Volume 2 — THE MONIST. (continued 3)

I have translated more than was necessary so as to give the “view” as a whole. Does it not contain the answer to your question, “What is the origin of the a priori”?

Though Littré solved your “basic problem of philosophy” he did not attach so much importance to this solution as you do because his philosophy is based upon a generalisation from all facts and not upon any one fact, however important it may be.

“Positive Philosophy is the conception of the world that results from the systematised ensemble of the positive sciences” and does not depend upon the solution of any psychological problem, although it recognises the importance of all psychological facts.

Your originality lies in your application of Littré’s discovery.

The reader has his choice between Littré’s positivism and your neo-Kantism, but if he side with you he must at least thank Littré for the solution on which your philosophy is based.

You say that “Comtean Positivism, especially as it is represented by Littré, consists mainly if not exclusively of the doctrine to ‘let metaphysics alone.’” Is this fair to the man that solved your “basic problem of philosophy” in a paragraph?

Positivism as represented by Littré gives due importance to the subjective element. He recognised that three essentials were necessary to the completion of Comte’s philosophy: a political economy, a cerebral theory, and what, for want of a better name he termed the subjective theory of humanity. This last comprised ethics, æsthetics, and psychology. Speaking of a confusion that obscures the whole discussion relative to psychology, he says: “Cerebral theory, mental or psychological theory are taken in two very different senses, which are never distinguished. These terms signify sometimes the organic conditions under which intelligence manifests itself, sometimes the formal conditions under which the intellect operates. As soon as these two significations are separated we perceive the means of settling the debate as to the place of psychology; for to the question: Where should these two orders be studied? it will be answered that the first should be studied in anatomy, physiology, zoölogy, the evolution of ages, pathology, it belongs therefore without contest to biology; but it will be answered that the second should be studied in the total development of history and in the application to all the modes of cognition; it belongs incontestably to philosophy. Thus there are two psychologies, one biological, the other philosophical, one relating to the individual man, the other to the collective man, one furnishing what is necessary in order to pass from biology to sociology, the other examining the subjective instrument by the light of all positive knowledge. But this complement of philosophy I do not call psychology, I call it the subject-theory of humanity; because while including psychology, it includes much more.” That is to say; ethics and æsthetics.... “In the order of the positive method it is at first by means of the object that human knowledge is built up, and we end with the subject.” “The theory of the subject is the indispensable complement of the theory of the object.”

Of positive philosophy Littré says: “While it constructs the series of the partial philosophies and thus embraces all objective knowledge, it constructs at the same time the series of effective methods and thus embraces all logical power. I borrow this expression from M. Comte, who so happily named these effective methods the logical powers of the human mind. When it has terminated its first series it is found to have also terminated the second. Thus the ensemble of the methods represents the function of the subject; the ensemble of the partial philosophies, the function of the object.”

Is this what you call a “one-sided philosophy”?

You say that Littré is the worst kind of a metaphysician because he maintains that we can know nothing about first and final causes; I quote him to show his position: “Positive philosophy is at the same time a system that comprises all that is known of the world, of man and of society, and a general method including all the ways by which things have been learned. What is beyond, either, materially, the depths (fond) of boundless space, or, intellectually, the endless enchainment of causes, is absolutely inaccessible to the human mind. But inaccessible does not mean null or non-existent. Immensity, both material and intellectual, holds by a narrow tie to what we know and becomes by this alliance a positive idea of the same order; I mean to say that by touching and bordering it, this immensity appears in its double character, reality and inaccessibility. It is an ocean that washes our shore, and for which we have neither bark nor sail, but whose clear vision is as salutary as it is formidable.” Aug. Comte et la Phil. Pos., 2d Ed., p. 519.

As Littré had found this shore encumbered with the wrecks of expeditions that had started out in search of first causes and final causes, it is no wonder that he was a little timid. His metaphor needs explanation in the light of other passages, otherwise it might seem to discourage pursuit of the unknown. He did not discountenance hypotheses but he was very much afraid of our inclination to take guesses for truth; and this, by the way, is the reason why he is not appreciated in this country, where we are so fond of guessing. What he really did was to discourage those navigators who would go in search of the Jumping-off-place, for the best that can befall them is to come back to where they started. The men that know the earth is round are the only men that find new worlds.

In answer to your statement that Littré’s philosophy “is an inventory rather than a plan to guide science in its further evolution” I will only repeat in his words, what he has shown so well, that “positive philosophy is the ensemble of human knowledge, disposed according to a certain order which enables us to grasp its connections and its unity, and to draw from it the general directions for each part and for the whole.”

You say that “Littré rejects the evolution theory and its attempts to explain ethics.” I quote him from La Philosophie Positive, March, 1880: “Positive philosophy does not deny the evolution of ethics; far from doing so, it maintained and inculcated this evolution long before the utilitarian doctrine made it its ethical pivot.”.... “General morality, born of the gradual culture of the sentimental basis of the human soul under the social protection of progressive centres, is entirely disinterested, and this is what makes its purity and its force.”

In your philosophy you have a god and a religion, in his we have the same things, but as they are so different from what is generally understood by these terms, we use others. Here are some of the Paroles de Philosophie Positive: “In the eyes of history, there are no false religions, there are only incomplete religions which make their way through time and perfect themselves.... The definition of religion is taken from its office, which is: to put education, and consequently moral life, en rapport with the conception of the world at each phase of humanity. Whoever examines this definition will find that it satisfies all the conditions of religion, either in the past, the present, or the future. It will be perceived that theology is not inherent in the religious idea. It was not always there in the past; for we cannot give the name of theology to primordial fetichism, which addressed its worship to neighboring objects, nor to the religions that adore natural agents, such as air, wind, night, dawn; it is with polytheism that theology begins. As for the future, general science, conceiving the world differently from the way in which it was conceived during the reigns of the successive religions, takes an office equivalent to the religious office, and must in its turn place education and moral life in accord with the universe as it appears to us.”.... “We do not outrage the old doctrine, whose past is glorious and venerable; but there is a public for which it is a dead letter; and it is to this public that we address ourselves and for this public that we labor.”

Is this not aspiration to be in unison with “the order of the world,” which you call God? And when Littré traces this aspiration back to its organic origin is he not explaining what you affirm?

Our philosophies are not perfect, but we must apply them, such as they are, to the needs of the day. The most pressing of all these needs, in my opinion, is unity of action among those who are animated with the new spirit.

Let us pull together.

Very truly yours,

Louis Belrose, Jr.

ÉMILE LITTRÉ’S POSITIVISM.

An editor cannot make it a rule to accept criticisms of considerable length which have reference to a remark incidentally made in a book review. The present case, however, although it belongs in this category, is of a peculiar nature. First, the remark on Littré was made by the editor himself, and accordingly he feels personally responsible for it; secondly, it contains a brief delineation of Littré’s character as a man and as a philosopher in the way in which he is usually regarded by the most prominent historians of philosophy. Mr. Belrose presents Littré in quite a new light and quotes passages in corroboration of his conception of Littré which are perhaps not generally known, for they are buried in articles of the positivistic journal La Philosophie Positive, and this journal enjoyed neither a long life nor a large circulation; nor is it to be had in any of the libraries accessible to me. Seventeen editorial articles were republished in bookform, (La Science. Au point de vue philosophique, par É. Littré. Paris, 1873), but the article “The Three Philosophies” is not among them.

If Mr. Belrose’s conception of Littré proves to be true, I shall not only gladly correct my own wrong view of Littré, but I wish also to call attention to the fact that he has been misrepresented by almost all and certainly by the best and most painstaking philosophical historians.

I cannot however in the main points accede to Mr. Belrose’s view and will have to sustain my former opinion that M. Littré was an agnostic. He made it a matter of principle to suspend his opinion on some of the most fundamental philosophical problems, which he considered as inaccessible. His positivism, accordingly, differs toto cœlo from the positivism presented in The Monist. His philosophy, like that of Comte, is so far as I understand it, a policy of let-metaphysics-alone. It gives up the struggle with metaphysics as a hopeless undertaking. Therefore, I should say, Littré’s positivism has not conquered metaphysics, and although it lets metaphysics alone, metaphysics plays an important part in it. Littré is an agnostic and like every agnostic that believes in the unknowable, a metaphysician without knowing it.

The doctrine of the three stages of knowledge, viz., the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages, appears to me of less importance. The doctrine of the three stages is at the same time not properly a Comtean idea; Comte adopted it from Turgot, the great statesman and one of the greatest men as a thinker and also as a character that ever lived and who is too little appreciated as such.

The main doctrine of Comte’s positivism is the doctrine that first and final causes cannot be known, and we must abandon our search for them; that human knowledge is limited to the middle, while the two ends are inaccessible. These insoluble questions, he declares, have made no progress from the beginning. Mr. Lewes in his book “Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences” expresses this agnosticism in the following words (p. 31): “Our province is to study her [nature’s] laws, to trace her processes, and, thankful that we can so far penetrate the divine significance of the universe, be content—as Locke wisely and modestly says—to sit down in quiet ignorance of all transcendent⁠[61] subjects.”

This idea has so far as I am aware never been given up by Littré; it remained the basis of his belief in the unknowable and his works abound in expressions that concerning the main problems of life, “the positive philosophy will neither assert nor deny anything.”

Littré concludes the last article of his volume “La Science” with the following words:

“Le domaine ultérieur est celui des choses qui ne peuvent pas être connues. La science positive professe de n’y rien nier, de n’y rien affirmer; en un mot, elle ne connaît pas l’inconnaissable, mais elle en constate l’existence. Là est la philosophie suprême; aller plus loin est chimérique, aller moin loin est déserter notre destinée.”

This quotation alone, I think, settles the first main point at issue.

Now I maintain that Comte’s view of causation where he refers to first and final causes is fundamentally wrong; causation is transformation and causality is the formula under which we comprehend the changes of matter and energy that take place. The expressions first and final causes are misnomers (see “Fundamental Problems,” the chapter The Problem of Causality). First cause is either the starting point of a series of some longer chain of causes and effects, or as the term is generally applied or rather misapplied, stands for the last ground or reason, i. e. the answer given to the ultimate question why?, which is the most general raison d’être that would explain and contain all the other and less general raisons d’être regarding the nature of existence. The term final cause, again, means either the last cause in a series of causes or (and so it is generally used) it is a misnomer for purpose; and the final cause supposed to be inaccessible to human comprehension is the purpose of the existence of the world at large. I object to there being three kinds of causes. There is one kind of causality only, and the causes of this causality in all the causal processes with which we are confronted are perfectly intelligible.

The problem of the first cause of the origin of our world, viz. the solar system and the milky way, was attacked first by Kant and later by Laplace, and the latter, without knowing of Kant’s solution, solved it in the main in the same way. All recent investigations stand upon this Kant-Laplace hypothesis so called, having added corrections only as to details. Shall we declare that these labors are vain and gratuitous efforts of vague speculations? Littré says, with reference to such speculations, concerning the past and future states of the world (le monde):

“La dissémination primordiale de la matière qui devait le composer, la dissémination future de la matière qui le compose, dépassant toute expérience, dépassent toute conjecture.”

If I misunderstand Littré, it appears to me a pardonable mistake.

Yet is not the problem as to the origin of the world at large, why matter and energy exist at all, insolvable? Littré says that the positive cosmogonies, such as the doctrine of evolution do not touch the absolute; they have nothing to do with first and final causes. He says: “Les cosmogonies positives la [i. e. la place des cosmogonies religieuses] remplissent, non pas qu’elles aient la prétention ni le pouvoir de pénétrer dans l’absolu et d’embrasser, les causes premières et finales.”—l. c., p. 560.

That kind of causality which is sometimes called “ontological,” having reference to the existence, not of single things as transformations from other things, but of the world at large and formulated in such questions as how did the universe itself, the world as a whole, originate, is properly speaking no causality, it is not a question concerning a cause, but concerning a raison d’être. However without haggling about the words cause and raison d’être, this ontological causality so called is by no means beyond human comprehension. The ontological question has found a very definite answer in the formulation of the law of the conservation of matter and energy; which declares that existence at large did not originate, the total amount of matter as well as of energy existed always and will exist always. It has not been created; it is uncreatable and indestructible; it is eternal.

Littré is quite explicit in declaring that the positive philosophy lets alone all theological and metaphysical problems. It is neither atheistic nor theistic, and does not side with either materialism or spiritualism. He says:

“Ni spiritualiste, ni matérialiste, la philosophie positive écarte de la science générale les débats que la science particulière a depuis long temps et à son grand profit rejetés.”—Preface d’un disciple in Comte’s “Course de Phil. pos.” p. xxvii.

Littré characterises as the main object of the positive philosophy, “to give to philosophy the positive method of the sciences, to the sciences the idea of the unity of philosophy.” He says: “Ainsi fut accompli ce qu’on doit appeler l’œuvre philosophique du dix-neuvième siècle, donner à la philosophie la méthode positive des sciences, aux sciences l’idée d’ensemble de la philosophie.” Preface, p. viii.

I am in perfect agreement with Littré that this is the object of positivism; but, if I understand Littré correctly, I disagree from his conception of the positive method. He limits the positive method to what he calls “experience,” and excludes every notion of the a priori. Littré apparently misunderstood the proper meaning of Kant’s idea of the a priori, for he used as a matter of course the a priori method wherever it was indispensable, so for instance in mathematics and in the application of mathematics.

Mr. Belrose says:

[Littré] “solved your basic problem of philosophy [i. e. what is the origin of the a priori] in a paragraph.”

The problem of the a priori reasoning is the question “Why can we know certain things before we have tested them by experiment? Man has not arrived by experience but by pure reasoning at the conclusion that the sum of the angles of every plane triangle has 180 degrees. How is he justified in declaring a priori that the angles of a certain plane triangle make up 180 degrees, although he has not measured them?” This problem is the fundamental problem of the scientific or positive method; it is the same problem which Mr. Charles S. Peirce discusses in his article (see pp. 321 et seqq. of the present number of The Monist), for the problem of apriority is identical with the question of necessity.

Littré has, so far as I know, never discussed the problem of apriority and necessity. He has simply rejected the idea of the a priori as the method of a false metaphysics, which is incompatible with the a posteriori method of positive science. The passage quoted by Mr. Belrose most certainly does not contain a solution of the problem. Littré declares therein that every chemical action is equivalent to a certain quantity of heat; and again this heat is equivalent to a certain quantity of motion. Thus, he says, thought is connected with mathematical modes of which it becomes conscious. Thought, he adds, is not an equivalent of heat or motion, for equivalence is not identity, but it is connected with mathematical conditions. This means that that kind of brain-action which represents conscious thought, depends upon definite proportions. But what in all the world has this idea to do with the problem of apriority? The phrase “mathematical modes” (which is misleading in this passage) is an unfortunate expression for “proportions” and we must add that Littré is mistaken when he says that the nervous substance when it becomes luminous, becomes conscious of these mathematical modes with which it is connected. Aside from “luminous” being simply an allegorical expression for conscious, it is wrong to say that the nervous substance becomes conscious of the mathematical modes of heat as they are proportioned in the brain. A sentient being knows through sensation nothing about the mechanism or the mechanical proportions of its own sentient structure. Sensation is the act of a becoming conscious not of the sentient structure itself but of the meaning which this sentient structure has acquired, and a consciousness of the mathematical modes which according to Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences ought to be the beginning of knowledge develops at a very late period. Any explanation of the origin of a priori, be it ever so brief, would lead us too far away from the points of our controversy. It is sufficient here to point out that the passage quoted by Mr. Belrose, contains no solution of the problem of our knowledge and certitude of mathematical, arithmetical, and other purely formal laws. On the contrary, this very passage is replete with error; it is a misstatement of facts and does not even bring to light the difficulties of the problem.

Littré was prejudiced against the a priori, and his prejudice induced him to underrate its importance. I read in one of Littré’s passages quoted by Mr. Belrose:

“If it [thought] attempts to go out metaphysically into space, it is reduced to combining subjectively its own elements, turns in a circle without issue and falls back upon itself.”

The a priori method of thought subjectively combining its own elements, is by no means a turning in a circle without issue so that in the end it will fall back upon itself. The a priori method of thought subjectively combining its own elements is employed by arithmetic, mathematics, and logic, and we are confronted with the astonishing fact that rules, or formulas, or calculations which were made by pure thought subjectively combining its own elements, are applicable and hold good as reliable guides in our experiments. If there were no a priori, how could we foretell or, what is more still, how could we predetermine the course of nature? The a priori has been wrongly employed by the so-called metaphysical philosophers to give us information about the substance and essence of the world. But the misapplication of the a priori is no reason for denouncing it as radically wrong.

The existence of the a priori is an undeniable fact. Kant was right in recognising it in its sweeping importance, yet he was wrong in his interpretation of the a priori, which according to his transcendentalism was based exclusively upon a peculiarity of the mind and not upon the nature of things. The positivists in France did not only object to the wrong interpretation of the transcendentalists but also denied the existence of the a priori. Accepting the principle that every knowledge must ultimately be a statement of facts, the question How is the a priori to be based upon facts? became in my conception of philosophy the burning problem which was next in order as a conciliation between Kant and Comte.

The French positivists, foremost among them Comte and Littré, have not given us an explanation of what is true and false in the theological and metaphysical notions of first and final causes, of the a priori of God, of substance, of force, etc.; they have simply abandoned the investigation of these ideas which are after all the most important tools in the household of the human mind for scientific and ethical purposes; and thus they have, in spite of their positivism in questions of detail, retained the metaphysical method of a priori reasoning which is quite legitimate in the formal science but out of place concerning facts. Take for instance the following argument concerning the materiality of things:

“Là, c’est à dire dans les sciences positives, on ne connaît aucune propriété sans matière, non point parce que, a priori, on y a l’idée préconçue qu’il n’existe aucune substance spirituelle indépendante, mais parce que, a posteriori, on n’a jamais rencontré la gravitation sans corps pesant, la chaleur sans corps chaud, l’électricité sans corps électrique, l’affinité sans substances de combinaison, la vie, la sensibilité, la pensée, sans être vivant, sentant et pensant.”—La Science, p. 307.

I do not mean to say that there are immaterial or spiritual substances, but I should say that any purely a posteriori argument in favor of their non-existence is insufficient. Would Littré mean that a Zulu should declare that ice cannot exist because he has never seen water frozen as hard as a stone? Any amount of experience, i. e. all a posteriori evidence, is in parts and will out of itself never acquire universal validity.

How strongly Littré is still implicated in the metaphysical method of applying a priori ideas to a posteriori experiences can be learned from the following statement:

“Le monde est constitué par la matière et par les forces de la matière: la matière dont l’origine et l’essence nous sont inaccessible; les forces qui sont immanentes à la matière. Au delà de ces deux termes, matière et force, la science positive ne connaît rien.” Preface, p. ix.

The metaphysical ideas, matter and force, are a priori notions of mystical entities or things in themselves, and thus it appears natural that experience should know nothing of them. But real matter and actual force are not unknowable existences. They can be known. We know something of them and positive science is engaged in broadening and deepening this knowledge. Says Littré:

“Les propriétés physiques sont manifestes en toute substance, dans quelque état qu’elle soit, isolée ou non isolée, et s’exercent sur les masses; les propriétés, n’apparaissent qu’entre deux substances, ont besoin de la binarité et s’exercent sur les molécules; enfin les propriétés vitales dépassant la binarité, ne sont compatibles qu’avec un état moléculaire plus composé.” Preface, p. x.

One of the fundamental principles of positivism, as I conceive it, is the definition of knowledge as a description of facts or of their properties. We call certain properties of the facts (i. e. the objects of our experience) matter and others force. When we say that we do or do not know a certain phenomenon we mean that we have or have not as yet succeeded in placing them properly in that system of thought-symbols of which our mind consists. Yet there is no sense in speaking of matter and force as being unknowable while the properties of matter and force are said to be manifest and appearing under certain conditions.

I have presented the main reasons why I still hold that there is a radical difference between Littré’s view of positivism and my own. Littré is an agnostic and he was an agnostic before that name had been invented. His objection to metaphysicism consists in the doctrine not that the object of metaphysics is a chimerical non-existence, but that the object of metaphysics exists yet it cannot be known. Thus Littré is as much a metaphysician as those philosophers whom he censures for their metaphysical views. He does not censure them for believing that the metaphysical exists, but for believing that it is knowable and attempting to investigate its nature.

As to the hierarchy of the sciences I shall simply quote a few extracts from Eugen Dühring’s criticism of Comte. Dühring says (Krit. Gesch. der Phil., p. 486):

“If Comte’s positivism were nothing more than what we have here laid down, its main contents would, strange enough, consist in negativity. The criticism of a certain kind of metaphysics, viz. of an ontology phantastical to a greater or lesser extent, would form its most significant character. The other element which consists in presenting a hierarchy and unitary conjunction of some of the sciences which are called positive in the usual sense of the term, cannot pretend to be philosophy in the higher sense of the word or even to be useful for science. A general view of knowledge, whether it consists of six or sixty volumes, does not add the least iota to the contents of our knowledge.... We cannot expect that a specialist should be pleased with a hierarchical sketch of his science, especially if the delineations are filled out with details of which he would be a better judge.”

It is true, and I concur in this with the French positivists, that a positive philosophy must be a systematic arrangement of knowledge. But I conceive it to be the philosopher’s work, not to take an inventory of the sciences, but to define the fundamental concepts of scientific enquiry and to elucidate the methods of cognition. Such fundamental concepts are the ideas, truth and criterion of truth, cause and effect, mind, thought, knowledge, ethics, etc. Concepts are the tools of thought and the practice of using them correctly has to be learned.

Positivism is not the original invention of a world-system, but the systematising of statements of facts so as to produce a world-system. The old philosophers gave us first a world-system, from which and in accord with which they defined their views of truth, cognition, cause, etc. They began to build their philosophy from the top down. Positivism begins from the bottom and is building up to the top with the assistance of the special sciences. A positive philosophy is inseparable from, but it cannot be replaced by, the sciences. The field of philosophy is to superintend the method and the plan of building, so as to compare the details and bear in mind the unity of the whole. In this sense Dühring says in criticising Comte (p. 486):

“However, concerning the form of the connections of methodical reflections, something can be done. Yet it must be possible to separate everything of such a kind and also new insights, so as to constitute a special branch of knowledge. Otherwise they will escape the specialists’ attention.... Not only Comte but all philosophers given to the idea of systematisation and construction of particular knowledge have made attempts in this direction which at most may range as sketches or popular presentations in a higher sense.”

Concerning Littré’s view of Comte’s religious vagaries Dühring says (p. 483):

“His [Comte’s] biographer, the Academician Littré of Paris, and also Stuart Mill are right in considering ‘The Course of Positive Philosophy’ as the main and fundamental work which is decisive as a contribution of his and a source of instruction to the world. However, they are very one-sided when they overlook that the philosopher even in his vagaries exhibited a universality of mind which remains superior to the standpoint of either Littré or Mill.”

I agree with Mr. Belrose that Comte’s religion as he conceived it consists of vagaries, but the main idea of developing the religions of the past which, as Littré says, are not false but only incomplete religions, into a religion that shall be in accord with the science of our day is no vagary, but a great and an important ideal.

Far be it from me to belittle Littré because I disagree from him in some fundamental questions. He was in his time, he is still, and will remain for ever a star of first magnitude in our philosophical galaxy. That which I consider as his errors does not detract from his greatness. Were not Kant’s mistakes in a similar way closely interwoven with his greatest merits? It is flattering to me that Mr. Belrose finds an agreement between his master’s and my views concerning the basic problem of philosophy, but I cannot discover it. Yet I gladly acknowledge that there exists an agreement of aim, and this agreement of aim which finds its truest expression in the word “positivistic” is perhaps of greater importance than the agreement of views.

P. C.

FOOTNOTES:

OBSERVATIONS ON SOME POINTS IN JAMES’S PSYCHOLOGY.⁠[62]

In calling attention to some objections to the views advanced by Professor James on the subjects of Belief, Emotion, and Will, it is only justice to myself to express the admiration I feel for his work as a whole. The thoroughly scientific spirit which pervades it, the author’s candor in admitting and his skill in surmounting difficulties, his learning and his originality, his aptness in illustration, and the energy and vivacity of his style combine to make it full of interest as well as instruction. It is because it should be, and doubtless will be widely influential, that it is important that any doubtful positions assumed in it should be subjected to a careful examination.

I shall endeavor to avoid any misrepresentation of the views which I combat, but space will not allow me to do full justice to the arguments by which they are supported, if such a thing is possible for an antagonist. For this, I must refer the interested reader to the original book. If what I have to say should have the effect of increasing the number of its readers, I shall not have written altogether in vain, whether I succeed or fail in setting the truth in a clearer light.

I. BELIEF.

Professor James entitles the chapter devoted to this subject “The Perception of Reality,” and defines belief to be “the mental state or function of cognising reality.” He explains that, “As used in the following pages, ‘Belief’ will mean every degree of assurance, including the highest possible certainty and conviction” (Vol. II, p. 283).

According to this definition, erroneous beliefs, such, for instance, as the belief that the earth is flat, stationary, and the centre of the universe, or the delusion of an insane man that he is Jesus Christ, are cognitions of reality. Professor James would probably say that they are realities to the mind entertaining them, and it is true that the feeling of belief is the same, whether the thing believed be true or false. I think, however, that it is more customary to use the verb which he employs in connection with beliefs which agree with the objective facts, and that the “feeling” or “sense” of reality would be a better term than “perception” or “cognition.”

This, however, is not, to my mind, the most serious objection to the definition. Although Professor James does not use the word “knowledge” in this connection, it seems evident, from the passage quoted above, and from what he says elsewhere, that he considers all kinds, as well as all degrees of certainty to be beliefs. It seems to me evident, on the other hand, that many of our cognitions of reality are not properly called beliefs. As an instance, I will quote the illustration with which he opens the discussion of “The Various Orders of Reality” (p. 287).

“Suppose a new-born mind, entirely blank and waiting for experience to begin. Suppose that it begins in the form of a visual impression (whether faint or vivid is immaterial) of a lighted candle against a dark background, and nothing else, so that whilst this image lasts it constitutes the entire universe to the mind in question. Suppose, moreover (to simplify the hypothesis), that the candle is only imaginary, and that no ‘original’ of it is recognised by us psychologists outside. Will this hallucinatory candle be believed in, will it have a real existence for the mind?

“What possible sense (for that mind) would a suspicion have that the candle is not real? What would doubt or disbelief of it imply? When we, the onlooking psychologists, say the candle is unreal, we mean something quite definite, viz. that there is a world known to us which is real, and to which we perceive that the candle does not belong; it belongs exclusively to that individual mind, has no status anywhere else, etc. It exists, to be sure, in a fashion, for it forms the content of that mind’s hallucination; but the hallucination itself, though unquestionably it is a sort of existing fact, has no knowledge of other facts; and since those other facts are the realities par excellence for us, and the only things we believe in, the candle is simply outside of our reality and belief altogether.

“By the hypothesis, however, the mind which sees the candle can spin no such considerations as these about it, for of other facts, actual or possible, it has no inkling whatever. That candle is its all, its absolute. Its entire faculty of attention is absorbed by it. It is, it is that; it is there; no other possible candle, or quality of this candle, no other possible place, or possible object in the place, no alternative, in short, suggests itself as even conceivable; so how can the mind help believing the candle real? The supposition that it might possibly not do so is, under the supposed conditions, unintelligible.”

I readily grant that it is, under the supposed circumstances, unintelligible that the candle should be thought to be unreal, but it seems to me equally so that it should be believed to be real. What does Professor James mean by a belief in the reality of the candle under such conditions? Nothing more than that the mind is conscious of a sensation which we know, but it does not, is like that produced by the sight of a candle. This sensation is certainly a reality, and the only possible reality to that mind. Professor James must, then, be understood as maintaining that a sensation, pure and simple, is a belief in an object exciting the sensation. If, for instance, the first consciousness of the supposed mind were the odor of a rose, or the whistle of a locomotive, he must admit that the mind would believe in the rose or the locomotive. If I have a headache, or am hungry or tired, I not only have beliefs about these sensations, but the headache, the hunger, the weariness, are themselves beliefs. Now I submit that this is contrary to all ordinary use of language. It is, perhaps, impossible for an adult, with his mind full of memories of past experiences, to have a sensation without some sort of a belief about it, but although the sensation and the belief may be inseparable, they are not indistinguishable, and, as a matter of fact, every one does distinguish between his sensations and his beliefs about them. I do not think it would be quite correct to say even of an adult who had never seen or heard of a candle, that, on seeing one for the first time, he would believe in the reality of the candle, although doubtless he would believe he saw something real—a real flame, for instance.

If it be admitted that sensations are entitled to be called beliefs, it seems impossible to stop short of the conclusion that all states of consciousness are beliefs.

Emotions and volitions are as much realities as sensations, and are known as such by the mind that experiences them. That memory and imagination involve belief, is too evident to need discussion. But if this be the case, the chapter on belief could have been very greatly abbreviated—need not in fact, contain more than four words. To say that all consciousness is belief would perhaps simplify matters, but it would not advance our knowledge very much, nor would it accord with the ordinary use of the word, which has reference to a particular kind of consciousness, which every one knows, however hard he may find its definition.

It seems to me, therefore, that Professor James’s definition of belief is defective in two ways. There are beliefs which are not cognitions of reality, and there are cognitions of reality which are not beliefs. Especially in regard to the latter class, I think that the definition confuses a distinction that is real and important, between different kinds of knowledge. We know our sensations, emotions and volitions in a way which differs not only in degree but in kind from any usual, or, I think, legitimate sense of the word “Belief.”

Perhaps it would be the safer course to rest content with pointing out the objections to the author’s definition without laying myself open to retaliation by attempting one of my own, but it does not seem to me impossible to give one which will include all that is understood by the term and nothing more. I should say that belief is the sense or feeling of relation between mental objects. That we have belief whenever we have this feeling, seems to me too plain to require argument, and I am unable, after a good deal of reflection, to call to mind any belief that is not included in the definition. If I see, or imagine that I see a lighted candle, it may excite in my mind a great variety of beliefs, as, that the flame is hot, that the light and heat are caused by the chemical union of oxygen with carbon and hydrogen, that the material of which the candle is composed is wax, paraffine or tallow, that it has a cotton wick, that it is of a certain size, weight, and color, and so on indefinitely. All of these are evidently ideas of relation. To say “flame,” or “hot” does not express a belief, unless something else is understood, but to say “flame is hot” does so. If I say that the color red is equal to the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, I fail to express a belief because the mind perceives no relation between the objects, and the answer to such a statement would be, not that it is or is not true, but that it has no meaning. The only cases which occur to me in which it might be plausibly argued that a belief did not involve the feeling of relation are such impersonal expressions as “it rains,” or, “it is cold.” The exception, however, is only apparent, arising from the erroneous idea that everything which is implied in language must be expressed. When we say, “it rains,” we mean, “rain is falling.” In either form of language, the thought conveyed is that of the relation of the drops of water and their motion. The stock-broker, with his prearranged code, may communicate the ideas of a long sentence in a single word, or the Freemason may do the same to the initiated by a gesture. In such a case, it would be absurd to contend that no relation is felt or communicated because there is no formal subject or predicate.

Whatever may be thought of the sufficiency of my definition, I risk the assertion that it includes all beliefs that can be affirmed, denied or doubted. We never question our sensations, emotions or volitions—we have them, are aware of them, and that is the end of the matter. It is the relations of our sensations to each other, and to our pleasures and pains, our choices and rejections, that involve us in all sorts of perplexities. The whole question of the grounds of belief in general, and the truth or falsehood of particular beliefs is a question of relations. It is, then, in the sense indicated above that I shall use the word hereafter.

Having settled the definition, it may be worth while to consider for a moment whether this feeling of relation, which can only be known by experience, is enough like any other mental states to be classed with them. On this point Professor James says: “In its inner nature, belief, or the sense of reality, is a sort of feeling more allied to the emotions than to anything else. Mr. Bagehot distinctly calls it the ‘emotion’ of conviction. I just now spoke of it as acquiescence. It resembles more than anything else what in the psychology of volition we know as consent. Consent is recognised by all to be a manifestation of our active nature. It would naturally be described by such terms as ‘willingness’ or the ‘turning of our disposition.’ What characterises both consent and belief is the cessation of theoretic agitation through the advent of an idea which is inwardly stable, and fills the mind solidly to the exclusion of contradictory ideas. When this is the case, motor effects are apt to follow. Hence the states of consent and belief, characterised by repose on the purely intellectual side, are both intimately connected with subsequent practical activity. This inward stability of the mind’s content is as characteristic of disbelief as of belief. But we shall presently see that we never disbelieve anything except for the reason that we believe something else that contradicts the first thing. Disbelief is thus an incidental complication to belief, and need not be considered by itself.” (P. 283).

I am unable to satisfy myself whether, in the above passage, Professor James has in mind the feeling of belief or other feelings which often accompany it. The “cessation of theoretic agitation,” “willingness,” “turning of our disposition,” are accompanied by feelings which I should say are not only like, but identical with emotion. In the case of old, confirmed beliefs, however, theoretic agitation ceased, and the turning of the disposition occurred, if at all, long ago, and I am unable to recognise anything resembling emotion in my belief that two and two make four, that cows eat grass, that iron is a metal, and many others that might be mentioned. Nor do these beliefs, at the present time, give rise to motor effects, which, so far as I am able to see, only result from such beliefs as are, directly or indirectly, associated with emotion. If such beliefs as I have mentioned are not purely intellectual, as distinguished from emotional phenomena, I should be at a loss to know where the distinction is to be made between “the head” and “the heart.” The sense of relation seems to me to be the most purely intellectual of all the mental functions, and, although it may give rise to all sorts of emotions, the more settled, undisturbed and unquestioning the belief, the less likely is it to give rise to any but the feeling of calm, which seems to me to be the antithesis of emotion. I should say that belief is a feeling sui generis, without enough analogy with any other to justify classing them together.

I have already quoted the illustration with which Professor James opens the discussion of the subject of Reality. After quoting from Spinoza, to the same effect, the supposed case of a horse with wings imagined to be real in the absence of any contradictory thought, he goes on to say: “The sense that anything we think of is unreal can only come, then, when that thing is contradicted by some other thing of which we think. Any object which remains uncontradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as absolute reality.” (P. 288). Elsewhere he says:

“... all propositions, whether attributive or existential, are believed through the very fact of being conceived, unless they clash with other propositions believed at the same time, by affirming that their terms are the same as the terms of those other propositions.” (P. 290).

This, I think, is stated too strongly, at least, in the latter quotation. A proposition that is uncontradicted will be believed, but it is not necessary that the contradictory proposition should be believed in order that the first may fail of belief. I believe nothing, at present, contradictory of the proposition that it is now raining in Boston. I think it not improbable that such may be the case, but at the same time the contrary proposition is present to my mind, that it may not be raining in Boston, and the result is the state of mind which Professor James very properly regards as the opposite of belief—doubt. But supposing that a proposition is presented to the mind, which, being for the time uncontradicted, is believed, and that subsequently another, contrary proposition is presented, is it certain that the latter will be disbelieved? May not a state of doubt replace belief in this case also? Or supposing that two propositions, which have been believed independently, are brought into juxtaposition in such a way as to show that they are inconsistent, how are we to determine which if either, shall be believed? Professor James seems to teach that it is a matter of choice.

“That we can at any moment think of the same thing which at any former moment we thought of is the ultimate law of our intellectual constitution. But when we now think of it incompatibly with our other ways of thinking of it, then we must choose which way to stand by, for we cannot continue to think of it in two contradictory ways at once. The whole distinction of real and unreal, the whole psychology of belief, disbelief and doubt, is thus grounded on two mental facts—first, that we are liable to think differently of the same; and second, that when we have done so, we can choose which way of thinking to adhere to and which to disregard.⁠[63] The subjects adhered to become real subjects, the attributes adhered to real attributes, the existence adhered to real existence; while the subjects disregarded become imaginary subjects, the attributes disregarded erroneous attributes, and the existence disregarded an existence in no man’s land, in the limbo ‘where footless fancies dwell.’” (P. 290).

The doctrine that belief is, in the last analysis, a matter of choice is a prominent feature of Professor James’s teaching, to which I shall have occasion to refer again. It seems to me to involve him in some inconsistencies. For the present, it should be noted that he admits the reality of every mental object in its proper relations.

“If I merely dream of a horse with wings, my horse interferes with nothing else and has not to be contradicted. That horse, its wings, and its place are all equally real. That horse exists no otherwise than as winged, and is moreover really there, for that place exists no otherwise than as the place of that horse, and claims as yet no connection with the other places of the world. But if with this horse I make an inroad into the world otherwise known, and say, for example, ‘That is my old mare Maggie, having grown a pair of wings where she stands in her stall,’ the whole case is altered; for now the horse and place are identified with a horse and place otherwise known, and what is known of the latter objects is incompatible with what is perceived of the former. ‘Maggie in her stall with wings! Never!’ The wings are unreal, then, visionary. I have dreamed a lie about Maggie in her stall.” (P. 289).

Here, the dream is a reality, and the winged horse is as really a part of it as the mare Maggie is of the outside world. The reality of the winged horse in the one case, and his unreality in the other, depend on his relations to other mental objects. So, for instance, if any one should say that a mermaid was a creature with the portion of a man from the waist up united to the body and limbs of a horse, I should be justified in contradicting him, and saying that it was not a mermaid but a centaur that he had in mind. It would not be a valid answer to say that there were really no such things as mermaids and centaurs. In mythology, a centaur has as definite a structure as a giraffe has in zoölogy, and it is as inexcusable to confound the one as the other with anything else. This point is amplified by the author in a section on “The Many Worlds,” in which the various objects of thought are found in their proper relations, and out of which each one selects a world of practical realities, according to his dominant habits of attention. In the relative sense, in which we contrast reality with unreality, or consider one object more real than another,

“Reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life ... in this sense, whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real.” (P. 295).

“Whatever things have intimate and continuous connection with my life are things of whose reality I cannot doubt.” (P. 298).

This power of exciting and stimulating our interest, Professor James finds to be possessed in a pre-eminent degree by sensations, which thus become, directly or indirectly, our tests of reality, and among which those which are pleasurable or painful hold the first rank. Next to them, if not of equal power, are emotions.

“The greatest proof that a man is sui compos is his ability to suspend belief in the presence of an emotionally exciting idea. To give this power is the highest result of education. In untutored minds the power does not exist. Every exciting thought in the natural man carries credence with it. To conceive with passion is eo ipso to affirm.” (P. 308).

Professor James’s account of the grounds of belief seems to me inadequate in that it fails to show the connection between our sensations and emotions and other mental states and our beliefs. Why is it that the sight of the heavenly bodies, for instance, awakens in different minds such diverse beliefs as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems of astronomy? What does a man who is frightened believe? What belief would necessarily result from a colic? It is not enough to say that sensations and emotions are connected with belief; we want to know how they are connected.

Bearing in mind the definition of belief as the sense of relation between objects, the question resolves itself into the origin of feelings of relation. As relations are of various kinds, they may be suggested to the mind by different circumstances. They may, I think, be divided into three classes:

1) Relations of likeness and unlikeness. These result from the comparison and discrimination of objects. All the beliefs involved in the recognition and classification of objects arise in this way. When, on seeing a certain object, I say that it is a bay horse, and will weigh about eleven hundred pounds, I give expression to relations of comparison. The comparison may be immediate, between objects simultaneously present to the senses, or alike present only to memory or imagination, or between a present object and a remembered one, or mediate, by comparison of two or more objects with some other. All mathematical truths are of this kind.

2) Relations of cause and effect, of substance and quality, of whole and component parts, of order in time and space, are due to association. When I say of the horse that his movements are caused by muscular contractions, that he is of a gentle disposition, that he has a bony skeleton and red blood, that he is five years old and is harnessed to a carriage, I express relations of association. In his chapter on Association Professor James says:

“Belief in anything not present to sense is the very lively, strong, and steadfast association of the image of that thing with some present sensation, so that as long as the sensation persists the image cannot be excluded from the mind.” (Vol. I, p. 598).

I do not think it is a fact that the image of the thing believed in need be associated with any present sensation. I am not aware, for instance, that there is, at present, any such association in my belief in the existence of the city of Constantinople, or that Queen Victoria is reigning in England. The associations in these and similar cases are with objects of memory and not with present sensations. On the other hand, what we mean by belief in a present object always involves memory of the past. When we say that we believe in anything, we either mean that it is like other things of the same sort of which we have had experience, or that it stands in some other relation to them. Complete loss of memory would not only destroy all our past beliefs, but, if it were permanent, would prevent our ever forming any new ones. The universe, in such a case, would be a mere chaos of sensations.

In order that things may be associated, they must first be discriminated, otherwise, as Professor James has shown, in his chapter on Discrimination and Comparison, they are thought of, not as associated things, but as one thing. In like manner, when discriminated things have once been associated, the tendency is, in the absence of contrary experience, to think of them as belonging together. A child, attracted by the brightness of the teapot, touches it and burns his fingers. He naturally expects the teapot to be hot the next time he sees it. He is told that his Christmas gifts were brought down the chimney by Santa Claus. Until the statement is contradicted, he believes it. Why should he not? Or the association of things in the mind may come about without any external suggestion. I remember that the first time that I ever heard a person snore, the thought came into my mind that the strange noise was made by a bear, and I lay awake most of the night, in fear of being devoured. The tendency is to think of things as related in the way in which they are first presented to the mind, until they come up in some different relation. This seems to be the explanation of the tendency to “believe as much as we can,” to “affirm immediately the reality of all that is conceived,” of which Professor James speaks. With increased experience, we find that there is a difference in the uniformity of associations, and accordingly the coincidence of two or more things is associated with the doubt whether or not the association is a constant one.

3) In addition to the relations considered above, there are some which, although expressed in terms of association and comparison, seem to me to have a different origin. That the whole is greater than any of its parts is a relation of comparison; that a thing cannot be in two different places at the same time, that every event has a cause, that there is an external world, are relations of association. Although they do not arise independently of experience, they contain more than is given in experience, and the uniformity and firmness with which they are believed can, it seems to me, only be accounted for by the assumption of an innate propensity to look upon things as related in these ways.

So far as I am able to judge, beliefs always arise in one or another of these three ways. But a still more interesting question, from the practical point of view, than that of the origin of beliefs, is that of the comparative validity of the various grounds of belief. Are they all of equal worth, and if not, is there any way of determining which are to be given the preference, or is belief, like taste, a matter about which “non disputandum”?

Professor James does not go very deeply into the discussion of this question. As we have seen, he assigns to sensation the greatest efficacy in producing belief, and discusses the comparative power of various sorts of sensations in this respect. Emotion he makes a close second. But the question which gives us the more reliable information, in cases in which they conflict, he does not discuss at all. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that a man under the influence of strong emotion often draws different conclusions from the evidence of his senses from those at which he would arrive in its absence. Is he warranted in doing so? Would any degree of personal interest warrant a man in believing or disbelieving the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Newtonian theory of gravitation, the Mosaic or the Darwinian view of the origin of species? There is no doubt that belief on such subjects as these is influenced by our interest, real or supposed, in one or the other view, and perhaps Professor James would say that he deals with the working of minds as they are, not as we imagine that they ought to be, but the general knowledge that a class of considerations is reliable or the reverse is another thing that not only ought to, but actually does affect our beliefs, and the question of the method to be pursued in ascertaining the actual relations of things, of forming true beliefs instead of false ones, is one which hardly ought to be ignored in a discussion of the subject.

Referring to the three classes of relations already considered, it is, I think, evident that there are differences in the way in which they affect our belief. In comparison, the essential thing is the accuracy of the observation. One who has once fully comprehended the proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, is as sure of it as he could be after any amount of experience. In comparing sensible objects, we may, it is true, and our belief confirmed by repetition, but this is only in case that we doubt whether the comparison was rightly made in the first place. That red does not look like blue, nor sweet taste like sour, we are as certain on one trial as a hundred. If we apply a foot measure to an object eight inches long, nothing can add to our certainty that they are not of the same length. In matters of association, on the other hand, a great deal depends on the uniformity of the association—the number of times that we have experienced it without contrary experience. When I hear a crow, for instance, I believe that it is black, because all the crows that I have ever seen have been so. A sheep I assume to be white, but with a less degree of confidence, because black sheep are more numerous than white crows. In the case of a horse, I have no belief in regard to the color within a certain range, unless I have some means of knowing about the particular animal in question. If I were told that my friend had bought a horse, I should have no idea whether it was bay, or black, or white, or some mixture of these colors. If, however, I were told that the natural color of my friend’s horse was green, I should be much more confident that the statement was false than if the same person should tell me he had seen a white crow, for, the same reason that I should more readily believe in a black sheep than in the latter. In the customary use of the word, I might say I knew it was not so. In the case of intuitive judgments experience has little or nothing to do with the strength of belief. The adult man is no more firmly convinced of the existence of something external to himself than the child, and, although he may come to doubt it on speculative grounds, he no more fails than the child to show by his actions that he has a practical faith in it.

In many, if not most of our beliefs, all of these elements are present. If I see an orange, for instance, I have the intuition of externality, the comparison with other oranges that I have already seen, and associations of internal structure, taste, smell, and the like. All of these, and very possibly some emotion, as, for instance, a desire to eat it, may arise, simultaneously or so nearly so as not to be distinguished in time, as parts of a single mental state.

There is one kind of association, of importance enough to deserve mention, of which Professor James makes no mention. The beliefs, or alleged beliefs of other people have an influence on our minds which is, I think, not inferior to that of emotion. The man who can, without misgiving, maintain an opinion which contradicts all that he learned in childhood and all that is held by those whose good opinion he most values is, I fancy, quite as rare as he who can suspend judgment in the presence of an emotionally exciting idea. Most of us take our religious, political, scientific, and practical beliefs at second hand, from the friends with whom we associate or the books and papers we read. Take a young man out of his home and put him, for instance, in college, and it will probably work a change in his moral standards, not necessarily for the better. At home, if he knew of a theft, or an assault, he would very probably be ready to bring the offender to justice, but if the offender is his classmate, and the sufferer a member of the succeeding class, he will very probably think it a more shameful thing to report the wrong than to do it. At the same time, he doubtless considers it utterly reprehensible that ignorant Italian peasants should feel in the same way about betraying their neighbors who are guilty of robbery or murder.

Coming now to the influence of emotion on belief, it will not, I presume, be disputed that it comes about by way of association. Professor James, as we have seen, holds that “every emotionally exciting thought, in the natural man, carries credence with it.” I suspect that this is true only in the sense that, in the absence of experience, not only every exciting thought, but every thought is believed. However this may be, in respect to the natural man, I think it is pretty certain that, in the case of such artificial beings as those who reflect on the causes of their emotions and beliefs, it will be found that in order for an idea to excite our emotions, a certain degree of belief is necessary. Professor James illustrates his position by the fact that a man can walk along a curbstone without any apprehension of falling, because the thought of falling awakens no emotion of dread, while on the edge of a precipice the emotion caused by the thought of the consequences of a mis-step may quite overcome his belief in his ability to keep his balance. But a chamois-hunter or an acrobat will pass along the same place without the slightest apprehension, not because he does not think of what would happen if he should fall, nor because he has more liking than any one else for being dashed to pieces, but because he has what the inexperienced man lacks, entire confidence in his ability to avoid the danger.

Since I began writing the last paragraph, a number of thoughts have passed through my mind, any one of which would be sufficiently exciting if I believed in them, as, that I may die within the next half hour; that I may fall heir to a fortune, and the like, none of which have produced any emotional disturbance, because I do not believe that there is any probability of their being true. Why was it that not only the medical profession but the public in general became so much interested, recently, in the announcement that Dr. Koch had discovered a substance that promised to be a cure for tuberculosis? Partly on account of the interests involved, but at least equally because his reputation was such as to inspire confidence in what he said. There are plenty of medicines advertised in the newspapers for which greater claims are made than Dr. Koch made for his discovery, which fail to arouse any such general interest. These examples are probably enough for illustration of the familiar fact that belief is the most common cause of emotion, and that a thought that is not believed is apt to leave us unmoved.

Nevertheless, it is a notorious fact that emotion has a great deal to do with determining the sort and degree of evidence which is satisfactory to us. Love and hate, respect and contempt, affect our beliefs in regard to the character of their objects in matters entirely independent of the qualities which originally inspired the feelings. We find it an easy matter to believe that a man whose religious or political opinions we think pernicious is a bad man in matters which have nothing to do with his opinions, and may find it almost incredible that one whom we like personally should think differently from ourselves on matters in which we are deeply interested. But what particular evil we shall believe of the person whom we dislike, or good of the one whom we like, depends entirely on circumstances. A man, for instance takes a dislike to a stranger on account of some lack of good manners. Whether he shall suspect him of being a clergyman or an infidel, a drinker or a prohibitionist, a Sunday-school teacher or a gambler, or both, is likely to depend very largely on his own tastes and principles in regard to such matters. So, on the other hand, his views in regard to religion, temperance and gambling, are probably due in great measure to the practice of the people whom he likes. A woman who has been brought up with a horror of drunkenness hears that a man with whom she is violently in love is a drinker. She will probably disbelieve it at first, but if she becomes convinced of the truth of the report, she will very likely come to think that a drunkard need not be such a bad fellow after all. If there is any one thing that more affects our beliefs than what the people we like say, it is what they do.

In like manner, emotional states without any definite object, such as we call moods if they are transient, and disposition or temperament if they are habitual, color our belief, not by originating any definite propositions, but by making us receptive to those that tend to confirm them. It is not when a man is broken in spirit by repeated calamities that he is most ready to believe that “where there’s a will there’s a way,” nor in the flush of youth, health and triumph that the doctrine that “all is vanity,” comes home to his heart. In whatever way such states of mind come about, whether as a result of original constitution, or of experience, or of disease, they make the mind inhospitable to whatever does not harmonise with them. In the case of insanity, this disposition may outweigh the plainest evidence of the senses, so that a man may believe that he is rolling in wealth and luxury when he is destitute of the ordinary comforts of life, or that his wife and children are dead when they are present before his eyes. In a lower degree, most of us probably have experience of something of the sort in “fits of the blues,” but while the general character of the belief may be decided by the emotional tone of the mind, its precise form is determined by the man’s interests. Low spirits would not be likely, for instance, to effect a man’s opinion as to the probable course of the stock market, unless he were in some way interested in stocks, and the view favored by his emotional condition would depend on the side of the market on which his interest lay. Beliefs which, in our ordinary state of mind, are not associated with any strong feeling, such as mathematical truths and the physical and chemical laws of matter, remain unaffected in all kinds and degrees of emotional disturbance.

It seems clear, then, that, as a matter of fact, emotions affect our beliefs through association. It is not difficult to see how this comes about. Emotions tend to perpetuate themselves. A man who is in high spirits will laugh at vexations which, if he were in an irritable frame of mind would seem intolerable. We allow liberties to our friends which would offend us in persons to whom we are indifferent. The same inertia of the mind which is shown in these cases offers a resistance to any thought that tends to disturb it. If I like a man and hate dishonesty, evidence that the man is dishonest calls up at the same time two contrary emotional states, which cannot subsist together. One of three things must happen; either the association of the feeling of liking with the person of the man, or of that of repugnance with dishonesty, or of the quality of dishonesty with the man must be given up, or at least impaired. But the feeling of affection for my friend and that of hatred for the alleged fault are old established associations, while that of dishonesty with his personality is a new one, which, in order to find lodgement, must expel the original inhabitant. Although I may have formed no definite association of honesty with him, the difficulty is of precisely the same sort as if I had. In either case it is the breaking up of an habitual association.

Such being the way in which emotion affects belief, its value as a ground of belief must be determined in the same way as in other cases of association. If any emotion is so exclusively connected with some definite object that the one is never present without the other, we are warranted in inferring the existence of the object from the presence of the emotion, as Robinson Crusoe inferred from the human footprints on the sand that men had been there. As a matter of fact, there is comparatively little uniformity in associations of this kind. The same things affect different persons differently, and the same persons differently at different times. Our hopes and fears are sometimes realised and sometimes disappointed, and people to whom, on slight acquaintance, we feel attracted, often develop qualities of a different kind from what we expected as we come to know them better. If I am fond of money, and also of idleness, or of friendship, and also of having my own way at all times, it does not follow that taking my ease is the way to get rich, nor that always insisting on my own way is the course to make friends. The most, I think, that can be said in favor of emotion as a ground of belief is, that its existence presupposes the existence of some object adapted to excite it. Avarice may be said, in a sense, to prove the existence of wealth—if there were no wealth there would doubtless be no avarice—but not that a particular avaricious man will be wealthy. Fear implies the existence of harm, but not necessarily that harm is coming upon the one that fears. These are matters in which we can apply the test of experience to our beliefs, and it seems evident that emotion adds nothing to our knowledge. We know the things independently of the emotions they excite, and every one recognises that to expect a thing merely because we either desire or fear it is, in matters which we can test by experience, utterly fallacious.

But there are matters lying outside the range of our experience in regard to which it is often confidently asserted that our desires and fears are sufficient proof of their reality—a view in which I cannot agree. If it could be shown that we long for something of an entirely different kind from anything we have known, that might perhaps be an argument in favor of its existence, but such is not the case. The wish for immortality, for instance, is nothing more than the wish for life. Probably there are but few who would not rather have immortality without death than after it, but experience has at last convinced the most hopeful that this is not to be expected, and the search for fountains of youth and elixirs of life has few devotees. We want life, and we have life; we want happiness, and we know happiness, whether we ourselves have it or not, but to say that the fact that we want more than we get of both is a reason for supposing that we shall ever have all that we want of either is to reason in a way which we should all see to be fallacious if applied to things of every-day life. I conclude, then, that the emotions which a belief excites are utterly valueless as a test of its truth, and that we may expect that, both with individuals and the race, emotion will play a smaller and smaller part in belief as true knowledge and culture increase. This is not saying that, in cases of doubt, it is unreasonable to hope that things may turn out as we wish.

As to innate beliefs, it is enough to say that we cannot altogether rid our minds of them, and that they answer perfectly the purpose of working hypotheses. A man may question the reality of an external world to his heart’s content, but if he runs his head against a wall, or drops a brick on his toe, it will hurt him just as much as the most thorough-going materialist. The consequence is that such a doubt does not affect our conduct. Abstractly, these beliefs do not all impress us with the same degree of certainty. That the same thing cannot be in two different places at once, is, I think, felt to be more absolutely and necessarily true than that there is such a necessity in the order of events as is implied in the idea of causation, but for all practical purposes we are as sure of the one as of the other.

I have already quoted Professor James’s assertion of our ability to choose which among different ways of thinking of the same we shall adhere to and which disregard. Perhaps the most prominent feature of his teaching on the subject of belief is that it is an active, not a passive state of the mind—a choice, not a necessity. One or two more quotations on this point will make this plain.

“As bare logical thinkers, without emotional reaction, we give reality to whatever objects we think of, for they are really phenomena, or objects of our passing thought, if nothing more. But, as thinkers with emotional reaction, we give what seems to us a higher degree of reality to whatever things we select and emphasise and turn to with a will. These are our living realities, and not only these, but all things that are intimately connected with these (p. 297).

“Now the important thing to notice is that the difference between the objects of belief and will is entirely immaterial, as far as the relation of the mind to them goes. All that the mind does is in both cases the same; it looks at the object and consents to its existence, espouses it, says ‘it shall be my reality.’ It turns to it, in short, in the interested emotional way” (p. 320).

Although the doctrine is stated, in these and other passages, without qualification, it is hard to reconcile it with some other statements. He devotes a chapter to “Necessary Truths,” and says:

“We must attach the predicate ‘equal’ to the subject ‘opposite sides of a parallelogram’ if we think those terms together at all” (p. 617).

I do not know that it makes much difference whether we say that, in a case like this, we cannot think differently of the same, or that, having thought so, we cannot choose which way of thinking to adhere to and which to disregard. The proposition that a horse is a vertebrate animal cannot be called a necessary, a priori truth, but I find it as impossible to think of a horse that is not a vertebrate animal as of a parallelogram with the opposite sides unequal. A figure with the opposite sides unequal would not be a parallelogram, and anything that was not animal and vertebrate would not be a horse. Whether the difficulty in the two cases is the same or not, it is clear that, by Professor James’s admission, here is a restriction of our choice as to what we will believe.

Again, he speaks of pleasurable and painful sensations as “belief-compelling.” Compulsion, so far as it exists, excludes choice, and if this expression is justified it implies another limitation on the freedom of belief.

With regard to painful sensations, it seems to me that the fact is that they, and their associations, force themselves on our attention, rather than that we “select, and emphasise and turn to them with a will.” If I have a toothache, I may believe that if I retain the tooth it will keep me in pain for a long time, and if I have it extracted, that will also be a painful process. It does not seem to me that the expressions quoted above accurately describe my state of mind in regard to either of these beliefs.

According to Professor James, when a man becomes convinced that he is financially bankrupt, or that he has lost his good name, or that he is suffering from an incurable and fatal disease, it is because he “espouses” this view of the matter, “consents to its existence,” says “it shall be my reality.” This notwithstanding that such a belief may drive him to determine that, so far as in him lies, all existence, all reality shall cease; to consent to death and espouse the grave. Would not the criminal who hears his death-sentence pronounced prefer, if he could, to disbelieve his eyes and ears, and to feel that it was all a bad dream? So far as I can judge with regard to many unwelcome beliefs, they are not like the highwayman who offers the alternative of “your money or your life,” but like him who throws you down, binds and robs you without offering any choice.

Perhaps the most striking example of the view under consideration is found in a foot-note on p. 318, in which, after quoting, with approval, a statement of Royce that “The ultimate motive with men of every-day life is the will to have an external world,” he goes on to say:

“This immixture of the will appears most flagrantly in the fact that although external matter is doubted often enough, minds external to our own are never doubted. We need them too much, are too intensely social to dispense with them. Semblances of matter may suffice to react upon, but not semblances of communing souls. A psychic solipsism is too hideous a mockery of our wants, and, so far as I know, has never been seriously entertained.”

Leaving aside the question whether any one who really disbelieved that there was any reality, outside of his own mind, in objects of sense, could believe in the existence of that which he only infers from the conduct of those objects, it seems to be distinctly stated that the reason of these beliefs is, not that we cannot help believing so, but that we choose to believe so, and not otherwise, and that we are able, having so chosen, to believe as we wish. That there may be no doubt as to the sense in which the term “Will” is used, I will quote the explanation with which he opens his chapter on that subject:

“We desire to feel, to have, to do, all sorts of things which at the moment are not felt, had, or done. If with the desire there goes a sense that attainment is not possible, we simply wish; but if we believe that the end is in our power, we will that the desired feeling, having or doing shall be real; and real it presently becomes, either immediately upon the willing or after certain preliminaries have been fulfilled” (p. 486).

Now each one must judge for himself whether this, or anything like this is the way in which he came to believe in an external world. Judging from my own experience, I should say that the reason we originally have such a belief is that it arises spontaneously in our minds, and that, for a long time, it never occurs to us that it can be otherwise. However that may be, I am certain that when the contrary possibility was presented to my mind, it struck me as strange, rather than dreadful, and that I firmly believe many things that seem to me far more hideous than the doctrine that I am the universe. So far as society is concerned, if I can be Shakespeare and Milton and Goethe, Plato and Bacon, Newton and Darwin, Luther and Columbus and Washington, as well as all the people of my acquaintance, it strikes me that I can be pretty good company for myself. To use the universality of the belief as a proof of its voluntary nature seems to me very much such an argument as to say that because all bodies attract each other in the ratio of their mass and inversely as the square of the distance, the falling of a stone must be a purely voluntary matter. I do not see what stronger argument, in a case like this, could be made for the necessity of a belief than the alleged fact that no one, under any circumstances, is free from it.

Now, if we substitute the term “Propensity” for “Will” in the passage quoted above, it would seem to me an entirely accurate description of the facts, and I can only understand how the authors quoted could take the ground they do except on the assumption that all propensities, or at least all which prevail, are choices or volitions. That such is not the case seems to me clear enough in regard to belief from some of the instances which I have already mentioned, but it will perhaps be still more evident from cases in which belief is not in question. The propensity to remember and constantly think of painful and distressing things, which we would gladly banish from our thoughts, or such things as silly rhymes and trifling tunes; to tremble and lose our presence of mind in danger, when we have most need of the full use of all our faculties; to express our emotions by muscular movements when we wish to conceal them, and many others that might be mentioned, are examples of the fact that an invincible propensity may be quite the reverse of a choice.

That belief is an activity of the mind may be freely admitted. The mind—whatever the substratum of our states of consciousness may be—is not a receptacle, to hold indifferently whatever may be poured into it nor a sheet of blank paper, on which this or that may be written by circumstances; it has a character of its own, and reacts to its environment. What the reaction shall be depends both on the character of the mind and what is presented to it, but it seems incorrect to assume that all the dispositions of the mind are of the nature of desires or aversions. In the last analysis of which we are capable, our character is probably due to our physical constitution, original and acquired, and our beliefs may be profoundly affected by a few glasses of whiskey or an attack of fever. Whether the reactions of the matter of which our brains are formed are as invariable as those of inorganic matter need not be discussed here; the present point is that while belief is a sense of the relations of things as they are, the essence of will is the desire to have them otherwise than as they are. To make belief a matter of choice is the same as to say that I may at the same time choose that things shall be as they are and otherwise.

Professor James closes the chapter with a practical observation:

“If belief consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man on an object, how can we believe at will? We cannot control our emotions. Truly enough, a man cannot believe at will abruptly. Nature sometimes, and indeed not very infrequently, produces instantaneous conversions for us. She suddenly puts us in an active connection with objects to which she had till then left us cold. ‘I realise for the first time,’ we then say, ‘what that means!’ This happens often with moral propositions. We have often heard them; but now they shoot into our lives; they move us; we feel their living force. Such instantaneous beliefs are truly enough not to be achieved by will. But gradually our will can lead us to the same results by a very simple method; we need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterise belief. Those to whom God and Duty are now mere names can make them much more than that, if they make a little sacrifice to them every day. But all this is so well known in moral and religious education that I need say no more” (p. 321).

The above passage seems to me to illustrate at the same time the force of Professor James’s rhetoric and an occasional tendency on his part to be carried away by it into statements that are altogether too sweeping. In an immense proportion of cases, the method that he recommends is precisely the surest way to convince ourselves that the thing in question is not real. It is the method which the small boy takes to convince himself that the gun is not loaded; the drunkard and spendthrift to satisfy themselves that their vices will not bring them into poverty and disgrace. A man may sit all day at the fork of the road, and believe that the broad way does not lead to destruction, but when he puts his belief in practice he discovers the truth. So far as practical matters, capable of being brought to the test of experience, are concerned, it can only be said that if they are real, we shall convince ourselves that such is the case by acting as if they were real. Doubtless Professor James had not such prosaic things as these in mind when he wrote the passage, but a method that will not serve us in regard to such questions as whether water will wet us or fire burn us, can hardly be called infallible. But even in regard to questions that must always remain matters of opinion it is not true in the unqualified sense in which Professor James puts it. Probably many men, brought up in the belief that it was their duty to observe the first day of the week by religious worship because the Hebrews were required to abstain from labor on the seventh day, have come to modify their belief without any material change in their practice, and even the belief in regard to the nature and attributes of God may be affected in advance of a change in the conduct based upon it.

The law of association in this regard is subject to the same limitations as we have already found to hold in respect to other matters. Associations of action with belief have a tendency to strengthen it, but, as in the case of emotion, they may be overcome by other considerations, and it is entirely possible for a man to go on for the better part of a lifetime in punctilious conformity to usages which in his heart he despises, and break out in open rebellion at last. From the ethical point of view, the advice which seems to be implied, of deliberately choosing a way of setting doubts at rest which is as efficacious on the side of error as of truth, of vice as of virtue, seems to me, to say the least, of doubtful tendency. We must often act in doubtful cases, and take the risk, amongst others, of thus confirming ourselves in error, but certainly there can be no more solemn motive for weighing well our beliefs before committing ourselves to them by action than the fact that we may, by habit, pervert our moral sense, blind our judgment and stifle our conscience.

To the man who believes that there is a universe, of which he forms an infinitesimal part, and that all his interests depend on his attitude toward the power that works in it, it is of infinitely more interest to know how he can know the truth than how he can convince himself of this or that. Shall truth be our master, to be followed and obeyed, though he command us to give up all else that we hold dear, or our servant, to be employed as suits our passion or caprice, and dismissed when he will no longer serve our purpose?

This is perhaps the most momentous question that we are called on to decide. The man who makes the wrong choice may or may not attain what he seeks, but though he gain the whole world, he will lose his own soul.

W. L. Worcester.

FOOTNOTES:

THE NATURE OF MIND AND THE MEANING OF REALITY.⁠[64]

Professor William James’s supposition of “an hallucinatory candle” seen by a “new born mind entirely blank and waiting for experience to begin” is an impossible and self-contradictory figment. We might as well speak of the dry Niagara falls employed in the manufacture of some material goods out of nothing. For, first, a mind entirely blank is no mind and, secondly, a blank mind if it could exist at all, would have no hallucinations. An hallucinatory candle can be produced only out of the memories or the combination of memories of former candle-sensations. A blind man sees in his dream no colors, and a deaf man hears no symphonies.

A new-born babe is already in possession of many inherited memories. Thus the first sense-impressions after the babe’s birth find the organism, especially its skin, nerves and muscles predisposed for their reception. The babe’s organism accordingly presents an instance of a relative but not of an absolute blank; an absolute blank of a something that is to develop into mind can mean only a lump of sentient matter at the moment of formation. As soon as it is formed it is exposed in every second of its existence to innumerable impressions which fill the blank with contents and these contents are the mind that is developing.

Sentient substance is not at rest, but like a flame it is possessed of an incessant activity. The form of this activity is both extraordinarily plastic and stable. It is plastic, for every impression together with the reaction of the impression modifies it and leaves a trace: it is stable for the traces of all the impressions and reactions are preserved.

The first sense-impression of a lump of sentient substance produces an irritation which objectively considered is a commotion of the sentient substance and subjectively considered a feeling, the substance being sentient ex hypothesi. This first and primitive feeling is meaningless, for it has not, and cannot have, any reference to any other feeling, memory or mind, and meaning is created through the interaction of feelings with memories of feelings.

Some later sense-impression of the same kind will not only produce the same irritation but also serve as an irritation to awaken the memory-trace left by the former sense-impression. The new feeling will melt into one with the reawakened memory of the former feeling. In the long run many traces of the same kind which are, as it were, deposited in the same place will constitute an organ predisposed to receive the correspondent impressions; and now a sense-impression received by such an organ may be called a sensation. A sensation is not merely a feeling, it is a feeling of a special kind and it is felt to be of a special kind. In other words, a sensation is a feeling that has acquired meaning; and this meaning is the product of the interaction and coöperation of feelings and memories. Sensations have become symbols representing the cause of the sense-impression which produced the sensation, and ideas are symbols of a higher order representing either whole classes of a certain kind of causes of sense-impressions or certain features thereof, or certain relations among them.