The philosophy of common sense

Front matter

Class _ Book J

GopightN .

Wot

Prefatory Note

The present volume, being the second in a series of collected studies, is a companion to The Creed of a Layman, published in April 1907. It is designed to form a summary of the philosophical grounds on which the preceding work was based; and it carries on the autobiographical account of the stages by which the author reached those conclusions. Most of the Essays were papers read at the Metaphysical Society between the years 1 87 1 and 1880, or were founded on discussions that had taken place there. The whole of the Introduction and the Essays numbered iii. iv. vii. viii. x. xi. xvi. xxiii. (about one-third of the volume) are either new, or have been published only in the small organ of the Positivist Society of Clifford's Inn. The remaining Essays were published in the Fortnightly Reviewbetween the years 1870 and 1892, and in the Nineteenth Century between 1877 and 1886, and the author desires to express his thanks to the proprietors of those publications for their courteous permission to allow the re-issue. As these pieces have long ceased to be current, it is believed that the contents of this volume will be found to be practically new to the modern reader

VI PREFATORY NOTE

as well as to the younger students of philosophy. And the writer now in his old age submits to all who are seeking some sound basis of life Thoughts formed in his maturity after exhaustive discussions with some of the first thinkers of our time.

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ix

ESSAY

Introduction

In a former book — The Creed of a Layman — I set forth the grounds on which I had found peace in a religion of Common Sense — the silent, it may be, unconscious, and too often the unavowed faith of many good and sensible men. I shall now endeavour to show the intellectual basis on which such a faith is grounded ; and this I venture to describe as The Philosophy of Common Sense. Rational Philosophy indeed, from the time of the early Greek sages down to Auguste Comte, has never been anything but the Common Sense of the best minds systematised and correlated to a righteous life. For some sixty years I have studied competing systems of Philosophy, finding some truths and much verbiage in all. And long ago I came to see that philosophy, like Religion, is much more simple, more practical, closer to a strenuous life on earth, than philosophers are thought to admit.

At the outset a question may be asked — Why should we trouble about Philosophy at all? What good will it do us? Is it not to waste time on a superfluity of Culture? No mistake could be greater — and indeed more dangerous. All sane and serious men have some general ideas which lie at

X PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

the back of their brains, whether they are conscious of them or not, whether they ever reduce them to formal propositions, or suffer them silently to influence their lives. This is their philosophy.

Consistent and efficient conduct is impossible without some settled cast of the mind. Many may never have heard of "Differentiation," "The Categorical Imperative," "Monism," or "Pragmatism." But they do believe in certain dominant ideas; and these in the long run determine their conduct. Idle fribbles perhaps, and men and women who have no mind of their own in anything, but are the docile slaves of circumstance, whim, or stronger natures, can hardly be said to have any philosophy, as they can hardly be said to have either mind of their own or will of their own. But even they are dominated by the philosophy of those around them.

In this age, when orthodox doctrines are melting away, a dangerous sophism is coming into fashion that religion is entirely a matter of feeling, not of understanding; so that, when the dogmas of the Gospel are found to fail, Christians are told that faith has no need of creed, that holy emotions constitute a working religion, without any substratum of positive belief. This is in truth the very dry-rot of religion in senile decay. Every form of religion worth the name, Theocracy, Judaism, Polytheism, Christianity, Romanism, Puritanism, Islam, Unitarianism, even modern Theism — all have rested upon a definite, coherent body of doctrine.

For ages this has been the solid power of the Catholic Church; and Rome, at any rate, holds to this still. A religion of bare emotion rapidly degenerates into gross extravagances, and even foul abuses. The fanatics of the Middle Ages — Flagellants, Anabaptists, Mystics, like Antinomians, Shakers, Dukhobors, Mormons, and Revivalists —

INTRODUCTION xi

threw over rational doctrines and flung themselves upon the storm-driven sea of pious zeal. Oriental and African zealots often drifted into ghastly excesses under the influence of irrational emotions. No religion can guide or purify man's life unless it rest upon a solid bed of assured convictions. It would be a wretched apology for the latter days of the Gospel that it has no need of reason for the faith that is in it.

Efficient religion implies a corresponding philosophy of the World and of Alan. Not indeed a Metaphysic of Being, a Canon of Reality and Truth, nor an Analysis of Consciousness and the like ! But behind every serious and practical mode of religion there must rest, in a more or less conscious form, an intelligible view of the relation of mankind to the world of Nature and Humanity around us, some overmastering source of Duty, some ground of Hope, some object of Reverence.

To have no ideal of Reverence, Hope, or Duty, to have no sense of relation to Things or Persons around the individual (even as an unconscious habit of mind) — this is to be without any religion. And all the yearning in the world and all possible fervour of spirit, devoid of reasonable belief, can end in nothing but constant change and spiritual confusion. The Philosophy may be nothing but an alembic wherein is distilled solid good sense. But no religion can work for good or endure for a generation unless, as its base and backbone, it hold some theory of the World it has to live in and the Fellowmen it has to work with.

In the present book I seek to trace how I came by degrees to solve the main problems of Thought, as in a former book I sought to trace the same evolution in problems of Religion. I can promise the reader that I will trouble him with no hard words, psychological enigmas, or double acrostics in dog- Greek. Metaphysics tend more and more to be carried xii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

on in the Unknown Tongues vouchsafed to the elect which require years and years of study to master. The modern Metaphysical Tongue is far more bewildering to the unlearned than either Esperanto or Volapiik. In fact Metaphysics are mainly kept alive by the internecine war of the rival Esperantists and Volapiikians of Philosophy to obtain recognition of their respective jargon. The so-called science of Metaphysics resembles an elaborate geography of an imaginary and invisible planet, described in an artificial language which no one but the geographer himself can apply. The result of these Nibelungen combats, wherein hero slays hero in some legendary world, is too often the dying sigh of Hegel — that he had but one disciple who understood him — and he misunderstood him.

I must guard my words against being misunderstood myself. I know that Metaphysics have absorbed many of the most profound minds that Humanity can boast. I recognise the imperishable value of their labours. I admit that metaphysicians, even of these latter days, exhibit extraordinary subtlety and intellectual power. I agree with them that no man can pretend to speak about philosophy at all unless he has done his best to master the vast evolution of Metaphysical Thought. I have done this; and over a long life of study I have followed this most fascinating form of the higher meditation.

I claim to have mastered the cryptic, but perhaps indispensable, language in which these subtle theories have to be cast. I claim to have understood these philosophers; I am not blind to their marvellous ingenuity, their heroic patience, their noble detachment from grosser claims. And knowing as I do the impulse in us to face these primordial problems, having given years of life to get to the bottom of these interminable answers to the eternal riddles, acknowledging, as I

INTRODUCTION xiii

must, the invaluable service to mankind both of the problems and of the answers, I affirm that the mass of what is called Metaphysics is the fruitless search after insoluble puzzles : a search which it is wise to understand as an intellectual gymnastic, but whereon nothing practical, real, or true can be built.

The word Metaphysics, like almost every word used in this study, is sO elastic that I must define the sense in which I use it here. It includes Ontology, i.e. the knowledge of abstract Being, of Things-in-themselves, of the Real substratum of the Universe, of the Absolute Existence which does, or may, lie behind the sum of Appearance known through the human senses to our conceptions. We say that the search, which for thousands of years has occupied some of the acutest of human brains, has led to nothing and can lead to nothing for reasons which sound Philosophy explains.

Under Metaphysics I include the ultimate analysis of Consciousness, the ultimate explanation of the relations of Mind and Matter, and the absolute form of either. I include also the search into First Cause, Final Causes, or the abstract meaning of Cause. In Metaphysics I include the relation of human consciousness to some imagined Universal Consciousness. I include the search into some imagined substance underlying and over-reaching Life — call it Soul or anything of the kind. Lastly, in Metaphysical impotence we include the abysmal problem of Freedom and Necessity. Sound Philosophy will seek to measure the enormous volume of high intelligence that has been exhausted on all these subjects, and then will pass on to practical Knowledge, as it passed on from the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life.

But sound Philosophy of course does include a rational Psychology, the Laws of Thought, the analysis of the Mental processes, Logic, and the Organum of reasoning and demonxiv PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

stration. It does include a system to explain the practical relations of man to the outer world, of man to his fellowmen, of the evolution of life and of society. But it refuses to be labelled under Materialism, or Monism, or Agnosticism, or Phenomenalism, Realism, Idealism, Panlogism, or Pragmatism. All of these are more or less abortive attempts to solve insoluble problems.

Sound Philosophy has tested a thousand answers. It finds them all equally idle. It does not attempt to show they are false. It admits that they are wonderful feats of building without bricks, or rather of building with mere clouds. They might all be true, if indeed there be a world wherein out of clouds we may fashion "the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself." Philosophic good sense watches this insubstantial pageant fade, this baseless vision dissolve, and leave not a rack behind.

To repudiate Metaphysics is not to disparage the profound achievements of abstract thinkers, ancient and modern, or the canons of a systematic First Philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, and their successors in antiquity, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel — all profoundly modified the thought of the world, and each has given us imperishable truths. So far as Positivism is concerned, all of these men are commemorated in the Calendar of Great Men, and have been duly honoured by Comte. Some of them undoubtedly are classed as Metaphysicians, and all of them have laid down as truths much that no one to-day can accept. But the rare value of much that they taught, and the necessity for understanding what they did teach, even for study of their very extravagances and errors, is what no rational student of philosophy can dispute. Their very failures are more illuminating than the accepted truisms of lesser men.

INTRODUCTION XV

In the permanent residuum of truth left by the speculations of these great thinkers, and in the entire history of Metaphysics from Plato to Mr. Arthur Balfour, there is one profound lesson, one and the same Constant amid a thousand Variables. That truth is the Limitation of the Human Mind. There is no paradox in recognising the achievements of metaphysical thinkers, even in admitting the indispensable nature of their work, if we mean that the fundamental lesson of Philosophy is the knowledge of what the Mind can do, and what it cannot do. That essential condition underlies all serious thinking, and is really decisive both in Theology and in Philosophy ; for from the very dawn of religion as a system of beliefs, Theology has been inextricably associated with these ontological problems.

Theology has ever lived upon them, and still lives on them to-day. And it has needed ages of intense meditation and the waste of consummate intellects to convince us that the quest must be abandoned as hopeless, mischievous, irrational. Philosophic Thought could not become truly rational until it had solved the problem of the real laws of the thinking Mind. Religion could not face the modern world until it had freed itself from the insoluble problem of the Quest of the Holy Grail it had long so passionately sought.

The note of every original work of Metaphysics is to correct, qualify, discredit its predecessors. Its criticisms are so convincing that we wonder how the older theory ever held its ground. The critic triumphs like a "strong man armed," until "a stronger than he shall come upon him and take from him all his armour wherein he trusted." Take any Metaphysical treatise which reviews the labours of its predecessors, it matters not from which sect or school, the strength of it lies in its refutation of preceding doctrines. Take any text-book on the history of speculative philosophy, xvi PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

such as those of Zeller, Kuno Fischer, or Lewes, or such excellent summaries of Metaphysics as those in the old and new Encyclopedia Britannica, by the former Master of Balliol College, and by the present President of Corpus College, in Oxford. Turn to the latest general History of Philosophy, by Arch. B. D. Alexander, Glasgow, 1907. The story, even in impartial hands, is one long tale of error, failure, confusion, and uncertainty. Professor Case's essay, full of learning, judgment, acuteness, as it is, ends with a hope that we may "pass through the anarchy of modern metaphysics," and in the future discover some answer to the great questions. With philosophic courage, one after another, the Metaphysician walks up to the Eternal Sphinx, though he sees round her the whitened bones of those who have gone before him. Why hope? Why ask? Why not turn aside — to some useful and less depressing search ?

It has been well said that Metaphysics is "the prolonged impotence of two thousand years." Science, like other solid achievements of the human intellect, advances from step to step, from generation to generation, ever building anew on the assured foundation of previous discoveries. It does not constantly hark back to the earliest theorems of Copernicus, Galileo, or Harvey. But the Ontologist and the Panlogist is for starting afresh with the data of Plato, Descartes, or Spinoza; and his greatest triumph is to prove how all his predecessors were wrong. The supreme result of two thousand years of debate is stated in a recent work to be "the potentiality of self-realisation eternally inherent in the world-principle." If we do not accept this dogma, if we even confess that we see no meaning in it, we are told that we are old-fashioned and not up to the high level of modern thought.

For my part I am so old-fashioned as to agree with Thomas

INTRODUCTION xvii

Carlyle when so long ago as the year in which I was born he wrote : —

" The disease of Metaphysics is a perennial one." " It is a chronic malady that of Metaphysics, and perpetually recurs on us." " There is no more fruitless endeavour than this same, which the Metaphysician proper toils in: to educe Conviction out of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting what is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what is ? . . . Consider it well, Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind; to environ or shut in, or as we may say, comprehend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, as for the foolishest ! What strength of sinew, or athletic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold his own body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up himself? The Irish Saint swam the Channel, ' carrying his head in his teeth ' ; but the feat has never been imitated."

I have read in my time whole libraries of metaphysical dialectic — aye, and many of the very latest, and I think I see most of what they mean, or ought to mean, and I am quite alive to their subtlety and their profundity. But I cannot see that in all these seventy-six years since Carlyle wrote, they have advanced the problem one inch. The stone of Sisyphus ever rolls back down the hill. Oxford calls out to Edinburgh ; Birmingham challenges Harvard ; and Glasgow replies to Cambridge. And one and all appeal to Jena, Berlin, Tubingen, or Bonn. Now the cry is — "Back to Kant!": anon it is — " Hegel to the rescue!": and then there comes to the front Neo-Schopenhauerianism, or the Pan-Pessimism of Nietzsche, and the Pragmatism of Signore Papini. The cry is still they come ! and one after another they recede into the distant background, like successive scenes in a modern pageant.

One of the typical characters of Metaphysics is that they are thought to have "fashions" like a lady's sleeve or a dandy's collar, and to revolve in "seasons." As in the

XV111 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

modiste's world "every lady now wears electric blue," and not to wear electric blue is to be dowdy, so in the Metaphysical world Neo-Hegelianism becomes all the fashion, and not to care for Nietzsche is to be " Mid- Victorian" and old-fashioned. A Privat-docent from Jena or a Dr. Philos. of Chicago publishes an " epoch-making " book wherein the "Unbewusster Wille" of Schopenhauer, or the "Anstoss" of Fichte, and the "Be griff" and the "Idee" receive some new development — or it might be final annihilation — and forthwith the Metaphysicians of Europe will listen to nothing but the new epoch-making Metaphysic. Examiners in Academies and reviewers in periodicals, who have to be professionally up-to-date, work the new discovery into students and readers. We are all so completely under the harrow of Examiners and Critics that it requires some courage to confess a weakness for what was common sense fifty years ago. But I make bold to say that nothing marks the tiro more than silly conceits about " fashion" in philosophy.

If philosophy changes in each decade with any text-book of the day, with each professor whose lectures fill his classroom, philosophy would be as frivolous a pursuit as the last "creation" of the Rue de la Paix. It is not so very much that has been permanently added to the solid Philosophy of Mind since Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel. All of these established something lasting in the bases of general philosophy, and all of them have since been criticised, corrected, and developed by their successors. I have never closed the windows of my own mind to later ideas — indeed I have derived some instruction and much amusement from some of the latest. But so far as the problems of pure Metaphysics are concerned, I hold that the substantial truth of the matter may be found in the works of Spencer, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Bain, and Comte, though I am not prepared to

INTRODUCTION xix

swear belief in all that we read in any one of these. The Professors and Masters of Britain, America, Germany, and Europe in general, do not seem to me to have shaken the essential truth of the Philosophy of Experience and the Relative Synthesis of all human knowledge; and I am not to be frightened by the nickname of Mid-Victorian, or of old-fashioned, materialist, and the like, from saying again what I have held all my life — and hold still as firmly as ever.

It would not be of very grave consequence if addiction to Metaphysics stood by itself, and did not affect religion, philosophy, morality, and life. Those who pursue these studies are not so many, apart from the demands of examinations, lectures, and reviews of books. But Metaphysics do not stand alone. They tend to take the place of Revelation, which has been pronounced to be " old-fashioned." Long years ago Carlyle wrote, "The Christian Religion of late ages has been continually dissipating itself into Metaphysics ; and threatens now to disappear, as some rivers do, in deserts and barren sand."

Since this terrible indictment of orthodox creeds was written, the process of substituting the fashionable Metaphysic of the day for Revelation, now superseded by modern criticism, has gone on with increasing speed. The Scriptural dogmas whereon the entire scheme of religious faith has so long been thought to rest are quietly surrendered by men who clutch at the nebulous hypotheses of some "Higher Consciousness," or the "Absolute as the highest expression of Reality," whatever that may mean. As any one can put upon either of these phrases, and on many similar phrases, any meaning that he likes, they serve as proofs of "God," "Soul," "Immortality," about which, in the old and real sense, doubts begin to be harboured.

XX PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

The " Higher Consciousness," "the Absolute," "Intuitional Truth," since they transcend logic and proof, can be made to warrant anything that transcends positive knowledge. The famous maxim of Novalis — ' ' Philosophy [meaning Metaphysics] can bake no bread ; but it can procure for us God, Freedom, and Immortality" — has proved a raft of comfort to the theologian in the shipwreck of orthodox dogma. He throws overboard Scripture, Creeds, Church, and Catechism, and rides out the gale on Greek or German ambiguities. Metaphysics do not enable us to realise either God, Freedom, or Immortality; but they wrap them all in a transcendental haze, and enable us to fancy we do know them. The sober truth would be this. Metaphysics can bake no bread and procure no food, physical or spiritual; but they enable us to talk about God, Freedom, and Immortality when we have abandoned the ancient grounds on which we used to believe in them.

It has become, therefore, of prime importance to test the legitimacy of Metaphysical pronouncements, and to have clear convictions about the cardinal problems they pretend to solve. These pronouncements now take the place of Holy Writ and the truths committed to the Church of Christ. Bible and Church being found "old-fashioned," religion is being under-pinned on transcendental sublimities which, though as old as the Bible, are now furbished up with a new gloss.

These are thought to obtain sovereign authority from the support given them by a few specialists in Physical Science. Certain well-known physicists have given more or less encouragement to spiritualist speculations and Latter-Day Theosophies. The illustrious Michael Faraday was a Sandemanian ; the living rival of Charles Darwin dabbles in Psychical Research and has published some amazing revelations

INTRODUCTION xxi

about other worlds. There is nothing to prevent a chemist or an electrician from being a Mussulman or a Buddhist in religious belief. But his views on general philosophy have no higher value than those of any botanist, or geometer, or microscopist.

The public has a somewhat credulous way of looking on deserved reputations in physical research as equivalent to philosophic competence. It is really very often a disadvantage when a specialist is called on to face the ultimate generalisations of thought. In these days of minute subdivision of labour, a man like Dr. Edison spends his life in a series of intricate experiments which almost close his mind from touching on psychological problems or the canons of demonstration. Wonderful discoveries in the world of physics entitle such an one to be called a "man of science," but they certainly do not constitute him a philosopher. And his opinions on the "Higher Consciousness" or "the immanence of God in Nature" have no greater authority than that of any intelligent man who has found no time to study the history of philosophy from Plato to Spencer.

It is the long and complex story of the evolution of metaphysical speculation which is really decisive on these problems. Almost any of the thousand solutions of "Absolute Being," "Ultimate Consciousness," and the "World-Principle" have a fascinating plausibility when stated with all the specious lucidity of the born metaphysician. It is only when the trained student of philosophy, after long years of reading and meditation, comes to realise the eternal failure of every attempt, the weary round in a closed circle from which the victim can find no issue, and is perpetually brought back to the same familiar spot from which he started, it is only by having traversed all the gloomy circles of the Inferno of Ontology, and so through the terraces of the Purgatory of xxii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

Intuition, that the mind finally issues in the Heaven of clear vision. The only safe way of reaching philosophic clearness is to have paced through the secular stages in the history of general philosophy. The facile guesses of a specialist in Physics can do nothing but "make that darker which was dark enough before."

I am speaking of general tendencies and not of particular persons, schools of thought, or phases of religion. It is notorious that in the English-speaking world, as in Europe generally, there are various schemes of faith which treat the orthodox dogmas of all the Churches as untrustworthy or obsolete, and yet do find a ground in sonorous Metaphysics for as much of Christianity or Theism as they think worth preserving. They cherish consolation in all sorts of spiritualist hypotheses which may mean anything and are incapable of meeting positive refutation. Pantheism, Panlogism, i.e. the Infinite and Omnipresent Mind, the Universal Mind, the Impersonal Consciousness, and the like may be stretched to explain anything and to warrant any proposition. That an electrician or an algebraist has toyed with Spooks and Subliminal Consciousness is a very poor title to install him as a Father of the New Theosophy. This novel Patristic Thaumaturgy is as purely imaginary as that of Origen or Chrysostom. Their Materialist or Idealist Book of Genesis is a mere fairy-tale, with no more science in it than the Pentateuch. It would be a sad end for the Catholic Scheme of Salvation which has done so much for civilisation and morality if it has to rest on the Revelation of Psychical Research.

It may be convenient if I set down my own reminiscences of how my mind grew under these studies. At school we were familiar enough with some of the shorter Dialogues of Plato, and had much to say about Socrates' last words as he drank the hemlock in prison. But it was at Oxford that I

INTRODUCTION xxiii

began any serious study of Greek philosophy. There the ordinary courses involved a very close and minute reading of the principal books of Plato and of Aristotle, and a general understanding of the development of Greek philosophy from Thales to Proclus — those ten centuries before and after Christ wherein the history of speculation curiously follows the course of modern Metaphysics from Descartes to Hegel and Jowett.

The essence of the training at Oxford in my time was the exact analysis of the treatises of Plato and Aristotle, sentence by sentence, in the original Greek. I believe this to be the most valuable scheme of philosophical study which can be followed. I would hesitate to lay down any opinion on the use of Greek in general education; but I make bold to say that the hammering out every shred of meaning in the great standard works of Aristotle is the most illuminating mode in which the human mind can be trained. To have absorbed the cardinal conceptions of the profoundest intellect ever given to man is to be securely launched on the road to living Truth.

Like other students I was, of course, first interested in Plato, the fascination of whose language reaches the highest point ever attained in any prose. It is always a struggle with one who loves fine literature to suffer the mellifluous imagination of the Academy to be displaced by the ironbound good sense of the Ethics and the Politics. Equally, of course, I took the Metaphysical fever in the usual youthful form, just as when I thought I understood the Calculus, I devoted some time to the quadrature of the Circle. My tutor in Logic was a fervent believer in the high-and-dry Oxford Dialectic, and I wrote under his guidance reams of mysterious disquisitions about " Being," ''Consciousness," "Noumena," "Categories," and "The Absolute." There is

Xxiv PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

a strange fascination in the pursuit, as to some minds there is in Chess Problems and the Chances of Rouge et Noir. But before I quitted Oxford I was a confirmed Aristotelian; and I had learned to apply to the Metaphysics of Plato, and the Platonists old and new, the conclusive judgment of Aristotle in his second book of Politics — "All these disquisitions have brilliancy, originality, grace, and profound subtlety — but they settle nothing in the end."