Genetic theory of reality, being the outcome of genetic logic as issuing in the aesthetic theory of reality called pancalism, with an extended glossary of terms

Front matter

Gopyiiglit^^^.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Preface

IN this book the matter appears which I had intended to place in the projected fourth volume of the work Thought and Things or Genetic Logic. ^ The change of plan has resulted from two considerations. The first and less important reason for it is that the London publishers of the latter work having gone into the hands of a "receiver," there promised to be delay and uncertainty as to the appearance of the new volume.^ The more essential consideration, however, is that by making of this volume a separate work, I am able to include in it anthropological and historical matter which I had promised to the present publishers some time before. In fulfilling that promise, I am therefore completing the scheme of treatment of Genetic Logic, as announced in the Introduction to the first volume of Thought and Things, and at the same time giving to the topic of Genetic Morphology (the last division of Genetic Logic) more extended treatment and wider scope. I find, in fact, of great interest the

^ London, Geo. Allen & Co. (now Allen & Unwin) ; New York, Macmillan. vol. i., "Functional Logic," 1906; vol. ii., "Experimental Logic," 1908; vol. iii., "Interest and Art, Genetic Epistemology, " 1911.

' It is only just that I should add that the acknowledgments made to the English publishers, in the Preface to volume iii., were intended for Messrs. Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., whose business was taken over — with what success I have indicated above — by Messrs. Geo. Allen & Co.

V vi Preface

confirmations coming to the theory of Interpretation — as issuing from the analyses of the larger work — from the treatment of the racial and historical problems (in Part II. of the present text).^

The close relation subsisting between this volume and the others mentioned is also seen in the frequent allusions to the latter found in the present text. By means of such references many repetitions are avoided; and at the same time those detailed analyses are summarised upon which rest the conclusions of this work. This is also, of course, the excuse for such citations: they are the references necessarily made from one part of a literary whole to other parts.

The main conclusion itself, the doctrine of Pancalism, is the author's matured contribution to the theory of reality — the philosophy to which his professional life of study, teaching, and writing has led him. It is now for the first time stated with sufficient fulness and with historical perspective. It was, however, thought out some time ago, and the principal point has had more or less definite statement in print on more than one occasion. Besides the exposition contained in vol. iii. of Thought and Things, chap. xv. (see also the Preface to the same volume, where the term Pancalism is first made use of) , brief statements are to be found in articles in the Psychological Bulletin, vol. iv., April 15, 1907, and (especially) the Psychological Review , May, 1903, and May, 1908; in Darwin and the Humanities, London ed., 1910, p. 93; and in the Preface to vol i. of Thought and Things, 1906, p. x, to which the motto

' Confirmations briefly anticipated in part, in the Preface to volume iii., the final chapter of which also anticipates, in the form of a programme, the general theory of Pancalism now fully worked out.

Preface vH

xb xaXbv xav was affixed as an indication of the result to which the entire research had led the author. Further, apart from lectures delivered in Princeton and Baltimore'^ since about 1900, an early printed statement, which it is now relevant to recall, is that made in the Preface, p. ix, to the volume of collected essays entitled Fragments in Philosophy and Science (New York, Scribner's Sons, March, 1902). I venture to quote it here that it may be compared with the conclusions of the present text.

"The universe of science is, when all is said, a cosmos which is not only true, but also beautiful, and in some sense good. Science tells us what is true; that is science's prerogative: and whatever may be science's final word about nature, that word is in so far the truth of the matter. Philosophy then enters her questions: How can such truth be also good, beautiful, livable? . . . While others say other things, and many others many other things, I say — using the liberty of this preface — It is good and true because it is beautiful. Nothing can be [finally] true without being beautiful, and nothing can be in any high sense good without being beautiful. In the words of my colleague and friend, Professor A. T. Ormond^ {Foundations of Knowledge, p. 228), 'the aesthetic principle is at the same time a demand and an intuition ... an ideal requirement and an intuition under which our world completes itself. ... It repre-

* Citations from these unpublished lectures are made by Dr. (now President) W. D. Furry, in his monograph, The Esthetic Experience, its Nature and Function in Epistemology (Baltimore, 1908), a work in which the author, a member of my philosophical Seminary at Baltimore, carried the pancalistic point of view into the interpretation of certain epochs in the history of philosophy.

^ This allusion to the views of Professor Ormond is now recalled and made more explicit on p. 215 below, and in Appendix B.

VIU

Preface sents the point in our conceptions where worth and truth coalesce and become one.'

"The ascription of beauty, a reasoned, criticised, thought-out ascription of £esthetic quality, is the final form of our thought about nature, man, the world, the all."

This profession of faith is now given its justification after a dozen years. ^

It has seemed to the writer that this volume might serve as a sort of Introduction to Philosophy, at least to those who conceive of philosophy not as in opposition to science but as inclusive of it. For the developments herein proceed upon conclusions drawn from psychology, theory of evolution, logic, sociology, anthropology, ethics, aesthetics, and history and science of religion; and in each connection the summary given is made intelligible apart from actual resort to the detailed treatises on those subjects. The final conclusion is reached as one resting upon the sciences, but as one finding its place in the historical series of interpretations of nature and man to which we give the name philosophy. The historical sketch given in Part II. and the conclusions arrived at in Part III. show this. The method, also, while new in some of its applications, is

^ The following explicit statement from the Psychological Review, May, 1904, p. 219, summarizes the pancalistic doctrine: "There is here [in the assthetic] a higher psychical immediacy in which all the dualisms of the mental life, at the stage reached, may on occasion merge in an immediate contemplative value of real presence; the dualisms of 'theoretical and practical,' 'mind and body,' 'inner and outer,' 'freedom and necessity,' all merge to the vanishing point in the sesthetic. " The article from which this citation is made gives a table which presents to the eye the main lines of development — the "progressions" — of the mental life which were worked out later in detail in the work Thought and Things.

Preface

IX stated and defended in relation to other methods of philosophical procedure. The discussions of aesthetics and of the primitive and unlogical interpretations of the world may be found to bring something fresh into philosophical introductions in comparison with the many restatements of the problems of philosophy in logical form of which our literature is full.

As adding an additional feature of utility to the volume in this direction, an extended Glossary is added presenting the definitions of terms new and old to which the genetic point of view has given a precise connotation.

J. M. B.

September, 1914.

PAGE

Chapter II

§ I . The Nature of Interpretation . . ,11

§2. Interpretation as an Organisation of Interests . 13

§ 3. Interpretation as the Social Organisation of

Interests . . . . . . • i?

§4. The Progression of Interpretation . . . 21

§ 5. The Realities as Interpreted .... 25

CHAPTER III The Paralellism between Individual and Racial Interpretation

§ I . The Question of Racial Interpretation . . 32 xii Contents

PAGE

2. Racial Interpretation as Organised Social

3. The Stages of Interpretation ... 38

CHAPTER IV Early Racial Interpretation: Its Pre- LOGiCAL Character

§ I. General Character of Early Racial Interpretation ....... 43

§ 2. The Social Character of Early Racial Interpretation ....... 46

§ 3. The a-Dualistic Character of Early Racial Interpretation ....... 53

§ 4. The Relatively a-Logical Character of Early

Racial Interpretation .... 64

CHAPTER V Early Racial Interpretation: Its Positive Character

§ I . The Social Organisation of Primitive Interest . 67

§ 2. The Affective Nature of Primitive Generalisation ....... 68

§3. Imitation and Ejection in Primitive Thought . 72

§ 4. Primitive Animism and Mysticism ... 74

§5. The Rise of Mediate or Logical Interpretation . 83

8 I

§ 2

§3 §4 §5

§6

8 I

§2

§3 §4

§5

§6

§7

Contents xiii

CHAPTER VI The Religious Interpretation PAGE

The Religious Interest ..... 86

The Religious Experience .... 87

The Religious Object : its Personal Meaning . 92

The Religious Object : its Ideal Meaning . . loi

The Development of the Religious Meaning: its Logic ....... 107

The Social Character of Religion . . . 109

CHAPTER VII Religious Reality and Religious Negation The Religious Object as Existing . . .118

The Union of Ideal and Actual in Religious Reality 122

The Religious Antinomy .... 127

Religious Negation: I. the Non-Religious or Secular ....... 129

Religious Negation: 11. The Irreligious or Profane ....... 132

Profane Reality: the Arch-Devil . . . 134

The Philosophy of Religion: Religion as Organ of Value ....... 138

CHAPTER VIII Logical Interpretation

§ I . The Transition to Logic : the Role of Imagination 1 40 § 2. The Problem of Reflection . . , -145

§3. Logical Theories : Scheme of Treatment . . 148 xiv Contents

CHAPTER IX Logical Interpretation: Mediation Theories PAGE

§ I. Actuality Theories: Intellectualism . .152

§ 2. Examination of Intellectualism' . . '155

§3. Ideality Theories: Voluntarism . . , 165

§ 4. Examination of Voluntarism . . . .167

Chapter X

Immediate Theories: i. Those Based on the Primitive and the Transcendent

§ I. Their Basis: Immediacy .... 174

§ 2. Theories Based on Primitive Immediacy (Primitive Mysticism, Subjectivism, Idealism) . 177

§ 3. Theories based on the Immediacy of Completion or Transcendence (Intuitionism, Dogmatic Spiritualism, Criticism, Absolutism) . 184

Chapter XI

Immediate Theories of Reality: ii. Those Based on the Immediacy of Synthesis

§ I. The Immediacy of Synthesis . . .193

§ 2. The Use of the Immediacy of Personality

(Higher Mysticism, Super- Personal Theories) 194

§ 3. The Synthesis of Feeling (Platonic Love, Constructive Affectivism, Faith Philosophy) . 201

§ 4. The Esthetic Synthesis (Aristotle, Kant,

Contents xv

Chapter XII

Results of the Historical Survey: the Demand for an Intrinsic Synthesis

PAGE

§ I. The Presupposition of Truth and the Postulate of Value . . . . . .216

§ 2. The Fruitful Method, Genetic . . .220

Chapter XIII

§ I. The First Step : Imaginative Semblance . .231

§ 2. The Esthetic Interest Synthetic in the Sense

of Intrinsic or Autotelic .... 235

§ 3. The Esthetic Object Synthetic in the Sense

of a-Dualistic ...... 238

§ 4. The ^Esthetic Ideal Synthetic in the Sense of

§5. The .Esthetic Reality Inclusive and Privative . 244

§ 6. The .Esthetic Reality a Synthesis of Universal

and Singular . . . . . .249

CHAPTER XIV § I. .Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of the

Presupposition and the Postulate . . 256

§ 2. ^Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of Actuality and Ideality ..... 259 xvi Contents

§ 3. Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of Freedom and Necessity ..... 261

§ 4. .Esthetic Realisation an Immediacy both of

Reconciliation and of Fulfilment . . .266

§ 5. Esthetic Intuition a Union of Theoretical and

Practical — and More . . . . .269

§ 6. ^Esthetic Reason and Absolute Beauty . .271

CHAPTER XV What Reality Must Mean .... 275

Sorts of Relativity ..... 278

The .Esthetic Content a Non-Relative Whole . 280

The ijEsthetic, a Non-Relative Mode . . 283

The .Esthetic, a Non-Relative Acceptance . 286

§1

§2

§3 §4 §5 §6

The Esthetic Non- Relative as Respects the Relation of Knower and Known . . .291

§ 7. The Knower and his Experience: Pancalism . 300

Chapter XVI

§ I. The Nature of Reality ..... 303

§2. The Only Alternative — Pluralism . . . 307

§ 3. Pancalism, a Constructive Affectivism . . 308

Contents xvii

PAGE

•

• 313

Appendix A .

.

. 323

Appendix B .

.

• 323

Appendix C .

•

. 325

. 331

GENETIC THEORY OF REALITY

Chapter I The Problem: Genetic Morphology

§ I. The Question of Interpretation

IN an earlier volume, ^ in which the programme of the entire discipline of Genetic Logic was outlined, the following sentence from Lotze was quoted as defining what we are now to consider as the problem of interpretation.

I. "It is," says Lotze, ^ "the question how far the most complete structure of thought which all the means enable us to rear, can claim to be an adequate account of that which we seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our ideas. " This pronouncement is fully applicable to the topics which are now to come before us. Assuming the completed structiire of knowledge as genetically made out, "the complete structtire of thought ^ which all our means enable us to

^ Thought and Things, vol. i., "Functional Logic," Introduction, sect. l6. The place of this problem in the whole scheme is spoken of both in the general Introduction as just cited, and also in the Introduction of volume iii. of that work, which presents the topic of Real Logic. In the volume last cited, entitled "Interest and Art," the problem of Genetic Epistemology is treated, while here the correlative problem of Genetic Morphology is taken up. See Appendix A.

^ Lotze, Logic, Eng. trans., vol. i., p. 12.

3 Rather, in our case, the complete structure of "experience," not merely that of thought, narrowly understood.

rear, " the further question then is, how far this complete structure of thought or apprehension — pre-logical, logical, and hyper-logical — can claim to render adequately the reality which "we seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our ideas. "

This question is sufficiently definite and not at all unfamiliar. It falls apart naturally into two: first, that of the "claim," to use Lotze's term, that thought or experience makes to render reality, the problem of Epistemology^; and second, that of the validity of the results — the success or failure, in this task, of the different motives and processes of experience. How are their respective results to be adjusted in the meaning of reality present in the assumptions of knowledge and life alike? This is the problem of Comparative Morphology, which follows upon that of Epistemology, both utilising the results of genetic research. Together they constitute "Real Logic. "^

2. This last is the problem of interpretation. We have, as Lotze intimates, the natural and ordinary assumptions, in life and experience, of what is superficially called "reality. " But we go on to reach, always and everywhere, ways of understanding, construing, thinking about, this reality; in some cases, from mere curiosity; in other cases, for purposes of practical utility. The savage who falls on his face in the presence of the eclipse, no less than the astronomer who turns

^ Epistemology, taken in the broadest sense, as including all possible modes of apprehension, affective and conative as well as cognitive.

^"It remains for Real Logic (i) to interpret each entire series of objective constructions in terms of the sort of reality which their cognition attributes to them; and (2) to interpret all of them together in the mode of reality in which their common cognition terminates, if there be such a comprehensive mode." — Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., sect. II.

The Problem: Genetic Morphology 5

his glass upon it, is "interpreting" reality. The action of each shows how he understands the event, what its meaning is to him.

§ 2. The Historical Problem of Interpretation

3. Our method, however, requires that the problem be stated in historical and genetic form. We are led to see that there are not only typical sorts of interpretation appearing as the outcome of typical stages and modes of mental process, but also that there are recognisable genetic reasons for their appearance when and where they do. A primitive man can not understand the world in terms of meanings of refined reflection, any more than a child can understand the explanations given in the text-books of physics and psychology. We may suppose, therefore, that these differences have themselves genetic order and development, that there is a natural history of interpretation itself: a continuous movement in the adjustment of the motives of the apprehension of things, resulting in a progression in the evolution of world-views, with the evolution of human culture. If the individual's typical experience passes successively through a series of modes of apprehension — projective, religious, dualistic, logical, esthetic, — we should expect the history of culture to reveal a similar progress. Similar stages and points of view should be observed in the development of racial interpretation and reflection.

This is a restatement, from a genetic and evolutionary point of view, of the problem of "stages " of thought stated by August Comte, with a suggestion as to its solution. What have been the stages in the evolution of interpretation? And why — from what genetic motives — have they been what they have? If the development of the apprehension of self and things, in the individual's case, is correctly made out, we may be able to trace out the correlative stages in the historical evolution of the race. The social products could not rise higher, at any period, than the individuals' knowledge and practice would justify — so much negatively. And the notable and typical gains of individuals, in mental and moral progress, would show themselves, in time and in serial order, in the texture of the social fabric; in its institutions and in its theoretical speculations — so much, at least, more positively.^

4. The consideration of the question of the history of interpretation falls to the genetic theory of reality and constitutes, in our plan, the first great branch of Morphology. Our consideration of it takes form parallel to that of the consideration of the meaning of reality to the individual^: the types of interpretation found in

' In my History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation, this thought is carried out, the development of psychology being considered as the evolution of the dualism of mind and body and its interpretation, parallel with a similar movement in the individual. That little work (London, Watts; New York, Putnam, 1913) was written and published in the interval between the appearance of vol. iii. of Thought and Things and the present volume. It develops intimations made in earlier publications and worked out in university lectures at Baltimore, 1903-6. The same thought has been utilised in treating a special problem in the monograph of Furry, Aesthetic Experience (Psychol. Review Philos. Monographs, No. i, 1908).

^ The "Genetic Epistemology " of Thought and Things, vol. iii. Of the two more evident explanations of the parallelism or "concurrence " between the two movements, this seems the preferable, because it is more empirical and demonstrable. It suggests a de facto relation, the presence of influences by which the individual and social apprehensions have actually advanced together and in reciprocal relationship to each other. . . . The other (the "rational") explanation assumes a certain constitution or "nature" of thought, which shows itself to be the same in the two cases.

The Problem: Genetic Morphology 7

the history of thought are, in genetic order, pre-logical, logical, and hyper-logical. This intimation may here suffice for the purpose of introduction to the detailed investigation itself (Part II., below).

§ J. The Intrinsic Problem of Interpretation

5. The problem of interpretation itself remains over, apart from the question of history. The consideration of its history is ancillary to its own treatment. We have, then, as the second and last great problem of Morphology — as it is the last also of Genetic Logic as a whole — that of the interpretation of the meaning of reality as legitimately issuing from the entire mental movement whose development has concerned us. Which, if any, of the historical interpretations is justified in its results? — what does each motive contribute to the full meaning of the real? — what is the synthetic and reconciling mode of apprehension in which the movement of commerce with the real itself overcomes its own dualisms and oppositions, and attains a fully satisfying contemplation of that which, in the words of Lotze, is "the object and occasion of our ideas"?

This is the intrinsic problem. Our treatment of it will be genetic in the sense already illustrated.^ Our aim is to follow the movement of mental process and not to dictate to it; to observe it, not to direct it. It is in this that the treatment of the topic as a branch of

^ A recent able discussion of Genetic Morphology, taken in this sense, is that of W. M. Urban in the concluding chapter (xiv.) of his work, Valuation: Its Nature and Laws. As is indicated later on (chap, x,, sect. 19), this is the fundamental problem of the "critical" enquiry of Immanuel Kant, with the important diflference, however, that our method is genetic, not "critical" or logical.

genetic logic differs from the traditional, purely' logical and theoretical, discussions. These indeed belong, as we are to see, to a special period — the "logical" period — in the history of interpretation.

But there are other motives entering into the full meaning of the real, beyond the discursive or logical, and it is equally our business to discover them.

6. As has been said, the historical movement of interpretation shows the three great periods conveniently characterised as prelogical, logical, and hyper-logical; and these three headings will be our divisions in the treatment of the historical movement.^ But in the consideration of the comparative factors entering into the interpretation of the meaning of the real as such, we find that such a division — based on successive crosssections, as it were, of the entire content of mental process — is not adequate. It indicates the character of the psychical process from which the interpretation issues and the general type of solution as dependent upon the mental function. But it does not penetrate of itself into the solution and discover the motive at work by which the type of reality is determined. At the same time, by its distinction of modes of process — as being prelogical, logical, and so forth — it gives us hints by means of which we may utilise the results reached in the examination of the processes themselves.

Such, indeed, has already been our resource: we have found, in the discussion of Epistemology already referred to, that the meanings of the real persistently fell into two great classes. On the one hand, both the demands of action issuing from the motives of the

'Except that instead of "hyper-logical" we speak of "immediacy" theories, a term more significant for classification as explained below.

The Problem: Genetic Morphology 9

practical life, and those of knowledge proper issuing from the motives of the intellectual life, proceed, always and everywhere, by a process of mediation hy and through representative states of mind or ideas. On the other hand, the interests of immediacy, of direct apprehension and contemplation, are present in characteristic forms in the lowest and the highest reaches of conscious process, in the primitive and in the hyper-logical. All reality, therefore, whatever the process of reaching it may be, is either immediate or mediate, either immediately given or mediated by ideas. If this be true, our problem is greatly simplified. We have to ask, not whether this or that stage of development gives the final interpretation of reality ; but which type of " real " meaning, the mediate or the immediate, is the more comprehensive and satisfying.

In this part of our work therefore (Part III) we will examine interpretations based respectively on Mediation and Immediacy, taking account of the several types of each revealed in the historical accoimt of the stages of interpretation (Part II) and reaching our own reasoned results.

In the last Part (IV) it will remain to gather up certain Conclusions and Corollaries of a philosophical sort, which illustrate the wider bearings of Pancalisra.*

§ 4. Scheme of Treatment

In view of the foregoing, we arrive at the following scheme of treatment :

I Certain Appendices follow, of which the first (Appendix A) may be especially referred to here, as well as a " Glossary" of the terms used in this and other genetic treatises. On the term " Pancalism," see the remarks in the Preface.

TABLE I

Genetic Morphology: the Problem of Interpretation. Part I. Introduction.

Chapter II

§ I. The Nature of Interpretation

I. It will become plain as we proceed that what we are calling Interpretation — following the usage already suggested^ — is generally covered by the term "meaning." The best way to introduce the topic, indeed, is to recall briefly the theory of meaning as it has been worked out in recent discussions, and take advantage of what we know about it.

In general, interpretation is simply the entire meaning given to an experience, fact, event, by the consciousness which, as we say, "makes" the interpretation. Given bare happenings — a flash of light, a rumbling sound, a shaking movement — each item means this or that experience: a thunder-storm, a passing cart, an unsteady chair. Whatever intent of added meaning attaches to the bare content of fact or idea, it is in so far a personal interpretation of the fact or idea. It may be little or much, superficial or profoimd. Infor-

^ This chapter sets together, under the heading of Interpretation, the results of earKer detailed discussions, so far as they are comparable with those of racial thought as brought out below (Part II.). It aids us also in the task of focussing our thought in the final interpretation to which we ourselves arrive (Parts III and IV). See also Thought and Things, vol. i., and HoCfding's La Pensee humaine.

II mation, purpose, utility, association, habit, appetite, instinct — a dozen motives of meaning — may surge up and segregate themselves about the nucleus of the given datum. All the experiences cited as examples above, sensations of sight, hearing, muscular sense, may be united together in the interpretation made by the Sicilian, who cries "earthquake," and rushes from his dwelling in terror. And a similar interpretation may be arrived at by the scientific man seated at Washington, who has before him simply the tracing of a needle on carbon paper, hearing, seeing, and feeling nothing of the physical event itself. His interpretation is more remote, more indirect and logical, as we say, but it expresses, just as the Italian peasant's does, the meaning he attaches to the datum that comes before his mind.

2. Avoiding debated questions, of the nature of the datum, the relation of content and intent, of presentation and interest — all questions elsewhere sufficiently discussed^ — we may here simply point out that the interpretation, considered as attaching to the thing interpreted, is of the nature of "intent," over against content. It has the variability and personal quality — as being relatively mystical or logical or aesthetic — given it by the individual's mode of apprehension and feeling. As meaning, it is selective. Over against this, there is the relative constancy and recognitive character of the content, the common and neutral thing or event that is interpreted. The sound, the light, the movements of the earth, are heard, seen, felt, in about the same way by all normal persons; they constitute the same "content." But the interpretations of one or more of these events differ seriously. The actual event may give rise to all sorts of conjectures and

" See "Functional Logic," vol. i. of Thought and Things.

suppositions, each in its way a tentative "intent" of interpretation.

3. In the tangled wilderness of these differences, however, it will pay us to attempt to discover pathways — lines of classification and distinction in the motives and in the results. And it appears that we have at hand means of doing so. The general distinction between two great factors of knowledge, the datum and the interest, should be recalled; and the question asked as to the relative place and role of each of these in this or that case of interpretation. On the one hand, the datum goes on to develop into the objective reality which controls the manifestations of interest and action ; on the other hand, the interest gives personal and selective meaning to the objective system of data. Let us consider the nature of interpretation somewhat more fully from this point of view.

§ 2. Interpretation as an Organisation of Interests

4. The interest which the individual brings to any objective experience is as varied as are the motives of action and knowledge. As has often been pointed out, the simplest "thing" — the sapling, say, at the roadside — ^may be rendered in a variety of ways, which testify to the dominant habit or to the casual interest of the observer. The modest tree means the refuge or shelter, the source of fire- wood for the home, the specimen of horticulture, the value for exploitation, the species of botanical science, the object of aesthetic pleasure, the symbol of religious truth. All these are legitimate and synchronous interpretations of what is, in the experience itself, a certain controlling set of conditions — controlling upon the senses, upon direct observation, and upon social acceptance. We say to one another, "See that tree!" — and with the replycomes the possibility of reporting and confirming in common the basis upon which the different interpretations all depend. These interpretations, however, may run away with the datum, so to speak, piling upon it a mass of selective and personal interest, which obscures and distorts it. Indeed the great motive and the prolonged struggle of the cognitive interest, as such, the interest in neutral and objective truth, is just to disentangle the bare object from the meshes of preferential interest and interpretation, and preserve intact its system of commonly observable relationships.