A Pluralistic Universe

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NIVERSE I,FC. URES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON THE PHILOSOPHY

WILLIAM JAMES

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P LURALISTIC UNIVERSE

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PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE HIBBERT LECTURES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY

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MANOR Rockville, MARYLAND 2008

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Dwn< """,r,",v of ,I>< ptots or rationa lists, we are, ourseke. , parts of the universe and share t he same oll e deep COllC~'" in its d~still ies .....Ve crave alik~ to ful more t ruly at home with it, and to contr ibute our mite to its ameliorat ion. It would be pil iful if small aeslhetic d iscords were to keep honest men asu llder. I shall mY$elfhave U$e fo r the diminUlive epilhets of empiricism. n ut if you look behi nd the words at t he spir it, I am sure you w ill not find it malricida l. I am as good a son ;IS any rational ist among you 10 our common mother. What troubl~s m ~ more thall t h is misapprehellsion is the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged to ta lk about , and th~ di fficu lt y of making them inte lligible at one h~ar ing. nut the", two pieces, 'zwei stu~c ke : as Kant wou ld have sa id , in eve ry philosophy - t he final outlook, belief, or attimde TO whkh it br ings us , and the ",asonings bywhich that attitude is ...,ached and m ediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to t el l us, must indeed be true, but that is the leaS! of it s requirement s. One may be true without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelat ion. \Vhat d isti nguishes a ph ilosopher's tru th is that it is r,a,on .d. Argument, not ~uppos it ion , must have put it in his pos.e%ion. Common men find them.dves inheriting their belief! , we find a good example of it in L ot7-c's we ll-k nown proof of monism from th e fact of interaction between finite things. Suppose, Lone .ays in effect, and for si mpli city's sa ke I have to raraphra~e him, for h is own words are too long to quote - many disti nct beings a, D, r, etc., to exist independently of each other: ran a in that (au rvn ad on or \Vh at is it to act) Is it not to exert an influence? D oes the influence detach itsel f from a and find br I f so, it is a thi rd fact, and the problem is not how (I acts, bu t how it s ' influence· ~c t ~ on b. By ~noth er influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of influmces find b rather th an , unless b is somehow prefigured in them already? And wh en they have found b, how do Ihey make b respond , if b has noth ing in common wit h them? \!Vhy don't they go right t hrough o? The change in b is a rupo"u, due 10 b', capac it y for taking account of as influe nce, and that aga in seems to prove that o's nature is somehow fitte d to Il'. nat ure in advance. a and b, in short. arc not really as distinct as we at first sllpposed tbem, not separated by a void. W ere this so they wouid b~ mutually impenetrable , or at least mutually irr elevant. l hey would form two un iverses each living by it self, mak ing no d ifference to each other, tak ing no accou nt of each other, mllch as the un;ve(';e of your day dreams takes no account of mine. Th ey must therefore belong togethe r before hand, be co -implicated already, their natures must have an inborn mutua l reference each to each. L otze's ow n solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things .upposed cannOt be real in t h"t .hape, but all of them, if reciproca l action is to be poss ible between them, must be regarded as part. of a single real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has to

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g ive p lace to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, being u nin telligible as such, is to be understood as an imma n ent operation." 'Ihe words 'immanent operat ion' ",em here to mean t hai th e single real be ing M, of which il a n d b are members, is t h e o nly thing that changes, and th ai whe n il changes , it changes inwardly and all oVer at once. W hen pa rt a in it changes, conseqllently, part b mllst also change, but without the whole M ch anging this would not occu r. A preuy argu ment . bul a pu rely verbal one, as r appre h end it. e lll! your il and b distinct, they can't interact ; ,alf them one, they can. For taken abst ractly and without qua li fication the words 'distinct' and 'in dependent' suggest only disconne ction. If this be the only property of your a and b (an d it is t h e o nly property your words imply), then of course, .ince you can't deduce their mutual influence from it, you can find no grou n d of it s occu r ring between them. Your bar. word 'separate; conuadicting your bare word 'joined: seems to exclude connexion. Lotze's remedy for the imposs ibil it y thu~ verba lly found is to change the first word. If, instead of calling a and b independent, we n ow call them ' interdependent ,' 'united,' or ' on e,' he says, thtl. words do not contradict any in ,'ery truth about the w ord 'som e: Rad ical em pi ricism a nd pluralism st and out for th~ legit imacy of t he notion of some: each pan of t he world is in some way. connect~d , in some other ways not cOll nccted with its other parts , alld the w ays ca n be discrim inat ed, for man y o f them are obvious, a nd their d ifferences a re obvious to vicw. Absolutism , on its side, seems to ho ld that 'some' is a cat cgor~' ru inously illfected w it h sdf-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly consis tent a nd there fore pertine nt to reality a re 'a ll' and 'none: The question ru ns into the still m ore general one w it h which M r. Bradley and h t cr w ritns of t he monistic school h'l"e made us "bun dand y familiar - the quest ion, namely, whet her all t he relat ions w it h ot h er things, possible to a bei ng, are pre- included in its intrins ic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to ~Ome of these rclations, it can b~ w ithout reference to them , and , if it ever does ~ n ter into them , do 00 adventit iously and as it were by an aft er- thought . Th i. is the ,6

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question as to whe t h~r 'ext~rna]' relations can exist. They sum to, undoubtcdly. My manuscript, for cxample, is 'on' t he desk. Thc relation of being 'on' doesn·t seem to implicate or involve in any way t he innu meaning of the manuscript or t he in ner structurc of the desk - thcse objects engagc in it on ly by their outsidcs, it secms only a temporary accident in t heir respective historie$. Moreover, the ·on' fail s to appear to our senses as one of those unintelligibk ·between,' that have to be separatdy hooked on thc lcrrn$ thcy prctcnd 10 conncct. A ll th is innoccnt sense - appearancc, however, w e are told, can not pass muster in the eyes of reaSOn. It is a tissuc of self-contrad iction which only thc completc absor ption of the desk and the manuscr ipt into the higher unit y of a more absolute reality can ovucomc. Thc rca.oning by which this condu,ion i. supportcd i. too subtle and complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you will thank mc for not inv it ing you to con,idcr it at al l. " I fcel thc morc free to pa~~ it hy now a~ I think that the cur~ory account of the ab$Olutist ic att itude which J have already given is sufficient for our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of the absolu te as 'not proven· - please observe that J go no fart her now - need not he backed by argument at every specia l point. Flank ing operations are less costly and in some w~ys more dfecliv( Ih~n fronla l a1t~cks . Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my rem ain ing lectures that th~ alternat ive of an univcrsc absolutely rational or ab.olutely irrational is forccd and strained, and that a via mdia cx ists which >Omc of you may agree with m~ is to be pr~f~rred. Som~ rationality certa inly does character i'~c our uni'-crscj and, weigh ing onc kind with another, wc may dcem that the incomplete kinds that appea r are on the whole a. acceptab le as t h e through-a nd-through sort of rationa lit y on which the m onist ic systematizers iosist. All the said systematizers who have wr inen since Hegel have owed their in'piration largely to him. Even when they have found no use for his particular triadic dialectic, Ihcy ha'·c drawn confidencc and cou rage from his authoritative and con'lucring tone. I have ,a id nothing abou t Hcgel in Ih is \ccturc, so I mu st rcpa ir thc om ission in the ncxt.

LECTURE III H EGEL AND H IS M ETHOD DIRECTLY or in directly, th at strange and power fu l ge niu s H egel has done mOre to strengt hen idea listic pantheism in th ought ful ci rdes than all ot hu influe n ces put toge ther. I mus t talk a [itt Ie about him before drawing my fina l conclu.ion. about the cogency of the argu -

ment> for the absolll1c. In no philosop hy

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the fact that" philoso -

pher's vision and the technique he uscs in proof of it arc t w o d ifferent th ings more palpably evident than in Hegel. "Ihc vision in h is case wa~ t h1!

of a world in which reason holds all th ings in 801ut io,., and

accounts for all the irrationalit\' that super fi cia lly appears

h· ta king

it

up as a 'moment' into itself. "nl;' vision was So intense in Hegel, and the lone of :!uthority with wh ich he spo ke from out of the midst of it was so weighty, th at the impression he made has never been effaced . On ce dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' sight could not co ntract t o any lesser prospect . Th e tech nique which H egel used to prove his vision Was the so -called diakcti c method, but here his fortune has been quite contrary. H ardly a recent disciple has felt his particub r applicat ions ofthe method to be satisfactory. Many have le t them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of provisional stopgap, symbolic o f wh at might some day prove possible of execution , but having no l iteral cogency or value now. Yet these verr same disciples hold t o the vision itself as a revelation that can never pass away. The case is curious and wort hy of our st udy. It is st ill more m r ious in th at these same disciples, alt ho they arc usually willing to abandon any I'a rl imlar inst ance of Ihe dia leeric mcthod to its cr it ics, arc unshakabl y sure that in some shape the dialectic method is the key to truth . W h;lt, then, is the di;lleclic method? It is itsel f a part of the hegelian vision or int uit ion, and a part t hat finds

HEGEL "1 Leibnitz in hi. t h~odicy "'pres~nts God as limited by an ant~ce dent reason in t hings w hich makcs certa in combinations logically incompatible, c~rtain good. impo<sib1e. H e survey. in advance all the universes he might create, and b~· an act of what L eibnirz calls his antecedent will he chooses our actua l world as the one in wh ich thc evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its min imum . It i. t he be st of all the worlds that arc possible, t her~fo .. , bu t by no means t he m ost ~b.tractl~· desirable world. H av ing mad e thi. mental ~hoi~e . God next procceds to what Lcibnitz calls his act of consequent or decr~tory will: he says 'Fiat' and t he w orld selected spr ings into objecti,·c bc ing, with all the finite crcatures in il to suffer from it. imperfections without sha ring in its crcator'. atoning vision. ,6 ,he

Cf. Dr. F"I I" •• x""II .." ,,,' id'; E'h;c~l mo" i.n, ~"d , h. pmhle ,,' of ovi1; i" vol. i. No. '. April. '90$.

H~_rdJ.~'n,,1 ojll""I.gy.

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

L otz e has made some penetrat ing remarks on this conception of Leibnitz's , and t hey exact ly fa ll in with what I say of the absolutist conception. The world projected ou t of the creative mind hy t he fial, and existing in de t achment from its au t hor, is a sphere of being where t he parts rea lize t hemselves on ly singly. rf Ihe divine value of Ihem is evid ent only when t hey are co llectively looked ai, t hen, L otze r ightly says , the world surely becomes poorer and not r icher for G od 's utterance ofthefial. He might much betlcr have remained conte nted w it h his merely an te cedent choice of the sc heme, without following it up by a creative decre e. The scheme IlS such was admirable; it cou ld only lose by being tran~lated into reality. " Why, I similarly ask , should the absolute ever have lapsed from th e per fect ion of its own integra l experience of th ings, and refracted itself into all ou r finite experiences? It is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them have confessed the imperfect rationa lity of the absolute from this point of view. Mr. McTaggar t, for example, w rites: 'Does not our very fai lure ro perceive the per fection of the un iverse des t roy it? ... In so ('u as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not per fect ours elves. A nd as We are parts of the universe, that cannot be perfect:" And Mr. Joachim find s just t he same difficulty. Calling the hy-

pothesis of the absolute by the narne of the 'coherence th eory of truth; he calls the problem of understandi ng how the complete coherence of all t h ings in the absolute should invoh'e as a necessary moment in its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds , a self-assertion which in it s extreme form is er ror, - he calls t his problem , I say, an insoluble puule. If truth be the universaljons ~I origo, how docs error slip in? 'The coherence t heory of truth; he concludes, 'may thus be "'''W~ 1"'" UJ'Y, """,.,.(, r~IU'W u~w"'_l',cln' J:>."'~'1M U1 '~'1' ,.odd", 0, I"'""'" w= 1'1"0-,," •. ", ' '''lliu"jj' "MO[ 'l"0' I"Uld. '"0)0 0, J~>q 0,

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u ~ql! JI 'lU!'I 0l pC~1 SOC) IIV ·U! l'lii'nOJq ~q 01 .Incn)un~ a otrong inst inctive preju d ice which Fech ner ingen ious ly tr ies to overcome. Man's mind is the h ighest consciou sness upon the earth, we th ink - t he earth itsel f be ing in all w ays man's in ferior. H o w should its consciou sness, if it have o ne, be $uperior to h is' \V hat are th e ma rks of sup er iorit y w hich we arc tempted to use hu e: [f we look more ca refully into them , Fech nn poi nts Olll thal lhe earth possesses eac h and all of them m ore pe rfectly t han we . He considers in deta il the points of ditferen~e between us , and show, th em all to make for the eart h ', higher rank . I will touch on on ly a few of the&e point&. One of t hem of course is i ndependenc~ of other externa l bei ngs . E xtern al to the eart h arc on ly the other hea "enly bod ies . All t he t h ings o n which we externa lly dep end for li fe - air, water, plant and ani mal food, fellow men, etc. - are induded in her as her constit uent pa rt s. She is self-sufficing in a m illion respects in which we are nor so. W e depend o n her for almost everythi ng , she on us for but a sm all portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from w int er to summer and re volves us from d ay into night and from nig h t into day. Com plex it y in u nit y is ano ther ' ign of sup~rior ity. Th e tota l earth's complexi t y far exceeds th at of ;lny organ ism , for she includes all our orga n ism s in hersel f, along w ith an in fin it e numbe r of t hi ngs tha t our organisms fail to incl ud e. Yet ho w s imple and m ass ive arc t he ph ases of her Own proper life! As the total bea ri ng of any animal is seciate and tranquil compared wit h the agitatioll of its blood corpuscles, so is the ea rth a seda t e and tranquil being compared w ith the animals whom she su ppor,".

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

To d~velop from within , instead of b~ing fashioned from without, is also counted as somet h ing superior in men's eres. An egg is a h igher style of being tha n a piece of clay which an external modeler mah s into the image ofa bird. VVd l, the eanh's histor~' develops from w ithin. It is like Ihat of a wonderful egg which Ihe sun's heat, like Ihat of a mOl herhen, has stimu lated to its cycles of evolUlionary change. Ind ividuality of Iype, and differe nce from other beings of its type, is another mark of rank. 'DIe earth d i ffers from every other phtnet, and as a class planetary beings are ~xtraordinarily distinct from ol hu beings. Long ago the earth was called an an imal; but a planet is a higher class of being than either man or an imal; nol on ly quantitatively greater, like a vaster and more awkw ard w h ale or elephant , but a be ing whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to and fro, of sm:tching our limbs and bending our bod ies, shows only our de fect. Whal are our legs bUi crutches, by means of wh ich , with restless efforts, we go hu nt ing after the things we h ave not inside of oursdves. But the eanh is no such cripple; whr should she who already possesses within herself the things we sO painfully pursue, have limbs analogous to ours? Sha ll she m im ic a small part of herself? What need has she of arms, wit h nothing to reach for' of a mck. with no head to cury? of eye~ or nose wh en she finds her way through space without either, and has t he millions of eyes of all her an imals to guide their movements on her surface, and all their nOSeS to sme ll the Howers that grow? For, as We arc oursdvc> a part of the earth, so our organs are her organs. She is, as it were, ere and car over her whole extent - all that we sec and hear in separation she sees and h ea ... at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon her surface, and t heir mu ltitudinous conscious relations w ith eac h ot her she takes up into her h igher and mOre general conscious life. 1\10st of us, consideri ng t he t heory that the whole terrestria l mass is animated as our bodies are, ma ke the mistake of w orking the analogy too literally, and allowing for no differencn. If the eart h be a sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? \Vhat corresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, We expe~l functions wh;~h she llready per forms through us, to be perfor m ed outside of us again , and in just the samc way. Bm we Sec pcrfectly well how the earth pcrforms Somc of thesc fun~tions in a way un likc Our way. If you spcak of circulation. what need has she of a heart when the sun keeps all the show~rs of rain that fall upon her and all the springs and brooks and ri"cr, that irrigate her,

going? What ,,"cd has she of interna l lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in living commerce w ith the atmosphere t h at clings to it? The organ t hat giv.. u. most trouhle is the bra in. All the consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains. - Can there be consciousness, We ask, where there is no brai n ) But our brain, which primarily serVC$ to corrdate our muscu lar reaction. with the e"ternal o bjects on wh ich w e depend, performs a func tion wh ich the earth permrms in an entirely different way. She has no proper mU$cles or li mbs of her own, and the only objects enernal to her arc the o t her stars. T o these h er whole maSS reacts by most e"'luisite alterations in its tota l gait, and by sti ll more exquisite vibratory re sponses in its substance. H er ocean reflects the light s ofhe"ve n as in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monStrous lens , the do ud s and snow -field. comb ine them into white, the wood. and f1owe .. disperse t hem into colors. Polari7.ation . interference, absorption, awa ken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. For these cosmic rclations of her s, the n , she no m ore needs a special brain than , he needs eyes or ears. Our brains do indeed unify and corrd ate innumerable fu nctions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our ears nothi ng of light, but, hav ing brains , we can feel sound and light toget her, and compa re t hem. We aCC()U nt for this by t he fib re. wh ich in the brain con nec t t he optica l wit h the acoustic ce ntre , but just how the.. e fibres br ing together not only the ",nsations, but t he cen t res, we fa il to sec . But if fibres arc indeed all that is needed to do th at tr ick, has not the earth pathways , by which you and I are phys ically continuous, m ore than enough to do for ou r t wo minds what the brain- fibres do for t he so unds and .ights in a single m ind? Must every higher means of un incation between things be a lit era l brain-fibre, and go by that name: Cannot the ea rth- m ind know ot herwise t he contents of ou r m ind. toget her' Fechner s im agination, insisting on the differences as well as on the resemblances, t hus tr ies to make o ur picture of the whole eart h 's life mOre co ncrete. He revels in the thought of its perfect ions. To carry her precious freight through t he hou," and seasons what form could be mOre excellent th an hers - being as it is horse, wheel s, and wagon all in o ne. Th ink of her beauty - a shi ning ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over o ne half, the other bathed in st arry night, rdl.ccting the hea'·ens from all her waters, my riad$ of light> and shadows in the fold. of her mounta ins and wind ings of her va!!ey., she would be a spectacle of rainbow glory, could one on ly sec her from afar as we see parrs of her from h er own mou nt ain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a name would then

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

be visible in her at once - all that is delicate or gracdul, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or cheerfu l , or luxu riant, or fresh. That landscape is her face - a peopled l andscape, too, for men'. eyes wou ld appear in it like diamonds among t h e dew-d rops. Green would be the dominant color, but , he blue aunasphere and t he clouds wou ld enfold her as a bride is shrouded in her vei l - a vei l the vapory tran sparent folds of which the earth , through her mini.ters the wind., never tires of laying and folding about herself aneW. Every element has its own livi n g denizen •. Can the celestial ocea n of ether, whose waveS arc light, in which the eart h herself Hoars, not have hers , h igher by as much as t heir element is higher, swimmi ng without fins , flying wit hout w ings, moving, immense and tranquil, as by a half- spiritual force through the h alf- spiritual sea which they inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one anoth er, following the sl ightest pull of one another'. attranion . and harboring, each of t hem, an inexhaust ible inward wealth? Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, needing no earth ly food or drink , messe ngers between ourselves and God. Here arc actua ll y exis tent bei n~, dwelling in Ihe light and moving through the sky, needing neit her food nor drink , intermediaries bet ween God and us , obey ing his J;ommands. So, if the heavens really arc t he home of angels, the heavenl~· bodies must be t hose very angel., for othe r creatureS Ib~u arc none. Yes! t he eart h is our great J;ommon guardian angel, who watches oVer all our intere sts combined. I n a striking page Fech ner relates one of his moments of direct vision of this truth. 'On a certa in spring morning I went out to walk. 1he field. were green, the birds .ang, t he dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here and there a man appeared; a light as of tran s figural ion lay on all things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment of her ex istence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it seemed to me not on ly so beaul ifu l an idea. but sO Irue and cka ra fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich an d fresh and Hower- like, and yet goi ng her round in the skie s sO fi rm ly and so at one wit h herself, turning her whole living fa"" to H eaven, and carrying me al ong with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how the op inions of men could ,,·c r ha'·e so spun thcm selves away from life .0 far a5 to deem the earth on ly a dry dod, and to seek for angels above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky, - only to find them nowhere .... But such an exper ience a. this passe. ror famastic.

The eart h is a globular body, and wh u more she may be , one can find in m ineralogical cabinet.:" "Vhe,e there i. no vi.ion the people peri.h . Few professorial philosophers have any visio n. Fech ner had vision , and that is why one can read hi m OVer and over again, and each time bring away a fresh SenSe of reality. Hi s earlie.t book w as a visio n of what the inner life of plant s may be li ke . He called it 'Nanna ." In the ,kvelopment of an i rna Is the nervous s~·stem is the cent ral fac l. Plant s develop ce nt r ifuga lly, spre ad their organs abroad. For that reaSOn people suppose that they can have no consciousness, for they lac k the un ity w h ic h the centra l nervous sys t em provide,. But the plant's conscious ness may be of another type, being connected w ith other .tructures. Violins and p iano. give oUl sounds because they have string •. D oes it follow that nothing but str ings can give out so und? H ow th en about flutes and organ-pipe.? Of course the ir sounds are of a different q uality, and sO may the consc iousness of plants be of a qualit y correlat ed exclus ively with the ki nd of organization t h at I they possess. Nutrit io n, respirati on, propagation take place in them w ithout nerves. In us tbese functions are conscious only in unusual state" normally their consciousness is eclipsed by that

which goes wi th th e brain. No such eclipse occu rs in pia nt s, and thei r lower consc iousness may t herefore be all the more lively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and a ir wit h their leaves, to le t their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw the sap, is it conce ivable that they should not consc iously suffer if water, light , and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the flowe ri ng and ferti lizat ion which are the cu lmination of their life take place, they should not feci their o wn existence more intensely and enjoy some th ing like w h at we call pleasure in oune I-·cs' Does the water-lily, rocking in her trip le bath of water, air, and light, rdish in no w ise her ow n beauty: When the plant in our room turns to the light, doses her blossoms in the dark, responds to our wateri ng or pruning by increase of size or change of sh ape and bloom , who has the r ig ht t o say she docs not feel, or that , he plays a purely passive part? Tnlly plants Ca n foresee nothing, neither the scrthe ofthe m ower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neithe r run away nor cry ou t. But th is on ly proves how di fferent their mode. of feeling life must be from those of anima!. that live by eyes and ears and locomot ive organs, it does no t prove that they have no mode of feeling life at all. H

red",." u,P.rJ;, S"ltni"'I:'. IU,. p. '7"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

How ocanty and scatte,..,d would sensation be on ou r globe , if th e feding-life of plants w ere blotted from existence. Sol itary would conscious"es. move Ihrough t he woods in t he .hape of some dee r or other q uadruped, o r fly about the flow ers in that of some insect , but ca n we really suppose t hai the N ature Ihrough whi ch God's breath blows is such a barren wilderness as t his' I have probably by this time said enough to acq uaint those of you who have n"·er seen t hese metaphys ical w ri tings of Fechner with t heir more general characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like reading them yoursdves." ·Ihe specia l thought of Fechner's with which in these lecture. I have mos t practica l conce rn, is his belief t hat the more indusive forms of conscious"ess are in part ron,!ilul,,1 by the more lim ited forms. Not t hat they arc the mere sum of the mOre lim ited forms. As our mi"d is "ot t he bare sum of our sight s plus our so u"ds plus our pa ins, but in adding theoe terms together also finds rdations among them and weaves t hem into schemes and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate knows anything, so the earth- sou l traces rel ations between the cont ent s of m .,· mind and the contents of yours of which neither of our separate minds is conscious. It ha$ schemes, forms, and objects proportionate to its w ider field, which our mental fields arc fa r 100 nUfOW to cognin. By oll rse!\·es we are simply ou t of rebt ion with each othe r, for it we are both of us there, and d!!prml from each other, wh ich is a positi ,·e rdat ion. W hat we are w ithout knowing, it knows that we are . \~e are dosed against its world, but that world is not closed against us . It is as if the total universe of inner life had a sort of gra in or d irect ion, a sort of valvular structure , permitting k nowle dge to Aow in o ne w ay only,.o that the w ider might always have the narrower under observation, but n,,·cr the n arrower the w ider . Fechner'. great analogy here i. t he relation of the senses to our ind ividual m inds. \ Vhen our eyes are open t heir sensations en ter into our genera l mental life, wh ich grow s incessa ntly by the add ition of what they see. Close t he eyes, however, and the visua l additions stop, nothing but t houghts and memories of the past visual experiences remain - in combination of COUrse w ith the enOrmOUS sto~k of other t hOllghts and mem ories, and with the data coming in from the senses not ye t closed. Our cye -sensations of thems elves k now nothi ng of this enOrmouS life joto wh jch the y fa ll. Fechner thinks, as any COmmon man would t h ink . Jl F«hnc" laIC" .ummarizing orhi. view., Die T ag«an.ich t gcgcnucb« de< Nachtansicht , Leipzig, ,g7'), i. r>OW, I undeutand, in proce .. of translat;"n. Hi. Little B"" k of Ufo aflC' D •• , h ""is" al«",Iy in tWO A ",.,ic"n v."ion., 0"" puhli'hed by U"le. B,,,wn & Co .• BOOlon . n' hcr by rhe Open Cou,., Cn .. Ch"'agn.

'h.

that they are taken into it directly when they occur, and for m par! of it ju,t as they are, Th ey don't stay ours ide and get represe nted inside by the ir copies. [t is only the memories alld cancel''' of them t hat are copies; t he sensible percept io ns themsd ves arc taken in or w alled our in their own proper per sons according as the eyes are o pen or shut. Fechner li ken s our individ ual penon. on t he earth unto so many sense - organs of t he earth's soul. W e add to it s percep tive life so long as Our own life lasts. It "bso rbs our p erceptions , just as they occur, into it s larger sphere of knowledge , and com bines them with the o ther d ata the re. W hen one of us d ie>, it is as ifa n eye of t h e world were do.ed , for all p,rupliv, contr ibutions from that part icular quarte r cease . But t he memories and conceptual relations that have spun themse lves round t he perceptions of t hat person remain in the la rger earth -life as disti nct as ever, and form new .. lat ions and grow and develo p th roughout all t he future, in the same w ay in which ou r o w n distinct o bjects of thought, once stored in memory, form new relations and develop t h roughout our whole finite life . Th is is Fechners theory of immorta lit y, fi rst published in the little 'Buechlein des lebens naeh dem rod e; in r836, and re-ed ited in greatly improved shape in t he last volume of his 'Zend-avena: \ Ve rise upon the earth as w avelets rise upon t he ocean. W e grow ou t of her wil as leaves grow from a tree. 'Ihe wavel ets eatch the su nbeams separat ely, the leaves stir whe n t he branches do not m ove. They rea lize t heir Ow n event' apart, just as in Ou r own con.dou""e •• , when anything becomes emphatic, t h e background fade> from observat ion. Yet the event w orks back upon the b ackgroun d, as the wa,·clet works upon t he waves, or as t he !eaf's mo" ement, work upon the sap inside the branch. Th e whole sea and the w hole t",e are regist ers of what has happened , and are different for the w ave's and t he leafs act ion ha,·ing occurred. A grafted t w ig may mod ify its stock to the roots: - so o ur ou tl ived private experiences , impressed on the whole earth-m ind as memories, lead t h e immortal life of ideas t here , and become parts of t he great system, fully d ist ingu ished from one another. just as We ourselves wh en alive w ere distinct, rea lizing th emselves no longer isolatedl y, but along with One anot h er as so many pa r tia l sys tems, enter ing thus into new combin ations , be ing affected by t he percept ive exper iences of t ho"" living then, and affecting the living in their turn - altho they are so .eldom recogn ized by living men to do so. !fyou imagine that this ent rance afte r the death of the bod y into a common life of higher t ype means a merging and loss of our distinct persona lity, Fechner asks you whe ther a visual sensation of our own

"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

ex ists in any sense I~n for itulfor I,n distil"t/y, when it enters into o ur high er rebtiona l consciousness and is there d istingu ished and de fi ned. - Rut here I must stop my repor t ing and send you to hi s volumes . Th us i. t he universe alive, accord ing to this ph ilosopher! I thi nk you will admil t hai he makes il more thiddy al ive , han do the other philosophers who, follow ing rationalistic methods .olely, gain t he same results, bm on ly in t he t hinnest outl ine • . Both Fechner and P rofessor R oyce , for example, believe ult imately in One ;t ll- indusi"e m ind . BNh b el ieve that we, jus t a. we stand h ere, are const itue nt parts of th at mind. No oth .. contmt h as it t h an us . wit h all t he other creatu res li ke Or unlike us , and the relations which it fi nds between us. Ou r caches, collect ed into one, arc substantivdy ident ical with its ali, tho the all is pe rfect while no each is perfect, sO that we have to admit t hat new qua lit ies as w ell as un perceived relat ions accrue from the collective form . It is thus sup erior to the d i.tributive form . But having reached this re.u lt , Royce (tho hi. !reatm enl of the subjec t on its moral side Seems to me infi nitely rich er and thic ker than t h at of an~' ot her contemporary idealistic philosopher) leaves u. very m uch to ou r own de,·ices. Fechne r, o n the cont ra ry, tr ies to trace Ihe superiorities due to the more collective form in as much detail a. he can. H e marks t h e various intermed iary stages and halting

plaee! of collectivit y, - a! we are to our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system to t he earth, et c., - and if, in order to escape an infi nitely long summation, he posits a complete G od as the all-conta iner and le ave> him about as indefinite in featu re as t he ideal ists lea"e their absolute, he yet provides us wit h a very de fi nite gate of approach to h im in the sh ape of the eanh- oou l, thr ough wh ich in the nature of things we must firs t make con nexion w ith all the more envelop ing superhuma n rea lms , and with which ou r more im mediat e rel igious commerce at any rat e has to be carried on . Ord in ary monist ic idealism le ave. everything intermediary out. It recognizes only t he extremes , as if, after the fi rs t rude face of t he phe nomena l world in all its part icular ity, not h in g bu.t the .u prcme in all it> per fection could be fou nd. F irst, you and I, just as w e arc in this room ; and the momen t We get b elo w t hat su rface , the unutterable absolu t e itse 1f1. D oesn't this show a
J6

M,. Bradley ought to be to some dcgr<e

laO! 1' ");arne obj« ... Of o,her field., howO"er .hi. i. not.., tr ue, 110, in .he I"y"hologioral Review for 1895, "01 . ii, p. 105 (> For my own part, I have finally found mysel f compelled to give up the logic, fairly, squarely, and irre vocably. It has an imperishable usc in h uma n life, bu t that usc i. no t to make us theoretically acquainted w ith the essentia l natu re of reality - just what it is I can pe rhaps sugg~st to you" little later. Rea lil y, life, experience, ~oncret sha ll be ascertainable. 'Il, ese mi nor pulses"W~ can indeed go on 10 ascert ain or to com pille indefinitely if We have p"tilhing h"l'P'n, '" ,he ",alm d oon«p,,> «;'tLon. ,herromi.< g.in &ilo !O fu" ,hie,

tr.,,,,

"";"'n« ". ",,'" ...

""".Ilow 'ho:! orKirnt.oo Of""r,,;,,1 cofttn mon: ifl'i~l>-, AS'"i" i, m,y I>< said ,h.... '"" combi", old cone,p" i".o now """. co"",iving .h", .."h ,.. Ii. i.... ,h, "hu. God. ",u l" 0' ,..h.... not, .of ,..h"'h 0"' ",",;/,", lif, ,Ion, wo uld I..Y< u, .1'0g< • ookly in",.m.n,.1 v. lo< con""p" of ,I-,.,m . E,he, ond mokc" leo m.y b. lik, coomin.", ond .. "'g'~ only"" m'ny "",,he. b~ t he help of whi< "",,,,,,, ""p'IT,iv into it sel f w hatever is gra fted o n , until at length somet h ing wholly d ifferent h,l< taken itll pla~e. In such" procell. We"", 'l> su re, in sp ite of inte llectualist log ic w ith it. 'as suches,' that it i, the .ame nucleus which is able nOw to make con nexion with what goes and again with what comes , as We are Sure that the Same point ca n lie On diverse lines that inter.ect there . Without being one throughout, such a un iverse is conti nuous . It s members interdig itate with their next ne ighbors in ma nifold d irections, and the re arc no clean cuts between them anywhere.

"'5

WtLl1 ... ~t Th~

lA ~tES

great clash of intell~ctualist logic with sensible =p~ri~nce is where the experience i, that of influence exerted. Intellectualism denie. (as we saw in l~cture ii) th at finite t hings can act on one anot her, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up to t h emselves. To act on anything meam to get into it somehow; but that would mean to get out of one's self and he one's other, which is self-contradictory, etc. M eanwhile each of us actually is h is ow n other to that ex tent, Jivingly knowing how to perform 1he trick which logic tdls us can·t he done. My thoughts animat~ and actuat~ this vory body which you s~~ and h~ar, and thereby influence you r thoughts. ·[he dynamic current somehow docs get from m e to you, how~ver n umerous t he intermediary conductors may have to be. D ilore the act ion of t he other organs, t he sou nd coalesces with t he feeling, the sight . and The smell sensations aga in. Now the nat ural way of talking of all this') is to say that certai n sensat ions a", experienced , now singly, and now toget her w ith other sensations, in a common conscious field . Fluctuations ofattcntion give analogous resu it ." \Ve let a .emation in or keep 4' Ga"on Rageot, RI. ) 6, ation. hy «minding u, of their 'dumbne,,: in thot 'hey do not come al read)' namd, a. co«P" may be ",id to do, only .how. how in«l ltion that it w:>s impo$sible for purely logical reasons, is un found ed in princ iple. 'Every sm:>llest $t:>te of consciousne$S, concretdy taken , overflows irs own definition . Only concepts arc selfidentical ; only 'reason' deals with dosed equations; nat lire is but a name for nee ..; every point in her opens out and runs into t h e more; and the on ly question, with reference to any point we may be consider ing , is how far into the rest of na!llre we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond irs overflow. In the pulse of inner li fe immediately present now in each of us is a little pa"" a l ittle future, a little awareness of our own body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we arc t rying to talk about, of the earth 's geography an d the direction of history, of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how muc h more? Feeling, however diml~' and subconscioush', all these things , vour pu lse of inner life is cont inuous with them, belongs to them and t he), to it. You can't ident ify it with either one of them rather th:>n with the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those direct ions , what it de,-dops into wiJllook bac k on it and say, "Jh at Was t he original ge rm of mt ." In prindp", then, the real units of our immediately-fdt life are unlike the unirs that intel lectualist logic ho ld s to and make. irs calculations with. lhe}" are not sepante from their oWn others. and you ha"e to take them at w idely separated dates to find any tw o of them t hat seem unblent. lhen indeed they do appear .epa rate even as th eir con cepts are separate; a chasm yawns between the m; but the ch asm itself is but an intellectuali,t fict ion, got by abstracting from the conti nuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was filled. It is like the log carried first by \Villiam and H enry, then by William, H enr)" and John, then by H enry and John, then by John and Peter, and so on . All real un its of exper ience owrlap. Let a row of eqllidistant dot s on a sheet of pape r symbol i ze th e concepts by w hich we intellectua l ize the world. Let a ruler long enough to CoVer at least three do t s stand for our se nsible exper ience. Then the concei,-ed ch anges of the sen.ib le expe rience can be syrnboli'~ed by sliding the ruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to it, one after anot her drop away, but it will alw ays cover at leas t two of them, and no do ts less than t hree will e\'er adequately cover i/. You falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots.

" 6

"V hat is true here of successive states must also be true of simu ltaneous characters, They also overlap each other with their being, My present field of consciousne.. i, a ce ntre surrounded by a fringe th at sh ades insensibly into a subconscious more. I usc t hree sepamte terms here to de scribe, this fact ; but] might as well .... e th ree hundred, for th e fact is all shades and no bo ... ndaries. Which part of it properly is in my consciousness , whic h out~ If I name what is o ut, it already has come in. The cent re works in One way while the margins work in anN her, and presently overpower t he centre and are central themse lves. \Vhat we conce ptually ident ify ourselves with and say We arc t h inking of at any ti me is the ce nt re; but o ur full self is t he whole field, w ith all those indefi nitely rad iating subconscious poss ibil it ie s of increase that we can o nly feel without conceiving , and can hardly begin 10 analy"~e. Th e collect ive and the distributive ways of being coexist here, for each part functions d istinctly, makes connex ion with it s own peculiar region in the sti ll wider rest of experience and lends to draw Us into t hat li ne, and yet the w hole is somehow fdt as one pulse of our life, - not conceived so , but fdt so. ]n principle, then, as ] sa id, in tellectua lism's edge is broken; it can o nly approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our in ner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its irnpo~sibi lities . Every bit of lt8 at every m om ent is part and parcel of a wider sel f, it quivers along various radii like the wind-ro~e on a compass, and t he actual in it is continuously o ne w ith possibles not yet in Our present sight'" And JUSt as we arc coconscious w ith o ur own momentary marg in, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more rea lly central self in things which is co- consciou. with the w hole of us? May not you and I be conA ... ent in a h igh er consciousness, and conAuently active there, t ho w e now know it not? I am tiring mysel f and you, ! know, by va inly seek ing to describe by concepts and words what I ~ay at the same lime exceeds either conceptua lization or verbalizatio n. As long as one continues lalking, intellectualism remains in und isturbed possession of the fiel d. '! h e return to 5'

lhe conKio". ""If of 'he mom en' . 'he

~onality wh ich the g en ius of certain medical men, as Jane t , Freud, Prince, Sid i" and o thers, have unearthed w~ re unk nown in Fech ner's ti me, and neither th~ ph enom~na of automatic w r it ing and speech, nor of med ium,hip and 'po~,ession' generally, had been recognized or stud ied a, we now study th~ m, so F echner', stoc k of ana logies is scant compared w it h our present one. H e d id t he best with wh at he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal or super normal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior co-consciousness being possible. I d oubt whether we shall ever understand some of them wit hout using the very Jetter of Fec h ner', con ception of a great reser voir in which t h e m emor ies of earth's inhabitants

arc pooled and prese n 'cd, and from which, when the Threshold lowers o r t he va lve opens, in format ion ordinarily shut o ut leaks into the mind of exceptional individ uals among us . But t hose regions of in'luiry arc perhaps too spook-haunted to in terest an academic aud ience , and t he o nly ev idence I feci it now decorous to bring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary rel ig ious experience. [ t h ink it may be asserted that there ar~ religious exper ienees of a specific nature, not d~ducible by analogy or psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experie nce. I think that t hey point with rea,onablc probab ility to t he conti nuity of o ur consciousness w ith a wider spiritual environme nt from whic h t he o rdinary pr ud ential man (who is the only man t h at scient ific psychology, sO called. takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin my final lecture by referri ng to th~m aga in bridly.

12 1

LECTURE

VIII

C ONCLUSIONS AT the close of my last lecture I referred to lh. existence of religious

exper iences of a sp ecific ""lUre _ ! must nOW cxphin ju.t what I mcan by such a claim. Bridly, the facts ] have in mind may all be described as experienccs of an ""expected life succeeding upon death. By this I

don't mean immortality,

Or

the death of the body. I mean the death -

lik e termi n ation of cerlain menta l proce .... within the ind iv idual's exper ience, proce ..es that run 10 fai lure, and in some individua ls, at I~as! , ~Vfntllar~

in d.~pair. Ju st as tomarlf ic love ~e.mS a comparatively

recent litera ry in "cnrion, so these experiences o f a life th at s upervenes

upon despa ir scem to have played no great part in official theology till Luther'. t ime; and possibly the best way to ind icate their characte r will

be to point to a certain contrast betwee n t he inner life of o urselve s and of d)e ancient Greeks and Romans. Mr. Chesterton , , think, sa~·s somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans, in all that conce rn ed their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn set of folks. The Athenians thought th at the very gods must admire the rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves were apparen tly of much the same opinion. Cato's vera. R""d. (0< ""ample, what he "'y>. on p. 578. o( • billiard 00.11keeping- i.. '"hornet."." u",hl in =:I-hairedne ... both .. aolalyzed 00' of a man and when gi,."" wilh the re .. ofhim. ,he", "l>yh< ',..,change" (p. l&o~ Whyoo.. he immtd)' add th'" he the plurnliot to plc.d the """-mu"t",, of ,och aWnC1ion, woold be on ignor"'ioelonchi: It i. impoos.iblo to .dmit ~ to be ",ch. The ent;'" eknrhu. and is just"' to whe.her par" which yon con ab..mct from <x;>ting whob con al", contribute to ,"I",. whok. wid"",. ch.nging .hei. inner ""'Un: . If .I",y """ ,hu. "",ukl " ..... u, whole. into new ge".lt-qu"I;',,.",.J. 'h'" I"rtial chmgco "'" ' hinbbk, and ,hrough- and·, hroogh clunge not a di:JJ<eti< r>e,,,,,,ity; ' hat monism i. Orially « . p ",." It in ,h i. h<x>k being livingl)' on ,hi, ,.ble? \ Vhy i,n' the ,,,ble on the book? 0 , why ,Joe'n't 'he 'on' 0, in wha, mn the iural exi,,,,nce con,i", if"'" in a .pirituai miniature of the ",hok be,', com,i,u, ion ac,uating; every partial f"",o< as its purpoo