The Problem of Reality: Being Outline Suggestions for a Philosophical Reconstruction

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface ........ i

Introductory Note on Terminology . . 9

Preface

The following pages contain suggestions for a reconstruction of the Philosophical Problem and for its solution, taking it up at the point at which it was left by the classical philosophical schools of Germany. To designate the subject-matter of the Problem, I have sometimes used the word " Metaphysic " for the sake of convenience. It would be useless to be deterred from this by any fear lest the ordinary Philistine should, at the mere use of the word, be thrown into convulsions. Of course, its bare mention will cause him to froth at the mouth with inept common-places as to the impossibility of any science other than that of ** phenomena.'* He will kindly enunciate for you a variety of unimpeachable propositions, all as true as they

PREFACE.

are trivial, which he considers crushing, and which would indeed be so, had they anything whatsoever to do with the point under discussion. A certain Problem exists, call it by what name we will, — " Reality,'' " Experience," " Nature " {(pva-iag) — as given in Consciousness. This is the Problem to be explained, to be reduced to terms of Reflective Thought. " Metaphysic," properly interpreted, need mean no more than the analysis of " Nature/* of the given, albeit under its ultimate aspect of something experienced. This Problem only leads us beyond nature or beyond experience in so far as it seeks to formulate the conditions under which experience is possible, or which all experience presupposes. In this sense it may be said to be beyond Nature — iii€Ta(f>vo'ucos — just as the terms of any synthesis in their abstraction are in a sense beyond or outside the synthesis as concrete.

It does not require a very great deal of

PREFACE, thought to see (at least after it has been once pointed out) that the whole Problem with which we are here concerned is summed up in what we call " Consciousness," either potential or actual. All Object is, in the last resort, incontrovertibly nothing but a possible or an actual determination of Consciousness. Every actual determination, or, as it is often, with doubtful propriety called, " state " of Consciousness, bears within itself the presupposition of another determination or ** state " which, because other than the actual determination, is regarded by the unreflective understanding as distinct from Consciousness altogether. Philosophic analysis corrects this opinion of the unreflective understanding, — this " common-sense " view as it is termed, — and discloses Consciousness as the alpha and omega of all things. It is unnecessary to dilate further upon this point now, as so many of the following chapters are more or less occupied with its elucidation.

PREFACE,

It is obvious, then, that the Metaphysical Problem exists, and that it is futile to deny its existence. Those who dislike the term ** Metaphysic '' may call it " Theory of Knowledge," but there is no point gained by doing so. It is open to anyone to allege want of interest in the Problem, but not to deny that the Problem obtains. For a man to question its existence and to suggest that all Philosophical investigation issues in mere logomachy, because he has no aptitude for the working-out of the Problem, or has no interest in its subject-matter, is just as absurd as it would be for another man, destitute of any mathematical faculty, to question the possibility of mathematics, and to suggest that its symbols were simply hocuspocus. Philosophical treatises are not written for those who take no interest in the Problem of Philosophy. You cannot make a man feel an interest where he does not. I well remember my early indignation at being required to

PREFACE.

investigate whether, if two sides of a triangle were equal, the angles opposite to those sides would be also equal, simply because 1 was perfectly indifferent as to whether they were equal or unequal. So it is with the man who despises Philosophical investigations. The difference is that the average man of culture is vastly more concerned with the properties of lines and angles than with the conditions and meaning of Consciousness. Like all majorities, the majority who are interested in the problems of Mathematics, but not in those of Metaphysic can, because of their majority, easily sustain their attitude of contempt for those for whom the Problems of Metaphysic are of greater interest.

Practical utility is another question, and one upon which it is almost futile to enter. In the first place, the Problem of Conscious Reality being once admitted, it is obvious that it must contain within itself the method on which all

PREFACE.

Other investigations in the last resort depend. Apart from this, to boycott a Problem, especially one so far-reaching, on the ground that no immediate utility is to the superficial view apparent in it, is a manifest absurdity. Yet this is the attitude taken up, to all intents and purposes, by those who say that Philosophy is an extinct science, that there is no general Problem of Life and Thought as apart from the special sciences, and that all that the word "Philosophy" can henceforward mean, if used at all, is a generalisation of the results of the special sciences.

The argument sometimes heard that, with the great social questions around us pressing for solution, abstract Philosophy must yield to studies having an immediate bearing on human progress, expresses undeniably a certain truth. But it applies equally to the investigation of nearly all departments of Natural Science. Lavoisier was no meta-

PREFACE, physician, yet he was told that " the republic has no need of chemists." I readily admit that a great and satisfactory progress in Philosophy, as in other intellectual departments, is only possible after the solution of the social question, but the deliberate ignoring, for an indefinite period, of any subject of human interest is a policy that, even were it desirable, could not be consistently carried out

In such discussions as follow, it is difficult to draw the line between expounding at length, at the risk of wearying some readers, points with which they are already familiar, and rendering oneself unintelligible to others to whom the question is more or less new. I make this observation, on the one hand, in order to forestall the criticism that some items of my exposition are stale, and, on the other hand, in order to excuse myself with those who, from want of familiarity with Philosophical literature, may find it hard to follow portions of the

8 PREFACE.

argument. I may say, in conclusion, however, that I believe that there is nothing in the following pages that a thoughtful reader who has ever opened a book on Philosophy should find any difficulty in grasping.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON TER- MINOLOGY.

The metaphysicophobist often accuses Philosophy of being a simple logomachy. . The implication is, that the philosopher or metaphysician makes words take the place of thought. Now, those who have devoted serious attention to the investigation of the conditions of Consciousness know well enough that words, so far from being a welcome auxiliary to the philosophic thinker, form one of his greatest stumbling-blocks. That a " fightabout- words" Jias occupied a place in the History of Philosophy is true enough, but this is the fault, not of Philosophy, but of language itself. It arises from the difficulty which exists, of expressing adequately, in the state of development as yet attained by language, the distinctions discovered by Reflective Thought. Philosophic Thought has outstripped language. Such logomachy, then, as does obtain, is simply lo THE PROBLEM OF REALITY.

due to defects, not of Philosophic Thought, but of language, which can only imperfectly and ambiguously express Thought-distinctions.

"Subject" The term "Subject," for in-

stance, has a curious philosophic history, and was originally used in the opposite sense to that universal since Kant. In the following chapters, the word **Subject," used with a capital letter for the sake of marking a distinction, is confined exclusively to the " I " of apperception, the referee of all Consciousness, and is not employed, as is the customary fashion, to mean the individual Consciousness.

The word ** Reality " again may be used with two or three meanings. It may be employed exclusively to denote common-sense Consciousness. With me, it means any object or synthesis "bSu^!" appearing in Consciousness of whatsoever nature, an4 is thus synonymous with the word ** Object" or Existence, in the widest significations of those words. There is another and a special sense, in which the word ** Reality ** means the highest and most complete expression of a thing, its fullest development. This is its meaning as used in the Hegelian system. In this sense " Reality " is synony-

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY, ii

mous with one of the meanings of " Truth'' Here the *' Reality " of Conscious- "Truth." ness, or " Reality " in its highest significance would mean the fullest, the most complete development of Consciousness. In this sense, it may also be used for the specific .determinations of Consciousness. For example, the " Reality " of a flower is not the stem, nor the bud, but the flower as it is at the moment before it drops its petals and falls into decay, that is to say, the flower at its ripest and when most fully expanded. This is the purpose, the telosy of seed, stem and bud. It is all that the flower as such has to express. The ** truth " of a thing also means the fullest expression of its development, the final phase to which all previous phases are contributory as means to an end. The term '* Reality " is, however, used by Kant and by others, to express the intensiveness of feeling, and hence as a mere element in a perceptive synthesis. It is never used by me in this sense. The lowest and hence fundamental stage of Reality is, obviously, sensible consciousness, its elements being per se unreal, i.e. mere abstractions.

The word ** being " I employ with a distinctive Signification, not as synonymous with Real- "Being." ity or Existcncc, but as the element in Reality of in-itselfness or self-positing^ which, in all Objects corresponds to the " I " in the primal synthesis of Consciousness.

"I^'SSSS:- The words *' Knowledge " and ** Experience" are from our present standpoint, synonymous with Object-in-general or Reality. There is no Object that is not a synthesis of determinations of Consciousness, and, as such, a piece of Knowledge or Experience.

"Thought." " Thought " is in these pages

solely employed to express the element of concept-forming.

'"o?C?^"' The "concept" or ^^category" is that unification of the sense impression, or mere Feeling, whereby it is constituted Reality, in other words, it is the final element which goes to make up the Object.

'i5S5|hv? By ** Reflective Thought" I

mean, not the Thought entering into the Object, which, inasmuch as it goes to the making up of the latter, may be termed " Productive Thought," but that Thought as reproduced in the individual mind. The Thought that enters into the Object is immediately common to all.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY. 13

It belongs to Consciousness-in-general, irrespective of individuals. But on the other hand, Reflective Thought, although it is governed by general laws, belongs nevertheless immediately to each individual remembering mind only.

"Idee." The ''Idee'' in the Hegelian

system is the developed form of the concept. "Understanding." The ** Understanding," in the classical German Philosophy, means Reflective- Thought in its critical stage as separating and defining, the holding fast of distinctions to the exclusion of their opposites.

"Reason." " Reasou," on the other hand,

means the insight into the essential unity of things in their opposition, the fusing of abstractions in the concrete whole.

"•^^^" Of Aristotle's distinction be-

tween ** matter" and *'form" it is scarcely necessary to say much. It may, in Anglo- Saxon, be most briefly expressed by saying that *' matter " is the /^^/-ness of things, while. " form " is their a;^a/-ness.

«|^^e> Every Reality consists of cer-

tain "elements" or "principles." Viewed /^r se — as distinguished from their union in synthesis — these "elements" are abstract qtwad the Reality in question, but viewed in their synthetic union they together constitute the Reality.

Api)Si?ptiSL" The term " unity of apperception," by which Kant designates the primitive unity of Consciousness, I regard as a function of the pure Subject, and in this we have the primary distinction between what I have termed the " logical " and the ** a-logical.*'

In the undifferentiated Subject of all Consciousness, we have the a-logical in its purest form. The a-logical also appears in Reality as the element of mere Feeling and in events as Chance, and so forth. But all this will be sufficiently discussed in the subsequent pages. "TransoendentaL" The word " transcendental," though avoided by me as much as possible, means Consciousness regarded in its primary elements, and is in this sense synonymous with *' metaphysical," neither words implying, as they are commonly supposed to do, something outside Experience, but merely connoting the conditions under which all Experience is possible.

These few comments will include all that it is necessary to say regarding the mere definition of terms. ** Particularity," " universality," and some other terms are explained in the course of the exposition.

Chapter I. The General Nature Of Reality

Philosophy with many persons means speculation on things in general. For the student of the development of human thought, Philosoph)' means inquiry into the true significance of Reality. It means the reduction of the totality of things, or, in other words, of our concrete or immediate Consciousness, to terms of our abstract or reflective Consciousness. The possibility of our doing this rests upon the fact that all Reality contains a "^jSClSI."' Thought-element. Were thought and thing radically opposed to, or even distinct from, one another, not only Philosophy, but **common-sense" itself would be impossible. A Reality or a thing containing no Thought-element would be unapprehensible, unknowable. If however we examine into our use and meaning of the word '* Reality " we shall find that it involves the notion of apprehensibility, and that i6 THE PROBLEM OF REAUTY.

hence an unknowable Reality, a Reality that, by its very nature, cannot become a content of Consciousness or be known, is a contradiction in terms. An unknown Reality — a Reality, that is, which is not an actual Object of Knowledge, can be spoken of; but such a Reality is none the less assumed as a possible Object of Knowledge, or it could not be spoken of. If what is here said be doubted, the doubter may fairly be challenged to point to any Reality or thing, of which Thought is not a necessary component. What, for example, do we mean by the terms used to express the specific Realities of " common sense" Consciousness," — " table," " house," " tree," — except Thought distinctions } We affirm a thing to be a table by virtue of recognising it in Thought under certain concepts. Its Reality as " table " involves its distinction from other Realities that are not ** table," and its reciprocal connection with other Realities or Objects under certain Thought-forms or categories common to them all. It is scarcely necessary nowadays to show that the empiricist notion of an experience of a succession of particular objects — '' tables," houses," **trees " — building up the general conception of the

THE GENERAL NATURE OF REALITY. tj

Object, does not militate against what is here said. It may be quite true that the individual mind awakens to the knowledge of the fact that an Object is what it is, by virtue of reflection on experience, and further that it is by virtue of reflection on experience that it is able to abstract the universal concept from the Object as given. But this does not alter the fact that the universal concept forms part of the Object in its original concreteness. The Thought-element or concept- relation which the mind abstracts from the Object is there to be abstracted. All that empiricism has to teach us resolves itself therefore into the truism that the form of the concept as abstract — or, as the Schoolmen would have said, in its "second intention" — is not the same as its form as an integer of the concrete world — or in its " first intention." The " universal" and "necessary" element which all Reality involves is clearly thought into the Object. Yet although thought into the Object, it is clearly not thought into it by the individual mind, since the latter finds it already given in the Object. Take it away from the Object and the Object ceases to be Object, ceases to be real. The ordinary empirical perception represents the lowest stage of Consciousness. The Thought-element, which the individual mind finds embedded in the Reality as presented to it, shows that the Reality itself has no meaning except as forming part of a thinking consciousness, potential or actual.^ So much as to the ** universal " and ** necessary " element in Experience, or Kripwledge, which is plainly Thought, and nothing but Thought — Idea, and nothing but Idea.

Let us now abstract the general concept-form from the thing, " table," tree," or " house," together with the special categories, such as ** substantiality," causal connection," etc., which are involved in the nature of every Object as such ; if we do so, we shall find that all that remains over are the sense-impressions, extenpeoiing. sion, hardness, colour, in other words. Feeling. Once the " universal " and " necessary " element, the category, is gone, the Reality has ceased to be, leaving behind it mere Feeling ; the thing has vanished, and the caput fnortuunty blind Feeling, remains in its place. Old Kant was clearly right, then, when he saw,

^ See Appendix A, which the reader should study before proceeding further with this chapter.

although he did not always consistently keep the point in view, that the independence of the Thing or Object belonged to its " universal " and '' necessary " element — Thought. The merely particular and contingent element, Feeling, can plainly of itself never furnish Reality. If we look at these two elements still more closely, we shall see further that Feeling is e;^mediate in Consciousness and that Thought is mediate. Thought presupposes the material element Feeling as its stibstratum. The distinctions, relations or categories, according as we please to call them, which Thought strikes out, are struck out of Feeling. It is Feeling which is differentiated and to which Thought gives the touch of actuality constituting it Object or Thing. Thought reduces the inchoate principle of Feeling to definiteness and consistency by relating it under the concept-form. This is primarily a mere determination under the concept-form-in-general, in accordance with the principle of Porphyry's Tree. It is defined in the first place as Object or Thing in an increasing specification. Thus, all Reality is Object or Thing, the words being indeed synonymous. The Object or Thing is further defined as, for example, animate or inanimate, sensitive or insensitive, rational or irrational, but always in an increasing specification. But the concept-form always remains " universal," however low it may be brought down. It is always a form which admits of a possible infinity of instances coming under it. Hence the concept-form never touches the ^^e^-ness of rA/tf-ness. the Object ; the latter is always distinguished from it as immediate Feeling, or, so to say, as raw-material.

The same applies to the special form of the category as determining the world of Objects inter se, i.e. to "causation," "reciprocity" and the rest. In short, the nature of the concept-form is always and exclusively " universal," and never touches the particular. Such, then, is the element of Thought, considered per se. And for this reason, language, which is thq empirical sign of Thought, can never express anything but " universals." The very ''this*' of language, like its '' here*' and its '' nowl' is always universalised. It has passed through the mill of Thought and has become any " this^' and, therefore, nothing at all, in the sense that the this-ness, the particularity, having been mediated by Thought, has ceased to be its original self. The true ''this'' cannot be expressed in Thought or language ; it is in its nature //^/mediate, and when mediatised disappears and leaves behind a mere simulacrum of its former self. This is the gulf which always separates thinking and being. I am of course here speaking of Thought proper — abstract Thought. The mere psychological, remembered image, it is true, has its own Mw-ness, and is real as a mental image or memory, though it is not real in the same sense in which the Object remembered is real. It is not so, because, in the first place, the sensible content of its this-n^ss is different (for instance, less definite) ; and because, in the second place, it is not related synthetically under the categories presupposed by Reality in its first intention, i.e. by ordinary "common-sense" Consciousness. In the case of hallucinations, the second reason alone applies. Here the sensible content is the same, but the categorisation requisite to constitute its physical Reality fails at some point or other.

Qualities as such, the whole essence of which resides in their this-n^ss, can, similarly, not be expressed in Thought or language.

No one, for example, can convey in language, hardness, softness, colour or sound in themselves. The nature of qualities, as belonging to pure Feeling, resides, as already said, exclusively in their ^Ats-ness, and is therefore absolutely untranslatable into Thought, and is hence incommunicable in language. This indeterminate particularity or iAzs-ness it is that always separates the Reality from the Thought or concept in its abstraction. A Reality is never a mere " universal," but always contains a felt /^w-ness.

Logical and a-iogioai. The element of Feeling, which enters into every determinate Consciousness or Reality, is always antithetical to the concept or Thought-element, which informs it. The one is through and through particular, the other is through and through universal. The first is, as I may term it, through and through a4ogicaly the second through and through logical. Yet these two elements, antithetical though they be, have a common root and pre-supposition, and this common root is the potentiality of all consciousness expressed in that which we term ** I " (** ego "). We cannot get beyond this as the ultimate ground of all Thinking and Feeling, as that which is consciouSy and hence as the ultimate matter of Reality. Always passing over into Feeling and Thinking, it is yet never exhausted in them, but always maintains itself as the central element in the process from which the other elements of Feeling and Thinking come, and into which they return. We can only define the " ego " in words, as the possibility of Feeling and Thinking, as the " that " to which, in the last resort, they are both reducible as mere manifestations, but which is yet only realised in synthesis with them, namely in Concrete Consciousness. The primary element Feeling or sensibility is related to the ** I " in a double manner ; firstly, as its mere negation, otherness or difference within itself — I have a Feeling, am determined as Feeling ; and secondly, as determined or informed by the ** ego ** as a world of external objects connected indissolubly with itself and with each other in a definite manner. This relating-activity is termed Thought, and constitutes the secondary or logical element in Reality. ^^w'JJSii^'SJS"* The principle of individuation or particularity, and therewith, a fortiori.

that of number or plurality, first arises in the Object considered as "universe." The ** world** displays itself as an endless plurality. Through its Thought-activity, the *' I " regains in the individual mind, or in (as Kant calls it) ** the object of the internal sense," a pseudo-unity antithetical to this plurality or number. But it is a pseudo-unity in the sense that it is not an absolute unity like the " I " which is conscious of it as of all other objects. The "I" which constitutes the possibility of all consciousness whatever, experiences the world of external Objects immediately in its plurality. The personality or mind, on the contrary, only appears immediately in Consciousness as a unity. It is the immediate intuition of myself as this memory-synthesis which gives colour to the notion that my individual mind is absolute. But Thought revolts against such an assumption and proclaims it inconsistent with the system of Reality as a whole. It thereby reduces the memory-synthesis, or personality, myself, from the rank of an absolute unity to that of a relative unit, in other words, to the same level as that of external objects, or to that of being a particular representative of a universal class or kind.

^aimmimmi^t^mf

"'^ "*rSgSS?**^**' The transcendental **ego'' has often been the butt of small wits. It Is, however, of the first importance in Philosophy to distinguish between the Subject of Consciousness-in-general, the fundamental presupposition of all Reality whatsoever, and the mere memory-synthesis or personality, which is in truth its Object, but which ** common-sense " Consciousness confounds with it under the common word *' I " or " Subject." ** I am self-conscious," simply means " I," Subject, apprehend or become aware of this memory-synthesis or personality as Object. In Self- Consciousness the ** I " is objectified immediately as a more or less definite unity of Thoughts and Feelings (mental world) categorised at second hand, just as in external perception or common- sense Consciousness it is objectified as a more or less definite unity of Thoughts and Feelings, categorised at first hand. The first is element merely in a synthesis, albeit the fundamental element, and, apart from the synthesis, it is abstract and therefore unreal. The second is concrete or real, and therefore itself a synthesis, standing indeed at the opposite pole to the former. But here the saying.'* les extremes se touchent " has its application. This most complex of all Realities, the memory-synthesis, or self, can only by a refinement of abstract Thought be distinguished from its antithesis, the Subject of Consciousness^in-generaL In popular phraseology, they are confounded under the word ** I ; " in philosophical terminology, under the word " Subject." It is at the point of Self- Consciousness that Subject and Object coalesce and proclaim their essential unity. Were it not for the exigencies of language, one might more correctly reserve the words " me *' and " myself " for the self as the Object of Self- Consciousness. But if we retain the word " Subject " for the memory-synthesis, we must certainly invent another word for the ** I " which apprehends that memory-synthesis or which is the referee of all modes of Consciousness, mental and material.

aSti;;'«i5lSoa^ The difficulty of the ordinary man in getting rid of the absurd notion that Reality is anything else than a synthesis of relations in the Subject of Consciousness-in general, of which his personality or memory-synthesis is merely the temporary determination, — the idea which he has that the '* mind "

merely apprehends a Reality subsisting in itself, independent, not only of his own mind but of Consciousness altogether — rests upon his inability to grasp the cardinal distinction I have just indicated. He cannot distinguish, that is to say, between the mental world itself, on the one hand, the sum of thoughts and feelings knit together by memory called ** mind " or ** personality," which is itself the Object of experience in the fact of Self-Consciousness, and. on the other hand, the " I " which apprehends or experiences all that is apprehensible — Kant's " I " of original apperception. Both the mental world and the material world are respectively parts of the experience of this latter.

The assumption of a world outside myself in the last resort means nothing but the ascription of a certain section of my Feelings as immediate in a universal Subject to which numerical difference cannot be ascribed, but which is the basis of all Consciousness, whether mine or thine, in contradistinction to another section of my Feelings, which I recognise as merely secondary and derivative, because falling exclusively within the range of myself, or memory-synthesis, which necessarily implies this Subject

Only by virtue of the fact that this assumption, as one may call it, has its roots in the deepest recesses of Consciousness, do I become aware of an external world as such and recognise it as the common property of all minds. This is the only possible solution of the distinction between what, in the loose terminology of the psychologists, is called the Subjective and Objective. For the sake of convenience, one may term the first class of feelings — those which are extraindividual — felt-nesses, whilst reserving the word feelings for the second class, for those, namely, which I recognise as belonging, directly and exclusively, to my memory-synthesis or self. The Feelings in the first class, no less than those in the second, are viewed through this memory-synthesis, although distinguishable from it Fallacy as opposed to truth simply means the distortion of the cognition of the **pure ego" by that refracting influence of the memory-synthesis.^ This "self" soulobject or mental world, as already said, in spite of the absoluteness of its unity as felt, is reduced by Reflective-Thought to a merely relative unit — to an individual of a kind or