A realistic universe; an introd. to metaphysics

Preface

This volume on metaphysics is the sequel of a volume on the theory of knowledge, entitled *^ Truth and Reality/^ which was published in 1911. The two volumes furnish a survey of the field of general philosophy from the point of view of pragmatic realism. This attitude which the author has been championing for several years is an attempt to apply scientific method to philosophic problems. The term pragmatic is used in the sense which was first advocated by C. S. Peirce, and which is defined by the author in his own terms in "Truth and Reality. '* As applied to metaphysics the pragmatic method means that we must judge the nature of reality, in its various grades and complexities, by the consequences to the reaHzation of human purposes, instead of by a priori assumptions. Some may prefer the older adjectives of "empirical" or "critical"; but these terms seem definitely associated with certain historical doctrines, and a new term seems to be preferable in designating the scientific tendency of to-day. There is need in every age of retranslating the perennial problems of philosophy into terms of living human interest; and the author hopes in a measure to further this movement at the present time through these volumes. In "A ReaHstic Universe" the author has tried to make vital the fundamental problems of metaphysics in terms of our present thought-world, without the cant of the past, but with a deep sense of indebtedness to the masters of all time. While the book is intended primarily for the philosophic student, the aim has been to make the style as clear and simple as the problems would permit. In the use of scientific material, an effort has been made to find sources which would be intelligible to the layman rather than to make an appearance of erudition. Some portions, such as the introductory chapter and part five on Form, may be of special interest to the general reader.

vii viii PREFACE

The work as it now stands, imperfect as it may be in execution, has had a long history. The oldest portion is that relating to time. The author's theory of time was first outUned in a paper on that subject, written for Professor Royce's Seminary in 1897-1898. It found fuller statement in his doctor's thesis on "The Concept of Time" in 1899; and was further expounded in a monograph entitled ''Time and Reahty," pubUshed in the Psychological Review monograph series, No. 26, in 1904. A brief statement in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods in 1905 has been partly made use of in this book. As there has been no material change in the author's attitude since the pubhcation of the monograph, the reader may be referred to this for supplementary treatment. Preliminary studies of the concepts of Space, 1906, Consciousness, 1908, and Energy, 1908, have been published in the Journal of Philosophy, etc. While the main view-point remains in each case, the material has been thoroughly restated and should be judged by its present form. The same apphes to the article, ''The Ought and ReaHty," which appeared in the International Journal of Ethics, 1907, and which in the present volume has been restated under the title "Form and the Ought." Other papers which have been made use of, in whole or in part, are: "Do Things Exist?" 1912, and "Individual and Social Minds," 1913, from the Journal of Philosophy, etc.; "Knowing Things" from the Philosophical Review, 1911; "Knowing Selves," Psychological Review, 1912; "The Identity of the Ideals" from the International Journal of Ethics, 1912; "A Rehabihtation of Teleology," under the title of " Teleological Idealism," from the Harvard Theological Review, 1912; "Pragmatic Realism — the Five Attributes," under the title of "The Five Attributes" from Mind, 1913; and "The Divine Fivefold Truth" from the Moiiist, 1911. The author wishes to express his appreciation to these journals for their cooperation and encouragement, which have meant a great deal to a man working in comparative isolation. The work, however, is in no sense a compilation of articles, but was early conceived as a systematic unity, though he wished the advantage of the objectivity and time perspective furnished by preUminary pubhcation, as well as the incentive that comes

PREFACE IX

from feeling a part of the social consciousness with the informal reactions thus made possible. In this connection, he wishes to express also his appreciation to the Western Philosophical Association, before which many of the preHminary studies were first read.

As regards his indebtedness to other workers in the field, the book itself will have to bear testimony. Among philosophers, his indebtedness is greatest to the standard masters, not only because of their intrinsic merit, but because they have been most accessible. In all things speculative, we must still sit at the feet of the Greek masters. His first systematic training in philosophy the author received under the tutelage of the great German ideaHsts, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, thanks to his first guide in philosophy, James Seth. From the British empiricists he has learned, he hopes, a homely regard for the facts of experience. Of French thinkers, he owes most to Poincare, whose phenomenal grasp of science and transparent genius place him in a class by himself among philosophers of science. Of the author's immediate environment, he hopes there may appear in this work something of the inspiration of the great leader in American philosophy, William James, and of its recent laureate, Josiah Royce. Nor could one escape the vitalizing influence in our country of its great teacher, John Dewey, and the Chicago School. When the author was working out his theory of time, he did not have the good fortune to be acquainted with the brilliant work of Bergson on that concept. Not even WilHam James seemed conscious of Bergson's contribution in the later '90's. While the author's theory agrees with that of Bergson in aiming to estabUsh the reahty of time, both the fundamental intuition and the method are different. The concept as set forth in this volume, and in previous discussions, must be regarded, therefore, as a different concept. In the later revision of the work, the author has been stimulated by the recent realistic discussions, both in Great Britain and America. Since the first draft of this work was completed in 1912, and most of it antedates the movement sometimes called "the new realism," perhaps more properly called analytical realism, its development has been comparatively independent of this movement, and has Httle in common with

X PREFACE

it either in spirit or method. As between the extreme antiintellectualism of Bergsonism, and the extreme intellectualism of analytical realism, pragmatic realism steers a middle course. While maintaining, as against analytical realism, that reality is more than a congeries of abstract logical entities, it insists as against intuitionism on the relevancy of thought to reality. Only thus could thought furnish valid leadings in our practical and theoretical conduct. This attitude is in line with common sense and empirical science.

The present work does not aim to be a compendium of current literature. There are books which serve this purpose in an admirable way. It must be judged rather as a personal reaction to the permanent problems of human experience, for, whether we will it or no, our systems are after all personal reactions. If they are sincere and thorough, we may hope that they will further the total movement of truth. The time seems peculiarly auspicious for such an attempt at synthesis. While there has been much of suggestion and inspiration in recent discussion, the constructive efforts have been disappointing. This is due, no doubt, to the magnitude of the task. In the complexity of modern thought and life, we cannot perhaps hope for an Aristotle. What could once be accomphshed by individual genius, must now be carried out piecemeal by the interstimulation and supplementation of a collective mind. The author will be satisfied if he can count as even an infinitesimal part in this infinite task. As this work has grown up for the most part on the western prairies, may it reflect the homely sanity of the great West.

NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA

September 14, 1916

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGK

Introduction. The Meaning of Metaphysics . xiii-xxii I. Perspective. The Divine Five-fold Truth . 3-12

PAKT I. ENEEGY AND THINGS

Chapter I

It is the holy stillness of night. The world with its busy cares is asleep. And that is the witching hour of divine philosophy. In the silence, a Spirit comes to me and bids me write. Is it inspiration ? Or is it the fever of the night's vigil ? I do not know. But, somehow, my soul seems calm and I seem to see in a sort of mystic way the meaning of things which were dark before. At least I will obey the muse to-night and trust in the leading of the Spirit, for this seems like no human insight. Tarry, sweet Muse. The night is young. I would fain revel in glorious discourse. At other times I have spoken through the long processes of logic. To-night, I would fain speak as an oracle.

The Divine Truth of ''Being''

First of all, there comes to me the old and divine truth of "being" — not static, inert "being,'' but constellations of energy, conscious and unconscious, interlocking and interacting in space. Worlds rise and dissolve Uke smoke wreaths, with ever- varying cadences. Yet through all the shifting forms laws prevail ; and we gnats of a day, that are borne upon this stream of change, can, to a degree, forecast the future from the lingering shadows of the past. In each stage of creative transmutation, reality speaks to those that can understand : " that am I." In spots, and for a cosmic instant, energy collects and condenses into material centers. These centers, through their mysterious, dynamic threads hang together as a whole. You can pass on the light beams from one to the other, even to the last. They dance together in mathematical rhythm in cosmic space; and, in the 'infinite ages at least, carry on a fair exchange of measure for measure. And part, at least, have life and mind and can catch the meaning of their relationship.

Spinoza, the God-intoxicated, had a vision of the universe as two winding corridors ; each variegated fresco of one is imitated in the other, for the order of thought and things is the same. Each voice in one has its echo in the other, for the mind is the idea of the body. Proceed as you may through the infinite windings of one, no window opens into the other. But if eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and if it hath not entered into the thought of man that there is another half-world, is it more than the shadow of man's mind? And if any one doubts the existence of the other corridor, who shall prove it? Spinoza, in the passion of his fancy, supposed that if things exist, and if we become conscious of things, then things must be repeated. But things are just such as we must meet them and appreciate them in the wide, common corridor of experience. No bhnd wall separates experience from the world of its interest and love; thoughts and things are part of one divine context. It is through thoughts that we can use things, and things become significant by entering into the context of thought. Thought and things are not two halls, but relationships within one dynamic living world. There is onlj^ one window to the significance of the world of things, and that is thought, though things may hang in their own context, without being thought.

Whatever varieties of energy science may establish, whatever identities and equivalences it may trace in the flux of process, one thing is sure, mind which passes in survey the motley array cannot be declared unreal. For mind alone knows itself first hand for what it is, is aware of its own activity and meaning. Whether we find it convenient to make mind thin enough to cover the whole extent of being, or must recognize other types of energy, at any rate mind can never reason itself out of existence, can never make itself an accident in a world which sets itself the vocation to understand and control. Mind by virtue of its history and claims must be fundamentally at home in the universe. Its purposes alone can make clear the grades and complexities of ''being." Mind is not a by-play but; in the words of Plato, *'a noble and commanding thing."

But " being" is not, as falsely supposed by many an inspired genius, the only door to reality. It has been the habit of man thus far to emphasize some aspects and read out other aspects of reaHty, according to his temperamental, intellectual, or practical bias. In this he has usually been right in the importance of the aspects he has read in, and wrong in the aspects he has read out. Thus the Eleatics of all time are quite right, that there must be *' being" — stuff, constancies, thickness, grist. But because there must be thickness, must there be absolute thickness, absolute constancy? Could not science and practical life get on with relative constancy? So far as our experience goes, we do so get on ; and in a manner find our way from part to part within the checkered woof of reality.

The Divine Truth of Time

Instead of writing a poem to the solid, as Parmenides does, why not write a poem, as Heraclitus does, to divine flux, with all its sadness and novelty? Our hopes and aspirations, as well as our doubts and fears, are built upon the consciousness that the universe is not absolutely made, but in the making; that the future may divorce the present, however firmly thought and its object are wedded now — sometimes by altering our attitudes, when the facts we intend seem constant ; sometimes by altering the facts in conformity with our more constant ideals. But our attitudes are facts, too, part of the dance of attention in the ever-shifting focus of object and interest in the drama of experience. Like a magician, time converts the death of winter into the bloom of spring. Like dew upon the flowers, it makes childhood open into youth. Like summer it comes into our veins. Like a lapwing in the night, time steals upon us and we are old. Even while we sleep it transforms our values and purposes. Like moth and rust it creeps into our equations and facts. However viewed it is true that reality is vibrant, that it is ever in solution, that it glows. And no static view can ever piece together this motion and life of real process. We can hold only part of reaHty in the net of our concepts, the rest trickles through. And while the constant residue is more important for science, what trickles through may be the more characteristic of life.

True, we cannot prove from the fact of change, any particular change or rate of change, nor deny any particular constancy.

The processes of the universe travel at diverse paces. We must take the substances of the reaUty which time transforms, each after its kind. But we can prove that if there is change, there must always be change. For, in the infinite seons, if time or change were finite, it must have run its course untold ages ago. Change must be taken as real and underived, prior to all our ideal measurements, if it exists at all. This change value, I call time. Let the paean be chanted to eternal time — doublevisaged time, with hoar frost on the brow looking backward, and the fire of youth in the face looking forward, fading Autumn and budding Spring in one.

If we center our interest on the flowing, the novel and the irreversible, we can easily fall into the mood that only the flow is real ; that the flux is absolute and that there is no such thing as constancy, or truth even in part; that the transforming of the stuff of meanings and of matters is the real and that uniformities are but illusions. With Omar Khayyam we may come

to say :

" One thing at least is certain — This life flies : One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ; The flower that once has blown forever dies."

Yes, all that is born in the pangs of earthly beauty shall fade and die. This would be infinitely sad, if spring and youth were not reborn with new beauty at the turn of the year. But while 'Hhe bird is on the wing," why deny such seeming perchings, such constancy as there is, such prediction as experience proves? While the hues of the shadows flit and blend into each other on the face of the mountain in a thunderstorm, still the outlines of the mountain show us the course of the change ; and while the torrent hastens to the sea, the scenery of the banks helps us to gauge its swiftness. So do the more permanent fringes of meaning and tendency help us to take stock of the fleeting values of our own life.

The Divine Truth of Space

And why should not some one write a poem to the void — the glorious expanse of space? For what a congested world this would be if it were condensed into a mathematical point — no looking at each other, no embraces, no starry heavens, no gravitational equipoises of swinging masses, no differentiation of individual centers, no canvas for the cosmic artist to spread his sunsets on, no marshaling of the ranks of tonal harmonies as a result of this absolute condensation — all for want of room. If you have space, you can put as many holes into it as may be necessary, shooting it through with energetic centers, conscious and non-conscious. You can stretch your gravitational threads, you can pour in your luminiferous ether and spread out your electro-magnetic field; you can fill it as full as imagination and convenience may dictate. On its neutral background you can paint as great a variety of star patterns, of cosmic tragedies and comedies, as the necessities of nature and the artistic genius of the universe may prescribe.

I would not make space everything, carving a world out of it by means of geometrical figures as some have done. Our imagination at least is too finite to create a universe out of nothing, whatever an infinite mind might do. But, in any case, you must presuppose your space, which you so thanklessly ignore, to have your side-by-sideness of centers, your free mobility, your perfect conductivity. No hindrances there to the wheels of Charles's Wain, no opaqueness to the mercurial messengers of light, — only sublime distances making feeble man's artificial measures, where constellations dart through space to the Pleiades. Viewed from the side of space, your bodies and energies become interferences — departures from the pure limit with which we start.

It is true that in the poetry of science, the limitations of space are being annihilated for many practical purposes. The electric network of nerves under human control binds humanity together for social sympathy and cooperation as never before. But it is also true that science has revealed the wonders of space to us in a new light, as its equations of distance, both in the large interstellar world and in the minute interactions of things, bankrupt the resources of our imagination. At any rate, so long as distance thwarts the wilFs realization in the handclasp of loyal men, the meeting of fond lips, and the embrace of loving hearts, space must be recognized as real. To divine, neglected space, bespangled with many a star for diadem and begirdled with lightning, let my song go forth.

The Divine Truth of Consciousness

And what shall I say of consciousness, illuminating nature, the manifold world of process and its flow? To be sure, it would not appear except for the complexity of the world of process — its organs and contexts of relations. But they in turn would have no significance or value apart from the divine light of consciousness. It was a noble insight, that of the Sankyah philosophy in far-off days and climes. It is only as nature (Prakriti) develops senses and intellect on the one hand, to match the motley variety of the world on the other, that consciousness can illume the world. It is nature that furnishes the subject and the content too. Consciousness is a neutral hght. It adds only the awareness. It cannot be responsible for plurality of egos, any more than for unity, as the Sankyah supposed. Nor does nature vanish with consciousness, but with it becomes significant nature, aware of its pulse beats and its destiny. In itself, consciousness has no variety, no color, no direction. But with it comes to Ught the color and variety and meaning of this whole checkered, flowing world. No wonder the Sankyah philosophers, with their longing for mystical peace, for the negation of strife and variety, centered their gaze on neutral consciousness and allowed nature to vanish with the abstraction of attention.

How long before the mysterious awakening ; what vicissitudes of change; what migration of spirit through cosmic spaces; what dizzy ages of evolution of organs and of mind, before my spirit saw the light, who can tell? Who can follow the journey of mind through geologic ages? Who knows whether it is a hardy native plant, grown up in the cosmic weather of our earth, fraught perhaps with unconscious memory, chastened through suffering, selected by nature's breeding from the simpler stages of life below; or whether it is a divine gift, groping its way in the dark to its father's house? But when consciousness does illumine the patient face of nature, what beauty of significance is there — in part expressed ; in part vaguely felt and only half understood. What opportunity is there for sharing in the directive creation of the divine destiny, which nursed us to this end. Elsewhere, no doubt, the hght has shone before; soon the hght here shall flicker and go out again, as the soul goes forth to its new mysterious birth. All this — the before and after — is hidden in the night of our ignorance, but how glorious to be awake just now, to catch to-night this glimpse of the eternal procession of the ages. Whatever may be the destiny of mind in the cosmic whirl of change, thank God for this.

When I take my journey in the sea of energies, midst ethers and star dust, perchance through skies and clouds to stars unknown, perhaps to linger here midst dance of circumstance, who can tell when and how I shall appear ? But I believe that the light of consciousness shall shine for me again ; that I shall see anew the glory of God's world ; that I shall feel the sympathetic touch in the march of the aeons as I never have before. If so, what does it matter how long I sleep, waiting for the call of God's energies to the beauteous vision? To consciousness, lighting the world, in one flash of interest and value bringing groping will and matter face to face, let my hymn be sung.

The Divine Truth of Form

And, then, what hymn can I sing worthy of the glorious divinity of form? For who would want a chaos of moving pictures like the nightmare of a dream? The consciousness of such a crazy quilt would be even less to be desired than the annihilation of Nirvana. But we have the conviction that some facts are worth more than others. In the shifting and relative shapes of the flux, the soul comes to the insight, now and then, of eternal beauty. Restless sound is woven into harmony, the chaos of color into divine form and expression. The world of things, to some extent, can be recreated into the world of ideals. Who can wonder that Plato found the idea of form, of significant unity, diviner than all the flux in space and would allow to worth alone the prize of being ?

Let the materialist claim that beauty is a physiological relation ; that it depends on a certain structure and its motor reactions. He does not* contradict the diviner insight that form — significant relationship — is an original and underived aspect of reality. True, reality must prepare the spirit for its realization and appreciation by preparing the organism. Nature must construct an ^Eolian harp to vibrate with the universe of tones. It must invent a photochemic film to give us the many colored rays of cosmic light. In the conflicts of experience it must bring to clearness and distinctness the instinct for fitness and order. Beauty and right come to us first as intuitions, before we can understand or separate the form from the matter. But if we are nurtured in the lap of nature to the end that we may become conscious of form and beauty, then it must be true that beauty suffuses the whole of things; that the flux has worth only as it is sifted through eternal form; that nature's beauty and, still better, our conscious creation of beauty, is the imitation of a reality of which we have but a vague intimation, an objective world of form, interpenetrating our world of sense, and, in the long series of mutations and survivals of history, constituting our human nature. Looked at from the side of process, nature is a lavish creator, and some of its gifts also have form as read or appreciated by human nature. This is not mere chance. It is part of the selective evolution of reality, for human nature is part of nature. Beauty is but nature become conscious of its formal character through its more developed organs of human nature. Thus do nature and human nature conspire to produce the sunset and the symphony.

In human nature, nature discovers her own order, recognizes the rhythmic pulse beats of her restless activity. Her immanent tendencies become ideals, her direction organized purpose. And this human nature, while it lightens to an extent the past, is but the prophecy as yet of the larger overarching and overlapping form toward which the universe in its highest reaches is aiming — that free realization of an ideal where work and play blend in the fluent and joyous activity of spirit.

As the music of each passing moment dies into the recessional of the past, one thing remains amidst the changes and chances of clashing masses and souls — the direction of the process. That, at least, is absolute, eternal and divine. What is this direction? Is it more than that the universe in patches expresses ideals and so becomes immortalized ? Is there a grand finale? If time is infinite, this should have come to pass infinite ages ago. Yet for a superior insight, the patchwork may be a scheme. That it is so remains for us an act of faith — a faith that, in the drift of cosmic weather,

" Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well."

This faith Uke every faith must be justified and transformed in terms of our growing experience. For on the shifting sea of life, the horizon must ever move forward with the progress of the journey, as we steer towards an unknown goal. We can catch the direction in part only by looking backward at the glittering wake of the past. Unseen insights, new adventures, unpredicted accidents confront us in the unknown. But the brave souls who search anxiously for the leading and who follow the light as God gives them to see the light shall arrive. For through it all, we believe, there runs the silver thread of order, the cheering message of the beyond.

The conclusion of my poem, which I can but feebly express, shall be that I own the supplementing concreteness, the real thickness of life as all of these, interpenetrating in one common world. Reality reveals itself in five different ways. It has five windows. It reveals itself to our purposive endeavor as a world of restless energies with their relative uniformities. It reveals itself further as time, which in the flux of selves and things gives the lie to the past and creates for the soul new mansions of meaning and value. We must also orient ourselves to space, the playground of energies where the heavens spread out like a curtain and clouds are moved back and forth as draperies. Under certain conditions of complexity and intensity, the whole is lighted up by consciousness; and lastly running through it all as the invisible warp of the many-colored woof there must be form — the direction which our finite minds strive to unravel. This is the Divine Fivefold Truth — the five doors which we must enter if we would bask in the divine illuminating wisdom.

The night is far spent. The intoxication of soul is wearing off. The cock crows, announcing that matins is at hand. The goddess of drowsy slumber will soon lift her silver veil from off the naked earth and depart. The busthng, jostling, wakeful, petty cares will return with the dawn. I thank thee, Spirit, for divine philosophy. May it prove sane when viewed in the glaring light of day. At least the bliss was great, while it lasted. And now into Thy care I commit my mind, while I, too, join the unconscious world in the soft arms of sleep.

Chapter II

The story of the concept of being is a long one and constitutes pretty much the whole story of philosophy. From Thales down, men have tried to simphfy our world by reducing it to some Urstoff, some simple entity or entities in terms of which the motley variety of our world might be expressed and imderstood. It might be water, it might be fire, it might be material atoms, it might be mind, it might be electricity, it might be some combination of elements. In any case the human mind has felt more at ease in the world when it has thus simplified it. But whatever may be our opinion of Urstoff, upon one thing we are now agreed, that experience stuff, as revealed in our immediate feeHngs and sensations, on the one hand, and our purposive construction, on the other, must be the starting point of all our investigations. In terms of this we must differentiate and express the problems of the universe in so far as they can be expressed. But is reaHty through and through experience ?