Part 34

[62] Book III, chap. 2, sec. 5; italics mine. The latter part of the passage, beginning with the words "If we did not often commence," etc., is quoted by Mill from Comte. The words "neither induction nor deduction would enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena" are his own.

[63] Book III, chap. 7, sec. 1.

[64] Book III, chap. 14, secs. 4 and 5.

[65] WILLIAM WHEWELL, _The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, London, 1840.

[66] The essential similarity between Whewell's view and that of Lotze, already discussed (see chap. 3) is of course explainable on the basis of their common relationship to Kant.

[67] _Logic_, Book IV, chap. 2, sec. 2; italics mine.

[68] _Ibid._

[69] _Ibid._, sec. 4; in sec. 6 he states even more expressly that any conception is appropriate in the degree in which it "helps us toward what we wish to understand."

[70] _Ibid._, sec. 6; italics mine.

[71] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 383.

[72] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 25; italics mine.

[73] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, chap. 3.

[74] W. S. JEVONS, _Principles of Science_, pp. 231, 232.

[75] B. ERDMANN, "Zur Theorie des Syllogismus und der Induktion," _Philosophische Abhandlungen_, Vol. VI, p. 230.

[76] WUNDT, _Logik_, 2d ed., Vol. II, p. 131.

[77] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, p. 72.

[78] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 452 ff.

[79] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 454-461.

[80] BOSANQUET, _Logic_, Vol. I, p. 46.

[81] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 10.

[82] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 74.

[83] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 11.

[84] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 75, 76.

[85] BRADLEY, _op. cit._, pp. 4-6.

[86] _Op. cit._, pp. 7, 8.

[87] This study may be regarded as in some sense a development of pp. 7-10 of _The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_, published in 1896 by The University of Chicago Press. While quite independent in treatment, the two papers supplement each other.

[88] The best special illustration of this truth with which I am acquainted is presented for the science of chemistry in an article by F. WALD, "Die Genesis der stöchiometrischen Grundgesetze," in _Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie_, Vol. XVIII (1895), pp. 337 ff.

[89] [Greek: Xi] 201, 246.

[90] H 99.

[91] In allusion to fr. 90 (DIELS). DIELS finds in fr. 108 (fr. 18, BYWATER), [Greek: oti sophon esti pantôn kechôrismenon] the thought that God is the Absolute, comparing the [Greek: Nous] of Anaxagoras and the [Greek: chôristê idea] of Plato and the [Greek: ousia chôristê] of Aristotle. He assumes that [Greek: sophon]=[Greek: logos] and concedes great significance to the fragment. But this interpretation is utterly incompatible with everything else that we know of Heraclitus, and should be admitted only if it were the only one admissible. ZELLER discusses the fragment at length, Vol. I, p. 629, 1. If Diels's interpretation be accepted, the exposition above given of Heraclitus's logical position must be abandoned.

[92] It has been, and in some quarters is still, the fashion to say that Heraclitus is the originator of the doctrine of relativity; but Zeller is quite right in denying the charge. No doubt his teachings lent themselves readily to such a development, but he did not so express himself. According to him the _contrarieties coexist in the process_.

[93] _Cf._ RITTER-PRELLER, § 65_c_.

[94] This, in a word, is the burden of my study of _The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_.

[95] I have in preparation a study of the problem of physical interaction in Pre-Socratic philosophy which deals with this question in all its phases.

[96] This statement is, of course, figurative, since Empedocles denied the existence of a void.

[97] I cannot now undertake a defense of this statement, which runs counter to certain ancient reports, but must reserve a full discussion for my account of physical interaction.

[98] The motive for making this assumption was clearly the desire to make of the [Greek: Nous] the prime mover in the world while exempting it from reaction on the part of the world, which would have been unavoidable if its nature had contained parts of other things. It is the same problem of "touching without being touched in return" that led Aristotle to a similar definition of God and of the rational soul. The same difficulty besets the absolutely "simple" soul of Plato's _Phaedo_ and the causality of the Ideas.

[99] ARISTOTLE, _De Generatione et Corruptione_, 323^b 10 f.

[100] We have seen that this distinction was latent in Anaximenes's process of rarefaction and condensation. For other matters see CHAIGNET, _Histoire de la Psychologie_, Vol. I, p. 114, whose account, however, needs to be corrected in some particulars.

[101] I say "perhaps" because ancient reports differ as to the precise relation of position and arrangement to the distinction between qualities, primary and secondary.

[102] This is only another instance of what MR. VENN (_Empirical Logic_, p. 56) has wittily alluded to as "screwing up the cause and the effect into close juxtaposition."

[103] Simplicius says [Greek: euthys meta to prooimion]; see DIELS, _Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_ (Berlin, 1903), p. 347, l. 18.

[104] Fr. 2, DIELS.

[105] See DIELS, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, p. 343, l. 2; p. 344, l. 27.

[106] 320 C f.

[107] Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the immediate preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded any but the most general and casual reference to the recent literature of the subject. Much of this literature only imperfectly distinguishes the logical and psychological points of view, so that critical reference to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the positions criticised, would be useless.

[108] In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed the common notion that the physical world, physical object, and property may be taken for granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and that the problem is only as to the objectivity of economic and ethical contents. Of course we may, in the end, come to believe that the "physical" object is itself an economic construct, in the large sense of "economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the attitude of entertaining in a general way the plan of building a house _of some sort or other_, one may have before him various building materials the ascertained qualities of which are, it may be, socially recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There is doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred to. But along with the _definition_ of the plan in ethical and economic judgment, along with the determination actually to build a house, and a house of a certain specific kind, must go _further_ determination of the means in their physical aspects, a determination which all the while reacts into the process of determination of the end. See below, p. 246, note 3.

[109] In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and induction is one of degree. There is but one _type_ or _method_ of inference, though some inferences may approach more closely than do others the limit of pure "subsumption."

[110] See III below.

[111] It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into economic conflict are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically interrelated members of the provisional system of life. On the contrary, the very essence of our contention is that adjustment established between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment is in itself ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends of life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes elsewhere in the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of which it was determined remained unchanged. The "mutual exclusiveness" of the ends in ethical deliberation is simply the correlate of a relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A man's command over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies much and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time; but, on the other hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of sympathy, and his spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not. Hence there can be and is a certain more or less definite and permanent comprehensive scheme of conduct morally obligatory upon him so far as the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, but so far as his conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot be prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral selfhood admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself. The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions of life--conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for that matter the individual's own nature, are _variable_, these are the subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the determination of problems by the "economic" method--problems, that is, for which no _general_ answer, through reference to a more or less definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly, incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.

[112] Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical, others as economic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet others as amenable neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type of situation and the corresponding mode of judgment employed determines whether an end shall be for the time being ethical, economic, or of neither sort conspicuously.

[113] The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our present view, be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be valuation of means, is essentially choice of ends--and, as would appear, choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by reason of the usually slight intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also by reason of the absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as Emerson remarks, "sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again, "The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.... [The true prudence] takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good" (Essay on _Prudence_).

[114] Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the ends here spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because they are as yet in a measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and are not yet understood in their true economic character; likewise the means are wanting in that final shade or degree of physical and mechanical determinateness which they are presently to possess as means to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, by which is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general physical re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of the present economic judgment-process appear as physically available indifferently for either of the tentative ends under consideration are only in a general way the same means for knowledge as they will be when the economic problem has been solved. They are, so far as now determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes incidental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like the present.

[115] In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt to furnish what might be called an _analysis_ of the consciousness of objectivity. This has been undertaken by various psychologists in recent well-known contributions to the subject. For our purpose it is necessary only to specify the intellectual and practical attitude out of which the consciousness of objectivity arises; not the sensory "elements" or factors involved in its production as an experience.

[116] So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly more instructive as they are, _for their own purpose_, than they would be if more sharply discriminated and complexly referred.

For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own terminology; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this terminology as psychologically correct. The sense-quality of which we read in "structural psychology" is, we hold, not a structural unit at all, but in fact a highly abstract development out of that unorganized whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. There is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality "red" in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have constructed a definite and measured experience which may be symbolized as "object-before-me-possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the original sensory total-experience we now have a more or less developed perceptual (_i. e._, judgmental) total-experience. It is an instance of the "psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements of _meaning_ in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the true nature of the "simple idea of sensation" or "sense-element") as so many bits of psychical material which were isolated from each other at the outset, and have been externally joined together in their present combination.

[117] The phrase is Külpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness taken as a whole, as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional, rather than in the sense made familiar by Spencer and others.

[118] The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's upon the same subject. In discussing his first class of modes of consciousness, the _Vorstellungen_, he says: "We find no contrasts between presentations excepting those of the objects to which the presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, a high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding presentations as contrasted; and, in general, there is in any other sense than this no contrast within the entire range of these conscious processes" (_Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte_, Bd. I, p. 29). This may stand as against any attempt to find contrast between abstract sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. What is, however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects? Apparently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this sense we should need finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in terms of objectivity as above defined, rather than the reverse. They are cases in or specifications of the determination of adequate stimuli.

[119] In this connection reference may be made to the well-known disturbing effect of the forced introduction of attention to details into established sensori-motor co-ordinations, such as "typewriting," playing upon the piano, and the like.

[120] _Cf._ PROFESSOR BALDWIN'S _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, and PROFESSOR MCGILVARY'S recent paper on "Moral Obligation," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, especially pp. 349 f.

[121] Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the object implies fuller physical knowledge of the object than was possessed at the outset of the economic judgment. See above, p. 234, note; p. 246, note 3; and p. 271, below.

[122] _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II, p. 5.

[123] See p. 253 above.

[124] It is not so much the case that the object, on the one side, excites in the agent's consciousness, on the other, the "sensations of resistance" which have played such a part in recent controversy on the subject, as that (1) the object in certain of its promptings is "resisting" certain other of its promptings, or that (2) certain "positive" activities of the agent are being inhibited by certain "negative" activities, thereby giving rise to the "emotion of resistance." That "positive" and "negative" are here used in a teleological way will be apparent. It is surely misleading to speak of "_sensations_ of resistance" even in deprecatory quotation marks, except as "sensation" is used in its everyday meaning, viz., experience of strongly sensory quality.

[125] The general theory of emotion which is here presupposed, and indeed is fundamental to the entire discussion, may be found in PROFESSOR DEWEY'S papers on "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological Review_, Vol. I, p. 553; Vol. II, p. 13.

[126] Such is, in fact, the teaching of the various forms of ethical intuitionism, and we find it not merely implied, but explicitly affirmed, in a work in many respects so remote from intuitionism in its standpoint as GREEN'S _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See pp. 178-81, and especially pp. 355-9.

[127] Sermon II.

[128] Not to imply of course that psychologically or logically the distinction of conditions and means is other than a convenient superficial one.

[129] Manifestly we have here been approaching from a new direction the "Recognition coefficient" of reality described above. See p. 266.

[130] This, if it were intended as an account of the genesis of psychology as a science and of the psychological interest on the part of the individual, would doubtless be most inadequate. We have, for one thing, made no mention of the part which error and resulting practical failure play in stimulating an interest in the _judgmental_ processes of observation and the like, and in technique of the control of these. Here, as well as in the processes of _execution_ of our purposes, must be found many of the roots of psychology as a science. Moreover, no explanation has been offered above for the appropriation by the "energetic" self of these phenomena of interruption and retardation of its energy as being, in fact, its own, or within itself. The problem would appear to be psychological, and so without our province, and we gladly pass it by.

[131] We can, of course, undertake no minute analysis of the psychological mechanism or concatenation of the process here sketched in barest outline. Our present purpose is wholly that of description. Slight as our account of the process of transition is, we give it space only because it seems necessary to do so in order to make intelligible the accounts yet to be given of the conscious valuation processes for which the movement here described prepares the way.

It will be observed that we assume above that the purpose is _successful as planned_ and _by succeeding_ brings about the undesirable results. Failure in execution of the purpose as such could only, in the manner already outlined, prompt a more adequate investigation of the _factual conditions_.

[132] The case is not essentially altered in logical character if for the Levitical law be substituted the general principles of the new dispensation read off details by an authoritative church or by "private judgment."

[133] A remark may be added here by way of caution. The presented self, we have said, attenuates to a mere maxim or tacit presumption in favor of a certain type of logical procedure in dealing with the situation. It must be remembered that the presented self, like all other presentation, is and comes to be for the sake of its function in experience, and so is practical from the start. The process sketched above is therefore not from bare presented content as such to a methodological presumption, which, as methodological and not contentual, is qualitatively different from what preceded it.

[134] _Recognized_ authority is, of course, not the same thing by any means as authority unrecognized because absolutely dominant.

[135] We may be pardoned for supplying from the history of ethics no illustrations of this slight sketch.

[136] In fact, as suggested above, the _Prolegomena to Ethics_ is in many respects essentially intuitional in spirit, though its intuitionism is of a modern discreetly attenuated sort.

[137] This would appear to be the logical value of functional psychology as a science of mental process.

[138] We have already given a slight sketch of the historical process here characterized in the barest logical terms.

[139] Further consideration of the problem of factual judgment must be deferred to Part V.

[140] The relation of the empirical self to the "energetic" and to standards will come in for statement in Part V in the connection just referred to.

[141] It might be possible to construct a "logic" of these various types of working moral standard in such a way as to show that in each type there is implied the one next higher morphologically, and ultimately the highest--that is, some sort of concept of the "energetic" self.

[142] It matters not at all whether, in ethics or metaphysics, our universal be abstract or on the other hand "concrete," like Green's conception of the self, or a "Hegelian" Absolute. Its logical use in the determination of particulars must be essentially the same in either case.

[143] In this connection reference may be made to MR. TAYLOR'S recent work, _The Problem of Conduct_. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to terms of an ultimate conflict between the ideals of egoism and social justice, holding that the conflict is in theory irreconcilable. With this negative attitude toward current standards in ethical theory one may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further contention that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the "ethics of subsumption" is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method of ethics cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic which shall be as valid as the procedure of the investigator in the sciences. Mr. Taylor's _logic_ is virtually the same as that of the ethical theories which he criticises; because an ethical _ideal_ is impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of MR. BRADLEY'S criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the _Logic_ as an interesting parallel.

[144] MR. BOSANQUET'S discussion of the place of the principle of teleology in analogical inference will be found suggestive in this connection (_Logic_, Vol. II, chap. iii).

[145] See above, p. 243 and p. 259 _ad fin._