Part 62

Principles which have not been derived either from the facts to be explained, or from the additional facts which belong to their system, do not and cannot explain the phenomena.

* * * * *

Comprehension is, as it were, an explanation of a higher degree. The term means a grasping together, and it actually consists in viewing two or several facts in such a way as to recognise their common features. Comprehension is a reduction of our patterns of explanation; it unites two or several of them in one formula.

For instance, it has been observed that certain objects float in water while others sink to the bottom. The observations do not seem to agree, they present two incoherent facts. When we find out that the weight of a floating body is equal to the weight of water which it displaces, we understand at once why bodies whose specific gravity is greater than water sink while those of a lighter specific gravity float. Comprehension, in this as in every other case, is the description of a process which comprises all the facts that belong to a special class in a common formula. The description must be applicable to all single cases however different they may be.

This conception of comprehension has a great advantage over Mr. Peirce’s view. While he has to bring in some “other fact” from the outside, we need not introduce any foreign element. Comprehension, as we understand it, can rise from the statement of particular facts to more and more general formulations, until finally we arrive at universal laws. All the laws thus formulated to satisfy our cravings for comprehension, are found to belong to one great system of laws, and our scientists are constantly engaged not only in widening the range of our experience by new discoveries, but also in revising our statements of the uniformities of nature and, where they appear to be in collision, in bringing them into harmony.

This conception of comprehension is monistic, Mr. Peirce’s is dualistic. We need not, in order to explain the facts of existence, go beyond them into a supernatural realm. Mr. Peirce must go outside of the world into non-existence when he attempts to understand the world by the principles of his philosophy. It is very doubtful whether explanations, the “essential” nature of which is to consist of “other facts usually hypothetical,” will be satisfactory to anybody except himself.

Otherness makes any fact unfit to serve as a factor of an explanation and indeed I cannot think of any instance, real or imaginary, in which the explanatory facts, be they real or hypothetical, do not form parts of the system under consideration.

There is only one instance to which Mr. Peirce’s method of explanation has been applied, and I am under the impression that it has been invented solely for this purpose. Mr. Peirce’s philosophy is too original to be explained by the usual methods; it must have an original method of its own. In order to explain “law” Mr. Peirce calls in “chance.” His explanation must be an “other fact” and the only fact different from law is not-law, lawlessness, or absolute chance. According to my idea of explanation, law can never be explained by chance. According to Mr. Peirce, it is the only possible thing that can be called in as that “_other_ fact” which is supposed to be the essential constituent of an explanation.

If Mr. Peirce’s method of explanation were sound, we should have to explain order from chaos, possibility from impossibility, and sense from nonsense.

II. MR. PEIRCE’S PHILOSOPHY.

Mr. Peirce’s constant references to scholastic philosophy remind me of happy years long past when I was extremely interested in the theories of such men as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Occam, Abelard, Tauler, and others. Together with my chum, now a sober Professor of physics at a German University, I freely indulged in the construction of various world-theories, which, alas! were quickly overthrown one after another by the slightest puff of wind. I have not lost my interest in the schoolmen, but it is considerably weakened.

Mr. Peirce’s repeated praise of scholastic realism and his condemnation of any theory that he brands as nominalistic, seems to me like the method of some of our politicians who, eager to revive toryism, should censure all evils of the politics of to-day as whiggish. This comparison is not exaggerated, for there are a few Hamiltonians who miss the refining influence of an aristocratic class and regret that the historical tradition of toryism has been so completely broken. I would not deny that there is some truth in it, and there is some truth, too, in mediæval realism, which has been neglected by the, first violently suppressed and then triumphant, nominalism. But in reviving realism the Scotists should be very careful to avoid a resurrection of its errors.

1. DUNS SCOTUS AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PATRON SAINT.

Johannes Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, honored since his successful defense of the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Conception by the title Doctor Subtilis, and the very same man after whom, on account of the narrowness of his later disciples during the time of the Reformation, a blockhead is to-day called a dunce, was one of the most characteristic figures of scholastic philosophy. He lived at the end of the thirteenth Century when the authority of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas who had died March 7th, 1274, was all but universally recognised. Scotus appeared as the most powerful opponent of Thomas. Ingenious, original, bold, and buoyant in his attacks he had a short but brilliant career and died comparatively young at Cologne, in November, 1308.

While Thomas, surnamed Dr. Universalis, or Dr. Angelicus, is regarded by his order, the Dominicans, as the greatest authority in philosophical matters, Scotus succeeded in impressing his mode of thought upon the Franciscans; yet Thomas is universally regarded in the Roman church and also among Protestant theologians as the more orthodox Christian.

Almost all the ideas of Scotus were set forth in opposition to the views of others and mainly of Thomas. Thomas was a determinist, Scotus an outspoken indeterminist. Thomas says that man’s action is necessarily determined by what he thinks is best. Scotus avers that man thinks in a certain way because he wills in a certain way. Man’s ideas are fashioned to suit his character. His motto is, “_voluntas superior est intellectu_” and his idea of will is identified with the indetermined arbitrariness of a perfect _liberum arbitrium_. According to Thomas, God commands us to do the good because it is good. Scotus calls good that which God commands simply because God commands it. The will of God, like the will of man is, in Scotus’s opinion, undetermined, it is arbitrary. Thus God created the world not because his will was determined by some motive, but because it so pleased him; and Christ’s passion and death were not really an atonement; they simply were accepted as such by God.

Without entering into this controversy of _anno olim_ we might say that we side neither with Thomas nor with Scotus, but would modify the statement of the former by the criticism of the latter. Thomas goes too far when he says that whatever is recognised as the best will of necessity be done. He overlooks the power of passions. Thomas’s statement would be right, if every passion were regarded as a will which has its own and independent but mistaken ideas about good. A soul whose passions are more powerful than rational considerations will necessarily be inclined to obey its irrational impulses. There is something in Scotus’s criticism, but his view is no improvement. In speaking of will as superior to the intellect, did he ever ask himself the question, What his own will would be independent of his intellect? Further, when God is said to command the good because it is good, Thomas separates in a logical consideration two ideas which are identical. Scotus is right in defining good as the will of God. From our standpoint we should say, the will of God, viz., the moral order of the universe, is of a definite kind which can be ascertained by experience. To speak of the will of God as good is an anthropomorphic expression. Good is that which agrees with the will of God; bad, that which opposes it. Suppose the moral order of the universe were different, goodness and badness would change with it.

We have sketched the views of Scotus only to show the points of contact between him and Mr. Peirce. Mr. Peirce is also an outspoken indeterminist. He identifies feeling with chance, and his free will is a _liberum arbitrium_. Mr. Peirce, like Scotus, also separates theology, and, with it, religion, from philosophy.[133] Scotus ridicules those who confound both, clearly indicating that he is aiming at Thomas, to whose fervent faith their conciliation was a matter of momentous and all important consequence. Scotus goes so far as to aver that something might be true in philosophy which is wrong in theology (see Ed. “Wadding” Fol. 4, p. 848)—a statement that to an honest searcher for truth must almost appear as frivolous.[134]

How much more imbued with true religiosity was his great namesake John Scotus Erigena the venerable founder of scholasticism when saying: “_Non est alia philosophia, i. e. sapientiae stadium, et alia religio_.”

2. MR. PEIRCE’S ORIGINAL THEORIES.

Mr. Peirce as a controversalist and critic is like Scotus, brilliant, versatile, and powerful. But he is more; he is also constructive.

Mr. Peirce’s style of architecture reminds us of neo-Platonism, and this is quite in harmony with Scotism, for Scotus, through Avicebron, derived many of his ideas from the Neo-Platonists. Mr. Peirce proposes a modern view of emanation, which starts the world from that βῦθος of nothingness which at the same time is the womb of all existence. The primeval state of being, says Mr. Peirce, “Was mere nothing from a physical aspect,” but, if it was not really nothing, what, then, was it?

It was chance.

Here lies the essential difference between Mr. Peirce and the neo-Platonists. The neo-Platonists (whose speculations, if they are treated not as philosophy, but as poetical effusions, are very profound and thoughtful) look to the Logos, or world-reason, as the beginning of the world emanation, while Mr. Peirce shows a certain contempt for reason. To the neo-Platonist, reasons _are_ explanations, while to our modern Scotist, reasons explain nothing. He says:

“Reasons explain nothing, except upon some theistic hypothesis which may be pardoned to the yearning heart of man, but must be doubtful in the eyes of philosophy....” (P. 567.)

Mr. Peirce goes so far as to speak of “the dullness of ratiocination’s self.”

Mr. Peirce’s gospel would deviate in the very first verse from that of St. John, for it would read

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ἡ τυχή.—In the Beginning was Chance!

And this chance which was in the beginning actually is, to Mr. Peirce, God, a personal God, an anthropomorphic deity endowed with consciousness. He says:

“That primeval chaos in which there was no regularity was mere nothing from a physical aspect. Yet it was not a blank zero; for there was an intensity of consciousness there, in comparison with which all that we ever feel is but as the struggling of a molecule or two to throw off a little of the force of law to an endless and innumerable diversity of chance utterly unlimited.” (_The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 19.)

And in another passage he says of chance:

“That it is a being living and conscious is what all the dullness that belongs to ratiocination’s self can scarce muster hardihood to deny.” (P. 560.)

Mr. Peirce’s argument that all the dullness that belongs to ratiocination’s self can scarcely muster hardihood to deny his proposition, sounds strange in the mouth of a scientist. But it is not strange; for I have found that enthusiastic defenders of improbable theories always fill the holes of their argumentation with abuse of those who dare to discover these holes. Call a person who doubts the truth of your statements dull, and you will frighten many a weak mind into a patient acceptance of your view.

We may rest assured that whenever a philosopher scolds he is at his wit’s end. For why should he lose patience if he can prove his proposition? Thus diatribes are always symptoms that there is some flaw in one’s logic and the louder one chides the sorer is the spot.

Mr. Peirce is serious in the statement that chance is a conscious being. He actually identifies chance and feeling. He says:

“Chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.”

The primordial chance, the existence of which, according to Mr. Peirce, “calls for no explanation,” has “a primordial habit-taking tendency.” Whence this tendency gets into the universe of absolute chance, Mr. Peirce is unable to disclose. The deviations from the mechanical order in the present course of things, which, by the by, are by no means proved, suggest to him and justify, in his opinion, this assumption. Thus, assumes he, primordial chance ceased to be chance; it changed by a gradual habit-taking into regularities. Consciousness ceased to be consciousness and became crystallised into natural laws. Mind ceased to be an arbitrary sporting, and by becoming effete it begot, through a summation of minute effects, this material universe of ours. Accordingly, real existence or thing-ness consists merely in the regularities thus produced, and “physical events are but the degraded ... forms of psychical events.”

This is in brief Mr. Peirce’s cosmogony, which, as the prophet of Tychism, he reveals to us in axiomatic aphorisms.

By gradual habit-taking, Mr. Peirce declares (_The Monist_, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 176), mind will at last be “crystallised in the infinitely distant future.” This rather sad outlook is, in another passage, modified by a counter-oracle, which announces that “an element of pure chance survives.” Why, he does not say. Irregularities, not being entirely suppressed, can increase again, and as such they are “undeveloped forms of psychical events.” Says Mr. Peirce (_The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 18):

“There are almost insensible fortuitous departures from regularity; these will produce, in general, equally minute effects.... Protoplasm is in an excessively unstable condition.... In the protoplasm these habits are to some slight extent broken up, so that, according to the law of mind, ... feeling becomes intensified.

“This breaking up of habit and renewed fortuitous spontaneity will, according to the law of mind, be accompanied by an intensification of feeling.”

This is the gist of Mr. Peirce’s mental philosophy, which proclaims that “consciousness is not to be reinstated without tychism.” The reappearance of chance is said to explain the origin of mind!

Our conception of mind is different. We see mind develop out of sentiency by the recognition of the regularities of the surrounding world. Reason is almost a synonym of man’s ability to form generalisations, of his having and operating with concepts, of his thinking ideas. Not the arbitrariness of a wilful mind is the properly mental of man’s soul, but his reason; and man’s reason originates under the influence of the uniformities of the surrounding world, which impress themselves, in what we call experience, upon his existence. The more a creature recognises the regularities of existence, and the more its soul becomes an image of this world-order, which is the prototype of his reason, of the divine Logos, the higher it rises in the scale of evolution.

If chance, as Mr. Peirce declares, is but the outward aspect of that which within is feeling, we should henceforth have to look upon the roulette and dice as sentient beings.

3. THE FOUR POSITIVE ARGUMENTS OF TYCHISM INSUFFICIENT.

Mr. Peirce adduces four positive arguments for believing in absolute chance. They are: (1) the prevalence of growth; (2) the variety of the universe; (3) the necessity of explaining law; and (4) the existence of feeling.

By growth, Mr. Peirce does not understand the growth of crystals, or trees, or organisms. That kind of growth is a mere transformation. Mr. Peirce’s idea of “real” growth is “opposed to the conservation of energy.” It is not an increase of the thing growing through the assimilation of substances taken from the surrounding world; it is an actual increase of energy, not a mere change; it is a growth of the universe itself. Granted the possibility of this so-called “real” growth, and we can easily explain the evolution of the world out of the tiniest beginning. But, of course, one thing has to go: either the conservation of energy or “real growth.” Mr. Peirce lets go the former, I the latter.[135]

The variety of the universe is, in my world-conception, sufficiently explained by the variety of forms, for form is indeed the _principium individuationis_; a doctrine, which, but for Mr. Peirce’s philosophy, I should regard as almost universally accepted. Among its advocates we find also Mr. Peirce’s great master, Duns Scotus, and Scotus’s teacher, Avicebron. In so far as various formations are possible, (exactly as the die can show six different surfaces,) chance plays an important part in the diversification of nature, but this chance is not to be thought of as a violation of the law, but appears to be a special case only, and a true manifestation of the law under complicated conditions.

Chance and probability are not mere subjective ideas, creatures of our ignorance, playing a rôle simply in our limited knowledge of the world. The words signify a certain condition of objective existence.

For instance, the probability of throwing 1 with one die is 1/6. This means, the die is so constructed that it can show six different positions, one among them being 1; and these six possibilities are as real a quality of the die, as its weight or its color.

The die has six possible positions. Now I take a die and throw 3. Are we not entitled to believe that the throw was sufficiently determined by all the innumerable conditions which accompany the act? We confidently think so, and feel no need of assuming any absolute chance. Now I throw again. What is now the probability of throwing 1? We answer again, 1/6. And, lo! there it is! It came at the second throw, and we ask, was our statement of the probabilities wrong? We say, no! it was not wrong, for it remains true even now. The statement does not mean that we shall throw a 1 at each sixth throw, but that (supposing the die to be perfect) 1/6 among all the possible throws will be 1, so that supposing all the possible throws realised in an infinite series of throws, the average number of 1’s among them will be the one-sixth part of the whole.

The enormous importance of chance (viz., of that real chance which is no violation of the law) has been recognised since Democritus and has received a fresh illustration from the investigations of Darwin, which I need not here recapitulate.

The theory of probabilities teaches, that whatever can happen in the long course of an infinite number of events, actually will happen, and that whatever, according to the nature of things, has a greater probability, will in an infinite number of cases occur with proportionately greater frequency.

The lesson which we have to draw from this statement is, that that which we wish not to happen, should be made impossible. And this can be done, perhaps not perfectly, but approximately. According to Mr. Peirce, the evolution of mind is due to the reappearance of chance; we say that the evolution of mind is marked by man’s increasing power in the restriction of chance.

The identification of chance with feeling, or even with mind, is to me an idea so grotesque, that I am inclined to regard it as a relic of gnostic speculations.

Mr. Peirce, instead of attempting to comprehend laws, as we do, seeks to trace their origin. He tries to explain their existence by growth, as if they were beings that evolve like the forms of planetary systems or the organisms of living creatures. Considering the fact that Mr. Peirce is a realist only in name, and that his philosophy is soaked with nominalistic traditions, we should say (and Mr. Peirce will pardon me that I quote the expression from him) that:

“The puzzle for him is simply the usual difficulty that plagues nominalism when it finds itself confronted with a reality which has an element of generality.”

The assumption of absolute chance might be used to account for any otherwise inexplicable event, but Mr. Peirce does not countenance this idea. He warns us to be cautious in its use, like the druggist who labels his poisons “handle with care”; “I only use chance,” he says, “to give room for the development of law.” Having used absolute chance to start the world with, he dismisses it. So Fiesco discharges his negro after he has done his work: “_Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit gethan, der Mohr kann gehen_.”

In my criticism of Mr. Peirce’s theory I said (_The Monist_, II, p. 574):

“How little, after all, we can escape the determinism of law as being a feature of the world, will be seen from the fact that the explanation for the evolution of law is presented by Mr. Peirce as being itself a law, i. e., a formula describing a regularity supposed to obtain in facts.”

Mr. Peirce replies:

“Is there no difference between a law, the essence of which is to be inviolable ... and _that mental law, the violation of which is so included in the essence that unless it were violated, it would cease to exist_?... Thus I clearly escape the contradiction attributed to me.” (P. 561.)

Mr. Peirce’s escape is like the disappearance of a medium from a room without doors. He must have got out through the fourth dimension. The argument is so subtle that I cannot see it, and I feel tempted to retort in a sentence quoted from my profound adversary:

“I confess, I can find only words without ideas in the objection.” (P. 561.)

Mr. Peirce speaks of law as having developed out of chance, but he himself, in fact, after a fashion, explains the origin of those laws of nature which represent its present uniformities by a law of habit-taking.

That the conservation of energy should leave no room for feeling is to me an obscure proposition. The law of the conservation of energy declares only that the sum of all energy in the world, potential as well as kinetic, remains constant. If a living and feeling being renews its waste and stores up new energy in its tissues, it must take it out of the general storehouse of nature; it must transform it, and cannot produce it out of nothing. Why should feeling become impossible, if the conservation of energy is true?

The identification of chance with feeling is, to my mind, a vagary. It is true that feeling develops mind; mind makes deliberation possible, and deliberation implies choice. But choice is not chance. The choice which a man makes is determined by his character. There is more resemblance between logical identity and a pun, than between feeling and chance.

4. THE NEGATIVE ARGUMENT A LOGICAL FALLACY.

The four positive arguments for believing in absolute chance are untenable. But Mr. Peirce, knowing that he had to weather a storm of criticisms, has taken along a sheet-anchor, consisting of a negative argument, which, if it were true, would make the four positive arguments redundant.

What shall we say to the statement, that chance need not be explained? Mr. Peirce says: