Volume 1 — THE MONIST.

NATIONALISATION OF EDUCATION AND THE UNIVERSITIES.⁠[88]

A little more than a century ago it was universally believed that, in the nature of things, the vitality of a republic and its size stand in an inverse ratio. The inadaptability of a republican system of government to a state of vast territorial expanse and with a very numerous population was considered an almost axiomatic, i. e. self-evident, truth. When the thirteen English colonies in North America had taken the bold resolution to transform themselves into the United States of America, many an ardent patriot often asked himself, not free from anxious foreboding, whether the Union was within the limits laid down by irreversible political laws, as the utmost extent of republics fit to endure. If it had not been for the size of the country, the doubts as to whether the republican experiment was likely to prove a success, would never have assumed a character, which gave sufficient color to the charge of monarchical tendencies, to make them appear well-founded in the eyes of so many people. When afterwards a new empire was to be added to the Union by the Louisiana purchase, the doubt, as to whether the republican system of government would be equal to the strain put upon it by such an immense enlargement of the area of the United States, played a not unimportant part among the objections of the opposition. That experience has definitively disposed of these ideas, by proving the apprehensions to be unfounded, is no reason to think meanly of the political discernment of those who entertained them. It will not be universally admitted, that experience has thus far proved them to be wholly unfounded also as to consolidated republics. And how can it be wondered at, that at that time the essential difference was not fully realised and understood, which exists between a federal and a consolidated republic with regard to the peculiar dangers and evils apt to arise from this specific cause. Though republican federations had been known to the world for two thousand years, no instruction was to be derived from their history on this head. As to the extent of territory, the consolidated Roman republic, which had consumed its vitality with its growth, could alone be compared with the United States; and as to many of the essential features of their political structure, neither modern nor ancient history furnished an analogy. In the soil of the New World, the germs of European institutions had—adapting themselves to the new conditions—developed into a new type of commonwealth.

It is conceded on all sides that, next to the capacity of the American people for self-government, the United States owe it primarily to the happy blending of the principles of National Union and State Independence that, taking all in all, hitherto their history has been the most striking and convincing vindication of republican institutions; and it is hardly questioned that, but for the happy blending of these two principles, a republic comprising half the North American continent and possessed of all the requisites of vitality never would nor could have existed. Upon their being “an indestructible Union of indestructible States,” the vitality of the United States absolutely depends. That, with this principle as the foundation, the domain of a republic can be almost indefinitely extended, without thereby destroying its vital energies, has been irrefutably demonstrated. But does that mean, that the United States have definitively solved the problem of keeping the vital forces of a republic covering a vast area unimpaired? By no means. Only the preliminary question has been settled by them for all time to come, what the indispensable prerequisite of its solution is, and they have thus far succeeded in preserving their vitality. But even as to themselves, the solution of the problem itself has to be repeated over and over again, not only by generation after generation, but every year and every day. The hour never will, never can come, when the American people can, with impunity, say: the task is accomplished; let us rest and enjoy the fruits. It never can come, because the problem itself is in a continuous state of transformation. Though the changes be so slow, that they are imperceptible to the keenest eye trying to follow them up from year to year, they are none the less real, and if they are not duly heeded, the penalty will have to be paid some time in one way or another. While the fundamental principle, the blending of National Union and State Independence, is irreversible, the attempt to make its application immutable, would be fatal. I say the attempt, for actually to do it, is, in the nature of things, impossible. The American people are not only constitutionally a nation. The civil war did not result in the permanent disruption of the Union, but in welding it more indissolubly together, because, with the single exception of slavery, the facts coincided with the law. In spite of the tremendous sectionalising influence exercised by slavery, the nationalisation in feeling, thinking, and interests had made such progress under the operation and protection of the law of the land, that it could stand as severe a test, as any consolidated State can boast of having stood. The causes, to which it was due, that the facts were in conformity with the law, have been ever since unremittingly at work,—the counter-tendencies have disappeared with the abolishment of slavery,—and, independent of that, those causes are every year acquiring a greater force. The actual nationalisation, therefore, goes steadily on, whether we like it or not, and though the constitutional nationalisation be allowed to remain unchanged. While the legal status under the Constitution may not be altered for ever so long, we are confronted by constantly changing conditions. If we do not conform in what we do and leave undone to the irrepressible changes of this evolutionary process, the maintenance of the principle of blending National Union and State Independence will avail us but little. The vital energies will dry up and ebb away, for while we have kept the form, we have become strangers to the spirit which renders it a magic force. Nor ought the dividing line between political parties to run, as in days of yore, on the question of State rights and consolidation. All discriminating patriots must be as well State rights men as consolidationists, respectively conscious supporters and promoters of further nationalisation. Where and how ought State independence to be strengthened, so as to prevent an over-consolidation by the silent working of those nationalising causes, which it is impossible to stem? and: Where and how ought consolidation, respectively nationalisation, to be promoted, in order to make the working of those nationalising causes conducive to the true interests of the people and to the invigorating of republican institutions? These are the two questions which the American people have constantly to ask themselves. On the discretion and discernment displayed in trying to find the correct answers must it depend, whether the federative principle will work as well in the future, as it has done in the past.

If these propositions must be admitted, it can be proved that in no respect is conscious and systematic nationalisation more imperatively needed than in regard to education. At first sight this assertion may seem worse than extravagant. I am, however, not afraid to submit my case to the jury of the American people, if I am but conceded the legal right of every criminal, to be heard ere I am judged.

Education is the bed-rock on which this republic rests. However excellent its political institutions be, its decay and ultimate downfall is inevitable, if the people fail to do their full duty by themselves in this respect. For, in a democratic republic, political institutions are live forces only so far as the people have the mental and moral requirements for working them well, and these mental and moral requirements can be attained only by education. It is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, a vital question for the republic that every one of its sons and daughters receive not only some schooling, but that the education of all be proper and adequate. That is a tremendous task. It constantly grows in scope and intricacy, and at the same time, it becomes of more and more import that it be well accomplished. With the people rests the ultimate decision in everything, and the problems confronting the commonwealth are assuming more and more a character, taxing the highest statesmanship to the utmost. Thus the claims upon the intelligence and the moral soundness of the people are fast being strained far beyond anything ever known by any former generation in this or any other country. And lack of the required intelligence and moral soundness in any one State necessarily affects the whole Union. A State that is derelict to its duty in the education of its people, wrongs not only itself, but also the nation. By its share in the federal government, every State is directly instrumental in laying down the law for the whole country. All the States are thereby made to participate in the payment of the penalty for its intellectual and moral deficiencies. This is, however, by no means the only way in which they are made to suffer by them. What the law does with regard to everything rendered federal by the Constitution; commerce, travel, and interchange of population do in other respects. They are unremittingly and with ever increasing intensity at work, multiplying and rendering more close the organic relations between all the parts of the vast domain, every water-way, railroad-track, and telegraph line performing the functions of the veins in the animal organism. If the blood be poisoned in one limb, the virus cannot be prevented from working its way into the whole system.

To admit that education is in the highest degree a national interest, and to deny its being a national concern, is, however, a self-contradiction. To contest either the right or the duty of a nation to acknowledge every national interest a national concern, and to deal with it accordingly, is a palpable absurdity. Not as to the Whether, but only as to the How, can the people be restricted by the Constitution. A constitution imposing upon the people an injunction to minister to the needs of the commonwealth, would be as great a political monstrosity as a constitution providing for the dissolution of the state.

This doctrine will not be allowed to pass unchallenged. I shall be asked whether I set myself against the universally accepted fundamental principle of American constitutional law, that the federal government has no powers but those granted to it by the Constitution. I do not. “Where, then,” my interlocutor will go on, “do you find the express grant or the implied power?” Nowhere. “Then you advocate a constitutional amendment to the effect indicated by you?” I do not. I know that such an amendment could not get the vote of a single state, and if there were a possibility of its being adopted by the constitutional number of states, I should be found, to the last, among those fighting it tooth and nail. I can hardly conceive of a more suicidal measure than the adoption of such an amendment. Just because education is the bed-rock on which the republic rests, is it of vital importance that it does not become a federal affair. Self-reliance and responsibility are the main pillars supporting a democratic commonwealth. Kill, in the people of a state and the population of its subdivisions, the habit of self-reliance and the sense of responsibility in regard to the substratum of the whole political and social structure, and they will wither and shrivel up in regard to everything else. The compulsion to tax themselves directly for the establishment and maintenance of schools and the being in close touch with those entrusted with the direction of the educational work are an inestimable boon to the people.

Even if it were economically possible to do without direct taxes, political reasons would peremptorily forbid their abolishment. On account of their moral effect, no state could dispense with them, and least of all a democracy. All indirect taxes are paid more or less unconsciously; the people, however, must be kept conscious that the public purse means their own pockets. The more they lose sight of this, the wider the door is opened to paternalism, and paternalism is a more deadly enemy of liberty than despotism and tyranny. These, if any vitality be left in the people, ultimately kindle the desire for liberty, while paternalism acts upon it as an opiate and ends by killing it through the systematic enervation of self-government. If this is to be kept alive not only in form, but also in essence and in spirit, the people must constantly be held to teach themselves in illustrating by their own acts the irrefutable truth, that not the rights, but the self-imposed duties are the vital principle of true democracy. Nothing, however, is more apt to drive this all-important fact irresistibly home, implanting it ineradicably in their whole feeling and in their conscious thinking, than the necessity to vote, as directly as possible, out of their own pockets the money required for preserving intact and in vigor the prerequisite of all that is needed for the preservation of the nation’s vitality. If it be not deemed irreverent, I should say that every dollar a man voluntarily votes out of his pocket to provide for the educational needs of the community, preaches to him a political “Sermon on the Mount.” “Liberty and self-government,” it says, “must be paid for;—state and society are in their very essence ethical conceptions;—they must totter, fall, and crumble to pieces, unless they rest on an ethical foundation;—to preserve, broaden, and deepen this foundation, by providing for the required intellectual and moral equipment of the generations in whose hands the future destinies of the commonwealth will lie, is the paramount duty of the people;—no one has the right to exempt himself from doing his share in the fulfilment of this duty, for the heirloom of the past, enjoyed by the present, is but a trust to be left, with accrued interest, to the future;—the fulfilment of this duty ought to be considered rather a privilege than a sacrifice, for every farthing paid for the maintenance of the humblest village school is an integral part of the nation’s life-insurance premium;—glory in this responsibility to the whole country, for it constitutes you, with the wealthiest and mightiest, a joint builder of its greatness;—glory in thus bearing witness by the fruit of the sweat of your brow, that you, too, are sworn in on the creed that man does not live by bread alone;—glory in and render thanks for being thus held to keep ablaze in your own bosom and help kindle in the bosom of the lowliest child of the community, the sacred fire of idealism.”

That by many, perhaps by most people, this appeal is not heard in distinct words, I do not contest. But that is no reason to make light of it. Utterly lost it never is. Something of it sinks into the mind even of the dullest and most hard-hearted, though it be but in the form of a faint and vague feeling. To make them lose this, is to deprive them of the best they have. Democracy is not a mill-pond, on which a fragile boat can outride the wildest tempest. It is the open sea, on which the proudest and stoutest craft is sure to be swamped, sooner or later, if it be not properly ballasted. True idealism, however, never was a more essential part of the ballast, than in these times and in this country. It stands more in need of it than any other state, because its unparalleled opportunities are appallingly powerful incentives to plunge headlong into the materialistic tendencies of the age. Therefore, it is ruthless to lay hands on anything tending to keep alive and foster true idealism in the people. For this reason it would be, in my opinion,—not in intention, but in effect,—a dastardly crime, under any plea whatever, to release the people from the obligation to provide in their local organisations for the education of their youths.

Therefore, I even deem it upon the whole more beneficial than detrimental that many of the higher and most of the highest educational institutions of the country are the free gift of high-minded men and women to the people. I have never agreed with those who have contended in this country that the duty of the commonwealth does not extend beyond providing for primary and, at the most, to some extent for secondary education, and that it would not be fair and proper to tax all for the establishment and maintenance of colleges and universities, which, in the nature of the case, only a small minority can frequent. It would be hard to name a more promising sign of the times, than that this doctrine has of late lost so much of its former hold upon public opinion, that one would have to search long for an advocate of it in its original rigor. It is eminently in the interest of all, that there be an ample number of men and women who have received the highest education. Therefore, it is evidently not only justified, but imperative, that the commonwealth furnish the means for supplying its want. But if the views held in this respect on the continent of Europe had prevailed in the United States, the American people would have been the poorer of one of the vastest and most grateful fields for manifesting idealistic public-spiritedness. An inestimable loss, for idealistic public-spiritedness is not the least of the causes to which it is due that American democracy has stood the test; and idealistic public-spiritedness, like every virtue, grows stronger and more fruitful by being practised. Every donation for educational purposes prompts others to follow suit, and is, apart from its direct beneficent effects, a most valuable object-lesson to the whole nation. With equal impressiveness, the rich and the poor are reminded of the treasures which “neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.” On every educational institution brought into existence in such a way are indelibly inscribed the two magic words to which this country owes it greatness: Help yourself, and Public Spirit; every one of them is a living protest, as well against paternalism—whether it present itself in the socialistic or in any other garb—as against the setting up of the golden calf as the idol of the republic. Therefore, everything tending to seriously check these manifestations of idealism and public spirit in regard to higher education would be deplorable, even if it were in itself commendable, for paternalism and materialism are too rampant to leave anything undone that is calculated to keep them down.

To contend that the existing decentralisation in regard to education must be done away with, would, for these reasons, be a truly Quixotic charge upon windmills: the venture must result in broken bones. It cannot, and, if it could, ought not to be done, for this decentralisation is the natural outgrowth of the whole historical development of the commonwealth and in perfect accordance with the underlying principle of its political and social structure. But it would be strange logic to conclude from this that it can have worked no harm, or that the evil consequences it may have had cannot be remedied. Can it be denied that, apart from the primary schools, it sounds almost like mockery to speak of an American system of education? If we look at the schools of a higher grade, we are confronted by a bewildering chaos, and the nearer the top, the worse the confusion becomes. That the effects of this are not altogether good, will be universally admitted, though opinions will differ as to the weight that ought to be attached to the bad consequences in the aggregate and severally. To me, some of them seem to be of a very serious character, and I hold that they must from year to year become of more consequence. To say that somebody has been through a “high school,” does not convey sufficiently definite information as to either the kind or the amount of instruction he has received. To know that somebody is a graduate of an “academy,” a “college,” a “university,” means to know next to nothing as to his mental equipment. To gauge our man, we must inquire, What academy, what college, what university? Having learned that, we are in hundreds of cases not a whit wiser than before. We have to ask for the calendar of the institution, and, after having read that, we shall often be still pretty much at sea, for, as the Germans say, “paper is patient,” and the printing of a first-class programme implies by no means of necessity first-class instruction. This may be considered by some of little or no moment, because the degrees confer no rights whatever. But they are, nevertheless, not senseless gewgaws. If they be deemed such, their abolishment must be insisted upon, for then they are as much out of place in this country as orders or other meaningless titles. They are intended to be certificates of knowledge and mental training. If they lose this character, they are nothing, or worse than nothing. It is, however, self-evident that they must be deprived of this character, exactly to the extent that the educational institutions bearing the same name and conferring the same degrees differ from each other. Do you not think it more than likely that, if a law were passed making it obligatory to add to the letters indicating a degree the name of the institution by which it was conferred, an astounding number of ornamental tails to names would be cut off forever?

This would not be done, if the degrees merely failed to be definite and reliable certificates of knowledge and mental training. They do positive harm, because the institutions conferring them have little more in common than the name, their educational standard differing in the extremes, as much as the crippled shrub and the sturdy oak. While the public do not know what value to attach to the degree, a large percentage of the recipients are betrayed into offensive and pernicious self-deception. Upon the official averment of their alma mater, they lay the flattering unction to their soul that they have received a much better intellectual outfit than they really possess. These institutions practically reverse the precept of the Greek sage: not “know thyself,” but “deceive thyself” is the maxim imprinted on their diplomas. And this self-deception is a subtle, contagious virus. It is at least doubtful, whether more will take warning by looking through the false pretense, or be lured by it into the same mistaken notions as to the requirements of genuine higher education. To have practically no fixed standards for the different grades of higher education must as inevitably have mischievous effects upon the intellectual life of a people, as its economic life must be demoralised by allowing everybody to coin money of the same outward appearance, but of any alloy he pleases. Not that harm has been done by the almost unlimited freedom enjoyed by the educational institutions owing their existence to private munificence, is to be wondered at; it is astonishing that the deleterious effects have not been much worse. A premium is offered for sailing under a false flag. If a college may be called a university, and an academy a college, it would be more than surprising if the grander name were not frequently preferred, for it flatters alike the vanity of the donors, the instructors, and the pupils, and will—with more or less reason—be expected to work as a bait. With the name goes the right to confer degrees, and the exercising of this privilege is to serve the same purposes. But the name renders it necessary to keep up appearances, and that is an expensive pleasure. The masquerading in a pretentious guise cuts down the allowance of wholesome food. Worthless universities instead of good colleges, inferior colleges instead of satisfactory academies and fitting schools, are but too often the result. No name will deprive the rose of its sweet scent; but the buttercup cannot, with impunity, call itself a rose.

The worst, however, is, that even the best institutions of the higher order are made to pay a heavy penalty for the shortcomings of those of the lower rank. Not getting the proper material, they do not turn out as good work as they in themselves might do. Much valuable time, which ought to be devoted to going on with the building, must be spent in mending and strengthening the deficient foundation, which, after all, does not acquire the requisite solidity, because mending is necessarily patchwork. Nor is the damage confined to the pupils that have been sent up from inefficient schools. These act as a drag upon those who have come adequately prepared. To render matters worse, the deficiencies are neither the same with all, nor is it known beforehand where they will be found and how far they will extend. Neither are the curricula the same, nor is there any guaranty that the same curriculum means the same work done. Here so many things have been taught, that everything has suffered in regard to thoroughness. There, specialisation has commenced so early, that the basis is too narrow and too shallow. Training for a special purpose has encroached upon education. All these difficulties greatly hamper the institution. But they do more. They exercise a strong pressure upon it to stray from the right path, for they are powerful incentives to yield to the evil tendency, more to measure, than to weigh the work done. This is, in my opinion, the most deplorable of all the bad consequences which the lack of a uniform system, resulting from the decentralisation of education, has thus far had; and it is all the more dangerous, because the measuring principle is so well fitted to be clad in the seductive garb of a lucid and clear-cut system.

I do not expect that every one of my propositions will be universally assented to. But can any unprejudiced observer dispute that there is enough truth in what I have said to prompt the people seriously to ponder the question, where this is going to end? If no conscious, energetic, and concerted effort be made to counteract the evil effects of decentralisation, the very fact of higher education having assumed such a kaleidoscopic character renders inevitable its becoming more and more kaleidoscopic. The founders, boards of trustees, presidents, and faculties of new institutions are almost compelled to give their individual notions on higher education, to a dangerous extent, free scope. Having a hundred different patterns presented to their consideration, the temptation is well-nigh irresistible not to adopt any one of them, but to devise a new one. A new experimenting laboratory is set up. That its experiments will be, positively or negatively, of some value, is to be supposed. In most cases, however, the public interest would have been better served by a good factory, renouncing the risky ambition of dabbling with new inventions.

A European is struck with wonderment that, considering the extent to which decentralisation in higher education has been carried, not infinitely more harm has been done, and that the harm it does, seems to impress the Americans comparatively so little. Neither can be understood, unless one fully realises to what a degree the American commonwealth is still in its formative period, and what an astounding educational power there is in American life. To the former it is principally due, that the deleterious effects mentioned are here in fact of much less consequence, than they would be, where the advantages of an historical development, counting by more than centuries, are paid for by the rigidity of age; and the latter supplements and corrects the work of the schools so effectively, that it is not surprising to find even many a keen-sighted and highly accomplished American more or less blindfolded as to this. Because the ultimate results are satisfactory, it is taken for granted, that the educational conditions of the country must be all right, while a searching critical examination irresistibly forces upon one the question, whether a good deal is not achieved in spite of them. If this be so, failure to promptly attend to what is defective in them will surely be punished, for thanks to the rapidity with which the United States are being filled up, their formative period is fast drawing to a close, and with its close, the educational power of American life will be, in some important respects, very sensibly diminished. The peculiar advantages, they have thus far enjoyed, are steadily growing weaker, while intellectually and morally, the difficulties confronting the whole civilised world, and difficulties peculiar to them, are as steadily making greater demands upon the people. Growth of population and development of economical life, with all its attending circumstances, constantly working at the further nationalisation of the American people, and the problems to be solved growing more and more intricate, disaster must become inevitable, if education does not keep abreast of this double movement; and this it cannot do, if we do not energetically and systematically go to work to nationalise education without consolidating it. Nor have we any time to lose, for the task is by no means easy. Every inch of ground gained will be the price of an arduous and protracted struggle.

From the Federal Government no direct assistance is to be derived, for the question is not within the province of its constitutional powers, and if it were, we ought not to ask its interference, because, as I said, to nationalise education without consolidating it, is to be the aim. Public opinion, unaided by law, must effect the reform. Public opinion, however, is in this country even more powerful than the law. It is sure finally to overcome not only all active, but even all passive resistance, which is always much harder to overcome. But is there any possibility of ever inducing public opinion to take the question up in full earnest? I am confident there is, and at all events it must be tried. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for not undertaking it. It only admonishes us, not to waste time, strength, and enthusiasm in vain attempts to carry the fortress by assault. The works are so extended and so strong that only a methodical siege requiring a great deal of skill, patience, and determination, offers any chance of success. Two preliminary questions must, therefore, be answered, ere operations can be commenced: who is to conduct the campaign, and by what tactics can the approaches be pushed on the fastest?

The answer to be given to the first question is plain. The instructors are to be considered the experts, if anybody can claim the title. Upon them, therefore, devolves the duty to take the lead. This they have already commenced to do. The very existence of a National Educational (Teacher’s) Association is in itself irrefutable proof that the opinions advanced by me, have, in some way and to some extent, asserted themselves for some time. How this has been done and what has been effected, I do not feel called upon to discuss. I merely state that while I appreciate what it has done and expect from it still more in the future, I am firmly convinced that the goal can never be reached if we are to content ourselves with what this organisation is capable of achieving. This will be deemed the less disparaging, if I furthermore state that, in my opinion, the end could no more be attained by any other organisation acting singlehanded. Hunting for any one device which will as certainly effect a cure as patent medicines claim to cure bodily ailments, is but to waste time. The evil has to be attacked from many points and in many ways, if sanitation is to set in.

While I am fully persuaded of this, I am, however, on the other hand as firmly convinced that nothing will be of avail if the Universities do not step forward, heading the column of attack and adding compulsion to suasion. The reform has to be worked from the top downward. At present the law is, to a great extent, dictated by the schools of the lower grade to those of the higher. This must be reversed. The Universities must insist upon getting the proper material for doing what in their judgment is the proper work. They must cease fitting themselves to what the schools are pleased to send them. By closing their doors against all applicants whom they do not really deem adequately prepared, they must compel the schools, either to take down from their portals the inscription “fitting school,” or to mend their ways and furnish their pupils the kind and the amount of instruction they ought. A University that meekly submits to travel on whatever roads some hundreds of schools, which all more or less follow their own notions, happen to think good enough, never can be a University except in name. No institution has a moral right to the proud name of University that does not, consciously and determinately, do all that is in its power to direct its educational policy solely by what the civilisation of the age and the true interests of the nation require.

I wish the old maxim ultra posse nemo obligatur did not compel me to say “to do all that is in its power,” for I am but too well aware how deplorably little that is in many cases. State Universities are subject to another will, and this other will is apt to have very much its own notions as to how much a University may be allowed to cost, and to determine the standard of the University entirely by the local standard of schools. Other Universities, though legally their own masters, are practically restrained as much or even more by implacable facts. No University can entirely dispense with students, and the endowment of more than one University forbids its making light of the number of students it can secure. Being to some extent dependent upon the students for their maintenance, they cannot afford to be very fastidious in regard to the standard of schools they try to enlist into their constituency. But there is also a goodly number of Universities whose position is in absolutely every respect so strong that they can enter the lists without any risk whatever to themselves. Whether they stop growing for a while or even decline in numbers for some years does not affect their future in the least. They are so much in quest by students that the fitting schools are sure to make haste to meet their requirements, if these rise above their curriculum. To move on in wild leaps would, of course, be foolish. But so long as these Universities do not do that they never need to look backward in their onward march; their whole constituency of schools must follow close upon their heels, because they cannot afford to bolt and drop out. The more the leading Universities proceed upon a concerted plan, the larger the circle would grow, within which their joint pressure would be irresistible: the strength of each would be doubled by pressing on, shoulder to shoulder with the others, on the same lines. At the same time it will make it correspondingly easier for the weaker ones to follow in their wake. How could it fail to make an impression upon those on whom they depend, if they can back their pleas by urging the practical unanimity of all the foremost institutions of the country as to the right course to take? The more the leading Universities are united, not only as to the scope and method of their own work, but also as to what is to be considered the proper preparation for University work, the more will deviations from the rules laid down by them come to imply to public opinion inferiority of standard; and if there is a whip under which American communities smart, it is this. As to this would be added the missionary influences of the alumni sent from the leading Universities into all parts of the republic, it would be strange indeed, if the idea were not constantly to spread and to cast deeper root, that to adequately provide for the educational needs of the country, it is necessary consciously to create and systematically to foster a tendency, by the free action of public opinion, more and more to harmonise education, in developing it everywhere and in all its ramifications into a thoroughly organic structure.

I am prepared to hear the opinions I have ventured to advance strenuously contested and, perhaps, even mercilessly ridiculed by many. The open antagonists, however, cause me but little uneasiness. I fear only one thing, i. e. that those who more or less endorse my criticisms and agree with me as to what is desirable, will be induced by the arduousness of the work to persuade themselves that it is impossible to bring about such a reform. To them I should say: Where there is a will, there is a way, and the American people must be brought to will this reform, because every year a portentous word is becoming more true and of greater import: “the age of perils is past, but the age of difficulties has set it.”

H. von Holst.

FOOTNOTES:

MEANING AND METAPHOR.

Professor Huxley supposes⁠[89] “that so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions.” He finds that “the science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages.” The difference he sees is “that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality.” He then goes on to warn us against dealing with symbols as though they were “real existences.”

Few indeed are free from reproach in this matter, so far as reproach is deserved at all in the general unconsciousness of what constitutes the danger. Few see the question to be vital or the danger to be urgent; and even those who do are apt to deny that the search for a remedy can be a crusade worth attempting; the very idea seems Utopian or pedantic. On the one hand, teachers as a rule do not take their own analogies and metaphors seriously. Both the literary and scientific, as well as the philosophic and historical instinct tell against their doing so. In their eyes figures have either faded into indifferent abstractions, or they are obviously pictorial and merely rhetorical. But the average reader is apt to take them at the foot of the letter. He is usually unaware both of the extent to which he literalises and of the curious inconsistencies which his literalising involves. So he makes his inferences with alight heart, and wonders, perhaps, at the resulting confusion without suspecting its true cause.

Would that the real state of the case and its practical consequences could be pressed home to all with such force, that whatever be our line of work or thought or expression we should strive in earnest to mend matters. At least, we might begin by learning better what part symbolism plays in the rituals of expression, and ask ourselves what else is language itself but symbolism, and what it symbolises. We should then examine anew the relations of the “symbolic” to the “real”; of image, figure, metaphor, to what we call literal or actual. For this concerns us all. Imagery runs in and out, so to speak, from the symbolic to the real world and back again. As matters stand, we never know where we are because we know so little where our phrases or our words are; indeed, perhaps they and we are “neither here nor there.” Or, if we do know where we are, we cannot be sure that our hearer or reader knows where he is. He, too, is probably “neither here nor there.” He often praises or agrees with us in the wrong place or the wrong manner. That is worse than being complained of or differed from; it is difficult to repudiate approval. Nor can we take refuge in lucidity and fancy that the clear must be the true. In the long run and in the cases which signify most, there is no escape through merely lucid style or method. The “luminous” speaker or writer, the “forcible” orator or essayist, the moment he tries to convey to the public mind a thought which is really new, will find himself hampered by his very clearness itself. His ideas are controverted on assumptions not really his; or he himself is misled in subtle ways by what he assumes in others.

Thus, by an instructive paradox, the clearest writer is often the most controversial; and he wonders at our perverseness as, while we admire his power and his “style,” we wonder at the perverseness in him. We possibly agree with him in ways we do not suspect; he possibly agrees with us in senses he ignores. Such a writer may pride himself on a chary use of metaphor, or on a carefully sharp distinction between “image” and “thing” or “object.” But he is liable to forget the danger dogging him even here. One is tempted to say that there is only one term more figurative as well as more ambiguous than “metaphorical,” and that is “literal.” Most certainly much that is called “literal” is tinged with the figurative in varying degrees, not always easy to distinguish, even with the help of context. The word “literal” itself is indeed a case in point. It has rarely, if ever, any reference to writing.

The question is, whether this state of things is quite so inevitable as most of us seem to think. Certainly, so long as we are content to live in the fool’s paradise of supposing that only the perverse, the prejudiced, the stupid, or the ignorant can possibly mistake our meaning, and that our misreadings of others are simply due to their “obscurity,” or “quibbling,” or literary incapacity, we shall ourselves contribute to the hopelessness of the situation. But this is a subject which cannot be dealt with in an incidental way; it is rather a hope for the future, that one of the most practically serviceable of subjects—that of Meaning, its conditions and its changes—shall be seriously taken up. Then, indeed, we may get back to the first of all questions, and that which is most pregnant of helpful answers; that which needs asking more than any other if good work is to be done in this day of universal “unsettlement”:—What do we really mean? On all sides dead calms are stirred and ruffled, dead levels upheaved or depressed; nothing (happily) can hope to escape the wave of quickening force. So before long we may well be asking this question in good earnest; and when we do we can but be the better, even if we must needs submit in some cases where we may have been prematurely positive, to be content (for the moment) with the answer: We do not really know.

The fact is, that we have been postulating an absolute Plain Meaning to be thought of, as it were, in capital letters. We have been virtually assuming that our hearers and readers all share the same mental background and atmosphere. We have practically supposed that they all look through the same inferential eyes, that their attention waxes and wanes at the same points, that their associations, their halos of memory and circumstance, their congenital tendencies to symbolise or picture, are all on one pattern. Verily, we need a “Critique of Plain Meaning”!

Again we quote on the same assumption. Unless the language of our author is obviously archaic; unless his allusions unmistakably betray a different life-context, a different social “milieu,” in short, a different mental world, we claim him or we repudiate him on the same principle. We take his words, we take his phrases, we fill them out with the same content as our own, we make him mean precisely what we ourselves mean. And be it noted that it is always what we mean now. That this in any way varies from what we meant at some time when, e. g., our attention was differently focussed, rarely enters our heads.

We shall, I suppose, admit that until lately there was one very good reason for this state of things. Only the exceptional mind (if any); only the mind which could not make itself fully understood by its contemporaries, and would risk being reckoned crazy or criminal if it spoke “plainly,” had any suspicion that this way of looking at things was being gradually invalidated by the general extension of the critical domain. The history of language, its relation to thought; the scope of expression and representation, the function of the figurative and symbolic; the growth of all means of mental communion from the simplest rudiments of gesture or cry to the highest point of intellectual complexity,—all this was either ignored or taken for granted on radically insecure bases.

Again, while the underlying conditions of language must be looked for in the domain of psycho-physics, that science had not yet come into existence. Even now it is but feeling its way and putting forth tentative hypotheses, warning us, as it does, so that they are liable to be constantly modified and occasionally revolutionised. And what does it realise, first and foremost? That our difficulties on the very threshold of the inquiry are, as usual, largely those of language. On all sides we have to use, as best we may, modes of expression that inevitably convey ambiguous meanings even to the thoughtful, even to the trained mind, which cannot but carry with them a background of outgrown or disproved premises, vitiating more or less every conclusion that we draw from them. The very phrases which are our only shorthand for the vast oratory of nature and experience betray us in the using. We have taken them as though they were like numerals invariable in meaning, thus supposing them subject to a permanent uniformity. We have taken them as though they were without a history, merely fortuitous labels or symbols of unanimous consent; the accepted sense, we think, being easily ascertainable, always persistent, and wholly sufficient for practical purposes. In any case we strangely assume that we may safely play upon all the chords of imagery, reserving without difficulty for serious use a body of terms which are direct expressions of “fact.”

But the suggestion now made is that this is precisely one of the most dangerous of presuppositions. It is not the man who has mystified himself, or who wishes to mystify others; it is not the man who confounds the reality of the logical with that of the actual; it is not the man who takes emotion for proof and notion for fact; it is none of these, but the man who is clear on such points and sees that they must be drawn out into clues and followed up to the uttermost, if we would know where we are—who is beginning to see that the paramount need of the moment is the “torpedo-shock” of the question, What do we really mean? He knows that the off-hand vagueness and ready-made confusion, which too often from sheer ignorance usurp the name of common-sense, are in the long run its most deadly enemies.

We may look forward then with a new hope to the rise of a systematic inquiry on the subject of meaning and its changes. This would entail the much-needed work of classifying metaphor, and might even be found to point to the existence of a third value, neither wholly literal, nor wholly figurative, as that of a large proportion of ordinary expression. From this and like causes, in this age of rapid changes due mainly to scientific conquest, we can all readily put to each other questions to which either a “yes” or a “no” must be equally misleading. And men of science have specially realised this, since many a time they have been unjustly credited with evasion, or with untenable or immoral views, because they either answered to a “plain question”: “In one sense, yes; in another, no,” or else gave an answer which could not fail to be misunderstood by a mind which was governed by unconscious survivals. So far as we are in touch with modern culture, we no longer mean what we must have meant in the days before Copernicus, when we say, for instance, “the sun rises.” When we speak of infection, we no longer mean what we used to mean before microbes had been heard of. When we talk of “heat,” we no longer mean what we used to mean even fifty years ago. And when a man says that he believes in the sun, the planets, the cosmos, in the heavens and the earth, in mind and matter, in soul and body, in spirit and flesh, he cannot, if he would, mean just what his forefathers meant, or indeed anything at all absolutely and finally. Whether we will or no, the meaning of such terms is changing on our very tongues, and ever swaying between the extremes which we call literal and metaphorical; “heaven,” e. g., ranging in value from sky to human destiny; “earth,” from soil to the visible Home of Man. We may appeal, and are right to appeal to “hard, dry” facts; but we perforce put something out of ourselves even into these. They become “facts” under the quickening touch of “mind,” while that emerges from a dim world of prepossession, bequeathing us many a primitive legacy from pre-intelligent sentience, and perhaps from little-suspected sources lying yet further back. For instance, primitive terror in its “superstitious” forms tended to represent man as inferior to and dependent on powers of some sort;—and this was true to natural order in the fact that his very world was not self-centred and was dependent for its best boons upon a greater than itself. As language advanced, he began quite naturally to express his meaning in “appropriate metaphors”; to use, e. g., the figures of light and then of sight to describe what he had, as we now say, “in his mind,” or what sense-messages, as we now say, had “put into his head.” For “something told him” that light, as it had been the first pleasure, was also the great means of life.⁠[90] And he “saw,” in however grotesque a guise, the unbroken continuity of the organic and the inorganic, and perhaps even more clearly than most of us yet do, that of so-called “matter” and so-called “mind.” Perhaps in some cases, therefore, he chose his imagery better than (after long ages of dualism carried to the splitting-point) we generally do now.

He knew again that the senses after all, stern masters though they were while life was so hard to live, had very narrow limits; and that the world was in some sense fuller and richer of life than it had seemed to be as known directly through them.⁠[91] And then he wondered,—and began to ask. He was the first Questioner. As Prof. Max Müller says,⁠[92] “the greater the savagery, the dullness, the stupidity with which Homo sapiens began, the greater the marvel at what must have been from the first, though undeveloped, in him, and made him in the end what we find him to be in the men of light and leading of our own age.” The mere fact of the question is the riddle to be solved. For certainly the beasts had not taught him either to wonder or to ask. And not merely insatiable questioning but something more here rises to challenge our attention and to demand reflection. Man is the first critic because he is the first idealist; the first to be discontented, to protest, to see life as a “ravelled end,” as something which is incomplete and speaks of something more. Surely in any case the step of all steps, the deepest yet the narrowest line to cross is the step from something noticed or found, from something which happens or appears, from something which somehow affects us, excites us, to its significance.

Of course in one sense it is impossible to fix any definite moment as that of the advent of this “significance.” Animals interpret each other’s aspect and gestures, often indeed with a subtle precision which to some extent we have lost. But interpretation in the intellectual sense becomes, from our present point of view, that which makes us really human. Our progress, our ascent, is mainly marked in this. The root-question to ask in gauging levels of humanity is, how much can a given man interpret or translate, of a world that teems with meaning? How much can he truly classify and relate, how much can he rightly infer and conclude, how much can he account for, explain, and fruitfully apply? For after all, results must be our tests. Claims and credentials are nothing, unless they can show this warrant; whereas truth which can use all facts alike is the very means of survival. Man begins by doing, by acting out impulse; then he learns to “think” little by little, observing, questioning, pondering, testing his way onward and upward. And throughout his patient, often painful journey, he is himself perpetually challenged. Nature’s stimulating appeals rain upon him ceaselessly from every side; she orders him to master all her meanings. He responds:—at first again, “blindly,” but ever rising to higher grades of answer. Both deficiency and error are no doubt more or less present in all mental response to actual fact—that is, in all experience. But the essence of sanity from the first lies in corrective power. Everywhere there is either absence of notice, absence of response, or there is experimental activity (broadly speaking) corrected at once; automatically or by the combined effect of the related organic activities. For instance, in health, if in using the hand, one finger accidentally goes astray, the coördinating muscles promptly recall it to a “sense of duty.” We know how the same rule works in speech and writing. Therefore, unless “voluntary” and “capricious” (or “willing” and “wilful”) are synonyms, the advent of volition ought not to mean the abrogation of this rule.

It is, however, obvious that “natural selection” can only operate in cases where death or sterility is the consequence of failure in adaptation and appropriate reaction, or segregation the consequence of excessive variation. But the point here is, why does not a tendency to correction, thus established, survive automatically in incipient imagination and therefore in language? It seems almost a burlesque of popular notions of “free will” to suppose that the moment the death-penalty is taken off, the new-born intelligence, unique in adapting power, should go astray persistently without let or hindrance. Many now merely formal or even jocular customs still prevailing⁠[93] testify, as legacies from a remote time of danger needing to be averted, to the strength of tendencies organised during myriads of generations under the pressure of the struggle for life. Why does not this apply to language?

But sight gives us here perhaps the most suggestive lesson; for therein the ascending series seems especially gradual and unbroken. The eye, unlike the other organs of sense is an outgrowth of the very brain itself; “the retina ... is in reality a part of the brain.”⁠[94] We may well therefore connect its functions specially with the thought of significance; it is the main out-post of our central means of interpretation.

Taking the stages in the evolution of the eye, and using a short summary of these as a convenient means of testing the value of a conspicuous group of metaphors, we find (1) a mere dint; (2) this dint deepening into a pit which (3) gradually narrows. Hitherto we have had only light and darkness; now we have an image, though but a dim one. (4) The pit is closed by a transparent membrane; this is protection, not obstacle. (5) The lens is formed by deposit of cuticle. Gain; increased distinctness and increased brightness. The lens can focus a larger pencil of rays from each part of the object to each part of the retina (corresponding point). Finally, iris and eyelid protect the perfected eye more completely, and enable it both to bear more light and to discern more detail.

If mental development were in any way comparable to this physiological development, we should expect to find (1) something which would naturally be described as a vague or dim “impression”; gradually deepening, becoming more distinctly localised as the stimulus became more definitely “impressive.” (2) We should begin to find “reality” and the “unreal”; “fact” and “fancy”; “truth” and “falsehood”; knowledge and ignorance,—contrasted as “light” and “darkness.”⁠[95] And this is what actually happens.⁠[96]

(3) Still our mental “impression” would not as yet afford us an image; “imagination” only now comes upon the scene and begins to work (though as yet “dimly”) upon the objects which more and more “incisively” “impress” us. (4) Our deep “impression” is closed in one sense from direct contact with the outward; mental vision becomes more delicately differentiated from the emotional “touch,” however this may be specialised and intensified. But what secludes this is transparent; it is protection, not obstacle. We rightly speak of mental penetration; of “seeing through” a superficial limit. The mental “lens” is formed from that “continuum” on which the original “impression” was made. The gain now is increased distinctness and brightness. More rays of “light,” of reality, of fact, of truth, of knowledge, can now be focussed from each part of a given object (or group of objects) of mental attention and interest; to each part of the responsive “sensitive plate” of the mind. Finally we have, so to speak, increased protective growth. The function of what are called academic culture and scientific method, with their fastidious standards of fitness and accuracy, may perhaps represent something not unlike that of iris and eyelid, enabling the developing mind safely to bear intenser illumination and also to discern more subtle detail.

It must be admitted that so far as it goes this is a significant psychological parable. However slender its right to the position even of a working clue to early stages of mind, it has at least better credentials than many accepted analogies can claim. And throughout its course what most “impresses” itself upon one’s mind is the steady maintenance of invariable reaction to excitation, and of protection from unfavorable stimulus.

“Mind,” as Mr. Shadworth Hodgson tells us,⁠[97] “is a fiction of the fancy.” Of course this is open to the retort that so is fancy a fiction of the mind, or fiction a fancy of the mind.

Psychology is full of these see-saws of paradox, depending on vicissitudes of linguistic usage or context. But mind is indeed a fiction of the fancy when we endow it with a fanciful freedom from all ties with what we call physical reality. For this, however plainly we may recognise its genesis in our own sequences of sense-impression, does practically through them rule us with an undeviating severity which neither fiction nor fancy can tamper with. Therefore, if we think it absurd to suppose that there may possibly be an undiscovered vein of authentic and really indicative symbol or metaphor running through the arbitrary meshes of fanciful custom or mythical term, we are in fact implying that all clues from the original interactions of physical energy were entirely lost when what we call “mind” issued first in language. But at all events we may be sure that links between the “physical” and the “psychical” are everywhere drawing closer and emerging clearer, however buried as yet in a mass of the fantastic or the arbitrary.

It will probably be objected that we can never hope to find these. No doubt such an attempt must mean the patient work of many lifetimes, and at best we could not hope to lay bare the ultimate point of “origin.” But yet it seems worth trying. For after all, even the results which may appear so scanty in the tracing back of language, are already rich far beyond what could have been hoped for a few generations back. And if it were once realised that such a line of work might have practical and far-reaching issues; if we really saw that thus some barren disputes and speculations might cease to bar the way or to waste some precious energies, we should be more than rewarded. In his “Dialogues of Plato”⁠[98] Professor Jowett warned us twenty years ago of our linguistic dangers, repeating his warning with greater emphasis and in fresh forms in the admirable essays added in the edition just published. He urges that the “greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants and not allowing them to be our masters.” “Words,” he tells us, “appear to be isolated but they are really the parts of an organism which is always being reproduced. They are refined by civilisation, harmonised by poetry, emphasised by literature, technically applied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the border-ground of human knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every lively-minded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of millions and yet are always imperceptibly changing:—not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage, gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us.” Then he reminds us of what we too often forget; that “language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected, an effect and partly a cause of our common humanity, present at every moment to the individual and yet having a sort of eternal or universal nature.”⁠[99]

Nowadays, when we feel most scathingly superior, we often announce that we fail to see and have yet to learn something which, bringing us, it may be, a really fresh idea, unpleasantly stirs misgiving. Let us go on with our greeting, meaning it in good earnest. For when we honestly and without reservation consent to learn and succeed in seeing some things now waiting for our study we may find more than we look for, within reach. After all it may be that we have really failed to see and have really yet to learn the part that meaning—whether of language or of conduct—and its change or variations (successive or simultaneous) have had throughout the mental history of man. It may be that while the ordinary modern metaphor like the ordinary modern analogy is a mere rhetorical device, some few images may be found to hail from an altogether deeper and more authentic source. Many, however ancient, are not of course any the more valid for their antiquity. On the contrary it is obvious that such a figure for instance as “foundation” or “basis” to express an ultimate necessity, is a survival from days in which the earth was supposed to require and to possess such fixed and immutable base, while the analogies, e. g. between the human and the inorganic orders are now reversed. We import the idea of mechanism and invariable sequence into the former instead of exporting conscious intention into the latter; we level down where our forefathers levelled up. And we have to beware of the subtle atmosphere of fallacy thus introduced.

But on the other hand it is conceivable that some may be found to belong to that as yet mysterious energy on which natural selection plays and of which variation is the outcome or the sign. What we find in language may thus be, as it were, not merely the “scarred and weather-worn” remnant of geogenic strata but sometimes the meteorite, the calcined fragment of earlier worlds of correspondence, ultra-earthly, cosmical. We have no right to do more than ask and seek and knock at the gates of fact in such a matter as this. But until that has been done; until at least we have tried the experiment; have looked for grades of validity in metaphor and analogy in the light of modern science, and still more, have recognised clearly the powerful though hidden effects upon us of organised mental picture brought in surreptitiously with verbal imagery, or by comparison; we cannot know whether such an effort is worth while or no, or what harvest it may yield. For after all, whether we like it or no, we are heliocentric; the world and all that is in it is cosmically generated. As far as science—and experience—are concerned, anything which says “I don’t admit that origin; I claim to have produced myself or to have been originated by and on the earth in a final sense,” must make good its geocentric or self-creating pretensions with overwhelming cogency and rigorous proof. We appeal to the “light” of science, of reason, of experience, against the “darkness” of superstition, myth, and mysticism. And we are thus appealing not to the supersensuous or supernatural but to the ultra-satellitic. Not only beyond the earth and touch but beyond the atmosphere and hearing is the home of the light that lightens our small world, calling forth in us the answer of sight. And the manifold revelations through this sense—in its mental as well as bodily character—press upon us, with greater and greater insistence, the wealth of our relations with the universe.

In any case, meaning—in the widest sense of the word—is the only value of whatever “fact” presents itself to us. Without this, to observe and record appearances or occurrences would become a worse than wasteful task. Significance is the one value of all that consciousness brings, or that intelligence deals with; the one value of life itself. But perhaps for this very reason we have taken it too much for granted. It may need a more definite place in psychological inquiries. It may have unsuspected bearings.

When we have realised better what manner of gift this is, we may find answers of which we have prematurely despaired; answers coming not from the “mystical” point of the horizon of experience, but rather from the neural. And let us beware here of repeating the pre-scientific error of postulating, for figurative purposes, a flat earth on which whatever lies beyond “horizons” never meets! But, it may be said, why not? Why should it signify? Why, but because Man is the one not merely who thinks, or speaks, or writes, or looks upwards, but the one who means, the one who is the meaning of much, and makes the meaning of all; the one who will not tolerate the unmeaning anywhere in experience. Nothing remains but that he should interpret rightly; that he should apprehend nature and experience in their true sense. It is the glory of science that she puts this aim in the forefront of her labors. She tells us that nothing can be done without assumption and hypothesis as to the meaning of things. But that significance belongs to the very spring to which we owe her dauntless energy and her accumulating triumphs.

Why should it signify? The very term answers us. To “signify” is the one test of the important. The significant is alone worth notice. We inherit a mode of thinking which we are at last becoming able to criticise in the light of knowledge gained by observation and experiment. But if we persist in using, without warning to hearer or reader, imagery which has no longer either sense or relevance, or which tends to call up a false mental picture or to perpetuate an else decaying error, we shall to that extent forfeit the very gifts which science brings us, and must not complain of the obstinate persistence of ideas which needlessly divide us. At least, let us try to realise more clearly what we are losing in this way. The danger even thus must needs be lessened; detected bogies become powerless for mischief; but we need not leave their ancient home empty, swept, and garnished; stores of verified analogy are waiting to replace them. The figurative must not indeed be pressed, still less literalised. But we may see that it conveys a true, rather than a false impression; and harmonises with, instead of contradicting that which we most surely know.⁠[100]

It may be said in a true sense that the function of the hero, the saint, the poet, is to bring the world to life. But the function of the devoted servant of science, the critical scholar, the true philosopher, is to bring the world to truth, in a sense only now becoming possible. Through the last discipline alone, in its most thorough applications, can we hope fully to master the scope of all significance and the laws of all its workings. Then, indeed, we may further hope to read with a fresh eye the Significance of Life.

Victoria Welby.

FOOTNOTES:

REPLY TO THE NECESSITARIANS. REJOINDER TO DR. CARUS.

§ 1. In The Monist for January, 1891, and in the number for April, 1892, I attacked the doctrine that every event is precisely determined by law. Like everybody else, I admit that there is regularity: I go further; I maintain the existence of law as something real and general. But I hold there is no reason to think that there are general formulæ to which the phenomena of nature always conform, or to which they precisely conform. At the end of my second paper, the partisans of the doctrine of necessity were courteously challenged and besought to attempt to answer my arguments. This, so far as I can learn, Dr. Carus alone, in The Monist of July and October, 1892, has publicly vouchsafed to do. For this I owe him my particular thanks and a careful rejoinder.

§ 2. I number the paragraphs of his papers consecutively. The following index shows the pages on which those paragraphs commence, and the numbered sections of this rejoinder in which they are noticed.

DR. CARUS REJOINDER

Vol. II, p. 560 ¶ 1

” ” 2 §28

” ” 3 29

” 561 4 23.27

” ” 5 21

” ” 6 18

” ” 7 18

” 562 8 18 bis.

” ” 9 21

” ” 10

” 563 11 12.21.22

” ” 12 19

” ” 13 19

” 564 14 3.12 bis. 22

” ” 15 8 ter, 16

” 565 16 21

” ” 17 3

” ” 18 3

” ” 19 13 note

” 566 20 14

” ” 21 13, 14

” ” 22 3.12.22

” ” 23 12

” ” 24 3.13.14

” 567 25 8

” ” 26 8

” ” 27 8.22

” ” 28 20.22

” ” 29 12

” 568 30 22

” ” 31 22 bis

” ” 32 22

” 569 33 22

” ” 34 22

” ” 35 8

” ” 36 29

” ” 37

” 570 38

” ” 39

” ” 40

” 571 41

” ” 42

” ” 43

” 572 44 23

” ” 45

” ” 46 5.23

” 573 47

” ” 48 7

” ” 49 7

” ” 50 7

” 574 51 7.25

” ” 52

” ” 53 25

” ” 54

” ” 55 25 bis

” 575 56 17

” ” 57 17 bis

” ” 58 17.25

” ” 59 17

” ” 60 17

” 576 61 7.17.25 bis

” ” 62 17.21

” ” 63 17

” 577 64 17 bis

” ” 65 26

” ” 66 25

” ” 67 25 bis

” 578 68 6.7

” ” 69 17

” 579 70 6

” ” 71 3

” 580 72 3

” ” 73 3

” ” 74 3

” ” 75 3

” 581 76 3

” ” 77 3.11

” ” 78

” ” 79 21

” 582 80

” ” 81 29

” ” 82 29

” ” 83 29

Vol. III, 68 84 5

” ” 85 27

” ” 86

” 69 87 12

” ” 88 5.15 bis

” ” 89

” ” 90

” ” 91 5

” ” 92 5

” 70 93 5

” ” 94 5

” ” 95 3

” ” 96 4.11

” 71 97

” ” 98

” ” 99

” ” 100

” 72 101

” ” 102 11

” ” 103 6

” ” 104

” ” 105

” 73 106 11

” ” 107 6

” ” 108 6

” ” 109 6

” ” 110 6

” ” 111 6

” 74 112 6

” ” 113 6.11

” ” 114 6

” ” 115 6

” 75 116 6.7

” ” 117 6

” 76 118

” ” 119 9

” ” 120 6.16

” ” 121 14

” ” 122 11

” 77 123 3

” ” 124 10

” ” 125 7

” 78 126 8

” ” 127 8

” ” 128 29

” 79 129

” ” 130

” ” 131

” ” 132

” ” 133 27

” ” 134

” 80 135

” ” 136

” ” 137 15

” ” 138 15

” ” 139 5.15

” 81 140 15

” ” 141 15

” ” 142 15.25

” ” 143 15.24

” ” 144 15 bis

” ” 145 15 bis

” ” 146 15 bis

” ” 147 15 ter

” 82 148 15

” ” 149 12.15

” ” 150 15 bis. 25

” 83 151 15.24

” ” 152 15.24

” ” 153 15.24

” ” 154 15.24

” ” 155 15.24

” 84 156 15 bis

” ” 157 15

” ” 158 15.24

” 85 159 15.24

” ” 160 15.24

” 86 161 15 bis

” ” 162 15

” ” 163 5.14

” ” 164 14

” 87 165 4.14

” ” 166 14

” ” 167 14

” ” 168 27

” ” 169 27

” 88 170 27

” ” 171 27

” ” 172 27

” ” 173

” ” 174

” 89 175 27

” ” 176 27 bis

” ” 177 27

” ” 178 27

” ” 179

” ” 180 30

” ” 181

” ” 182

” 90 183 30

” ” 184

” ” 185 27

” ” 186 27

” 91 187 27

” ” 188

” ” 189

” ” 190

” 92 191 4

” ” 192 27 bis

” ” 193 20.27 bis

” 93 194

” ” 195 8

” ” 196 8

” 94 197

” ” 198 6

” ” 199 30

” ” 200

” ” 201

” 95 202

” ” 203 20.29

” ” 204 29

” 96 205 20

” ” 206

” ” 207

§ 3. Dr. Carus’s philosophy is hard to understand. Some phrases which he frequently uses lead the reader to imagine that he is listening to an old-fashioned Königsberg Kantian. What, then, is our surprise when we find (¶ 14) that he sneers at the Kantian, Sir William Hamilton (whom he calls Mr. Hamilton) as having “no adequate conception of the a priori.” In his “Ursache, Grund und Zweck” (1883), an admirably clear and systematic exposition of much of his thought, he takes a Schleiermacherian view of the a priori. He admits it to be founded in the universal conditions of cognition; but he thinks it is among the objective rather than the subjective conditions. This is an opinion to which Hamilton is also at times inclined. It is a weak conception, unless the whole distinction between the inward and the outward world be reformed in the light of agapastic and synechistic ontology. For to deny that the a priori is subjective is to remove its essential character; and to make it both subjective and objective (otherwise than in the sense in which Kant himself makes it objective) is uncalled for, and is cut off by Ockham’s razor. But when synechism has united the two worlds, this view gains new life.

Another thing which has astonished me is Dr. Carus’s extravagant laudation (¶ 17) of Venn’s highly enlightened and remarkably bright-thinking, yet blundering little book, “The Logic of Chance.”⁠[101] This is the way he speaks of it: “This admirable work, we will make bold to say, marks a new epoch in the study of logic.” He adds that it “paves the way which Mr. Peirce has actually followed.” But the question of the nature of probability had long before that publication engaged the attention of some of the most powerful intellects in England; and my opinion concerning it was fully made up before I saw the book. I do not think I learned anything from that except a classification of the philosophies of probability. However, after all his eulogy, Dr. Carus only uses the book to quote from it Mill’s rewording of Kant’s definition of causation, which he would better have quoted direct.

Let me say, not to Dr. Carus, but to the younger generation of readers, that if they imagine that Hamilton, because he is antiquated, is not worth reading, they are much mistaken. The Scotistic elements of his philosophy, and his method in the notes on Reid are especially worthy of attention. As for Mill, though his philosophy was not profound, it is, at least in his “Examination of Hamilton,” admirably set forth. Whoever wishes to appeal to the American philosophical mind needs to be quite familiar with the writings of these two men.

Dr. Carus himself accepts all that I hold for erroneous in Kant’s definition of causation as universal and necessary sequence. Mill merely substitutes the exacter words invariable for “universal,” and unconditional for “necessary.”⁠[102] In giving his form of the definition, Mill shows why it is not applicable to the sequence of day and night, namely, that that is not necessary. Yet Dr. Carus writes (¶ 18) of this very same sequence as if it came under Mill’s definition!⁠[103]

Again, why should he make it “the immortal merit of the great Scotchman” (¶ 22), that is, of Hume, that he admitted the truth of Leibniz’s principle?

The famed puzzle of causation is peculiarly understood by Dr. Carus. The difficulties which the perusal of Hume suggested to the mind of Kant,⁠[104] were such as belonged to all categories, or general conceptions of the understanding. The precritical Kant inherited a very decided nominalism from Leibniz and Wolf; and the puzzle for him was simply the usual difficulty that plagues nominalism when it finds itself confronted with a reality which has an element of generality. Necessity is, I need hardly say, but a particular variety of universality. But Dr. Carus (¶ 24) passes over this, to dwell upon an entirely different objection to causation, namely, that it seems to be a creation out of nothing, and a miracle.

I find myself equally at cross-purposes with him, when in ¶¶ 71-77, he speaks of the prevalent views of logicians concerning comprehension. This word, in logic, measures the amount of predicates or marks attached to a conception; but Dr. Carus’s criticisms seem to be based upon the idea that by comprehension is meant logical breadth, or the amount of subjects to which the conception is applicable.

I am simply gravelled by his remarks (¶ 95) concerning sundry English words.

No more do I know what to make of his praise (¶ 123) of the German translation of a French phrase used in the theory of functions, meaning univocally determined.

§ 4. One habit which goes far to obscure Dr. Carus’s meaning is that whenever he finds his opinion at variance with a familiar saying, instead of rejecting that formula, he retains it and changes the meaning. This is calculated to throw the whole discussion into confusion. Thus, nothing is more certain than that the so-called “law of identity,” or A is A, was intended to express the fact that every term is predicable of itself. But Dr. Carus, simply because he finds that “meaningless and useless” (¶ 96), thinks himself authorised to confuse the terminology of logic by making this formula, A = A, under the same old name, mean that things to which the same name is applicable are for some purpose equivalent.

In like manner, he changes the meaning of the word freedom (¶ 165), so that the distinction between those who maintain and those who oppose the freedom of the will may, in words, disappear. It seems scarcely defensible for a thoroughgoing necessitarian, such as he is, to fly the flag of Free Will.

He, also, changes the meaning of spontaneity so far that, according to him, “masses gravitate spontaneously” (¶ 191), and so pretends that his doctrine does not suppress the spontaneity of nature!

§ 5. There are other questions of terminology in which I am unable to agree with Dr. Carus. Thus, when I define necessitarianism as “the theory that the will is subject to the general mechanical law of cause and effect,” Dr. Carus (¶ 139) wishes to delete “mechanical.” But the result would be to define a doctrine to which the advocates of free will would generally subscribe, as readily as their opponents. In order properly to limit the definition, it is quite requisite to exclude “free causation.” By “mechanical” causation, I mean a causation entirely determinative, like that of dynamics, but not necessarily operating upon matter.

Dr. Carus mentions (¶ 84) that there are several different ideas to which the term necessity is applied. It seems to me that what lies at the bottom of all of them is the experience of reaction against one’s will. In the simplest form, this gives the sense of reality. Dr. Carus himself admits (¶ 46) that reality involves the idea of inevitable fate. Yet philosophical necessity is a special case of universality. But the universality, or better, the generality, of a pure form involves no necessity. It is only when the form is materialised that the distinction between necessity and freedom makes itself plain. These ideas are, therefore, as it seems to me, of a mixed nature. Dr. Carus (¶¶ 91-94) insists that by the necessary, he wishes to be understood to mean in all cases the inevitable. This is the idea of fate, and is not the conception which determinists usually attach to the term necessity. Yet he does not appear to be quite consistent. At one time (¶ 88), he carefully distinguishes necessity from fate. At another time (¶ 163), every element of compulsion is to be excluded from the conception of necessity.

§ 6. One important key to Dr. Carus’s opinions is the recognition of the fact that, like many other philosophers, he is a nominalist tinctured with realistic opinions.

He says (¶ 103), that “there is no need of discussing the truism that, properly speaking, there is no absolute sameness.” Now, upon the nominalistic theory, there is not only no absolute or numerical identity, but there are not even any real agreements or likenesses between individuals; for likeness consists merely in the calling of several individuals by one name, or (in some systems) in their exciting one idea. On the other hand, upon the realistic theory, the fact that identity is a relation of reason does not in the least prevent it from being real. On that theory, it is real unless it is false that anything is itself. Thus, upon either theory, identity is just as real as similarity. But Dr. Carus, being a nominalist leaning toward realism, is inclined to make dynamical relations real, and second-intentional ones unreal. This opinion, I think, is a transitional one.

The declaration (¶ 198) that “natural laws are simply a description of nature as nature is,” and that “the facts of nature express the character of nature,” are nominalistic. But in another place (¶¶ 107-116), he says distinctly that uniformities are real.

He says (¶ 70), “Mr. Peirce attempts to explain natural laws as if they were concrete and single facts.” This is eminently nominalistic. The nominalist alone makes this sharp distinction between the abstract and the concrete,⁠[105] which must not be confounded with Hegel’s distinction for which the same words are used. The nominalist alone falls into the absurdity of talking of “single facts,” or individual generals. Yet Dr. Carus says (¶ 68) that natural laws describe the facts of nature sub specie aeternitatis. Now I understand Spinoza to be a realist. In ¶117 he considers it “settled” “that there are samenesses.” This is realistic. But in ¶ 120, he holds “the whole business of science to be to systematise the samenesses of experience,” which is nominalistic.

§ 7. Dr. Carus seems to be in some doubt as to how far evolutionism ought to be carried. In ¶¶ 48-51, he seems to side with my contention that it should be thoroughgoing. In ¶116, he makes intellect an evolution from feeling. Yet he is sometimes (¶ 125) “inclined” to say the world never was a chaos; he sometimes (¶ 61) thinks it weak to suppose that real chance begets order; and he sometimes (¶ 68) goes so far as to pronounce eternity to be the conditio sine qua non of natural law.

§ 8. Every reader of The Monist knows that our good editor’s great word is “formal law.” The clearest statement he has ever made of this doctrine I find in the following two sentences (¶ 127):

“The a priori systems of thought are ... constructions raised out of the recognition of the formal, i. e. relational samenesses that appear in experience. All possibilities of a certain class of relations can be exhausted and formulated in theorems.”⁠[106]

This is perspicuous. For example, of pairs, we can easily show that there are but two forms A:A and A:B. This proposition,—theorem if you will,—exhausts the possibilities. If we make believe there is no danger of falling into error in mathematical reasoning,—and one danger, though not, perhaps, a very serious one, is eliminated,—then this proposition is absolutely certain. But I will say, at once, that such a proposition is not, in a proper sense, synthetic. It is a mere corollary from the definition of a pair. Moreover, its application to experience, or to possible experience, opens the door to probability, and shuts out absolute necessity and certainty, in toto.

Concerning points like this, Dr. Carus, in company with the general body of thinkers, is laboring under a great disadvantage from not understanding the logic of relatives. It is a subject I have been studying for a great many years, and I feel and know that I have an important report that I ought to make upon it. This branch of logic is, however, so abstruse, that I have never been able to find the leisure to translate my conclusions into a form in which their significance would be manifest even to a powerful thinker whose thoughts had not long been turned in that direction. I shall succeed in doing so, whenever I can find myself in a situation where I need think of nothing else for months, and not before. That may not be for thirty years; but I believe it is the intention of providence that it should be. Meantime, I will testify, and the reader can take my testimony for what he thinks it is worth, that all deductive reasoning, except that kind which is so childishly simple that acute minds have doubted whether there was any reasoning there,—I mean non-relative syllogism,—requires an act of choice; because from a given premise, several conclusions,—in some cases an infinite number,—can be drawn. Hence, Dr. Carus is altogether too hasty in his confidence (¶¶ 195, 196) that general thinking machines “are not impossibilities.” An act of original and arbitrary determination would be required; and it seems almost evident that no machine could perform such an act except within narrow limits, thought out beforehand and embodied in its construction. Moreover, positive observation is called for in all inference, even the simplest,—though in deduction it is only observation of an object of imagination. Moreover, a peculiar act which may properly be called abstraction⁠[107] is usually required, consisting in seizing evanescent elements of thought and holding them before the mind as “substantive” objects, to borrow a phrase from William James. At the same time, the process I am describing, that is, relative deduction, is perfectly general and demonstrative, and depends upon the truth of the assumed premises, and not, like inductive reasoning, upon the manner in which those premises present themselves.

But the application of the logic of relatives shows that the propositions of arithmetic, which Dr. Carus usually adduces as examples of formal law (¶ 15), are, in fact, only corollaries from definitions. They are certain only as applied to ideal constructions, and in such application, they are merely analytical.

The truth is our ideas about the distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments is much modified by the logic of relatives, and by the logic of probable inference. An analytical proposition is a definition or a proposition deducible from definitions; a synthetical proposition is a proposition not analytical. Deduction, or analytical reasoning, is, as I have shown in my “Theory of Probable Reasoning,” a reasoning in which the conclusion follows (necessarily, or probably) from the state of things expressed in the premises, in contradistinction to scientific, or synthetical, reasoning, which is a reasoning in which the conclusion follows probably and approximately from the premises, owing to the conditions under which the latter have been observed, or otherwise ascertained. The two classes of reasoning present, besides, some other contrasts that need not be insisted upon in this place. They also present some significant resemblances. Deduction is really a matter of perception and of experimentation, just as induction and hypothetic inference are; only, the perception and experimentation are concerned with imaginary objects instead of with real ones. The operations of perception and of experimentation are subject to error, and therefore it is only in a Pickwickian sense that mathematical reasoning can be said to be perfectly certain. It is so, only under the condition that no error creeps into it: yet, after all, it is susceptible of attaining a practical certainty. So, for that matter, is scientific reasoning; but not so readily. Again, mathematics brings to light results as truly occult⁠[108] and unexpected as those of chemistry; only they are results dependent upon the action of reason in the depths of our own consciousness, instead of being dependent, like those of chemistry, upon the action of Cosmical Reason, or Law. Or, stating the matter under another aspect, analytical reasoning depends upon associations of similarity, synthetical reasoning upon associations of contiguity. The logic of relatives, which justifies these assertions, shows accordingly that deductive reasoning is really quite different from what it was supposed by Kant to be; and this explains how it is that he and others have taken various mathematical propositions to be synthetical which in their ideal sense, as propositions of pure mathematics, are in truth only analytical.

Descending from things I can demonstrate to things of which various facts, in the light of those demonstrations, fully persuade me, I will say that in my opinion there are many synthetical propositions which, if not a priori in Dr. Carus’s sense, are, at least, innate (notwithstanding his frequent denials of this, as in ¶ 15) though he is quite right in saying that their abstract and distinct formulation comes very late (¶ 126). But turn the facts as I will, I cannot see that they afford the slightest reason for thinking that such propositions are ever absolutely universal, exact, or necessary in their truth. On the contrary, the principles of probable inference show this to be impossible.

Dr. Carus adduces the instance of a geometrical proposition, namely, “that two congruent regular tetrahedrons, when put together, will form a hexahedron.” (¶ 25.) This, he says, seems to be “a very wonderful thing”; for why should not a larger tetrahedron be formed, just as two heaps of flour make a large heap of flour? Yet, he continues, the probability that the two tetrahedrons do always make a hexahedron is 1, “which means certainty” (¶ 27). But as it happens, the proposition, in the form stated is quite erroneous. What is true is this. If two tetrahedra are so placed that one face of each is coincident with one face of the other, while all the other faces are inclined to one another, and if of the 8 faces, the 2 that are coincident are not counted, there remain to be counted 8-2=6 faces. But there is nothing more wonderful about this than that 8-2=6, which is an easy corollary from definitions. Very few propositions in mathematics that appear “marvellous” will hold water; and those few excite our astonishment only because the real complexity of the conditions are masked in an intuitional presentation of them.

Dr. Carus holds (¶ 15) that formal knowledge is absolutely universal, exact, and necessary. In some cases, as where he says that, given the number of dimensions of space, the entire geometry could be deduced (¶ 35), the boasted infallibility will prove on examination to be downright error. In all other cases, the propositions only relate to ideal constructions, and their applicability to the real world is at the best doubtful, and, as I think, false; while in their ideal purity, they are not synthetical.

Thus, my good friend and antagonist holds that the combination of oxygen and hydrogen to produce water is not “different in principle” from that of the tetrahedra to produce a hexahedron (¶ 26). There is all the difference between the ideal and the real; which to my Scotistic mind is very important. But this is not the only passage in which he speaks as if form were the principle of individuation.

§ 9. Dr. Carus’s position is even weaker than that of Kant, who makes space, for example, a necessary form of thought (in a broad sense of that term). But Dr. Carus appears to consider space as an absolute reality. For he says (¶ 119) that “every single point of space has its special and individual qualities.” Here again form is made the principle of individuation; whence the queer phrase, “individual qualities.”

§ 10. Dr. Carus argues that whatever is unequivocally determinate is necessary. (¶ 124.) Were the determination spoken of real dynamic determination, this would be a mere truism. But the expression used, eindeutig bestimmt, merely expresses a mathematical determination, and therefore no real necessity ensues. The equation