Chapter 17

[Footnote 1: Here again the reader must beware of slipping from logical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we _attribute_ a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of the case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its original place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically incorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.]

unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[1]

It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of radical empiricism solely.

V

The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some as more external. When two terms are _similar_, their very natures enter into the relation. Being _what_ they are, no matter where or when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the _where_ and the _when_, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: the term's inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any

[Footnote 1: Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his _Man and the Cosmos_; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter xii (the Validity of Judgment) of his _Theory of Knowledge_; and by F.C.S. Schiller, in his _Humanism_, Essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are Hodder's, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. i, 307; Stout's, in the _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, 1901-02, p. 1; and MacLennan's, in the _Journal of Philosophy_, etc., vol. i, 403.]

book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created _pro hac vice_, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. It is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism in its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example, we are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could get to _be_, and get into space at all, then they may have done so separately. Once there, however, they are _additives_ to one another, and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations may supervene between them. The question of how things could come to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their relations, once the being accomplished, may consist in.

Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the _situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book itself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the table. He admits that 'such external relations

[Footnote 1: Once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at issue. The point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished from _B_, is not the same thing as mere _A_ not in any way affected' (_Elements of Metaphysics_, 1903, p. 145). Note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' which begs the whole question.]

seem possible and even existing.... That you do not alter what you compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these difficulties.... There is a relation in the result, and this relation, we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying the terms by it? [_Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their relative position_.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_].... If the terms from their inner nature do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all.... Things are spatially related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and yet in no way themselves

[Footnote 1: But 'is there any sense,' asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, on p. 579, 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and "about" things?' Surely such a question may be left unanswered.]

are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I reply that, if so, I cannot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. The process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it [_surely they contribute to it all there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational throughout. [_If 'irrational' here means simply 'non-rational,' or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, Mr. Bradley should show wherein and how_.] But, if they contribute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [_Why so, if they contribute only their surface? In such relations as 'on,' 'a foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' etc., only surfaces are in question_.] ... If the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected [_inwardly altered?_] by the arrangement.... That for working purposes we treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that of course is not the question at issue here. That question is ... whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [_i.e., a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by the facts.'[1]

Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a medium of external relations;

[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, pp. 575-576.]

and he then concludes that 'Irrationality and externality cannot be the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in which their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the background appear those fresh results which never could have come from the premises' (p. 577). And he adds that 'Where the whole is different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be different.... They are altered so far only [_how far? farther than externally, yet not through and through?_], but still they are altered.... I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by their whole [_qualified how?--do their external relations, situations, dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify them 'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are altered' (p. 579).

Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und zwar_ 'so far.' But just _how_ far is the whole problem; and 'through-and-through' would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat undecided utterances[1])

[Footnote 1: I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its 'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' gets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, 'may throughout remain unchanged' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with the rest of him, there may be 'no change' (p. 580). Why does he immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of such abstractions would be an _ignoratio elenchi_? It is impossible to admit it to be such. The entire _elenchus_ and inquest is just as to whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also contribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. If they can thus mould various wholes into new _gestalt-qualitäten_, then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in different wholes [whether physically able would depend on additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All the theses of radical empiricism, in short, follow.]

to be the full bradleyan answer. The 'whole' which he here treats as primary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' simply _must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There _must_ be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The 'must' appears here as a _Machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of Mr. Bradley's absolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly confesses that how the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578).

Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. Bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. 'External relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality.

VI

Mr. Bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,' but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain _whats_ from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness _as thus isolated_. But this does not prevent him from equally well understanding their combination with each other as _originally experienced in the concrete_, or their confluence with new sensible experiences in which they recur as 'the same.' Returning into the stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to him impossible.[1] 'To understand a complex _AB_,' he

[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this: 'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ table? Why isn't the table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on' connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? Mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? But, if so, in what can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? Somewhere we must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.]

says, 'I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning, say with _A_, if I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I have got beside _A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction 'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in neither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more than another external element. And "facts," once for all, are for my intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 572).

Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of transition, but says that

[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W.J.]

when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. 569).

Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like in case we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be hooked on _ad infinitum_. The nearest approach he makes to describing a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_ as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the nature of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley, seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet' are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[1] All that I can verify in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions),

[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related again to each! Both Bradley (_Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33) and Royce (_The World and the Individual_, i, 128) lovingly repeat this piece of profundity.]

but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. Bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of them,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.

Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against its best known champion would count as either superficiality or inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an empirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers.

[Footnote 1: The 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, not under discussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience gets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is the puzzle.]

APPENDIX B

THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[1]

... Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the subject--his own writings included--one easily gathers what he means. The opponents cannot even understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to Mr. Ward: 'I do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospel if you please; ... but if the revelation does contain a meaning, I will commit myself to this: either the oracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it.' Münsterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a _verständigung_ with him is '_grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen_'; and Royce,

[Footnote 1: President's Address before the American Psychological Association, December, 1904. Reprinted from the _Psychological Review_, vol. xii, 1905, with slight verbal revision.]

[Footnote 2: _Appearance and Reality_, p. 117. Obviously written _at_ Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.]

in a review of Stout,[1] hauls him over the coals at great length for defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for one, never gathered from reading him, and which I have heard Stout himself say was quite foreign to the intention of his text.

In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_.

(1) There is a psychological question: Have we perceptions of activity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have them?

(2) There is a metaphysical question: Is there a _fact_ of activity? and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what does it do, if it does anything? And finally there is a logical question:

(3) Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or by some other source of information? Throughout page after page of the literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and mere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if it implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants, moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience it would make if his adversary's were triumphant.

[Footnote 1: _Mind_, N.S., VI, 379.]

It seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience, to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them somewhat. The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or particular issue. The principle of pure experience is also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some experient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a definite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality. In other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real.

Armed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of activity present to us.

By the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what it means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be definitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the judgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity. What we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later question.

Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever we find anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any apprehension of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were our world describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing changing,' 'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an 'inactive' world. Bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the bare fact of event or change. 'Change taking place' is a unique content of experience, one of those 'conjunctive' objects which radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve. The sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should feel our own subjective life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing experienced there in the form of something coming to pass.

This seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist that for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to justify, or at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we _are_ only as we are active,[1]

[Footnote 1: _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii, p. 245. One thinks naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ here.]

for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr. Bradley's contention that 'there is no original experience of anything like activity.' What we ought to say about activities thus simply given, whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only when the field of experience is enlarged.

Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a wild _ideenflucht_, or _rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would say, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive world.