Personal idealism : philosophical essays by eight members of the University of Oxford

Preface

This volume originated in the conversations and discussions of a group of friends drawn together primarily by their membership in the Oxford Philosophical Society. The Society was started in the spring of 1898, and among some of the most regular attendants at its meetings a certain sympathy of view soon declared itself. In the course of two years the trend of opinion had grown so definite as to suggest to me the project of a volume of essays. Among those who- seemed likely to contribute I circulated a programme which made it the object of our volume " to represent a tendency in contemporary thinking, to signalise one phase or aspect in the development of Oxford idealism." That tendency was summed up in a phrase which I thought I was originating at the time I wrote the programme, though it seems to have occurred independently to others. 1 It is the phrase we have chosen for our title, " Personal Idealism." For me our volume fulfils the purpose with which it was projected so far as it develops and defends the principle of personality.

Personality, one would have supposed, ought never to have needed special advocacy in this self-assertive country of ours. And yet by some of the leading thinkers of our day it has been neglected ; while by others it has been bitterly attacked. What makes its vindication the more urgent is

1 Prof. Howison uses it to characterise the metaphysical theory of his Limits of Evolution, published last year.

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that attacks have come from two different sides. One adversary tells each of us : " You are a transitory resultant of physical processes" ; and the other: " You are an unreal appearance of the Absolute." Naturalism and Absolutism, antagonistic as they seem to be, combine in assuring us that personality is an illusion.

Naturalism and Absolutism, then, are the adversaries against whom the personal idealist has to strive ; but the manner of the strife must be different in each case. Personal Idealism is a development of the mode of thought which has dominated Oxford for the last thirty years ; it is not a renunciation of it. And thus it continues in the main the Oxford polemic against Naturalism. To it and to Naturalism there is no ground common, except that both appeal to experience to justify their interpretations of the world. Thus against this adversary the argument must take the form of showing that from naturalistic premises no tolerable interpretation of the cardinal facts of our experience can be made. If it be asked what are those cardinal facts, I should answer : Those which are essential to the conduct of our individual life and the maintenance of the social fabric. They are summarily recognised in the credo that we are free moral agents in a sense which cannot apply to what is merely natural. Round this formula of conviction are grouped the questions debated with Naturalism in our volume. They are the reality of human freedom, the limitations of the evolutionary hypothesis, the validity of the moral valuation, and the justification of that working enthusiasm for ideals which Naturalism, fatalistic if it is to be logical, must deride as a generous illusion. If these crucial questions be decided in our favour, the system of Naturalism is condemned.

Accordingly, where Naturalism confronted us, we were not unfrequently obliged to take the aggressive and carry

PREFACE vii

the war far into the enemy's country. But in the other essays a different line of action has been taken. The Absolutist is a more insidious, perhaps more dangerous adversary, just because we seem to have more in common with him. He professes to agree with us in the fundamental conviction that the universe is ultimately spiritual ; against the naturalist it was just this conviction which had to be vindicated. We decided, then, to meet the Absolutist with what may be called a rivalry of construction. Absolutism has been before the world for a century, more or less. It has put forth its account of knowledge, of morals, and of art ; and that account, suggestive though it is, has not satisfied the generality of thinking men. If the grounds of dissatisfaction be demanded, I can only give the apparently simple and hackneyed, but still fundamental answer, that Absolutism does not accord with the facts. Thus, instead of entering upon the intricate task of refuting Absolutism, we have felt free to adopt the more congenial plan of offering specimens of constructive work on a principle which does more justice to experience. Our essays are but specimens. They indicate lines of thought which could not be worked out fully in the space allowed. But they are extensive enough, let us hope, to enable the reader to judge whether their general line of interpretation is not more promising than that of Absolutism.

It may be objected that we are wrong in assuming that Absolutism cannot be reconciled with the principle of personality. In reply two points of incompatibility may be specified shortly; further particularity is impossible without a much fuller statement, more especially since Absolutism is not so much a definite system as an aggregate of tendencies without a universally acknowledged expositor. The two points in respect of which Absolutism tends 1 to

1 I use a guarded phrase, because what follows is not entirely true of exponents of Absolutism so distinguished as Prof. Henry Jones and Prof. Royce.

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be most unsatisfactory are, first, its way of criticising human experience, not from the standpoint of human experience, but from the visionary and impracticable standpoint of an absolute experience ; and, secondly, its refusal to recognise adequately the volitional side of human nature. Both matters are dealt with in the essay on Error which stands first in the volume. There it is shown that error and truth are not dependent upon the Absolute ; in other words that we can know with certainty without knowing the absolute whole of Reality ; and that, if we err, it is by human criteria, not by a theory of the Absolute, that we measure the degree of our error. Further, in regard to volition, the same essay shows that error is relative, not to the content of knowledge only, but also to its intent, i.e., the intention of the agent in setting out upon his search for knowledge. The reader may be left to trace for himself the wider operation of these principles.

In conclusion there is one feature in our essays to which I would venture to call attention as constituting what to my mind is the most valuable feature of their method ; that is, the frequency of their appeal to experience. The current antithesis between a spiritual philosophy and empiricism is thoroughly mischievous. If personal life be what is best known and closest to us, surely the study of common experience will prove it so. ' Empirical idealism ' is still something of a paradox ; I should like to see it regarded as a truism.

H. S.

Contents

ESSAY PAGE

I. Error. By G. F. Stout, M.A., Wilde Reader in

Mental Philosophy i

II

AXIOMS AS POSTULATES By F. C. S. Schiller

I. The Growth of Experience

1. Agreement that the world is experience + connecting principles — why we

should start rather than conclude with this.

2. But (a) whose experience ? Ours. Why self cannot be analysed away ;

why knowledge of self depends on experience.

3. (b) Experience of what ? The world. But what the world is, it is not

yet possible to say completely.

4. (1) The World not ready-made datum but constructed by a process of

evolution,

5. (2) i.e. of trial or experiment — original flexibility or indeterminateness

of world. Experiment suggested by practical needs — conscious and unconscious experimenting.

6. (3) Limits of experimenting— ' matter ' as resisting medium — impossi-

bility of saying what it is in itself. Conception of material world developing in experience. Value of Aristotelian description of a ii\r) capable of being moulded.

7. (4) The ' World,' therefore, is what is made of it — plastic. How far,

to be determined only by trying. But methodologically plasticity assumed to be complete. Provisional character of our ' facts.'

8. Bearing of this 'pragmatism ' or ' radical empiricism ' on the nature of

axioms. Their origin as postulates to which we try to get world to conform. Contrast with the old empiricism and apriorism.

II. Criticism of Empiricism

9. (1) Its standpoint psychological, (2) intellectualist, (3) axioms pre-

supposed in the experience which is supposed to impress them on us — ■ Mill's admissions, (4) derivation not historical, but ex post facto reconstruction, (5) its incompleteness, (6) impossibility of really tracing development of axioms and so unprogressiveness.

III. Criticism of Apriorism

10-25. Its superficial plausibility and real obscurity. Fallacy of inferring

from § 9 (3) that there are a priori truths. II. How postulates also yield 'universality' and 'necessity.' ' Necessity r

and need.

12. 'Condition of all possible experience' means? Might be (i) cause or

psychical antecedent, (2) presupposition of reflection (logical), or (3) ethical or asthetical. Objections.

13. Meaning of ' a priori '; (1) logical or (2) psychological* Equivocations of

apriorist authority. 14-18. The a priori as logical. But why analyse in Kant's way? Exclusive correctness of Kantian analysis not to be based either ( 1 ) on its a priori truth, or (2) on experience of its satisfactory working. Else why should Kantians have tried to better it ?

1 5. Kant's derivation of his analysis from psychology.

16. Even if it were satisfactory, no proof that it would be the only or the

best possible.

17. If a priori is not in time, its superiority to the a posteriori merely

honorific.

18. Kant's analysis neither simple nor lucid.

19-22. A priori as psychical fact. But if so, has it (1) been correctly described? (2) how is it distinguished from innate idea? (3) does not epistemology merge in psychology?

20. As facts a priori truths have a history, which must be inquired into.

21. A priori faculties tautologous, and

22. should not be treated as ultimate.

23. Result that science of epistemology rests on systematic confusion of

alternative interpretations of apriority. The proper extension of logic and psychology.

24. Intellectualism of both apriorism and empiricism incapacitates them from

recognising unity and activity of organism. How this may be recognised by deriving axioms from a volitional source by postulation.

25. Kant's recognition of postulation in ethics — its conflict with his 'critical'

theory of knowledge — resulting dualism intolerable. Hence either (1) suppress the Practical Reason or preferably (2) extend postulation to Theoretic Reason.

IV. Some Characteristics of Postulation

26. Postulates at first tentative and not always successful — their various

stages and common origin — the theoretic possibility of changing axioms not practically to be feared.

27. Postulates not a coherent system inter se except as rooted in personality.

V. The Postulation of Identity

28. Not to be derived out of nothing, but out of a prior psychical fact on

the sentient level of consciousness — why consciousness itself cannot be derived — its characteristics on the sentient level.

29. Hence identity (of self) first felt in the coherence and continuity of

mental processes, and forms basis for the postulation of identity — the practical necessity of recognising the ' same ' in the ' like.'

30. Once postulated, identity proves a great success, though never completely

realised in fact. Stages of identity -postulation : (1) recognition of others and objects of perception. But these change and so do not provide a stable standard of comparison. Hence (2) postulation of ideally identical selves.

31. (3) Meaning demands absolute identity and recognition leads to cogni-

tion — advantage of classification by ' universals ' which abstract from differences.

32. (4) The use of language, i.e. identifiable symbols, connected with the

demand for identity.

33. Logical bearings of this doctrine. The practical purpose of the judgment

as the clue to the meaning of predication and as determining the limits to which abstraction shall be carried.

34. Limitations and conventions on which the logical use of identity depends.

VI. Other Postulates

35. The concurrent development of consciousness of 'self and ' other ' = the ' external world, ' postulated to account for felt unsatisfactoriness of experience.

39. Postulation of Contradiction and Excluded Middle.

37. Hypothesis a form of postulation.

38. Causation a demand for something whereby we can control events. Its

various formulations relative to our purposes. Sufficient Reason. The absolutely satisfactory as 'self-evident.' The infinite regress of reasons and causes limited by the purpose of the inquiry.

39. Postulate of ' Uniformity of Nature.' Suggested by gleams of regularity

amid primitive chaos. Methodological advantage of postulating complete regularity. Its practical success. 40-3. The Space and Time Postulates. Kant's reine Atischamtng a hybrid between perception and conception and so a confusion of psychology and logic. Really psychological data have served as basis for conceptual constructions which are methodological postulates.

41. Construction of physical space out of sensory data. Geometrical space

a construction to calculate behaviour of real bodies. Antithesis between qualities of perceptual and conceptual space — reasons for postulating the latter.

42. Alternative conceptual constructions of 'metageometry.' Their obscurity

due to their greater complexity and uselessness. A conceptual space is valid in so far as ztseful, but never real.

43. Time: (i) subjective, (2) objective, (3) conceptual. (1) Too variable to

be useful, (2) a social necessity, but relative, (3) a postulate.

44. Other postulates, e.g. substance, passed over.

45-7. Postulates not yet fully axiomatic. (1) Teleology — its derivation from the postulate of knowableness. Necessity of anthropomorphism. Rational human action teleological. Why this is not extended by science to nature. Its misuse by professed believers — possibility of future use.

46. Ultimately mechanical methods imply teleology, assuming that world

is partly conformable to our ideals. But part being given, we must assume all. Postulation as illustrating the teleology of axioms.

47. (2) Religious postulates — personality and goodness of God — immortality.

VII. Concluding Reflections

48. The psychological possibility of instinctive postulation and its relation

to logical justification.

49. The method of origins never gives complete explanation. But validity

must be connected with origin. Completeness unattainable while knowledge is still growing.

50. Effects on philosophy — a return to practice and a perception of the

inadequacy of intellectualism.

E

51. Belief in the alleged incompetence of the reason due to (1) the putting

of questions which have no practical value and ultimate meaning, (2) 'antinomies.' But these at bottom volitional and due to a refusal to choose between conflicting aims. E.g. the 'insoluble mystery of evil.' Methodological necessity of assuming all real problems to be soluble.

52. Gain to philosophy because (1) more responsibility felt about volun-

tary confusions of thought which (2) are more easily remedied and to which (3) the young are not pledged. Invigorating effect of Pragmatism.

I

§ I. The first survey of his subject ought to be sufficient to appal the intending writer on almost any philosophic topic. The extent, variety, and persistence of the divergences of opinion which he finds are such that he needs to be possessed of unusual faith and courage not to despair of convincing even an unprejudiced reader — and in philosophy where shall he be found ? — that his undertaking holds out any prospect of scientific advance. For it needs no little philosophic insight to perceive that these divergences, instead of discrediting Philosophy, are really a subtle tribute to its dignity. They testify that in our final attitude towards life our whole personality must be concerned, and tend to form the decisive factor in the adoption of a metaphysic. As soon as a metaphysic attempts to be more than ' a critical study of First Prejudices,' and essays to be constructive, it will always come upon a region where different men argue differently, and yet with equal cogency, from (apparently) the same premisses. The most reasonable explanation of this phenomenon is to admit that as the men are different, and differ in their experience, neither the data which have to be valued, nor the standards by which they are valued, can really be the same. Indeed, the whole history of philosophy shows that the fit of a man's philosophy is (and ought to be) as individual as the fit of his clothes, and forms a crushing commentary on the intolerant craving for uniformity which ineffectually attempts to anticipate the slow achievement of a real harmony by the initial fallacies and brusque assumptions of a ' cheap and easy ' monism. It behoves the true philosopher, therefore, to be tolerant, and to recognise that so long as men are different, their metaphysics must be different, and that even so, nay for this very reason, any philosophy is better than none at all.

But though the ultimate differences of philosophic opinion are probably too deeply rooted in human idiosyncrasy to be eradicated by any force of argument, it is none the less conducive to the progress of every philosophic discussion that some common ground of (at least apparent and preliminary) agreement should be found on which the rival views may test their strength. This is accordingly what I have tried to do, though it was not without difficulty that I seemed to discover two fundamental points of initial agreement which would, I think, be admitted by nearly all who have any understanding of the terms employed in philosophic discussion. The first of these is that the whole world in which we live is experience and built up out of nothing else than experience. The second is that experience, nevertheless, does not, alone and by itself, constitute reality, but, to construct a world, needs certain assumptions, connecting principles, or fundamental truths, in order that it may organise its crude material and transmute itself into palatable, manageable, and liveable forms.

Acceptance of these two propositions does not perhaps carry us far, and I have no desire to exaggerate its controversial value. For, as soon as we attempt to go a step farther and ask what, more precisely, is this experience, out of which, and for the sake of which, it is agreed that all things are constructed, we speedily realise that we have, here also, stumbled unwittingly into a very quagmire of metaphysical perplexities. It is indeed a convenient fashion in high philosophic quarters to treat the harmless truism with the enunciation of which I have ventured to start, as the final term in a protracted course of dialectical philosophy, and to put forward Experience (written of course with very large capitals) as the ultimate explanation of all things. My excuse for not treating my

52 F. C. S. SCHILLER „

readers (if any) to a similar performance must be that I have neither the heart nor the head for feats of this kind, and that they can always fall back upon the consoling dictum that experience is Experience (with the addition ' of the Absolute ' thrown in, if they are very inquisitive), when they have found that my explorations in a very different direction lead to nothing interesting or valuable.

§ 2. I shall accordingly proceed to divide my question into two. If all the world be experience and what is needed to understand that experience, (i) whose experience is it ? and (2) of what is it experience ? To both questions again some will be satisfied to reply — ' of the Absolute, of course.' If that really contents them, and is all they wish to know, they had better read no further. For my part I hold that this answer, even if it were true and intelligible, is of no scientific or practical value whatsoever, and hence cannot be of any philosophic value either, except to votaries of philosophies which have no scientific or practical value.

To the first question, therefore, I shall make bold to answer, ' our experience,' or, if that imply too much agreement among philosophers, and I may not take a common world for granted, more precisely, ' my experience.'

Here again I must be prepared to be assailed by a furious band of objectors intent on asking me — " Who are you ? How dare you take yourself for granted ? Have you not heard how the self is a complex psychological product, which may be derived and analysed away in a dozen different ways ? And do you actually propose to build your philosophy upon so discredited a foundation ? "

To all this the simplicity of my humble reply may, I fear, be thought to savour of impertinence. I shall merely say " Abate your wrath, good sirs, I beseech you. I am right well aware of what you urge. Only I have observed also a few facts which in your scientific zeal you have been pleased to overlook. In the first place I notice that these analyses of the self you allude to are various, and that so the self may find safety in the very multitude of its tormentors. I observe, secondly, that the analysis is in every case effected by a self. And it always gives me a turn when the conclusion of an argument subverts its own premiss. Next I note that these analyses being the products of a self, must, if that self is (like my own) rational, serve some purpose. But unless that purpose is the highest of all (which in your case I see no reason to suppose), the validity of the whole procedure will be relative, and its value methodological. It may be excellent, therefore, for your purposes and quite unsuitable for mine. And, lastly, I observe that an analysis does not fall from heaven ready made ; it is the product of a purposive activity, and however appalling it may sound, it remains brutum fulmen until such time as somebody chooses to adopt it. It is from this act of choice, then, that its real efficacy springs, and if I choose to analyse differently or not at all, if I find it convenient to operate with the whole organism as the standard unit in my explications, what right have Scribes and Pharisees to complain ? For in either case the choice must be justified by its consequences, by the experience of its working, and I am not aware that anything valuable or workable has resulted from the psychological analyses in question. I am therefore sanguine that the assumption of my own existence, which I provisionally make, may very possibly turn out better and be less futile than any of the denials of the self which it may seem convenient to maintain for certain restricted and technical purposes of psychologies which neglect their proper problem in their anxiety to be ranked among the ' natural sciences.'

" As for the other, personal, question — ' Who am I ?' — that we shall see. I say we pointedly, because, to be quite frank, I too am still learning what I am, by experience. For unfortunately I was as little endowed with any a priori knowledge of myself as of anything else. Hence I can only say, provisionally, that I am at least what I am, and what I am capable of becoming. For I have a notion that my career is not yet over. In saying this

I do not, of course, lay claim to anything unknowable ; I only mean that I am not anything completely known, either to myself or any one else, until I cease to have new experience. And if you are content to share these humble attributes and to be selves in this sense, you are very welcome ! "

§ 3. I come next to the second question — what is it I experience ? The answer must be very similar. My knowledge of the object of experience — we may call it ' the world ' for short — is still imperfect and still growing. And so though I may provisionally describe it by all the ordinary phrases as ' external,' and material, and spatial, and temporal, I do not attach much value to them, and cannot honestly say that I know what it ultimately is. For I do not know what it will ultimately turn into. Not of course that I despair on that account of ultimately answering this question also to everybody's satisfaction (and especially to my own ! ). Only the world of knowledge always seems to be painted on an uncompleted background of the unknown, and fresh knowledge is always coming in which modifies the total impression. This knowledge is largely (or perhaps wholly) the result of guesses which I cannot help making, like my fathers before me, for practical reasons. As for the character and the details of these guesses, are they not written in the histories of human sciences and religions ?

§ 4. In reflecting on these histories, however, I observe several things which seem to have no slight bearing on the question of the nature of the world and our knowledge.

(1) The world, as it now appears, was not a ready-made datum ; it is the fruit of a long evolution, of a strenuous struggle. If we have learnt enough philosophy to see that we must not only ask the ontological question, What is it ? but also the profounder epistemological question to which it leads, How do we know what it is ? we shall realise that it is a construction which has been gradually achieved, and that the toil thereof dwarfs into insignificance the proverbial labour Romanam condere gentem. As a rule we do not notice this, partly because we are taught to neglect the history of ideas for the sake of burdening our memory with the history of events (which very likely did not happen in the manner alleged), partly because the sciences have a habit of evading the verbal confession of the changes which the growth of knowledge has wrought in their conceptions. Thus the physicist continues to use the term ' matter,' although it has come to mean for him something very different from the simple experiences of hardness and resistance from which its development began, and although he more and more clearly sees both that he does not know what ' matter ' ultimately is, and that for the purposes of his science he does not need to know, so long as the term stands for something the behaviour of which he can calculate.

§ 5. (2) I observe that since we do not know what the world is, we have to find out. This we do by trying. Not having a ready-made world presented to us the knowledge of which we can suck in with a passive receptivity (or rather, appearing to have such a world to some extent only in consequence of the previous efforts of our forerunners), we have to make experiments in order to construct out of the materials we start with a harmonious cosmos which will satisfy all our desires (that for knowledge included). For this purpose we make use of every means that seems promising : we try it and we try it on. For we cannot afford to remain unresistingly passive, to be impressed, like the tabula rasa 1 in the traditional fiction, by an independent ' external world ' which stamps itself upon us. If we did that, we should be stamped out. But experience is always more than this : it is either experiment or reaction, reaction upon stimulation, which latter we ascribe to the 'external world.' But reaction is still a kind of action, and its character still depends in part on the reacting agent. Nor have we any independent knowledge of the ' external

1 It is hard to say why this inadequate illustration should continue to haunt philosophic discussion, the more so as it always missed the point. For as Lotze has so well observed the ' receptivity ' of the tablet is really due to the intrinsic nature of the wax and not to an absence of positive character.

world ' ; it is merely the systematic way in which we construct the source of the stimulation on which we feel ourselves to be reacting. Hence even our most passive receptivity of sensations can, and should, be construed as the effortless fruition of what was once acquired by strenuous effort, rather than as the primal type to which all experience should be reduced. In it we are living on our capital (inherited or acquired), not helping to carve out (' create ') the cosmos, 1 but enjoying the fruits of our labours (or of those of others !). Which is pleasant, but not interesting. What is interesting is the course of the active experimenting which results in the arts, the sciences, and the habits on which our social organisation rests.

I proceed accordingly to consider the mass of experiments which collectively make up the world-process and by their issue determine the subsequent course of affairs. At the outset there seems to be nothing determined, certain, or fixed about it. We may indeed shrink from the assertion of an absolute indeterminism, but it is certain that we cannot say what made or determined the character of the first reaction, and that the first establishment of a habit of reaction is a matter of immense difficulty. And to a less extent this indeterminateness persists as the structure of the cosmos grows. The world is always ambiguous, always impels us at certain points to say, ' it may be,' ' either . . . or,' etc. 2 Nor were it well that it should grow rigid, unless we were assured that it would set in forms we could not wish to change. As it is, we have no absolute nor initial rigidity. All determinations are acquired, all are ratified, by their working ;