called ‘conation’. We have here again a term which is dangerously ambiguous.
1 On the unmeaning movements made in attention see Professor James, Psychology, i. 458. He however omits to notice that, beside ‘drafting off’, these movements, if monotonous, may fix positively. A movement with one character may serve as a fixed object. How far, if at all, without a fixed external world any attention and any self-control would in the end be possible, is an interesting question on which here I of course do not touch.
2 With regard to conation I may refer the reader to M., N.S. x. or [E. xxiii].
1 ‘Idea’ here includes any suggestion even when coming straight from a perception.
And if attention is used in this improper sense, we often will because we have attended, and do not attend in the least because we will. If one follows the known facts one must admit the existence of volition, where the idea realizes itself quite apart from any antecedent desire or conation, and where these have not even contributed to the origin and suggestion of the idea. We may end in such cases, and we probably do end, by attending actively to the idea; but we may do this because, and only because, the idea has laid hold of us passively. Thus our will to realize this idea in external action and in inward knowledge is but the self-realization of the idea which so has possessed us. And you cannot, if you keep to facts, maintain even that the suggestion holds us in all cases because it arouses desire or even pleasure. For in some cases these both are absent, at least from the known facts, while in other cases we may find even the
If it is urged that we have a general disposition to realize all our ideas, I have no wish to gainsay this. I am not, however, prepared to agree that such a disposition is ultimate, and in any case the assertion that it essentially depends upon pleasure or pain, or essentially answers to a conation, I must once more repeat, seems really contrary to plain fact. You may add again, if you please, that, without some special disposition in each case, no idea could hold and possess us. And once more, if you will not in every case assert the necessary presence of pleasure or pain, or of conation or desire, I am ready to accept and even to endorse this doctrine. But in some cases I must insist that this disposition is but physical, physical I do not say entirely but for the most part and in the main.
1 I hope to show this at length in a future article.
2 What I mean is this, that, however right you may be in saying that for psychology a certain disposition is merely physical, you will never be right in asserting that its psychical result comes merely from it, and that psychical conditions have contributed nothing to that result.
But to suppose that, with
Chapter XXV. On Mental Conflict and Imputation
Mind, N.S. xi, No. 43, 289-315. July 1902.
The purpose of this article is very limited. It proposes to deal to a certain extent with the subject of divided will, the conflict in the mind of ideas generally, and specially of the ideas in desire and impulse. It will inquire into the alleged facts of action contrary to will with special reference to the general nature of volition. And its aim will be to point out the principles on which in practice we impute actions to our selves or again disown them. I have for some time desired to write this article, in order, while trying to throw further light on its subject, to defend and in part to supplement the account of Will which I gave in Mind, xiii [E., xiv]. And I was led to desire this largely in consequence of a very interesting ‘Study in Involuntary Action’ by Mr. Shand.
Volition I take to be the realization of itself by an idea, an idea (it is better to add) with which the self here and now is identified,
1 In M., N.S. iv. 450-71. Compare other articles by the same writer in M., N.S. iii. 449-73, and ., N.S. vi. 289-325, and one by Dr. Stout in M., N.S. v. 3 54-66. I perhaps may be permitted to say that I at the time wrote a brief reply to Mr. Shand’s criticism. An unfortunate accident, however, prevented this from appearing at the proper moment, and so I thought it better to wait, not foreseeing the length of the delay. I have also made use in this paper Dr. Stout’s article, though I cannot assent to his definition of will. Compare also his Analytic Psychology and his Manual.
2 In M., O.S. xiii [.E., xiv] I left out this addition, not because I did not hold the doctrine, but because, having to treat a very large subject in a very small space, I tried, rightly or wrongly, to simplify the matter. The meaning of the phrase will be discussed in a later article.
or it is will where an idea, with
I hope on another occasion to explain this thesis more fully,
I will at once proceed to state the objection urged against will being essentially the realization of an idea, the objection, that is, which Mr. Shand would base on the facts as he apprehends them. I will then try to show that, even when the facts are so taken, the objection will not hold good, and I will point out the falsity of that assumption which underlies it. I will then deal briefly with the nature of mental conflict and of action contrary to volition. And I will end by asking how the result gained will bear on imputation. But by imputation we are here to understand the mere fact that we accept or disown certain actions, and I shall not inquire if in thus disowning or accepting them we are morally right.
Will, we are told by the objection, cannot consist in the realization of an idea, since there are facts which are inconsistent with such a definition. And the fact, which we are here concerned with, is the alleged instance of action which realizes an idea but is contrary to will.
1 I may, however, in the meantime, refer the reader to M., O.S. xiii [E., xiv] and again to M., N.S. x and xi [E., xxiii and xxiv].
2 Mr. Shand proposes to call this by the name of ‘involuntary action. I do not myself see how we can fix the sense of ‘involuntary’ as ‘contra-voluntary’, when the term has a wider meaning which is so well established. I fear that the result of such a struggle against language must be confusion, and I cannot perceive that the struggle is necessary. I should add that I do not forget that Mr. Shand rests his case against the above definition of will on other grounds also. I shall deal with these on another occasion.
There may
Now I do not accept the above description of the facts as correct, for I cannot admit without very serious qualification the simultaneous presence of each idea. But before entering on this matter I desire to lay stress on another point. Even if it were true that the self is identified at once with two conflicting ideas, the self need still not be identified with them alike and equally. There may be a difference here which will amount to a distinction and to an alternative between Yes and No; and this difference will be a reason for our attributing the result of one idea to ourselves and for our disavowal of the other. To this aspect of the case Mr. Shand, I think, has not done justice. The difference here of higher and of lower, with the possible consequence of an alternative between will and no-will, is very far from consisting in the presence or absence of mere morality. A highly immoral act may in a sense be an act which is higher, and it may come in an eminent degree from my self and my will. And, in short, it is necessary to enter into an examination of the whole question from this side. We must ask in the case of ideas
1. We all recognize the distinction between on the one side our true self, or our self taken as a whole, and on the other side a lower and chance self of some moment. There is a central group and order of certain feelings, ideas, and dispositions, which we should call essential to our selves. And hence, when we fail to act in accordance with certain habits, interests, and principles, or even act in a way opposed to them, the self that is realized is felt to be accidental and other than our true self. This is all so familiar that it would be superfluous to dwell on it, and taking it for granted I will pass on to insist on a further point. This distinction does not rest on the interference of an inexplicable something which is called the ‘Will’. For it holds, in the first place, obviously between one volition and another
1 If the Will were taken as something known and possessed of a known character, then, of course, volitions could have more or less of this character, and so be distinguished among themselves. But if this same character were found also to exist in every part of our nature, there would be so far no reason for ascribing it to the Will. I am, however, in the text, speaking of a Will which, itself unknown, interferes from the outside.
And, in the second place, it holds in cases where no volition at all is present. And a distinction applicable between volitions, and applicable also neither solely nor specially to volitions, cannot reasonably, I submit, be based on an empty ‘Will’. ‘I was not myself when I could act in such a manner’, ‘I was not myself when I could so think of you’, ‘I do not feel myself at all today’, ‘It was not like him to make that stupid mistake’—we have here some ordinary examples. We do not find in all of these cases the presence of volition, but we find in every case alike the false or the chance self in opposition to the genuine self. I, in short, fail to see how volition can here be
‘But’, it may be objected, ‘this distinction after all is but an affair of more and less. Outside of morality we may have perhaps a self which is higher or lower, but we never find a self which is really mine against a self which is not-mine, and which stands on one side of the chasm which divides Yes from No.’ An objection of this kind is common everywhere, but it seems really one-sided and superficial. Everywhere a difference in degree may amount to a distinction in kind. Everywhere, when you compare things with a view to some end, and so measure them by some standard, ‘more’ and ‘less’ may be opposed as what is right and is not-right. And in the narrow sense of ‘moral’ these distinctions are not all moral, and they are not confined to the moral world. Wherever in theory or practice one particular course must be taken, it seems even obvious that the course chosen, because it is better, will become for that reason the one course which is not bad. I am not at present raising any question with regard to imputation, and I do not say that everywhere the worse course, if taken, would be disowned by myself. This is a further question with which at present we are not concerned. What I wish to point out here is that everywhere and through all regions of our nature we find a distinction between the self which is, we may say, essential and the self which is accidental. And this distinction, however much it rests upon difference in degree, can and does come before us as a difference in kind between mine and not-mine.
It is the concrete matter and substance of our selves with which we have been so far concerned. And hence the distinction, so far as it has at present been drawn, may, if we please, be called material.
2. I pass from this to consider other ways of distinguishing higher from lower and mine from not-mine. There are several of these which in comparison with the foregoing may, if we please, be called formal. Everywhere the more universal, we may say, is the higher and more mine,
(a) In theory and practice alike a course will be formally higher when it explicitly and consciously asserts a principle instead of embodying it unconsciously. It is a higher thing, we may say, to act, knowing why we act, than it is to act simply. On the other hand, if you compare two actions while taking them as wholes, that which is conscious of no principle may, of course, really be the higher. For the principle asserted formally by the other action may be defective and narrow. In other words to act with a reason is, so far as it goes, higher than to act without one, but in any particular case the man who can give no reason may have more reason on his side. We know the one-sided
(b) I will pass on to another kind of superiority which also is formal, and which exhibits the same principle in a different application. We know, both in theory and practice, what it is to adopt a course at once and unreflectingly, and what it is, on the other hand, first to pause and then to say, ‘Yes, I will take it.’ I am not referring to the instances where incompatible suggestions leave us paralysed, and where, after oscillation or forgetfulness, one of these suggestions returns and determines our action. I am speaking of cases where we do not merely pause, but where we pause and reflect. We have a special end which is strong enough to prevent action until some course has been mentally qualified as its means. Or from the mere habit or, again, the idea and conscious principle of waiting, in the presence of a difficulty, until we have seen the thing from all sides—we in the presence of some suggestion or suggestions repress and suspend action. The suggestion or suggestions, whether in theory or practice, are, we may
1 I use the plural because I presume that, under normal conditions, if a suggestion in theory or practice really were and remained single, and strong enough to overcome what may be called my psychical inertia, I should certainly follow it. What restrains me is the presence in some sense of an alternative, and the only question is as to how general or how special this alternative is, and again at what point it is brought to consciousness. In connexion with the doctrine of the text I would advert to the phrase ‘to collect oneself’. My self is dispersed by being identified with conflicting suggestions and scattered in their disorderly struggle. It is collected when the various incompatible courses are taken all alike as not the end, and as inferior to the end, but at the same time as possible means to the end. It is this which at once both negates and subordinates the suggestions, and, while checking their Independent action, retains them as objects. And it is by identifying myself with this central principle that I become collected, and confront the detail as my property.
1 The great reputation which Professor James deservedly enjoys as a psychologist compels me somewhere to notice his doctrine of moral responsibility. But even that very sincere respect and admiration which I feel for his work in psychology does not, I am sorry to say, make it possible for me to speak of this doctrine respectfully. When in the presence of two alternatives (so Professor James informs us), one of which is remote and ideal, while the other presses on me with sensational urgency, I will the former with an effort—this is something unaccountable. It is, among other things, an action in the line of the greatest resistance. It is also the real essence of volition, and, being an affair of the purest chance, it is a conclusive instance of Free Will. And the fact that when I am tempted there is absolutely no reason why I will one thing and not the other—this fact. Professor James assures us, is a pledge that morality is not an Illusion. But ‘chance’ appears with Professor James to have several senses. In his Will to Believe (p. 155) it is said to mean that under absolutely identical conditions the same result need not follow. This is, as I understand it, really to contend that the same A is at once and in precisely the same sense both B and not-B, a contention which obviously would destroy and remove the whole notion of truth. Every one who anywhere desires to ask and to speak about the true and the false, must begin by postulating in effect that any such contention is absurd. And even in the Will to Believe I find indications that such an undiluted absurdity is not what really is offered. There are signs, I think, that what Professor James actually means is that the two cases really do differ, but that, not perceiving in what without prejudice to his conclusion such a difference could consist, he has been led to deny its existence. There appears to me to be at any rate a very serious confusion in his Psychology. Professor James there states the alternative as being between Free Will and Determinism, so that whatever is not Determinism is ipso facto Free Will. He then seems to define Determinism as the doctrine which holds that the duration and the intensity of any effort, which we put forth, are ‘fixed functions of the object’ (ii. 571) or ‘mathematically fixed functions of the ideas’ before our minds (574). And any other doctrine but this (so I understand) is defined as Free Will. This is to say that in volition you are ordered to strike out (a) the influence of what is actually in the mind though not before it, and (h) the influence of everything in the shape of a disposition whether natural or acquired. You are to accept this mutilated view, which, not only in the case of volition but throughout psychology, you probably consider to be quite untenable—or else, according to the sense in which I am forced to understand Professor James, you are compelled to embrace the alternative of pure chance. And the only comment upon such an issue which I could offer would be this. I do not understand how any one with the abilities and knowledge possessed by Professor James could present such an issue to his readers, unless his mind were influenced by ideas extraneous to psychology. And when he himself appears to hold Determinism, as thus defined, to be for the most part satisfactory to himself, I can hardly suppose that I have rightly apprehended his meaning.
With regard to ‘action in the line of greatest resistance’, I will add a few words. We have here once again, as I understand it, the false alternative to a doctrine which itself is false, and the application to the soul of these mechanical doctrines is not likely to result on either side in anything satisfactory. The fact referred to, I presume, is this, that ideas and principles have not motive power in proportion to the amount of psychical perturbation which immediately corresponds to them. We therefore can choose the alternative which produces, and which we know will produce, most temporary trouble and unrest. But I am unable to perceive that this fact is in any way even abnormal—to say nothing of its supporting the worship of blind Chance. We find the same thing regularly m the world that is merely intellectual. Where I refuse to adopt a principle of explanation which would make things easier in a particular case, if to do this would conflict with my more general principles—this is to follow (if you must say so) the line of greatest resistance. But for myself I must decline to adopt metaphors which seem to me to be false and misleading (cf. here Dr. Stout, M., N.S. v. 354-66, and Manual, p. 596).
About the claim to base moral responsibility upon mere chance, and to make it literally an affair of sheer accident, there is but little to be said. And, again, whatever seemed called for from me has been said now a long time ago. I must be allowed to express my opinion that apart from its theoretical absurdity such a claim is morally revolting, or would become so if it really could be seriously urged. Professor James, it is true, seeks to attenuate tins paradox. He limits, as I understand, my moral responsibility, and makes it begin and end with those cases where I decide with an effort in the presence of temptation. It is only here, he urges, or seems to urge, that my conduct is really a matter of pure chance, and that I, in consequence, am a responsible agent and not ‘the dull rattling of a chain, etc.’ (i. 453). But, if I had to choose, I should myself prefer the unlimited absurdity; for that is more consistent, and I cannot see that it is any more absurd. And if I am asked how, if these doctrines are really what I think them, they can possibly come to be upheld, I must answer as follows. I am forced to believe that these results are not got by an unprejudiced inquiry made direct into the real claims of our actual moral nature. Wherever they are reached, they appear to be reached by reasoning downwards from alternatives now long ago argued to be vicious. They come from our looking at morality while one eye glances at theological dogma. They are got, I must be allowed to add, by our neglecting to ask ourselves whether in the end what we mean is anything positive. If, in the presence of his moral experience, a man objects to every form of Determinism which he finds offered him on the ground that none of these forms is adequate to the fact—such a man may be mistaken, but he most assuredly is so far not irrational, and I at least so far could not refuse him my respect and even my sympathy. But if, assuming first (and it is a great assumption) that some doctrine capable of satisfying us wholly in this matter is possible, any one goes on to set up that which he takes (perhaps without sufficient inquiry) to be the opposite of Determinism, and then asserts this opposite without so much as asking if, considered morally, it is itself even tolerable—it is impossible for me to treat any such conclusion with respect. And I have thought it better, even at the risk of giving offence, to express in plain language what I think and feel on this unfortunate subject. Such thoughts and feelings are not very exceptional, and I should like to make it more difficult for any one quite to ignore them. And since Professor James has himself, as I think rightly, expressed himself freely on this matter, I am the more inclined to hope that I have not been wrong in doing so likewise. It is really the high standard which elsewhere he has kept before our eyes which has in a manner forced me to protest against what I cannot but regard as a dangerous lapse.
Nothing in the above remarks must, of course, be taken to apply to the theory of Pluralism as against Monism. It would certainly be quite incorrect to identify Pluralism with a doctrine of absolute chance, or with the claim that such an idea is the foundation of morality. On Professor James’s doctrine of volition and consent I shall hope to comment in a future article.
But, without
(c) From this I will go on to consider another variety of formal distinction. When we have before us A and B, the ideas of two incompatible courses, we may or we may not recognise these ideas as in the proper sense alternatives. If we so recognise them, then each is qualified for us by the negation of the other. When, in other words, we think of A, we think of it as A which excludes B, and in the same way we qualify B by the exclusion of A. And, taken thus as alternatives, A and B are so far placed on the same level, and you cannot say that one of them is formally superior to the other. But the case is different where A comes before us as qualified by the negation of B, but where on the other hand B is not actually thought of as excluding A. In this case B, however incompatible with A, does not come before us as containing the negation of A. And hence, taken formally, A and B are so far not on a level, since, as I think of them, while A embraces and subordinates B, B on the other hand does not contain any explicit negation of A. B is therefore, we may say, thought of as standing under and subject to A, while the subjection of A is not made any part of B’s content. And A will therefore clearly so far be higher and will be so far more mine. It will be higher because it is wider and more inclusive, and is in this respect nearer to the idea of my true self as an individual and concrete whole. It is however scarcely necessary to point out that, here as before, a formal superiority may be barely formal, and may amount practically to nothing. But once again, so far as it goes, we are bound to recognise it. And trivial or trifling as this distinction perhaps may appear, we shall find that in its application it may possess great importance.
3. There remains a principle of distinction which, though connected with the foregoing, does not directly fall under them. An idea which is pleasant or more pleasant is so far higher and more mine, and an idea that is painful or more painful is, on the other hand, less mine and lower. In a given individual case this principle may of course prove one-sided and so far false, but still, as far as it goes, it will remain always true. And, taking the world as a whole, we have some reason to believe that any divergence between this principle and the foregoing principles is but local and relative. We make no assertions about the goodness or badness of pain and pleasure per se, and we leave that to the Hedonist and to others who insist on taking abstractions for realities. We find in fact that pain is connected with contradiction and defect, while pleasure on the other side goes with increase of being and with harmony. And if we are wise, we shall not seek forcibly to divide these aspects. We shall not attempt to derive the one of them from the other, or to make either of them in abstraction the absolute good. But, avoiding
I would, before proceeding, once more remind the reader that all these distinctions in degree may, under some conditions, amount to differences in kind. Everywhere that, which from one point of view is but more and less, becomes from another point of view right and wrong, and true and false, and mine and not-mine. The interval bridged by degrees becomes, in other words, the open chasm between Yes and No. And now, in view of the above distinctions, I would submit that, apart from mere morality, there may be differences between a higher and a lower self. To hold that, when my self is identified with ideas, these ideas must, outside of the moral sphere, all equally be mine is surely indefensible. We have found enough differences in the daylight, and have seen no need to invoke the darkness of an inexplicable Will.
I will pass on now to consider the actual facts of mental conflict and the struggle of ideas and desires to move me in opposite directions. And it will be convenient in this article to speak of these ideas throughout as being also desires, even where they really are not so.
1 The main difference here hes in the presence or absence of pleasure felt in the idea (see M., O.S. xiii [E., xiv]). I shall in the present article take some account of this difference with regard to imputation, and I hope to touch on the general nature of desire in a future article. It will be understood, of course, that I recognize desire nowhere where an idea is not present. The general head for me is that of ‘moving idea’, and ‘desire’ I take to be but one kind that falls under this head. It is merely for the convenience of the reader that in this article I make the two coextensive, and I would beg him, in justice to me, to remember this.
It was, we
What in the first place, let us ask, are incompatible ideas or desires? They are such as, being diverse, would qualify the same point incompatibly.
1 This means in the end that they would, being diverse, simply qualify the same point (see A.R., Appendix, Note A, 500 = 562).
2 For a full explanation of this I must refer the reader to a former article in this series, M., N.S. No. 41 [E., xxiv].
But as soon as action begins, these elements naturally prove incompatible. In their movement towards reality our ideas collide, and the ‘and’, which joined them in harmony, at once disappears. In our attempt to act we either altogether fail to produce an action, or, if we succeed, we succeed but in part, and perhaps with painful results. And, led thus to pause and to consider, we may perceive that our desires interfere one with the other.
1 I hope to return to this whole subject. On the nature of aversion, I must, for the present, refer the reader to Mind, xiii. 21 [E., xiv. 268-9]. The ordinary doctrine on this head I still venture to think very seriously mistaken.
(c) What will be the end of this alternation of contrary desires? If the need for action is felt to be imminent, the chance pressure of some moment will force, we may say, accidentally one idea into reality. But, apart from this, the oscillation will tend normally to cease, as, from whatever cause, the excitement dies gradually down, and the ideas move us less strongly. We (i) may relapse into a state where we even forget the incompatibility and the conflict. And here, once again, we unite our opposite ideas and desires as elements in one positive whole, and simply rejoin them by an ‘and’. Or (ii) preserving some memory of their hostility, we may seek more or less unconsciously to reconcile them by an imagined harmony. We invent or we entertain the idea of some fancied situation, and, placed in this by a change or an addition of some element, our jarring fact undergoes an imaginary transformation, or at least tends, more or less unawares, to be ignored in a certain aspect. In this new complex, our contrary desires are both coordinated on equal terms, or again one of them becomes without negation in some way disregarded, or else taken as subordinate to and positively included in the other. Thus a man without conflict may desire both to remain in bed and to rise, because in some way his present does not come before him, altogether and without condition, as this ‘now’ that now is. Or, dreaming of how things might have been if he had married the woman that now is his neighbour’s, he may succeed unrebuked by his conscience in desiring her sinfully. What is done here is to imagine, more or less consciously, that some condition is added or removed, with the result that the case is altered, and is really no longer the actual case in hand. And so for the moment the incompatibility, though in truth unremoved, is removed
1 Cf. here James, Psychology, ii. 565. With this mode of removing practical conflict we should, of course, compare the theoretical solution of contradiction by way of distinction and division. In connexion with the doctrine of the text I should add that I, of course, reject the doctrine according to which the real and the imaginary can for me be distinct without an actual difference in their contents. While, e.g., I feel cold, I can certainly imagine that I feel warm, but certainly not without, in doing so, more or less abstracting from the conditions of my here and now. The widespread error on this subject makes, wherever it exists, a rational doctrine of belief and judgement impossible.
(d) We may, however, led by willing insight or driven by hard experience, have been brought to perceive that our two ideas A and B are really incompatible. And (i), in the first place, we may have qualified A by the idea of negating B, either in part or entirely, without at the same time qualifying B’s content by the negation of A. B may be unable even to suggest itself as the exclusion of A, or, if so suggested, it may be unable to maintain itself as A’s negative. On the other hand A, in its character of superiorityto B, may perhaps be forgotten, but can never be consciously driven out or held in subordination by its opposite. And hence the conflict of desires is, under these conditions, at an end. For a desire in the proper sense is not present without an idea, and it is now impossible for the idea B to maintain itself in collision with A. B, in short, cannot as against A any longer appear as an independent idea. It can appear; but where A is present, it can appear only as held in subordination to A. It is so far, therefore, a mere element included now in A’s content, and hence we must say that, as the idea B, it has so far ceased to exist. On the other hand, there may remain (as we have seen) a group of excited feelings and movements, which, if it could gain an independent expression, would be once more this desire and this idea of A’s contrary. We may recall the instance of the dog, mastered but still hankering and licking his lips. So again in determinedly swallowing a nauseous drug there may be a struggle of hostile feelings and even movements. But so long as B,
But, before proceeding, I would advert to a common error. It is absurd in volition to talk about the prevalence of the stronger motive and idea, before at least we have tried to make ourselves aware of the ambiguity of these phrases. And even to inquire whether our action takes the line of the less or the greater resistance, is, I will venture to add, in principle irrational. It is to discuss a problem, which to say the least is not merely mechanical, with a mind biased and in part blinded by physical metaphors. The defeated idea may survive, we have seen, in a mass of feeling hostile to our action. And in this case the volition may be made difficult, and the available energy lessened. But, upon the other hand, the result of conflict may on the whole be quite different, and the resistance, we may fairly say, has gone to increase the positive force. It is after all the whole self, and not the mere balance of its contents, which is realized in the act. And in many cases the excitement of the struggle, and even the very survival of the sensations and pains that belonged once to the defeated idea, pass to the credit of the idea with which the self is finally identified. The intensest volition, we might almost maintain, is that which has naturally developed itself from the smallest balance in the greatest sum of collision. Facts such as these will be forever ignored by the crude gospel of Necessity, and for ever perverted into a plea for miracle by the blind apostle of ‘Free Will’. They will be recognized
The idea B, though subordinated, as we saw, by its contrary A, may still be represented by a mental group which survives and struggles to restore it. And where decisive action is impossible, this group is a persistent source of constant danger to A. For, though B still may be unable to assert itself openly against A in the character of A’s opposite, it may none the less, if for some moment its subordination by A is forgotten, assert itself independently and positively. And the result of this will naturally be a desire, and perhaps an act, contrary to A. We have already glanced at this perpetual origin of insidious self-deceit. It may be dangerous, even where you honestly disapprove, to dwell too insistently on disapproval. For the constant negation of B by A is in a sense after all the continual repetition of B. And B is an element which, though subordinated, is perhaps for ever struggling to break loose and to appear and act independently. And hence your supposed repetition of B’s subjection may unawares have passed into the habitual toleration of its presence. You tend in effect to lapse into the holding of both ideas as positive, coupled with the mental proviso that the one is taken really as subjected to the other. And from this basis B may in the oblivion of some moment have gone on to become independent unconditionally, and, before you can take warning, may have suddenly realized itself in an act.
1 Cf. here E., xxiv. 436.
(ii) But in the end A and B may become qualified explicitly each by the negation of the other. Each may possess so much mental support, whether direct or indirect, that we may have been forced or led to recognize them as equal and conflicting alternatives. The idea and the desire B will now explicitly include not-A in its content, while A is determined in like manner by the exclusion of B. And a question, we saw, was asked as to what will result when both of these opposites are present. But we must meet this question, for the present at least, by denying the fact which it assumes. These moving ideas A and B cannot, while
We have been led to enter on an old and well-known problem, the question whether a man can knowingly and willingly do what is bad. It is possible, of course, to answer this question in the affirmative, and to explain the admitted fact rationally by the psychical weakness of one contrary (E., vi). But, if our foregoing conclusion was correct, such an answer will not wholly stand. We must deny the possibility of a volition where opposite ideas are present together, if it is true that these ideas cannot coexist where they actually are opposite. If ‘bad’ be taken explicitly as the contrary of ‘good’, and if both ideas are understood simply and unequivocally and without mediation and qualification, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ cannot coexist, nor can one of
1 I shall deal with this point in a later article [E., xxvi].
2 I am, of course, following here, as every one must follow, Aristotle, but how far at the same time I may diverge from him I do not inquire. His ‘incorrigible man’, at least as commonly understood, seems certainly an impossible monster.
3 For this latter consequence see below, pp. 467-8. The reader may object that the doctrine of the text refutes itself by proving too much. By the same reasoning, he may urge, it would be impossible also to will the good knowingly as against the bad, and with this we should be brought into collision with a large mass of fact. The answer is that, if the bad were present with the good as its independent opposite, in that case you certainly could not act for the good. But when the bad is not so present, but comes before you merely as negated by the good and as a subordinate element in that, the case is radically altered. You may reply, ‘But then the same thing will hold with the bad. Where the good as an independent positive idea is absent, the good may on its side be merely subordinate to the bad.’ Yes, but, I answer, you are now supposing what is downright impossible. The good, where I am conscious morally, cannot fail to be present as a positive idea. The good and the bad are certainly opposed, but none the less they do not stand on a level. The bad without the good would be nothing at all, but the good does not, except in a narrow and special sense, depend on the bad. The bad is, in short, essentially subordinate to the good. To call it a mere kind of goodness would certainly not be correct, but that would be far less false than to speak of good and bad as being two independent positive kinds. But I cannot, of course, enter into such a large subject here. We should be led once more to think of the self-contradiction inherent in the bad, and again to reflect on the absurdity of assuming that every idea has a legitimate contrary.
We have now to some extent examined the facts of mental conflict and of what may be called divided will. We previously, as the reader may recall, laid down those principles on which one idea is judged by us to be higher and to be more mine than another. And we may now proceed to the question of imputation in connexion with the definition of will. But in speaking of imputation, I mean merely to consider the fact without inquiring how far it can be morally justified.
The results we have reached enable us to deal rapidly with the subject of action against will. We have seen that the alleged fact, as it was offered to us, does not really exist. If we use ‘desire’ in the proper sense in which it involves an idea, we cannot really have an actual conflict of opposite desires, and in the end we might insist that we cannot experience the presence of more than one desire at the same time. But apart from this we found at any rate that, while A not-b holds its place, we cannot have also the simple and unconditional appearance of B not-a. And, given two opposite ideas explicitly qualified as opposite, we certainly could not in fact go on to realize either in a volition. If, however, for the sake of argument we suppose that B (whether we take it as independent and merely positive or again as an independent B not-a) has actually realized itself in the presence of A not-b, that would be a case of volition. The act would be so far clearly my will, but for other reasons, we shall go on to see, I might probably
I am far from denying that, while the idea of A not-b is held fast, B in spite of this can in a sense realize itself and pass into act. In the case of abnormal ideas we must allow that, in a sense, this can happen. But as soon as we consider the real sense in which it happens, we must deny that an act of this sort is a volition. The act would be a volition if B had broken loose from its subjection to A, and had come before us as itself positive and without any reference to A. But as long as B is held subordinate and does not appear except as negated by A, a different answer must be given. You cannot say that a subjected element contained within an idea is itself an idea proper. And since you, therefore, cannot assert that an idea has, in the proper sense, here realized itself, you, by the definition, are unable to affirm the presence of will. In such an act we no more have a volition than in an analogous case we should have a judgement. If, while mentally holding fast the idea A not-b, I were somehow to give utterance merely to B, that utterance would be no judgement nor the true expression of any idea really in my mind. And in the same way the escape into act of a subordinate element contained under an idea is not in the proper sense the realization of an idea, and it is so, by consequence, no volition.
1 The reader must bear in mind that this case supposes that both ideas are held to the last clearly each in its own individual character. If that character becomes obscured or confused, then, whatever else happens, the idea B certainly will not have realized itself as against A not-b. If the two alternatives or incompatibles come in the act before the mind, as one inconsistent ideal whole, it is clear that such an idea as this is not the idea of either, and could not itself possibly pass into fact. The supposed case, in short, demands that each idea maintains its individuality and its relation to the other; and where and so far as these ideas work practically, I do not believe this maintenance to be possible.
2 The same, I would repeat, must be said of the realization of one of the two struggling aspects of a self-discrepant ideal whole. That is not in any proper sense the realization of an idea, and it is, therefore, not will. In order for the volition of B not-a in the presence of A not-b to happen, what would be required would be the maintenance of each idea as at once distinct and as related to the other. And we have seen that for a theoretical purpose these ideas can be so held before us. But the very condition which makes that possible is, so far as I see, removed ipso facto by the ideas becoming practical. In order to become practical they, in short, are forced in some way to change their character.
As long as we keep to theory and confine ourselves to that which is in general true, we can deal more or less satisfactorily, I believe, with any case that can be offered. It would be far otherwise if we attempted to lay down rules by which to settle particular cases in practice. We have already noticed a class of actions which, in theory not puzzling, would prove really intractable by any rules of art. There are cases, we saw, where the collision has been more or less unconsciously and surreptitiously removed. Neither of the opposite ideas has here been forgotten or openly extruded, but one or both of them has in some way been so qualified that they are conjoined together in one whole, and now coexist peaceably. The action that results cannot, of course, realize this inconsistent ideal whole, and the action, therefore, as failing at least in part to carry out its idea, will so far not be my will. If volition, it will be volition only to a certain extent, which will be different in each case.
1 The question would turn mainly, I presume, on the amount of connexion or disconnectedness between the elements of the ideal whole which is before the mind of the actor, and on what we are able to speak of there as one idea. We should also have to ask how far a volition can fail to realize itself and can yet remain a volition. This difficult question will be taken up in a later article [E., xxviii].
But to know in each case what was actually in the mind of the agent, to find the degree of his illusion, and
I will add another instance of this difficulty, mainly because it tends to illustrate the account which I have given of will. If I have the idea of another person as performing a certain act or as being in a certain condition, and if then the act or the condition really follows in me, this, to speak in general, would not be a case of volition. And we must say the same thing if I merely imagine myself as being in a certain psychical state, and if my imagination is thereupon realized in fact. The result will in neither case be volition, and it will probably fail of being so in two ways. The result in the first place may not have followed as a genuine consequence from my mental state, and, if so, it cannot be the self-realization of an idea. And, even if the result has so followed, it is still not a volition. For the idea of another’s act, or the mere imagination of my own act, is obviously not that ideal content which the result has realized. For the idea in each case, as I held it, was modified by a condition which divided it from simple union with my self as existing here and now. And since this character is not and could not be carried out in the result, my actual idea has not been realized, and the result, therefore, is not will. That which has been carried out in act is no more than a partial aspect of my idea, and it therefore in the proper sense is itself no idea at all. On the other hand, if the qualification of my idea as alien or as imaginary for the moment lapses and falls out (and there is, of course, a tendency to this lapse), the case is altered essentially. The idea at once becomes a mere unconditioned idea of the result, and, if that result is as a direct consequence realized, we have genuine volition.
1 It may possibly be objected that, unless I also believe that the result will take place, that result is not volition. But unless the term ‘belief’ is improperly used here so widely that the objection disappears, I cannot assent to this doctrine. I shall return to this point in a future article [E., xxvi].
This distinction, taken in general, appears to be clear and simple, but to decide in
We have seen the general conditions, according to which the act which results from a mental conflict is either to be taken as a volition or disowned in that character. The alleged case of an idea realizing itself openly in the face of its opposite we could not accept. It is not a fact, but is a very natural misinterpretation of fact. But, if the reader decides to regard it otherwise, the principles we have laid down will still enable us to deal with it. By these principles I judge ideas and desires to be higher and lower, and to be mine and not-mine, and I can apply these distinctions to the alleged case in two different ways. I may narrow the definition of will so that the case falls outside and can be disowned as volition. And, if so, will is ‘the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified, provided that this idea is not too much opposed materially or formally to that which is higher than itself and is essentially mine’. In view of the ambiguity of language, such a proviso would, perhaps, be defensible, but for two reasons I do not propose to adopt it.
In the first place, I have convinced myself that the fact alleged is not really a fact, and in the second place, even if it were a fact, I consider that the proviso is not wanted. The idea realizing itself openly against its contrary would in this case be a volition, and we certainly must go on to allow that this volition would be mine. But with so much the question is very far from disposed of. The act would be my volition, but it need not be my volition in the sense that I should impute it to my genuine self, and consider that I on the whole was accountable for its existence.
I am not inquiring here as to what in the end can be morally justified, and I am not even sure that such a question is able to be answered. I am asking merely about the
1 This doctrine is open to question, not merely on its positive side, but also otherwise. To say that I am to think myself better or worse for nothing except what directly or indirectly has issued from my will, is to come into collision with a body of sentiment which is not easily repudiated. Any doctrine of this kind starts on a path which in the end leads to a choice between opposite abysses (A.R., chap. xxv). On this subject of moral responsibility I must be allowed here to protest against the assumption that it is tractable only when you introduce theistic ideas. On the contrary, I submit that it is precisely the intrusion of these ideas which has turned the question into a battle-field for rival dilemmas. For myself, when I am offered the idea of a moral creator who tries to divest himself by some ludicrous subterfuge of his own moral responsibility, or the idea of a non-moral potter who seems to think it a fine thing to fall out with his pots—when, I say, I am offered these decrepit idols as a full and evident satisfaction of the highest claims of the human conscience, I am led to wonder if the writer and myself, when we use the same words, can possibly mean the same thing. It is even a relief to turn back to the old view that the Deity is a person limited like ourselves, a person face to face with mere possibility and with chance and change, and in truth, like ourselves, in part ignorant and in part ineffectual. Such a doctrine, I readily grant, need not interfere with our human morality, but I must be allowed to doubt if those who more or less consciously would seek to revive it, can realize what it means. It would in the end leave the limited Deity together and along with ourselves in a Universe, the nature and sense and final upshot of which would in the end be unknown. I cannot myself admit that non-interference with our moral distinctions need be bought at the price of such ignorance. And there are also those who, accepting a more unlimited ignorance, would, in my opinion, be found in a less irrational position.
If I have willed anything, I am of course in a sense responsible for so willing, but what that amounts to on the
1 Thus for criminal purposes, I believe, in at least most codes, a man must be mad or not mad. But it is notorious that, apart from the difficulty of such a clean division, moral responsibility can exist among the insane in varying degrees. Responsibility in intoxication is again a well-known puzzle which law must cut with a knife.
There would be little advantage in our attempting to enter further into this subject, and I will end by repeating those principles which we laid down at the beginning of this article. (1) If I can bring and retain A not-b before my mind, and cannot do this with B not-a, A is so far higher and is so far mine more truly than is B. (2) The same conclusion follows if, taken on the whole, A is more pleasant than B, or less painful. And if any idea has moving force out of proportion to its pleasantness or, again, to its freedom from pain, that is, to some extent and so far as it goes, a sign of the idea’s alienation. It is, so far as it goes, a reason for taking the idea as not genuinely mine. This is, however, a criterion which cannot be applied indiscriminately. In the first place, where an idea moves us at once
Will may therefore be defined as the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified, and we have found no reason for restricting or for modifying this account.
Chapter XXVI. The Definition of Will (I.)
Mind N.S. No. 44, 437-69. October 1902.
The object of this article, and of two which follow it, is to explain and defend a definition of will, a definition which has been already laid down by me on various occasions.
A volition is ‘the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified’, and in psychology there is in the end no will except in the sense of volition. We may speak of a permanent or standing will
1 E., xxiv and xxv. Cf. E., xxiii and xiv.
2 Cf. E., xxii. The above statement does not mean that a volition may not be continued beyond the limits of what we experience. See below.
3 E., xxiv. 438. The meaning of ‘a standing will’ is a point to be discussed in a later article.
and may talk as if it existed there where at the moment no actual volition
A volition, I have said, is the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified, and a volition is a whole, in which we may go on to find the following aspects. There is (1) existence, (2) the idea of a change,
1 Or we may prefer to say ‘the idea of something different to what exists’. The precise content of this idea is a difficult question which will have to be discussed at length hereafter.
It is difficult in a series of articles to make a beginning except from some assumption. I think it best at present to assume provisionally the existence of what is called ‘ideo-motor action’, and to try to show that volition falls under this head. I shall therefore take for granted here the tendency of an idea to realize itself, and any question as to the existence and nature of this tendency must be deferred to another article. Let us then for the moment agree that ideo-motor action in general is a fact, and from this let us go on to consider in detail the aspects of volition which we have mentioned.
It may be convenient to take first the aspect of existence.
Existence, then, is that actual series of events which is either (a) now and here, or is (b) continuous with my here and now. In volition (we must next proceed to note) this existence must be altered, and, further, the alteration must start directly from the existing ‘now’. The change must begin on and from this ‘present’, and this present must be taken in its own character and unconditionally. But, while emphasizing this point, we must remember not to push emphasis into error. Volition certainly must begin from and on the ‘this now’, but volition as certainly is not confined within these limits. And it is wrong to deny that I can really will something to happen after an hour or after my death. I shall return to this error, but at present need insist only on the truth that, wherever volition ends, it must begin at once by an alteration of my present existence.
The reader may remember that this doctrine has been denied. It has, for instance, been objected that will does not always aim at an alteration of the present, for its end, we are told, may be a mere continuance and so an absence of change. But a continuance of the present in a certain character is, I must urge, if really willed, a real will for
1 Lotze, Medical Psychology, p. 300, gives the instance of a martyr whose will is directed on actual pain. But the martyr’s will, I reply, has for its object the maintenance of a certain attitude with regard to the pain. He wills that the pain shall not move him, and this means that it shall not take the course which it naturally would take of itself. His real end is therefore to alter existence, to change it so that it will follow a different course. The willed maintenance of an attitude, in short we may say, is a perpetual willed alteration of existence. We may notice here another doubt which perhaps may be raised. Will is not always for something to come, it may be said, for I can will, however unsuccessfully, to alter my past. But, I reply, the fact that the change, when made, would here lie behind me, is really irrelevant. From the point of view of the act itself the change is future, and the act starts from the present state of things and alters that. I shall consider later how far the fact of Resolve can be taken as an objection to the doctrine of the text.
In volition there must be an alteration of existence, and of existence as such. The change, which comes in, must not merely be something which in some indirect way belongs to existence, and qualifies that so as to leave it, so far, unchanged as existing. On the contrary, the change must directly qualify the existence itself in such a way that, even as existing, it suffers that change. The alteration in other words must not be merely ideal. This is a distinction which within my present limits I cannot fully discuss, but a failure to grasp it would leave the reader at the mercy of error. Let us suppose, for instance, that what I have willed is to think and know this or that, the result of my volition will here have two sides which we must not confuse. The object has been qualified ideally, and this, again, is an event which has happened in me. My existence has, as existence, been changed by my will, but the existence of the object itself, on the other hand, has not been altered at all. It has become qualified not in fact but, as we say, ideally; while the actual change which has taken place belongs, we say, only to me. It is impossible to ask here what is the ultimate truth with regard to this distinction,
1 Cf. here E., xxii. 370 and E., xxiv.
From this I will go on to lay stress on another important point. Not only in volition must the existence be altered, but it must be altered to that character which was possessed by the idea. And not only must the existence suffer a change to this prescribed result, but the result must also be produced by the foregoing idea. The idea must itself alter the existence to its own nature, or in other words the idea must itself carry itself out into the changed existence. And, if all this does not happen, there is really no will, but at most a more or less explicable counterfeit and illusion. This point is so evident that I think it useless to enlarge further on it here, and will pass on to warn the reader against a dangerous misunderstanding. In insisting that the result in volition must come from the idea, I do not mean to assert that the idea must be the whole and the sole cause. This would be a doctrine which in my judgement could not possibly be sustained, and in short would involve a very serious mistake. I cannot here enter into the general subject of cause and effect, but for our present purpose I may perhaps express my meaning as follows.
And for this reason a result, when it has only been expected, is not taken as willed. Expectation is not volition except to that extent to which it is a will for apprehension, and is a will so far for a change of my psychical existence. If I expect the arrival of a letter and the arrival in fact happens, my idea has certainly been realized, but the result is not attributed to my will. The cause of the letter’s coming is not taken to lie in existence plus my idea, but in existence qualified by other and independent conditions. We may illustrate again by the case of a spasmodic movement which is expected but not willed. The whole question is in brief whether, and in what way, my idea contributes or does not contribute to the result.
1 A machine might be such that, say, its whistling might be the sine qua non of its work, since both in fact are effects from one and the same cause. If the machine took the whistling to be the cause of the work, that would be clearly an illusion, and if the idea in volition were a mere sine qua non, will would also be illusory. It may be urged on the other side that if the idea is but one element in the whole cause, we cannot say properly that the effect is produced by the idea. An objection of this kind, we must however not forget, has a very wide application. I think it perhaps enough to reply here that, where we consider that such an element has importance, and where we wish to insist that its presence really, as we say, ‘makes the difference’, we may fairly speak of the change as being produced by it.
2 If I have not misunderstood the doctrine advocated by Professor Münsterberg in his Willenshandlung, he considers the mere precedence of the idea enough to produce the appearance of volition. Any such doctrine would, however, seem to be opposed to the plain facts mentioned in my text. Since writing the above remark, as well as the present and the two following articles, I have made the acquaintance of Professor Münsterberg’s interesting Grundzuge der Psychologie. The account of our volitional consciousness seems considerably amended there (pp. 354—5), but it remains, as I understand it, fatally defective. When a man expects to yawn, and then this happens, it surely does not by itself give him the consciousness of will. On the other hand it falls, so far as I see, within Professor Münsterberg’s definition. But the problem, I venture to think, has been made hopeless from the first by more than one unexplained, if not arbitrary, assumption, and I must regret that Professor Münsterberg’s great penetration and ingenuity have not been applied in larger measure to the work of making clear his principles.
We may illustrate
1 On Expectation cf. E., xiv, 261, 278 and xxiv. 417, note 2. I do not admit that in all expectation there must be will or even desire, but, so far as there is will, it is a will only for the ideal development of the object in and for me, and any other will, if present, falls outside the expectation itself. It is instructive to take a case where I both will a result and also therefore expect the result to happen. We have here (a) the existence as it is now, and (b) the existence ideally qualified for me by the result, when taken by me as subject to the condition of my idea and a time-interval. And so far there is no opposition between my idea and existence, and no awareness of will. For the actual volition we must have also (c) an awareness of the opposition of my idea of the result to the existence as it is now, followed by the attribution (in some sense) of the actual change as an effect to the idea. We need not stop to notice also the further possible attribution of my better apprehension of the result, when it arrives, to another volition. What we should observe in the above case is that, for actual volition to take place, the consciousness of the time-interval must for the moment lapse, or at least pass into the background, and that on the other hand this consciousness is essential to expectation proper. A thing may be desired and expected, and may even be willed and expected, but, so far as in the proper sense it is expected, we must add that, so far, it is not properly willed or desired. If you do not feel the idea of the change to conflict with the present existence. you have no experience of volition, and, so far as the certain future is emphasized, this opposition disappears. On the other hand, in all expectation there is a tendency for this qualification by the time-interval to drop out. The moment that this happens there is an opposition between the existence and the idea, and desire and perhaps volition may in consequence be generated forthwith. Cf. E., No. xiv. 261.
It may be objected first that will cannot be the alteration of existence by an idea, since there may be a volition where the idea does not really carry itself out. And as examples of this may be adduced such cases as resolve and intention, will in paralysis, and again the facts of disapprobation or approval. I will discuss these objections beginning with resolve; and in connexion with this point I must deal with a matter of importance, the difference between a complete and an incomplete act of will.
If intention and resolve by themselves were really volition, why should we hear of a mere resolve or of a mere intention? The question is obvious and, I will add, it points to an evident truth. A resolve in its essence is not a volition, and, so far as actually it is will, it is so but incidentally. The moral chasm between the two facts often cannot be ignored. It is plainly one thing to be resolved beforehand, and another thing to act when the moment has come. And, if resolve were will, then to make a hero, or again a monster of vice, no more would be wanted than defect of imagination with ignorance and foolishness. But a resolve really is not volition, and the point of difference seems clear. A resolve is directed, and it must be directed, on what we know is not yet actual, and so is only ideal; while volition, as we have seen, must invariably begin with the present
This to me seems clear, and I take the denial of it to be an obvious error, and it is therefore desirable to ask how such an error can have arisen. The doctrine of will, we may remind ourselves, is full of difficulty, and a readiness to grasp at anything which seems likely to help is a natural weakness. But apart from this there are various causes likely to create confusion about will and resolve, (i) Will may be taken in the sense not of actual volition but of standing tendency, (ii) Resolve in many cases involves the actual volition of a psychical state, (iii) There is an incomplete as well as a complete act of will, and, though resolve never can amount even to an incomplete volition, it can partake of its nature. For incidentally it consists partly in the same process and goes some length on the same road. But in resolve (I would repeat this) the existence to be changed by the idea is severed invariably by a gap from the actual present. I will now proceed to explain these three grounds of error, beginning with the last, and in connexion with this I must emphasize the distinction between complete and incomplete will.
With will taken in its full sense I agree that psychology cannot concern itself. My will is not completely realized until its end has been actually attained, even if that attainment does not take place until after my death. And for some purposes the confinement of will to a narrower meaning
Psychology, I agree, has to set bounds to its subject. The extent to which it can recognize physiological fact is limited. It will admit no more of this, in short, than it is forced to admit in order to justify its own account of psychical phenomena.
1 On the one hand, physiological explanation and fact has, taken for itself, no place in psychology. On the other hand, if it is anywhere contended that a difference in the physiological explanation affects materially the psychological account, I do not see how such a contention can be on principle excluded.
And psychology, I agree, cannot follow the process of will beyond the limits of the body, but on the contrary must take will as ended within them. While not denying, that is, the completer sense in which will goes
We may, in other words, distinguish roughly two periods or stages in volition. The first of these stages will consist in what may be called the mere prevalence of the idea, while in the second stage the idea will advance beyond its own existence towards its physical or psychical end. And I agree that in psychology we have a right to make use of these distinctions. On the other hand I urge that they everywhere involve some abstraction, and that this abstraction may be more or less artificial and vicious. There are cases where the action follows on the idea without hesitation or delay, and the stage of prevalence can hardly be said here to have an independent duration. And again the mere prevalence of the idea may itself go beyond the idea, for it may depend on the idea’s carrying itself out to some extent into the fact. An actual movement of my body, however partial, may be the means by which the mere idea of such a movement prevails. On the other hand, in certain cases we may consider the whole process of will as roughly divided into two more or less separate movements. In the first of these the idea, we may say, merely as an idea gains possession of my mind, while in the second it advances further beyond itself to realize itself in the facts. And while I must insist that the first stage, if taken strictly by
But it will be objected that, if volition may ever be such an inward event, our definition of will is no longer tenable. Is not the prevalence of an idea, I may be asked, something different from its realization in fact? In order to answer this question we must inquire in what this prevalence consists. The point is difficult, and, in order to deal with all sides of it, I am forced in passing to anticipate a future result.
We may pass from this to consider prevalence in another sense more material to our inquiry. If an idea is to be willed, it must not merely be felt as in one with my inner self. In order to be willed it must also dominate my psychical existence, and must banish or subject to itself whatever there is contrary to its being and progress.
1 The point has been noticed briefly in Mind, N.S. x. 446 E., xxiii. 397-8; 398, note.
2 We must never forget that the existence to which the idea is opposed may be merely psychical.
3 I do not here discuss how this sense of prevalence is connected with the former one. We have, on the one hand, an unwelcome fixed idea which gradually dominates me, until, all opposition being overcome, it is identified with myself. On the other hand, we have a desired end which I feel wholly to be mine, and which yet cannot realize itself against some part of my psychical being.
Now
1 With regard to using the impossibility of recall as a mark of prevalence, I do not think that by this we should really gain anything. The prevalence of the idea certainly implies that the process must advance unhindered by ‘me’, the ‘me’ being here understood not to contain any psychical element to which ‘myself’ is opposed. But this prevalence, we have already seen, is not volition. On the other hand, the impossibility of recall, if taken in a fuller sense, would be deceptive, for it would depend on circumstances more or less accidental. To pass to another point, we may here notice the question whether an act which takes time is to be regarded as one will or as several. We may answer that, so far as the sequel does not follow automatically from the beginning, the act may be regarded as having both characters. Each new change in existence, which is made directly by the idea, may so far be regarded as a new volition. This point may become important where the idea has failed to anticipate features which arise in the actual execution, and where in consequence the will becomes, as we say, paralysed, or has to be renewed.
We have now to some extent perceived the nature of complete and of incomplete will, and the degrees by which completion may be gradually approached. I have pointed
If a man’s arm is paralysed so that in fact he is unable to move it, he is none the less able, we are assured, most fully to will this movement (see Professor James, Psychology, chap. xxvi). I do not question here the fact itself, but I should interpret it as follows. The patient perceives the existence of his limb as it is, and over against this he has the idea of its alteration. This idea possesses him, and, apart from the above perception of existence, it finds in him nothing which seems to oppose its complete realization. The idea starts unchecked on its anticipated course and becomes more particularized, and then, at a certain point beyond this, it ceases to advance. But, although the idea no longer goes forward, there is a sense of actual volition. Now, as I understand the facts, the idea, in most cases at least, succeeds to some extent in passing beyond itself into actual fact. It moves not the part required but other parts of the body (James, ibid.). And, where this is the case and where such an actual movement is also perceived, I take it to explain in accordance with our definition the consciousness of will. The idea has moved forwards towards the change of fact, not only, as we say, in its own character, but beyond itself into an actual movement of the body. And this movement will, I assume, be perceived as a
1 The movement is not perceived as a complete carrying out of the idea. For in the first place the part moved is not that part of which the movement was willed. And in the second place, even if the two perceptions were to some extent confused, the absence of movement also in the required part, an absence which is perceived, would lead us to regard our volition as frustrated. On the other side our volition, though incomplete, will appear as actual. For the bodily movement, following in a continuous process on the prevalence of the idea, will naturally come to the mind as a sign that the idea has passed over into the body, however inadequately. And a process carried out to this point may in accordance with our definition be taken as will, as a volition which is not completed but which still is actually there.
But, it may be urged, there are cases where the idea does not advance outwards even up to this point. In these cases the idea remains entirely within itself, and after all there is an actual experience of will. If this does not take place in paralysis, I may be told, it happens often elsewhere. It happens where I will, for example, the movement of something outside of and unconnected with my body, as, for instance, the arrival of a letter or a change of position in the furniture of my room. Now, with regard to this alleged fact, I do not dispute that in a sense it takes place, but as to what happens when it takes place I remain in some doubt. For myself, usually, where I will, let us say, a chair to transport itself across the room, I find that I connect this anticipated movement with some bodily act of my own. A fixed glance, an order uttered inwardly or some other slight movement, goes in most cases together with the ‘prevalence’ of the idea; and this actual movement, I believe, enters into the process of that idea’s content. And, so far as this is so, the idea once more has carried itself out beyond itself. The idea has begun an actual change of the opposed existence, partial indeed and indirect, but enough probably to give the sense of its process having passed out into fact. And there is a further point which, in connexion with all these cases, I would recommend to the reader’s notice. If I ‘will’, let us say, that a letter has arrived or that a chair
The conclusion then, which so far we have reached, can be briefly resumed thus. An actual volition may certainly be involved in the prevalence of an idea, but that volition at the same time will be incomplete. But there will not be in any case even an incomplete volition, unless to some extent the idea carries itself out beyond itself. Where this aspect fails there will at most be a doubtful experience, due
1 If the mere prevalence of the idea is looked upon as a step towards its carrying itself out, and if it comes to the mind in that character, some consciousness of will would naturally result. I could not myself, however, admit the actual presence of will, except so far as the prevalence of the idea incidentally involves its actual passage beyond itself as a mere idea.
The idea of recalling some name or some other circumstance may be suggested to my mind, and I may decide by an act of will to carry out this recall. But the attempt may fail in fact to succeed, though the volition has been actual, and the idea, it may be said therefore, has prevailed but has not to any extent realized itself. This is an interpretation which once more I am unable to accept. There may have been in the first place a successful will for some internal utterance, and, apart from this, we may notice another important feature in the case. A will to recollect is a will to effect a certain change in my psychical being, and, even where this idea fails to carry itself out to the end, yet in its prevalence it may make, as we saw, some actual advance beyond itself. The possession of myself by the idea of a name to be recollected involves to a certain extent in fact the actual process of recollection. The recalling consists, that is, in the recovery of contiguous detail, and, so far as I can judge, wherever the idea of such a recall has become prevalent, that detail is in every case actually restored up to a variable limit. If so, the idea, we must say, has to a certain point realized itself in fact. If we take on the other side a case where my inability is more complete, I cannot myself verify in such a case the experience of actual volition. I cannot, I find, ‘will myself’ to know something, if my ignorance is too complete. Where this ignorance extends beyond a certain degree I cannot myself find a place for the will in question. I must either imagine my case to be other than in fact it actually is, or again I must content myself with the volition of something like a form of words, or else, to speak for myself, I cannot arrive at any experience of will. And this, I think, is not because volition
I will now return to consider further the case of resolve.
1 This point is discussed later.
2 Cf. here A.R., 410 [= 463], note.
On the other hand, there are several causes which may lead to a confusion between resolve and will. In the first place, my being resolved may be a state of standing or permanent will. We shall inquire later as to the proper meaning which belongs to this phrase, but a resolve so understood, though in a sense it is will, is clearly not itself an actual volition. In the second place, I may of course have willed to form some resolution, and in this case there is certainly an actual volition. But what has really been willed is the production of the mental state called resolve, and the volition here and the resolve itself are clearly not the same thing. And there is in the third place another reason why will and resolve are confused. The essence of a resolve, we have seen, divides it from volition, for it belongs to that essence that a resolve is directed on something other than the present. And yet incidentally it may imply an actual though incomplete will. The idea in a resolve may to a greater or less extent carry itself out at once into actual fact, and, so far as this process takes place, it will involve a real volition. Or, again, in resolve the idea may be realized in an imaginary existence, an existence more or less confused with actual fact, and, so far as this confusion happens, the resolve will be accompanied by some consciousness of will. But every such process falls, we must not forget, outside the resolve, when that is taken in its own true and special character. That character implies that the existence which is confronted by the resolve is distinguished from the existence
There are some additional cases where it is urged that volition can be present, although in these cases the idea fails to pass beyond itself. I must however defer the consideration of what Professor James has called ‘consent’, and the discussion of any argument based on Mr. Shand’s ‘types of will’. I shall explain hereafter why I am forced to reject these doctrines, and I must content myself here with some very brief remarks on the subject of approval. The approval or again the disapproval of a mere idea has been held to constitute will, and such a doctrine once more is in conflict with our account. There are two ways in which ‘the idea’ may be here understood. It may be taken as the idea of a change to be made in my present existence, and in this sense we have in effect discussed its claim already. There will be an actual volition so far as such an idea prevails, and so far as in its prevalence it also succeeds in carrying itself out. Apart from this process my approval certainly is not volition, and, where this process is present,
I have now dealt with several objections raised against our definition of will. They have been based so far on the assertion that the idea in will need not carry itself out beyond itself. And I have tried to show that such an assertion cannot be maintained. I must pass from this to examine some other views which in my opinion are mistaken, and we may begin with the alleged necessity in will for the presence of judgement or belief. But before I discuss this, I will remark on a point of importance.
We have seen that the idea in volition must prevail and dominate, and this in the end means that we are moved by but a single idea. I do not say that beside this one idea no other idea can be present in will, but, if present, no other idea can be the object of will or desire. It cannot be the suggestion of a change which, felt in one with my inner self, then moves itself towards its own existence in fact. So far as in volition we have the presence of two moving ideas, one of these, unless it comes as a not-self opposed to my inner self, must tacitly or explicitly be subordinate to and included in the other. It must enter the main process as a passive accompaniment or as an active factor, and it may contribute to the total idea positively or again by the way of its own subjection or banishment. I have explained the above doctrine in a former article and to this I must refer.
1 E.,. xxiv and again E., xxv.
If in will there ever remains an independent practical
This doctrine of the idea’s monarchy has another side which I will now proceed to notice. The idea which realizes itself in will must be the idea taken as unconditional and unmaimed. I do not mean that the incomplete realization of a positive idea cannot be will. Under some conditions I have agreed that an incomplete process may be an actual will carried out imperfectly. But under other conditions the passing into fact of anything short of the idea in its entirety must be denied to be will. And there are cases which exhibit strikingly the truth of this principle. If my idea contains the restraint of A, and if A then is carried out into fact unrestrained, my idea, it is clear, has not been realized. The same conclusion holds where my idea was to realize A modified and subject to a condition, and where in the actual process this modifying condition falls out. In these cases the result indubitably has not come from my will. And we must again deny will where my idea has indeed been actually carried out, but where the result follows not from the idea itself but from some other condition. The future application of these doctrines will show their importance, and I must content myself here with inviting the reader to notice them. I will however add an example which I have not invented. A priest in hearing a confession may himself pass into the fault reported by his penitent, and this result may be culpable, but presumably it is not willed. The idea, we will assume, has here carried itself out, but it has done this in such a manner as to lose its identity. Provided, that is, that the idea has remained qualified in my mind as the act of another, it cannot in its proper character, and as such, realize itself in my person.
1 This distinction between an unqualified and a qualified idea bears on the question why ideas do not always realize themselves. I shall deal with this point hereafter, when I have to show the means by which ideas carry themselves out.
I will proceed from this to examine the mistaken doctrine which I mentioned above. Beside the prevalence of the idea it may be contended that volition implies always a judgement or belief, a judgement, that is, with regard to my future or at least my possible action. This is a doctrine which I have never been able to accept. We may begin by distinguishing two senses in which judgement can be used. In its ordinary meaning a judgement about the future asserts its idea of my ‘real’ world, a world which includes everything which is taken as continuous with itself and in the same plane with its own ‘reality’. But there is a wider sense also in which judgement may be taken. In this wider sense every possible idea is at the same time a judgement, and, in being entertained, is ipso facto used to qualify reality. The imaginary, the absurd, and even the impossible, are upon this view all attributed to the real, for all ideas in a sense, so far as we have them at all, are the predicates of reality. It is, however, not in this wider meaning that a judgement about the future is asserted to characterize volition. Indeed in this wider sense we should judge of the possible and the future as of something which is, and with this clearly we should have removed the distinctive essence of will. But in any case, I submit, it is not true that in volition the idea is always the idea that I am about to do something. I cannot admit that the qualification of the change as my act must always in volition form a part of the idea’s original content. This is a point which I shall hereafter endeavour to make plain, and I can do no more here than recommend it to the notice of the reader. Its consequence, if made good, must be the rejection of the wholedoctrine we are discussing, whether that is taken in awider or in a narrower sense.
The presence of a judgement in all volitions certainly cannot be discovered. You will not find it everywhere when, apart from theory, you examine the facts. If you take the case of actions where without delay the result follows the suggestion, no one, apart from theory, would deny that many such actions are willed. To suppose on the other hand that everywhere, before or even during such an action, there is a necessity for the judgement that I am about, or if possible about, to perform it, to my mind is indefensible. Unless you confine will arbitrarily to a certain number among reflective volitions, I cannot find this judgement, and I must express my disbelief in its existence. I will however not dwell on this point, but will leave it to the consideration of the reader. It serves, if made good, as a disproof of the alleged necessity for judgement.
I will however add to the above objections an additional difficulty. In a highly developed mind and under exceptional circumstances there may happen, I think, a case of the following nature. There may be present a judgement of the kind required, and then an act in which the idea is realized, and yet in spite of this there may be no real volition. I may have an impulse to sneeze where I have also a desire to restrain myself, and the impulse may induce a moving idea of its result, and even also the judgement that probably or certainly I am about to produce it. And yet, if the act follows, and is even the effect of the idea and the judgement, the act under some conditions must and would be denied to be a genuine volition.
1 In the above I am taking belief throughout as identical with judgement, but for some purposes I should consider it needful to distinguish them sharply from one another.
2 I have discussed these conditions in M., N.S. xi. [E., 25.].
I am aware that according to some writers such a complex case
1 Dr. Stout has adduced and discussed this instance (M., N.S. v, on ‘Voluntary Action’) and in connexion with it defends the doctrine criticized in the text. But the view which he advocates remains to me untenable and also obscure. ‘Volition is a desire qualified and defined by the judgement that, so far as in us lies, we shall bring about the attainment of the desired end’ (l.c. 356). The words ‘so far as in us lies’ may, however, be understood in several meanings. They might be qualified either by the addition of ‘physically’ or ‘psychically’, and, when we adopt ‘psychically’, we may do this in more senses than one. We may take volition to be complete when there is a certain judgement about the future together with desire, or we may mean that beside this a domination by the idea is required. But the discussion in the text provides, I think, for the whole of these cases, since in the main it rests on the denial of a necessity for any judgement at all. With regard to the presence of desire I shall hereafter explain that in my view desire is most certainly not necessary for will. But, to pass from this and to return to the instance of the unwilled sneeze, I do not understand that Dr. Stout could deny the possibility here of a desire for the result as well as of a judgement in the absence of will. And I may perhaps urge this as an objection, although I could not myself admit a desire here in the strict sense of actual desire. In addition I may remark that in any case ‘desired’ must be understood as ‘desired to be had here and now’, and the judgement must refer to an immediate production of the result. If on Monday I have the belief or judgement that on Wednesday I shall assuredly be tempted to realize an end which I even now desire, and shall infallibly, ‘so far as in me lies’ and apart from interference, bring about this result—such a state obviously need not already be an actual volition, and it need not even amount to a resolve or intention. So far as the desired end is viewed by anticipation as being realized by something in the future, it is so far not willed or intended by me. You do not get present agency unless my idea is opposed to fact, real or imaginary, and against this present fact realizes itself and me. I have however already explained this point in distinguishing expectation and again resolve from will. But the words ‘so far as in us lies’ are capable of yet another interpretation. They might mean that, in order to be a genuine volition, an act must proceed from my higher or true self, and that, if it is to a certain point irrational, it must be denied to be will. I do not know how far I should attribute such a view to Dr. Stout. It is a point discussed by me in M., N.S. xi. [E., 25]. I may say in conclusion that I have considered the remarks which (in Mind, N.S. xxv.) Mr. Shand has offered on Dr. Stout’s doctrine of will. I cannot however say that in consequence I have been able to find this view clearer or more satisfactory.
(b) There is another reason why a judgement has been supposed to belong to the essence of will. ‘One cannot’, it is said, ‘will to realize an end which one regards as impossible, and in willing therefore one must judge that the end is possible.’ But surely there is no force in this unless you assume the necessity for some judgement, and this assumption, I have pointed out, is opposed to the facts. We may, however, in this connexion inquire how far we can will the impossible.
1 Cf. here Professor James, Psychology, ii. 560.
We must, I think, assert or deny a will for that which is judged to be impossible, according to the
1 The extent to which such a division in the self can be carried is in some cases considerable. The subject is further discussed in M., N.S. xi. [E., xxv]. The reader will notice that I treat as an obvious mistake the doctrine that the idea’s content is not affected by a change in its modality. This mischievous error is far too prevalent.
I will at this point very briefly notice several fresh errors. I cannot accept the doctrine that desire is essential to will.
The objections, which so far we have considered, admit the presence of an idea in volition, and have been directed more or less against that idea’s self-realization. I will proceed now to those which deny that an idea is essential to will. There are undoubted acts of volition, it will be contended, where no idea of the end is even present. And such a contention, if made good, would be a fatal difficulty, but on the other hand I cannot doubt that it is opposed to the facts. In every case of will I must insist that an idea is present; and, if an idea is not present, no one, I believe, apart from some prejudice would call the act a volition. We have in this connexion to deal with the actions which are termed impulsive, and with these we may take acts from imitation and from the word of command, and, generally, whatever act is suggested by a perception. Mr. Shand, again, would instance here the facts of what he terms ‘negative’ and ‘imperative’ will.
1 M., N.S. vi, on ‘Types of Will’, to which article I refer the reader for Mr. Shand’s views in this connexion. They will be discussed hereafter.
The above objections are based in the main on one kind of mistake, on a misconception, that is, with regard to the real nature of ideas. When such misunderstandings are
(i) An idea (I must insist) has not always a simple character, and what we term ‘our idea’ or ‘our object’ may be often the fragmentary aspect of a complex whole. To speak in general, our apparent idea and our real idea may fundamentally differ, and this difference, if unnoticed, may result in delusion. For what we call ‘our idea’ may in truth be incomplete or again irrelevant. I have had already in previous articles, as in the present, to call attention to this truth, and the neglect of it is a source of widespread error. An idea cannot be identified at pleasure with something less or something more than itself, and the question as to what in a given case is my actual idea, may entail a careful inquiry.
(ii) An idea may exist and may yet be unspecified and general. In order, for instance, to act on the idea of avoidance or injury, I need not have the idea of injuring or avoiding in some particular manner. The alternative, between the presence of an idea in a specific form and the absence of an idea altogether, is radically mistaken. I agree that something more particular than the general idea must exist in my mind, but I deny that this something (whatever according to the case it may be) must itself belong to the content of the genuine idea which I use. The whole assumption, if I may be plain, is the merest prejudice. In the course of the act itself the idea’s content will in its process further particularize itself, but before the act the genuine content of the idea may be general. And it is perhaps sufficient here to call attention to what I will term this evident truth. Once assume that an idea must be specific or be nothing, add to this the assumption that whatever appears at first sight to be our end and object is always really and truly so—and you may be taken far, but unfortunately away from the truth.
(iii) An idea itself is not an image, nor is it always even based on an image as distinct from a perception. The denial of this truth is a prevalent error, and it underlies
1 On this and the preceding error cf. M., O.S. xiii. 23 [E., xiv. 269-70] and N.S. x. 5 [E., xxiii. 391].
If we return to the objections founded on the alleged fact of will without the presence of an idea, we may now discover them to be invalid. The removal of errors will
1 There are a few points here which I would ask the reader to notice, (i) Will and volition are not taken to include what is called a standing will, (ii) To urge that the idea is often the creature of a blind impulse, which it does but passively translate, is quite inconclusive. If the ‘impulse’ is entirely without any consciousness of end, then, of course, so far it is not will. On the other hand, given the idea, the question of that idea’s origin is by itself irrelevant, unless you are asking when and how the volition arose. The real question is whether in fact the idea, when it is there, carries or does not carry itself out in the act. The act is or is not will, according to the answer given to this question, (iii) I shall deal with any objection based on the alleged ‘imperative’ and ‘negative’ types of volition, when in their proper place I dispose of these doctrines, (iv) It may be instructive to quote from Mr. Shand’s interesting article (M., N.S. vi. 290) what seems on another point a serious misunderstanding of fact. ‘If we are angry with some one, ideas of hurting or paining him occur, and we sometimes find the pain or injury has been inflicted without any prior consciousness on our part that we were going to inflict it. If we are reproached for the action, we say we did not “mean” to do it.’ This statement seems to contain more than one ambiguity, but I will confine myself to the words ‘mean to do it’. Does the person using these intend to deny his volition? I should say certainly it is not so. He may intend to deny a deliberate volition or set purpose, but perhaps, and more probably, his denial refers to something else. He is saying that he did not mean to do, and so by consequence did not will, the particular act. He willed, that is, to injure in general but perhaps not to strike, he willed to strike but perhaps not with such a heavy stick, and at all events he did not mean that the blow should fall where it actually fell, and so did not will the particular result. The true question here is about the actual content of the idea, what that was, how unspecified it was, and how far the individual result can be taken as its proper self-realization. When the facts of the case are ascertained, and when they are approached in this manner, I cannot see that they really present any difficulty.
Before I reply to this in detail I will venture to recall the general position to the reader. I am not in these articles undertaking to cover the whole ground of psychology. I am offering a definition of will which claims certainly to hold good everywhere. It claims, that is, wherever it is applied, to remain consistent with itself and with the common understanding of the facts. Hence I consider myself bound to deal with any case that is offered me, if that case
This being understood, I proceed to consider the instances offered above, and I find that I can at once dispose of a considerable part of them. The idea which in will realizes itself is the idea of a change to happen here and now in my existence. But it is obvious that in gestures, or in whatever may be called the mimic expression of an idea, the idea does not contain the element of my changed existence, and therefore in such a change the idea does not carry itself out. The gesture may as a gesture be willed, and if so we of course have volition, and a volition which exactly corresponds with our account. But, if the gesture is unwilled, the change in my existence is indeed caused by the idea, but on the other hand it never was contained in that idea. And, not being contained in the idea, it cannot have been carried out by it. The idea has not realized itself, and by our definition there has been therefore no will. The same thing holds of those movements by which I involuntarily reveal the place of a hidden object. These movements come from my idea and they betray it, and yet you cannot say that the idea has realized itself in them. For the idea of an object in such or such a place is not the idea of my change. The idea of my directing a person to the object, if that idea were unconditioned and so carried itself out, would by our definition be will. And the act would,
With regard to acts done from imitation there is room for considerable doubt. But the doubt applies merely to the facts of each individual case and does not affect the principles on which our decision is formed. ‘Imitation’ I use here to cover cases where the perception of something done by or happening to another leads in me to the occurrence of the same action or state. And taken in this wide sense, imitation, I presume, must occur at a stage where the ideal suggestion can hardly be supposed to exist and carry itself out in the mind. Whether this wide sense should be narrowed we need not inquire, nor can I even touch on the difficulty which attaches to the beginnings of imitation. We are concerned here merely with the principles on which such acts are asserted or denied to be will, and about these principles I see no occasion for doubt. Where there is no idea of a change in my existence, there is by our definition no will, and the same conclusion is even more obvious where no idea at all is present.
1 I may once more remind the reader that this subject has been discussed by me in Mind, N.S. xi.
2 We must not forget here that an ideal suggestion may come direct from a perception, and that usually, though not always, the presence of such a practical suggestion in me involves ipso facto the dropping out of the element of an alien personality.
And the
1 The reader will remember that I am not speaking here about degrees of responsibility. I am asking what I at least regard as a very different question, What is and what is not a formal volition? (Cf. E., xxv.)
And, however
1 If the suggestion of an act remains so involved with another’s personality that it does not free itself, or again become the idea of my doing the act because of that other, the act is not volition. To take another case, if the resolve for a future act leads to action immediately, the act is not will. It fails to be will, because the idea was incompatibly conditioned. There was at most a partial will in the sense in which that has been explained to belong to resolve. The above doctrine as to a foreign personality raises, I may remark, no real difficulty with regard to acts done in common.
We have now, I hope, defended our definition from the charge of undue wideness. It will include no consequence
It is often held that the genuine object which we desire, and which again we aim at in volition, must be something which when attained falls within our existence. The end, it is contended, must be realized for us, and it is so realized when our idea passes into a perception. And beyond such a perception, it is urged, we can desire and will nothing. I have some years ago remarked on this mistake (M., o.s. xiii. 21 [E., xiv. 267]), but I will attempt very briefly to deal with it here.
We have already noticed the view, according to which volition does not pass beyond the idea. The present doctrine is an error of a different kind, and it concerns the meaning contained within the idea itself. It maintains that I cannot even aim at anything which is not to be experienced by myself. And this doctrine, though based on a truth, is itself certainly erroneous. I will pass by that form of it which regards my pleasure as my one possible end, and will confine myself to the view that I cannot aim to realize anything unless that is to be perceived or experienced directly by myself.
If this were true, it would in the first place condemn some experience as illusory. No one, apart from theory, doubts that he can desire and will events to happen after his death. And the suggestion that his real aim is not
You may urge that a desire, which is not satisfied for my direct knowledge, must remain unsatisfied, and you may argue that in the end I can desire only that which would satisfy my desire. But in psychology, I reply, we can hardly insist on truth which is to be true in the end. And certainly we cannot assume as self-evident that all desires must be able to be satisfied, or identify my actual aim with whatever in the end that should involve or entail. You cannot argue, in short, that I have no desire for a certain object, if I perceive, or at least might perceive, that as such it would not satisfy me. For that personal relation to myself, which is implied in satisfaction, need not enter into the actual content of my idea. Desire is an inconsistent state, I agree, and its inherent contradiction, I agree, should be removed by satisfaction. But I cannot conclude from this that there is in fact no desire except for an end taken as attainable, and free from all inconsistency whether noticed or unnoticed. If you keep to the facts as observed, they are not in harmony with such a conclusion. And if you wish to make the mere existence of a mental state depend on its ultimate self-consistency, I cannot think you realize the effect and the ruinous sweep of your principle.
Volition (and in this respect it diverges from mere desire)
1 I shall return to this point hereafter.
But it is not true that the
1 I do not here discuss another possible ground of the above mistake. This ground would consist in the doctrine that my psychical states, such as ideas and perceptions, cannot also and at the same time be more. On this point see M.,N.S. ix. 5-7 [E., xxii. 369-71].
Chapter XXVII. The Definition of Will (II.)
Mind, N.S. xii, No 46, 145-76. April 1903.
We have defined a volition as ‘the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified’, and in the foregoing article we to some extent explained the first part of these words. I shall now proceed to show what is meant by a practical identification with self. I am in the present article still forced to assume the fact of ‘ideo-motor’ action, but the nature of this will be discussed on a later occasion.
To ask what is meant by the identification of an idea with my self, would in the end raise the whole question of the essence and origin of consciousness. We find that self and not-self are related both theoretically and practically, and we may inquire in general if these terms and their distinctions are original and ultimate. Or, if this problem is dismissed or is placed on one side, we may discuss the question of rank and priority as between perception and will. Since practice implies knowledge we may contend that the latter must come first, or we may on the other side reduce theory to a one-sided development of the practical process. We may insist again that neither attitude is higher in rank, and that neither taken by itself is original or prior. Both appear together, we may add, as essential aspects of consciousness, and we might go on to investigate their exact nature when first they appear, and attempt to trace their development from their earliest forms, if not from states which are neither. But in this article it is not my object to pursue such inquiries. I shall take the theoretical and the practical relation of the self to the not-self as facts of experience, and shall try to point out some aspects which are contained in both, attending specially of course to the practical side. Facts of experience the reader must understand to be experienced facts, and he must not include in
If in this way we examine the practical relation of the self to its world, we at once discover the features which were set out in our definition.
1 M. N.S. xi, No. 44 [E., xxvi]. The reader must also be referred here to the article on Conation [E., xxiii].
(i) The not-self, we have seen, is an existence, and this existence is for me. It comes before me or comes to me as a perceived other or as an object. Now in the practical relation it is important to observe that this ‘other’ has two senses, and that only one of these senses is found in mere theory. It is in the sense common to theory and practice alike that I am going first of all to consider the object. The perceived object, we may say, on the one hand comes as something which is independently, and on the other hand it is felt as something which is for me. I am not attempting here, the reader will understand, to explain or to justify the apparent facts, but am endeavouring merely to describe them. The object is in a sense which is not applicable to the whole felt moment, for, while the object is felt, it is also experienced as other than the felt self. It is therefore for me as something which is not myself. But to say that its relation to me is an object, or that my passivity towards it is an object, would certainly be false. How far these aspects may become objects at a later time and for reflection, I do not here inquire; but at first and in their essence, while we confine ourselves to the theoretical attitude,
1 I should perhaps remind the reader that I do not accept the restriction of ‘feeling’ to denote merely pleasure and its opposite.
(ii) In the practical relation the aspects we have described above are still to be found, but another feature is added which transforms the character of the whole. This feature is the opposition between self and not-self. In my practical attitude I experience myself as something contrary to the object. I do not merely receive the object and feel it as mine, although other than me, but I also feel my-self as something which is opposite and struggles to change it. And in this total feeling both the not-self and the self are present now as contrary realities. The relation with both its terms now appears before myself as two objects, but in what sense I am an object to myself we must go on to inquire.
In my practical consciousness there is a relation, we saw, between the not-self and an idea. This idea is the idea of a change in that object not-self, and the idea in its conflict with the not-self is itself an object for me. Hence a relation with both its terms is now before me as an object perceived. But this relation on the other hand is not merely a new perceived object. For I feel myself one with the idea in a sense in which I am not one with that object which opposes it, and therefore in and through this idea I feel myself in collision with that object, which has thus become in a further sense something alien and not-self. And my felt oneness with the idea and felt contrariness to the conflicting existence are not two separate facts, but are inseparable aspects of one fact. Whether in any sense opposition can otherwise be experienced and known I do not here inquire, but except through an idea there is no opposition if that is really practical and means will. And this is a point
(iii) This practical identification of self with the idea may be called specific,
1 This is the question as to how far self-consciousness is present always in will.
2 We must however be careful to avoid exaggeration on this head. I consider that, apart from the practical attitude, the self can be aware of the agreement or disagreement of its own felt content with that of the object before it. I think that such a sameness or difference may be felt, and the feeling then translated into a judgement. And if this were not possible, we should, I think, find it difficult to account for some aspects of self-consciousness. This is a matter, however, with which I cannot deal here.
In the practical relation we can find in the first place an existing not-self. There is an object, and it is felt as mine though as other than me. And we have in the second place an idea which conflicts with this existence. This idea once more is an object, and it is felt likewise as mine, and felt likewise again as other than myself. And so far we have no aspect, it may be said, which is not found in mere theory. For we have two objects in relation or two elements of one complex object, and each of these is mine and is not-mine in precisely the same sense. But we have so far left out of
I have explained that I assume nothing as to any temporal or other priority, and I am far from maintaining the possibility in fact of a mere theoretical attitude. But to the reader, who will not forget this necessary warning, I will offer what follows as perhaps a help to a better understanding. Let us suppose a self with an existing object, and let us suppose that the contents of the self and of its object are discrepant. The felt content of the self will here be hindered in fact by the not-self, but the self so far will not know that itself is hindered. It will on the other hand feel the uneasiness of its checked expansion, and its object will become disagreeably qualified. But now let us suppose further that the main aspect, in which the self is hindered, itself qualifies the object inconsistently with the object’s existence, and so itself becomes an idea for the self. With this the whole situation is forthwith changed. In this idea we have now an object in collision with existence and hindered by that. And the self now feeling itself to be specially at one with the idea, itself is hindered by existence and is aware of the hindrance. And the existence in this way has become not merely other but opposite. We in short have risen into the level of actual conation and will.
1 I will once more here refer the reader to my previous articles. Cf. also A.R. 547-8 = 606-7.
(iv) The actual volition, we have seen, is the alteration
The attitude of theory presents us here with an important contrast. The theoretical not-self, as we so far find it, may be discordant in various degrees, and the reality may more or less conflict with the idea which endeavours to express it. And in this discordance, since it qualifies me, I may suffer internally, and by its removal, so far as it is removed, I may feel myself expanded and satisfied. But the process here is experienced as in the main the self-realization of the object. The process can hardly be alleged
(v) There are several points on which I will now endeavour to obviate misunderstanding. The existing not-self is not always my external world, but may consist in any existence of and within myself which is opposed to me.
1 Cf. here my Appearance, 83 = 97.
We have here within the whole, which is felt as my present being, the opposition of two objects. We have the idea of a change in some existing feature, and together with this first object comes the feeling of myself as specially one with the change. But, on the other side and as a second object, we have the actual feature of myself as I exist in fact, and this second object is a not-self which is opposed to the idea and to myself. And we have then the process in which the inner self carries itself out into this not-self. Everywhere, to pass from this special instance, we must bear in mind a general result. An element, which in one sense is a not-self, may in connexion with an act of will take a different position. And this is a point to which I must invite the attention of the reader. The not-self in a volition is always more or less particular and limited, and it is limited, we may say, for the purpose of the volition. Beside those internal feelings which have not even the form of a not-self or object, there will be tracts even of our outer world which for the moment will share their position. They will not make part of that not-self which opposes the idea and our volition. They will on the contrary fall back into that general mass which is felt as myself, a mass which in various
1 An idea is false, we may say, in so far as the reality cannot be expressed by it without conflict, and a will is bad in so far as the idea fails to express the genuine nature of myself. In this article I am concerned only, it will be understood, with the formal essence in which all volitions agree, and I pay no regard to any Substantial’ or ‘material’ differences between them.
(vi) I will pass on from this to emphasize two points of importance. In the first place both self and not-self must in volition have a concrete content, and both must be actually experienced in their own proper nature. We must have an experienced relation between two experienced terms, and, if it were not so, volition would not be ‘a fact of experience’. If it were not so, an experience of activity or
In will the terms and their relation and, in short, the whole process is experienced, but this process in all its aspects is not experienced in the same sense throughout. (a) The existence and the idea of its change, we have seen, are both objects. And the self is an object to itself so far as it is contained in the idea—a point to which we shall presently have to return. And the self again, as itself carrying itself out into fact, must to a certain extent be perceived as an object. But however much these aspects of the whole come before me as objects, they are none the less experienced also as elements felt within the ‘now mine’. And (b) this experience of my total present is itself not an object, and it cannot in the end even for reflection become an object throughout. And (c) the same result holds of my identification of myself with the idea. The felt oneness of my inner self with the idea of the change cannot become an object, unless we go beyond and unless we so far destroy will. It does not matter how much my self has passed beforehand into the content of the idea, and it does not matter how much my self perceives itself as carried out in the act. In the end my union with the idea must remain essentially a felt union, and, so far as by reflection it becomes an object, volition so far has been superseded and has ceased to exist. I do not deny that this union, while being felt, can perhaps to some extent also be an object, but it is merely as being
1 I cannot accept without qualification the statement that we are self-conscious in the practical attitude, and in the theoretical attitude no more than conscious. Not only, in my opinion, do we fail everywhere to be completely self-conscious, but I could not admit without some reserve the doctrine that all self-consciousness is in its essence practical. The above statement however expresses, if it exaggerates, an important truth.
I have now endeavoured to explain how in volition I am identified with the idea and opposed to the not-self. I have still to ask how far my self enters into the content of the idea, and together with this question I shall have to inquire into the experience of agency. But before I enter on this subject, I will endeavour to dispose of some remaining difficulties. I must deal briefly with the nature of reflective volition, and in connexion with this will remark upon Choice and Consent. And I will open the discussion of these points by stating a probable objection.
‘Your account,’ it may be said, ‘whether so far it is satisfactory or otherwise, applies to will merely in its first and undeveloped form. But will in the distinctive sense is not found at that level. I do not really will until I suspend myself and consider my future course, and then assert myself in something like choice or consent. This is the essence of volition, and, however much your account may be laboured, this in the end falls outside your definition of will.’
1 The same objection could be urged about our higher and lower will, our divided will, our attention, and so forth. I have already treated these cases so far as is necessary in Mind, N.S. xi, Nos. 41 and 43 [.E. xxiv and xxv], to which latter article I may refer specially for some illustration of what follows.
Now I cannot here attempt even to sketch the development of will from its lowest form upwards. But in its highest form certainly no principle is involved beyond those which in our account we have set out already. And I will endeavour
In the higher form of volition (so much cannot be disputed) we come upon a most important difference. Our will at this stage has become reflective. I do not here identify myself immediately with this or that practical suggestion, but on the contrary I regard these as things offered to me for my acceptance or rejection. This does not meanmerely that I am inconclusively moved by conflicting ideas, and that I fluctuate and waver in their ebb and flow. And it does not mean that I am held motionless by balanced forces or paralysed by shock. The ideas are not mere forces which in me produce states of motion or rest. They are objects which I separate from myself and keep before me at will. The suggestions so far are mine, and again in another sense they are not mine, and their adoption in short lies entirely with myself. Of all the suggestions offered I may accept none, and, when I accept one, I do not merely become what is offered. I actively adopt the idea, I take it into myself, or, if you prefer the phrase, I put myself into the idea. This is a specific act, and with it comes a mode of feeling which is specific. And this by an exaggeration has been emphasized as a fact irreducible and unique.
The exaggeration being omitted I think the above statement is correct, but I claim that the facts are embraced by our definition of will. Indisputably the self is able to rise above suggestions. The self can in a manner alienate these from itself, and then, if it does not reject all, can adopt one of them formally. And it is desirable, I am sure, to lay stress on these facts. On the other hand I cannot take the facts as a kind of supervening miracle which, I know not how, is to prove something—it seems not easy to say what. The self can suspend itself, but, as soon as we inquire into the means, there is an end of the miracle. The means we can discover in every case to be a higher idea, and this higher idea, at least in one of its aspects, is the negation of the particular suggestions. It is with such an idea that in reflective will our self is identified. And the consequence,
1 This question is to some extent dealt with in a preceding article, M. N.S. xi, No. 43 [E. xxv].
2 It would be well I think if those, who maintain that they are so, would explain how much in psychology is not exceptional and unique. We have again, with a difference, the same experience of alienation and reunion when after suspense and doubt an idea is accepted as true. The conditions here, as we have seen, are partly diverse. It is here the not-self which first rejects and then reunites itself with the idea, whereas in will this is done by the self which is opposed to the not-self. The conditions and feelings in both cases may be called the same generically, but not altogether. We shall once more notice this difference when we deal with the subject of Consent.
1 The subject of disjunctive volition will be briefly discussed in the article following this.
(b) In the second place a choice must be made between at least two things which move me. It involves a preliminary suspension, however brief, and that suspension comes, at least usually, from conflicting desires. But choice always and without exception is between two or more moving ideas. I may indeed be ordered to choose before I begin to desire, and in this case the suspension may be said to start from the suggested idea. But the choice, when it takes place, takes place always in essentially the same way. The suggested idea moves me as I am moved by my own idea of an ulterior end, and in each case I have before me two opposite means which prevent instant action. The means in every case must be identified with the moving end, and, if you use ‘desire’ here in a widened sense, the means in every case must both be desired. The fact that, apart from this identification, they may be indifferent or even repulsive does not raise really the least difficulty.
(c) We have to choose ‘between’ things, and the ‘between’ implies that one thing is rejected. To say ‘take one’ and to say ‘choose one’ are different requests. Unless the
I will go on from this to remark upon the meaning of Consent. Professor James (Psychology, ii. 568) has used this term to express the ultimate fact in action and belief.
1 Mr. Shand, in Mind, N.S. vi, pp. 301 foll., appears to me to have seriously misapprehended the facts on this point.
2 I do not know if this was suggested by Lotze’s use of Billigung, Med. Psych., p. 302. I have already remarked on Approval, M., N.S. xi. 453 [E. xxvi. 495].
I have already explained how far I can agree to call such experiences ultimate, and I will now point out why in the case of either action or belief the use of consent is really indefensible. In the first place my consent is given always to a foreign force, and in the end it is given always to a foreign will. In the second place consent is not my mere awareness that something is to come from this will, but it implies necessarily that to some extent I am responsible for the result. If, where I might have hindered another’s act, I have not attempted to hinder it, I may be taken as a condition of the act and therefore so far as its cause. On the other hand, to call such consent my volition of the act would
1 Consent can of course be given in such a way that it amounts to an incitement, and it can be given in such a way as to have the opposite effect. But these effects, I submit, go beyond and fall outside of a bare consent.
A further inquiry into the nature of consent is not necessary here, but the following remarks may perhaps be of service to the reader. The difficulty of defining consent does not lie merely in the uncertainty of the particulars, but attaches itself also to the general idea. Consent is a positive attitude of mind which must exist positively to a certain degree. But on the other hand that degree is determined only by negation and by omission.
Consent is a mental attitude of one agent towards the act of another. The first agent must be aware of the act, and up to a certain point must share the sentiment from which it proceeds. That point is fixed by the presence of abstention from resistance to the act as proposed or from attempt to nullify it if existing. As consenting, I am dominated by a sentiment in accordance with the act, so far that either a feeling of hostility to it does not arise in my mind, or, if it arises, is prevented from carrying itself out. The result is that I do not oppose the act.
It is a further condition of consent that (a) the act must be taken by me as in some sense to concern me, and (b) some kind of opposition is in my power, or taken by me to be so. The act must fall within the region which I take to be the sphere of my will, and in this sense must interest me. And some kind of volition to oppose the performance or continued existence of the act is always possible here.
Consent must be distinguished from approval. Approval (a) extends beyond my personal concerns, and (b) involves some reference to a standard. In these two senses it is impersonal and disinterested.
Consent, in order to remain consent, must stop short at a certain point. If it becomes more than a positive state of feeling, measured and defined by abstinence, and if it passes into an attempt to further the act or commit it in common, it has ceased so far to be mere consent.
It is obvious from the above that the positive state of consent itself is not properly an act and is not itself willed. It might itself be willed as a psychical effect, but as such it would be only the effect of a volition other than itself. On the other hand, the signification, to another or to my own mind, of my state of consent can obviously be willed. And that abstinence from opposition, which is one aspect of the consent, can itself again be willed. I can will to behave consistently as consenting without any ulterior end in view beyond this behaviour as following from the consent.
If on the other hand my behaviour, as consenting, or again as signifying consent, is willed as a means to the performance of the act in question, I have (as we have seen) passed beyond simple consent. I now have furthered by my act the act of another, and may even have joined with him in committing it. And the result here will be no longer the mere effect of my consent; it will be that effect as contemplated by me and set before me as my end. The mere foreseeing by me that in fact the effect will follow must be distinguished from this; and the difference between the two lies in the nature and action of the idea which in each case is before my mind.
Thus, even in theory, the mental state of consent is not easy to fix, while in practice the difficulty seems well nigh insuperable. The difficulty here lies mainly in knowing the exact nature of that to which at the moment consent is given. For the consent is given to something as it appears at one moment to the consenter, and as at that moment it is qualified by his feelings. But the exact nature of such an impression, as it happens in another, can be arrived at only by approximation and always presumptively. The difficulty again as to what is to be taken as and presumed to be a willed or unwilled indication or signification of consent, can only be disposed of roughly.
And consent is inapplicable to a common volition,
1 The reason why Professor James, with all his insight, is led to advocate this absurdity is, I venture to think, at once clear and instructive. Professor James, as I have noticed before (M. N.S. xi. 297 [E. xxv. 452, note]), seems to approach the facts of the soul with a mind too much dominated by mechanical metaphors. What moves in the soul is forces external and foreign. And when in use such principles fail, and Professor James sees their failure, instead of rejecting them as disproved he attempts to help them once again from the outside. My will is more than the resultant effect of foreign forces, and it is therefore something inexplicable which supervenes and is added from the outside at a certain point. And, being merely added, it does not and it must not transform the external forces. Hence the special virtue of consent, which on one side makes an assertion of myself, and on the other side still leaves the forces foreign.
We now approach a difficult part of our subject, the question how far in will the self enters into the idea of the change; and we may connect with this question a brief inquiry into the meanings of activity and agency. The
This being dismissed, we may enter on a more limited inquiry, and may ask first whether and how far my self must enter into the content of the idea. The idea, we have seen, is always the idea of a change in existence, and certainly in some cases it is the idea of myself making this change. I as realizing the end am in these cases an object to myself, and it is this idea of myself which here makes the beginning of the process. Now no one can doubt that such an idea is often present in will, and I am not concerned to deny that it is present usually. But I cannot agree that in will the idea does contain my self always, and I do not think that I as making the change must always be an object to myself in the idea.
This question taken by itself has but little importance. On the one hand, volition is the identification of my felt self with the idea, and this felt self, we have seen, is so far never an object. And, so far as it becomes an object, the felt self so far is not the self which actually wills. Hence the presence or absence of my self as an element contained in the idea can hardly be vital. On the other hand, in every case after the process has started, my self must perceive itself to some extent as entering into this process, and to some extent therefore my self must in every case become an object
I cannot admit that in all cases my self as changing the existence forms part of the idea’s content. At an unreflective level of mind, whether in ourselves or in the lower animals, a suggestion, if it acts at once, need not be so qualified. The perception of another engaged, say, in eating or fighting may produce by suggestion these processes in me. And the result in such a case has on the one hand been certainly willed, but on the other hand the element of my fighting has not always been contained in the idea. An idea is present because the perception has for me qualified existence incompatibly with itself, and because this incompatible feature, opposed in me to the existing not-self, has then carried itself out. On the other hand, the idea is not the idea of the fighting of another, for this aspect of otherness drops out before the idea acts in me. And the question is whether the idea, in thus coming to me straight from the perception and in dropping out, as is necessary, some portion of that perception’s content, must in part replace that omission by the insertion of my self. I know of no principle from which such a result must in all cases follow, and, as I observe the facts, the result in many cases is absent. The idea of fighting is felt in volition to be mine, but it need not contain me as an element in the ideal content. Neither the other nor myself need actually appear in that content, though the idea of fighting, freed from otherness, must be in relation with my not-self and must be felt as mine. Then, as the idea realizes itself, my felt self becomes in part also perceived, and in the actual process I acquire the experience of my fighting. And, if this is so, then in volition the idea is not always the idea of myself making a change.
1 This is a point to which I shall return very shortly.
2 We must be careful not to assume that at an early stage the perception of another’s fighting comes to my mind as something belonging to another. The perception will contain something like ‘fighting there’, and this, in becoming a suggestion, sheds the ‘there’, and in the action is perceived as ‘fighting here’ or ‘me fighting’. At a still lower stage the ‘here’ and ‘there’ become even less specified, but, as long as we can speak of will at all, there is an incompatible adjective which is opposed to existence and which in this sense is an idea.
A confusion on this point may threaten danger to our whole doctrine of volition. ‘Your view’, I may be told, ‘is entirely circular and so illusory. All that you have done is to take the fact of will as an unexplained mass. You then transfer that mass in idea to the beginning of the process, and the process therefore naturally appears as the realization of this idea. But the idea simply anticipates the actual process in an unexplained form, and you have therefore offered in fact no explanation at all. For it is will, you say in effect, when with will we have the idea of it beforehand.’ But such an objection need, I think, not cause any serious
In volition I must have, and must be conscious of, an object not-self, and I must be conscious again of an object idea. With that idea I must feel myself in a special sense to be one, and the idea must be qualified in its content by its relation to the not-self. Then, when the idea realizes itself, I perceive myself also as moving in the same sense, and up to a certain point in this movement I am an object to myself. And my self again in many cases, before the idea has even partly realized itself, is contained as an element in the content of the idea. But at the beginning of the act my self is not always so contained. And after a certain point the process, we have seen, may wholly pass beyond my knowledge and being.
1 We may ask whether the idea, before it realizes itself, need even be the idea of my future state. The idea must be felt inwardly as mine, and it must qualify the not-self which comes to me and which so far qualifies me. The idea must thus in its content be the idea of a change in me. But if you ask whether the idea is that of a change in myself as distinct from others, the question is different. The doubt is whether a change of my not-self, even where my not-self is in felt opposition to an idea felt as mine, must therefore be qualified in the idea as a change of myself as distinct from other persons or things. And I cannot maintain the affirmative here. But, since the idea in its actual process at once goes on to qualify itself, the inquiry, as I have explained in my text, seems to have no importance.
‘But it is the perception of agency’, I may probably be told, ‘which is here really in question. Agency and the experience of it are things one or both of which are ultimate, irreducible, and unique, and in this inexplicable fact is contained the real essence of will. To make will consist in the perception or in the idea of this fact is really circular. And once more the perception like the fact is irreducible and ultimate.’
1 It will be so experienced, that is, except under certain conditions discussed later in this article.
2 I do not mean to imply that this objection as it stands would be offered all at once by the same person.
Now, to confine my reply first to the objection
I will pass from this point to consider another mode of objection. ‘The experience of agency’, it may be said, ‘falls outside your account of it. We might on your account of the matter perhaps perceive a change happening to the not-self, and we might also perceive a change happening to ourselves, but with this we should never get to perceive ourselves as making the change.’ But for my part I cannot understand how this perception could fail. I feel myself one with the idea of a changed not-self, an idea opposed to the not-self which actually exists. And as this idea invades the not-self, I feel and I perceive that my self is expanded. The change of the not-self is perceived as my process of expansion, in which both that existence and my-self become in fact what ideally I was. We have a change of existence beginning with its idea in myself and itself really ending in that which was ideal. This moving idea is
There are fundamental difficulties, I admit, which I must here leave untouched. The perception of succession in general, and the qualification in any process of the beginning by the end, offer well-known problems which here it is impossible to discuss. And the same remark holds, we may add, of every kind of predication. But these difficulties do not attach themselves specially to the perception of agency in the self. They apply equally to the experience of any change in outward existence. And these difficulties, if so understood, furnish no ground for objection against our doctrine of will. Such an objection is not grounded unless these ultimate questions are answered in one special manner. It is possible to hold that in the self there is an agency which the self knows in that character, and that this self-conscious agency, while inexplicable itself and the essence of will, serves to explain our perception of process in things, and meets the difficulties which attach themselves to predication in general. I consider any such view to be untenable and to be in conflict with fact, but I cannot undertake the discussion of it here. Whatever plausibility it may possess comes I think from its vagueness and from its inability to realize the conclusions to which its principle would lead.
1 The appearance of Professor Münsterberg’s interesting volume since these words were written has not inclined me to modify them.
Such a principle however, it may be urged, is the
It is better to leave an objection which, however fundamental, is far too vague to be discussed briefly, and I therefore will state in a concrete instance the former more definite argument. ‘I may have a pain,’ it may be objected, ‘and the idea of its relief, and I may experience the tension of that idea against existence and may feel myself one with it. Then, when the idea is realized, I may experience, in and with this change of the not-self, a great expansion of my self. And yet with all this I may gain no perception of agency.’
1 I may refer here to M. N.S. ix and x [E. xxi and xxiii]. I have noticed for some years an increasing tendency in England to do what I must call to coquet with the doctrine of the ‘primacy of will’. I do not, I trust, undervalue the lesson which is to be learnt perhaps most readily from Schopenhauer. But that lesson, I am sure, is much less than half learnt if we do not realize the difficulties which arise from anything like a whole-hearted acceptance of the doctrine. Professor Munster berg’s important work should here prove instructive. I hope also that Mr. Schiller’s essay, contained in Personal Idealism (which I have seen since writing the above), may in its way be useful, though one would seek in it in vain for any serious attempt to realize the meaning and result of that gospel which it preaches.
2 Compare the remarks on Expectation (E. xi. 481-2).
The realization of the idea on the contrary appears to begin with an independent movement of the
1 A change ensuing on, and continuously following from, motion of some object not my body tends in general to be attributed to that object and not to myself. On the other hand, the origin of motion in my body, as coming from myself and proceeding outwards, is, I presume, the main source of our experience of agency. The perception of agency in my outward world, I should agree, is transferred, but, though transferred, it may have become a more familiar and natural way of apprehension. I do not however mean by this to imply that our experience of the order of the outward world begins with such a transferred perception of agency.
Let us now suppose, on the other hand, that the facts are altered. Let us suppose that relief from pain comes habitually when the idea of it is present, or when that idea to a certain extent has inwardly prevailed. And let us suppose that the respective increase and decrease of the idea and of the pain are in general related inversely. Under these conditions we should tend, I submit, to view the relief as ensuing from the idea, and in the process, when it happened, we should gain a perception of our agency. The relief in fact really might arise from another unperceived cause,
1 This proviso must be emphasized. If there is anything about the idea which makes it other than my idea simply, the act will so far not be experienced as my will. See the preceding article [E. xxvi].
2 An unbiased inquiry into the conditions under which we get an experience of activity and passivity is a thing which, so far as my knowledge goes, is sorely wanted. I cannot think it satisfactory that two competent psychologists should in the case of some psychical process be clear, one that the experience of activity is there, and the other that it is not there. I cannot myself approve when I see such a difference end apparently with two assertions. But for myself, even if I were otherwise fitted to undertake this inquiry, it is plain that I could not be regarded as unbiased. In the main, however, and subject to some necessary explanation which is given below in this article, I find that the presence of the experience depends on an idea. If, for instance, my imagination is excited and I perhaps desire to sleep, I can view myself at pleasure as freely active in my imagination, or again as passive and constrained by the activity of a foreign power. And, as I view myself, so also I perceive and I feel myself. Similarly in a carriage or in a train I can regard and can perceive the movement as my act, or again as an alien force that actively sweeps me away either as merely passive or as unwilling. And I can even mix both experiences and can feel that it is at once my act and is also my fate which is taking me in each case to its end. The whole matter, I submit, is one for an unprejudiced inquiry, and I will venture once again, not without hope, to recommend this conclusion. Cf. A.R. 547 = 605.
We have so far supposed as one of our conditions a special acquired tendency, a disposition, that is, to join the
Before I pass from the subject of our experienced agency I must direct the attention of the reader to a remaining difficulty. Wherever you experience agency in the proper sense, there you have the experience of volition. Hence, if anywhere you perceived yourself as an agent in the absence of conditions which we have defined as essential to will, such a fact clearly would destroy our definition. Now, if we make no distinction between an awareness of activity and of agency, a contradiction of this kind is likely to arise, and I must therefore offer at once a brief explanation on this point. The question is, however, too fundamental to be discussed here in an adequate manner.
I will begin by noticing a doubt which may be forthwith dismissed. It might be contended that for an experience of activity and passivity it is not necessary to be aware
1 On this point see above, p. 521.
2 E. xxiii. 391, and xxvi. 503-6.
3 These symbols, of course, are miserably inadequate and may even mislead. I however offer them to the reader who is prepared to make the best of them. The vertical line which divides these groups of letters is of course not to be understood as distinguishing in the ordinary sense ‘subject’ from ‘object’. The division holds merely within the content which is experienced in my whole self, and it is meant to distinguish those features in the object-world, which oppose and limit me, from the rest of my world, whether object or not, with which in feeling I am one. If we suppose a part of my body, which for the moment is out of gear and so prevents my ordinary feeling and perception of self, and if we then suppose that this restriction of myself is removed, such an example may perhaps explain the general sense of our symbols. Unfortunately, with the restriction and enlargement there goes also a qualitative change.
In this case I become aware of myself as changing outwards from a narrower to a wider self, a self that has
I can identify myself largely with this objection, but I cannot endorse it altogether. I do not think that in the absence of an idea I could possibly attain to the experience of agency. I should not under the described conditions either perceive myself as doing something or as having something done to myself. But if activity and passivity are used in a lower sense which stops short of agency, then under the above conditions I might be aware of myself as active or passive. And I should not myself object to the use of activity and of passivity in such a lower sense, at least so long as confusion is avoided. My perceived self-expandedness in what before was the not-self may thus, unless for some further reason the process is taken as beginning from the not-self, be regarded as the perception of my activity. And on the other side my self-contractedness, when my self is seen to become in part the not-self, may be an awareness of passivity; so long, that is, as the result is not made to appear as beginning from my self. And in neither case will such’ an experience involve an idea—an idea, I mean, which carries itself out in the result. But such a lower activity, whether on the side of my self or of the not-self, must be clearly understood not to amount to agency. It is not agency at all, that is, so long as it remains simply in its own character. On the other hand, it tends naturally to pass beyond itself and to become the
It may be instructive to dwell for a time on the above sense of activity and passivity, a sense in which as yet they do not imply agency and will. We must distinguish this again from feelings which, whether in idea or in actual time, are anterior to perception, and which in any case do not pass beyond their own lower level. These feelings of activity and of passivity of course exist at all stages of our development, and in some sense each, I should say, precedes its respective perception. But neither is in itself an experience of passivity or activity, if this means that, confined to them, we could be said to have any knowledge of either. Our first perception of activity or passivity goes beyond and is distinct from such feelings. It gives us the knowledge of something in the character of being active or passive, though this something is not yet qualified on
And we have a perception of activity which remains on the same level. In this, as we saw, I perceive my self to be enlarged at the expense of the not-self. But whatever feeling may accompany and may qualify this process, I do not perceive the not-self as striving or myself upon the other side as doing something to this not-self. Thus, in my theoretic attitude again, the unknown existence is beyond me as a not-self, and my knowledge of it can come to me as an expansion of myself at its cost. And yet my attitude so far involves no experience of resistance or of agency. We found another instance in what I may perceive on relief from a pain, although the cessation of the pain is not viewed as my doing. And we saw that activity and passivity in this lower sense are turned by a small addition into that which implies agency and will.
1 I refer to that state of mind in which the object comes to me as something which is, without my feeling at the time that it is doing anything to me, or I to it or again to myself.
2 If we imagine a dog beginning to run, we may suppose that with this he gets at once a perception of activity (cf. A.R. 548 = 606). His experience, however, at first need not amount to agency proper. But the perceived expansion of self into the not-self will tend naturally to become an idea, and that idea of the result will tend to precede and to qualify beforehand the process. And, with such a self-developing idea of a changed not-self, the dog would have forthwith the experience of agency. The same ideal construction can of course be also made from the outside by a spectator, and can then be attributed, perhaps falsely, to the actual subject of the process. In the passage of my book to which I have just referred I have not distinguished between the two senses of activity referred to above.
This addition in each case
These subtleties, however wearisome, cannot I think be safely neglected. We have often what may be called an awareness at once of both activity and passivity; but to take the two always here in the same sense and as exactly correlative might involve us in confusion and in serious difficulty. The practical attitude, we saw, involves in itself the attitude of theory, and without the perception of an object no will is possible. Now as receptive of such a not-self I have a sense of passivity, and we may regard this sense as in some degree present in will. But in will to take this perceived passivity together with our perceived agency, as at one and the same level of meaning, would not be defensible. It would be a mistake which might lead us to dangerous results.
Before I pass from this subject I must return to a final difficulty. ‘It is impossible’, I may be told, ‘anywhere to understand activity in a lower sense, for activity and passivity are inseparable from agency both in fact and in idea. The distinction of self from not-self depends on the full practical relation, and apart from this relation there is neither in idea nor in time the possibility of an experience of anything lower.’ This is an objection which obviously goes too far to be discussed in these pages, but I can at once make a reply which I consider to be here sufficient. The reader is at liberty to assume here for the sake of argument that our experienced distinction of self from not-self comes into existence with and in the experience of agency and will. I could not myself admit that before this distinction there is no experience at all. But for the sake of argument
I will end our inquiry into this difficult point by reminding the reader that in one sense I attach to it no great value. We have, I think, a natural tendency to make use of activity and of passivity in cases where the experience of agency is absent. And for myself I am ready to permit within limits and to justify this use, but on the other side I am also ready to condemn and to disallow it. But in the latter case, if we may not distinguish between activity and agency, we must at least distinguish both from a lower experience. There will be an experience, such as we have described, which falls short of agency, and which, if it is
We have now discussed the sense in which the self in will is identified with an idea, and in connexion with this have inquired into our experience of activity and agency, and we have asked how far these two should be regarded as distinct. Our space has been too short for a satisfactory treatment of such problems, even if otherwise such a treatment were within my power. There remain various questions with regard to the practical relation and its opposition of the not-self to the idea and to the self. I can however do no more here than notice some points in passing, (i) In the first place this opposition is, I should say, in no case motionless and fixed. The idea, if it does not at once realize itself, will ebb and flow, and, as against the not-self, will at its boundary more or less waver. There will be a constant movement, however slight, of passing forward into fact and of again falling back, (ii) The opposition of the not-self may again be so transitory and so weak that it fails to give us in the proper sense an awareness of resistance. The existence to be changed by the idea may be more or less isolated. It may find little support in any connexions with the self and the world, and its strength may be said to consist in its own psychical inertia.
1 I shall return to the subject of inertia in my next article.
And the extent of the existence and the inertia may be inconsiderable. In other words, the resistance to some special change may be no more than a resistance to change in general. But this resistance, it is clear, may in some cases amount to very little, (iii) We may have in volition a forecast and an expectation of the result, and this may be strong and may be definite in various degrees. And in some cases its strength and detail may tend to overpower the actual fact. The idea may, before the act, so prevail against the perceived existence as in part to suppress my experience of
In the next article I shall discuss the alleged plurality of typical volitions, and shall briefly deal with errors which prevail on the subject of aversion. Then, after disposing of some minor points, I shall finally inquire how and by what means the idea comes to realize itself in fact.
Chapter XXVIII. The Definition of Will (III.)
Mind, N.S. xiii, No. 49, 1-37. January 1904.
In some preceding articles I have defined will as ‘the self-realization of an idea with which the self is identified’, and I have endeavoured to explain and to justify this account. I have hitherto assumed the fact of what is called ‘ideo-motor action’, and I have still to show that the assumption is warranted. But before I proceed to this last part of my subject, I must attempt to deal with several remaining difficulties.
The first of these is the question as to a plurality of volitional types.
1 Mr. Shand (M. N.S. vi. 289-325) has written a very instructive article on this subject.
(a) We may begin with a short account of ‘imperative’ volition. In a true imperative I will the production of a
1 I have of course always rejected the doctrine that a command must imply a threat. This fiction is as contrary to sound psychology as it is to plain fact.
If, in walking with another man, I see him about to tread on some small living creature, I may will at once the prevention of this result. And I may execute my will in a number of ways. I may pull or push the person, or I may point to the object, or I may cry out ‘There is something there’, or ‘look’, or ‘stop’. Now in any of these cases an imperative may be present or absent. If the manifestation of my will is included as a means in the idea of my end, we have in each of these cases a genuine imperative, and otherwise we have in no case an imperative volition. This is the principle, and all the rest is a question of fact to be decided in each case by a special observation. We may illustrate this again by what happens among some of the lower animals, where the mother is engaged in teaching her young. The tap, the push or the pull, the call or the warning sound, or the action set as an example, cannot in most cases, I presume, be regarded as orders.
1 Whether the lower animals can use imperatives in the strict sense I do not here discuss. It is certain that they can behave in an imperative manner, and that this may be some evidence of their use of ideas I have long ago pointed out (L. 31-2 = 33).
The instance of the sudden and instinctive imperative adduced by Mr. Shand (317) does not present us, I think, with any special difficulty. If we are to decide whether an
In an ordinary imperative I will the real production of the act by the other, but it may be doubted if this feature belongs to the essence. The imperative consists merely, it may be said, in a willed manifestation on my part, and what lies beneath this appearance is not essential. But this is a subordinate point which we are not concerned to discuss, and, however it is decided, our main doctrine remains unaffected. And I do not think that we need dwell further here on the subject of imperative volition.
1 The reader should recall in this connexion that in one sense my will is limited to my inner self, and in another sense it extends into the outer world. See E. 26. We may, in passing, notice how the use of an internal imperative to myself is possible only where I have two selves which are taken as alien to each other. To make the whole of morality coexistent with the actual use of an imperative is therefore a most serious exaggeration.
(b) I must deal very rapidly with the alleged ‘hypothetical’ and ‘disjunctive’ types of will (Mr. Shand, l.c., 296-300). I cannot admit the existence of a conditional or an imaginary volition. We have to do in such cases, I should say, with an intention or a mere resolve, and how far this is will we have discussed in a previous article (see E. 26). So far as the idea really is taken as conditional or as imaginary, it is so far not willed; but it may at the
(c) Negative volition must be discussed at greater length. The whole subject of negative states and of negative functions in psychology has, so far as I know, been treated unsatisfactorily. We had to enter this field in our inquiry into mental conflict, and with regard to some points I must refer the reader to that article (M. N.S. xi, No. 43 = E. xxv). But I should like to reprint here a passage from a paper published many years ago.
1 The nature of Choice has been discussed in the preceding article.
2 Mind, O.S. xiii, pp. 21-2 [E. xiv. 268]. In this passage more stress should have been laid on avoidance and removal, as well as on destruction, as a form of negation. And again it might perhaps have been made clearer that I do not deny the existence of negative desire, but only of desire which is barely negative.
The doctrine contained in it has
‘I will now glance briefly at a point far too negligently handled. What is the nature of aversion? First the object of aversion, like the object of desire, is always an idea. We may indeed seem to desire the sensations that we have, but our object is really their continuance or their increase, and these are ideas. And so it is with aversion. The mere in-coming of the painful is not aversion, nor is even the fear of it, if fear is confined to mere contraction or again to aimless shrinking back. To me aversion seems positive, what we call ‘active dislike’. It implies a desire for negation, for avoidance or destruction. And hence its object, to speak strictly, cannot be reality, since it implies negation, and that is an idea. But desire for negation is still not aversion, until painfulness is added. The object to be negated must be felt to be painful and may also be so thought of. Aversion then is the desire for the negation of something painful. It is not a negative kind of desire over against a positive kind, and I myself could attach no meaning to a negative desire. Aversion is positive, but its true object is the negation of that which is commonly called its object—a confusion which has arisen from taking dislike to be mere negative liking. Aversion has a positive character, or it would not be desire; but its positive side is variable. There may be a definite position whose maintenance we want, as when we are averse to the injury of something we love; or again, the positive may be left blank—something, anything, is what we want if it will serve to rid us of the painful. But again we may positively desire the act of destruction, with the agencies of its process, and so depend for the pleasures of life on our aversions. I hope this brief sketch may throw light on an obscure corner of our subject, and I will, in passing, advert to another mistake. Desire and aversion have been taken to be aspects of desire, since that is tension,
1 Volkmann, § 140; Lipps, p. 604.
This is mere confusion, for all aversion has an ideal object.
What is negative will? It is a will to remove, to avoid, or to destroy. The idea which realizes itself in negative will is the idea of such a result. And negative will has a character of its own, which in one sense is irreducible and unique, but on the other hand most emphatically it is not coordinate with positive volition. It is subordinate, and is a specification of the main positive type. The idea which it realizes is never simple, but always implies, and always must imply, a positive basis and aspect. Thus the process of destruction or avoidance has an affirmative side, and without such an aspect of positive assertion all negation is meaningless. I will explain this doctrine by a defence of it against some objections.
‘Your doctrine’, I shall first be told, ‘is contrary to fact. It would imply that with the negation of a particular A we have always a positive idea B, an idea which itself is particular and is coordinate with A. In other words, there would be no denying except on the basis of an explicit alternative between particulars. And any assumption of this kind would be contrary to fact.’ But no such assumption, I reply, is involved in our doctrine. For the positive side of destruction or escape may remain unspecified and general, and certainly need not take the shape of a coordinate particular. In negative will, we may say, the affirmative is usually not specified. And to argue, ‘Either no idea at all or an idea that is particular’, would surely everywhere, and not only here, conduct us to ruin. On the contrary, I in fact may deny this or that without the actual assertion of any particular opposite. On the one hand, that which is to be removed must be specified always; but the positive aspect of the removal, although necessary, may be utterly vague. The thing in short is understood to be done somehow, but the positive ‘how’ is left blank.
1 It is in my opinion a mistake to hold that every positive term without exception must have a coordinate negative, and in the end this mistake would have a ruinous result. As to negative will Mr. Shand (pp. 292 foll.) appears to me to assume without inquiry that the alternative, ‘Either a particular positive idea or none’, is a sound one. He does not state whether he everywhere rejects unspecified ideas, and he does not explain how we are able to do without them, and how, for instance, we are to understand, say, the idea of an absence. I cannot agree with Mr. Shand that the psychology of negation has been injured by the transference from logic of ideas which there are true, but are inapplicable in psychology. I should say on the contrary that it is neglect of logic and mistakes in logic which have here injured psychology.
1 There is here, we may say, no experience of agency proper, though there may be perhaps in a lower sense an experience of activity. [See M. N.S. xii .E. xxvii].
There must be a principle
1 We saw in M. N.S. xi, xxv [E. xxiv. 436] that for this reason your disapproval may serve to retain the suggestion.
An alleged negative volition, we have seen, is either not genuine will, and, when scrutinized, at once ceases to appear in that character, or else, if real, it does but specify our general account. It is a type which falls under and which confirms our definition of will. And we need, I think, consider no further these alleged types of independent volition. We have found that in every case, so far as it is a case of real will, we have an idea which carries itself out into fact. And the inability to verify the presence of this idea has, we saw, been due mainly to a failure to apprehend it in its proper character.
I will add some further remarks on aversion in its relation to positive desire. The extract given above contains, I believe, the main truth on this subject, but I will endeavour in certain points to confirm and to illustrate its doctrine. Aversion and positive desire certainly are not coordinate, any more than are denial and assertion in logic. And it is not difficult to show how the mistaken view about aversion has arisen; but I will first endeavour to remove some misunderstandings.
‘All desire’, it may be said, ‘is and must be for change, and therefore all desire is negative; and on one side it must
We can now dispose of a difficulty which may seem to arise from the difference in the relations of aversion and desire to existence. The object of aversion, we may be told, must exist, while the object never exists in the case of desire. You cannot, in other words, desire that which is actual, while you can be averse to it. But there is a dangerous confusion here as to the meaning of ‘object’. The object may mean either the existing not-self which is before me, or it may mean on the other hand my ideal end. Now in no case can my idea itself be something which actually exists; and on the other side, both in desire and in aversion alike, there is opposed to my idea something which I represent to myself as actually existing. This opposition of idea to fact holds even where the fact is imaginary. I can thus be averse to a calamity though I do not really expect it,
1 I am forced in this and some other points to dissent from Waitz, Lehrbuch, p. 444, whose remarks I have however profited.
1 Since this article was written I have made acquaintance with Dr. Pfänder’s thoughtful essay, Phänomenologie des Wollens. Dr. Pfänder there (p. 71) criticizes the doctrine that aversion has a negatively determined end. He has however, I do not know why, understood negation here as bare privation or absence; and certainly, so understood, the doctrine he criticizes becomes untenable. In the presence of a painful noise, e.g., I may desire its absence, but that desire is not, as such, an aversion. It is not the mere absence, but it is the positive suppression or avoidance of what annoys me, that is really desired in aversion. Dr. Pfänder appears to me to be confused on this head, or to be dealing with some confused statement to which he does not refer. Again, pp. 109-111, he objects that a negative will may be a will for a bare not-doing. But unless my idea changes something which otherwise would be and is therefore taken to exist, I must insist that we have not a real case of volition at all. See M. N.S. xi, 440 [E. xxvi p. 479-80]. And, again, the will to produce a state of privation is, as such, a positive and not a negative volition.
The mistaken coordination of aversion with desire has arisen, I presume, in several ways. It has been helped perhaps by the confusion which we have just briefly noticed, and it is connected certainly with logical errors as to predication. But the mistake has come perhaps mainly from a natural but misleading parallel, and by a transference to aversion and desire of the opposition between pleasure and pain. Unless we separate pain from unpleasantness,
In both desire and aversion, if we do not distinguish between pain and unpleasantness, we must to some extent have the presence of both pleasure and pain. The idea of the end must in positive desire be felt to be pleasant, and the same thing to a less degree will hold good in aversion. In both alike the whole state may, according to the conditions, be either pleasant or painful, though the latter case will more often be found to exist in aversion. But, since both are complex, we may have in each a preponderance of either pleasure or pain. In aversion the felt hostility of existence to the idea will be painful, but this same feature must appear also in positive desire. In both the felt tension of idea against existence will not fail to produce uneasiness, however slight that may be and on the whole outweighed. And thus the distinction, so far, may be said to consist merely in degree; but we must from this go on to take account of a further difference. In positive desire the idea of pleasure does not always qualify the object. In desire, that is, I must indeed always feel pleasure in the idea, but pleasure may either enter or not enter into the content of the end, and its entrance, where it enters, does not belong to the essence of desire. But in aversion, while in the same way to some extent I must with my idea feel some pleasure, on the other hand the internal content of my idea must be qualified by pain. Unless the painfulness of the object, upon which the process of negation is to fall, enters itself beforehand as an idea into my idea of this process, I cannot think that in the proper sense we have an aversion. We may again contrast here the desire to kill an animal for sport with the desire by any means to destroy noxious vermin. In the first of these cases we
Aversion and positive desire are thus in principle distinct. But in each the complication of pain and pleasure may be great, and there is a tendency in each to transform itself and to pass into the other. In many cases we find them existing side by side in a mixed state, while in other cases coexistence gives way to more or less complete subordination. But a desire or an aversion, where completely subordinate, has ceased, we must remember, to exist as an actual aversion or desire.
This last remark has a wide and important bearing (E. xxv) and it leads us here to the discussion of a well-known question. Can I will that to which, while willing it, I have an actual aversion? If the doctrine laid down in the article just referred to is sound, a volition of this kind will be clearly impossible. Given an actual aversion, you would have an idea which conflicts with the idea implied in your will, and you would as a result have no action or, if an action, no will. If, on the other hand, your positive idea has prevailed over your aversion, the aversion has been banished or else made subordinate. But in the latter case it has been modified and has ceased to be an actual aversion. The will to do what I hate, although I hate it, must imply that in some sense my hatred is changed. The negation has been turned into an element within a complex positive idea. The aversion has lost its independence, and, however painful, it is no longer an actual aversion. I am still ‘averse’ in this sense that a mass of hostile feeling
I shall soon return to this distinction between an aversion and a mere condition of averseness, but at present must remark further on the coexistence of aversion and will. The statement that I cannot desire and will that to which I am at the same time averse is seen, when compared with facts, to be clearly erroneous. The mistake arises partly from neglect of the distinction which we have just made, but it is mainly due perhaps to a failure in observation. The great complexity of aspects contained in aversion and desire, and the presence in each of elements, pleasurable and painful, which come from a variety of sources, is often not noticed. We have seen that a desire, when considered as a whole, may be painful, just as an aversion, when it is taken on the whole, may be pleasant. We may instance the desire of a mother to save her child when she fears that she cannot, and again the pleasure of destroying what we hate where there is not too much trouble or danger. And hence, though I can will that to which I am averse without also desiring it, I certainly on the other hand may desire it and desire it eagerly. The alternative which by itself excites our repulsion may, as an escape from the intolerable, be desired and may even be regarded with complacency. And we may be aware of this pleasure, or again, because the pleasure is outweighed by pain, we may, despite the actual fact, deny its existence. But I cannot here enter further into the detail of these complicated states.
1 Cf. E. xxv and E. xiv. 263. Mr. Shand (pp. 324-325) rejects the view stated in the text, but I must be allowed to doubt his having apprehended it rightly. He apparently fails generally to see how in desire pain and pleasure are mixed. An example of desire for a painful alternative is found in Claudio’s mood of ‘flowery tenderness’ for death. And in De Goncourt’s Germinie, p. 15, we hear of ‘une attente de la mort qui devenait a la fin une impatience de mourir’. The defect in Mr. Shand’s account becomes visible from another side, when he fails to see that an act done from mere principle tends naturally to become an act done from desire (pp. 323-4). The pain caused by injury to the principle must tend to produce a desire for relief. I think that, if Mr. Shand generally had done more justice to the actual facts, he would have felt less need to betake himself to something inexplicable behind them. But, however that may be, his articles have not failed to throw light on the subject.
A state of desire or aversion, where the actual aversion or desire is not present, has two meanings, and these different senses may be conjoined or used separately. In the first sense I have a group of feelings, perceptions, and perhaps movements, such as belong to the actual aversion or desire, but, when taken by themselves, are incomplete and stop short of it. This group continually tends to produce the complete and actual state, and it may therefore be called its conditional presence. But even in the absence of such a group we may be said still to desire or dislike, if it is understood that, given the object, we should certainly assume that attitude towards it. And we may speak in the same sense of a will which is standing or permanent. We may mean by this the constant presence of actual feelings and ideas, such as go to make, let us say, a volition to injure, and such as, given the occasion, would actually produce the volition. And we have so far an habitual mood of a certain character. But again by a standing will we may signify no more than a general disposition to injure. Whatever may be in fact my present mood, and whatever may be the ideas and feelings which are now actually in my mind, I should, without regard to this, under certain conditions have a volition to injure. And since these conditions
If you ask for the ultimate nature of a permanent disposition to act, I should myself decline in psychology even to entertain such a problem. But how the standing will passes into an actual volition is a question which on the whole is not difficult to answer. Apart from the oscillations of an habitual mood, which is a matter not here to be discussed, the actual volition in the main is produced by Redintegration. Something that occurs to us has a character which falls under the law of our disposition. The character may fall under that law directly, or again indirectly and through a further principle, and the connexion again may be positive or negative. In any case the disposition in this way becomes active, and brings into fact the further element which it ideally contains. But this is a point to which we shall very soon be compelled to return.
There are a number of questions about desire which I must here leave untouched,
1 For some of these see M. O.S. xiii [E. xiv].
An affirmative answer is common, but, I think, cannot be
If then conation is understood as the experienced striving of my self, I cannot perceive that everywhere conation is involved in desire. It may be argued that without conation desire would not have begun to exist. Want and need, however urgently experienced, are not yet desire, since they lack the idea of an object which is opposed as an end to existence. And the argument would urge that, apart from movements which in fact realize the end, the end as an idea in desire would not have come into being. And the idea of these movements will therefore, it is said, qualify the end and object of desire. And apart from these movements, if the satisfaction could ever be gained, at least the idea of it could not possibly be retained by the mind. But the presence of these movements in idea will most certainly involve a conation. And this active attitude remains, it will be further urged, through all our mental development, and everywhere will qualify the object of desire, even in a longing, say, for warmth. Thus the desired object must contain always to some extent the idea of my actively getting it, and every desire therefore will essentially involve a conation. Now I admit the force of this argument, and I agree that, speaking broadly, desire will not be separate in its origin from conation. I could not maintain that without conation it in no possible case arises; but such an origin of desire, I admit, would certainly be in fact exceptional. On the other hand I cannot argue that, if in its beginning desire depends on conation, it therefore now must involve a conation in its essence. I do not see why the ideal element of my acting for some end should not in
And there is a counter-argument which to my mind has considerable weight. An intense desire for relief may be followed by an actual relief, and by a perception and a sense of complete satisfaction. But certainly in some cases the relief is not experienced as having been attained by my action, and, if all desire is conation, such a result seems to me hardly explicable. You may indeed contend that the experience required escapes my notice, although present in the result, just as, before the result, the conation was actual though I failed to observe it. But I prefer in each case to accept the evidence of the fact which I observe, and I must therefore deny that in all desire without exception a conation is implied. If it is to be always present it will be the conation of some psychical element not my self, or it will be the striving of something which itself does not enter into my experienced world.
I must go on from this to point out the distinctive character of Wish. Desire and wish tend naturally in fact to pass one into the other, and the distinction in language between them is at times not maintained. But this distinction exists, and it corresponds to a difference in principle, and on this point it is well to be on our guard against error.
In the first place a wish is not a striving or conation. It is, again, not the general head under which all desire falls,
1 This untenable view is advocated by Professor Ehrenfels in his interesting study Fülen und Wollen, and again in his Werttheorie.
A wish, it is true, generally is inclined to be
Wish is a desire which in a certain way has been specialized and limited. The idea of satisfaction has in a wish been broken from its connexion with my actual reality. The idea is disconnected, but at the same time it is retained, and its realization has been imagined in a world which is not the world of my reality. This world may according to the circumstances be more or less defined or indefinite, but it never ceases in a genuine wish to appear as imaginary. And hence the collision of the idea with fact can to a greater or less extent be suppressed. Wish is desire for an imaginary end which, because it is imaginary, can be regarded as attained. And hence a wish, so far as it is a desire which is
The idea in wish is separated from our world by the perceived failure of means to its realization. And the failure may come to us as general, or again as conditioned by a special obstacle either negative or positive. This obstacle may consist merely in my fear or my scruple, but, so long as it qualifies the real world, it prevents the presence of my simple desire. If then I place my desire in an imagined world where this obstacle does not hold, I have a wish. And because this other world is recognized as not actually present, my wish does not lead me to an act or an attempt.
1 ‘I wish you to do this’ is less peremptory than a simple imperative, because it is hardly unconditional. But ‘I wish that you would’ is of course the correct expression of a wish.
Wish arises from the retention of the idea despite our inability to give it reality. The idea is retained by the persistence of the want which remains unsatisfied and compressed. And this want, we have seen, frees itself and expands into a heaven of its own. We have in wish a sense that fruition is at once more than possible and yet less so, according as we look first on one world and then on the other. A wish is innocent, because disconnected from the actual world. It is enervating, so far as it rests in enjoyment divorced from action. It is insidious, because its idea, being actually unrealized, tends to pass into simple desire.
The passage of mere wish into desire calls for little remark. The obstacle that bars our desired end may for a
1 It will be instructive to note here the difference between wish and resolve. In the first place a wish is for a mere result and does not essentially imply agency on my part. In the second place my resolve is directed upon the real world. In resolve this real world is not the world perceived as immediately present, and in this point, we have seen, resolve is distinguished from will. On the other hand the world of resolve is not discontinuous with my world as it exists here and now. There is no breach between the two; for the present world is regarded as extending itself into the future, and the present world is contemplated as itself actually there before me in resolve, notwithstanding an interval and even perhaps a condition. And it is only because it is directed upon the real world, as in this sense actually present, that my resolve is a volition, so far as it is one. On the other side, in wish we have a world which we are aware is imaginary. This world is therefore not contemplated as the prolongation of reality, but is estranged from the real, and is sundered from it by a breach in nature. And to throw a volition across such a breach does not even suggest itself as possible. The subject of resolve has been discussed in M. N.S. xi, No. 44 [E. xxvi].
We now approach a part of our inquiry which perhaps has been too long deferred, and must ask how it is that in volition the idea realizes itself. That the idea does realize itself is at least an apparent fact. And if this fact
1 I cannot of course here enter into an inquiry into the exact nature of cause and condition positive and negative. I have already had to touch on the necessity for the idea’s action in M. N.S. xi, No. 44 E. xxvi].
Let us then proceed to ask in what way the idea realizes itself. We provisionally assumed the validity of ideo-motor action, but that assumption must now be allowed to drop. We must inquire, therefore, under what law or under what laws in psychology this fact of the idea’s self-realization will fall. And I will begin by dismissing a view which is equally common and erroneous. A desire and a conation on this view are essential to will, and the presence of these together
It is not the fact that desire and conation are to be found in all cases of will. Acts done at once from imitation or in obedience to an order, and generally acts which at once ensue from the suggestion of an idea, furnish instances which on this point seem really conclusive. No one, apart from theory, could fairly deny that of these actions at least some are volitions, or reasonably assert that in every case a desire or conation in any proper sense is present. When the sequence is delayed I admit that there is some ground for doubt. You may argue here that delay must cause necessarily a tension between the idea and existence, and that this tension must amount to conation and desire. But for myself I cannot accept even this modified conclusion. Where after delay volition follows from an unpleasant fixed idea, I cannot allow that in all such cases there is a desire or a conation of my self, and yet on the other side no one here, except to save a theory, would deny everywhere, where desire is absent, the presence of will. And where there is no delay, and where the result follows at once from the idea, the above contention, it appears to me, wholly breaks down. The existence need not be perceived in such a case as resisting the idea. On the contrary, all that is implied in such a case of volition is that the existing not-self should be felt as opposite to such an extent that its change is perceived as an alteration made by me. But this opposition need not amount to the tension involved in desire and conation. And again that felt pleasure in the idea which is certainly necessary for desire (E. xiv. 261-3) may be absent, it seems to me, in some cases of will. We must conclude, therefore, that conation and desire, even if usual in volition, cannot, if we respect the facts, be taken as essential and necessary.
1 This matter is discussed further in M. o.s. xiii [E. xiv]. I do not propose to do more than mention the old mistake that the object of all desire is pleasure. We may fairly, I think, call this doctrine exploded.
2 I cannot verify the presence of felt pleasure in the idea in all cases of volition, but this pleasure on the other hand (E. xiv) seems essential to desire. It must be understood (I will repeat) that, in speaking here of desire and conation, I am excluding the desire or conation of any mere element in my self, or again an y desire or conation which is not experienced as such. On the alleged necessity for the presence of desire in volition the reader may find it instructive, and perhaps entertaining, to consult Professor Sully (Human Mind, ii. 214 following). Professor Sully in my opinion neither states fully nor indeed understands the case which it is incumbent on him to meet, and even then, in his attempt to show the presence of desire in all will, he begins even himself dimly to discover his collision with fact. He is forced to substitute for ‘desire’ such phrases as ‘analogue of desire’, ‘nascent desire’, and ‘rudiment of desire’, and he is driven to speak of an action as ‘half-volitional’. But the seeking refuge in such unexplained, if not meaningless, phrases is, I would submit, an unconscious admission of failure. The only thing like an argument to be found in Professor Sully’s pages is the contention that pleasure and pain are of such importance in development that they must be regarded as even now essential to volition. I shall deal with this point hereafter.
There are actions—to repeat
1 This seems an evident truth, but it is too often not recognized in practice. The case of ‘disinterested actions’ in Professor Bain’s psychology may perhaps be cited as a well-known instance of its neglect. But in other forms this neglect is still too prevalent in the psychology of will.
But even if desire and conation were everywhere present in will, their presence would supply no answer to the question before us. We want to understand how my idea is able in each case to gain its own particular reality. And when you point to conation and desire as that bridge by which the passage is made, your answer, even if it were not
You may repeat your old song that the springs of action are pleasure and pain, and that, wherever I will, it is in the end these which produce my volition. But (a) in the first place, I may once more remark, your statement is contrary to fact. There are cases of rapid volition where such a doctrine is even seen plainly to break down. And (b) in the second place, to identify pain and pleasure with aversion and desire is surely to fall into a palpable and gross mistake. And it is not true even that pain and pleasure are always accompanied by aversion and desire. Nor in the case of pleasure do the facts allow us to admit even a tendency always to produce motion rather than rest.
1 For a discussion of all these points I must once more refer the reader to M. o.s. xiii [E. xiv]. The existence of pleasures without want or desire is an old and well-known doctrine which I should have thought could not fairly be ignored; and in this opinion I am not shaken even by the following oracle, ‘Wollen wir näher beschreiben, was wir denn bei Lust und Unlust in uns finden, so wissen wir dies nicht anschaulicher zu thun, als indem wir die Lust als ein Streben nach dem Gegenstand hin, die Unlust als ein Widerstreben gegen ihn bezeichnen’ (Wundt, Physical Psychology, i. 589). I must be excused from any attempt to reproduce this sentence in English. I understand Professor Külpe to dissent from it (Lehre vom Willen, pp. 26, 49).
But (c) in no case could pleasure and pain explain the particular detail of will. That which has to be explained is the passing, in a given individual case, of this particular idea to its own special reality. And even if against the facts we admit that apart from the influence of pleasure and pain there is in no case volition—even if we allow that everywhere in this sense pleasure and pain produce action—yet with this the essence of the volitional passage remains unexplained. We have not learnt how this idea, in distinction from that
Let us pass on to ask in what this machinery does really consist. Our answer to this question will traverse ground which is in the main quite familiar, and we may content ourselves therefore with a summary statement. We have in the first place a variety of special ‘dispositions’, and we have in the second place the presence of some ideal suggestion which is at the same time the presence of the starting-point of some one disposition. The consequent passage of this special disposition into act is, we may say, the bridge which carries our idea over into reality.
1 And we must of course say the same thing of Attention. The doctrine that attention is the essence of will was popularized by the late Dr. Carpenter (Mental Physiology, 1874), and I am personally indebted to him for having then forced that question into the front. Dr. Carpenter’s work in psychology cannot, I imagine, be rated highly, but on one or two points he has not generally gained the credit which he seems really to have deserved. On the subject of Attention I must refer to M. N.S. xi, No. 41 [E. xxiv].
2 I will ask lower down if there is any exception to this general law of will.
3 By ‘merely physical’ I do not mean merely physical absolutely, but simply with reference to the consciousness of the subject. And again, when I speak of an aspect as psychical, I do not mean to deny that it possesses also a physical side.
But, to serve in volition proper as a means of transition, a disposition must possess in all cases a psychical
1 This original disposition will be physical in part or physical wholly. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to decide between these alternatives.
2 I do not deny that, without any ideal modification of perceptions in themselves, there might up to a certain point be a development of diverse reactions corresponding to different perceptions. Objects, that is, not modified themselves ideally so as in this way to have acquired meanings, might become associated through trials, through failures and successes, each externally with a diverse act. The connexions here would be external psychically, because the acquired dispositions would not be psychical. How far such a development is possible in fact I need not discuss, because I am unable to see how, upon this line, volition would ever be developed. I have found Dr. Stout’s teaching on the nature of the ‘disposition’ left behind by practical experience not easy to understand. It is to my mind deficient in clearness. See Manual, bk. i, chap. 2, and bk. iii, chap. 1.
But, it will be objected, this
To this objection I reply that dispositions are not merely successive.
1 I have already entered somewhat more fully into this very important matter in M. N.S. xiii, 7 [T.R. 360-2], to which I would refer the reader. Cf. also A.R. 41 = 49.
2 An idea, so far as referred away from my psychical moment to another subject, is certainly so far an abstraction from psychical fact. On the other hand, if confined to this aspect of itself, the idea could not be my idea at all. The idea in short, to be an idea, must have its own psychical existence, which existence is not referred away as above.
It is enough that you have something, whatever it may be,
The passage in volition from idea to fact, we said, was made by a bridge. And the bridge, we find, is a disposition, the latter element of which has through experience become qualified in idea by its starting-point. If in its origin the disposition is but physical, there is so far no will. But through experience of the process, both in its beginning and its result, we have now an acquired disposition which on one side of its working is psychical. The result is qualified in idea by those feelings which made part of the beginning, and there is a tendency for these feelings, when suggested, to pass into the actual result. And the suggested end, therefore, serves as the ideal beginning, and itself starts the machinery which bridges the passage into fact.
The new result, which in this way has been produced, need not of course reproduce the old result in every feature. The disposition, we must remember, is in itself always general. In our mental development dispositions are specified into subordinate varieties, but no disposition, however individual, can lose the character of a general tendency. And the present idea of the end coincides but generally with that disposition which it excites and which carries it into fact. It is the present situation which, we may say, selects through an idea the special tendency required, and then itself from that basis particularizes the actual result in accordance with itself. And there would naturally be room at this point for much discussion and comment. But the difficulty at this point, I would add, does not attach itself specially to volition, but belongs to the doctrine of reproduction in general. Within the limits of the present inquiry it would be difficult to enter further into the subject, and I do not think that here we are called on to do so.
I will now proceed to deal briefly with several objections. (a) ‘There is a fatal defect’, I may be told, ‘in the account which has been offered; for it starts the disposition from its psychical side, and any such start is impossible.
1 On the connexion of soul and body see my Appearance. The above prejudice of course is widely prevalent. Professor Titchener for example, in his Outline of Psych., p. 343, instructs the student that to suppose a causal connexion between physical and psychical, if perhaps not forbidden by ‘metaphysics’ is contrary to ‘logic’. For myself I really do not know whether I am even permitted by ‘logic’ to hope that the student does not wholly depend for his information upon Professor Titchener. Since writing the above I have made acquaintance with Professor Münsterberg’s interesting Grundzüge der Psych. No one who can appreciate good work would speak disrespectfully of Professor Münsterberg. At the same time I do not understand how he can think that those, who on the above point reject his conclusion, would accept the premises from which he draws it.
(c) It may be objected that the above explanation, if correct in itself, is inadequate for its purpose. If no more than this were wanted in order for the idea to carry itself out into act, the idea of an action could never or seldom remain unrealized. But such unrealized ideas, upon the other hand, are a common experience. From which it follows that the essence of volition must consist in something other than ideo-motor action as explained above. But a sufficient reply to this objection is really not difficult. A
1 I should be inclined to illustrate here by the absence in general of actual movement in dreams. See M. N.S. iii [E. xviii].
(ii) Apart from some unusual strength, absolute or relative, an idea of change will not dominate unless it finds support in my present condition. There may be a present group of sensations in harmony with the beginning of the change, together with uneasiness and psychical movement in the direction required. And this may be assisted by the perception of some special object. And again a special disposition, or group of dispositions, connected with the idea may be predominant and explosive. And of course, mutatis mutandis, there is the same kind of support from the physical side. We may thus say generally that, apart from exceptional strength, an idea will not dominate except through the favour it receives. And, when it finds the mind engaged specially in an opposite direction, the suggested idea will under ordinary conditions fail to gain control. (iii) Up to this point we have considered cases where a genuine idea of change has been present, but where that idea has failed to dominate and move me. But the idea may have been qualified, so as itself not to be the idea of a change which is to happen here and now. The way of connexion with my real world may be seen by me to be absent, as where the suggested change is regarded as merely imaginary. Or again the idea of change may have become an element in some wider idea, a whole in which
I will pass from these objections to deal with another kind of difficulty. Your account, it may be said, is based on redintegration, and yet that law, however valid, is certainly not final. The tendency of every idea to realize itself in existence is really more ultimate, and even beyond this we may find a law which is still more fundamental. Every psychical element by itself involves a more or less unnatural mutilation and sundering, and every such element seeks to repair its defect. It therefore tends to reproduce its complement and to restore itself to the full character of the whole. But (however that may be) I see no advantage in discussing such a doctrine here. For if the self-realization of an idea in will is an instance of this ultimate tendency, that in no way would conflict with our general account. And since an ultimate tendency does not realize itself, I presume, without particular machinery, we were right in any case to seek that machinery in dispositions and in redintegration. There is, however, a further point on which I admit that my account is inadequate. Redintegration works, I believe, in all cases of volition, and in most cases I think that its working suffices. But there are other cases which seem to call for an additional law. An idea has a tendency everywhere to reinforce that existence which possesses its content, and, where existence has a content which partly corresponds to the idea, the idea has a tendency to create in fact a completer agreement. It thus transforms the existence to its own character, and so realizes itself. Now redintegration, it may be fairly said, will here not wholly account for the result, and we must therefore admit a further law, say, of Fusion or Blending. This is a difficult point which I am not disposed here to discuss, but the suggested conclusion once more need occasion no difficulty. If we recognize a tendency which in the end falls outside of redintegration, and even if we go on to call that
1 I assume here that redintegration cannot legitimately be reduced to partial fusion. I should certainly myself not agree to speak of the fusion of an idea with a disposition.
2 It is contrary to fact that the tendency of an idea to realize itself depends on pleasure or pain, and contrary again that it depends on my attention to the idea. The assertion, again, that in volition the idea must be ‘apperceived’ may perhaps be admitted if ‘apperception’ is used in a very wide sense, but such an assertion is useless if offered as an explanation of will. For whether in fact an apperceived idea realizes itself or not must depend in each case on how the idea is apperceived. If it is apperceived theoretically, that so far tends to prevent the realization of the idea in fact. But as soon as you inquire about the nature of this how and this difference, you are thrown back on the machinery which we have described in the text. Into that which Professor Wundt calls ‘apperception’ I am unable to enter. The limited time at my disposal would hardly justify an attempt on my part to ascertain that exact meaning which for so many years Professor Wundt has been endeavouring to expound or perhaps to discover.
We may thus conclude that will is a psychical process certainly not original or ultimate or self-explanatory. It is everywhere a result from that which by itself is not volition. The passage of an idea into existence, we found, is the essence of will; and that passage, we have now seen,
1 In his Medicinische Psychologie, 1852.
2 To some extent these cases can be reduced to the support and liberation of a disposition previously held in check. And the idea itself, we must remember, may represent a disposition. I do not however (I must repeat) accept such explanations as quite adequate.
I may now proceed to touch very briefly on the development of will, but must first insist further on its connexion with pleasure and pain. I have declined to include either of these in the definition of will, but on the other hand I admit the importance of both. If I were writing a psychological
1 On these points I have enlarged in M. o.s. xiii [E. xiv].
And when we consider the origin and growth of dispositions and habits, the selective agency of pain appears as a prominent factor. I am ready to agree that without pain and pleasure the will in fact does not originate, and that without pain and pleasure, to speak in general and in the main, it does not now exist. But on the other hand, while I find actions which apart from theory no one would deny to be volitions, but which, so far as I see, do not issue from pain or from pleasure, I cannot admit pain and pleasure into the essence of will. I cannot in these cases find felt pleasure in the idea of the change, or felt pain in the existence which opposes the idea. And further I must insist once more that in pleasure and pain you have not an explanation of the passage of the idea to its reality. They are a means of selection among various ways of bridging the interspace, but I could not possibly admit that either itself serves as a bridge. The bridge in short remains external to them as it is external to the sundered idea. Thus, if pleasure and pain always were present in will and contributed always to its existence, they could be placed in its definition as at most a constant accessory in fact to its main essence. But since the facts are otherwise, I have no choice but to exclude them wholly. If I am to ignore or to override apparent exceptions to their presence, I can do this only on the strength of a necessary principle. But I have here looked in vain for any principle or for any necessity.
From this I must pass to consider an objection based on the development of will. ‘Your account’, I may be told,
(i) It is not permitted in psychology to confuse the questions of origin and of essence. You cannot assert that a psychical fact now possesses a certain aspect, because you judge that at its origin this aspect was present and was even necessary. It is of course legitimate to argue that this aspect has not disappeared, if, that is, you are prepared to state the reason upon which your argument rests. But no man, who believes from observation that in some cases the aspect is absent, can accept your conclusion unless your reasoning, in short, is conclusive. And the general disposition to believe that what has been is, or that what is usually is always, cannot seriously be offered as a conclusive argument. Now in the present case, though it may well be due to my limited knowledge of the subject, I do not know of any attempt to offer a serious argument. If there is a conclusive reason why pain and pleasure cannot in some cases now be absent in fact from volition, I have not seen so much as an attempt to offer that reason. But I am too familiar with the argument that apart from pain and pleasure there is never volition, because the presence of these is always implied in will.
(ii) It is indefensible, we have seen, to confound origin with essence, and there is a further confusion under this head which should be banished from psychology. Let us suppose that in the history of the animal kingdom, or even in the history of the human race, certain dispositions have arisen as the result of pleasure and pain, or again as the result even of volition. And let us suppose that you are in a position to establish this origin. But to advance from this basis to an assertion now about the human individual, and to urge that in him these dispositions are to be taken as resulting from will, although you cannot maintain that they have arisen from his will—surely no leap of this kind
(iii) And on another point the reader must allow me to insist once more on the difference between assumption and proof. Suppose that you have shown (which I am sure you cannot show) that in every case dispositions are the result of pain and pleasure—you cannot, starting from this, affirm that dispositions originate in will, except on the strength of a further logical step. And, in the presence of a denial, to attempt that step by bare assumption is not permissible. Now I am forced to deny that the working of pleasure and pain is always volitional. When on the presence of a stimulus a reaction takes place, and when that reaction is maintained and intensified because it is pleasant, and in consequence tends now by association to be connected with the stimulus—this to me so far is not in the proper sense volitional. And when at the same level pain prevents the formation of some association, either through a counter-habit or simply by the removal of the painful—to speak of merely so much as being will, I must call indefensible. The doctrine that pleasure and pain imply, or even in all cases coincide with, conation or desire, at least in the sense of a desire or a conation of my self, we had to reject as contrary to irrefragable facts. And I must repeat even once again that the proof, if such a proof were possible, that dispositions originate through pleasure and pain, is not, taken by itself, a proof that they result from will. I am not of course speaking of proofs which seem, to consist in mere verbal definition.
Having taken such a position I consider that in the main I am not called on to discuss further the argument from development. But for the sake of clearness I will try briefly to pursue this point further. There is an attempt, as I understand it, to show that will has no origin beyond
There is, it seems to me, but one sense in which will could be really ‘autogenous’, and in which, as will, it would depend on nothing prior to itself. If you take your will to be a man who from the first possesses a certain character, and if you suppose that your development consists in the willed selection by this man of that material which suits with his nature, such a process, I agree, might perhaps be called the ‘autogeny’ of your will. At any rate your nature, so far as acquired, would have been acquired by your will, and certainly that result would have come from your volition. But no such doctrine, I presume, could be even so much as discussed in psychology. On the other hand, apart from an inadmissible view of this kind, I see no sense in which the will can be really ‘autogenous’.
1 I am far from denying that what is found to be true and beautiful and good is in the end so found because it is felt to answer the needs and express the character of the self. But I hardly think that psychology can concern itself even with this. And it would not lead to the conclusion that will is prior to psychical dispositions, or indeed is anything itself but a psychical result.
If, however, within psychology we seek for a will which is before dispositions, it may repay us to see for ourselves how far a consistent view is possible. We must begin here
How far we here have dispensed wholly with dispositions the reader must judge. But when we ask if such an account holds of the development of a human individual, the answer, I presume, must be a decided negative. Even if you add hypotheses with regard to his intra-uterine life, you cannot maintain that the individual to so great an extent is himself the immediate result of conditions and of fortunate survival. And, at least in human psychology, we surely in each case must begin with the individual. If on the other hand we go backwards in the development of our race and of the animal kingdom, we are met at a certain point by difficulties of a further kind. Let us suppose that at a certain point biology is willing to accept our being that has no special structural tendencies, yet at this point we perhaps have gone quite beyond psychology. How much in its psychical aspect can we say about a being such as this? If at such a supposed level it possesses any consciousness of its own, how far does that consciousness contain and depend upon pleasure and pain? I should have thought myself that, at least in the present state of our knowledge, it was not possible even to assert the existence
The effort to deny that will depends upon given dispositions, and the attempt to carry these dispositions back to a point where they originate in will, must end in failure. The will as an individual, who for private reasons or for no reason breaks out into definite action, seems hardly admissible. And again there is a wrong identification of will with the influence of pain and pleasure. There is a false assumption that such an influence, if original, could not later be dispensed with. And, lastly, by retiring backward in search of an uncontaminated beginning, you are threatened at a certain point by a formidable dilemma. You will reach a stage where there still are inherited dispositions, but where these dispositions now appear to have become merely physical. Merely physical, that is, not absolutely, but from the point of view of any special science. And here, without finding what you seek, you will have been carried beyond psychology. Or on the other hand you will be forced to carry over into biology psychological doctrines which within psychology you cannot establish or justify. ‘But no,’ I shall be answered, ‘you do not understand the logic of our argument. We take as a fact the actual formation of dispositions in accordance with our doctrine, and the fact therefore depends upon no preconception. For in our actual experience we can observe the production of
But it is time we turned to consider the negative side of the above argument. We know, it is contended, how in our experience dispositions are formed, and we therefore may exclude any other mode of origin as impossible. But such an exclusion, I reply, if it is to be logical, must rest upon thorough knowledge. The excluded must be meaningless, or it must be self-contradictory, or it must be in plain collision with something positive which is itself clearly known.
1 I do not here ask how these aspects are connected.
Merely physical, that is, not absolutely, but from the point of view of any special science. Now can we say that the formation of dispositions within our own experience is known clearly? Is the influence of pain and pleasure a thing’ which we can call really understood? I do not myself see how any one can maintain that this is actually the case. How then can the formation of dispositions apart from this influence be
If you bring in metaphysics this result, it is possible, might be altered. You might contend that the minimum of reality in the end involves pain and pleasure, and involves what you call will. And you might go on to argue that to suppose the contrary even in a special science is not permissible. But, without attempting here to enter into your metaphysics, I must insist that to intrude such speculations into the sciences is not permissible.
I must conclude then that, even if action under pleasure and pain is wrongly identified with will, we cannot, however far we go back, get rid of external connexions. We must suppose that special dispositions everywhere precede and are the foundation of will. And, even if by retracing the history of the race you could free yourself at some point from given dispositions, yet, when you come to the individual, the difficulty returns. For if the will of the individual presupposes dispositions which by him are unwilled, his will originates in that which to it is external. And even if the origin of the individual will were in accordance with your doctrine, you could make no logical conclusion from the origin to the essence. It is bad psychology, it is no better than prejudice, to assume that a thing must remain all that it was. The fact is that the working of pleasure and pain is not all volitional, and, again, the fact is that some volitions do not involve any such working. And no mere argument from origin, even if it were well-grounded, can alter these facts. Hence pleasure and pain, however influential in general they may be, cannot be given a place in the definition of will.
1 I had hoped to have been able long before this to discuss the doctrine of will, which has been put forward by Professor Royce in his interesting and important work, The World and the Individual. I find to my regret that I can do no more than indicate very briefly the general attitude which, at least in psychology, I am forced to take with regard to it. (i) I could not agree that in psychology everything, which is felt as the satisfaction of my nature, can be taken as the realization of an idea or as willed. (ii) I must again dissent from the view that an idea is in itself so far the realization of a purpose or will. This is the case, I should say, only where there has been a will to have that idea, and in this case an idea of the idea must have preceded. (iii) I cannot make our intellectual and aesthetic self-realization subordinate to practice except in a sense and within limits far narrower than those assigned by Professor Royce. (iv) I cannot agree that in cognition the object is in the end selected by an idea. On the contrary I think that the idea is itself in the end ‘selected’ by something not an idea.
Generally I agree that the real is what satisfies, and that no other definition of reality in the end is so ultimate as this. But in psychology I certainly cannot say that what satisfies is or has been willed. And even outside psychology I cannot take reality as being merely, or even in the first place, a satisfied will. I am unable, that is, to regard will, either in myself or in the universe, as being more than one partial aspect of the whole. But I must hope to discuss hereafter some of the doctrines contained in Professor Royce’s instructive work.
Chapter XXIX. The Evidences of Spiritualism
The Fortnightly Review, No. ccxxviii, N.S. December 1885.
Spiritualism, if true, demonstrates mind without brain, and intelligence disconnected from what is termed a material body.…It demonstrates that the so-called dead are still alive; that our friends are still with us though unseen.…It thus furnishes that proof of a future life which so many crave.’
Three great gulfs, to be crossed by three separate labours, divide the spiritualist from his Land of Promise. His first task is to prove that the ‘phenomena’ are real. He must show next that they are not the abnormal work of human spirits. But, when these obstacles are passed, a third closes the way. He has to leap from the fact of non-human intelligences to the goal of immateriality and immortal life. It is this alone for which the common spiritualist cares, and my object is to show that, if all else were done, this at least, is hopeless. Let us accept without question the phenomena as alleged. Let us admit that these ‘demonstrate’ minds extra-human and in communion with ours. But, arguing from these premises, we utterly deny the further conclusion. It does not follow that these minds have no material bodies. It does not follow that the dead are really alive. We have no right on this evidence to believe in any future; and, if we believed in it, then on this evidence we should be fools if we craved it; and, if the reader cares to traverse a dry chain of arguments, he will see with what poor fancies the spiritualist is fed.
1 Wallace, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 212.
I will begin at once with a fatal objection. In the premises of the spiritualist there is nothing at variance with
As to what matter is we might dispute for an eternity and fail to agree; and the difficulties are not simply made by metaphysics, but obtrude themselves in forms like those of ‘fluids’ and ‘ether’. But by ‘matter’ we commonly mean a reality extended in three dimensions, which can be moved, and can move, and can cause sensation. And we are used to suppose that there is no matter but that which we normally perceive, or which forms one system with what affects our senses. But, if we reflect, we see at once that this supposal rests on nothing. There is no logical objection to the possibility of several kinds of matter, which, for us at least, do not even form one system, which all have several spaces of their own, and which do not move one another at all. How, indeed, could we be sure that there is not matter which fails to affect us, but which, if different ourselves, we at once should perceive?
1 In order to avoid misunderstanding I may say that I do not advocate materialism. I might add, with some prospect of being misunderstood, that I object to spiritualism because it itself is an outcome of materialistic tendencies. It is merely another sort of materialism.
2 Mr. Wallace (Miracles, p. 45) agrees that there probably are ‘forms of matter and modes of ethereal motion’ other than those which our senses enable us to recognize.
But, if so much is possible, then I would suggest something else. This matter, which usually is indifferent to our own, may under unknown conditions
We ourselves have souls and bodies, and we perceive certain facts, assumed to be the effects of souls not our own, which yet, because like our effects, show that other souls exist. And we press on with this conclusion in spite of the fact that we have failed to find the intermediate bodies. Now we agreed to take this failure as evidence that the facts are not effects of our bodies; but the spiritualist wants to go much further than this. He argues, ‘Not dependent upon our bodies, and therefore upon none, quite bodiless and “ethereal”.’ And this is irrational. For, in the first place, nothing excludes the idea that there are bodies not normally obvious to ourselves; or, in other words, such bodies are possible. And, in the second place, the evidence suggests that they are real. First, the analogy which we must use from the embodied soul is a ground, a priori, for expecting a body. And what is the evidence a posteriori? In the end it all resolves itself into effects on matter. There is not one shred, and there could not be one shred, incapable of being so interpreted. Nay, a great part, and apparently the part most relied on, could hardly be taken as anything else. Effects upon our matter have to be explained. Are they better explained by a different matter or by a naked ghost? Tables are moved, finger-marks and foot-marks are printed on sawdust, and furniture is shattered
But the spiritualist will reply, ‘Your alternative is false. We are not forced to choose between matter and ghosts. The spirits are not bodiless any more than we are, but their bodies are higher and of ethereal substance. Thus though impalpable they are potent, and though active indiscerptible {not subject to being separated into parts}, and such bodies are a warrant of immortality.’ For myself I must reply that if they were ever so thin, I do not see how that brings them nearer to spirit. If they are extended and movable they are probably discerptible, and most assuredly we have no hint that they are anything but mortal. The possibility that they are not so is an idle fancy, for which the facts alleged give no sort of excuse. This ‘spiritual body’ is a foolish imagination. It inhabits our space and yet is not material. It is attenuated to that degree that it passes through matter, and yet is indivisible and everlasting. It is not quite a solid and not quite a spirit, nor yet quite a gas. It is inexplicable and not wanted to explain anything else. Once admit that matter may exist and not normally be perceived, and then its thinness or grossness becomes irrelevant. Admit, on the other hand, it is thin past earthly thinness, and it still is material and still discerptible.
We have started by assuming the existence of active non-human intelligences, and we have so far seen that the
But when we ask as to their souls, I think we get a little light. When we weigh the probabilities, the balance does move in a certain direction. There is reason to think their souls lower than ours and, taken on the whole, less intelligent and feebler. Of course they perceive what we do not perceive, but so, to some extent, do the lower animals. That they perceive all that we perceive, or on the whole more than we do, there is no evidence. The unusual need not be higher, and to them we do not know what is unusual. And it would never do to say, ‘But we ask questions and
We have now seen that the spirits are probably embodied, and that their minds at least are inferior to our own. And like ours their bodies are too probably discerptible, and their souls, the adjectives of those physical aggregates, must too probably perish. And assuredly the materialist laughs in derision. You may count it a great thing that thought does not depend on the matter of the brain, but what if it rests upon something more coarse, something that you would hold still more despicable and vile? Your new revelation of these latter days has given us something
Spiritualism, so far as we have seen, is exploded. Admit its facts and its conclusions do not follow. If there are souls, not ours, behind its phenomena, yet these souls are not bodiless nor are they immortal. And presumably they are inferior to our own; they give us nothing to admire and nothing to hope for. But the spiritualist will urge that I have left out of view a main part of the evidence. I have said nothing of the testimony borne by the spirits, and I have neglected the great fact of spirit-identity—the proof that our relations still are alive, and that therefore we shall live. The discussion of these points was put off for a time, since they involve some difficulties and require some patience. I will deal with them forthwith, and we shall very soon find that the testimony borne by the spirits is worthless. We shall go on to see that their identity is not provable, nor, if provable, a warrant of immortality, nor in any way comfortable. Let us first take their testimony.
From this we get information, edifying if not useful, as to the things both of spirit-land and of our own earthly life; but what specially concerns us is the assertion that after death we too go to spirit-land, and that life there is, or may be, much higher than here. Still testimony, as we know, may be false as well as true, and the question is whether in the case of a spirit we have got any reason for supposing it true. I am compelled to believe that we have simply no reason. We have control neither over the facts deposed to, nor over the mind and character of the witness. But under such conditions any testimony is worthless; and if the reader will have patience, I will make this point good.
Testimony, we must remember, does not supersede experience. It can never be an independent source of
What, however, do we mean? Do we mean that a man is to believe nothing but what he has seen, and nothing that runs counter to his private experience? We are far from meaning this. What we insist on is that our reason for believing the witness must come in the end from our own direct knowledge. It is not that we are confined to private experience, but that this experience itself must warrant our leaving it, by giving us a reason for going beyond. In the case of testimony what is this reason? It is an inference on our part to a mind in the witness which, first, is capable of having learnt the fact attested and, next, is able and willing to communicate the truth. We in short infer that the mind of the other may in these respects be treated as our mind; and in consequence we have merely to test its statements in the way in which we test our personal observations.
1 I cannot ask here how far the results of private experience may be set aside on the strength of testimony. I admit that in some cases they must be thus set aside. I have said something on this question elsewhere.
Thus, when Mr. A tells me of this or that event
Now the capacity and the desire of Mr. A to speak truth must rest in the end on my positive observation. But his absence of motive for untruth and deceit rests not only on that, but on something as well. It implies what may be called my negative experience, and it is based on an assumption. I assume that I know not quite all about the witness, but so much that, if he had a motive to deceive me, I should become aware of it. I assume that in my witness there exists no other life with other motives besides those which I discover. These, I think, are the criteria which we are forced to employ when we deal with unsupported human testimony. We do not always apply them with rigour and, where the testimony is supported by our own experience, we are, of course, not compelled to be so exacting. But where the gravest results follow from simple depositions, there we do and we must bring our tests to bear strictly. Without tests such as these (the defenders of miracles will endorse so far what I say) there is no reason why I should either believe or disbelieve.
If we apply our criteria to the teaching of the spirits, we gain at once a momentous result. Their assertions go beyond our personal experience, and their testimony is not supported. Hence our criteria must be applied with unsparing rigour. Let us make the experiment, and see if the spirit-witnesses are not turned out of court. In the first place, do the spirits know what they talk of, and have we got that assurance? I cannot think that we have. No
So far we cannot tell if the spirits are really well informed; and to this may be added a subsidiary doubt. When we communicate amongst ourselves we are sure that our system of signs is trustworthy. If it were not so the practical results must show it; and this is in the end the sole test that we have. But when we converse with spirits have we got that assurance; and if not, do we possess any other? I will only allude to this doubt in passing, and will proceed to state a more fatal objection. If the spirits really know and are able to communicate, does it follow that they are willing? May we suppose that they are truthful? We must not do so without reason, and have we any reason? With this question we arrive at a very noteworthy feature. It is admitted that some spirits are fraudulent and mischievous, but the spiritualist asseverates that others are sincere, and that he can winnow the false from the true. And, half dazed by his audacity, I can only reply, Produce your criterion.
Human testimony is sifted in part by our knowledge of the matters alleged, in part again by our experience of human nature, and by special information as to the character of this witness. The absence of a motive or a tendency to lie must either be shown or must else be assumed on a general presumption. And this is our criterion. But when we come to the spirits we can apply it no longer. We have no knowledge of our own by which to check their statements,
But the spiritualist may deny that we have any need to make them. He may say that our experience gives us a test. The spirits tell us things that we ourselves verify. They are found intelligent and faithful in some things, and that gives us a reason to trust them beyond. But this conclusion is irrational. If a spirit perceives events through a wall and in the distance, if he sees what is hidden in the pastor in the future, and we verify his competence, yet this, as we have seen, ‘does not warrant him capable of any higher knowledge. He might yet be a witness not competent to speak of the things of spirit-land. His capacity is not established by the strange and unusual. It is when he proves himself our equal in the highest that we have, that
To sum up the result: When a spirit bears witness of things beyond our world, we know neither his ability nor his honesty, and we have no kind of presumption in his favour. We have seen before that, apart from the testimony of the spirits, we must regard them as not bodiless and may suppose them mortal; and their testimony also has proved to be worthless. Nothing now remains save the bulwark of spirit-identity, and if that goes, the last defence of spiritualism has vanished. This bulwark at first sight looks somewhat imposing. We recognize in the spirits our dead friends and relations, and so are sure that they survive. But if they survive, then we also shall not perish. We are all immaterial and all immortal, and with a destiny beyond the grave which may fill us with hope. But, unfortunately, the edifice has no foundation. We do not know that these spirits really are our friends, nor can we hope in consequence ourselves to survive. And if we knew this, yet our friends may be material and mortal, and our heritage not joy but sadness and foreboding.
It would be a task alike ungrateful and useless to argue against that which some of us call ‘instinct’, against the assurance of love and the impulse of affection. And to those who are persuaded that they converse with their dead my reasonings are not addressed; but to others I must show the flaws in the evidence. Even here amongst ourselves and in the daylight of the sun such a proof is not
How do we know here on earth that the man whom we recognize is really our relation? And, first of all, how should we prove it in a law court? We should show in the first place the identity of his mind, as evinced by memory and by sameness of habits, and in the second place we should point to the identity of his body; but on reflection we see that this latter carries everything, and that the sameness of body is the goal of our argument, to prove which indirectly or directly they all would be aimed. And the reason of this is (as we shall see lower down) that we cannot show, except by way of the body, the continuity of the soul. If the body exists it must exist continuously; but the continuous existence of another man’s soul can be shown, if at all, only by a circuitous process. I shall return to this hereafter, and at present will but point out that for legal purposes the identity of the body proves the sameness of the man. Now the body is, of course, a material thing, a thing differing from other things, and puzzling us much by its change and its sameness. But we need not notice the special problem^ which it offers, and may confine ourselves to the question, how we show the identity of a material object. Is it enough to make out that it seems to our tests just the same as it was? No, that is not enough, for it shows no more than sameness of description. The identity of this or that material object depends also on the continuity
Hence if we proved the continuity of our relation’s body we should prove his identity. But strictly to prove continuity is impossible, and we must content ourselves with a certain probability. We try to show that at the end of various intervals a body like our relation’s was present in the world, and that if, during those intervals, the body had been changed, we must have been aware of it. We try to prove that the facts are in favour of continuity, and that nothing suggests an opposite hypothesis. But we may meet a great obstacle, for throughout some part of the time in question we may be able to get no sort of direct evidence. Still our case is not hopeless. We are able to add an indirect argument. First, our relation is not known to be dead or elsewhere, and the man before us is like what our relation would have been, and his story is credible—hence he may be our relation. And now, secondly, we produce our indirect proof. There is no one save our relation who could appear so like him, and therefore our man must be the person we seek. This decides the question.
Now our must be, it is obvious, rests on an assumption. We suppose ourselves to have such a knowledge of the world that we can be sure there is no facsimile of our relation, or, if there were, that we should get to know it. We see the nature of our argument if we take the case of twins, so like as hardly to be known apart. If these twins, A and B, had been absent for even a moderate time, then, if no evidence could be got to show continuity, it might be utterly impossible to prove the identity of A or B. And this shows us the assumption which we commonly use. No one save a near relation could ever be so like, and, in this case before us, no such person is possible. Our assumption, perhaps, may be no more than probable; but we must employ it, or have no opinion at all. And, whether
If we now return to spirit-identity, we shall find that we have got an important result. We cannot use for a spirit the same sort of proof that we use for a man. Continuity of body cannot be shown where no body exists, or where it exists ethereally and not in our world. And to argue from the exclusion of all other bodies is equally impossible. Hence, where we have no body material as mine is, the legal evidence for identity is quite out of place. This, I think, must be admitted, and the question is, Have we among human beings any other way of proving identity? I confess I cannot find one. Let us suppose that A and B have two wives C and D, and, though the bodies of C and D seem still the same, that their souls are transferred. In this (impossible) case could we get to know the identity of their souls? I do not think that we could. A man might say, ‘This woman C is no longer my wife; she is at present not the same with the woman I married.’ But nothing could entitle him to find the soul C in the body D. For myself at least, I do not see what evidence could establish that point. And if so, we must say that without the same body the same soul is not provable.
We have so far made good that the identity of a spirit is not capable of the proof which we use amongst men. That, however, may not matter. The removal of the body removes a difficulty. ‘Our relation’s soul is hard to recognize, when we know that his body is possibly elsewhere, and itself with a soul. But death strikes out the old body, and simplifies the question, so that knowledge becomes possible.’ A spirit appears to us like our relation in appearance, disposition, and knowledge of facts. That is really all the evidence, and is it enough? If we strike out the body it is the same evidence that we used to establish human identify, and so far it is valid. But unfortunately it stops at a fatal limit, for it wholly leaves out the indirect proof. We assume with a man that no other could resemble him, since we know our own earth and the nature of its people. Without this assumption the inference is
The identity of an individual, corporeal or otherwise, does not consist in sameness of present description. If the same soul lived twice at the interval of a century, would it really be the same? Or must we not add continuity of history? But how with a spirit is such evidence possible? Shall we venture to assert that none could really be so like unless he were the same? Think for a moment of the unknown region of spirit-land, and then judge if such assumptions are better than fancies. It would be easier if we knew that no spirit was anything but a man deceased. It would be easier, but still unlawful. For to us the other world is buried in darkness, and we know nothing of the dead, how they are changed (it may well be) and sadly translated. The proof that we seek for would have to lie in this, that after certain signs we should be forced to exclaim, ‘My kinsman or the devil.’ And we cannot reach this alternative. And moreover, even if the alternative were reached, we could not exclude the latter supposition. ‘The spirit may be a devil…and abuses me to damn me.’
We are too ignorant to assume that from spirit-land no counterfeit would come to mock us. We cannot tell that no spirit save the soul of the deceased could so put on his knowledge and wear his semblance. It is all wild imagination. If I asserted that each man has got his double in spirit-land, sometimes seen during life, and which, lingering after death, amuses his kinsfolk, I should say it on grounds to the full as convincing. We cannot tell that no spirit is like our relation; we cannot say that no spirit is able to personate. But would they do it if they could? Well, we do not know their motives, and we cannot say they would not. Nay, there is some evidence that they do. The spiritualist himself teaches counterfeiting spirits, fraudulent and mischievous. True, he adds that we detect them by their own non-success, and by the help of those others, not fraudulent or (perhaps) still undetected. But, as we saw, this is illusory. Since we know nothing beforehand, the chances seem even that all of them are fraudulent;
We can never know that we really converse with our relations, and hence we cannot tell that we ourselves shall survive. But even this is not the end. If we did recognize in the spirits our friends that are dead, that would not prove them or us immaterial or immortal, or exempt from worse than earthly afflictions. It would not prove them wholly immaterial, since they probably, as we have seen, have material bodies. Nor would their identity weaken that probable conclusion, for a soul might have one body and then, again, another, possibly without any loss of identity; or, if identity were lost, yet at least to us the appearance would remain. ‘Do you say, then, you admit that the soul is transferred, and is therefore independent?’ Nothing need be transferred. The materialist holds soul to be a function of the body. Well, then, obviously if you were to destroy my body, and after a thousand years make another one like it, my soul must (so far as my consciousness is concerned) start afresh without a break and maintain its identity. When the pressure of the bone is removed from the brain, the consciousness begins from the moment of the blow; and if the patient were not trephined but destroyed, and ten thousand years hence a man like him were made, then, after an operation ten thousand years hence, the consciousness would start from the moment of the injury. You may object that the soul would not really be
Hence our relations are material, and are probably mortal, and we can draw no hope from their existence after death. They may say that they progress, but why should we believe them? In the first place, we have seen and conversed with but a fraction, and the rest are not known. Then, again, we cannot tell that our witnesses do not lie. And if they speak what they believe, how much do they know? How much of their own prospects, how much of all those creatures whom perhaps they never see? Their own intelligence is not high, perhaps now it is decaying, and their own degraded future they cannot forecast. Were they doomed to extinction, to mouldering dotage, even to something unspeakable, why suppose that they would know it? And there is an ominous circumstance. The souls of great writers, when called upon, indite, if not fustian or drivel, the saddest commonplace. And we reject them as counterfeit, but perhaps we are wrong. Perhaps our Shakespeare after all and our Bacon and St. John were the genuine men, travelling ignobly through decrepitude to final dissolution. This is a fancy, but not more fanciful than the rest. And so we must say that, if our apparitions are really the deceased, they do not open the future nor give us hope that their lives will be long or desirable. And in the face of this result (if that were all that we had) there would be comfort in the death which gives peace in the grave. It is much to know the worst, and if we can say, ‘They are not troubled, for their poor private selves death is sleep everlasting, and the higher life which they lived lives on through their labour’, then that worst is not bad. But to be sure that they exist, but not for how long, really
Let us collect the result of our long discussion. We have seen that, even if we hold converse with the dead, yet that gives no hope of bliss beyond the grave, either forever or even for a very little while. And we have no right to believe that we hold this converse. And, if we commune with intelligences, yet we have no right to take anything from them on trust. Further, though we may admit an intercourse with souls, yet these souls are not any more spiritual than we are, nor are they any less material or more immortal; nor again are these objections dependent one upon the other, but any one by itself is dangerous to spiritualism. Still, I fear that the result may be a feeling of too much. I fear the spiritualist may reply to these doubts by a counter-charge of general scepticism. I have indeed laboured to distinguish our ordinary inferences from the reasoning employed to establish the spirits, and it is on those distinctions that I would take my stand. Still, that the spiritualist and myself may each understand the other, I will endeavour to meet a possible objection. ‘On your showing,’ I may be told, ‘though the spirits did exist and with a message for ourselves, yet they would have no way of delivering their tidings—or rather, though they delivered them, we never should be sure of it, or at least ought never to accept their testimony. And this position is absurd and is palpable scepticism.’
I answer that I fail to perceive the absurdity; and while I defend an opinion, not formed for an occasion, but embraced long ago and tried by some wear, I would beg for a little the attention of the reader. I deny utterly the right claimed by the beings of one sphere to hold communion with those of another. I see no reason to expect any converse of the kind, nor is it incredible or unlikely that, if such converse took place, there should exist no means for the accrediting of testimony. We must not first make our fancies the measure of the universe, and then exclaim that the facts are absurd and impossible.
No convincing revelation can now be made to us which is to stand on anything but internal merit. A revelation of this sort is by no means incredible, but what does it mean? It means that our souls are so assisted and enlightened that we perceive of ourselves that the testimony is true. The testimony, in other words, is not taken as testimony, and
Against the religion of the spiritualist, if we take it at its best, against his conception, that is, of the true aim of the soul and of its duty towards God, I have nothing to say. He stands far above the common level of orthodox Christianity, and if I thought that this article would weaken his persuasion, that would cause me regret. And I wish the spiritualist to understand that my objections are not aimed at his practical doctrines. They are directed against his forecasts of our personal future, which, if true, could make no difference to our duties, and which he rests upon evidence entirely worthless. His premises could never establish his result. It is not his fault or his spirits’ fault, but it lies, I am convinced, in the nature of things, that no proof of the kind which he attempts is possible. And if he replies that a religion must be something for the people, and that what to me is but a puzzle to them is demonstration, I must answer that I could not even for the sake of religion take part in his deception.
I will not assert, if we were quite sure of the truth, and were sure that our fraud would but tend to support it, that then we might not say, ‘Since the people must be deceived, be it ours to deceive them wisely ana well’; but since the case is far otherwise, and since our fraud would take its place amid the uncleanly struggle of superstition and priestcraft, we ourselves must be defiled if we countenance deceit, and admit bad evidence for true conclusions. This in any case must be true, and there is something besides. Who is able to guarantee us against these spirits? They are not saying today what they have sometimes said before, and who knows but hereafter they may say something else? I do not trust these spirits however fairly they may speak.
Spiritualism has had so far a very easy game to play. Its facts have been canvassed much more than its inferences, and it has for the most part enjoyed a mon opoly of interpretation. But when its data are established (if they ever are established), that monopoly will go, and it will, point by point, have to battle with rival hypotheses. I shall have succeeded in my purpose if I have shown that that battle is hardly begun.
Note: The following extract from a letter written by the author on February 1, 1922, may be of interest.
‘I don’t want to write about spiritualism generally. What I want is to correct a mistake which I made in writing, as if what is called spirit-identity could not be shown to exist by any evidence. I have written for myself an abstract of what I think is correct now, but I can’t, I fear, make this interesting generally, and doubt if I shall now try to do more. Certainly I dislike spiritualism very much, but of late years there has been evidence of much better character, though I have read little of it. I cannot see any reason to think that any new religion can ever be built on spiritualism.’ The
Another reference to this subject will be found in Essays on Truth and Reality, 440, footnote, where he says:
‘What I myself wrote on this head some time ago (Fortnightly Review, 1885) is, I recognize, one-sided and unsatisfactory; but it contains doubts which are far easier to ignore than to remove. For instance, to discuss the question of the identification of a “spirit”, without any regard to what is involved logically in the identification of a man, seems to be still the common way, and to myself it still seems to be ridiculous’.
Chapter XXX. On The Treatment of Sexual Detail In Literature
Note. The following article was written in 1912, at a time when the flood of erotic novels had not yet swept over the English reading public. Some harsh and, as he thought, unjust strictures on certain books had called the author’s attention to the subject, and he thus briefly recorded his own views.
On re-reading his article some years afterwards, when already a change had taken place in current literature, he thought it necessary, in order to guard against misconception, to add the Note which is printed below (see pp. 626-7).
The question as to the right of the novelist to present and dwell on sexual detail has, I understand, begun to trouble us. In this dispute it is only too easy to take a side, but to judge intelligently requires more than mere personal bias. And if we are to form a reasonable decision, we must at least make some attempt to understand. It is in aid of any such attempt that these pages have been written. To freedom from bias on my own part I make no pretence at all. I should be false to all the tradition of my life, such as it has been, if I were not wholly on the side of liberty in science, literature, and art. The feelings which I entertain towards any part of the public, which I am forced to regard as enslaved and hypocritical, I need not express. My object here is, so far as I can, to set out the principle on which any rational discussion must be based.
I will for the moment imagine myself to be a novelist attacked and blamed for treating of sexual matters. And I will first state briefly, and merely in general, the real essence of the attack, and next will explain the proper line of defence. The attack will be developed not quite as it is usually made, but as it must be made, if it desires to be logical and consistent.
(1) It is a recognized law that all ideas have a tendency to work themselves out into personal emotion and action. This law obviously holds good in the case of amatory sexual
Next, everything in sculpture or in pictorial art which portrays, or even suggests, anything amatory must be excluded. The nude figure tends to become a mere pandering to lust. Further, in poetry no sexual love may be introduced, except perhaps in a guarded way the love of husband and wife, and possibly the amours described so chastely in the Song of Solomon. As for the novel (the theatre need not even be mentioned), we have something here worse even than poetry, because nearer to actual life. The novel, if not (like the Morte d’ Arthur) full of ‘bold bawdry’, is at least replete with pernicious suggestion, witness Paolo and Francesca, and all those others whom romances have led to sin and to death spiritual if not bodily. And music so far as it is ‘the food of love’ should be peremptorily silenced.
The attempt to distinguish between loves of diverse kinds must be repelled as insidious. If the love is sexual, it is sexual; and sexual emotions and ideas tend normally to one end. They lead to desires which, except in matrimony, cannot be gratified without sin. Even though resisted, such ideas must unsettle or corrupt. And the one remedy is to banish whatever tends to excite them. Hence everything, everywhere, which suggests amatory ideas, must in
principle be forbidden.
I have stated the objection to the treatment by the
(2) For indeed such is the result, to which the attack on novels seems necessarily to lead. And I will now go on to ask where the process, which has taken us to such a conclusion, has been mistaken.
Is, in the first place, its foundation, the general law of the development of ideas, to be condemned as an error? No, we must answer, the law in itself is perfectly true, but here it has been misapplied because misunderstood. For what the law really states is merely a tendency. Suggested ideas tend to develop themselves in me and with personal consequences. This, however, is only true so far as taken conditionally. It should mean simply that the ideas produce a certain result where they are not interfered with, so far, that is, as they are not obstructed by other ideas or contrary feelings and sensations, and not subordinated to impersonal interests. Obviously there are various ways in which to prevent undesirable disturbance of my personality by, for instance, sexual ideas. And obviously one way will be to embody these ideas in some impersonal setting, to attach them, that is, to an object or world of objects other than, and beyond, my mere individual life.
An idea associated with an interest which transcends my mere being, as this or that human animal, this or that creature as it lives and feels at this or that moment—will develop itself accordingly. The movement of the idea will take the direction of the interest. But this will, so far, prevent the idea from discharging itself in mere personal emotion and action. In short, so far as the mind is full of independent interests, these will attract ideas amatory or otherwise within their circle, and will so control them. It
What, we may now ask, are these interests of which we have spoken? We have first the habit of mind which is called scientific, the set desire to know and understand, and everywhere to arrive at truth. And it is surely beyond doubt that, where sexual matters are attended to in this way, whether in anatomy, physiology, medicine, the history of animals, or again in anthropology, the result, to speak in general, is not libidinous. All such studies of course can be used improperly and wrongly. But then, as so used, they certainly, so far, have ceased to be scientific.
Let us consider in the next place pictorial art. So far as this art really is pursued and loved as art, and not as something which is different, the same principle holds. The interest in the artistic effect controls the tendency of amatory subjects to disturb the personal state of the man who studies the picture. There is in the picture, to those who can appreciate it, the victory of the master over all the difficulties of composition and technique. And to the public in general there is visible, at least in some measure, the achieved beauty of the result. And beauty, as beauty, is always outside of and above and beyond any mere personal feeling. Beauty is not something which remains within me, as a mere condition and state of myself. It is there, whether in motion or at rest, as an object outside me and for me, or else it fails to be beauty. My interest therefore in what is beautiful must, if it is genuine, so far prevent any amatory ideas from taking in me what we have called a mere personal direction.
There are times, we must admit, where at least in the case of certain persons art fails to achieve its end, and then may in consequence merely disturb and excite. Art again can be even intended and used to produce this result. But here assuredly, so far and to this extent, we have not to do with genuine art.
When we pass on to poetry and to the novel, our general principle still holds, though it is more difficult perhaps here to apprehend it clearly. In poetry and in novels (it
With poetry, in contrast to the novel, it is far easier to realize this truth. The whole situation described in the poem may be said usually to be set in a kind of frame apart and remote from my actual life. Even where the poetry is lyrical, the emotion is felt to be idealized, raised above the being of the mere moment, and so made impersonal. I have never heard Tennyson, for example, denounced as a carnal poet. And yet he could write:
Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shivered in my narrow frame.
Oh love! Oh fire! Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro’
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
If here you cannot recall or imagine, and so feel the sensation more or less, the poetical effect is wanting. But if your ideas and emotions stray beyond the vision of Fatima’s passionate heart and burning flesh, if they begin to wander
You may in this connexion recall the erotic sentiments warbled by young ladies in drawing-rooms. These flames have indeed in one sense tortured many, but I do not suppose that they have often inflicted moral injury. The imagined situation is detached from the actual environment. Whatever ideas and feelings are excited are felt to belong to another world, the region of ‘mere music’ and of ‘only poetry’. The ideas and emotions therefore qualify and are appropriated by this other world, and their downward and outward irradiation and development in the singer and the audience are checked.
When we pass to the treatment of sexual matters in the novel the same principle which has guided us, still keeps its force. But not so (it will be urged), since the novel differs essentially from poetry, because it has to keep closer to ordinary life. In reply I might indeed ask where there is any fixed borderline between some poetry and romance in prose. But I prefer to deal more directly with the main point at issue. I insist that everywhere in literature, enjoyed as literature, our principle is valid. We have everywhere what we have called the impersonal direction and set of the interest. We are absorbed not in ourselves but by an object before our minds. It is this object which our ideas and our feelings colour, and by this object they are dominated and held. So being controlled, their development within our personal selves is obstructed. Detached from our own life they go on to realize themselves in that world which we only contemplate. And in this detachment lies the freedom which is bestowed on us by every form of genuine art.
To inquire into the nature of all that interest which is satisfied by the novel would carry us far. It is a question too wide for our present discussion. In a prose romance,
It is possible, we all must agree, for an artist not to succeed. The painter, the poet, or the novelist, in introducing sexual material, may have failed to keep the detail duly subordinate. Hence, instead of qualifying the main interest, this detail may break loose. It may remain no longer bound to the service of the artistic purpose. And, thus set free from the object before us, the sexual ideas and feelings, no longer checked, may develop their natural process in ourselves. Such a result, however, where it happens, is due not to art but to art’s failure.
But more commonly, far more commonly, the failure is in ourselves. To take and to enjoy art and literature for what they really are, is not given to all of us. During early life (I cannot here ask why) this defect may more or less be expected. The outbreaks, for instance, caused in boys by the reading of tales of piracy and of othfer criminal adventures, are things of constant occurrence. And too many persons, in the same way, remain through all their lives children. The detachment of personal feeling, and its location beyond us in another world, is for such minds not
1 Sprüh’n einmal verdacht’ge Funken
Aus den Rosen—sorge nie!
Diese Welt glaubt niclit an Flammen
Und sie nimmt’s fur Poesie,
so writes Heine in addressing a lady. The reverse process, alas! is but too familiar. There are too many who, understanding nothing of literature or art, degrade their pure radiance into personal inflammation.
Which is the higher being? Is it the man who strives to empty his mind of all that is sexual, to banish from his life all the beauty and all the romance that, based on sex, carries sex into an idealized world? Is it he who thus leaves his own nature at best vacant and starved, or opened perhaps to the inroad of that which turns it into ‘a cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in’? Such a question surely cannot be answered in the affirmative.
The higher man surely is he who, loyally accepting his whole nature, seeks a positive remedy for its weakness. Such a man will know that his safety lies not in vacancy but in fullness. He brings, so far as in him lies, the entire tendencies of his being as an offering to that which is more complete than himself. He seeks generally to identify all his energies with a higher purpose. And in science, in art, and in literature, by setting even the lowest recesses of his nature before him as an object, he aims at personal freedom.
A Note—added at a later date: Such is the justification in principle for the use of sexual detail, and all that remains is to guard against certain misunderstandings.
I have already explained that certain persons are not fit to appreciate art or literature where sexual detail comes in. The detail to them becomes something other than art or literature. Again some persons are inclined both in their lives and elsewhere to give too much attention to passionate sexual love, and still more persons to romantic love. Now even in the form of art and literature it is better for some of these persons not to have their attention too much centred on this subject. And it must be admitted against the novel that, retaining to a greater or less extent the aspect of a tale of adventure, it, to speak in general, is prone to exalt the adventurous aspect of sexual love, which is not really the aspect which in life possesses most moral importance. So that while it is perfectly true that literature, like art, can and does free us from personal desire, it is true nevertheless that, if one-sided, it does or may tend to exalt one-sidedly one side of human nature, and possibly depress others.
So much for the reader. And for the writer, while it is impossible to say that any subject is incapable of literary or artistic treatment,
1 e.g. Balzac’s La Lille aux yeux d’or, and perhaps Une passion dans le desert.
Chapter XXXI. Relations
{Unfinished, edited by H. H. Joachim.}
I. Introductory Note: Between January and April 1923, and again during the first four months of 1924, Bradley was at work on the subject of ‘Relations’. His original intention was to put what he wished to say into the form of an article for Mind.
1 Compare the following extracts, all from letters to his sister:
‘I am decidedly better…and have been doing a very little work in arranging my ideas with a view to an Article in Mind perhaps…(Weston, 17 January 1923.)
‘The Article I want to write would have done well as another Terminal Essay in the Logic, only I wanted to get done with that.—It contains nothing really new, but its object is to insist on the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of any “relational” stage of experience—however necessary.’ (Weston, 25 January 1923.)
‘This thing I am preparing to write as an Article for Mind is logical and metaphysical. It is on the nature and position of “relations”.…I am not ready to write yet, but am making an outline and notes.…’ (Weston, 1 February 1923.)
‘I am writing, as a preliminary, a full abstract.’ (Weston, 1 March 1923.)
‘I am writing a full sketch…I hope to have got this done in a day or two now…(Weston, 19 March 1923.)
‘I have finished an outline and notes for that Article I want to write.’ (Weston, 23 March 1923.)
2 ‘I have been looking…at the Sketch and Notes that I made at Weston, and rather fear that it will turn out a bigger job than I thought.’ (Oxford, 9 April 1923.)
‘I have been going over the notes of what I wanted to write when here last year. There is a good deal too much stuff, I fear, for an Article in Mind, unless I can cut it down—which I may be able to do.’ (Weston, 8 January 1924.)
‘I have too much material (which I got together last winter) and find a difficulty in dealing with it, apart from the actual difficulties of the subject.’ (Weston, 4 February 1924.)
3 ‘I am arranging to make the whole thing divisible into two parts so as to be able to appear in Mind—to do this I am putting off the discussion of some serious difficulties to the latter part. The risk here is that I may find that I shall have to alter the first part after I have tackled the second.’ (Weston, 17 February 1924.)
4 ‘I have done a little more and have actually written about 20 pages; but the subject extends itself, and, unless I limit it arbitrarily and unsatisfactorily, will become unmanageable in anything short of at least 50 or 60 pages, to say nothing of the difficulties. I may however be able to limit it so as not to be ashamed to publish, and this I must try to do.’ (Weston, 8 April 1924.)
Thus the projected article remained unfinished. The major portion of the first part (probably about three-quarters) exists in the draft referred to above. The manuscript (hereafter called C) fills twenty-eight and a half pages of a ‘memorandum tablet’. Though much corrected in places, it is very nearly in final form, and is printed without substantial alteration below. But the second part of the article was never written, and not even a rough draft or outline of it exists.
Prior to his change of plan, however, Bradley had accumulated a quantity of valuable material in preparation for the undivided article as originally designed. Most of this preparatory work is contained in a black quarto notebook (hereafter called A). There are, besides, twenty pages of a manuscript (B) enclosed in an envelope, on which the author has written ‘MSS. & Notes for Article’; and, lastly, a few entries in a red quarto notebook (W) to which both A and B occasionally refer. Many passages, taken from these sources (A, B, or W), are reproduced in the Appendix (pp. 653-76), and arranged, so far as possible, as notes supplementary to the text of the first part of the divided article (pp. 630-50). Nearly all the selected passages do in fact throw further light upon various points in this completed portion of the projected work; and many of them sketch problems which the author intended to discuss in the second part, and even foreshadow to some extent the arguments he would probably have used.
II. Unfinished Draft of the First Part of an Article on Relations: [Superscripted numbers mark where the author intended to add a footnote with references.]
We all, I think, are agreed that the question as to relations, their nature, truth, and reality, is both central and difficult. To deal with it and all that it involves within the space of an article is certainly not in my power. But the main view as to relations which I advocate I will attempt so far as I can in what follows to make intelligible.1
If ‘relation’ is not used merely as a vague term for any sort of connexion or union of that which is both one and many, but is employed in a stricter and more limited sense, then to me relations do not in the end as such possess truth or reality. Experience, so far as in a proper sense relational, I take to be in no sense either primary or ultimate. Such experience is necessary and is justified as a way of advance in knowledge; and if we fail to recognize this, we are led into fatal error. On the other hand, any relational view involves self-contradiction in its essence. It rests on a form of experience which is more primary and, in a sense, more ultimate—which form, though vitally implied in itself, it attempts to leave behind and supersede. And thus the relational view, while justified and more than justified in advancing, must fail in the end to reach full reality or truth. Its essential presupposition and support remains, we may say, throughout infra-relational, while the higher stage of a unity which at once includes and transcends mere relations is reached by no relational experience so long as that remains itself. Such experience, then, I take to be a makeshift aiming unawares beyond itself at an end, fulfilled in which it must lose every claim in its own right to truth and reality.
This consummation (I may perhaps be here allowed once more to insist) I take as an experience neither one-sided, nor abstract and negative. It is the complete realization of all our desires for truth, beauty, emotion, sensation,
1 [The MS. reads ‘truth beauty sensation and emotion and activity’. The reading given above is taken from earlier drafts in A and B.]
It is not in detail knowable and it remains, if you please, inexplicable. But in its main positive character, as the fulfillment of every end and the complete reality of all partial existence, it is both knowable and certain. And since it is beyond any one kind of experience—feeling, thought, and intuition, sense, activity, and will—while it positively includes each and all of these, to identify it with any single one is of course ridiculous. Hence, when those who hold to an Absolute such as the above are set down as mere Intellectualists or as seekers in vain to find a universe in the blank nothingness of abstract identity, I must be permitted to doubt whether we have anything here which deserves the name of criticism.2
Relational experience, to return from this digression, is to my mind in no sense either primary or ultimate. It presupposes and rests on another mode of experience which, though itself also imperfect, has a better claim to,, such titles. And I will now proceed first to describe and contrast the main characters of each; and then, after entering into fuller detail, endeavour to deal with some points of difficulty.
The primary form of experience may, I think, be best called ‘immediate experience’ or ‘feeling’, and with regard to this I may be allowed to refer to what I have written elsewhere.3 To limit the meaning of feeling to pleasure and pain I must take as quite indefensible. And if there ever is such a thing as one simple feeling, I will put that here on one side. I mean here by ‘feeling’ such a mode of experience of sameness and difference in one as is an awareness direct and non-relational of that which is at once one and many. If we may permit ourselves to speak here prematurely of a whole and parts, then in immediate experience the whole qualifies every part while the parts qualify all and each both one another and the whole. Thus extension and color as they come first are not given as related. They are both in one, just as the contents of every ‘this’, ‘now’, and ‘mine’ come in one and make one with the
1 [‘the [total] unity’ [MS.]]
There are some real difficulties to which later I shall have to return, but my next task is to show how the form of relational experience differs essentially from feeling. There are, however, some misunderstandings which, before proceeding, I will attempt to remove. I do not suggest that what I call feeling is in every sense ultimate, and that we can take such a mode of experience as itself, in short, absolute Reality. On the contrary, such a doctrine would be to my mind a radical and fatal error. The ultimate reality of the universe is not something merely below or above what appears. It must on the contrary hold within itself every variety of fact and experience; and wherever you can even suggest a more, you have failed to reach what is really ultimate. And so, dismissing the above error which in another form I have noted already, I will go on to mention some points where I am met by real difficulty.
Are we to maintain (i) that, in the race and in the individual, the stage of mere feeling is prior in the sense of coming first in time? Can we again (ii) say that at any time feeling did, or does, come to us pure—and by ‘pure’ I mean verifiable as such internally throughout each detail comprised in it? Obviously we can see at once that often, if not usually, this is not the case. Our feeling is one and is a whole, but none the less may contain pieces of relational
But what I fail to understand is the position of those who seek apparently to deny or ignore the very existence of what I call ‘feeling’—an experience, that is, which, being more than merely simple, holds a many in one, and contains a diversity within a unity which itself is not relational. To take an ordinary sense-perception—say, for instance, that of a green leaf—as a unity which consists in one or more relations is to me to go counter to the plainest fact. And the same result to my mind is obvious when we look at some experience which is aesthetic or consider again any, no matter what, emotion. To attempt to deny that an emotion is one whole, or to treat its unity as consisting in no more than some relation or relations, I cannot but regard as really monstrous.
1 [The author intended to add a footnote with references.]
Or take that experience which at any and every moment, however little we attend to it, comes to us as the world in its character of ‘this’, ‘now’, and ‘mine’. Is it possible to deny that we have here a feeling which contains a diversity in unity, however vague? Is it possible to maintain that this unity is no more than merely one or more relations? Obviously and undeniably, on the one hand, we can and do and must transcend the above unity. But, on the other hand, (in order) to be actual and real, surely there is nothing which can fail in some sense to be contained in it and
Dismissing now for a time any doubts or difficulties with regard to feeling, as the immediate experience of many in one, I will go on to show the main difference when we pass to an experience which is relational. Both are alike in being ways that hold a diversity in unity, but in feeling the whole and the parts (if we may use that expression) qualify (we have seen) one another throughout. But such qualification, where you have relations, ceases in part to be possible. The diversity here, while still forming a whole, has hardened itself into a plurality of terms, each so far independent as to have become an individual with a being and character of its own. And hence to say anywhere here about the parts and the whole that any one thing really is the other leads to obvious contradiction. A relation (we find) holds between its terms, and no term (we find) can itself simply be or become a ‘between’. On the contrary, in order to be related, a term must keep still within itself enough character to make it, in short, itself and not anything diverse. And again, while the relations are not the terms and the terms are not the relations, neither the terms nor the relations can make that whole, in which nevertheless we find them. For the terms and the relations (we have seen) cease as such to exist, unless each maintains
Relational experience must hence in its very essence be called self-contradictory. Contradiction everywhere is the attempt to take what is plural and diverse as being one and the same, and to take it so (we must add) simply or
1 [‘or [Ref.] apart’ [MS.]. [Cf. Note A in the Appendix to A.R.]
2 [‘which seems [whatever else it may be] certainly either less’ [MS.]]
Whether immediate experience, as feeling, itself already involves contradiction in its essence is a question with which later I shall endeavour to deal.8 But I prefer first to set out more in detail the discrepancies inherent inseparably in all that is relational. Relational experience on the one hand is, I agree, unavoidable and is fully justified in its own place as a way of life and knowledge. But on the other hand I have to urge that it can claim no title higher in the end than that of a necessary makeshift.
In the detailed criticism, which now follows, the reader must expect to find little more than what already, I hope, has been in principle laid down.
(i) A relation both is and is not what may be called the entire relational situation, and hence in this respect contradicts itself.
(a) A relation, to be experienced and to be actual, must be more than a mere abstraction. It must be an individual
1 [‘as itself—[any more than if you tried to take it as without any terms.]’ [MS.]]
Now the experienced relational situation must—to speak loosely—be viewed as a whole which has parts. And on examination we find that the relation itself cannot be something less than the above whole and all the parts of the whole. For it is not merely the terms or merely a bare form of union between them. Merely with either of these, or again with both of them in the sense of each one, the actual relation is not there. What is still wanting to it to make it itself is what has been called ‘the fact of relatedness’. A relation to be actual cannot itself be less than all and everything that makes the entire relational fact.
(b) This on the other hand must be denied. For a relation is not its terms, but, on the contrary, it is between them. And though the terms may ‘enter into the relation’, yet, if they were nothing beyond it, they obviously would no longer be terms. A term (we have seen above) is as such not a quality. On the contrary, anything, to be a term, must itself be a particular or individual.
Certainly every content and aspect of the relational situation as an experienced fact may and must be taken as qualifying in some sense the situation as a whole; and, without so much as this, we cannot have a relation at all. But you cannot take the particular terms as thus qualifying the relation, even if you could take them, so far as they are particular or individual, as thus qualifying the whole. In short, to experience a relational situation as one whole and one fact, you must take it so that, as relational, the whole is not, and cannot be, qualified by its aspects or parts. The relation, as soon as and so far as the whole situation has become relational, has become no more than one of the parts. And to regard this part as itself the entire whole is an obvious absurdity.
Every actual experience is a unity of the diverse and may, speaking loosely, be taken as a whole with parts. But the unity, so far, is merely that which belongs to immediate experience or feeling, and taken so far is no more than
1 [‘experience [into that which supersedes what can be called merely relational], and’ [MS.]]
You cannot escape here from contradiction by an appeal to what may be called the diversity of respects. It is idle to urge that the terms are individuals only in respect of their relation and so far as they are related, while none the less, so far as they are taken otherwise, they still remain mere aspects of, and mere qualities in, the one whole situation. This attempt but transfers the dilemma into the bowels of each particular term. For, with such an internal diversity in each term, either the term has been broken and destroyed by the loss of its unity, or else, seeking to preserve that and so keep the diversity of respects together, you are none the less ruined. For you have now fallen back on what holds within the stage of mere feeling, and which has ceased to hold so far as the situation has become relational.
The whole result, which so far we have reached, may perhaps become even more visible when we pass on to consider another form of the same fundamental discrepancy.
(ii) Every relation does and again does not qualify its terms, and is and is not qualified by them. To state this otherwise, and in a way to which I will return—the terms and the relation must ‘enter’ one into the other, and yet again are ruined if they do so. You cannot (this is the point at present) alter one or both of the terms and leave the relation unaltered, or alter the relation without making a difference to the terms. But on the other hand unless, and except so far as, you are able to do this, you cannot think relationally. And to combine the above requirements without contradiction is impossible so long as relations are accepted as something which is ultimately real and true.
After what has gone before, we need not, I think, develop the above discrepancy in detail. A relation as actual is not a mere abstraction. It means a relational situation, which is an individual and unique fact. It means a unity qualifying and qualified by the diversity which it contains and which, like itself, can and must be called unique. But on the other hand, unless allowed to abstract from the above fundamental fact, no experience, which is in the strict sense relational, can exist. And to the question how the abstraction is compatible with the individual unity, which is no less essential, the relational experience has no rational answer. It claims tacitly a right everywhere, so far as a present purpose is served, to ignore some vital
We are not called on everywhere (I also am sure) to emphasize the difference between our abstractions and the concrete fact. It would be stupid, I agree, to insist everywhere that, with a relation and its terms, a change made on one side makes also a change on the other side. Any one, I suppose, can see, and can maintain
1 [‘maintain [be ready to assert]’ [MS.].]
Our one way of safety, whether in theory or in life, is (I presume) more or less to keep in mind the danger inseparable from our use of abstractions. Everywhere, I presume, when so called on, we should be ready to consider, and perhaps fo agree that we are leaving out something required to make the whole and real truth—and to do this even where we cannot show and specify what particular aspect in a given case is lacking. Everywhere, in short, we
I am not to be moved here by the charge of an insult offered to Common Sense. For not only in speculation, but in life, we must all be ready to affront that which somewhere, perhaps, in the name of Common Sense may claim our respect. Common Sense certainly should consist, and at its best certainly it does consist, in the emphasis everywhere, whether in theory or in conduct, on what may be called the main view—the view, that is, which mistrusts and keeps furthest from mere abstractions, and comes nearest on the whole to that which is entire and is sane. But Common Sense, taken (as too often it may be seen) at its worst, is in its essence a one-sidedness, which we must not be afraid to mark as stupid or even, perhaps, to denounce as immoral.
Concrete individuality, the ultimate inseparability of identity and difference, is in my view everywhere the character and the test of reality and truth, and no other view in the end but this to my mind is tenable. A sameness where there is no kind of difference has in the end no right to its name, and a diversity not based on identity is nowhere a fact. A distinction without some difference is neither actual nor possible, even if we hesitate to add that there is no difference without a distinction.
1 [I shall return to this point hereafter. [Note by the author.]]
A sameness or a diversity which is merely ‘numerical’ is no better than an abstraction which is permissible only so far as it is found to be useful. And the same conclusion holds of an otherness, which denies that in the end its other is ‘another of the same’, and assumes that others are possible (and even exist) which differ in no respect but their otherness. Such abstractions, I would repeat, we have a right and a duty to use, if and so far as they help us. But they are indefensible, and they may be dangerous, if and so far as we mistake them for genuine truth and reality.9
1 [See my Essays, pp. 240, 264 note. [Note by the author.]]
2 [For comment on the attempt to escape by an appeal to the plurality of respects, or of the diversity of ‘ways in which you can look at it’, I would refer the reader to what has been already said on pp. 637 and 638. [Note by the author.]]
(iii) I will now deal briefly with relations, taken as what may be called ‘external’ or ‘internal’ merely. And, though at the cost of some repetition, I will show how such a distinction, if we insist on it as ultimately valid, involves us again in contradiction. It exhibits once more the discrepancy inseparable from all relational thought.
Every relation (unless our previous inquiries have led to error) has a connexion with its terms which, not simply internal or external, must in principle be both at once. And, if so, the above distinction, if you take it as absolute, will be plainly untenable. On the other hand, if understood and applied as no more than a useful makeshift, the above distinction may stand. When it has ceased to claim more than what may be called ‘relative truth’, it may be accepted as true.
I will first of all consider relations, taken in an absolute
What should we mean (I will ask first) by a relation asserted as simply and barely external? We have here, I presume, to abstract so as to take terms and relations, all and each, as something which in and by itself is real independently. And we must, if so, assume that their coming or being together in fact, and as somehow actually in one, is due in no way to the particular characters of either the relations or the terms. From neither side will there be anything like a contribution to, or an entrance into, the other side—or again to, or into, that union of both which we experience as a relational fact. Undeniably the fact is somehow there, but in itself it remains irrational as admitting no question as to its ‘how’ or ‘why’. Or, if you insist on a reason, that would have to be sought neither in the terms nor the relation, but in a third element once more independently real and neither affecting, nor again affected by, either the relation or the terms. This, I suppose, is the way in which relations have to be understood, if you take them as external merely and also as ultimately and absolutely real.
What (I ask next) should, on the other hand, be meant by a relation viewed as absolutely and merely internal? You, I presume, still in this case would continue to take the terms each one as, so far, in and by itself real, and as independent absolutely of any whole that could be said to contain them. And you would go on to attribute to the particular characters of the terms, as so taken, some actual relation or relations which you find, as you say, to fall between them. Something like this, I suppose, is or ought to be meant by a relation which is asserted to be real ultimately and internal merely.
The idea, I would add, that I myself accept any such doctrine as the above seems to myself even ludicrous.
1 [‘seems baseless’ is written above ‘even ludicrous’ in the MS.]
Such, if the above statement is correct, should be the meaning to be given to mere external or internal relations. And it remains now to show briefly that, if taken as valid ultimately, such relations must be rejected. For in both cases we are met by a fatal inconsistency. We rest, in each case alike, on abstractions which refuse to come together so as to realize that diversity in unity which belongs in fact to the relational experience. And, in each case, if we are to regain this admitted fact, there must be a covert appeal to an experience which is in principle non-relational.
With mere external relations (to take these first) it should be clear that what we have to start with are no more than abstractions. The terms, each as real by itself, are not actual facts; and the relation taken by itself is but one more abstraction. And from terms taken as in themselves unrelated, and from a relation not taken as itself their relation, there is no logical way to the union present in, and required for, the relational fact. What has to be accounted for has hence so far been simply ignored. And while we keep to our terms and relation
Passing on now to consider relations taken as internal
An actual relation, we may remind ourselves, must possess at once both the characters of a ‘together’ and a ‘between’, and, failing either of these, is a relation no longer. Hence our terms cannot make a relation by passing themselves over into it bodily. For in that event their individuality, and with it the required ‘between’, would be lost. All that we could have left would be another form of experience, now no longer relational, qualifying which directly our terms would have ceased to be terms. On the other hand, if, to remain themselves, our terms retain their character as individuals, there is no legitimate way (we have seen) to their union in fact. We are without the ‘together’, which (like the ‘between’) is essential if any relation is to be actually there.
And it is idle here once again to fall back on a real distinction to be found in our terms, and to seek once more to solve our problem by a division of respects. It is useless to urge that the terms really in one respect can pass beyond themselves, and by that self-surrender make the unity required for the relation, while none the less in another respect the same terms save the relation’s character by still each preserving its own. Any
1 [But any [MS.]]
The diversity between, and the union together, of the ‘respects’ taken within each term raise the old dilemma, still insoluble and still unavoidable if we keep to relational experience. And no attempt to show there how the same thing can at once remain within, and still pass outside, itself can in the end avoid self-contradiction—while to fall back on a covert
Mere internal relations, then, like relations that are merely external, are untenable if they make a claim to ultimate and absolute truth. But taken otherwise, and viewed as helpful makeshifts and as useful aids in the pursuit of knowledge, external and internal relations are both admissible and can be relatively real and true. And the distinction made between what is intrinsic and extrinsic, or between what we call essential and (on the other side) accidental only,
1 [The MS. here is very much corrected. It is possible that we ought to read ‘or between what we call “really essential” and (on the other side) “accidental only and circumstantial’”.]
But the distinction holds just so far as we are able in practice to take the nature of our individual term as double. A term in the end (we have seen) can stand in no relation into which it itself does not enter. But on the other side, if the relation is not to be destroyed, the term’s entrance cannot (we have also seen) be entire and made bodily. It must be no more than partial and confined to what we call ‘a certain respect’. But the question as to how that part of the term which enters in is related to that part which remains outside leaves us (we may remind ourselves once more) with a final contradiction.
Still in practice, and for a limited purpose, you can divide your individual term, and take one part as what you call ‘essential’. And so far as this division is made, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic relations will hold. Wherever that part of your term which you select as
Your individual term is an abstraction always. It implies what we may call a selection from the concrete fact of the whole and entire experience. And the
Every term in every possible relation
1 [‘the [crucial] question’ [MS.]]
2 [‘essence? [What is the extent of that which has thus been made the essence of your individual term?] [omit?].’ [MS.]]
3 [‘involved in [and to be recovered from]’ [MS.]]
4 [Or ‘where the relation’. Neither alternative is struck out in the MS.]
5 [‘limit [made by your abstraction]’ [MS.]]
6 [‘relation [such at least is my view]’ [MS.]]
7 Footnote on Similarity. The above will hold even in the case of suggestion by similarity—where from one idea we are supposed to pass directly to another idea like it, which it excites by similarity.
In the first place, the exciting idea (taken by itself) is not a fact, but an abstraction; for it comes and must come to us only as in one with the whole comp(lex) psychical fact of the moment.
And, in the second place, it is only because of the identity between itself and what it excites—an identity present as what we call a ‘disposition’ left by previous experience—that we are able to pass to the excited idea. The connexion once more will be through an implied totality. Refer to my Logic. [Note by the author.]
And a hard division, made
(iv) I will next take the question whether a relation is essentially single or plural, and will further ask if in any case its plurality can be more than dual. Deferring this latter point, we may anticipate the answer that a relation must be both single and plural, though to reconcile these characters without a contradiction is in the end not possible. And when we recall our previous result—that in every relational experience there must be terms and also their unity, and that this experience (we had to conclude) cannot in the end be justified—our present question may seem perhaps unnecessary. But the discussion of it may in any case, I hope, direct attention to problems at once difficult and important.
How far, and in what sense, does every relation (we may ask) involve what may be called a ‘passage’? We have seen that a relational experience, taken in its strict sense, is beyond the stage of mere feeling and of mere ‘inherence’, and is in its essence discursive. It has to contain terms and a ‘between’; and must it not also (we have to ask) involve a ‘way’ and a ‘passage’ in the sense of a going actually from one term to another? In the case of some relations an ‘order’ and ‘direction’ we find admitted to be essential, though in others this feature seems at least to be non-essential and at first sight even quite absent. Still, considering further, we are led to ask with regard to every relation, no matter of what kind, whether for its existence, if not also for its essence, a passage always is required, and what a ‘passage’ in the end must be taken to mean. Does it, not to mention anything more, involve at least the
Such questions, we may all perhaps agree, are not easy to answer; and for myself they raise a further difficulty as to the precise form in which what is temporal and spatial appears, while experience is still at the stage of feeling and is below the level at which relations in the proper sense are developed. I cannot, however, even attempt to deal here with these problems, the importance and the difficulty of which I certainly recognize. And for our present purpose an answer to this question as to the final nature of that which in a relation we have called ‘passage’ is (I venture to think) not necessary.
We may content ourselves here by repeating that a relation in the strict sense is always an abstraction. The relation itself is not the entire fact of the relational situation, as actually experienced, but in every case omits and ignores more or less of what there is contained. And in the amount omitted relations can differ. Some can make a complete abstraction from what is implied in the aspect of passage with its order and direction, while in other relations more or less of this aspect is to be found, and is taken as essential to, and as meant by, the relation itself. But since the relation in no case offers us unabridged the entire fact of the relational experience, we here, I think, can leave unanswered this question as to the ultimate meaning and sense of ‘passage’. For some feature, which we take the actual experience to contain, can fail (we have seen) more or less to appear in, and make part of, the relation’s ‘meaning’ and ‘essence’.13
And in any case our former difficulty will remain unremoved. Every relation must contain a diversity in the form of individual terms; and, on the other hand, unless the relation is one, the relation is destroyed. And there is no way, we found, in which these characters can legitimately be combined. And we hence must here accept the
We may pass on to deal with a further question as to a relation’s plurality. We
1 [And we [MS.]]
The objection seems however, so far at least as I am concerned, to rest on a grave misunderstanding. It stops, in the first place, short of that, to which in principle it should be led. For not one kind of relation, but every and any relation, if taken as an ultimate reality, would (on any view such as mine) be fatal to Monism. And, apart from this, the objection seems to assume not only that all Monism is based on the fact of ‘simple inherence’, but that it also implies that in this experience we are to find ultimate and absolute reality.
Now, so far as my Monism is concerned, I take an opposite view. Simple inherence, if relational, is to my mind self-contradictory. And, taken as non-relational and in the form of mere feeling, any such experience must on my view fail to reach ultimate truth and reality. For nothing, I have urged, which is not all-inclusive and complete, can satisfy that want and demand, in which we find our criterion of Reality—a want and demand which to me obviously and plainly cannot be satisfied by mere feeling. Reality on my view is doubtless infra-relational, but doubtless again it is relational, and in neither of these characters is it ultimate. It is only in what is super-relational, and is at once neither and both of the above, that we can find,
And if I am told that in any case Monism, if it is to stand, must be able to explain, and to exhibit more or less in detail, the positive ‘how’ of the universe—that again is what I deny. On no conceivable view can, I should say, the world become explicable throughout; and some feature of the world left unexplained can serve to refute a general view only so far as it can be shown that, if that view were true, this particular feature should be explicable.
1 [App. Index, s.v. Inexplicable; and p. 556 [9th impression, p. 494]. [Note by the author.]]
And if it is urged, finally, that since relations of every kind are, in the end, no more irrational than is everything else there can be no reason for not accepting them all as ultimately real—I am at no loss for a reply. I have shown in the first place that relational experience has to fall back on a non-relational form of unity, and is therefore not ultimate. And even experience in the non-relational form of feeling I myself do not accept as ultimate reality. Nothing to myself is real ultimately but that super-relational unity of the One and Many, which is at once the consummation and the pre-condition of all and everything.14
To return from what I fear has been too long a digression, I will notice a further question as to the sense of a relation’s plurality. This, we have so far seen, must at least be dual. But it has been urged by Mr. Russell that, beyond mere duality, we must accept relations which are multiple. Such a conclusion I have however not found myself able to accept.
1 [See my Essays, the Index, s.v. Relations. [Note by the author.]]
Note on the Sources: The following account of A, B, and W is inserted here, since all the passages quoted in the present Appendix have been drawn from one or other of these sources. References to the original paging are given throughout for the convenience of future students who may desire to examine the manuscripts, should the latter eventually be accessible in the Bradley Library.
(i) ‘A’ contains about forty-six closely written pages. After an Index, the first entry begins on a page numbered ‘p. 6’, and seems in fact to be the continuation of three loose sheets of manuscript which were enclosed in the book.
1 These loose sheets are numbered on both sides (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5), but one of the sides numbered ‘2’ is a first draft of pp. 4 and 5.
Then follow entries (isolated or loosely connected with one another) which together cover all or most of the topics to be discussed in the article. Thus pp. 16-17, 22-4, and 34-45 are drafts (in different stages of completion) for the treatment of the distinctions between ‘external’ and ‘internal’, and ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ relations. On p. 24, and again on p. 45, there are drafts for a discussion (in connexion with ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ relations) of Hume’s distinction between ‘relations of mere ideas’ and ‘matter of fact’. Then, at the end of the entry on ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’, there is a Note (p. 43, and again on p. 47 with a reference to the earlier page) that the article is to conclude ‘with some general remarks about the relational view as valid, though not ultimately true, and how it is to be transcended’, or whether the ultimate result is ‘Scepticism’. On pp. 18-21 Bradley, starting with a quotation from Professor Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, develops some of the main contradictions involved in relational experience, justifies his own description of it as a ‘makeshift’, and sketches and defends his conception of the ‘one individual which is real and true’. There is a reference back to this passage on p. 55, where Bradley refutes the suggestion that asymmetrical relations disprove Monism. Pages 24 a, 25, and 26 show that every relation is both single and dual (involving a ‘passage’) and discuss whether (or in what sense) relations can be ‘multiple’; and another treatment of the same subject occurs on pp. 32-3. Lastly, there are two different drafts (the first on pp. 27 a, 29, and 31, and the second on pp. 27, 28, and 30) for a discussion of the question whether relations differ in degree.
(2) It is possible—on the whole, perhaps, even probable—that in B we have a rough draft of the undivided article, to be identified with the ‘outline’, ‘full abstract’, or ‘full sketch’ mentioned in Bradley’s letters of 1923 and ‘finished’ by March 23rd of that year.
But the identification of B with the ‘outline’ mentioned in Bradley’s letters is far from certain. For a comparison of B with C
1 There are four unmistakable references to B in these Sketches, viz. on pp. 51 b, 57, and 58 (bis). But the exact date of B is uncertain; and in any case the references may have been inserted long after the Sketches were written.
2 Some of these questions are dealt with in an entry on pp. 52 and 53; and the author has inserted cross-references between these pages and pp. 58 and 59 of Sketch No. 2.
3 See the extracts quoted in the Introductory Note (above, p. 628, n.
4 In spite of the references to B, which these Sketches contain (see above, n. 1).
5 There is nothing to suggest that the ‘Recapitulation’ is of later date than the rest of Sketch No. 2.
6 See below. Note 8, pp. 658 and 659.
7 C is the unfinished draft of the first part of the divided article: see Introductory Note, p. 629.
shows that nearly all the contents of the former are reproduced in a fuller and more final
1 Cf. above, p. 633 and p. 635; and below, Note 8, pp. 658 and 659.
(3) W, or ‘MS. Book W’, is the latest of a series of notebooks which Bradley used to record the results of his philosophical reading and reflections. The earliest entry in W presupposes the publication of Essays on Truth and Reality, i.e. is later than 1914; and the book was still in use. The paging is on both sides and is continued to p. 78; and about seventy of these pages are filled with entries, closely written and remarkably free from erasures or corrections. There are notes amongst the entries, and drafts for the discussion and solution of problems drawn from almost every field of philosophical inquiry—psychology, aesthetics, ethics, logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion; and, in addition, critical studies, e.g. of Russell’s Analysis of Mind, Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, Sir Henry Jones’s A Faith that Enquires, and Professor Parker’s The Self and Nature.
There are references in A and B to pp. 22, 23, 43, 45, and 71-73 of W; and pages 43 and 45 are reproduced in Notes 11 and 12 below (pp. 665-7).
Note 1. The question of relations, their ultimate nature and place in the world of reality and of knowledge, is obviously so large and so central that to deal with it satisfactorily would involve a treatise. This I naturally am not attempting in the present article. My object here is to be allowed not so much to justify as to explain. I find myself with a view as to relations for which I claim no originality, and which seems to me the only tenable view…. Even if faulty, that view, I venture to think, is instructive. And I hope that an explanation, however defective and even dogmatic, may be excusable. [B, p. 1.]
Note 2. This perfect experience, which is absolute truth (and) reality, cannot (as I have so often urged) be fully realized intellectually either by the understanding or by any form of intuition. It is the complete union not of one side but of every side of our being and experience. It is feeling, will, sense, and understanding in one. And, though from any one side it can be approached and enjoyed, it cannot be fully there except from all sides at once in a way which, in
Note 3. I will first explain briefly what I mean by immediate experience or feeling. I have dealt with this in Appearance, Essays, and Logic, to the Indexes of which I would refer the reader. [B, p. 2.]
Note 4. I myself venture to think that everywhere, in the individual as in the race, this stage (viz. feeling) comes first in development. And I think that, as it comes first, it is free throughout from relations and so may be taken as pure. An awareness, say, of temporal and spatial diversity, as it comes first, does not to my mind wear a relational form.
This seems evident, if we agree that in relations in the proper sense a passage to and fro between the terms is implied. And to maintain that this is to be found in the first awareness of temporal and spatial diversity seems an untenable view. Hence, though to be clear as to the undeveloped form of space and time is (I admit) difficult, I consider this to be the more acceptable alternative.
If however we hesitate to affirm this, we must admit that, so far, where these (spatial and temporal diversities) are present, the whole experience cannot throughout be called pure. There will, that is, be parts of it where, within each, the character of the whole awareness will not be carried out fully. Of course I do not mean that the character of the whole is thereby vitiated throughout, for that would destroy it. What I mean is that within the fluid whole there would be clots, inside which the character of the whole would fail to be there—and something further would be there, though (apart from their ‘insides’) these, as all else, would be contained in and qualify the whole, and it them. [B, pp. 2-3.]
And if a difficulty is raised as to temporal and spatial experience, and how this can be there in a non-relational felt form, I admit the difficulty—as to this form. But that at worst only shows that the felt is never pure throughout. The oneness of the felt whole remains; only in it are diversities which internally, when you consider
[For the ‘passage’ implied in every relation, see above, pp. 647-8.]
Note 5. If you ask for reality, you must have that (i.e. feeling) at least, however much else you also have. The ‘this’, ‘now’, and ‘mine’ are irremovably there, or the ‘real’ is not there. This to my mind is so plain, that I don’t know how to argue for it. Of course it is transcended, but still remains contained in whatever transcends it—so that the universe, if it could cease to be ‘mine’, however much else it is, would become unreal except as an abstraction.
From this we can arrive at once at a conclusive result. If the contents of feeling have the form that I have described, and if a relational fact has also the form I have shown, then a mere relation cannot be immediately experienced. Relations of course, like everything else, that is, are immediately experienced, but never as relations in the proper sense, simply and merely as such. Relations are nothing if not conjunctive; but what is merely conjunctive so far does not belong to immediate experience, and cannot in that character enter into feeling. And yet, since it is nothing if not felt, a relation enters into immediate experience as a self-contradictory abstraction.
Hence to talk about immediate experience of mere relations of various kinds as fact is to me absurd. The felt unity is there, and hence the mere experience of relations is not there as fact, but as an abstraction made by the understanding.
This view may be wrong; but to ignore it, and to talk about relations as given directly in our immediate experience, without (apparently) an idea that they [i.e. those who use such language] can be held to mistake abstractions for given reality, seems to me really remarkable.
1 On the position taken here by Professor James I have remarked in my Essays, pp. 149 ff. To these pages I would venture to invite an attention which I think they have never received. [Note by the author.]
Note 6. I have taken, and must take, as a fact the immediate non-relational experience of diversity and oneness in unbroken union. There are those, I know, who at least seem to deny this and to
I do not mean that the holder of a thesis is bound to explain everything which seems to look like an experience to the contrary. This is not my opinion. It is the apparent refusal to recognize any such experience, even as an experienced fact, which I cannot think justifiable.
1 1-1 ‘which I think needs to be justified.’ [Correction added in pencil by the author.]
I had hoped at least to learn from Mr. Russell’s Analysis of Mind what view he takes as to an actual or possible experience of a non-relational union of oneness and diversity. But this hope ended for myself in complete disappointment. Mr. Russell does not even raise the question whether everything distinguishable has, in and by itself, reality. He seems to start, on the other hand, with the assumption that every mental fact can be analysed in the sense of being shown to be a relational complex—where, that is, it fails to be an atomic unit whether as a sensation or a relation. And of this enormous assumption he appears to be so sure that, when it fails to work in his hands, he (in this respect unlike J. S. Mill) believes that with another man it might work and that the fault so far is his own.
With regard to ‘feeling’ used to designate some whole of which we are directly aware—the contents of which whole are not unified by a relational framework, but qualify one another and their whole immediately—Mr. Russell feels himself justified apparently in treating any such view as negligible, even to the extent of ignoring its existence as an actual error. But in his own use of ‘feeling’ Mr. Russell not only seems to my mind to be inconsistent but even,
The question as to what makes the togetherness of this or that relation with these or those sensations (where they happen to be together in fact) is naturally ignored. But what surprised me was to find that Mr. Russell apparently fails to perceive that what has been called ‘the problem of Inherence’—the question, that is, of a non-relational qualification—arises even with regard to the atoms themselves. Whether diversity and similarity, or either of them, are ‘relations’, I am unable to say; but, so far as they are such, they can hardly qualify the units except relationally and from the outside. But passing this by, if we aim at consistency we seem forced to take the ultimate units, whether ‘terms’ or ‘relations’, as simple—as mere ‘qualities’, free from the least internal diversity. But how a relation (or all relations) can be so taken as merely simple, I do not understand. And with regard to ‘sensations’, if these possess themselves either feeling-tone or strength (which apparently is the case), we have to ask if this diversity can qualify the simply one. If you take the qualification as internal and as non-relational, the whole ultimate assumption as to analysis seems forthwith wrecked; while, if you take the diversity as relational, and as so stuck on to the simple unit from the outside, you are in collision with what seems to be plain experience—to say nothing of the hopeless difficulty which arises with regard to the relatedness in fact of this or that relation with these or those units, of whatever kind they may be.
For myself, I consider that the use of fictions, however indefensible ultimately, is justified in psychology—so far as, and provided that, they work in explaining the facts. But I regret to add that I cannot find that, even if Mr. Russell were content to justify his analyses on this ground, there has been any success gained by the use of his principles such as seems to justify their ultimate unsoundness. [A, pp. 6-8.]
Note 7. Take a relational situation and examine it.
1 [Ref. to Appearance. [Note by author.]
2 ‘Relatedness’ here. Ref. for ‘And’ to Logic and Appearance. [Note by author.]
Note 8. Note by the editor: According to the original plan of the article, it is clear from both A and B, this question would have been treated here. Thus (i) there is in A the draft for a ‘Recapitulation’ (cf. above, Introductory Note, p. 652) which runs as follows:
‘We have seen what is meant by immediate experience or feeling, taken as union of one and many. We have described its nature and shown that it exists unquestionably.
‘We have seen that (it) is not an ultimate answer to (the) question as to what is real in the end. It does not (as it is) contradict itself; but it, as such, cannot keep its place. In finite beings in time there tends to be a clash; and when we try to mend this theoretically, then feeling does and must contradict itself, because it can’t supply its “how”—even apart from practical collision.
‘Hence relational experience. Its nature has been described, which does and must contradict itself since it depends on a unity, which is not relational, and hence itself by itself fails to be anything as a whole. It is a necessary and useful way of advance, but remains a makeshift.
‘Feeling is more ultimate; but whether prior in time we agreed to leave doubtful, as also whether it ever was or is pure. Usually it is not pure, but contains relational matter—as "clots" merely.
‘Hence neither is ultimately real. What is that, must contain, and also go beyond, both. This we may and do aim at, but cannot throughout verify in detail as fully reached and the sole reality of everything.’
And (ii) approximately the same order of treatment is followed in B, where the question ‘whether feeling involves contradiction in its essence’
But the author’s decision (cf. letter of 17 Feb. 1924 quoted above, p. 629, Note 1) to divide his material, so as to make of it an article in two parts, led to a modification of the original plan. It became necessary to put off ‘the discussion of some serious difficulties to the latter part’—and amongst them, no doubt, this ‘difficulty’ about feeling and its essential freedom from contradiction. Unfortunately, the second part of the article was never written; but the following extracts from A and B may be taken as rough indications of the lines along which his treatment of this ‘difficulty’ (and of other connected difficulties in regard to feeling) would probably have been developed.
What is to ‘understand’? It is to have the real as something before us as an object, so that our mind can pass, as to its diversity, from one of the many differences to another, and from each and all to the One, and from the One to each and all—and do this without thereby altering the real so as to make it to be another one and cease to be the same, in the sense of becoming a fresh one generally, or (more specially) by causing it (as we take it) to show a jar and a break in its continuity….
But in what is felt, or experienced immediately, there is no question so far of ‘understanding’ in this sense. If we have one simple feeling (I do not ask if we ever do or can) no diversity would be there or could even be suggested. And, given that diversity, we may have, in feeling, so far no object and in any case no passage from this feature or aspect to that. We have simple qualification of each by the other, and all by the whole which they qualify, and there is hence no question of any intellectual contradiction nor any inquiry as to ‘how’. And if we reflect on this, still, so far as we keep to it, we meet with no difficulty. If and so far as we take it as it comes and is, the felt is ultimate and real. And it is ‘unintelligible’, so far, only in the sense that to try to understand it is to transform it into something beyond itself and something not itself.
I will not ask here whether, and how far, and in what sense the apprehension of a change in reality, the mere presence of an object or a self, and the experience of passivity and activity (these cannot be divided) already involve a transcendence of the level of mere feeling. What we are assured of is that practical collision, and struggle in what is felt, is what forces reflection, and makes it impossible merely to take as it comes the union of sameness and difference, the one and the many. And when change is felt as alteration, the passage beyond mere feeling has been made. That something should be
Feeling satisfies us as long as it keeps its form and does not clash. We should never ask for understanding if it didn’t clash. But it does clash, and therefore to seek a remedy by going beyond it is necessary. How and why does it clash? It clashes practically in life, and it must do (so) because we are finite beings in a world of change.
But is it even satisfactory as to its form? No: when we reflect on it, we see that it is not so, because its matter and form are not really connected, but only so in form. Hence it does not contradict itself while it remains mere feeling, but it does so when we have taken the way of ideas and ask for truth—then we see that, even internally, there was a necessity for a clash.
Contradiction proper may be said to belong only to the world of ideas and truth. It is the failure to take Reality as an ideal union of the One and Many without an internal collision…. Our remedy by ideas succeeds only so far as we do this, and we never succeed in doing this except partially—though partial success is a necessary way of advance. We seek also to remedy our failure by construction of beauty, but this is not truth. And we seek again to do this in and by intuition—but that again fails, except partially.
But in feeling there is no contradiction, because there is no attempt at analysis—with its separation of the One and Many, and the attempt to rejoin themotherwise (i.e. by ideas and truth), and the opening of the question of ‘how’ and ‘why’ and the problem of mediation. On the other hand in relations in the proper sense this analysis and abstraction are necessarily involved, and the question of contradiction is raised and must be faced. [A, pp. 51a and 51b]
Experience (to repeat this) as immediate union of one and many (as above described) so far as it goes is ultimate, both as being there and as being irremovable And, so far as it goes, it is satisfactory. Unless, that is,… the diverse contents are or become such that they refuse to comply with the form, no criticism is possible. There is no self-contradiction, because there is no question of any ‘how’—(how) this can be that and the whole everything. The ‘is’ is final and, so far as it goes, is enough.
But in the confusing
1 [‘Confusing’ seems to be the word intended.]
Well, but why not agree (i) that the mediated or relational view depends in the end for its unity on the unity of an immediate felt whole, and so far rests upon that; and yet (ii) like the immediate whole may and must be taken as an ultimate fact, with regard to which to ask if it contradicts itself is unnecessary and improper? Why not swallow also and equally this second undigested vital necessary?…
Now what I have said is that the felt as it comes, and so far as we keep to it, is real undeniably. It is not self-contradictory, nor is it unintelligible in the sense of refusing to be understood or as itself at once implying and frustrating a claim of the intelligence. It has (where not simple—if it ever is so) the features or aspects (or call them what you will) of diversity and unity in one. And you may attend to these, so as to recognize them as there, without altering them and without any analysis in the sense of applying the category of Whole and Parts. You can say that the felt combines unity and diversity, and does not do so analytically—but somehow otherwise, though positively.
At this stage (I have agreed) it is impossible to remain. This union of one and many (I have shown) is broken and torn in practical conflict and then theoretically. And so far as this happens, it becomes self-contradictory and (as above) unintelligible…and (if you will) no better than the relational view which follows. The difference is that this second view cannot be called a felt fact. The felt so far as relational (time and space) is not felt in a relational form, while the second view is obviously an attempt to satisfy a claim which it admits. It is provoked by the break-down of feeling in its unreflecting discord. It is an attempt, by analysis and the application in some sense of Whole and Parts, to take the immediate union in the felt otherwise, so as to satisfy our intellectual want—which it therefore recognizes and admits as a criterion of reality. This the first view does not do, so long as it is true to itself.
I agree that, so far as you describe the felt so as to analyse it and make a claim to have understood it (and to describe it, without so doing more or less, is not possible—though it is possible provisionally and subject to understood negations), the felt has ceased to be a felt fact. It has, so far also, itself become a self-contradictory
Feeling… combines the two aspects of ‘one’ and ‘many’ so as not to contradict itself nor to be rejected as unintelligible; but this holds only so long and so far as it remains pure and non-relational and non-reflective. I do not hold that, when and so far as we reflect on feeling, it can stand that
As soon as you analyse the felt, you so far destroy it as such. And in any attempt to describe it in words we tend perforce to adopt the attitude of analysis, and to surrender ourselves to the necessary form of the discursive understanding and apply to some extent the category of Whole and Parts. But this tendency can be resisted. We can attend to the diversity of its aspects (in union), and apprehend and recognize this as a positive fact,
1 [After ‘that’ there is an illegible word of four letters (? ‘long’) in the MS.]
2 [Cf. ‘There is in the strict sense no predication here’ (i.e. in immediate experience) ‘for that implies a relation—just as, taken in the full sense, even distinction does so’ (B, p. 2).]
3 [The author may have intended the sentence to run: ‘We can attend to, and apprehend and recognize, the diversity of its aspects (in union) as a positive fact.’]
We can, that is, while describing, at the same time warn ourselves that our description must be taken throughout
Thus the mode of union in immediate experience of sameness and diversity, of the one and the many, of the ideal and the real, can be taken as fundamental. It is not ultimate in the sense that we can remain there and be satisfied. But it is not as such false, because as such it makes no claim to be true; and as it ignores any question as to ‘how’ and ‘why’, it so far cannot fairly, while it remains itself, be rejected as unintelligible. You may say that it is, so far, not so much above or below, as it is outside of, falsity and truth.
It is otherwise with experience that is relational. That (we have seen) is beyond the stage where this can simply come to us as also that, and both diversities as One while their One is what it is as being each. It has become in essence reflective in the sense that, aiming to remedy a failure, it in effect admits the demand to reach truth; and because, offering an answer, it has raised the question of mediation and of ‘how’ and ‘why’, and has offered itself not merely as there, but as intelligible. It is inconsistent because (as we have seen), while it claims to have superseded and remedied the felt, it still rests upon that—or is dissipated, in the absence of any real Oneness
1 [Below ‘Oneness’ the MS. has ‘individuality’, which may have been intended as a correction.]
Note 9. Nothing in the end is real but the individual; and the individual is unique and (at least in my opinion) there is in the end but one individual which is real and true. And it is individuality that everywhere we seek, and with this alone can be satisfied more or less perfectly in so far as its realization is more or less complete. And individuality means the union of sameness and diversity, the presence in all of the One and of the One in everything, with the qualification of each by the other throughout and of the whole by all and everything—so that there is no actual or possible other than
…I would repeat first that every case of terms in relation is an individual and unique ‘situation’—a whole, where any alteration on either side must affect the whole throughout and not leave that anywhere unaltered. There is no valid process, by which the opposite of this principle can be justified in the end. You can abstract legitimately, wherever such an abstraction is required as being serviceable; and any such abstraction is justified relatively and for its purpose, but not as such ultimately and absolutely. Of course it seems monstrous to say that the same relation cannot hold where the terms have become different, or that the same terms cannot as such acquire some altered relation. And it would be monstrous to insist on such a principle in practice, and to refuse everywhere to agree to what rests on a necessary abstraction.
And of course, again, to show in detail everywhere how the above principle holds of terms and relations alike, is, I agree, quite impossible. But once again I have to insist that an inability of this kind is not a ground of disproof, unless you assume that differences nowhere may be asserted unless the exact and particular point of diversity can be specified—an arbitrary assumption, the results of which have not, I imagine, been faced.
1 See Appearance. [Note by the author.]
To my mind there are in the end no such things as sheer sameness or mere diversity. And to my mind, again, every actual relation is a situation, which is an individual whole—which any kind of analysis" and abstraction must, in the end, more or less falsify as such. On the other side, if we are to understand, the way of abstraction and analysis is necessary, and it is justified or not in any particular case according to what we gain or lose by it theoretically. And hence I
Note 10. Relations would be merely internal if, the terms being taken as real independently, each in itself, the relations between them (as a class, or in this or that particular case) in fact arose or were due merely to the character of the terms as so taken.
Such a view has truth in it, so far as it denies mere externality and, again, recalls the fact that every relation rests on a unity taken as an immediate whole, and again insists that any change in the internal character of the terms must (in some sense) alter also the relation. But, in going further and in denying wholly the external character of relations, it obviously to me either ignores or denies wholly the fact of relational experience—or else, while keeping it ostensibly, asserts of it what involves a destructive self-contradiction.
How far such a view has ever in fact been advocated, we need not consider. The attribution of it to Hegel rests, I should say, on a misinterpretation. We meet it nowadays as the consequence taken to follow from a foregone alternative between external and internal relations, the idea of neither being in the end true being at the same time ignored.
[A, p. 39: the first sentence has been inserted, in accordance with a note by the author, from an earlier draft in the same notebook.]
Note 11. ‘Relations are external only in abstract mathematics, in which the terms can be ranged side by side, and united by a sign which symbolizes their relation, without in any way modifying them. The number 8, for instance, will always remain the same number in all the relations in which it can be placed to other numbers: 8 × 4, 8 + 3, 8 − 5, 8 ÷ 2, etc.’ (Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction against Science, pp. 336-7.)
This, if I remember rightly, is a going back to Hume’s relations of ideas and matter of fact.
1 [Cf. Note 12.]
The real difference is that in some cases you cannot show that
In ideal construction you say that 6 + 2 and 9 − 1 are the same, and that 8 and 9 are different. The identity and difference are relations. Are they merely external? Then why one and not the other? Is it mere chance? And, if so, how and why predicate the result of the terms? Are they merely internal? Then how and why can you have the terms without them; and how and why one special arrangement rather than another, and apart from all the rest that are possible? You must have at least an ideal ‘And’ or ‘Together’, and that is external.
You cannot show the difference to the terms, but you prove it thus:—
Is there a difference or not? If none, the result is nothing. If any, where does it fall? If outside the whole, then (once more) nothing. If inside, then where? You cannot say. But, if inside and not elsewhere, then surely in the terms. And, if not, by what right do you predicate it of the terms? The conclusion therefore is that there is always a difference, and one to the terms; but that in some cases you can for certain purposes abstract from it more or less wholly, and can in other
To appreciate the doctrine of ‘external’ relations, take the case where you have identity or equality, or more and less or inequality or diversity in general. Say you have ‘5 + 1 = 6’, or ‘6 does not equal 7’, etc., etc. Here the relations are to make no difference to that of which they are predicated.
If so, is it a matter of pure chance which you have? Why one here, and not the other? Why not both at once? How can contraries exclude or be incompatible, if they make no difference—if one being there makes no difference to anything? And is it not monstrous to predicate, if this (whatever it is)
1 [some [MS.]]
2 [if this whatever it is (or all is) makes [MS.]]
The answer is: ‘But where is the difference? After all, 6 remains 6 throughout all its diverse contexts—one and unaltered.’
I reply: ‘Yes, so far as you abstract and keep to your abstraction; but this is (ex hyp.) just what you don’t do when you predicate. And so far as you don’t, it’s false that the "6" is one and the same simply.’ To reply, ‘If so, analyse and show exactly how it is affected (i.e. abstract the various affections, and show them as abstracted)’, won’t
And if you object ‘Yes, but you admit yourself that there is an identical "6" in itself, of which you predicate alteration’, I reply that I don’t do this. There is no number at all apart from the context of other numbers—the whole world of number. And, more generally, no abstract element is anywhere as such real apart from some context (’And’, ‘Together’, etc.).
And if you urge ‘But then the "6" actually is whatever you can anywhere predicate of it’—this is not so. It is so, if you take the whole world of its possible predicates as actual. This is another further question I don’t raise here. But what you predicated as actual was of the ‘6’ here, under such and such conditions, as actual (whether as the abstract ‘6’, or the ‘6’ as specially here in ‘5 + 1 = 6’). Actual and possible have got to be distinguished.
Of course all the above becomes far worse, if a term can be related to itself. [W, p. 45.]
Note 12. No relation is merely intrinsic or external, and every relation is both. A relation may be called one or the other, according as its ‘why’ is supposed to be present and known or not; according as we have the individual whole, in and by which the relation holds, or fail to have it; and according as (to put the same thing otherwise) we can suppose the relation possibly absent. The appeal may be to a given perceived whole, or to an understood one. In neither case can it be sufficient to make the relation merely ‘intrinsic’. [W, p. 43.J
Every relation… is both external and internal, and cannot be merely either. But still, taken relatively, this distinction is tenable as extrinsic and intrinsic, or as accidental and essential. (See Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, vol. i, pp. 249 ff.)
It is tenable just so far as we are able to presuppose an ‘individual’ with a certain character, and (depends upon) whether in this character the relation is taken as included or is only super-imposed and contingent. It is plain that, in one case, for an individual to enter into certain relations belongs to his character and that, in
1 For this distinction I refer to Alexander, though. I do not agree with him wholly. [Note by the author.]
2 with [MS.]
[A, pp. 23-4. Some sentences have been inserted from p. 43 in accordance with references given by the author.]
This distinction (of Extrinsic and Intrinsic, Accidental and Essential, etc.) underlies Hume’s distinction of relations of mere ideas and of matter of fact. In the first, you go from the mere ideas themselves to the relation, which therefore doesn’t depend upon circumstances. In the second, you have a set of circumstances, in which you find a relation—which, therefore, you may or may not find in another and different set. Now it is not true that from two mere ideas you can logically develop a relation between them; for that conclusion requires a further premise, in the form of a whole to which they belong. And it is not even true that, without a further premise, you can even analyse, and show a relation within, one single idea.
1 See my Logic. [Note by the author.]
What is true is that, in one (first) case, you have all you want for a valid conclusion in the abstract and that, in the other (second) case, you have not—since ‘matter of fact’ implies always the presence of that which defies complete analysis, and leaves your further process at the mercy of some unknown and irrelevant factor. [A, p. 24.]
Recall here Hume’s view. This is false on both sides. It is true that with mere ideas you may have all the knowledge you want, and with matters of fact not so. But it is false that you ever can go anywhere from one idea or more as simply themselves. Everywhere (a) a whole is involved, and everywhere (b) you abstract and your conclusion is abstract. It never can reach ultimate truth and reality. It never is true of that, since that is individual. And what in that falls outside your conclusion will therefore, so far as unknown, remain mere ‘circumstance’, ‘matter of fact’, and (if you will) mere conjunction. And so far as you abstract, you can go from ‘matters of fact’ to others—and you can’t go otherwise. What is once true is always true, and otherwise is not true. But with matters of fact it’s harder to abstract from mere circumstances, as you can’t construct.
In both cases alike you are therefore left in the end with mere
Note 13. Some relations (we naturally say) are the same each and either way. Others not so. This raises (the) question whether for a relation proper a ‘way’ is needed or not. If you say ‘Yes, a relation is essentially discursive’, then what is the ‘way’?
(i) It seems certainly, so far, temporal. A relation seems to imply a passage, and a passage ‘between’. Then, is there a backwards and forwards, and (are there) two directions, in every relation? Clearly so. Yet not in the same sense, since we have two classes of relation called ‘symmetrical’ and ‘asymmetrical’. We may say perhaps that, while in all relations a passage is (involved),
1 [Facing this sentence, on the opposite page (p. 46) of the Notebook, the author added: ‘An intellectual construction or intuition can’t stand simply in its own right as there, and as being and containing all that’s wanted for ultimate truth and reality.’]
2 concerned [MS.]
(ii) But is every relation spatial? The question of how in the end we come to perceive the diversities in spatial perception comes in here, and is extremely difficult. Still, where order and direction essentially come in, is the difference here always spatial as well as temporal?
Perhaps for reflection some spatial schema is used in every case; but I should say (it) not only is not, but never was, involved everywhere.
(iii) Then, again, is the difference of what comes in and what goes out in the self with its felt expansion and contraction to be considered as a possible ground of diversity—and also the teleological character of this (Essays, pp. 308-9)? I am inclined on the whole to say that not every relation involves a spatial character, except when in a highly reflective form. But temporal—otherwise. [A, pp. 25 and 24 a.]
In the class where passage is denied it is still present; and, though ignored, we abstract from it and it is still there. It belongs (we should say) to the situation, only when you take that as psychological; and it does not make a part of ‘the relation itself’. But, when we ignore or abstract from what here is irrelevant, we have ‘the relation itself’. And that contains no passage, and is single—in its character (that is) of an abstraction.
In the other class such an abstraction is not admitted or admissible. From the passage and order, taken as merely psychological, we still of course continue to abstract; but we none the less assert their
1 [its [MS.]
There remains the interesting question as to how far the passage essentially involved in all relations is merely temporal, or whether it also everywhere must be spatial. This question would involve a discussion of the ultimate nature of the order and direction in time and space, and of the character of time and space as each first appears in experience. And even if I felt myself competent to deal with these problems, the space here would be lacking. But in any case I venture to think that our result as to the fundamental inconsistency of all relations would continue to stand. [B, p. 20.]
Note 14. I will take here (as instructive) an argument against Monism.
Asymmetrical relations are said to disprove Monism, because Monism rests on simple inherence as the only way in which there is ultimate reality.
The argument, if right, is improperly limited—because any relations, if so, disprove Monism.
But Monism does not rest on simple inherence as the one form of reality. It even (in my case) says that that form is unsatisfactory (see Appearance).
Monism (with me) starts with the above form, but shows that it does not satisfy a want, which is to be satisfied only when the above imperfect solution is developed so as to be made perfect.
Of course also it is possible to base Monism on a given ultimate
Again, if it is meant (that) Monism must be prepared to explain everything—that I reject altogether. There is no view, I think, which conceivably could explain everything in detail—and no reason why it should do so, in order to be true.
Again, if it is said that at any rate asymmetrical relations are as ultimate as anything else, I dissent. They imply inherence, which does not imply them. Feeling contains everything, which clearly asymmetrical relations do not. Even if you urge that in all feeling there is change and so asymmetrical relation (at least implicit), in the first place I deny the fact and, next, in any case the feeling of change is subordinate to the whole felt aspect of oneness.
Of course, if there is no unity which is non-relational or super-relational, then (I agree) there is no final unity of any kind and no Monism. But what a monstrously false assumption! [A, p. 55.]
Of course I agree that to take the one reality as merely felt, or merely at the stage where qualities inhere non-relationally in their subject, is a fatal error. Obviously with this not merely one kind of relation, but every kind is left outside the real, and Monism therefore is impossible. But the assumption that every Monism in this way must commit suicide is to my mind untenable. Why, beyond the stage of relational development, there should not be a higher and all-inclusive reality, in which all contradictions are made good, I have always failed to understand. The demand to find this completed reality as a fact, and produce it and show it as fact to any kind of perception, to my mind is irrational. The criterion to my mind consists in the satisfaction of a demand. This is the criterion we all use, and all must use—unless we prefer to rest on arbitrary private liking. And if our main demand is satisfied by such an ultimate reality, and is not satisfied otherwise, that to my mind is enough. To object that it and its ‘how’ in detail are inexplicable is no refutation, unless you choose to assume that whatever is inexplicable is so far unreal—an assumption probably in your case inconsistent, and in any case arbitrary. If you could show that such a reality fails in its general character to meet and satisfy our ultimate demand, or again collides with that in principle, the case would be altered. But I have asked in vain for any evidence that such is the fact. [A, p. 21.]
1 [The Self and Nature, by De Witt H. Parker, chapter ix, pp. 212-73.]
And I may be permitted, perhaps, here in this connexion to notice the objection, adopted in the main from Mr. Russell and urged by him [i.e. by Professor Parker, cf. pp. 233-7.]
as fatal to every kind of Monism. He assumes that every Monism must take the universe as throughout a simple unity of qualities or adjectives in and of a whole which completely determines them, and is bound (I understand also) in this way to account for and explain all its contents—which it obviously cannot do in the case of ‘asymmetrical relations’.
Now nothing, I agree, can be more obvious (than) that not only some, but any form of relational experience is, on such a view of Monism, impossible, while (as a fact) it is undeniable. But for myself (if I may speak as a Monist) this from the first has been obvious, and I do not take the ultimate reality as above, and I had hoped that so much was clear; and further, as to claiming or admitting that Monism has to ‘explain’ everything, nothing could be further from what I hold. Such a contention to myself is ridiculous.
Hence, when it is objected against me as a Monist that all that I as such have a right to is the terms and the whole, while the order or direction is in neither—my answer is that no whole is really a simple whole, and in every whole are always conditions unexpressed, and that in these conditions falls the difference required here, and here is the reason why ARB and BRA are incompatible (that is, when and where they are so). In short, far from admitting that Monism requires that all truths can be interpreted as the predication of qualities of the whole, Monism with me contends that all predication, no matter what, is in the end untrue and in the end unreal, because and so far as it involves always and ignores unexpressed conditions. [B, pp. 10-11.]
Although the question of ‘multiple relations’ is referred to as ‘this final point’ (above, p. 649), there is some ground for thinking that, had C been completed, it would have included the discussion of one more subject. For in B (p. 4) the author draws up the following Plan or List of Headings for his treatment of relational experience:
‘(a) State relational view abstractly.
(b) Show contradiction in detail.
(c) Show how it stands on immediate experience, while attempting to supersede it.
(d) Show how it can’t be taken (as immediate experience is taken) as not unintelligible and not self-contradictory.
(e) It is not another ultimate form of unity (Parker).
Then, more detailed questions about it—
(i) Every relation is and is not the whole situation (Alexander).
(ii) Every relation does and does not qualify its terms, and so also reciprocally.
(iii) A relation may therefore be multiple indefinitely.
(iv) Every relation is (a) both external and internal, and again (b) may be intrinsic or extrinsic.
(v) Every relation is, and is not, capable of degree.’
Now this Plan is carried out in B (pp. 5-20), though not without considerable modification. Thus the treatment of the more general topics, (a)-(e), is run together. And, as regards the ‘more detailed questions’. No. iv (the treatment of which is in B far less adequate than in C) is merged with No. ii (and Bradley has accordingly corrected the ‘iv’ into ‘ii’ in the Plan); the treatment of No. iii is expanded so as to include a discussion of the singleness and duality of every relation; and No. v is omitted altogether. But, as the reader will have observed, the treatment of the ‘more detailed questions’ in C follows the Plan very closely—the only modification being that No. iv precedes No. iii. And since there is no evidence to show that the omission of No. v in B was intentional, we may reasonably conjecture that the First Part of the Article would have included a discussion of the question whether relations differ in degree. Accordingly the later and better of the two drafts, which A contains on this subject (cf. above, p. 651), is reproduced below.
1 [Cf. Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays (1910), pp. 177 ff.]
2 [Cf. Essays on Truth and Reality, pp. 303 ff.]
Of course, if every complex must have some kind of unity, and if there is no unity beyond what is relational, and if a mere plurality of several relations is not a unity—it follows that the required unity of the diversity is one relation, which therefore is called ‘multiple’ because of the diversity which it unites.
The relation obviously is taken as the whole relational situation, in which also it is contained as a part, or again as a member of parts. And such a result, I submit, involves a self-contradiction….Of course I agree that, in a relational situation, the same relation may recur (more or less) throughout, and may be called ‘pervasive’ and ‘distinctive’ and, if you please, ‘dominant’. And, further, to call this a ‘multiple relation’, and take it as what gives unity to the whole situation, may perhaps (I am prepared to believe) be useful in practice—and, if so, I agree should be used. But that we have here an idea, which (however useful) is in principle self-contradictory, I hope to have made evident. [B, p. 18.]
II. Every relation is, and is not, capable of degree. Do relations differ in degree? We have here, I think, once more to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, and to both assert and deny. The cause of this is the ambiguity (essentially inseparable from ‘the idea of relation) which we have found meeting us everywhere.
A relation may mean the whole relational situation, or it may
And (so) to the above question my answer is both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. If you mean the ‘situation’—that is certainly capable of degree. If you mean the mere relation, abstracted from the situation, my answer is ‘No’.
One’s first impression, no doubt, may be ‘Yes’. For take (with Mr. Russell) similarity and difference, say between colours or shades of colour. The difference or similarity, when we pass from one to another, may in diverse cases be more or less; and, since these are relations, our conclusion seems proved. But on the other hand take equality (which also is a relation), and it is disproved. Or let us take adultery and homicide, each of which (like jealousy) is a relation, and note the more and less prevalence of each in various countries as a proof that both must have degree, though this is only recognized in one. And, finally, let us take two mixed collections of coins, and note that in one we have more cases of equality—which therefore shows that equality must be there in a higher degree.
But I submit that, whenever we speak of more and less, there is an underlying ‘what’, of which we assert this more and less. And for any rational discussion this ‘what’ must be ascertained.
And (to repeat the result anticipated above) I should say that, if this ‘what’ is taken as the relation in the narrower sense (as abstracted from the situation), the answer is that it is everywhere incapable of degree. It is there, or not there—and not more or less of it there, or even (in strictness) there more or less. And otherwise it is of course capable.
Let us take some cases of this ‘otherwise’, and ask there for the ‘what’.
(i) This may be merely psychical, as say (a) the relative frequency of occurrence, or (b) the relative occupancy of my mental space or strain of my attention, or (c) the general emotional disturbance (shock), or generally the kind of emotional tone.
These (we should all perhaps agree) are not degrees of the abstract relation itself, and should not be taken as belonging to it properly.
(ii) Take, then, the passage from one shade of colour to another, or from one colour to another, and the diversity in various cases of the degree of likeness or difference. Of what is this predicable except the relation itself?
I answer:—there is always an underlying identity there, though
The same thing holds when I pass from one colour to another, where the underlying identity is colour, which may be present or absent in some varying degree. And, in the end, the ‘what’ under-lying the change (whatever it may be) is always there; and it is that, and not the mere relation itself, of which there is more and less.
And we may (if we think it worth while) also note that a sense of change, and of resistance to change, may be more or less there at a stage when no relation in the proper sense is as yet experienced.
In short, when and so far as you do not (consciously of unconsciously) identify the relation with the relational situation, you have no right to speak of more or less of it. On the other hand, and so far as you do identify it, you certainly may do so. But whichever of these courses you take, you fail… to reach any view which is consistent with itself. [A, pp. 27, 28, and 30.]
Chapter XXXII. Replies to Criticisms and Notes
1. Mr. Sidgwick on Ethical Studies.
2. A Reply to a Criticism (by Professor James Ward).
3. Note (in answer to Alfred Sidgwick).
4. Note (on an article by H. V. Knox).
5. A Disclaimer.
6. A Reply to a Criticism (by E. H. Strange).
I. Introductory Note: It has been decided, though not without some hesitation, to reprint the following Replies to Criticisms.
Polemics of every kind were increasingly distasteful to the author as life went on; and, though formidable as an opponent, he was only induced to enter the lists when he considered that not only his own reputation but some vital point or principle was attacked. It was then that often, in a few trenchant sentences, his own views came more clearly to light, or were at times more fully developed.
Chiefly for this reason, and for the sake of completeness, but partly also because old misinterpretations tend to recur, it has been thought well to reprint the following Replies.
1. Mr. Sidgwick on ‘Ethical Studies’
[First published in Mind O.S. ii, No. 5, 122-5. January 1877.]
In the last number of Mind, [
And (1) I must impress on the reader that I disclaimed the attempt to solve the problem of individuality in general; and in particular that of the origin of the Self in time, and the beginning of volition. But so far as I have said anything, I will endeavour to show that it is not incoherent, as soon as objections against it are distinctly formulated. I cannot do so before. However, I may say that I have no quarrel with Determinism if only that view will leave off regarding the Self as a collection, and volitions as ‘resultants’ or compositions of forces, and will either reform or cease to apply its category of cause and effect. The problem, as Mr. Sidgwick states it, on p. 46 of his Methods of Ethics, I consider to involve a false alternative.
(2) The fact that when I speak of self-realization ‘we naturally think of the realization or development into act of each one of the potentialities constituting the definite formed character of each individual’ is not surprising, until we have learnt that there are other views than those which appear in the Methods of Ethics (72 ff.). And this we very soon do if we proceed. I have written at some length on the good and bad selves (E.S. vii); and on p. 161 = 146, I have repudiated distinctly Mr. Sidgwick’s understanding of the term. I thought that I had left no doubt that characters might be partly bad, and that this was not what I meant by self-realization as = end.
(3) ‘We may at least say that a term which equally denotes the fulfillment of any of my desires by some one else, and my own accomplishment of my duty, will hardly avail us much in a definition of the Highest Good.’ Perhaps. But I emphatically repudiate the doctrine that the mere bringing about by some one else of anything desired by me is my self-realization. If the reviewer wishes the
(4) Mr. Sidgwick must be aware that I have endeavoured to define self-realization as = end. He proceeds to remark, ‘the question then is whether we gain anything by calling the object of our search “the true whole which is to realize the true self”’. I think we do: but then I have not left the matter here as my reviewer seems to indicate. That point of view is reached on p. 73 = 67, and the whole remainder of the discussion down to p. 81 = 74 is quietly ignored by him. I call particular attention to this.
The passage on Hedonism which follows I will take hereafter.
(5) I do not know whether in what is said about Kant there is an objection to my views, nor, if so, what that is; but when the reviewer says of me, ‘he accepts a merely relative universality as a sufficient criterion of goodness’, I must remark that this is what I do not say. I say relative and absolute (192 = 173-4); and this appears even from my reviewer’s next page.
(6) ‘Mr. Bradley, I think, has not clearly distinguished this view from ‘his own; and the effectiveness of his argument against Individualism depends chiefly on the nondistinction.’ The view is ‘the old doctrine… that the individual man is essentially a social being’. But (a) if my view is partly the same as another, what is that against it? (b) If Mr. Sidgwick will point out confusion, I will admit it or answer it. I cannot do either until he does. (c) At any rate, ‘that the individual man is essentially a social being’ is my view, and is not my reviewer’s. If it be ‘a vague and barren ethical commonplace’, yet in his book he must be taken to deny it, for he finds the end and, I suppose, the essence of man by examining a supposed ‘single sentient conscious being’.
1 Methods of Ethics, p. 374.
(7) ‘He allows… even that “open and direct outrage
(8) My reviewer continues—‘But here he plainly comes into conflict with “unsophisticated common sense”: and surely, if that authority be thus found falsus in uno, it must be at least fallibilis in omnibus’, and thus we have still to seek for some criterion of the validity of its dictates.’ First, I must ask for a reference for ‘unsophisticated common sense’. It is given as a quotation from me, but I do not recognize it. Next, I have maintained that I do not really come into collision with common morality, but, when understood, am at one with it (226 = 204, cf. 157-8 = 142-3). And my reasoned exposition, ignored by the reviewer, may stand, I hope, against his ‘plainly’. Thirdly, he argues, What is falsus in uno is fallibilis in omnibus. The falseness in this one thing I deny. Next, if I admitted it, I should like to see the steps by which the conclusion follows. Next, I have never hinted that the moral consciousness is not fallible in particulars. Mr. Sidgwick really should give references for what he attributes to me. Next, I deny that it is fallible in all points. Lastly, even if it were false throughout, I say we have not ‘to seek for some criterion of the validity of its dictates’; for none is possible.
This is all I think it necessary to say in answer to that which my reviewer has urged against the doctrine I have put forward. The rest, which I have not noticed, I must not be taken to admit. And now, seeing that a large part of my book was directed against Hedonism in general, and one or two pages even against Mr. Sidgwick in particular,
First, as was said above, the reviewer ignores my interpretation of self-realization. Next, he suggests that my argument against Hedonism is that pleasures cannot be enjoyed all at once. True, that is an argument; but is it possible that Mr. Sidgwick can really believe that in other respects Maximum Pleasure answers to my conception of the end? This is so wholly at variance with the doctrine I hold that I confess I was not prepared for it. Thirdly, that the notion of Maximum Pleasure can systematize conduct and give a standard is a proposition I have formally contested. Mr. Sidgwick not only gives me an assertion for an answer, but by the way he introduces the assertion suggests to the reader that I believe it myself.
I can find no other defence of his opinions but the (unsupported) charge against me that I use rhetoric for argument, and that my apprehension of the views which I assail ‘is always rather superficial and sometimes even unintelligent’. Those views I think should be securely founded, if they are to bear being defended in this way.
2. A Reply to a Criticism
[First published in Mind N.S. iii, No. 10, 232-9. April 1894.]
The long ‘critical notice’ of my volume
1 Appearance and Reality.
2 Mind, N.S. iii. No. 9, 109-25, by Professor James Ward.
It seems not to be an account or estimate of my work, but a mere attack on what the writer takes to be its
There are first (109) some prefatory statements about method which to me seem erroneous, but which, being mere assertions, I leave to themselves. Then, on p. 111, the actual attack is begun. The general nature of Reality as held by myself is called in question. My critic starts from a tacit assumption as to ‘purely formal’ truth. He seems unaware that any one could regard his doctrine as an exploded fallacy, or could hold that a truth, if purely formal, would be no truth at all. But on the same page he has also, I observe, made a reference to Hegel. He then (112) proves that the universe need not be ‘an absolute unity’, and that I at least have no right to say more than that it ‘is’. The sequence of ideas seems here obscure, and the meaning may have escaped me, but I must deal with the arguments as rightly or wrongly I understand them.
First as to the ‘is’, my critic appears to assume that ‘all determination is negation’, and that hence I must qualify the universe negatively or merely by ‘is’.
1 I do not attribute to Mr. Ward the assertion that that which has no competing predicate must be simply ‘is’. That of course would be a bare and naked petitio.
He does not ask if I share this belief about negation; and, to speak broadly, I do not, nor do I know why I should be taken to do so. My critic fails to seize the distinction between further determination within a universal and its limitation from without. And he brings out the familiar dilemma between what is ‘conditioned’ and what is ‘clear of conditions’.
Then as to the oneness of the universe I argued in this way. Here is the world before us and in us, a world full of content and diversity. To try to explain this away would clearly be foolish, but, as we take the world up, it contradicts itself. In that character, then, we must assume that our world is not true or real; and yet, because it is, it must somehow with all its diversity be real. But (I argued) it cannot be plural, for that is self-contradictory, and every division and distinction pre-supposes and rests on a unity. Hence we are forced to take the whole mass of facts as all being one in such a way as also and without abridgment to be free from discrepancy. And as to the word ‘unity’, that of course matters little or nothing. Now, how does my critic meet this position? His statement is so obscure that I must quote it.
‘It would be absurd, no doubt, to talk of two universes, but the denial of plurality is only tantamount to the affirmation of unity when we are dealing with the discrete. To this, whether as one or many, the continuous is opposed. Thus it may be absolutely true that the universe is, and still remain an open question whether it is an absolute unity and not an indefinite continuum. No doubt the latter alternative is cheerless enough; but Mr. Bradley seems to be more or less vaguely aware that it is there.’
The statement about the denial of plurality looks rather like a naked petitio, but I pass this by. We have to deal (I have urged) somehow with the given mass of facts. Everything discrete or otherwise, the whole world of things and selves with all their contents and relations, we have on our hands. And Mr. Ward seems to assert that all this can, without any self-contradiction, be ‘an indefinite continuum’, that it is cheerless, and that of this I seem more or less aware. But what, as I understand it, has no meaning, has no power to trouble me. And the idea that the universe is ‘an indefinite continuum’ is to me meaningless or self-discrepant. A continuum, not one and identical in its diversity and diverse in its unity, is, in the first place, to |684| my mind, no continuum at all, nor do I quite understand how my critic is able to be unaware of this. As to ‘indefinite’—whether it is meant to deny distinctions or limits or something else—we are not informed; but in any case it seems to increase the internal discrepancy. And, since this possible alternative to unity, which is to ruin my doctrine, is not brought into the light, I must without more detail dismiss it as self-contradictory or meaningless. The further remarks as to ‘logical principles’ seem merely to repeat the same dogma about ‘form’, or to imply further that I have assumed, without any argument, that there are not many Realities. This latter implication would of course be incorrect.
Passing next to the doctrine that Reality is one experience, my critic tries once more to show that for me Reality = ‘is’. And the process is very simple (113). He finds that Reality and Being are at times not distinguished by me, and he concludes that therefore Reality (proper) cannot possibly mean more than Being (proper). But the principle which underlies this wonderful argument he does not state.
1 The assertion that for me the ‘real’ or the ‘experienced’ = ‘that’ seems to me baseless.
I have contended also that the universe is a perfect individual, perfection including a balance of pleasure, though as to the pleasure I pointed out that doubt is not quite excluded. My argument, right or wrong, was simple and an extension of what went before. If all phenomena, without abridgment, are to be consistent and one, then (I urged) they must be a complete individual and this whole must be perfect; because want of harmony between idea and existence, and again pain, must mean discord and so contradiction. Now with this argument, good or bad, I cannot find that my critic deals anywhere at all. He flies off instead (114) to a discussion on the ontological proof. The position I have given to this in my work, and the way in which I have treated it parenthetically, should have
The conclusion so far, that Reality is a perfect individual experience, is naturally abstract. It certainly, if true, has cleared away a large mass of competing theories, though my critic appears never to have looked at the matter from this side. But the conclusion is abstract and so far not satisfactory. On the other hand, it is a principle applicable (I have argued) to every part of the universe. The idea of individuality, I have contended, can be, and is, used as the criterion of reality, worth, and truth. Since everything which at all exists must fall within Reality, everything in some sense is an element in a perfect individual. And individuality, we can observe, shows itself variously through the facts of appearance, and is found in varying degrees. From the space and atoms of matter to the highest life of the self-conscious self we can perceive a scale of individuality and self-containedness. Realized perfectly in no one part of the universe, the Absolute still is realized in every part, and it seems manifest in a scale of degrees, the higher of which comprehends the lower. And the system of metaphysics (I have added), which I have not tried to write, would aim at arranging the facts of the world on this principle, the same principle which outside philosophy is unconsciously used to judge of higher and lower. If this doctrine is not true, most assuredly it is not new, and some knowledge of it, I suppose, may fairly be demanded from anyone who comes forward to speak on
But my critic urges that such a principle remains ‘purely formal’, ‘the matter remains absolutely indeterminate and the form is a purely logical framework’ (114), or this ‘absolute knowledge is form simply’. And he implies that such knowledge is not knowledge of the universe. If I had said that Reality was a perfect Will containing somehow within itself a plurality of finite wills, and if this principle were argued to be applicable to the various aspects of the world—would that also, I wonder, have been formal merely? But I am not told what it is that my critic expects from metaphysics. So far as I see, he argues downward from two assumptions.
He seems to believe that, without applying it to the concrete facts of the world, I ought to deduce straight from some abstract principle my ultimate conclusion. But he does not exhibit any warrant for this bare preconception. And when (113), after a sort of appeal to Hegel, my critic assures me that to ‘place the spirituality of the real beyond question…is what we want as a first step towards idealism’, he seems, in criticizing me, to bear witness against and to judge himself. For he appears to start from a sheer a priori construction of ‘idealism’.
And the assertion as to pure form is surely once again the merest dogma. Mr. Ward seems to offer a dilemma. Absolute truth (apparently) is to be a ‘determinate positive knowledge’ which has to ‘coexist along with’ finite truth (115), or else it is ‘form simply’ and ‘a purely logical framework’. But this division of form and matter is precisely that which he has to prove against me, and to urge it as if in philosophy it were an undisputed axiom seems a strange procedure. Does the physical analogy from a material frame and what fills it hold good? Are the general character and the detail two factors more or less indifferent to each other, and of which either can be anything apart from the other? Is it conceivable that knowledge could be
Now this whole doctrine may of course be mistaken in principle. I have failed, I know well, to grasp it and carry it out as it should have been carried out. Nay, if I had been able to keep closer to a great master like Hegel, I doubt if after all perhaps I might not have kept nearer to the truth. But when I am assailed today with the same dogmatic alternatives, on the criticism of which long ago Hegel based his system, and when these seem blindly urged as axioms removed from all possibility of doubt, my own doubts are at an end. For even if Hegel’s construction has failed, Hegel’s criticism is on our hands. And whatever proceeds by ignoring this is likely, I will suggest, to be mere waste of time.
From this point onward I can deal more briefly with my critic’s objections. I showed that in our psychical experience the various aspects point to a superior whole above relations, and that this whole in an imperfect form appears before, and still persists below, the relational consciousness.
My critic meets me (116) with bare assertions. Feeling could only be mere being without diversity, it could suggest only continuous change—both of which assertions I of course deny. It could not always be called ‘a finite centre of experience’—to which I of course assent if he means for itself. Then Mr. Ward seems surprised and shocked that a principle in development should appear first in a less differentiated form. Then he states that for me differences are absorbed by an empty Reality, as, on the next page, he asserts that for me all finite content is destroyed in the Absolute—ignoring the fact that I, rightly or wrongly, have at least insisted on the opposite. Then I am assured without a reference (117) that I make mind a mere logical summum genus. And, because I say of the theoretic and other aspects that they are factors among which none has supremacy, and, speaking of the Absolute, add ‘how these various modes can come together in a single unity must remain unintelligible’, I am asked ‘How can we talk of life if there is no supremacy and no subordination, or if its unity is to result from "factors" coming together for the purpose?’
1 The italics are Mr. Ward’s.
We come now to the connexion of finite centres of experience with the Absolute. The introductory paragraph (118) seems obscure, and I cannot pretend to have understood it, and it is therefore most unwillingly that I am forced to notice it. So far as it means that there is a serious difference between finite centres on the one hand and mere aspects of one centre on the other hand, I naturally assent to it. But the paragraph appears to imply very much more
Then follows a supposition as to what I hold concerning finite centres. It is not a correct supposition, nor does it even seem to be offered as correct, and I am hence not forced to examine it closely. It involves what the reader of my work can see I regard as contradictions. There is, however, a statement (119) which I cannot pass over. ‘To all finite centres, it will be remembered, there pertains a felt reality; and that is not appearance.’
1 The italics are Mr. Ward’s.
Passing on I find my critic still astonished. If appearances apart from Reality are nothing, and if in the end the ‘how’ of appearances is inexplicable, he urges that they cannot be the ‘revelation’ of Reality. But I am not aware that revelation must mean total manifestation perfect in
On the next page (120) my critic pursues the same path. After some statements and some implications as to the process in Reality, parts of which are incorrect, he urges that process within the Absolute is but appearance, not true as such, and he asserts that hence it is ‘pure illusion’. I have of course argued that appearance, though error, is partial truth, and is therefore not pure illusion. This contention doubtless may be mistaken, but a criticism which ignores it is surely not criticism at all.
The following page repeats with variations the same idle procedure. I have tried to show that time and change in their own character are appearance, but that (how in detail we do not know) they are corrected and preserved in a higher whole to which they minister. Once more, totally ignoring that on which I have insisted, my critic represents me as holding that time and change are reduced to zero. And, not content with this, he even allows himself strange liberties with my statements. The extract from p. 194 = 220 taken from one context is without a word
The mere illusoriness of phenomena (which in fact I do not hold) I might, it seems, have avoided, if I had not strained myself to escape from the pre-eminence of will (122). The history of philosophy since Kant does not wholly tend to support that hypothesis. And I am offered a dilemma between something like the pre-eminence of will and a belief that all changes ‘are but events and not acts’. This ready-made alternative (we have known for years) exhausts for Mr. Ward all possibilities. He is forced to see, and he even admits, that I do not assent to it, and yet he has no resource but, without any discussion, to charge me with incoherence. But is it criticism to judge an author from preconceptions which he is admitted not to accept? And then my critic seriously represents me as holding a doctrine quoted as to goodness and immortality, when on the same page (382 = 432) I plainly disconnect myself from it, and in part criticize it again on p. 450 = 508. That this extract from my work, the only one quoted for approval, should be put forward in spite of myself as my doctrine is characteristic. It is even more significant that, if this doctrine were mine, I should be blindly re-asserting it in the face of Hegel’s elaborate criticism. But what pleases me is that in my volume (450 = 508) this criticism actually is referred to.
On p. 123 the remark following the extract from my p. 29 = 34 may be commended in passing to the reader’s attention. And, coming to that essential inconsistency of thought which I have tried to prove, my critic prefers to stand outside the discussion and once more merely to assert. And When (124) he crushes me with ‘in what sense can a system be perfect, harmonious, and complete, when every constituent is not only partial but defective?’—he seems never even to have heard of the doctrine that, unless partial constituents were defective, they never could
At the end of his attack (124) my critic remembers that something has been forgotten, the chapter on degrees of truth and reality. He has never understood that an appearance is rejected as simply false, only so far as it offers itself as simply real. He seems ridden by the notion that between appearances and the real there is a sort of wall. The idea that nothing is or exists at all, except so far as it is the one Reality, that this Reality appears and shows its character everywhere in a more or less imperfect form, and yet that nothing taken by itself can claim to be the Reality—any such idea plainly has never entered Mr. Ward’s field of vision. And hence he is staggered to find that appearance after all has degrees. He asks in amazement how finite spirits are to use absolute Reality, as if finite spirits could possibly use or could be anything else, as if outside the finite the Absolute were anything at all, and as if a principle must be employed explicitly or applied in a perfect form, or else, failing that, not applied and not used in any way. He once more roundly asserts that, when the. whole is qualified non-relationally, this means that the relations are not added to, but extinguished. He does not anywhere even mention the fact that I at least insist on the opposite. And he ends with a sketch of my mental characteristics, which I am led to infer must be such as to account for and justify anything. When a man does not understand me at once, it is because I am unintelligible; when his statement as to what I hold contradicts itself, that is because I am incoherent; and when, suppressing one part of what I teach, he presents a fragment as the whole, he but does me the service my unhappy nature prevents me from rendering to myself. And this is a ft possible, but after all there is another possibility. If that idea could have been able to suggest itself to my critic’s mind, we might perhaps have been spared a controversy which (so far as I can judge) is wholly futile.
[First published in Mind N.S. xiv, No. 53, 148. January 1905.]
In the last number of Mind Mr. A. Sidgwick complains that he has suffered injustice. His attitude towards the new Gospel, it seems, has been misrepresented, and he seeks to deny my statement that he claims to be the champion of philosophic scepticism. As to the first point, how far he has been misrepresented the reader may decide; but on the second point perhaps I should offer a few words. In the article to which I referred (Mind N.S. iii. 336-47) the reader, I think, will find that Mr. Sidgwick unquestionably takes the field as the self-elected representative of philosophical scepticism, and the doubt is merely as to the meaning to be given to this term. Certainly Mr. Sidgwick explicitly there rejects scepticism in one sense, and explicitly defends it in another special sense which I have noticed elsewhere. But these special senses, and in short the ambiguous detail of the article, are, I submit, here irrelevant. The words ‘philosophical scepticism’ were used by me in their ordinary meaning. And the real question is whether the scepticism which Mr. Sidgwick champions does or does not imply scepticism in this general sense. Does he br does he not advocate the main sceptical conclusion that no positive doctrine in philosophy is theoretically indisputable? As to his acceptance of this conclusion the reader, I submit, is left no liberty to doubt (see more particularly p. 339). And I thought it well perhaps to remark on the apparent coexistence of this position with a benevolent interest in our new philosophical creed.
If Mr. Sidgwick’s intention was not to accept the main doctrine of scepticism, as commonly understood, he has of course only to’ state this, if indeed he is in a position to do so. And as his attack on myself showed to my mind little comprehension of my meaning, there is no reason, I presume, why I may not on my side have failed to understand his. But as to the person who in that case is most to blame
4. Note, on an Article by H. V. Knox (in M. N.S. xiv. 210-20).
[First published in Mind, N.S. xiv, No. 55, 439. July 1905.]
May I be allowed to make a brief statement in reference to the article by Mr. Knox in the last number of Mind? This article purports to criticize my views on certain ultimate questions. The discussion of such final difficulties, and the attempt to solve them, is naturally to be found mainly in the latter part of my book. On the other hand, in the above article I see no reference to any page beyond the first quarter of the volume, and I discover no acquaintance with anything that comes later. To speak in general, where I have raised a difficulty and offered a solution, my discussion is not condemned as worthless (as perhaps it is), but seems taken as if it possessed no kind of being.
Out of several instances I will point to the most obvious. I published in Mind, N.S. v,
1 [‘The Contrary and the Disparate’].
2 [A.R., p. 500 = p. 562].
But in the article, in which Mr. Knox now controverts my view of Contradiction, I find no
I could adduce other instances of what appears to be the same procedure, but one perhaps is enough. And to myself, though possibly not to others, the whole thing is inexplicable. I am not, I hope, under much illusion as to the defects of my volume, and on this special subject it will be a disappointment to me if it has to contain my last word. On the other hand, I perhaps need explain no further why, without denying the merits of Mr. Knox’s article, I have been unable to find in it much which concerns me personally.
5. A Disclaimer
[First published in the Journal of Philosophy, vol. vii, p. 183. March 1910.]
The too flattering notice of myself by Professor James, in the Journal (January), contains a statement which I think I should ask leave to correct. Professor James credits me with ‘breaking loose from the Kantian tradition that immediate feeling is all disconnectedness’. But all that I have really done here is to follow Hegel. In this and in some other points I saw long ago that English psychology had a great deal to learn from Hegel’s teaching. To have seen this, and to some extent to have acted on it, is all that common honesty allows me to claim. How far Hegel himself in this point was original, and how again M. Bergson conceives his own relation to post-Kantian philosophy, are matters that here do not concern me. I write merely to disclaim for myself an originality which is not mine. It belongs to me no more than does that heroical perversity or perverse heroism with which I find myself credited.
6. A Reply to a Criticism by E. H. Strange (M. N.S. xx. 457-88).
[First published in Mind, N.S. xxi, No. 81, 148-50. January 1912.]
(1) Mr. Strange apparently takes me to identify feeling with reality. Everything, I understand him to say, arises, out of feeling and returns into it. This, of course, is to me a fundamental mistake for which I am in no way responsible. The mistake runs through and vitiates a large part of Mr. Strange’s criticism. It is another side of the same error when I am told that for me feeling is indisputable and beyond criticism. I am unable to do more here than once more to express my surprise.
(2) I am further taken to limit the actual to a series of momentary and fleeting psychical events. I cannot think that my critic has the least idea of what to me is the position of events in time, or again of psychical existence and mental facts of the moment, and of how all this to me depends on ideal construction from the basis of immediate experience. He evidently takes mental facts as being for me something which in their own shape are ultimately real (488). The only answer which I can make here is a general reference to what I have written on the subject. Again (482) I am offered a dilemma on the ground that I deny ‘that the soul is existent’. I however thought that what I
(3) The assertion that I identify feeling with ‘the self or individual’ (464-5) once more causes me surprise and prepares me for anything or everything in the way of a conclusion. But I pass from this to notice the argument (465-6) that, if my doctrine as to feeling were true, I at least could not know this. Mr. Strange is apparently unaware that I have myself raised this objection and tried to deal with it (A.R. 79-80 = 93, 95 = 110, and Mind, No. 69).
(4) With regard to my alleged failure to recognize any act or subject in judging, and my inability to distinguish myself from other selves, I will merely refer to what I have written on these heads,
1 (M. N.S. xviii. 40-64 = T.R. chapter vi.)
2 On the second of these I have touched recently in Mind, No. 74, pp. x 55-6 [see M. N.S. xix. 153-85 = T.R. chapter ix].
(5) On page 478 there is a passage which I notice because it exemplifies a common misapprehension. Mr. Strange, like some other advocates of realism, fails to understand the position which he is anxious to attack. The contention which he has to meet is this, that he is taking a mere abstraction for reality, and that the burden of showing that what we contend is an abstraction is really more rests properly with him. Such an idea seems not to have occurred to him, but he will find that it is perhaps more worth his attention than the ingenious arguments which, I must acknowledge, he does not attribute to myself. In the same way I would add (though this has no
The above misconceptions, it seems to me, leave little value to Mr. Strange’s article as a criticism of myself. Certainly my views may be no better than those which he has attacked, but at least they are different. But there are doctrines which Mr. Strange has incidentally laid down, which, if they were tenable, would render detailed examination of what I hold quite superfluous. As to that I am entirely of one mind with Mr. Strange. But he does himself here, I must think, a most serious injustice when he speaks (479) of his having ‘tried to elaborate’ his doctrine. That is precisely the thing which on the contrary I would invite him to do, for, as he has left it, I feel that I could not in common fairness to himself attempt to criticize his position. I wish to keep in mind that, if a view opposed to my own is untenable, it does not follow that I myself am not equally wrong; just as the pointing out of misconceptions may, I know, do nothing to remove real difficulties. But if Mr. Strange would seriously apply himself to such a statement of his doctrine as would enable the reader to see how it can hold against familiar objections, I venture to think that, far from losing his time, he would produce something which would be read with attention and interest.
Francis Herbert Bradley
1846–1924
Premier British Idealist Philosopher
Regarded as ‘The greatest mind in Europe’
Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, 1870–1924
LL.D., University of Glasgow, 1883
Royal Danish Academy, 1921
British Academy, 1923
British Order of Merit, 1924
(First Philosopher so Honored)
List of Abbreviations
Ethical Studies = ES
Principles of Logic = L
Appearance and Reality = AR
Essays on Truth and Reality = TR
Collected Essays = E
(A Roman numeral following E indicates the particular Essay)
Mind = M
(The Old and New Series in Mind are indicated by OS and NS and the volume by a Roman numeral.)
References to the author’s works are to the latest editions, though references preceded by the sign = to the earlier editions are added for the convenience of some readers.
References by the author to the works of other writers have been retained without alteration.
References
American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. ISBN 9780544454453. “Conation”: The aspect of mental processes or behavior directed toward action or change and including impulse, desire, volition, and striving.
Bradley, F. H. Collected Essays, 2 of 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935.
Britannice, Encyclopedia. phenomenalism.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/phenomenalism/ additional-info#history
"Q.E.D." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 10 Dec. 2021.
F. H. Bradley Bibliography
Appearance and Reality (1893); second edition, with appendix (1897), new edition. Oxford, 1930.
Collected Essays. Oxford, 1935.
Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford, 1914.
Ethical Studies (1876); second edition, revised, with additional notes. Oxford, 1927.
Principles of Logic (1883); second edition, revised, with Terminal Essays. Oxford, 1922.