Chapter V: Part 5

From this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed to the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely disappears. If we could know what causation really and transcendentally is in itself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to track the future course of operations more intelligently out. The mere abstract inquiry into causation's hidden nature is not more sublime than any other inquiry equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more sublime level than anything else. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of the world as well as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. The worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements, be these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it exists rather in the dramatic outcome in the whole process, and in the meaning of the succession stages which the elements work out.

My colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of Stout's _Analytic Psychology_[103] has some fine words on this point with which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his separating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether (this I understand to be one contention of his) for activities are efficacious whenever they are real activities at all. But the inner nature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, I understand Royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them would be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper problem of the course and meaning of the world of life. Life, says our colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of defeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner value. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own lives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know the elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this pragmatic note.

The urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They are all problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span activities. When, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name traditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of consciousness, do the smaller activities still co-exist with the wider activities then experienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do the wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they exert control? Or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them and short-circuit their effects? Again, when a mental activity-process and a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same muscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes or not? Or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit their effects? Such are the questions that we must begin with. But so far am I from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions, that I hardly yet can put them clearly. They lead, however, into that region of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which Professors Bergson and Strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and interesting a way.[104] The results of these authors seem in many respects dissimilar, and I understand than as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot help suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising, and that they have the hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] President's Address before the American Psychological Association, Philadelphia Meeting, December, 1904. [Reprinted from _The Psychological Review_, vol. XII, No. 1, Jan., 1905. Also reprinted, with some omissions, as Appendix B, _A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 370-394. Pp. 166-167 have also been reprinted in _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 212. The present essay is referred to in _ibid._, p. 219, note. The author's corrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]

[86] [_The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods._]

[87] _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp. 116-117.--Obviously written _at_ Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.

[88] [_Mind_, vol. XII, 1887, pp. 573-574.]

[89] _Mind_, N. S., vol. VI, [1897], p. 379.

[90] _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. II, p. 245. One thinks naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ here. ["Actus autem est _duplex_: _primus_ et _secundus_. Actus quidem primus est forma, et integritas sei. Actus autem secundus est operatio." Thomas Aquinas: _Summa Theologica_, edition of Leo XIII, (1894), vol. I, p. 391. Cf. also Blanc: _Dictionnaire de Philosophie_, under 'acte.' ED.]

[91] [_Appearance and Reality_, second edition, p. 116.]

[92] [_Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke_, (1905), vol. IV, p. 110 (trans. by Max Mueller, second edition, p. 128).]

[93] I refer to such descriptive work as Ladd's (_Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory_, part I, chap. V, part II, chap. XI, part III, chaps. XXV and XXVI); as Sully's (_The Human Mind_, part V); as Stout's (_Analytic Psychology_, book I, chap. VI, and book II, chaps. I, II, and III); as Bradley's (in his long series of analytic articles on Psychology in _Mind_); as Titchener's (_Outline of Psychology_, part I, chap. VI); as Shand's (_Mind_, N. S., III, 449; IV, 450; VI, 289); as Ward's (_Mind_, XII, 67; 564); as Loveday's (_Mind_, N. S., X, 455); as Lipps's (Vom Fuehlen, Wollen und Denken, 1902, chaps. II, IV, VI); and as Bergson's (_Revue Philosophique_, LIII, 1)--to mention only a few writings which I immediately recall.

[94] Their existence forms a curious commentary on Prof. Muensterberg's dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He himself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both in his _Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzuege_ [_der Psychologie_], part II, chap. IX, Sec. 7.

[95] I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous sinner in my own chapter on the will. [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, chap. XXVI.]

[96] [Cf. F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp. 96-97.]

[97] [Cf. above, p. 59, note.]

[98] _Verborum gratia_: "The feeling of activity is not able, _qua_ feeling, to tell us anything about activity" (Loveday: _Mind_, N. S., vol. X, [1901], p. 463); "A sensation or feeling or sense _of_ activity ... is not, looked at in another way, an experience _of_ activity at all. It is a mere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is not later on a character essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as it comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. It, as it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for an outside observer" (Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, p. 605); "In dem Taetigkeitsgefuehle liegt an sich nicht der geringste Beweis fuer das Vorhandensein einer psychischen Taetigkeit" (Muensterberg: _Grundzuege der Psychologie_). I could multiply similar quotations and would have introduced some of them into my text to make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of view in most of these author's discussions (not in Muensterberg's) make it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any case, to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note, by omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more I stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of opinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may add to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in the excellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. I of his _Analytic Psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with certain muscular feelings and gives quotations to bear him out. They are from certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to show what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' is. [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 299-305.] I found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually oppose, as 'subjective,' to the activities of the transcorporeal world. I sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel the activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (I should now say the activity of 'consciousness' as such, see [the first essay], 'Does Consciousness Exist?'). There are, in fact, three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: the elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in the fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification of this _something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and an activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies 'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort of external appendage to itself (Stout: _op. cit._, vol. I, pp. 162-163), as if I 'separated the activity from the process which is active.' But all the processes in question are active, and their activity is inseparable from their being. My book raised only the question of _which_ activity deserved the name of 'ours.' So far as we are 'persons,' and contrasted and opposed to an 'environment,' movements in our body figure as our activities; and I am unable to find any other activities that are ours in this strictly personal sense. There is a wider sense in which the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,' and their activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But 'we' are here only another name for the total process of experience, another name for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the personal and individualized self exclusively in the passages with which Professor Stout finds fault.

The individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here'; when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that ordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of the rest of the world. [Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 344, note 8. ED.] The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. The word 'I,' then, is primarily a noun of position, just like 'this' and 'here.' Activities attached to 'this' position have prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be felt in a peculiar way. The word 'my' designates the kind of emphasis. I see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, 'my' activities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the other hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in movements in the head. The 'my' of them is the emphasis, the feeling of perspective-interest in which they are dyed.

[99] [_Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, sect. VII, part I, Selby-Bigge's edition, pp. 65 ff.]

[100] Page 172.

[101] Let me not be told that this contradicts [the first essay], 'Does Consciousness Exist?' (see especially page 32), in which it was said that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water wets, etc.) but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other, they check, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. The interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,' 'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental series. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play absolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can see no inconsistency.

[102] I have found myself more than once accused in print of being the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since literary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should like to say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published on Effort and on Will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to express. [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXVI.] I owe all my doctrines on this subject to Renouvier; and Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces' in the most strenuous sense. [Cf. Ch. Renouvier: _Esquisse d'une Classification Systematique des Doctrines Philosophiques_ (1885), vol. II, pp. 390-392; _Essais de Critique Generale_ (1859), vol. II, Secs. ix, xiii. For an acknowledgment of the author's general indebtedness to Renouvier, cf. _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 165, note. ED.] Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their connection, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of energy; but I defy anyone to show a single sentence which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my defending (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural agent. As a matter of plain history the only 'free will' I have ever thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh activity-situations. If an activity-process is the form of a whole 'field of consciousness,' and if each field of consciousness is not only in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted) but has its elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in the total) then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the literal uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in short, each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will if there were one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never saw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.

[103] _Mind_, N. S., vol. VI, 1897; cf. pp. 392-393.

[104] [Cf. _A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. VI (on Bergson); H. Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, trans. by A. Mitchell; C. A. Strong: _Why the Mind has a Body_, ch. XII. ED.]

VII

THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM[105]

Humanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.'[106] It is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other side.[107]

If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not keep just the same.[108] If such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.

It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance, have showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for example--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.' It is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the word 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps, and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each side of its central point of view.

Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what's what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism[109] now and here, others may improve it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general opinion may result.

I

The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to have seen that _though one part of our experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on nothing_.

Since this formula also expresses the main contention of transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical, it would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters. I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion susceptible of reasoned defence, though I am well aware how many minds there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been monistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of--it being essentially a _social_ philosophy, a philosophy of '_co_,' in which conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing 'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem of freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and paradoxes as well.

It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets rid of any need for an absolute of the Bradleyan type (avowedly sterile for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of an absolute of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge [a treatment of which I have already given a version in two very inadequate articles].[110] As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the views which _I_ impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly as I can.

II

If the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted, it will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the knower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One part of experience must, therefore, either

(1) Know another part of experience--in other words, parts must, as Professor Woodbridge says,[111] represent _one another_ instead of representing realities outside of 'consciousness'--this case is that of conceptual knowledge; or else

(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate _thats_ or facts of being, in the first instance; and then, as a secondary complication, and without doubling up its entitative single-ness, any one and the same _that_ must figure alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge of the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which, in the general course of experience, it gets woven.[112]

This second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of thought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more presently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly definite halting-place of thought, primarily for purposes of action; and, so long as we remain on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject _fuse_ in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception--the pen and hand which I now _see_ writing, for example, _are_ the physical realities which those words designate. In this case there is no self-transcendency implied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a more comminuted _Identitaetsphilosophie_.[113]

In case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience does transcend itself in knowing the other experience that is its object. No one can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without seeing them as numerically distinct entities, of which the one lies beyond the other and away from it, along some direction and with some interval, that can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a humanist, he must also see this distance-interval concretely and pragmatically, and confess it to consist of other intervening experiences--of possible ones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my present idea of my dog, for example, cognitive of the real dog means that, as the actual tissue of experience is constituted, the idea is capable of leading into a chain of other experiences on my part that go from next to next and terminate at last in vivid sense-perceptions of a jumping, barking, hairy body. Those _are_ the real dog, the dog's full presence, for my common sense. If the supposed talker is a profound philosopher, although they may not _be_ the real dog for him, they _mean_ the real dog, are practical substitutes for the real dog, as the representation was a practical substitute for them, that real dog being a lot of atoms, say, or of mind-stuff, that lie _where_ the sense-perceptions lie in his experience as well as in my own.

III

The philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond the stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he 'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common sense does not. For common sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy, noting actual differences in their perceptions, points out the duality of these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real terminus--first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate atoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two men, instead of coalescing with each other and with the real dog-object, as at first supposed, are thus held by philosophers to be separated by invisible realities with which, at most, they are conterminous.

Abolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes into 'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is regarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only carried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a definite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards an absolute truth that lies beyond.

The humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute transcendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured or believed in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following upon that of the outer body. The atoms again, though we may never attain to human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually. The mind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is possible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic be excluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and the mind-stuff itself becoming 'confluent' at the moment at which our imperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so do you and I habitually represent our two perceptions and the real dog as confluent, though only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage of thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no confluence _now_ between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of the pen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in the case of my hand, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of the hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any two things can be.

There is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge be taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster for practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever remote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities of experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience _that 'represents' it, in the sense of being substitutable for it in our thinking_ because it leads to the same associates, _or in the sense of 'pointing to it'_ through a chain of other experiences that either intervene or may intervene.

Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man habitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond' in the shape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the philosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They are not 'true' of anything else, they simply _are_, are _real_. They 'lean on nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole fabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the solar system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute position in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one gets a new _Identitaetsphilosophie_ in pluralistic form.[114]

IV

If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear that brevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader will see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which for common sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be _provisionally_ true by the philosopher just in so far as it _covers_ (abuts at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real experience, in the possibility of which to some remoter experient the philosopher finds reason to believe.

Meanwhile what actually _does_ count for true to any individual trower, whether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his _apperceptions_. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict too emphatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and the newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and modify each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result. [Having written of this point in an article in reply to Mr. Joseph's criticism of my humanism, I will say no more about truth here, but refer the reader to that review.[115]] In no case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our experiences and something archetypal or trans-experiential. Should we ever reach absolutely terminal experiences, experiences in which we all agreed, which were superseded by no revised continuations, these would not be _true_, they would be _real_, they would simply _be_, and be indeed the angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of everything else would be stayed. Only such _other_ things as led to these by satisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.' Satisfactory connection of some sort with such termini is all that the word 'truth' means. On the common-sense stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini. Our ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far as they harmoniously lead back to the world of sense.

I hope that many humanists will endorse this attempt of mine to trace the more essential features of that way of viewing things. I feel almost certain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so. If the attackers will also take some slight account of it, it may be that discussion will be a little less wide of the mark than it has hitherto been.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 5, March 2, 1905. Also reprinted, with slight changes in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 121-135. The author's corrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]

[106] [Written _apropos_ of the appearance of three articles in _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905: "'Absolute' and 'Relative' Truth," H. H. Joachim; "Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'" H. W. B. Joseph; "Applied Axioms," A. Sidgwick. Of these articles the second and third "continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic) controversy," the first "deeply connects with it." ED.]

[107] Professor Baldwin, for example. His address 'On Selective Thinking' (_Psychological Review_, [vol. V], 1898, reprinted in his volume, _Development and Evolution_) seems to me an unusually well-written pragmatic manifesto. Nevertheless in 'The Limits of Pragmatism' (_ibid._, [vol. XI], 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.

[108] The ethical changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident in Professor Dewey's series of articles, which will never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a book. I mean: 'The Significance of Emotions,' _Psychological Review_, vol. II, [1895], p. 13; 'The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,' _ibid._, vol. III, [1896], p. 357; 'Psychology and Social Practice,' _ibid._, vol. VII, [1900], p. 105; 'Interpretation of Savage Mind,' _ibid._, vol. IX, [1902], p. 217; 'Green's Theory of the Moral Motive,' _Philosophical Review_, vol. I, [1892], p. 593; 'Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,' _ibid._, vol. II, [1893], p. 652; 'The Psychology of Effort,' _ibid._, vol. VI, [1897], p. 43; 'The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,' _ibid._, vol. XI, [1902], pp. 107, 353; 'Evolution and Ethics,' _Monist_, vol. VIII, [1898], p. 321; to mention only a few.

[109] [The author employs the term 'humanism' either as a synonym for 'radical empiricism' (cf. _e.g._, above, p. 156); or as that general philosophy of life of which 'radical empiricism' is the theoretical ground (cf. below, p. 194). For other discussions of 'humanism,' cf. below, essay XI, and _The Meaning of Truth_, essay III. ED.]

[110] [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning of Truth_. The articles referred to are 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience,' reprinted above.]

[111] In _Science_, November 4, 1904, p. 599.

[112] This statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not read my two articles, 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience.'

[113] [Cf. above, p. 134; and below, p. 202.]

[114] [Cf. above, pp. 134, 197.]

[115] [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning of Truth_. The review referred to is reprinted below, pp. 244-265, under the title "Humanism and Truth Once More." ED.]

VIII

LA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE[116]

Je voudrais vous communiquer quelques doutes qui me sont venus au sujet de la notion de Conscience qui regne dans tous nos traites de psychologie.

On definit habituellement la Psychologie comme la Science des faits de Conscience, ou des _phenomenes_, ou encore des _etats_ de la Conscience. Qu'on admette qu'elle se rattache a des _moi_ personnels, ou bien qu'on la croie impersonnelle a la facon du "moi transcendental" de Kant, de la _Bewusstheit_ ou du _Bewusstsein ueberhaupt_ de nos contemporains en Allemagne, cette conscience est toujours regardee comme possedant une essence propre, absolument distincte de l'essence des choses materielles, qu'elle a le don mysterieux de representer et de connaitre. Les faits materiels, pris dans leur materialite, ne sont pas _eprouves_, ne sont pas objets _d'experience_, ne se _rapportent_ pas. Pour qu'ils prennent la forme du systeme dans lequel nous nous sentons vivre, il faut qu'ils _apparaissent_, et ce fait d'apparaitre, surajoute a leur existence brute, s'appelle la conscience que nous en avons, ou peut-etre, selon l'hypothese panpsychiste, qu'ils ont d'eux-memes.

Voila ce dualisme invetere qu'il semble impossible de chasser de notre vue du monde. Ce monde peut bien exister en soi, mais nous n'en savons rien, car pour nous il est exclusivement un objet d'experience; et la condition indispensable a cet effet, c'est qu'il soit rapporte a des temoins, qu'il soit connu par un sujet ou par des sujets spirituels. Objet et sujet, voila les deux jambes sans lesquelles il semble que la philosophie ne saurait faire un pas en avant.

Toutes les ecoles sont d'accord la-dessus, scolastique, cartesianisme, kantisme, neo-kantisme, tous admettent le dualisme fondamental. Le positivisme ou agnosticisme de nos jours, qui se pique de relever des sciences naturelles, se donne volontiers, il est vrai, le nom de monisme. Mais ce n'est qu'un monisme verbal. Il pose une realite inconnue, mais nous dit que cette realite se presente toujours sous deux "aspects," un cote conscience et un cote matiere, et ces deux cotes demeurent aussi irreductibles que les attributs fondamentaux, etendue et pensee, du Dieu de Spinoza. Au fond, le monisme contemporain est du spinozisme pur.

Or, comment se represente-t-on cette conscience dont nous sommes tous si portes a admettre l'existence? Impossible de la definir, nous dit-on, mais nous en avons tous une intuition immediate: tout d'abord la conscience a conscience d'elle-meme. Demandez a la premiere personne que vous rencontrerez, homme ou femme, psychologue ou ignorant, et elle vous repondra qu'elle _se sent_ penser, jouir, souffrir, vouloir, tout comme elle se sent respirer. Elle percoit directement sa vie spirituelle comme une espece de courant interieur, actif, leger, fluide, delicat, diaphane pour ainsi dire, et absolument oppose a quoi que ce soit de materiel. Bref, la vie subjective ne parait pas seulement etre une condition logiquement indispensable pour qu'il y ait un monde objectif qui _apparaisse_, c'est encore un element de l'experience meme que nous eprouvons directement, au meme titre que nous eprouvons notre propre corps.

Idees et Choses, comment donc ne pas reconnaitre leur dualisme? Sentiments et Objets, comment douter de leur heterogeneite absolue?

La psychologie soi-disant scientifique admet cette heterogeneite comme l'ancienne psychologie spiritualiste l'admettait. Comment ne pas l'admettre? Chaque science decoupe arbitrairement dans la trame des faits un champ ou elle se parque, et dont elle decrit et etudie le contenu. La psychologie prend justement pour son domaine le champ des faits de conscience. Elle les postule sans les critiquer, elle les oppose aux faits materiels; et sans critiquer non plus la notion de ces derniers, elle les rattache a la conscience par le lien mysterieux de la _connaissance_, de, l'_aperception_ qui, pour elle, est un troisieme genre de fait fondamental et ultime. En suivant cette voie, la psychologie contemporaine a fete de grands triomphes. Elle a pu faire une esquisse de l'evolution de la vie consciente, en concevant cette derniere comme s'adaptant de plus en plus completement au milieu physique environnant. Elle a pu etablir un parallelisme dans le dualisme, celui des faits psychiques et des evenements cerebraux. Elle a explique les illusions, les hallucinations, et jusqu'a un certain point, les maladies mentales. Ce sont de beaux progres; mais il reste encore bien des problemes. La philosophie generale surtout, qui a pour devoir de scruter tous les postulats, trouve des paradoxes et des empechements la ou la science passe outre; et il n'y a que les amateurs de science populaire qui ne sont jamais perplexes. Plus on va au fond des choses, plus on trouve d'enigmes; et j'avoue pour ma part que depuis que je m'occupe serieusement de psychologie, ce vieux dualisme de matiere et de pensee, cette heterogeneite posee comme absolue des deux essences, m'a toujours presente des difficultes. C'est de quelques-unes de ces difficultes que je voudrais maintenant vous entretenir.

D'abord il y en a une, laquelle, j'en suis convaincu, vous aura frappes tous. Prenons la perception exterieure, la sensation directe que nous donnent par exemple les murs de cette salle. Peut-on dire ici que le psychique et le physique sont absolument heterogenes? Au contraire, ils sont si peu heterogenes que si nous nous placons au point de vue du sens commun; si nous faisons abstraction de toutes les inventions explicatives, des molecules et des ondulations etherees, par exemple, qui au fond sont des entites metaphysiques; si, en un mot, nous prenons la realite naivement et telle qu'elle nous est donnee tout d'abord, cette realite sensible d'ou dependent nos interets vitaux, et sur laquelle se portent toutes nos actions; eh bien, cette realite sensible et la sensation que nous en avons sont, au moment ou la sensation se produit, absolument identiques l'une a l'autre. La realite est l'aperception meme. Les mots "murs de cette salle" ne signifient que cette blancheur fraiche et sonore qui nous entoure, coupee par ces fenetres, bornee par ces lignes et ces angles. Le physique ici n'a pas d'autre contenu que le psychique. Le sujet et l'objet se confondent.

C'est Berkeley qui le premier a mis cette verite en honneur. _Esse est percipi._ Nos sensations ne sont pas de petits duplicats interieurs des choses, elles sont les choses memes en tant que les choses nous sont presentes. Et quoi que l'on veuille penser de la vie absente, cachee, et pour ainsi dire privee, des choses, et quelles que soient les constructions hypothetiques qu'on en fasse, il reste vrai que la vie publique des choses, cette actualite presente par laquelle elles nous confrontent, d'ou derivent toutes nos constructions theoriques, et a laquelle elles doivent toutes revenir et se rattacher sous peine de flotter dans l'air et dans l'irreel; cette actualite, dis-je, est homogene, et non pas seulement homogene, mais numeriquement une, avec une certaine partie de notre vie interieure.

Voila pour la perception exterieure. Quand on s'adresse a l'imagination, a la memoire ou aux facultes de representation abstraite, bien que les faits soient ici beaucoup plus compliques, je crois que la meme homogeneite essentielle se degage. Pour simplifier le probleme, excluons d'abord toute realite sensible. Prenons la pensee pure, telle qu'elle s'effectue dans le reve ou la reverie, ou dans la memoire du passe. Ici encore, l'etoffe de l'experience ne fait-elle pas double emploi, le physique et le psychique ne se confondent-ils pas? Si je reve d'une montagne d'or, elle n'existe sans doute pas en dehors du reve, mais _dans_ le reve elle est de nature ou d'essence parfaitement physique, c'est _comme_ physique qu'elle m'apparait. Si en ce moment je me permets de me souvenir de ma maison en Amerique, et des details de mon embarquement recent pour l'Italie, le phenomene pur, le fait qui se produit, qu'est-il? C'est, dit-on, ma pensee, avec son contenu. Mais encore ce contenu, qu'est-il? Il porte la forme d'une partie du monde reel, partie distante, il est vrai, de six mille kilometres d'espace et de six semaines de temps, mais reliee a la salle ou nous sommes par une foule de choses, objets et evenements, homogenes d'une part avec la salle et d'autre part avec l'objet de mes souvenirs.

Ce contenu ne se donne pas comme etant d'abord un tout petit fait interieur que je projetterais ensuite au loin, il se presente d'emblee comme le fait eloigne meme. Et l'acte de penser ce contenu, la conscience que j'en ai, que sont-ils? Sont-ce au fond autre chose que des manieres retrospectives de nommer le contenu lui-meme, lorsqu'on l'aura separe de tous ces intermediaires physiques, et relie a un nouveau groupe d'associes qui le font rentrer dans ma vie mentale, les emotions par exemple qu'il a eveillees en moi, l'attention que j'y porte, mes idees de tout a l'heure qui l'ont suscite comme souvenir? Ce n'est qu'en se rapportant a ces derniers associes que le phenomene arrive a etre classe comme _pensee_; tant qu'il ne se rapporte qu'aux premiers il demeure phenomene _objectif_.

Il est vrai que nous opposons habituellement nos images interieures aux objets, et que nous les considerons comme de petites copies, comme des calques ou doubles, affaiblis, de ces derniers. C'est qu'un objet present a une vivacite et une nettete superieures a celles de l'image. Il lui fait ainsi contraste; et pour me servir de l'excellent mot de Taine, il lui sert de _reducteur_. Quand les deux sont presents ensemble, l'objet prend le premier plan et l'image "recule," devient une chose "absente." Mais cet objet present, qu'est-il en lui-meme? De quelle etoffe est-il fait? De la meme etoffe que l'image. Il est fait de _sensations_; il est chose percue. Son _esse_ est _percipi_, et lui et l'image sont generiquement homogenes.

Si je pense en ce moment a mon chapeau que j'ai laisse tout a l'heure au vestiaire, ou est le dualisme, le discontinu, entre le chapeau pense et le chapeau reel? C'est d'un vrai _chapeau absent_ que mon esprit s'occupe. J'en tiens compte pratiquement comme d'une realite. S'il etait present sur cette table, le chapeau determinerait un mouvement de ma main: je l'enleverais. De meme ce chapeau concu, ce chapeau en idee, determinera tantot la direction de mes pas. J'irai le prendre. L'idee que j'en ai se continuera jusqu'a la presence sensible du chapeau, et s'y fondra harmonieusement.

Je conclus donc que,--bien qu'il y ait un dualisme pratique--puisque les images se distinguent des objets, en tiennent lieu, et nous y menent, il n'y a pas lieu de leur attribuer une difference de nature essentielle. Pensee et actualite sont faites d'une seule et meme etoffe, qui est l'etoffe de l'experience en general.

La psychologie de la perception exterieure nous mene a la meme conclusion. Quand j'apercois l'objet devant moi comme une table de telle forme, a telle distance, on m'explique que ce fait est du a deux facteurs, a une matiere de sensation qui me penetre par la voie des yeux et qui donne l'element d'exteriorite reelle, et a des idees qui se reveillent, vont a la rencontre de cette realite, la classent et l'interpretent. Mais qui peut faire la part, dans la table concretement apercue, de ce qui est sensation et de ce qui est idee? L'externe et l'interne, l'etendu et l'inetendu, se fusionnent et font un mariage indissoluble. Cela rappelle ces panoramas circulaires, ou des objets reels, rochers, herbe, chariots brises, etc., qui occupent l'avant-plan, sont si ingenieusement relies a la toile qui fait le fond, et qui represente une bataille ou un vaste paysage, que l'on ne sait plus distinguer ce qui est objet de ce qui est peinture. Les coutures et les joints sont imperceptibles.

Cela pourrait-il advenir si l'objet et l'idee etaient absolument dissemblables de nature?

* * * * *

Je suis convaincu que des considerations pareilles a celles que je viens d'exprimer auront deja suscite, chez vous aussi, des doutes au sujet du dualisme pretendu.

Et d'autres raisons de douter surgissent encore. Il y a toute une sphere d'adjectifs et d'attributs qui ne sont ni objectifs, ni subjectifs d'une maniere exclusive, mais que nous employons tantot d'une maniere et tantot d'une autre, comme si nous nous complaisions dans leur ambiguite. Je parle des qualites que nous _apprecions_, pour ainsi dire, dans les choses, leur cote esthetique, moral, leur valeur pour nous. La beaute, par exemple, ou reside-t-elle? Est-elle dans la statue, dans la sonate, ou dans notre esprit? Mon collegue a Harvard, George Santayana, a ecrit un livre d'esthetique,[117] ou il appelle la beaute "le plaisir objectifie"; et en verite, c'est bien ici qu'on pourrait parler de projection au dehors. On dit indifferemment une chaleur agreable, ou une sensation agreable de chaleur. La rarete, le precieux du diamant nous en paraissent des qualites essentielles. Nous parlons d'un orage affreux, d'un homme haissable, d'une action indigne, et nous croyons parler objectivement, bien que ces termes n'expriment que des rapports a notre sensibilite emotive propre. Nous disons meme un chemin penible, un ciel triste, un coucher de soleil superbe. Toute cette maniere animiste de regarder les choses qui parait avoir ete la facon primitive de penser des hommes, peut tres bien s'expliquer (et M. Santayana, dans un autre livre tout recent,[118] l'a bien expliquee ainsi) par l'habitude d'attribuer a l'objet _tout_ ce que nous ressentons en sa presence. Le partage du subjectif et de l'objectif est le fait d'une reflexion tres avancee, que nous aimons encore ajourner dans beaucoup d'endroits. Quand les besoins pratiques ne nous en tirent pas forcement, il semble que nous aimons a nous bercer dans le vague.

Les qualites secondes elles-memes, chaleur, son, lumiere, n'ont encore aujourd'hui qu'une attribution vague. Pour le sens commun, pour la vie pratique, elles sont absolument objectives, physiques. Pour le physicien, elles sont subjectives. Pour lui, il n'y a que la forme, la masse, le mouvement, qui aient une realite exterieure. Pour le philosophe idealiste, au contraire, forme et mouvement sont tout aussi subjectifs que lumiere et chaleur, et il n'y a que la chose-en-soi inconnue, le "noumene," qui jouisse d'une realite extramentale complete.

Nos sensations intimes conservent encore de cette ambiguite. Il y a des illusions de mouvement qui prouvent que nos premieres sensations de mouvement etaient generalisees. C'est le monde entier, avec nous, qui se mouvait. Maintenant nous distinguons notre propre mouvement de celui des objets qui nous entourent, et parmi les objets nous en distinguons qui demeurent en repos. Mais il est des etats de vertige ou nous retombons encore aujourd'hui dans l'indifferenciation premiere.

Vous connaissez tous sans doute cette theorie qui a voulu faire des emotions des sommes de sensations viscerales et musculaires. Elle a donne lieu a bien des controverses, et aucune opinion n'a encore conquis l'unanimite des suffrages. Vous connaissez aussi les controverses sur la nature de l'activite mentale. Les uns soutiennent qu'elle est une force purement spirituelle que nous sommes en etat d'apercevoir immediatement comme telle. Les autres pretendent que ce que nous nommons activite mentale (effort, attention, par exemple) n'est que le reflet senti de certains effets dont notre organisme est le siege, tensions musculaires au crane et au gosier, arret ou passage de la respiration, afflux de sang, etc.

De quelque maniere que se resolvent ces controverses, leur existence prouve bien clairement une chose, c'est qu'il est tres difficile, ou meme absolument impossible de savoir, par la seule inspection intime de certains phenomenes, s'ils sont de nature physique, occupant de l'etendue, etc., ou s'ils sont de nature purement psychique et interieure. Il nous faut toujours trouver des raisons pour appuyer notre avis; il nous faut chercher la classification la plus probable du phenomene; et en fin de compte il pourrait bien se trouver que toutes nos classifications usuelles eussent eu leurs motifs plutot dans les besoins de la pratique que dans quelque faculte que nous aurions d'apercevoir deux essences ultimes et diverses qui composeraient ensemble la trame des choses. Le corps de chacun de nous offre un contraste pratique presque violent a tout le reste du milieu ambiant. Tout ce qui arrive au dedans de ce corps nous est plus intime et important que ce qui arrive ailleurs. Il s'identifie avec notre moi, il se classe avec lui. Ame, vie, souffle, qui saurait bien les distinguer exactement? Meme nos images et nos souvenirs, qui n'agissent sur le monde physique que par le moyen de notre corps, semblent appartenir a ce dernier. Nous les traitons comme internes, nous les classons avec nos sentiments affectifs. Il faut bien avouer, en somme, que la question du dualisme de la pensee et de la matiere est bien loin d'etre finalement resolue.

Et voila terminee la premiere partie de mon discours. J'ai voulu vous penetrer, Mesdames et Messieurs, de mes doutes et de la realite, aussi bien que de l'importance, du probleme.

Quant a moi, apres de longues annees d'hesitation, j'ai fini par prendre mon parti carrement. Je crois que la conscience, telle qu'on se la represente communement, soit comme entite, soit comme activite pure, mais en tout cas comme fluide, inetendue, diaphane, vide de tout contenu propre, mais se connaissant directement elle-meme, spirituelle enfin, je crois, dis-je, que cette conscience est une pure chimere, et que la somme de realites concretes que le mot conscience devrait couvrir, merite une toute autre description, description, du reste, qu'une philosophie attentive aux faits et sachant faire un peu d'analyse, serait desormais en etat de fournir ou plutot de commencer a fournir. Et ces mots m'amenent a la seconde partie de mon discours. Elle sera beaucoup plus courte que la premiere, parce que si je la developpais sur la meme echelle, elle serait beaucoup trop longue. Il faut, par consequent, que je me restreigne aux seules indications indispensables.

* * * * *

Admettons que la conscience, la _Bewusstheit_, concue comme essence, entite, activite, moitie irreductible de chaque experience, soit supprimee, que le dualisme fondamental et pour ainsi dire ontologique soit aboli et que ce que nous supposions exister soit seulement ce qu'on a appele jusqu'ici le _contenu_, le _Inhalt_, de la conscience; comment la philosophie va-t-elle se tirer d'affaire avec l'espece de monisme vague qui en resultera? Je vais tacher de vous insinuer quelques suggestions positives la-dessus, bien que je craigne que, faute du developpement necessaire, mes idees ne repandront pas une clarte tres grande. Pourvu que j'indique un commencement de sentier, ce sera peut-etre assez.

Au fond, pourquoi nous accrochons-nous d'une maniere si tenace a cette idee d'une conscience surajoutee a l'existence du contenu des choses? Pourquoi la reclamons-nous si fortement, que celui qui la nierait nous semblerait plutot un mauvais plaisant qu'un penseur? N'est-ce pas pour sauver ce fait indeniable que le contenu de l'experience n'a pas seulement une existence propre et comme immanente et intrinseque, mais que chaque partie de ce contenu deteint pour ainsi dire sur ses voisines, rend compte d'elle-meme a d'autres, sort en quelque sorte de soi pour etre sue et qu'ainsi tout le champ de l'experience se trouve etre transparent de part en part, ou constitue comme un espace qui serait rempli de miroirs?

Cette bilateralite des parties de l'experience,--a savoir d'une part, qu'elles _sont_ avec des qualites propres; d'autre part, qu'elles sont rapportees a d'autres parties et _sues_--l'opinion regnante la constate et l'explique par un dualisme fondamental de constitution appartenant a chaque morceau d'experience en propre. Dans cette feuille de papier il n'y a pas seulement, dit-on, le contenu, blancheur, minceur, etc., mais il y a ce second fait de la conscience de cette blancheur et de cette minceur. Cette fonction d'etre "rapporte," de faire partie de la trame entiere d'une experience plus comprehensive, on l'erige en fait ontologique, et on loge ce fait dans l'interieur meme du papier, en l'accouplant a sa blancheur et a sa minceur. Ce n'est pas un rapport extrinseque qu'on suppose, c'est une moitie du phenomene meme.

Je crois qu'en somme on se represente la realite comme constituee de la facon dont sont faites les "couleurs" qui nous servent a la peinture. Il y a d'abord des matieres colorantes qui repondent au contenu, et il y a un vehicule, huile ou colle, qui les tient en suspension et qui repond a la conscience. C'est un dualisme complet, ou, en employant certains procedes, on peut separer chaque element de l'autre par voie de soustraction. C'est ainsi qu'on nous assure qu'en faisant un grand effort d'abstraction introspective, nous pouvons saisir notre conscience sur le vif, comme une activite spirituelle pure, en negligeant a peu pres completement les matieres qu'a un moment donne elle eclaire.

Maintenant je vous demande si on ne pourrait pas tout aussi bien renverser absolument cette maniere de voir. Supposons, en effet, que la realite premiere soit de nature neutre, et appelons-la par quelque nom encore ambigu, comme _phenomene_, _donne_, _Vorfindung_. Moi-meme j'en parle volontiers au pluriel, et je lui donne le nom d'_experiences pures_. Ce sera un monisme, si vous voulez, mais un monisme tout a fait rudimentaire et absolument oppose au soi-disant monisme bilateral du positivisme scientifique ou spinoziste.

Ces experiences pures existent et se succedent, entrent dans des rapports infiniment varies les unes avec les autres, rapports qui sont eux-memes des parties essentielles de la trame des experiences. Il y a "Conscience" de ces rapports au meme titre qu'il y a "Conscience" de leurs termes. Il en resulte que des _groupes_ d'experiences se font remarquer et distinguer, et qu'une seule et meme experience, vu la grande variete de ses rapports, peut jouer un role dans plusieurs groupes a la fois. C'est ainsi que dans un certain contexte de voisins, elle serait classee comme un phenomene physique, tandis que dans un autre entourage elle figurerait comme un fait de conscience, a peu pres comme une meme particule d'encre peut appartenir simultanement a deux lignes, l'une verticale, l'autre horizontale, pourvu qu'elle soit situee a leur intersection.