Part 17
To restate the point in regard to the psychological function of imagery. Imagery functions in representing control as ideal, not as fact. It represents a possible process of reconstructing adjustments and habits; it is not an actual and complete readjustment. It arises normally in a stress, in the presence of fresh demands and new problems. It looks forward in every possible direction, because it is important and difficult to foresee consequences. But suppose the new adjustment to be made with reasonable success--reasonable, note. Suppose the ideal to be realized. With practice the adjustment becomes less problematic, more under control--that is, it comes to require less conscious attention to bring it about. The image loses some of its sensuous content. It becomes worn away, more remote, until at last it becomes respectably vague and abstract enough to be classed as a concept. Imagery is the stimulus of the reconstructive process between habit and habit, concept and concept, idea and idea.
We now return to the original question regarding the logical function of imagery. There is only one condition, I believe, on which we can accept the assumption of both empiricist and conceptualist that imagery is on the same level with sense-perception, and that is the assumption that meaning, logical meaning, is on the same level with habit, habit naming the more obvious, overt forms of response to stimuli, logical meaning naming the more internal forms of response or reference. Psychical response and logical reference thus become equivalent terms.
We have seen that imagery may exercise two functions with reference to habit, as direct and as indirect stimulus; so also with reference to logical meaning, imagery may be the stimulus to a direct reference of the idea to reality, or it may present, or mirror, conditions with regard to which some new meaning is to be worked out. The quality, the sense-content, of imagery may _per se_ suffice directly to arouse a habitual attitude, to call forth an immediate reference to reality. It may cause one to "tumble" to what is taking place, to "catch on," to apprehend (pardon these expressions for the sake of their description of the motor aspect of meaning), as when we say, for example: "It came over me like a flash what I was to do, and I did it." Our more abstract and complicated forms of judgment and reasoning, in which the imagery involved is reduced to the minimum of conscious, qualitative content, are of the same order, though at the other extreme, so far as immediate overt expression is concerned. We are working along lines of habitual activity so familiar that we can work almost in the dark. We need no elaborate imagery. Guided only by the waving of a signal flag or by the shifting gleam of a semaphore, we thread our way swiftly through the maze of tracks worn smooth by use and habit. But suppose a new line of habit is to be constructed. No signal flags or semaphores will suffice. A detailed survey of the proposed route must be had, and here is where imagery with a rich and varied yet flexible sensuous content, growing out of previous surveys, may function in projecting and anticipating the new set of conditions, and thus become the stimulus of a new line of habit, of a new and more far-reaching meaning. As this new line of habit, of meaning, gets into working order with the rest of the system, imagery tends normally to decline again to the rôle of signal flags and semaphores.
The distinction in logical theory between "image" and "idea" which we have been considering is only a half-truth from the point of view of psychology. It virtually limits the "idea" to a fixed, unalterable reference of a fragment of a desiccated image to a reality beyond. It indifferently loses the play and richness of imagery to the floating remnants of sense-content, or to an external reality. It limits itself to an examination of a final stage in thinking, a stage in which the image acts as a direct stimulus, a stage in which the sense-content of the image has little or no function _per se_, because this content now initiates directly a habitual adjustment, a worked-out and established adaptation of means to end. It overlooks the process of conscious reflection which logically precedes every such adjustment not purely instinctive or accidental, a process in which imagery as representational functions indirectly in bringing the resources of past experience, the fund of acquired habits, to bear upon the fragmentary and problematic elements of sense-experience actually present, thus maintaining the flow and continuity of experience. It fails to recognize that in the inseparable association of meaning with quality, of "idea" with "image," there goes the possibility of working out and applying new meanings from old, of developing deeper meanings, of testing and affirming more inclusive and universal meaning.
We are confronted with this alternative. Either the image has a logical function in virtue of its sense-content, or else the image functions logically merely as a symbol, the sense-content of which is a matter of complete logical indifference. According to the empiricist, the former is the case, according to the conceptualist, the latter. The empiricist would say that he needs the image to piece out the data upon which logical processes operate. Having met this need, the image is retired from active service. For the empiricist the processes of thought, observing, comparing, generalizing, etc., are as independent of the data they use as, for the conceptualist, logical meaning, reference, and "idea" are independent of the sense-content of the "image." In reality he agrees with the conceptualist in excluding the sense-content of the image from the processes of thought, and hence from the domain of logic.
From the standpoint of psychological theory the conceptualist is an improvement over the empiricist. He has gone a step farther in the analysis of thought-processes by showing that they are bound up with some kind of imagery, however irrelevant, inconsequential, and worn down the sense-quality of that imagery may be. His statement of ideas as references to reality lends itself readily, as we have seen, to the unitary conception in psychology of ideo-motor, or sensori-motor, activity. But is this where logical theory is to stop, while psychology as a study of "states of consciousness" takes up the unfinished tale and carries it forward? It seems hardly possible, unless logic is willing to give over its task of thinking about thinking.
Reduce the image to a mere symbol. Let its sense-quality be a matter of complete indifference. What have you, then, but an elementary and primitive type of reflex action? It is of no particular consequence even from what sense-organ it appears to proceed, or whether it appears to be peripherally or centrally excited. It is simply a case of feel and act; touch and go. Is this thinking? It may be regarded as either the germ or the finality of thinking, but what most of us are inclined to believe is the true subject-matter of logic is not to be limited to a simple reflex, or even to a chain of reflexes. It is something more complex, even if nothing more than an intricate tangle of chains of reflexes.
The complexity of the process called thinking does not reside alone in the instinctive or habitual reflexes involved. The more instinctive and habitual any adjustment may be, the less is it a matter of thought, as everyone knows, although its biological complexity is none the less patent to one who looks at it from the outside. The complexity of the thinking process resides in consciousness also; it resides in the imagery, the stimuli, the mere symbols, if you like, that have "come" to consciousness. As soon as the complexity begins to be _felt_, as soon as any discrimination whatsoever begins to be introduced or appreciated, at that instant the sense-content, the quale, of imagery begins to have a logical function. Conscious discrimination, however vague and evanescent, and the logical function of the quale of imagery are born together, unless one chooses to regard the more obvious and deliberate forms of conscious discrimination as more characteristic of a logical process. It is only as the sense-contents of various images are discriminated and compared that anything like thinking can be conceived to go on. The particular sense-content of an image, instead of being a matter of logical indifference, is the condition, the possibility, of thinking.
The conceptualist has contributed to the data of descriptive psychology by calling attention, by implication at least, to the remote and reduced character of the imagery which may characterize thinking. But it by no means follows that the more remote and reduced the sense-content of an image becomes, the less important is that sense-content for thinking, the less demand for discrimination. On the contrary, the sense-content that remains may be of supreme logical importance. It may be the quintessence of meaning. It may be the conscious factor which, when discriminated from another almost equally sublimated conscious factor, may determine a whole course of action. The delicacy and rapidity with which these reduced forms of imagery as they hover about the margin of consciousness or flit across its focus are discriminated and caught, are points in the technique of that long art of thinking, begun in early childhood. The fact that questionnaire investigations--like that of Galton's, for example--have in many instances failed to discover in the minds of scientists and advanced thinkers a rich and varied furniture of imagery does not argue the poverty of imagery in such minds; it argues, rather, a highly developed technique, a species of virtuosity, with reference to the sense-content of the types of imagery actually in use.
To push a step farther the alternative we have already stated in a preliminary way: Either the "idea," or "logical meaning," lies outside of the process of thinking, as a mere impulse or reflex; or else, in virtue of the sense-content of its "image," it enters into that conscious process of discrimination, comparison, and selection, of light and shade, of doubt and inquiry, which constitutes the evolution of a judgment, which makes the life-history of a movement of thought.
IX
THE LOGIC OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY[87]
It is not the purpose of this study to show that the Pre-Socratics possessed a system of logic which is now for the first time brought to the notice of the modern world. Indeed, there is nothing to indicate that they had reflected on mental processes in such a way as to call for an organized body of canons regulating the forms of concepts and conclusions. Aristotle attributed the discovery of the art of dialectic to Zeno the Eleatic, and we shall see in the sequel that there was much to justify the opinion. But logic, in the technical sense, is inconceivable without concepts, and from the days of Aristotle it has been universally believed that proper definitions owe their origin to Socrates. A few crude attempts at definition, if such they may be rightly called, are referred to Empedocles and Democritus. But in so far as they were conceived in the spirit of science, they essayed to define things materially by giving, so to speak, the chemical formula for their production. Significant as this very fact is, it shows that even the rudiments of the canons of thought were not the subjects of reflection.
In his _Organon_ Aristotle makes it evident that the demand for a regulative art of scientific discourse was created by the eristic logic-chopping of those who were most deeply influenced by the Eleatic philosophy. Indeed, the case is quite parallel to the rise of the art of rhetoric. Aristotle regarded Empedocles as the originator of that art, as he referred the beginnings of dialectic to Zeno. But the formulation of both arts in well-rounded systems came much later. As men conducted lawsuits before the days of Tisias and Corax, so also were the essential principles of logic operative and effective in practice before Aristotle gave them their abstract formulation.
While it is true, therefore, that the Pre-Socratics had no formal logic, it is equally true, and far more significant, that they either received from their predecessors or themselves developed the conceptions and the presuppositions on which the Aristotelian logic is founded. One of the objects of this study is to institute a search for some of these basic conceptions of Greek thought, almost all of which existed before the days of Socrates, and to consider their origin as well as their logical significance. The other aim here kept in view is to trace the course of thought in which the logical principles, latent in all attempts to construct and verify theories, came into play.
It is impossible, no doubt, to discover a body of thought which does not ground itself upon presuppositions. They are the warp into which the woof of the system, itself too often consisting of frayed ends of other fabrics, is woven with the delight of a supposed creator. Rarely is the thinker so conscious of his own mental processes that he is aware of what he takes for granted. Ordinarily this retirement to an interior line takes place only when one has been driven back from the advanced position which could no longer be maintained. Emerson has somewhere said: "The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us and not the history of theirs?" The difficulty lies precisely in our faith in immediate insight and revelation, which are themselves only short-cuts of induction, psychological short circuits, conducted by media we have disregarded. Only a fundamentally critical philosophy pushes its doubt to the limit of demanding the credentials of those conceptions which have come to be regarded as axiomatic.
The need of going back of Aristotle in our quest for the truth is well shown by his attitude toward the first principles of the several sciences. To him they are immediately given--[Greek: amesoi protaseis]--and hence are ultimate _a priori_. The historical significance of this fact is already apparent. It means that in his day these first principles, which sum up the outcome of previous inductive movements of thought, were regarded as so conclusively established that the steps by which they had been inferred were allowed to lapse from memory.
No account of the history of thought can hope to satisfy the demands of reason that does not _explain_ the origin of the convictions thus embodied in principles. The only acceptable explanation would be in terms of will and interest. To give such an account would, however, require the knowledge of secular pursuits and ambitions no longer obtainable. It might be fruitful of results if we could discover even the theoretical interests of the age before Thales; but we know that in modern times the direction of interest characteristic of the purely practical pursuits manifests its reformative influences in speculation a century or more after it has begun to shape the course of common life. Hence we might misinterpret the historical data if they were obtainable. But general considerations, which we need not now rehearse, as well as indications contained in the later history of thought, hereinafter sketched, point to the primacy of the practical as yielding the direction of interest that determines the course it shall take.
It was said above that the principles of science are the result of an inductive movement, and that the inductive movement is directed by an interest. Hence the principles are contained in, or rather are the express definition of, the interest that gave them birth. In other words, there is implied in all induction a process of deduction. Every stream of thought embraces not only the main current, but also an eddy, which here and there re-enters it. And this is one way of explaining the phenomenon which has long engaged the thought of philosophers, namely, the fact of successful anticipations of the discoveries of science or, more generally still, the possibility of synthetic judgments _a priori_. The solution of the problem is ultimately contained in its statement.[88]
To arrive at a stage of mentality not based on assumptions one would have, no doubt, to go back to its beginnings. Greek thought, even in the time of Thales, was well furnished with them. We cannot pause to catalogue them, but it may further our project if we consider a few of the more important. The precondition of thought as of life is that nature be uniform, or ultimately that the world be rational. This is not even, as it becomes later, a conscious demand; it is the primary ethical postulate which expresses itself in the confidence that it is so. Viewed from a certain angle it may be called the principle of sufficient reason. Closely associated with it is the universal belief of the early philosophers of Greece that everything that comes into being is bound up inseparably with that which has been before; more precisely, that there is no absolute, but only relative, Becoming. Corollaries of this axiom soon appeared in the postulates of the conservation of matter or mass, and the conservation of energy, or more properly for the ancients, of motion. Logically these principles appear to signify that the subject, while under definition, shall remain just what it is; and that, in the system constituted of subject, predicate, and copula, the terms shall "stay put" while the adjustment of verification is in progress. It is a matter of course that the constants in the great problem should become permanent landmarks.
Other corollaries derive from this same principle of uniformity. Seeing that all that comes to be in some sense already is, there appears the postulate of the unity of the world; and this unity manifests itself not only in the integrity and homogeneity of the world-ground, but also in the more ideal conception of a universal law to which all special modes of procedure in nature are ancillary. In these we recognize the insistent demand for the organization of predicate and copula. Side by side with these formulæ stands the other, which requires an ordered process of becoming and a graduated scale of existences, such as can mediate between the extremes of polarity. Such series meet us on every hand in early Greek thought. The process of rarefaction and condensation in Anaximenes, the [Greek: hodos anô katô] of Heraclitus, the regular succession of the four Empedoclean elements in almost all later systems--these and other examples spontaneously occur to the mind. The significance of this conception, as the representative of an effective copula, will presently be seen. More subtle, perhaps, than any of these principles, though not allowed to go so long unchallenged, is the assumption of a [Greek: physis], that is, the assumption that all nature is instinct with life. The logical interpretation of this postulate would seem to be that the concrete system of things--subject, predicate, copula--constitutes a totality complete in itself and needing no jog from without.
In this survey of the preconceptions of the early Greek philosophers I have employed the terms of the judgment without apology. The justification for this course must come ultimately, as for any assumption, from the success of its application to the facts. But if "logic" merely formulates in a schematic way that which in life is the manipulation of concrete experience, with a view to attaining practical ends, then its forms must apply here as well as anywhere. Logical terminology may therefore be assumed to be welcome to this field where judgments are formed, induction is made from certain facts to defined conceptions, and deductions are derived from principles or premises assumed. Speaking then in these terms we may say that the Pre-Socratics had three logical problems set for them: First, there was a demand for a predicate, or, in other words, for a theory of the world. Secondly, there was the need of ascertaining just what should be regarded as the subject, or, otherwise stated, just what it was that required explanation. Thirdly, there arose the necessity of discovering ways and means by which the theory could be predicated of the world and by which, in turn, the hypothesis erected could be made to account for the concrete experience of life: in terms of logic this problem is that of maintaining an efficient copula. It is not assumed that the sequence thus stated was historically observed without crossing and overlapping; but a survey of the history of the period will show that, in a general way, the logical requirements asserted themselves in this order.
1. Greek philosophy began its career with induction. We have already stated that the preconceptions with which it approached its task were the result of previous inductions, and indeed the epic and theogonic poetry of the Greeks abounds in thoughts indicative of the consciousness of all of these problems. Thus Homer is familiar with the notion that all things proceed from water,[89] and that, when the human body decays, it resolves itself into earth and water.[90] Other opinions might be enumerated, but they would add nothing to the purpose. When men began, in the spirit of philosophy, to theorize about the world, they assumed that it--the subject--was sufficiently known. Its existence was taken for granted, and that which engaged their attention was the problem of its meaning. What predicate--so we may formulate their question--should be given to the subject? It is noticeable that their induction was quite perfunctory. But such is always the case until there are rival theories competing for acceptance, and even then the impulse to gather up evidence derived from a wide field and assured by resort to experiment comes rather with the desire to test a hypothesis than to form it. It is the effort to _verify_ that brings out details and also the negative instances. Hence we are not to blame Thales for rashness in making his generalization that all is Water. We do not know what indications led to this conclusion. Aristotle ventured a guess, but the motives assumed for Thales agree too well with those which weighed with Hippo to admit of ready acceptance.
Anaximander, feeling the need of deduction as a sequel to induction, found his predicate in the Infinite. We cannot now delay to inquire just what he meant by the term; but it is not unlikely that its very vagueness recommended it to a man of genius who caught enthusiastically at the skirts of knowledge. Anaximenes, having pushed verification somewhat farther and eliciting some negative instances, rejected water and the Infinite and inferred that all was air. His [Greek: archê] must have the quality of infinity, but, a copula having been found in the process of rarefaction and condensation, it must occupy a determinate place in the series of typical forms of existence. The logical significance of this thought will engage our attention later.