Note 1, page 5.—Bailey: op. cit., First Series, p. 52.
Note 2, page 11.—Smaller Logic, Sec. 194.
Note 3, page 16.—Exploratio philosophica, Part I, 1865, pp.
xxxviii, 130.
Note 4, page 20.—Hinneberg: Die Kultur der Gegenwart:
Systematische Philosophie. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907.
LECTURE II
Note 1, page 50.—The difference is that the bad parts of this
finite are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists
may hope that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if
they had not been.
Note 2, page 51.—Quoted by W. Wallace: Lectures and Essays,
Oxford, 1898, p. 560.
Note 3, page 51.—Logic, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181.
Note 4, page 52.—Ibid., p. 304.
Note 5, page 53.—Contemporary Review, December, 1907, vol.
92, p. 618.
Note 6, page 57.—Metaphysic, sec. 69 ff.
Note 7, page 62.—The World and the Individual, vol. i, pp.
131-132.
Note 8, page 67.—A good illustration of this is to be found in a
controversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in Mind
for 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that
'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of
degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute
identity and absolute non-comparability.
Note 9, page 75.—Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, p. 184.
Note 10, page 75.—Appearance and Reality, 1893, pp. 141-142.
Note 11, page 76.—Cf. Elements of Metaphysics, p. 88.
Note 12, page 77.—Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 184.
Note 13, page 80.—For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley's
intellectualism, see Appendix A.
LECTURE III
Note 1, page 94.—Hegel, Smaller Logic, pp. 184-185.
Note 2, page 95.—Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of
contradiction in his Wissenschaft der Logik, Bk. ii, sec. 1,
chap, ii, C, Anmerkung 3.
Note 3, page 95—Hegel, in Blackwood's Philosophical
Classics, p. 162.
Note 4, page 95—Wissenschaft der Logik, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap,
ii, B, a.
Note 5, page 96—Wallace's translation of the Smaller Logic,
p. 128.
Note 6, page 101—Joachim, The Nature of Truth, Oxford, 1906,
pp. 22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be
the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of
that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them.
Note 7, page 115.—The World and the Individual, vol. ii, pp.
385, 386, 409.
Note 8, page 116.—The best un_inspired argument (again not
ironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins's excellent book,
The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, Macmillan, 1902.
Note 9, page 117.—Cf. Dr. Fuller's excellent article,' Ethical
monism and the problem of evil,' in the Harvard Journal of Theology, vol. i, No. 2, April, 1908.
Note 10, page 120.—Metaphysic, sec. 79.
Note 11, page 121.—Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, secs.
150, 153.
Note 12, page 121.—The Nature of Truth, 1906, pp. 170-171.
Note 13, page 121.—Ibid., p. 179.
Note 14, page 123.—The psychological analogy that certain finite
tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together,
cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential
elements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness
seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable
parts.
Note 15, page 128.—Judging by the analogy of the relation which our
central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower
ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever
superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination
of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might
be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving
of other human contents.
LECTURE IV
Note 1, page 143.—The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 227.
Note 2, page 165.—Fechner: Ueber die Seelenfrage, 1861, p.
170.
Note 3, page 168.—Fechner's latest summarizing of his views, Die
Tagesansicht gegenueber der Nachtansicht, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I
understand, in process of translation. His Little Book of Life after
Death exists already in two American versions, one published by
Little, Brown &Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago.
Note 4, page 176.—Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted
from my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of
non-human consciousness in his Appearance and Reality, pp.
269-272.
LECTURE V
Note 1, page 182.—Royce: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p.
379.
Note 2, page 184.—The World and the Individual, vol. ii, pp.
58-62.
Note 3, page 190.—I hold to it still as the best description of an
enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They
demonstrably do not contain the lower states that know the same
objects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the
Psychological Review for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp.
119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to
talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,'
leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case.
Note 4, page 194.—I abstract from the consciousness attached to the
whole itself, if such consciousness be there.
LECTURE VI
Note 1, page 250.—For a more explicit vindication of the notion of
activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as a
definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic
critics.
I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible
critics of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against
misunderstandings of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully
explain his statement that concepts have a practical but not a
theoretical use. Understood in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible,
for by concepts we certainly increase our knowledge about things, and
that seems a theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements
may follow in its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily
refutable out of his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything,
to give a better insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies
give: yet what is it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its
author not reason by concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show
that they can give no insight?
To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. In
using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of concepts
generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary
emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for they
serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what quarter we
must practically turn if we wish to gain that completer insight
into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs our hopes
away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. What he
reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude. He
but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our
naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense.
This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which we
may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with a
good philosophic conscience!—who ever conferred on us so valuable a
freedom before?
By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet
the other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new
order, with particular relations between them. These relations are just
as much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as
the distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it.
Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of
perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, we
get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as
mathematics, logic, and a priori metaphysics. To know all this
truth is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for
the relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static
ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or
contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing happens in the
realm of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic
gain fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real
world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and
history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right in
turning us away from conception and towards perception.
By combining concepts with percepts, we can draw maps of the
distribution of other percepts in distant space and time. To know
this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the
achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without
percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From
maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the
slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming
our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous
practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists.
But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths of
comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new
values into life. In their mapping function they stand to
perception in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing
stand to touch—Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of
anticipatory touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of
independent glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible
enhancement of life's value follows. Even so does the conceptual world
bring new ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not
only serve us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast
pictures is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements,
and feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused.
Abstractness per se seems to have a touch of ideality.
ROYCE'S 'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as
anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their
sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to
cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE
contends, in his Philosophy of Loyalty, appears another thing
altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. It
transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to live
for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a
'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling
successes.' (Op. cit., Lecture VII, especially Sec. v.)
Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new value to be
regarded as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for
altho a value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the
essence of that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in
its being a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as
their value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts
connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life,
so here again Bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who
have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own vital
careers differently. It doesn't necessarily follow that they understand
other vital careers more intimately.
Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones,
conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not,
of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant.
This surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called a
theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson's criticisms hold good.
Much as conception may tell us about such invisible objects, it
sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed, our
definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less
instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned in
such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a
solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules
may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the
help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about
among our sensible experiences.
We see from these considerations how easily the question of whether
the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into a
logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to
recognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is
certain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right in
contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly
impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to
sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the
whats as well as the thats of reality, relational as well as
terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. Yet
the remoter unperceived arrangements, temporal, spatial, and
logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as
well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may
call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need,
according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately
right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he
insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of
what we ought to know.
Note 2, page 266.—Gaston Rageot, Revue Philosophique, vol.
lxiv, p. 85 (July, 1907).
Note 3, page 268.—I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly
as I could, in my Psychology, and talked truly (as I believe) in
certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly
comes back.
LECTURE VII
Note 1, page 278.—Introduction to Hume, 1874, p. 151.
Note 2, page 279.—Ibid., pp. 16, 21, 36, et passim.
Note 3, page 279.—See, inter alia, the chapter on the
'Stream of Thought' in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius,
Psychologie, 1897, chaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, Idees
Generales de Psychologie, 1906, passim.
Note 4, page 280.—Compare, as to all this, an article by the
present writer, entitled 'A world of pure experience,' in the
Journal of Philosophy, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905).
Note 5, page 280.—Green's attempt to discredit sensations by
reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already
named, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how
intellectualism is dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green
as synonymous with the unreal.
Note 6, page 283.—Philosophy of Reflection, i, 248 ff.
Note 7, page 284.—Most of this paragraph is extracted from an
address of mine before the American Psychological Association, printed
in the Psychological Review, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in
the fact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present
bergsonian position.
Note 8, page 289.—The conscious self of the moment, the central
self, is probably determined to this privileged position by its
functional connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. It is
the present acting self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be
'subconscious' to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also
exerts an active function, it may be conscious in a wider way,
conscious, as it were, over our heads.
On the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson's Matiere
et Memoire, passim, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in
Muensterberg's Grundzuege der Psychologie, chap, xv; those in my
own Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in
W. McDougall's Physiological Psychology, chap. vii.
Note 9, page 295.—Compare Zend-Avesta, 2d edition, vol. i,
pp. 165 ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; Die Tagesansicht, etc.,
chap, v, Sec. 6; and chap. xv.
LECTURE VIII
Note 1, page 330.—Blondel: Annales de Philosophie Chretienne, June, 1906, p. 241.