Essays I-XXX

Contents

I. Introductory 1

II. The Use of Language .... 3

III. Existence 4

II

On the present occasion, I am to attempt the expression of thought by means of language; and the question whether thought can be otherwise made distinct to ourselves or communicated to others does not concern us for the present. It is generally admitted that language, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master, and that it is especially likely to obtain an undue mastery in those discussions relating to the nature of our primary convictions which have always been interesting to civilized men, however imperfect their results may appear. The immediate object of language is to state facts and to express desires relating to the external world. Even this task it accomplishes rather vaguely, and its metaphorical terms for our mental proceedings still further embarrass our attempts to discuss them. Metaphor and analogy may easily be carried too far, and may mislead us; so much every one is willing to grant. But he is also disposed to hold that his neighbor, and not he, has been misled. I shall not be able to prove my success in the control of language to be greater than that of others whom I may regard as carried away by their own words.

The invention of new technical terms does little to make language a more satisfactory implement. Such terms may indeed abbreviate our reasonings, but their validity cannot exceed that of the more familiar phrases which define them. Nor will it avail us to strive for precision of statement at the expense of perspicuity. When we are to make an obscure topic more distinct to ourselves, if not to others, our language must not cast additional darkness upon what can at best only be dimly discerned. And yet we must not conceal a difficulty by words which, although simple in appearance, are really only denials, not statements, of the problems before us. How far it is possible to comply with such precepts for the use of language can be learned only by experience.

Ill

All men will probably admit, as an indisputable proposition, the assertion that something is happening, going on, or taking place. But to obtain universal assent to this proposition, we must introduce ideas which we are not yet ready to discuss, by limiting what happens to feeling, intention, and thought. Here many will add that they are incapable of separating this conception from another, which insists upon the existence of something which does not happen, but which feels, intends, and thinks. This incapacity, to my mind, is an instance of the control of thought by language, above mentioned; and the thinkers whom I follow maintain that the separation of the two conceptions is possible. Existence, then, to us, implies only what can happen, not what is.

But a perfectly monotonous existence, like that which Buddhist doctrines are reported to describe as a state of final blessedness for the just, is not easily to be distinguished from a state in which nothing happens. Our notion of existence seems to require change, and this calls upon us again to anticipate the introduction of a new topic, that of likeness and unlikeness, which we may naturally wish to postpone.

If we are to use language at all, we must expect it continually to suggest to us complex ideas, for the discussion of which we are at the moment unprepared. It would be as useless as inconvenient to avoid phrases in which personal pronouns occur, because we have not yet considered what personal pronouns mean. Words which imply change and time must be employed in any attempt to indicate still simpler subjects of thought, and frequent references to an external world will occur in a treatise the professed subjects of which are purely mental. Many, doubtless, will be ready to say that under such conditions no value can be ascribed to any conclusions relating to the foundations of our knowledge. All who think so are right in abstaining from the search for such conclusions.

In my early years, I was once to some extent instructed as well as amused by watching a hen in pursuit of grasshoppers. Fixing her attention on one particular grasshopper, she followed it until it had become too tired to go farther, regardless of all the others which sprang up between her and that which she was chasing. If we can succeed at all in the hunt for clear conceptions over the field of language, it must be by the temporary neglect of all but that which we are seeking at the moment.

In the present case, we will endeavor to exclude from the consideration of the vague notion of existence with which we have begun all suggestions made to us by our own words, and to choose for ourselves that course of thought which best promises clearness and simplicity.

IV

The notion of parts composing aggregates, and aggregates composed of parts, appears to me to be less in need of definition by additional notions than any other which I can discover. This is the origin of all mathematical inquiry, and mathematics is commonly accepted as a comparatively distinct body of thought. Our chosen terms are mutually dependent; to imagine a part we must also imagine that which includes it, and to imagine an aggregate is to imagine something made up of parts. Possibly some may hold that this is equally true of thought and the thinker. In a certain sense, as will appear below, I can agree with them; but not as I conceive the statement to be usually understood. No argument upon the question seems practicable, and every one must decide it for himself.

Existence, regarded as an aggregate, consists of parts, each of which may itself be regarded as an aggregate, and this process may be indefinitely continued. Here we obtain our first suggestion of the idea of an orderly universe, which will of course be continually recurring as we proceed. Can any interdependence of ideas appertain to a chaos ? Our minds, developed under a reign of law, may perhaps regard chaos as divisible into parts; but no such idea, and presumably no idea at all, can easily be supposed to originate in chaos itself. This, however, is a merely fanciful speculation, which must not be allowed to detain us longer.

One part of existence is the present; the present, taken as an aggregate, may be indefinitely subdivided, and this process ultimately results in the total extinction of the present, as every one perceives. To use a mathematical term, easily understood, the integration of an indefinite number of parts is requisite in order to constitute what we call a present event. Consciousness is a term too vague and general to allow us definitely to declare it equivalent to integrated existence; but disintegrated existence cannot be regarded as conscious, and consciousness may be greater or less according to its degree of integration. In the language of mathematics, the term opposed to integration is differentiation; but disintegration is an expression which is probably more generally intelligible.

Memory, properly speaking, involves a recognition of the past, and anticipation a recognition of the future. If we regard consciousness as a compound of memory and anticipation, we must use these terms in a special sense, excluding such recognitions. This will furnish us with the idea of a conscious present, composed of an unrecognized memory and an equally unrecognized, and probably less extensive, anticipation, like a wave about to break, and steeper toward the shore than toward the sea.

In this view of the subject, consciousness may gradually diminish and finally disappear in disintegration, while we shall be unable to fix any distinct boundary between a conscious and an unconscious condition. Allowing ourselves here to admit the idea of an external world, we may imagine animals of various kinds to have various degrees of consciousness, without finding any line of ultimate separation between them and vegetables, in which we consider consciousness altogether absent; that is, we regard their existence as disintegrated.

According to one school of philosophy, no animal but man is conscious; but this theory is generally taken for an unwarranted expression of the pride of human nature.

On the other hand, a consciousness extended to embrace a past and a future eternity, so that everything shall be present, is no longer consciousness at all, however gradually we may regard it as approached. It is something wholly incomprehensible, which we may attribute, if we choose, to some supernatural power.

Between these extremes of the infinitesimal and the infinite, but not far from the former, lies that world of finite consciousness within each of us, to which we will now return. It forms only a small portion, as we all practically assume, of an existence apart from any external world, but disintegrated and unconscious. The familiar and frequently employed illustrations of this unconscious existence are the mental processes supposed to incite the rapid movements made to escape injury, or required in the performance of music, which are neither intended nor felt as separate actions. Only the general result is contemplated and perceived.

The slight and imperfect integration here assumed as a condition of consciousness is more or less complete in varying circumstances. When unwelcome, as in the case of pain, it can at times be intentionally suppressed to some extent. " Cowards die many times before their deaths" in conscious anticipation; and the unrecognized anticipation of ordinary consciousness may possibly be modified by resolution, as it may be restricted by nature among the lower animals, as already noticed. So far as this is true, pain may be lessened or extinguished.

Unrecognized anticipation affords us a further illustration of the control of existence by order. We expect the actual condition of things to continue, in the absence of any suggestion to the contrary; an expectation which prolongs what we have called the present. In so far as this expectation is not justified by fact, consciousness may be suspended, which happens, indeed, during the rapid movements recently mentioned ; or may recognize an event as still to happen, not as present. Such recognitions obviously attend the feelings of indifference, desire, dread, or intention.

y

Memory, if recognized as such, involves the idea of repetition. This is a comparatively simple notion, like that of parts and aggregates, and provides us with a second step toward the formation of a mathematical system. We remember a sensation or perception in the present, without recognition of the process as memory. This unrecognized memory is afterwards repeated and then recognized. Subsequent recognized repetitions may occur, and there may be repetitions of the recognition as well as of the memory, in any degree of complexity. The actual and historical basis of arithmetic is usually and reasonably referred to the recognition of external objects; but memories in a simpler form would apparently furnish such a basis, without the aid of any experience of the world without us.

The question has been raised whether, under laws of nature differing from those which we know, two and two might make five. It may be partially answered by the remark that memory, as we now understand it, would then be superseded by some process in accordance with which a pair of events would not be remembered as a pair. But let us not wander from the consideration of what actually happens into speculations about matters beyond the reach of experience.

Any event, however small a part of some aggregate, may itself be an aggregate of parts indefinitely numerous. Memory may repeat some of these parts without others; and, in the infinite complexities which are thus possible, we have, I think, an explanation of the comparative vagueness of the ideas expressed by the words like and unlike. It is of course open to any one to say that repetition, to his mind, is as vague a term as likeness. Others may find it more intelligible.

But however vague the notion of likeness may be, it still appears to involve another, that of universal order, which at this point we find forced upon us more decidedly than before. Any repetition suggests, without absolutely requiring, a necessary sequence of events, and accustoms us to an indefinite confidence in such a sequence. A given assemblage of infinitesimal details, if repeated by memory, appears to demand a continuation by another consequent assemblage. Every repetition, however minute, is the repetition of such a sequence, when we resolve the repeated event into its infinitesimal elements. "Over the past not heaven itself hath power"; at all events, we feel as sure that what has happened is immutable as we feel that what happens is real, and a remembered event presents itself to us as a necessary sequence. We may conjecture, but certainly without any thought of being able to prove, that memory and chaos are incompatible.

Perhaps it may be worth while to guard against the supposition that the foregoing reflections are meant as an argument for the principle of universal order, which is properly neither a term to be defined nor a proposition to be demonstrated, but an instinct to be obeyed. It controls the conscious action of all animals to whom consciousness can be attributed, and we may recognize its presence, if we choose, even in the unconscious efforts of vegetation. It cannot be established by the workings of our minds any more than an engine can furnish the power by which it is driven. We have only an infinitesimal acquaintance with an infinitesimal part of the universe, and must not pretend to make general assertions about the whole; while any partial statement which we may find possible must be made under the control of tendencies unconsciously developed in us, among the effects of which are memory itself, as well as the indefinite sense of likeness. Any inquiry whether memory and likeness could be conceived as existing in the absence of that instinct which demands compliance with the order of nature would be an inquiry resembling that whether two and two could make five under a different system of natural law, and must apparently be equally futile.

Different memories may appear as partial repetitions of one another, and to that extent the remembered events are alike. But as we neither know in the present nor remember in the past all the antecedents of anything which can happen, it is not requisite that the partial repetitions which we may observe should be succeeded by other repetitions as exact as their predecessors. Divergences will occur, which we recognize as evidence of unlikeness even in the portions of the remembered events in which the repetition seems most complete.

YI

There will probably be a general agreement in the proposition that classification, to be practically useful, must chiefly rest upon likeness. It is true that voluntary, or intentional, classification may be purely arbitrary. But natural classification, in which language seems to originate, results from the perception of similarities. It would be impossible to have words assigned to all the infinitesimal events composing an existence; considerations of likeness, and a resulting classification, must take place previous to the formation of even an impersonal verb. This would be true if language were to be used merely to assist internal thought, instead of as a means of communication with others. Consider, for instance, the statement "It rains," regarded not as implying an external universe, but merely as an expression of an assemblage of sensations. The order of these sensations, as well as the sensations themselves, must repeat many previous experiences, in order that the expression may have any purpose or meaning. Classification and language, as well as likeness itself, require as a necessary condition of their usefulness the assumption of an order of nature, however deficient in clearness the notion of that order may originally be. Dealing as it does with infinities of infinitesimals, it cannot be expected to present itself definitely and distinctly to a finite mind, while it may still be a condition requisite for every action of which that mind is capable.

Those who take part in any discussion conducted by means of language must have a sufficient agreement at the outset as to what language itself implies, or their time will be wasted. Two men may assent to a series of verbal statements, and yet, for want of such an agreement, may fail to draw from them any conclusion acceptable to both. Nor can the requisite agreement be obtained by a preliminary discussion, every word of which may be variously regarded. So far as external nature is concerned, little difficulty is usually found in avoiding such perplexities as are commonly called metaphysical; but in dealing with those mental questions which seem at first most accessible to our inquiries, we soon discover that we cannot hope for any general concurrence, and that we must content ourselves with a comparatively limited fellowship among our contemporaries. I am in no way entitled to criticize the opinions of others respecting the foundations of language, however widely they may differ from mine; and, at the same time,

I must allow them to criticize mine as much as they please.

A certain classification of classifications themselves, which has sometimes been regarded as important, deserves some notice before we proceed. Some classes appear absolutely, others only partially, distinguishable. To those who admit the idea of permanent, as opposed to transient, existence; of being, as opposed to happening; there seems a perfectly definite separation between the two conceptions. Numeration, too, as distinguished from measurement of quantity, presents us with a series of separate and distinct classes. On the other hand, the distinction between animals and vegetables, generally so clear, becomes vague in the lower forms of organic life. If we choose, we may regard this last distinction as one relating to our own sensations and thoughts, without reference for the present to any actual world without us. Certain other classifications, such as that of conscious and unconscious existence, or that of past and future events, may be regarded in either way, as we please. We may imagine degrees of consciousness, as we have seen, passing insensibly into unconsciousness; and the past is united with the future in the present.

No further analysis of this subject will here be attempted than that suggested by the remark that absolute distinctions, usually at least, have an artificial character; they seem to be constructed by reflection rather than offered to us by nature. Moreover, we become aware of a constant tendency, as we study any subject, toward vagueness in distinctions which at first seemed clear, and toward the formation of suspicions that our efforts at classification are the struggles of the finite mind to reduce an infinite universe to its own standard. So far as this view is accepted, we may admit that language can never be made definite enough to be an instrument entirely satisfactory to us, and that our knowledge is not likely to attain that degree of precision which we naturally desire for it. Inspiration and revelation, as is known, are the means on which many depend for the gratification of this desire.

VII

Inference is a process referred by some to classification, by others to likeness, and by a third school directly to the unconscious recognition of natural law. Those who entertain the views of classification and likeness above proposed find these three systems practicallyequivalent.

Ordinary reasoning, as distinguished from merely formal and generally useless logic, is of course mainly hypothetical, and largely unconscious. Whether conscious or not, it seldom rests on propositions of which we are so sure as to be thoroughly convinced of those derived from them. This is true even in mathematics, where the ultimate basis of our conclusions, when we search for it, is found to be somewhat unsteady. Those who aspire to certainty must obtain it by force of will. Others regard this certainty as equally doubtful with the uncertainty to which they are content to resign themselves.

Even the fundamental principle on which we have assumed all thought, language, and reasoning to rest cannot be stated, as has already been granted above, in the form of a downright assertion. When we make our return to it, after prolonged experience of its guidance, and try to understand clearly what we have been doing, it presents itself most frequently, perhaps, in the shape of a hypothesis the origin of which will be considered below; the hypothesis that if we knew accurately the present condition of the universe in all its details we could then be sure what would happen next. For practical purposes, it is better to say that so far as we do understand the present we are warranted in our expectations of what is to come, without pretending to any perfection of knowledge; and that even the little power which can be gained by observation is worth having. Just now, however, it is theory rather than practice with which we are concerned.

It is no part of my present plan to set forth any theory of reasoning; but having recognized the possibility of such a process, as well as the power of classification and the sense of likeness, it becomes more practicable to employ ordinary language in any desired discussion. Hitherto, every word which could be used has doubtless implied some theory, whether that which I have adopted or another; and these words must have frequently suggested processes of reasoning, because no other words were available, while at the same time no legitimate reasoning could be possible when the foundations of reason itself were to be discussed. What these foundations are, every man has to decide for himself without argument until some warrant for argument can be found. Men who are unconsciously at variance as to what reasoning implies will vainly expect to convince one another of conclusions which they may imagine to be indisputable.

VIII

Our convictions with regard to the world without us must be derived from inference, unless we choose, as some will, to consider them intuitive, or, with others, to deny their validity altogether. In our dreams, we are surrounded by an external nature as real to us at the time as any other, which we still repudiate on waking, as a mere fiction of our own. It is a familiar remark that our waking lives may be dreams, for all that we can prove to the contrary.

Assuming that we know something outside of the existence with which we began our attempted exposition of opinion, and assuming also that this knowledge results from inference, usually unconscious, let us see what can be suspected with regard to the nature of the process. We may now return to the consideration of that attribute of consciousness above described as unrecognized anticipation, in which whatever is happening is expected to continue. The incessant failure of this expectation, combined with our unconscious assurance of the order of nature, may induce the conviction that there are more such trains of events than that to which the term existence was applied above; that there is something more to be known in the universe than the feeling, intention, and thought which were originally accepted as realities.

Whether this speculation, for of course it is nothing more, is or is not admitted, it will doubtless be granted that we somehow become persuaded of the course of existences, integrated or not, in infinite number besides our own. Many of us insist on including in this persuasion substances which are, as well as events which happen; they must have matter without them as well as mind within. This view, if accepted, must be intuitive; it is beyond the reach of inference.

One assemblage of external events is of particular importance to each of us, and now requires us again to consider the realities which we originally accepted. Feeling, in ordinary language, includes sensation and emotion. While we will still neglect many problems of classification here suggested, we must admit either that there is a clear distinction between these kinds of feeling, or, with some philosophers, that emotion may be resolved into sensation and thought. In either case, we shall find sensation appearing as our immediate means of communication with external nature. But we also find a special set of events interposing themselves between us and nature at large. The sensation of a flash of lightning, for example, is referred in the first instance to something which happens in the eye, and this again to something which happens in the clouds. We admit the nature of these occurrences to be entirely unknown to us; all we know is the sensation itself; but most of us feel sure that both external events take place: Others, it is true, will deny their reality, and may go so far as even to refuse credence to the sensation. If we adopt the opinion of the majority, we find, on further examination, that each event may be indefinitely analyzed into parts. As usual, wherever we look, we are confronted with an infinity beyond our mental grasp.

We need not accept the abstract idea of matter as a necessity, before we can speak of our bodies as freely as we can of ourselves without stopping to discuss the meaning of personal pronouns. These bodies are so necessary to our recognition of other external objects that we take them with us into our dreams; at least, I do not know that any one dreams of being disembodied, and, if he does, I apprehend that he cannot explain to us his sensations in that condition. We dream, certainly, of being more or less than normally agile, but that is a difference easy to imagine. No attempt will here be made to distinguish between dreams of different kinds, or between dreams in general and the ordinary course of consciousness.

If intention and thought do not seem to demand the recognition of the body so imperatively as sensation, it may be because sensation itself seems to furnish them with any requisite antecedent events. As our observation of the body progresses, however, we learn to associate all mental action with the nervous system, and particularly with the brain, and to infer that nerves and consciousness have some necessary connection. Still, it remains comparatively easy to imagine disembodied thought.

IX

Unconscious inferences, indefinitely numerous, lead us to assume the existence of assemblages of events without us, similar to those from which we derive the notions of our own bodies. The nature of such inferences can be only vaguely conjectured; but it is easier to understand how, after the existence of other bodies than our own has been assumed, we can go on to infer conscious mental processes connected with them. In my fourth essay, I have already mentioned the apparent possibility of infinitesimal variations of consciousness in the animal world, passing by insensible degrees to the presumed unconsciousness of vegetables.

In this view of life in general, we appear to have a still less direct conviction of other conscious existences than our own than, we have of the unconscious existences in which we consider them embodied. But this view will be unsatisfactory to some, who would prefer to think of other minds as more immediately known to them than other bodies. They may wish to have a perfect assurance of the reality of other human beings, while reserving the right to consider the material universe as possibly, if not certainly, unreal. Perfection of any kind, however, is beyond the scope of the present essays.

The method by which we arrive, with whatever reservations, at our conviction of the existence of consciousness other than our own, naturally induces us to believe also that this consciousness resembles ours. That is, we consider it at least probable that the sensations of our neighbors are like those which we experience; that a red color, for instance, means to those who are not color-blind something much like what it means to us. This is clearly not a necessary conclusion. So long as the sensation of redness recurs to one man when it recurs to another, they are able to converse intelligently about red objects without the certainty of any similarity in their sensations.

We are apt to extend this presumption of similarity even to unconscious existence. Two men, for example, may witness the fall of a tree. Each knows it only through his own sensations, which may or may not resemble those of the other. But both may assume that if the assemblage of external events before them constituted a conscious life, or if, in the language of my fourth essay, these events were integrated to any extent, there would be some similarity between them and the sensations of the two spectators. This assumption, on consideration, appears to be purely arbitrary. We may regard the events of the material universe as real, without comparing them in any way with those which constitute our own existence. Let a tree fall in the absence of any spectators, and the assemblage of events so designated will be as real, and of a nature as unknown, as if it were witnessed by men.

X

Each present event, in the view which has here been taken of the present, is infinitely divisible; and its predecessor or successor in any given series differs from it only by an infinitesimal variation in the past or future. This tends to give the series that quality of continuity which should apparently belong to an orderly universe as distinguished from a chaos. The sequence of intention and execution, to be further considered below, is one chief method by which the sense of continuity is extended beyond the present, as well as, probably, a principal source of the unconscious assurance of order controlling our inferences.

The question here suggests itself whether the course of consciousness should be regarded as composed of many series proceeding simultaneously, or whether it forms but one infinitely divisible series, finite and unlike parts of which may alternate in the conscious aggregate. This is practically the question stated by Dante at the beginning of the fourth canto of his Purgatory, and, according to him, the second view, that of a single series, is the orthodox doctrine. At all events, it is that easiest to conceive and to hold. For convenience, then, we will regard events as proceeding in single series, whether integrated or not.