Part 30

“In the most general predicate which is determined Being or existence—for all things in the universe are determined beings—we have an evident two-foldness (a composite nature) which allows of a further analysis into pure Being and determination.”

We will parallel this analysis. For the sake of simplicity we will take a limited right line. It has the determinations straight and long, not length in the sense of measure, for length is ambiguous in its intent, but length in its qualitative sense—its linearity so to speak. Now separate from it first its straightness without however giving to it any other determination, and then its quality of longness. We have then a _pure_ line, that is neither straight, nor long, nor anything else. Such is an example of “Pure Being.” _We_ say however that its very being as a line is absolutely dependent on its determination as a long line; that such a determination alone constitutes it a line, is at once its determination and its being, that there is no two-foldness at all but only two names, and that as one-fold its determination as long and its being vanish together. What is true of a line is true of all relations and compounds of relations whatever.

Thus not only all knowledge but all existence so far as that term can ever have any meaning is relative; relative to all intents and for every possible turn.

To those who accept the essentials of this account of relations it will be easy to see what is the nature of an object and that of a concept or notion. An object is a relation or some congeries of relations that usually present themselves as a coherent whole to our sensibility or to consciousness. This is primarily effected in virtue of some efficacy which we cannot appropriate to ourselves, and so we distinguish our own personality from that manifold that we call the objective world. It is pure self-stultification after having made this most useful distinction to try and abolish it. Nothing but an utter abolition of all useful thought can result from so taking the data of experience.

X. NATURE OF A CONCEPT.

But objects are individual and generally found with various points of distinction some of which are irrelevant to most of the turns of mental life. We therefore neglect the irrelevant points and take many objects as copies of one another. This process is _not_ the formation of the concept or notion but it suggests and prompts that formation. We cannot but regard it as an error to take a conception as a _sum_ of individuals. It seems to us to be rather in the nature of a _locus_. A curve contains an infinity of points and yet the curve is not any sum of points even though it is often allowable to speak of it as the sum of all its points. So any concept, say, man, is not all the men that now live nor yet all the men that eternity both backwards and forwards has contained and will contain. A concept is a manifold and strictly universal and infinite in respect to the particulars it subsumes. We speak of the infinitive mood of a verb because the meaning of the word as thus taken is not put under any modification. In like manner the meaning of any concept though subject to various limitations in its applications is as a concept merely to be regarded as obtaining in a purely infinitive sense. Professor Jevons found a difficulty in classifying what he called _material_ terms, such as stone, sand, water, etc. Other logicians have put such terms as singular terms, while still others have classed them as general terms. There is a great variety of such terms. Potatoes, wheat, butter, ice, cattle, water, hydrogen, the names of all the elements, ether, electricity, time, space, love, virtue, etc., are instances. It seems to us that such terms are the normal types of general terms and that the canonical forms of our universal propositions ought to be unquantified not only as regards the predicates but also as regards the subjects. Why not “man is animal” just as “lard is grease” or “man is mortal” just as “butter is cheap”?

Moreover the distinction between a general concept and one that is called singular is only one of degree and not of kind. Every so-called singular term is potentially at least only an individual instance under a possible general or universal concept. A striking example of this potentiality is furnished by the modern generalisations of that formerly singular term, space. If these observations are well founded, the universals of thought even though arising out of the facts of experience and rigidly beholden to experience for every last element out of which they are constructed, form nevertheless a Formal-Thought-World, and the mind of man in virtue of its powers of imaginative construction and generalisation has a constitution that enables it to subsume the actual objective universe as only one particular of a universality of a higher rank.

Under such a conception of the objective world and the world of thought and their relations the old dispute of realism versus nominalism would take a new aspect. _Universals in re_ even though they were admitted to exist would become universals no longer in the higher universe of thought. True universals would only subsist as universals of the world of mind. The laws of Form and Formal Thought would thus become of chief moment in philosophy and no one could be recognised as properly laying claim to the title of philosopher without proficiency therein.

XI. FALLACY OF THE SPENCERIAN AXIOM.

Concerning the “axiom of symmetry” only a few examples of its fallacy are needful. Mutual friendship is certainly a “symmetrical” relation, but _A_ and _C_ may be mutual friends and _B_ and _C_ mutual friends also, but it in no wise follows that _A_ and _B_ are friends. They may be decidedly unfriendly as we often see the case. Take a case of equilibrium the cases of which seem to be favorite ones with M. Mouret. We suppose that planets may be regarded as in a relation of equilibrium with the sun and yet these mere equilibrations with the sun do not make any equilibrium between them. They do not knock together it is true but this is due to their own direct relations and not their relations of equilibrium with the sun.

The distances of points from each other is a “symmetrical” relation and yet point _A_ may be from point _C_ the very same distance that point _B_ is from _C_, but the distance of points _A_ and _B_ from one another may vary from coincidence to double the distance _A C_-_B C_.

XII. NATURE OF ARITHMETICAL EQUALITY.

Concerning the relation of “mathematical equality” there is no single relation that obtains throughout mathematics as such. There is numerical equality upon which the equality in service in numeric algebra is founded, and there is geometric equality, the equality of vectors, etc., all different from one another. M. Mouret seems to have only numeric equality in view. He claims this relation to be not only of a very simple nature but that it is the very foundation of the notions of magnitude and quantity. He even declares that mathematics could not exist without this relation. Did he lose sight of the usual proof of Fourier’s celebrated theorem?

As we have explained, things that are distinguished are not really alike but only for certain turns taken to be so. This assimilation of things is of various grades. In arithmetic, meaning arithmetic in its most general sense, the only logical comprehension that the various numbers possess is respectively their greater or less partitionability; _m_ is the same as _n_ means in arithmetic that whatever has the numerical rank of _m_ has also precisely the numerical rank of _n_ no matter what summations or other numerical operations _m_ or _n_ may represent. Identity of this sort is arithmetical equality. It seems a simple relation for the reason that its intervention very decisively simplifies our arithmetical comprehensions. It is however a coincidence of two relations that are converse to one another. These relations are “not less than” and “not greater than.” It is universally admitted that the more inclusive a notion or concept is in extension, the more simple and primary it is than any other notion or concept included as an instance under it. Now all equality is “not less than” but not all “not less than” is necessarily equality; hence, “not less than” is a wider and more primary notion than equality. On the same considerations “not more than” is in the same case. Equality is the limiting case between the variable and logically more simple cases of “not less than” and “not more than.” The notion of quantity emerges on comparison however vague between any two objects that have size, independently of the notion of equality. If this were not true how could we have the notions of infinitely large and infinitely small.

It is indeed true that without the notion of equality the theory of numbers and the mathematical analysis could subsist in a rudimentary state only, but to say that they would not exist at all is rash and not maintainable. The relations “not less than” “not more than” would still allow of some truly mathematical propositions, operations, and calculations. In that essentially qualitative notation that is ordinary language the relation that corresponds to equality is of very limited range but a relation that is analogous to “not less than,” viz., supersumption, is very efficient.

With a theory of numbers and a mathematical analysis using only the relations “not less than” “not more than” in lieu of the relation of equality the fundamental operations, addition and substitution, would find some scope of application and hence the derivative operations, multiplication, powering, etc., and their inversions, subtraction, division, etc., would obtain in some fashion and to some extent. This can readily be seen by any one who is familiar with the way in which expressions of inequality are used in modern mathematical analysis.

FRANCIS C. RUSSELL.

OBSERVATIONS ON SOME POINTS IN JAMES’S PSYCHOLOGY.

II. EMOTION.

Nothing in Professor James’s work will be likely to strike the average reader as more paradoxical than his views on the subject of Emotion, which he must be allowed to state in his own words. After premising that he will limit his discussion, in the first instance, to what may be called the coarser emotions, as fear, grief, rage, love, in which every one recognises a strong organic reverberation, he goes on to say:

“Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, _is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the existing fact, and that our feeling of the same changes, as they occur, is the emotion_. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we strike, cry, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily state following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually _feel_ afraid or angry.

“Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty sure to meet with immediate disbelief. And yet neither many nor far-fetched considerations are required to mitigate its paradoxical character, and possibly to produce conviction of its truth.

“To begin with, no reader of the last two chapters will be inclined to doubt the fact that _objects do excite bodily changes_ by a preorganised mechanism, or the farther fact _that the changes are so indefinitely numerous and subtle that the entire organism may be called a sounding-board_ which every change of consciousness, however slight, may make reverberate....

“The next thing to be noticed is this, that _every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is FELT, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs_....

“I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is this: _If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind_, no ‘mind-stuff’ out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. It is true that, although most people when asked say that their introspection verifies this statement, some persist in saying that it does not. Many cannot be made to understand the question. When you beg them to imagine away every feeling of laughter and of tendency to laugh from their consciousness of the ludicrousness of an object, and then to tell you what the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like, whether it be anything more than the perception that the object belongs to the class ‘funny,’ they persist in replying that the thing proposed is a physical impossibility and that they always _must_ laugh if they see a funny object. Of course the task proposed is not the practical one of seeing a ludicrous object and annihilating one’s tendency to laugh. It is the purely speculative one of subtracting certain elements of feeling from an emotional state supposed to exist in all its fulness, and saying what the residual elements are. I cannot help thinking that all who rightly apprehend this problem will agree with the proposition above laid down. What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lip nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the only thing that can be supposed to take its place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate sentence, confined entirely to the judicial realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feelingless recognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. A purely disembodied human emotion is a non-entity.” (P. 449 seq.)

It is, of course, impossible for me to give all the arguments by which Professor James attempts to establish his position; the above quotations will make it clear what it is—namely, that all our “feelings” are sensations.

Before proceeding to consider some of the objections to this view of the matter, it may be well to notice briefly what seems to be a gap in the author’s treatment of it. In adult human beings, very few, comparatively, of what are ordinarily recognised as emotions follow directly upon the perception of their objects, in the ordinary sense of the word. His theory might perhaps suffice, without further explanation for such cases as the “spitting” of blind kittens at the smell of a dog, or the rage of a bull at the sight of a red cloth, or the startled feeling that we experience at a loud and unexpected sound, if the latter should be called an emotion. But in the immense majority of instances the emotions of which he treats arise in a very different way.

Some of his own illustrations will serve as well as any to show this. For instance, neither running nor any other of the symptoms of fear which he enumerates is the necessary result of seeing a bear. A chained or caged bear may excite only feelings of curiosity, and a well armed hunter might experience only pleasurable feelings at meeting one loose in the woods. It is not, then, the perception of the bear that excites the movements of fear. We do not run from the bear unless we suppose him capable of doing us bodily injury. Why should the expectation of being eaten, for instance, set the muscles of our legs in motion? “Common sense” would be likely to say it was because we object to being eaten, but according to Professor James, the reason we dislike to be eaten is because we run away. So, again, striking is not a reflex act, following on the hearing of an insult as sneezing does on taking snuff. Whether the muscular movements or the emotions are the primary thing, what both shall be depends on many things besides the words that are spoken. To be accused of drunkenness or unchastity, for instance, would dispose some persons to violence, but others might feel only the stirrings of pride at what they would consider a tribute to their manhood. In those who considered such a charge opprobrious, it might excite feelings of amusement, contempt, pity, or grief towards the one making it, according to the estimation in which he was held. To say that if it makes us strike we shall be angry, if it makes us laugh we shall be amused, if it makes us weep we shall be grieved, does not go to the bottom of the matter. According to the theory, the thought of the estimation in which we are held by others is, in itself, entirely indifferent to us, and only affects our feelings through the muscular movements it excites.

In view of the variety of these movements in response to the same physical stimulus in a case like this, the statement that objects excite bodily changes by a preorganised mechanism explains nothing. We want to know why in one case a given perception excites one set of movements, and in another an entirely different set. Without attempting to decide whether or not a satisfactory explanation can be given on Professor James’s hypothesis, I will only say, that, so far as I can see, he nowhere attempts it. In his section on “The Genesis of the Various Emotions,” (pp. 477 seq.), he only discusses the question how the various feelings come to be associated with their respective movements. How the movements come to be associated with the perceptions, he does not discuss at all.

Turning now to the considerations which Professor James urges in support of his theory, quoted above, the first two—that objects excite bodily changes and that these changes are more or less distinctly felt—may pass unchallenged. I am disposed to go as far with him as to admit that these feelings, in the cases which he describes, may properly be considered components of the emotional state. But when he affirms that there is nothing else—that if we subtract our consciousness of peripheral sensations there would be no emotion left—it seems to me that he is going very much too far. I should have no hesitation in saying that such a statement of the case is contradicted by my consciousness, but as that would be merely setting up my consciousness against his, without the possibility of an umpire, I will call attention to some other considerations which seem to me to render it improbable.

In the first place, it is to be noticed that the cases he instances in illustration of his position are all of violent emotions. Admitting that we cannot have these emotions, in such degree, without movements such as he describes, nor even imagine how they would feel if such a thing were possible, it does not follow because they cannot be separated that they are identical. We do not reason in this way in regard to those feelings which are not commonly called emotions. I can no more imagine myself in intense bodily pain without a tendency to groan and writhe than deeply grieved without a tendency to weep, and yet no one, probably, would say that the pain consisted solely in my consciousness of the groaning and writhing. If grief is a kind of pain, it is to be expected that, in a high degree, it will produce bodily movements more or less similar to those excited by other sorts of pain. All these emotions, however, are capable of infinite gradations in intensity. The fear of losing one’s pocket handkerchief is an emotion of the same kind as the fear of losing one’s fortune. In Professor James’s description of fear, it is evident that he has abject terror in mind; I hardly think it probable that he has any such sensations, when he fears, for instance, that he will be late to dinner, and yet he must be differently constituted from many of his fellow-men if his state of mind in such a case is merely a cold, intellectual cognition of the fact that such a state of affairs would be undesirable.

The same is true of the other emotions he mentions. The feeling of the ludicrous is, perhaps, the strongest case he cites, but in my own case slight degrees of amusement do not excite laughter, or even any conscious disposition to laugh. There is, at the most, in such cases, a tendency to smile, which may be overpowered by some other emotion, without in the least impairing my feeling of amusement. It seems to me certain that slight degrees of all the emotions mentioned may be unaccompanied by any distinct consciousness of reflex movements. In such cases it is only by a pretty strong effort of attention that we are able, if at all, to determine what the bodily changes are, although we are distinctly aware of the emotion.

Again, it is to be noticed that many actions, similar in character to those we have been considering, are not associated with what are commonly called emotions. Laughing and sobbing, for instance, are spasmodic movements of the muscles of respiration, not strikingly different from hiccuping, and there seems no good reason why the consciousness of the former two should usually be felt as strong emotional excitement, while the latter is not. In some cases, movements identical with those accompanying particular emotions may occur entirely independently of them. Shivering from cold, for instance, is the same sort of a movement as may occur in violent fright, but it does not make us feel frightened. The laughter excited in children and sensitive persons by tickling of the skin is not necessarily accompanied by any mirthful feelings. The act of vomiting may be the accompaniment of the most extreme disgust, or it may occur without a trace of such emotion. Professor James himself gives an instance of this sort that can hardly be bettered: