The world we live in; or, Philosophy and life in the light of modern thought

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Preface

It is a fair question how dry a man has a right to be when he is writing upon a subject which ought to be of interest to every thoughtful man. The world in which we find ourselves is the common property of the learned and the unlearned. The problem of its nature and of our own adjustment to it stares us all in the face, if we think at all.

Hence, I make no apology for having written in a very plain and straightforward way. A truth simply stated is none the less a truth. An error stated in obscure and technical language is given a breastplate which may shield an unworthy life.

I hope no one will be deterred from reading my book by the rather formidable collection of notes appended to it. They are intended chiefly for my professional colleagues, and not for the general reader. The argument of the book is supposed to stand upon its own feet, and can be judged without reference to them. My program is contained in the first chapter. He to whom this makes no appeal need not read further, for my problem and its solution will not interest him.

That I am wholly in the right, or that I have said what I have meant to say as clearly and well as it should be said, I do not for a moment suppose. He who regards himself as infallible in philosophy, or who speaks with authority, stands revealed as lacking in a sense of humor. Did I suppose it would be of service, I should indicate the chapters which seem to me most in need of emendation by some one more acute ; but doubtless the critic will prefer selecting these for himself.

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However, the work is intended, in part, for those who are not first of all critics, but who read with the desire to discover something, even if it be inadequately expressed, that mayprove helpful to them. I earnestly hope that such may not go away empty-handed.

The man who stands quite alone may well ask himself whether he is standing just where he should. In offering the fruit of my reflections to others, I am encouraged by the thought that I am not standing alone, but that what has seemed to me a reasonable attitude toward the world has seemed reasonable also to many other men, both learned and unlearned, who are not devoid of judgment. I am willing to stand, with the reservations indicated in my book, as the champion of Everybody's World, — the world of common experience and of science, — maintaining that our first duty toward it is to accept it, and our second to try to understand it. I claim without hesitation that we may not properly be said to understand it, but rather to do it violence, if we, as philosophers, feel free to perform such operations upon it that it emerges from our hands robbed of its familiar and rather unmistakable features. We wrong it, if we dissolve it in the acrid vapors of a general skepticism ; we wrong it, if we thrust it out of sight and call it unknowable ; we wrong it, if we evoke a magic formula and substitute a shining apparition for homely Mother Earth.

The philosophic reader will recognize that I have felt it necessary to follow a path which leads in the same general direction as that chosen by a goodly number of contemporary writers. These modern realists are men of keen mind who appear to be impressed with the necessity of doing full justice to our experience of the world as it presents itself in the actual body of human knowledge. I may mention the names of Woodbridge, McGilvary, Miller, Holt, Marvin, Montague, Perry, Pitkin, Spaulding, and Kemp-Smith, in America ; of Stout, Russell, and Moore, in Great Britain ; and of Kiilpe,

Preface ix

in Germany. They do not in all respects agree with each other, and certainly I do not expect them to approve all the opinions which I express. But they appear to me to be pressing on, each as he best can, toward the same goal. If I understand them aright, it is that which I have set before myself — the working out of a sober realism, which will not refuse to accept suggestions from the idealist where such seem helpful, but which will take pains not to be misled into doing injustice to the unmistakably real world given in experience.

GEORGE STUART FULLERTON.

Columbia University, January, 19 1 2.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Everybody's World i

II. The Problem of Everybody's World . . . 16

Chapter I

I sit down at this desk to write, betraying in the very act my conviction that there are such things as pen, ink, and paper, a desk, a room, a world beyond it which I do not now perceive, persons in it who will read my reflections and understand or misunderstand them.

I know well that if I sit here dreaming and do not write, I shall not be printed, shall not be read, and shall neither convince, nor arouse opposition. I have said, "sit here dreaming," and the words mark my recognition of the fact that before me is a real desk in a real room, a something very carefully to be distinguished from those second-hand existences, those evanescent imitations, those reflections and echoes, that people the realms of dream and imagination.

"I shall not convince any one" — to whom do these words refer ? I am not concerned to convince the men in my dream ; or those phantom adversaries whom I can, by a free play of fancy, call into an unreal being, and hold them there long enough to secure myself the idle gratification of their phantom discomfiture, of their pretended rout and confusion in the face of the irresistible thrust of my argument. These men are shadows cast by my hands, my creations, puppets on my own private and insignificant stage. If I persuade them of the truth of my utterances, I am only reassuring myself; if I scatter them in flight, it is my right hand overcoming my left, and the triumph brings with it small cause for gratulation.

I am concerned to convince men who have bodies as real as this desk, this chair, this room lined with books, men who belong to the same world with these things. Men who could sit down here and write — who may now be writing elsewhere — who are quite able to hold their own against me, answering thrust with thrust, and surprising me by the skill with which they parry. Such men reveal an independence little flattering to my pride ; they may give me suggestions as to how I should hold my blade, or even criticize adversely the costume in which I see fit to walk abroad, indicating that I might have learnt to drape myself in a decent obscurity had I sat longer at the feet of Hegel. He who lays aside his cloak takes the risk of exhibiting before the world evidences of poverty which the selfrespecting prefer to keep for their own contemplation.

These my real neighbors, my friends or my foes, are not fugitive existences, irresponsible vagrants, that appear for a moment and then vanish, leaving no trace. They have a domicile and are to be accounted for. All of them are men of ancient lineage. Their ancestors, unknown to me, and imperfectly known to them, have from time immemorial had their place in the material world. They themselves now hold such a place. Some day they will be dissolved into their elements, which elements will not fade into the nothingness which awaits such stuff as dreams are made of, but will endure and go their ceaseless round in ever new combinations and dissolutions.

I write, then, for real men in a real world. It is permissible in poetry to say all the world's a stage ; but to confound the players who strut and fret their parts upon this stage with the shadowy personages who act for me alone, and who consent to annihilation when I begin to yawn, is not permissible in prose. I must take my neighbor more seriously than this. He is independent, disputatious, not in the least inclined to admit that I am the Master of the Show, and not greatly impressed with my philosophy. I must at him again ! And I must take care not to underrate him.

My neighbor is a man of sense, and is not to be treated as a heathen and a publican. In the very act of revolving in my mind various clever assaults upon his philosophical faith, I am checked by the reflection that we have much in common. We long ago hit upon a modus vivendi, and the ordinary commerce of life has been, and is, carried on satisfactorily. We live in the same town, if not in the same street. We speak the same language, save when the fine frenzy of speculation betrays us into utterances out of the common. Our actions seem to give the lie to those verbal extravagances which alarm the timid, but which do not really portend a disastrous outbreak of hostilities and the severance of all cordial relations.

All of which means that, whatever our theories, however original and startling, however fine-spun, dazzling, and iridescent, we actually find ourselves in a world, and pay to it the substantial tribute of involuntary recognition. It is the world of the man in the street, it is true, but it is by no means his peculiar property. From it the scholar must set out, if he will discover other worlds ; to it he must come back, if he will persuade any one that he has really discovered anything.

This world, the world of common experience and of scientific knowledge, is the very ground beneath our feet ; we cannot so much as leave it, without depending upon its aid. With it the philosopher has never been wholly satisfied, and for good reason. It is imperfectly illuminated ; we see but a small part of it from any given point upon it ; it is easy to misconceive what we do see, and we are brought constantly to a realization of our ignorance and error. What are we to think of the world as a whole ? What should be our attitude towards it ? Some men never raise such questions. The philosophers do ; and they seem to them among the most important questions that can be raised.

But there are philosophers and philosophers. To some, Everybody's World is little better than the City of Destruction, a place to leave in haste. Its streets and byways are half forgotten, its laws and usages allowed to slip out of mind. When such men come back to Everybody's World, and try to hold converse with their fellows, their utterances sound arbitrary and fantastic. What they say of golden streets leads us to believe they have been dreaming and inspires curiosity rather than respect. Others treat our common home with more consideration. They are unwilling to take our account of it, which they find more or less inarticulate, and they claim that the landscape before them is veiled in mist. Everybody's World is not to them precisely the world; but it is a view of the world, the view of the world which is vouchsafed to us all to begin with. It marks the direction in which we must look with straining eyes, if we will attain to something better. He who turns his back upon it will not find a world at all. If he is ingenious, he can people empty space with ghosts, but he cannot do more.

I have said that the philosopher is not wholly satisfied with Everybody's World, and distrusts our accounts of it. He may well complain, not merely of the indefiniteness and inconsistency of our utterances, but also of our reticences. There is much that we do not tell, for the very good reason that there is much that we do not see — much even that appears to the more clear-sighted to be spread out before our very eyes. Like Monsieur Jourdain, we talk prose without knowing it. Nevertheless, it would be going too far to say that there is not a very general consensus of opinion as to the broader features presented by Everybody's World. He who would have us believe that they are delusive appearances, and that the world, properly so called, is to be conceived as without them, totters under a burden of proof of quite overwhelming proportions. We may leave him for the present, and sketch those features in barest outline. The sketch will be recognized as true to life, I think, by an overwhelming majority of those who have so far succeeded in dispensing with artificial aids to vision.

To begin with, let me set down the system of physical things to which this desk, this room, my body, and the indefinite beyond in which they have their insignificant place, indubitably belong. I cannot begin elsewhere, if I would. At no time within my memory has any feature of my experience been more insistent and persistent. This system of things we admit as common property, however we may dispute touching the meaning of that ambiguous expression. My house and your house are in the same street ; you can visit me, look at my books, handle my pen, take up this paper and shake your head over it. We may in moments of irritation deny our neighbor a mind ; but to deny our neighbor a body is to deny him in Mo, to snuff him out, to extrude him from existence. It is not so much as an exit in the direction of the fourth dimension; it is not an exit at all ; it is black annihilation.

In the second place, I must sketch in the stage puppets which made their appearance a few pages back. Everybody knows that he imagines things, and that he is visited by dreams. But he is perfectly aware of the fact that neither the gate of horn nor the gate of ivory are real entrances to the house of life. They give admission to the abode of shades. In a given instance a man may not feel sure whether he has to do with a shade or with that which casts a shadow; but when the point is once determined, everybody — I do not include the idiots, infants, and some savages, referred to by Locke — everybody resolutely condemns the shade to remain in its own place. There can be no doubt that men generally distinguish with a good deal of sharpness between things and mere imaginings.

Nor are they wholly ignorant of the distinction between things perceived and the appearances of things. Certainly they make use of the distinction every day. When they grow a trifle scientific they are apt to call the appearances, as such, percepts, and they say that some percepts give more satisfactory information about things than do others. The fact itself, however, is not a modern discovery. It was known to prehistoric man, who crawled up to the moving figure in the distance to discover whether it should be welcomed as a friend or attacked as an enemy. In the same general class with things dreamt, things imaginary, and the percepts of things, belong other experiences regarded by the psychologist as falling within his special province, and referred by the man who is not a psychologist somewhat vaguely to his "mind." Thus, everybody knows that sensations, emotions, and volitions are not physical things and must be excluded from the realm of such.

To return to the physical things. In Everybody's World it is assumed that they exist continuously and go through various changes independently of our perception of them. The world was here before we came into it ; it will roll on after we are gone. We do not stop the cosmic clock when we nod, nor does only so much of it exist and function as falls within the illuminated circle of our field of vision. For us, things appear or disappear ; in the world, they exist or they do not exist. The distinction is clearly marked in human speech, and is observed when men discourse with one another. Any form of expression which seems to slur it over arouses suspicion and antagonism in the natural man, nor does it meet with a hospitable reception until the ground is prepared for it.

And the physical things thus given an independent and a continuous existence are assumed to belong to the one world, to form some sort of a system. Let the man who doubts this try to persuade his simpler neighbor of the existence of a planet at no distance and in no direction from any other planet, of the existence of a man who has at no time been anywhere. Such a man, he exclaims, is no man ; such- existence is nonexistence.

Or, if you please, such a man is a man in your mind, of whom you are talking incoherently. A real man must be an historical character, however humble the part he plays in history. A real planet must have its appointed path in a space continuous with ours. The most independent of the unlearned hesitate to carry their pluralism so far as to assign to a thing that is no thing a place that is no place, and to apply to this spectral bit of property the inappropriate name of real estate.

We should not allow ourselves to be seduced by an ancient tradition into thinking too lightly of this physical system. In Everybody's World it fulfills a most important function which some have overlooked. It has been said that mental phenomena of all sorts are, by men generally, excluded from the realm of physical things. I may add that mental phenomena are not, by men generally, accorded a continuous and independent existence, and given a place in a single system analogous to the material system. This does not mean that they are simply left at loose ends, treated as outlaws, relegated to a chaos beyond the confines of our ordered universe. They are gathered up and put into minds, which minds are referred to bodies with their definite place in the system of things.

In their account of these minds, and in their suggestions as to the nature of this reference, most men are highly unsatisfactory, if, indeed, they have anything to say at all. This is one of the dark places in Everybody's World, and few pretend to see clearly. Nevertheless, is it not everywhere accepted that every thought must be thought by somebody, that every dream must be somebody's dream ? A sensation at large has no more right to exist than a planet at large. How shall we determine whose thought, whose dream, whose sensation? How answer the insistent questions : When ? Where ? By turning to the world of physical things, whose "when's" and whose "where's" are spread out before us. It gives into our hands map and calendar.

It seems scarcely necessary to point out that, having distinguished as they do between ideas and things, and having referred certain ideas to certain bodies existing at certain times, men generally are in little danger of confusing their ideas of things with the things, unless it be in an occasional instance, and through some blunder. Caesar's dream of a triumphal entry into Rome is not a triumphal entry into Rome. My thought of Caesar is not Caesar, nor is my thought of his dream his dream. That we can think of things physical and mental is accepted without question in Everybody's World. Let the learned decide how this is possible. But woe be to the scholar, be he learned as Rabelais, who would persuade us that the thoughts of things are not different from the things, and that to the things must be assigned the same place in the universe that we have assigned to the thoughts ! This is anarchy ! This brings down our world about our ears in a moment ; the fair structure crumbles into a shapeless ruin, and the dust of it blinds and chokes us.

So much for the most striking features of the world which we all accept to begin with ; which we make our point of departure when we set out to find another. It has been shrewdly pointed out that it is hardly enough of a world to be called a world from the point of view of theory, 1 though it is a very good world to move about in. Thus, it is possible for a man to object : "Physical things? Of course I accept them. But what are physical things? In what sense is the external world external?" "Independent of me? Of course the things I see and feel are, in a sense, independent of me. They are not my dreams. But are they not, after all, the things I see and j eel?" " Things and appearances ? Keep the distinction, if you will — and then try to describe to me things apart from appearances." "Minds referred to bodies? You have indicated that things mental are of so peculiar a nature that they cannot be looked for in, on, under, or in the neighborhood of any body. Your

'reference' is no better than a pillar of cloud by night. You have presented us with a word lighted up by no ray of significance."

In other words, a man may accept and object in the same breath ; accept the outline, complain that, until more lines are added, the character of the figure cannot even be guessed. Nevertheless, it is no small thing to have even an outline, a patch of common ground, a spot on which we may meet and agree to separate. And it should never be forgotten that Everybody's World is really enough of a world to move about in, to carry on the ordinary business of life in. It is quite possible for us there to adjust ourselves to the present and to make provision against the future.

This means that it has a constitution with which it is wise for us to acquaint ourselves. A dawning suspicion of this glimmers in the mind of the infant that decides that one insertion of the finger into the candle flame is enough. With advancing years it is impressed upon us in a thousand ways that it is prudent to find out about things and to adapt ourselves to our surroundings. We repeat with approbation the aphorism of Bacon: "Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or to the mind, permit him, and he neither knows nor is capable of more."

It is matter of common experience that the world is a very big world, and that we are a very little part of it. It is a world in which, on the whole, a man must keep his eyes open, if he will not come to grief. To be sure, some are so situated in it that they may close their eyes to much, and, nevertheless, survive. All ignorances are not equally fatal to all persons. And there can be no doubt that we really play a part, that we have some control. Over the figures on my own private stage, over my thoughts and imaginings, I seem to exercise, if not an absolute, at least a powerful, sway. Over other things I cannot exercise io The World We Live In

the same authority, but I am not without some influence. I can move my little body about, and can cause some changes in material things. Of the limitations both of my knowledge and of my power I may remain ignorant as long as I am not put to the test. Where, in the ordinary course of nature, the test is a thing to be expected, and is palpable and undeniable, men learn to conduct themselves with modesty and to speak with caution.

The recognition of our somewhat humble place in the system of things may fairly be included among the features of Everybody's World. Men do not attempt to control the stars in their courses, or to call spirits from the vasty deep, being well aware that the attempt would be futile. It is everybody's secret that the little sphere of the known is bounded by the limitless unknown. And both in common life and in the sciences there is a restless activity, the aim of which is to increase our knowledge and to add to our power.

I expressly include the sciences because the man of science lives in the same world with the rest of us. We should have the grace to see in him an honored inhabitant of that world, and we should listen to his utterances with respect. But if we have clear vision, it must be plain to us that, whether he is giving us an account of the past history of our solar system, is predicting the return of a comet, is indicating the presence in space of planets not as yet revealed to any human eye, or is setting up a theory touching the imperceptible constituents of the bodies which surround us, he is, nevertheless, describing our world, or guessing at its contents. It is always possible for him to do his work without raising the special questions which have been dwelt upon above. When he has done it, we may treat the things of which he speaks as we have treated the objects that knock every day at our doors. Planet, or atom, or electron — is the thing real and physical ? What does it mean to be a physical thing ? Is the thing in space, and re-

Iated to other objects in space ? How does the object differ from my idea of it? Such questions the man who gives us information about the thing is bound neither to ask nor to answer. His world is Everybody's World; he should know it well, but it is not his duty to leave it and to seek another.

That it is a matter of practical importance to us all to increase our information is a commonplace. If we are to get what we want, we must be able to see what we want. Time spent in extolling the merits of science is, in our day, time lost. As well enter upon an argument to prove to men that we cannot orient ourselves satisfactorily so long as the shades of night envelop us, and that we walk most securely by daylight. Nevertheless, it is a good thing to bear in mind what the sciences do for us and what they do not do. They give us a fuller and better revelation of the world of our common experience, informing us as to what has been, showing us what is, and giving us hints as to what we are to expect under given circumstances. But science, unless it passes over to something which men have usually called by another name, does not exhibit the world under a different light from that to which we are accustomed ; and to the reflective this light has always seemed in certain respects an insufficient illumination.

There are those who are inspired by a lively curiosity to see the world otherwise than through the eyes of the average man, even the average man of broad information. What the latter takes for granted strikes them as problematic ; what he jolts over with indifference, scarcely feeling the shock, impresses them as intolerable inconsistency. Must one, they protest, ever remain on the surface of things ? Are we to be such spectators as sit, open-eyed and attentive, to be sure, watching the shifting scenes which succeed one another and recording the lines pronounced by the actors, but never asking themselves whether the play is comedy, tragedy, or melodrama, is consistent in its several parts, is well put together, has a moral purpose or is intended only to amuse ? Nor is an intellectual curiosity the only spur to reflection upon the world and its meaning. Men burn to attain to some sort of a world-vision — to see themselves and the system of things in perspective. They feel that, could they attain to this, it might introduce into life a consistency and harmony lacking in the hand-to-mouth existence of the man of limited horizon and of many maxims. What is wanted is such a view of the world as may make possible an attitude towards it, as may suggest a rule of life. To many, some such view is an imperious emotional need.

But must we not admit that even those who think little and read less, the unreflective many, have some sort of an outlook upon the world and an attitude towards it ? There is such a thing as a philosophy which is the passive precipitate of tradition, temperament, and past experience of life. Those who accept it are little troubled by problems ; obscurity and confusion are familiar elements in their universe, and are taken as a matter of course ; an occasional self-contradiction causes no acute discomfort. They can make up their minds about the world and their own place in it, without raising difficult questions and trying to answer them. No problem can plague us, if we will only put it out of our minds and refuse to think about it.