The life of reason

Introduction

REASON IN COMMON SENSE

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

COPYKIGHT, 1905, 1922, BT

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

NOV "3 ^u

Preface To The Second Edition

Twenty years separate me from the man I was when I wrote this book — ^years enlivened for me by many changes of scene and branded by a great war. There is hardly a page that would not need to be rewritten, if it was perfectly to express my present feelings.

Some readers would perhaps prefer the original to my revised version, and if I lived another twenty years I might myself prefer it. The written letter, then, may as well stand; especially as nothing hinders me from setting forth my matured views in fresh works, leaving it for others to decide whether I have changed for the better. After all, there has been no change in my deliberate doctrine; only some changes of mental habit. I now dwell by preference on other perspectives, in which the same objects appear with their relative bulks reversed, and inversely hiding one another; what lay before in the background — nature — has come forward, and the life of reason, which then held the centre of the stage, has receded. The vicissitudes of human belief absorb me less; the life of reason has become in my eyes a decid-

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edly episodical thing, polyglot, interrupted, insecui'e. I cannot take every phase of art or religion or philosophy seriously, simply because it takes itself so. These things seem to me less tragic than they did, and more comic; and I am less eager to choose and to judge among them, as if only one form could be right. When om- architecture is too pretentious, before we have set the cross on the spire, the foundations are apt to give way.

I am consequently far less inclined to take a transcendental point of view, as if the spirit at every point were absolute, and its objects its creations. Spuit is absolute enough, so to speak, relatively, and in its own eyes, since willy-nilly it must sohloquize; but any puppet in the hands of a ventriloquist seems to soliloquize, if we have no notion whence its voice comes. The self that speaks in us is deeper than we suppose, and less ours; but that is nothing against it. Spirit is always worth listening to, and worth understanding sympathetically; the ventriloquist, if not the manikin, deserves admu'ation. It is spirit, too, that Hstens and understands, and grows thereby riper and more secure. Yet the oracles of spirit all have to be discounted; they are uttered in a cave.

It was this murmur of nature, wajnvard and narcotic as it is, that I called reason in this book, and tried to catch and interpret nobly. I could hardly have undertaken or carried out such a task if I had not been accustomed to slip into the subjective, recovering at each step as far as I

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Vll

might the innocence of intellectual illusion, and painting things as they would seem from that angle, not as they are. From childhood up I had lived in imagination, being fond of religion and poetry, and driven by circumstances to lead my inner life alone; and the philosophy that prevailed about me, though not one which I ever personally trusted, could not help encouraging me in this subjective habit, representing it as deeper, more critical, and more philosophical than any dogmatism. Nevertheless, subjectivity in me was never more than a method, a habit of poetic sympathy with the dreaming mind, whatever it might dream. It was a method appropriate to a book like this, a presumptive biography of the human intellect, which instead of the Life of Reason might have been called the Romance of Wisdom. Moreover, the thoughts I was endeavouring to evoke and to analyse were not all dead thoughts. Many of them survived in my own perplexities or in the various idealisms of those about me. One consequence was that I was often betrayed into expressions which, if not taken dramatically, would contradict my naturaHsm; that vulgar belief in material things about us which not only underlay the whole life of reason as I conceived it, but was also its explicit final deHverance. Another consequence was that, when I knew or feared that my reader might harbour the very illusion I was rehearsing, I was tempted to analj^se it destructively, or argue against it : something really alien

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to the essential character of my task. It was only when the thoughts considered were unmistakeably dead — as was Greek mythology or (to my probable reader) Catholic piety — that I could warm freely to my work, without fear of confusing myself or other people. On the other hand, when the idea considered was a hving and indispensable one (no better description of the envisaged reality being as yet at hand) it was hard to relegate this idea to its native subjective sphere, where all ideas, of course, belong, without seeming to assert that its object also was a figment of himian thought — a simply bottomless fallacy.

Let a single instance suffice as a hint to the critic, and as an apology for all the equivocations of this kind of which I may have been guilty. I find myself saying (Vol. I, page 125) that "nature is drawn like a sponge, heavy and dripping from the waters of sentience." Obviously the "nature" in question is the idea of nature, vague at first and overloaded with myth, then growing distinct, constant, articulate. Existing nature could not be drawn either soaking or dry from the waters of sentience: for existing nature is a system of bodies long antedating sentience and making sentience appropriate and significant: or else (on the hypothesis of idealism) existing nature is the flood of sentience itself, from which nothing can ever emerge. That which on its first appearance comes drenched out of its watery element, is the dramatic notion of nature created by

PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION IX

mythology. And matching this primitive notion of natm"e, and growing slowly distinguishable over against it, is another primitive notion which I mention in the same passage, the ghostly notion of mind. This, I say, is composed of the "parings of experience, when the material world has been cut out of the whole cloth." *'Mind," too, is here a personage in the play of reason; it is the category of mind. Evidently the origin of existing mind could not lie in a discrimination which mind itself is making; but the discovery of mind may well come in that way. Shall I be blamed for giving the same name to the idea of nature and to existing nature, to the category of mind and to existing mind ? I admit that, if the words are pressed, they become confusing; and yet at the play I might innocently say to a friend: "There is Hamlet coming on the stage. What a get-up! He looks more like Bunthorne." Clearly the phenomenon I should then be calHng Hamlet would not be the real Hamlet, neither the Danish prince nor the presumable ideal in the mind of Shakespeare. This Hamlet is only the absurd actor playing Hamlet for the time being. Why should the verbal ambiguity be more annoying if in reviewing the life of reason I confidentially turn to the friendly reader, whom I suppose to be watching the same drama, and say: "See mind and nature coming on the- scene. What a travesty the green-room of fancy has made of them ! Here is nature tricked out in will and purpose like

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a moral being, and mind tumbling about in motley and gibbering!"

This drama, as I conceived it, was far from being a mere comedy of errors, to be treated satirically; it was a chequered experience from which wisdom might be gleaned. The story might be romantic, but the moral of it was classical. Error, under the influence of the existing object which it attempts to describe, suffers correction : and those first mythical notions of nature and of mind may be gradually clarified, until nature is seen to be a mechanism, and mind to be pure intelligence. The life of reason will mark a real progress whenever it gives fuller expression to the interests that prompt its gropings, and reaches the truth about such facts as, for its own purposes, it is concerned to discover. I was not studying history or psychology for their own sake : my retrospect was to be frankly selective and critical, guided by a desire to discriminate the better from the worse.

But by what standard could I distinguish them? The first suggestion for such a work had come to me in my student days, on reading Hegel's Phaenomenologie des Geistes. It had seemed to me that myth and sophistry there spoilt a very fine subject. The subject was the history of human ideas: the sophistry was imposed on Hegel by his ambition to show that the episodes he happened to review formed a dialectical chain: and the myth sprang from the constant suggestion that this history of human ideas made up the whole

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of cosmic evolution, and that those episodes were the scattered syllables of a single eternal oracle. It occurred to me that a more honest criticism of progress might be based on tracing the distracted efforts of man to satisfy his natural impulses in his natural environment. Yet if these impulses were infinitely wayward and variable, and if the environment itself was inconstant or undiscoverable, what criterion of progress could it be possible to set up ? As for me, I was utterly without the learning and the romantic imagination that might have enabled some emancipated rival of Hegel, some systematic Nietzsche or some dialectical Walt Whitman, to write a history of the Will to Be Everything and Anything. An omnivorous spirit was no spirit for me, and I could not write the life of reason without distinguishing it from madness. The suggestion of such a work accordingly lay dormant in my mind for years, until maturity, aided by Platonic studies, suppHed me with a fresh point of departure, and enabled me to conceive the whole subject in a way that seemed to rescue it at once from pretension and from futility. All that was needed was to know oneself. No unnatural constancy need be imposed on human nature at large: it suiSiced that the critic himself should have a determinate character and a sane capacity for happiness. He was not likely to be so original that, if he was sincere, nobody else would be found to share and approve his judgments. No conceited postulates need be made

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about the universe, commanding it to be exceptionally friendly, or to preserve us or those like us forever, or to " conserve values," as if the duration or the multiplication of instances had anything to do with excellence. The wisdom of Socrates was enough for living and judging rightly in any world, the most magical or the most mechanical, the best or the worst. I had no need to adopt the cosmology of Plato — a mythical and metaphysical creation, more or less plaj^ul and desperate, designed to buttress his moral philosophy. I was old enough, when I came under his influence, to discount this sort of priestcraft in thought, so familiar in Christian apologists. Experience, knowledge of my own heart, attachment to Spinoza, even the science of the day, protected me against those voluntary illusions. Indeed, to undermine them gently, by showing how unnecessary and treacherous they are in the healthy life of the spirit, was a chief part of my undertaking. In order to discern this healthy life, for the soul no less than for the body, not much learning is required; only a little experience, a little reflection, and a Httle candour.

Moral philosophy is not a science. It moves exclusively in the realm of familiar discourse. The units it distinguishes are dramatic units, like those of hterary psychology and historical fiction: ideas, persons, passions, destinies such as imagination presents to me when I survey my own past, or conceive the adventures of another. This lim-

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itation is far from involving the assumption that nothing but human discourse can exist, or that nature must be composed of rhetorical unities of that description. On the contrary, it is important for sanity and for art that human discourse should acknowledge the far deeper embosoming realms of matter and of essence, to which physics and dialectic are respectively addressed; otherwise moral philosophy would threaten to become myth and discourse mere ravings. Nevertheless, the uses of science remain human, in that it employs the mind nobly, chastens the feelings, or increases the safety and comfort of life. To investigate nature or refine dialectic beyond those uses, out of mere curiosity, may be an innocent automatic impulse in men of science, but it is vain. Physics and dialectic accordingly enter the life of reason only as developments of human discourse, coloured by himaan passions and serving them: the moralist accepts their reports, as he does those of memory and history, that they may enlighten him about the conditions and the possible forms of happiness. His own art, to which this book is essentially dedicated, is to express his reasoned preferences amongst all the forms of experience which his imagination can propose. To imagination the reader must appeal in turn if he would understand the argument; and if he would correct the conclusion, he must make sure that he is speaking for his heart, for his most secret dream of happiness. May, 1922.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTE- CEDENTS

Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates. — ^Efficacious reflection is reason. — ^The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness. — It is the sum of Art. — It has a natural basis which makes it definable. — Modern philosophy not helpful. — Positivism no positive ideal. — Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and conditions. — Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world. — The Greeks thought straight in both physics and morals. — Heraclitus and the immediate. — Democritus and the naturally intelligible. — Socrates and the autonomy of mind. — Plato gave the ideal its fuU expression. — Aristotle supplied its natural basis. — Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of restatement. — Plato's myths in lieu of physics. — Aristotle's final causes. — Modem science can avoid such expedients. — ^Transcendentalism true but inconsequential. — Verbal ethics. — Spinoza and the Life of Reason. — Modem and classic sources of inspiration Pages 1-32

Chapter II First Steps And First Fluctuations

Dreams before thoughts. — ^The mind vegetates imcontroUed save by physical forces. — Internal order supervenes. — Intrinsic pleasure in existence. — Pleasure a good, but not pursued or remembered unless it suffuses an object. — Subhuman delights. — Animal living. — Causes at last discerned. — Attention guided by bodily impulse.

Pages 48-63

Chapter III The Discovery Of Natural Objects

Nature man's home. — Difficulties in conceiving nature. — ^Transcendental qualms. — ^Thought an aspect of life and transitive. — Perception cumulative and synthetic. — No identical agent needed. — Example of the sun. — His primitive divinity. — Causes and essences contrasted. — Voracity of intellect. — Can the transcendent be known? — Can the immediate be meant? — Is thought a bridge from sensation to sensation? — Mens naturaliter platonica. — Identity and independence predicated of things Pages 64-83

Chapter IV On Some Critics Of This Discovert

Psychology as a solvent. — Misconceived role of intelligence. — All criticism dogmatic. — A choice of hypotheses. — Critics disguised enthusiasts. — Hume's gratuitous scepticism. — Kant's substitute for knowledge. — ^False subjectivity attributed to reason. — Chimerical reconstruction. — The Critique a work on mental architecture. — Incoherences. — Nature the true system of conditions. —

CONTENTS xvii

Artificial pathos in subjectivism. — Berkeley's algebra of perception. — Horror of physics.-— -Puerility in morals. — Truism and sophism. — Reality is the practical made intelligible. — Vain "realities" and trustworthy ''fictions" Pages 84-117

Chapter V Nature Unified And Mind Discerned

Man's feeble grasp of nature. — Its unity ideal and discoverable only by steady thought. — Mind the erratic residue of existence. — Ghostly character of mind. — Hypostasis and criticism both need control. — Comparative constancy in objects and in ideas. — Spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature. — Vague notions of nature involve vague notions of spirit. — Sense and spirit the life of nature, which science redistributes but does not deny.

Chapter VI Discovert Op Fellow-minds

Another background for current experience may be found in alien minds. — Two usual accounts of this conception criticised: analogy between bodies, and dramatic dialogue in the soul. — Subject and object empirical, not transcendental, terms. — Objects originally soaked in secondary and tertiary qualities. — Tertiary qualities transposed. — Imputed mind consists of the tertiary qualities of perceived body — "Pathetic fallacy" normal, yet ordinarily fallacious. — Case where it is not a fallacy. — Knowledge succeeds only by accident. — Limits of insight. — Perception of character. — Conduct divined, consciousness ignored. — Consciousness untrustworthy. — Metaphorical mind. — Summary Pages 137-160

Chapter VII Concretions In Discourse And In Existence

^ So-called abstract qualities primary. — General qualities prior to particular things. — Universals are concretions in discourse. — Similar reactions, merged in one habit of reproduction, yield an idea. — Ideas are ideal. — So-called xviii CONTENTS

abstractions complete facts. — ^Things concretions of concretions. — Ideas prior in the order of knowledge, things in the order of nature. — Aristotle's compromise. — ^Empirical bias in favour of contiguity. — ^Artificial divorce of logic from practice. — Their mutual involution. — Rationalistic suicide. — Complementary character of essence and existence Pages 161-183

Chapter VIII On The Relative Value Of Things And Ideas

Moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle. — Concretions in discourse express instinctive reactions. — Idealism rudimentary. — Naturalism sad. — The soul akin to the eternal and ideal. — Her inexperience. — Platonism spontaneous. — Its essential fidelity to the ideal. — Equal rights of empiricism. — Logic dependent on fact for its importance, and for its subsistence. — Reason and docility. — ^Applicable thought and clarified experience Pages 184-204

Chapter IX

Functional relations of mind and body. — They form one natural life. — Artifices involved in separating them. — Consciousness expresses vital equilibrium and docility. — Its worthlessness as a cause and value as an expression. — • Thought's march automatic and thereby implicated in events. — Contemplative essence of action. — Mechanical efficacy alien to thought's essence. — Consciousness transcendental and transcendent. — It is the seat of value. — Apparent utility of pain. — Its real impotence. — Preformations involved. — Its untoward significance. — Perfect function not unconscious. — Inchoate ethics. — Thought the entelechy of being. — Its exuberance.. . .Pages 205-235

Chapter X The Measure Op Values In Reflection

Honesty in hedonism. — Necessary qualifications. — ^The will must judge. — Injustice inherent in representation. — .ilsthetic and speculative cruelty. — Imputed values : their

CONTENTS xix inconstancy. — ^Methods of control. — Example of fame. — Disproportionate interest in the aesthetic. — Irrational religious allegiance. — Pathetic idealisations. — Inevitable impulsiveness in prophecy. — ^The test a controlled present ideal Pages 23&-255

Chapter XI Some Abstract Conditions Op The Ideal

The ultimate end a resultant. — Demands the substance of ideals. — Discipline of the will. — Demands made practical and consistent. — ^The ideal natural. — Need of unity and finality. — Ideals of nothing. — Darwin on moral sense. -—Conscience and reason compared. — Reason imposes no new sacrifice. — Natural goods attainable and compatible in principle. — Harmony the formal and intrinsic demand of reason Pages 256-268