Chapter XXVII: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (17)

The question is, whether this state of things is quite so inevitable as most of us seem to think. Certainly, so long as we are content to live in the fool’s paradise of supposing that only the perverse, the prejudiced, the stupid, or the ignorant can possibly mistake our meaning, and that our misreadings of others are simply due to their “obscurity,” or “quibbling,” or literary incapacity, we shall ourselves contribute to the hopelessness of the situation. But this is a subject which cannot be dealt with in an incidental way; it is rather a hope for the future, that one of the most practically serviceable of subjects—that of Meaning, its conditions and its changes—shall be seriously taken up. Then, indeed, we may get back to the first of all questions, and that which is most pregnant of helpful answers; that which needs asking more than any other if good work is to be done in this day of universal “unsettlement”:—What do we really mean? On all sides dead calms are stirred and ruffled, dead levels upheaved or depressed; nothing (happily) can hope to escape the wave of quickening force. So before long we may well be asking this question in good earnest; and when we do we can but be the better, even if we must needs submit in some cases where we may have been prematurely positive, to be content (for the moment) with the answer: We do not really know.

The fact is, that we have been postulating an absolute Plain Meaning to be thought of, as it were, in capital letters. We have been virtually assuming that our hearers and readers all share the same mental background and atmosphere. We have practically supposed that they all look through the same inferential eyes, that their attention waxes and wanes at the same points, that their associations, their halos of memory and circumstance, their congenital tendencies to symbolise or picture, are all on one pattern. Verily, we need a “Critique of Plain Meaning”!

Again we _quote_ on the same assumption. Unless the language of our author is obviously archaic; unless his allusions unmistakably betray a different life-context, a different social “milieu,” in short, a different mental world, we claim him or we repudiate him on the same principle. We take his words, we take his phrases, we fill them out with the same content as our own, we make him mean precisely what we ourselves mean. And be it noted that it is always what we mean _now_. That this in any way varies from what we meant at some time when, e. g., our attention was differently focussed, rarely enters our heads.

We shall, I suppose, admit that until lately there was one very good reason for this state of things. Only the exceptional mind (if any); only the mind which could not make itself fully understood by its contemporaries, and would risk being reckoned crazy or criminal if it spoke “plainly,” had any suspicion that this way of looking at things was being gradually invalidated by the general extension of the critical domain. The history of language, its relation to thought; the scope of expression and representation, the function of the figurative and symbolic; the growth of all means of mental communion from the simplest rudiments of gesture or cry to the highest point of intellectual complexity,—all this was either ignored or taken for granted on radically insecure bases.

Again, while the underlying conditions of language must be looked for in the domain of psycho-physics, that science had not yet come into existence. Even now it is but feeling its way and putting forth tentative hypotheses, warning us, as it does, so that they are liable to be constantly modified and occasionally revolutionised. And what does it realise, first and foremost? That our difficulties on the very threshold of the inquiry are, as usual, largely those of language. On all sides we have to use, as best we may, modes of expression that inevitably convey ambiguous meanings even to the thoughtful, even to the trained mind, which cannot but carry with them a background of outgrown or disproved premises, vitiating more or less every conclusion that we draw from them. The very phrases which are our only shorthand for the vast oratory of nature and experience betray us in the using. We have taken them as though they were like numerals invariable in meaning, thus supposing them subject to a permanent uniformity. We have taken them as though they were without a history, merely fortuitous labels or symbols of unanimous consent; the accepted sense, we think, being easily ascertainable, always persistent, and wholly sufficient for practical purposes. In any case we strangely assume that we may safely play upon all the chords of imagery, reserving without difficulty for serious use a body of terms which are direct expressions of “fact.”

But the suggestion now made is that this is precisely one of the most dangerous of presuppositions. It is not the man who has mystified himself, or who wishes to mystify others; it is not the man who confounds the reality of the logical with that of the actual; it is not the man who takes emotion for proof and notion for fact; it is none of these, but the man who is clear on such points and sees that they must be drawn out into clues and followed up to the uttermost, if we would know where we are—who is beginning to see that the paramount need of the moment is the “torpedo-shock” of the question, What do we really mean? He knows that the off-hand vagueness and ready-made confusion, which too often from sheer ignorance usurp the name of common-sense, are in the long run its most deadly enemies.

We may look forward then with a new hope to the rise of a systematic inquiry on the subject of meaning and its changes. This would entail the much-needed work of classifying metaphor, and might even be found to point to the existence of a third value, neither wholly literal, nor wholly figurative, as that of a large proportion of ordinary expression. From this and like causes, in this age of rapid changes due mainly to scientific conquest, we can all readily put to each other questions to which either a “yes” or a “no” must be equally misleading. And men of science have specially realised this, since many a time they have been unjustly credited with evasion, or with untenable or immoral views, because they either answered to a “plain question”: “In one sense, yes; in another, no,” or else gave an answer which could not fail to be misunderstood by a mind which was governed by unconscious survivals. So far as we are in touch with modern culture, we no longer mean what we must have meant in the days before Copernicus, when we say, for instance, “the sun rises.” When we speak of infection, we no longer mean what we used to mean before microbes had been heard of. When we talk of “heat,” we no longer mean what we used to mean even fifty years ago. And when a man says that he believes in the sun, the planets, the cosmos, in the heavens and the earth, in mind and matter, in soul and body, in spirit and flesh, he cannot, if he would, mean just what his forefathers meant, or indeed anything at all absolutely and finally. Whether we will or no, the meaning of such terms is changing on our very tongues, and ever swaying between the extremes which we call literal and metaphorical; “heaven,” e. g., ranging in value from sky to human destiny; “earth,” from soil to the visible Home of Man. We may appeal, and are right to appeal to “hard, dry” facts; but we perforce put something out of ourselves even into these. They become “facts” under the quickening touch of “mind,” while that emerges from a dim world of prepossession, bequeathing us many a primitive legacy from pre-intelligent sentience, and perhaps from little-suspected sources lying yet further back. For instance, primitive terror in its “superstitious” forms tended to represent man as inferior to and dependent on powers of some sort;—and this was true to natural order in the fact that his very world was not self-centred and was dependent for its best boons upon a greater than itself. As language advanced, he began quite naturally to express his meaning in “appropriate metaphors”; to use, e. g., the figures of light and then of sight to describe what he had, as we now say, “in his mind,” or what sense-messages, as we now say, had “put into his head.” For “something told him” that light, as it had been the first pleasure, was also the great means of life.[90] And he “saw,” in however grotesque a guise, the unbroken continuity of the organic and the inorganic, and perhaps even more clearly than most of us yet do, that of so-called “matter” and so-called “mind.” Perhaps in some cases, therefore, he chose his imagery better than (after long ages of dualism carried to the splitting-point) we generally do now.

He knew again that the senses after all, stern masters though they were while life was so hard to live, had very narrow limits; and that the world was in some sense fuller and richer of life than it had seemed to be as known directly through them.[91] And then he wondered,—and began to ask. He was the first Questioner. As Prof. Max Müller says,[92] “the greater the savagery, the dullness, the stupidity with which _Homo sapiens_ began, the greater the marvel at what must have been from the first, though undeveloped, in him, and made him in the end what we find him to be in the men of light and leading of our own age.” The mere fact of the question is the riddle to be solved. For certainly the beasts had not taught him either to wonder or to ask. And not merely insatiable questioning but something more here rises to challenge our attention and to demand reflection. Man is the first critic because he is the first idealist; the first to be discontented, to protest, to see life as a “ravelled end,” as something which is incomplete and speaks of something more. Surely in any case the step of all steps, the deepest yet the narrowest line to cross is the step from something noticed or found, from something which happens or appears, from something which somehow affects us, excites us, to its significance.

Of course in one sense it is impossible to fix any definite moment as that of the advent of this “significance.” Animals interpret each other’s aspect and gestures, often indeed with a subtle precision which to some extent we have lost. But interpretation in the intellectual sense becomes, from our present point of view, that which makes us really human. Our progress, our ascent, is mainly marked in this. The root-question to ask in gauging levels of humanity is, how much can a given man interpret or translate, of a world that teems with meaning? How much can he truly classify and relate, how much can he rightly infer and conclude, how much can he account for, explain, and fruitfully apply? For after all, results must be our tests. Claims and credentials are nothing, unless they can show this warrant; whereas truth which can use all facts alike is the very means of survival. Man begins by doing, by acting out impulse; then he learns to “think” little by little, observing, questioning, pondering, testing his way onward and upward. And throughout his patient, often painful journey, he is himself perpetually challenged. Nature’s stimulating appeals rain upon him ceaselessly from every side; she orders him to master all her meanings. He responds:—at first again, “blindly,” but ever rising to higher grades of answer. Both deficiency and error are no doubt more or less present in all mental response to actual fact—that is, in all experience. But the essence of sanity from the first lies in corrective power. Everywhere there is either absence of notice, absence of response, or there is experimental activity (broadly speaking) corrected at once; automatically or by the combined effect of the related organic activities. For instance, in health, if in using the hand, one finger accidentally goes astray, the coördinating muscles promptly recall it to a “sense of duty.” We know how the same rule works in speech and writing. Therefore, unless “voluntary” and “capricious” (or “willing” and “wilful”) are synonyms, the advent of volition ought not to mean the abrogation of this rule.

It is, however, obvious that “natural selection” can only operate in cases where death or sterility is the consequence of failure in adaptation and appropriate reaction, or segregation the consequence of excessive variation. But the point here is, why does not a tendency to correction, thus established, survive automatically in incipient imagination and therefore in language? It seems almost a burlesque of popular notions of “free will” to suppose that the moment the death-penalty is taken off, the new-born intelligence, unique in adapting power, should go astray persistently without let or hindrance. Many now merely formal or even jocular customs still prevailing[93] testify, as legacies from a remote time of danger needing to be averted, to the strength of tendencies organised during myriads of generations under the pressure of the struggle for life. Why does not this apply to language?

But sight gives us here perhaps the most suggestive lesson; for therein the ascending series seems especially gradual and unbroken. The eye, unlike the other organs of sense is an outgrowth of the very brain itself; “the retina ... is in reality a part of the brain.”[94] We may well therefore connect its functions specially with the thought of significance; it is the main out-post of our central means of interpretation.

Taking the stages in the evolution of the eye, and using a short summary of these as a convenient means of testing the value of a conspicuous group of metaphors, we find (1) a mere dint; (2) this dint deepening into a pit which (3) gradually narrows. Hitherto we have had only light and darkness; now we have an image, though but a dim one. (4) The pit is closed by a transparent membrane; this is protection, not obstacle. (5) The lens is formed by deposit of cuticle. Gain; increased distinctness and increased brightness. The lens can focus a larger pencil of rays from each part of the object to each part of the retina (corresponding point). Finally, iris and eyelid protect the perfected eye more completely, and enable it both to bear more light and to discern more detail.

If mental development were in any way comparable to this physiological development, we should expect to find (1) something which would naturally be described as a vague or dim “impression”; gradually deepening, becoming more distinctly localised as the stimulus became more definitely “impressive.” (2) We should begin to find “reality” and the “unreal”; “fact” and “fancy”; “truth” and “falsehood”; knowledge and ignorance,—contrasted as “light” and “darkness.”[95] And this is what actually happens.[96]

(3) Still our mental “impression” would not as yet afford us an image; “imagination” only now comes upon the scene and begins to work (though as yet “dimly”) upon the objects which more and more “incisively” “impress” us. (4) Our deep “impression” is closed in one sense from direct contact with the outward; mental vision becomes more delicately differentiated from the emotional “touch,” however this may be specialised and intensified. But what secludes this is transparent; it is protection, not obstacle. We rightly speak of mental penetration; of “seeing through” a superficial limit. The mental “lens” is formed from that “continuum” on which the original “impression” was made. The gain now is increased distinctness and brightness. More rays of “light,” of reality, of fact, of truth, of knowledge, can now be focussed from each part of a given object (or group of objects) of mental attention and interest; to each part of the responsive “sensitive plate” of the mind. Finally we have, so to speak, increased protective growth. The function of what are called academic culture and scientific method, with their fastidious standards of fitness and accuracy, may perhaps represent something not unlike that of iris and eyelid, enabling the developing mind safely to bear intenser illumination and also to discern more subtle detail.

It must be admitted that so far as it goes this is a significant psychological parable. However slender its right to the position even of a working clue to early stages of mind, it has at least better credentials than many accepted analogies can claim. And throughout its course what most “impresses” itself upon one’s mind is the steady maintenance of invariable reaction to excitation, and of protection from unfavorable stimulus.

“Mind,” as Mr. Shadworth Hodgson tells us,[97] “is a fiction of the fancy.” Of course this is open to the retort that so is fancy a fiction of the mind, or fiction a fancy of the mind.

Psychology is full of these see-saws of paradox, depending on vicissitudes of linguistic usage or context. But mind is indeed a fiction of the fancy when we endow it with a fanciful freedom from all ties with what we call physical reality. For this, however plainly we may recognise its genesis in our own sequences of sense-impression, does practically through them rule us with an undeviating severity which neither fiction nor fancy can tamper with. Therefore, if we think it absurd to suppose that there may possibly be an undiscovered vein of authentic and really indicative symbol or metaphor running through the arbitrary meshes of fanciful custom or mythical term, we are in fact implying that all clues from the original interactions of physical energy were entirely lost when what we call “mind” issued first in language. But at all events we may be sure that links between the “physical” and the “psychical” are everywhere drawing closer and emerging clearer, however buried as yet in a mass of the fantastic or the arbitrary.

It will probably be objected that we can never hope to find these. No doubt such an attempt must mean the patient work of many lifetimes, and at best we could not hope to lay bare the ultimate point of “origin.” But yet it seems worth trying. For after all, even the results which may appear so scanty in the tracing back of language, are already rich far beyond what could have been hoped for a few generations back. And if it were once realised that such a line of work might have practical and far-reaching issues; if we really saw that thus some barren disputes and speculations might cease to bar the way or to waste some precious energies, we should be more than rewarded. In his “Dialogues of Plato”[98] Professor Jowett warned us twenty years ago of our linguistic dangers, repeating his warning with greater emphasis and in fresh forms in the admirable essays added in the edition just published. He urges that the “greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants and not allowing them to be our masters.” “Words,” he tells us, “appear to be isolated but they are really the parts of an organism which is always being reproduced. They are refined by civilisation, harmonised by poetry, emphasised by literature, technically applied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the border-ground of human knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every lively-minded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of millions and yet are always imperceptibly changing:—not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage, gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us.” Then he reminds us of what we too often forget; that “language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected, an effect and partly a cause of our common humanity, present at every moment to the individual and yet having a sort of eternal or universal nature.”[99]

Nowadays, when we feel most scathingly superior, we often announce that we fail to see and have yet to learn something which, bringing us, it may be, a really fresh idea, unpleasantly stirs misgiving. Let us go on with our greeting, meaning it in good earnest. For when we honestly and without reservation consent to learn and succeed in seeing some things now waiting for our study we may find more than we look for, within reach. After all it may be that we have really failed to see and have really yet to learn the part that meaning—whether of language or of conduct—and its change or variations (successive or simultaneous) have had throughout the mental history of man. It may be that while the ordinary modern metaphor like the ordinary modern analogy is a mere rhetorical device, some few images may be found to hail from an altogether deeper and more authentic source. Many, however ancient, are not of course any the more valid for their antiquity. On the contrary it is obvious that such a figure for instance as “foundation” or “basis” to express an ultimate necessity, is a survival from days in which the earth was supposed to require and to possess such fixed and immutable base, while the analogies, e. g. between the human and the inorganic orders are now reversed. We import the idea of mechanism and invariable sequence into the former instead of exporting conscious intention into the latter; we level down where our forefathers levelled up. And we have to beware of the subtle atmosphere of fallacy thus introduced.

But on the other hand it is conceivable that some may be found to belong to that as yet mysterious energy on which natural selection plays and of which variation is the outcome or the sign. What we find in language may thus be, as it were, not merely the “scarred and weather-worn” remnant of geogenic strata but sometimes the meteorite, the calcined fragment of earlier worlds of correspondence, ultra-earthly, cosmical. We have no right to do more than ask and seek and knock at the gates of fact in such a matter as this. But until that has been done; until at least we have tried the experiment; have looked for grades of validity in metaphor and analogy in the light of modern science, and still more, have recognised clearly the powerful though hidden effects upon us of organised mental picture brought in surreptitiously with verbal imagery, or by comparison; we cannot know whether such an effort is worth while or no, or what harvest it may yield. For after all, whether we like it or no, we _are_ heliocentric; the world and all that is in it is cosmically generated. As far as science—and experience—are concerned, anything which says “I don’t admit that origin; I claim to have produced myself or to have been originated by and on the earth in a final sense,” must make good its geocentric or self-creating pretensions with overwhelming cogency and rigorous proof. We appeal to the “light” of science, of reason, of experience, against the “darkness” of superstition, myth, and mysticism. And we are thus appealing not to the supersensuous or supernatural but to the ultra-satellitic. Not only beyond the earth and touch but beyond the atmosphere and hearing is the home of the light that lightens our small world, calling forth in us the answer of sight. And the manifold revelations through this sense—in its mental as well as bodily character—press upon us, with greater and greater insistence, the wealth of our relations with the universe.

In any case, _meaning_—in the widest sense of the word—is the only value of whatever “fact” presents itself to us. Without this, to observe and record appearances or occurrences would become a worse than wasteful task. Significance is the one value of all that consciousness brings, or that intelligence deals with; the one value of life itself. But perhaps for this very reason we have taken it too much for granted. It may need a more definite place in psychological inquiries. It may have unsuspected bearings.

When we have realised better what manner of gift this is, we may find answers of which we have prematurely despaired; answers coming not from the “mystical” point of the horizon of experience, but rather from the neural. And let us beware here of repeating the pre-scientific error of postulating, for figurative purposes, a flat earth on which whatever lies beyond “horizons” never meets! But, it may be said, why not? Why should it signify? Why, but because Man is the one not merely who thinks, or speaks, or writes, or looks upwards, but the one who _means_, the one who _is_ the meaning of much, and makes the meaning of all; the one who will not tolerate the unmeaning anywhere in experience. Nothing remains but that he should interpret rightly; that he should apprehend nature and experience in their true sense. It is the glory of science that she puts this aim in the forefront of her labors. She tells us that nothing can be done without assumption and hypothesis as to the meaning of things. But that significance belongs to the very spring to which we owe her dauntless energy and her accumulating triumphs.

Why should it signify? The very term answers us. To “signify” is the one test of the important. The significant is alone worth notice. We inherit a mode of thinking which we are at last becoming able to criticise in the light of knowledge gained by observation and experiment. But if we persist in using, without warning to hearer or reader, imagery which has no longer either sense or relevance, or which tends to call up a false mental picture or to perpetuate an else decaying error, we shall to that extent forfeit the very gifts which science brings us, and must not complain of the obstinate persistence of ideas which needlessly divide us. At least, let us try to realise more clearly what we are losing in this way. The danger even thus must needs be lessened; detected bogies become powerless for mischief; but we need not leave their ancient home empty, swept, and garnished; stores of verified analogy are waiting to replace them. The figurative must not indeed be pressed, still less literalised. But we may see that it conveys a true, rather than a false impression; and harmonises with, instead of contradicting that which we most surely know.[100]

It may be said in a true sense that the function of the hero, the saint, the poet, is to bring the world to _life_. But the function of the devoted servant of science, the critical scholar, the true philosopher, is to bring the world to _truth_, in a sense only now becoming possible. Through the last discipline alone, in its most thorough applications, can we hope fully to master the scope of all significance and the laws of all its workings. Then, indeed, we may further hope to read with a fresh eye the Significance of Life.

VICTORIA WELBY.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] _The Nineteenth Century_, April, 1886. (Reprinted in _Essays on Controverted Questions_.)

[90] “Light affects the new-born infant at an early stage, although in this as in other respects individual differences immediately assert themselves. The child seems to take pleasure in an excitation of light and tries (even on the second day after birth) to turn towards it in order to retain it.” (_Outlines of Psychology_, H. Höffding, p. 4.)

“Under the influence of light the conversion of inorganic matter into more complex organic matter takes place, more particularly in the green cells of plants.” (_Ibid._, p. 315.)

“It is certainly necessary to look further back than the visual sensations to understand the great influence of light on all creatures that have sensuous perception.... Light is thus one of the most elementary conditions of life.” (_Ibid._, p. 229.)

[91] It must be borne in mind that I am using psychological terms in a merely general sense. Among many examples of such use I may quote Sachs (_Physiology of Plants_, p. 200) and F. Darwin (_Address to Biological Section_, Brit. Assoc, August 1891), who speaks of the plant as “perceiving” external change, as “recognising” the vertical line, “knowing” where the centre of the earth is, “translating” stimulus, etc. See also Darwin’s _Forms of Flowers_, p. 90.

Again Prof. M. Foster uses the word “will” in the same general (rather than metaphorical) sense. (_Text Book of Phys._, Part 3, pp. 1059, 1062, 1063.) Modes of reaction are thus verbally linked with consciousness, and we must remember that all our terms for the “mental” belong first to the “physical,” and that many are reciprocally used in the two spheres.

[92] _Natural Religion_, p. 243.

[93] See Dr. Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, Vol. I, pp. 74-121; _Ibid._, Vol. II, pp. 297-298, 404-428.

[94] Dr. M. Foster’s _Text-Book of Physiology_, Part 4, p. 1142.

[95] I am of course merely directing attention to the relative aptness of metaphors of mental process familiarly in use in our own language. It is obvious that before any inference could be made from them as to the value of unconscious analogies of imagery, we should have to make appeal to comparative philology and embark on a wide inquiry, for which the English-speaking races must wait for Dr. Murray’s epoch-making Dictionary.

[96] It must be borne in mind that the whole process presupposes the other senses or at least the temperature-sense, the “muscular sense” and that of touch; that is, we should have “felt” simple stimuli “emotionally” before we “saw” things intellectually. And hearing is not now in question, though in that, too, we should find the same character of development, i. e. the same prominence of the protective and discriminative factors.

[97] _Brain_, June, 1891. P. 13.

[98] Vol. I, pp. 285-286, 293.

[99] The following, among many pregnant passages between which it is difficult to choose, may be further quoted:

“The famous dispute between Nominalists and Realists would never have been heard of, if, instead of transferring the Platonic ideas into a crude Latin phraseology, the spirit of Plato had been truly understood and appreciated. Upon the term substance at least two celebrated theological controversies appear to hinge, which would not have existed, or at least not in their present form, if we had ‘interrogated’ the word substance, as Plato has the notions of Unity and Being. Those weeds of philosophy have struck their roots deep into the soil, and are always tending to reappear, sometimes in new-fangled forms; while similar words, such as development, evolution, law, and the like, are constantly put in the place of facts, even by writers who profess to base truth entirely upon fact. In an unmetaphysical age there is probably more metaphysics in the common sense (i. e. more _a priori_ assumption) than in any other, because there is more complete unconsciousness that we are resting on our own ideas, while we please ourselves with the conviction that we are resting on facts. We do not consider how much metaphysics are required to place us above metaphysics, or how difficult it is to prevent the forms of expression which are ready made for our use from outrunning actual observation and experiment.” (Vol. IV, p. 39-40.)

“To have the true use of words we must compare them with things; in using them we acknowledge that they seldom give a perfect representation of our meaning. In like manner when we interrogate our ideas we find that we are not using them always in the sense which we supposed. (_Ibid._, p. 41.)

“Many erroneous conceptions of the mind derived from former philosophies have found their way into language, and we with difficulty disengage ourselves from them. Mere figures of speech have unconsciously influenced the minds of great thinkers. Also there are some distinctions, as, for example, that of the will and of reason, and of the moral and intellectual faculties, which are carried further than is justified by experience. Any separation of things which we cannot see or exactly define, though it may be necessary, is a fertile source of error. The division of the mind into faculties or powers or virtues is too deeply rooted in language to be got rid of, but it gives a false impression. For if we reflect on ourselves we see that all our faculties easily pass into one another, and are bound together in a single mind or consciousness; but this mental unity is apt to be concealed from us by the distinctions of language.” (_Ibid._, p. 155.)

[100] I would gladly forward to any reader interested in a question of such practical bearings, a small collection of _Witnesses to Ambiguity_ gathered from representative sources, and a pamphlet which was circulated at the International Congress of Experimental Psychology, held in London, August, 1892, giving examples of the mischievous confusions suggested by the use, even among writers of the first rank, of the metaphor, _Inner and Outer_. Prof. H. Sidgwick, the president, in his opening address, expressed the opinion that very important work of this kind remained to be done, and added, “I have much sympathy with the view urged in a pamphlet that I have received for distribution among members of the Congress, which illustrates forcibly the confusion caused by one established antithesis of terms.” Professor Sully and others have expressed themselves strongly in the same sense.

REPLY TO THE NECESSITARIANS.

REJOINDER TO DR. CARUS.

§ 1. In _The Monist_ for January, 1891, and in the number for April, 1892, I attacked the doctrine that every event is precisely determined by law. Like everybody else, I admit that there is regularity: I go further; I maintain the existence of law as something _real and general_. But I hold there is no reason to think that there are general formulæ to which the phenomena of nature _always_ conform, or to which they _precisely_ conform. At the end of my second paper, the partisans of the doctrine of necessity were courteously challenged and besought to attempt to answer my arguments. This, so far as I can learn, Dr. Carus alone, in _The Monist_ of July and October, 1892, has publicly vouchsafed to do. For this I owe him my particular thanks and a careful rejoinder.

§ 2. I number the paragraphs of his papers consecutively. The following index shows the pages on which those paragraphs commence, and the numbered sections of this rejoinder in which they are noticed.

DR. CARUS REJOINDER
Vol. II, p. 560 ¶ 1
” ” 2 §28
” ” 3 29
” 561 4 23.27
” ” 5 21
” ” 6 18
” ” 7 18
” 562 8 18 _bis._
” ” 9 21
” ” 10
” 563 11 12.21.22
” ” 12 19
” ” 13 19
” 564 14 3.12 _bis._ 22
” ” 15 8 _ter_, 16
” 565 16 21
” ” 17 3
” ” 18 3
” ” 19 13 note
” 566 20 14
” ” 21 13, 14
” ” 22 3.12.22
” ” 23 12
” ” 24 3.13.14
” 567 25 8
” ” 26 8
” ” 27 8.22
” ” 28 20.22
” ” 29 12
” 568 30 22
” ” 31 22 _bis_
” ” 32 22
” 569 33 22
” ” 34 22
” ” 35 8
” ” 36 29
” ” 37
” 570 38
” ” 39
” ” 40
” 571 41
” ” 42
” ” 43
” 572 44 23
” ” 45
” ” 46 5.23
” 573 47
” ” 48 7
” ” 49 7
” ” 50 7
” 574 51 7.25
” ” 52
” ” 53 25
” ” 54
” ” 55 25 _bis_
” 575 56 17
” ” 57 17 _bis_
” ” 58 17.25
” ” 59 17
” ” 60 17
” 576 61 7.17.25 _bis_
” ” 62 17.21
” ” 63 17
” 577 64 17 _bis_
” ” 65 26
” ” 66 25
” ” 67 25 _bis_
” 578 68 6.7
” ” 69 17
” 579 70 6
” ” 71 3
” 580 72 3
” ” 73 3
” ” 74 3
” ” 75 3
” 581 76 3
” ” 77 3.11
” ” 78
” ” 79 21
” 582 80
” ” 81 29
” ” 82 29
” ” 83 29
Vol. III, 68 84 5
” ” 85 27
” ” 86
” 69 87 12
” ” 88 5.15 _bis_
” ” 89
” ” 90
” ” 91 5
” ” 92 5
” 70 93 5
” ” 94 5
” ” 95 3
” ” 96 4.11
” 71 97
” ” 98
” ” 99
” ” 100
” 72 101
” ” 102 11
” ” 103 6
” ” 104
” ” 105
” 73 106 11
” ” 107 6
” ” 108 6
” ” 109 6
” ” 110 6
” ” 111 6
” 74 112 6
” ” 113 6.11
” ” 114 6
” ” 115 6
” 75 116 6.7
” ” 117 6
” 76 118
” ” 119 9
” ” 120 6.16
” ” 121 14
” ” 122 11
” 77 123 3
” ” 124 10
” ” 125 7
” 78 126 8
” ” 127 8
” ” 128 29
” 79 129
” ” 130
” ” 131
” ” 132
” ” 133 27
” ” 134
” 80 135
” ” 136
” ” 137 15
” ” 138 15
” ” 139 5.15
” 81 140 15
” ” 141 15
” ” 142 15.25
” ” 143 15.24
” ” 144 15 _bis_
” ” 145 15 _bis_
” ” 146 15 _bis_
” ” 147 15 _ter_
” 82 148 15
” ” 149 12.15
” ” 150 15 _bis._ 25
” 83 151 15.24
” ” 152 15.24
” ” 153 15.24
” ” 154 15.24
” ” 155 15.24
” 84 156 15 _bis_
” ” 157 15
” ” 158 15.24
” 85 159 15.24
” ” 160 15.24
” 86 161 15 _bis_
” ” 162 15
” ” 163 5.14
” ” 164 14
” 87 165 4.14
” ” 166 14
” ” 167 14
” ” 168 27
” ” 169 27
” 88 170 27
” ” 171 27
” ” 172 27
” ” 173
” ” 174
” 89 175 27
” ” 176 27 _bis_
” ” 177 27
” ” 178 27
” ” 179
” ” 180 30
” ” 181
” ” 182
” 90 183 30
” ” 184
” ” 185 27
” ” 186 27
” 91 187 27
” ” 188
” ” 189
” ” 190
” 92 191 4
” ” 192 27 _bis_
” ” 193 20.27 _bis_
” 93 194
” ” 195 8
” ” 196 8
” 94 197
” ” 198 6
” ” 199 30
” ” 200
” ” 201
” 95 202
” ” 203 20.29
” ” 204 29
” 96 205 20
” ” 206
” ” 207

§ 3. Dr. Carus’s philosophy is hard to understand. Some phrases which he frequently uses lead the reader to imagine that he is listening to an old-fashioned Königsberg Kantian. What, then, is our surprise when we find (¶ 14) that he sneers at the Kantian, Sir William Hamilton (whom he calls Mr. Hamilton) as having “no adequate conception of the _a priori_.” In his “Ursache, Grund und Zweck” (1883), an admirably clear and systematic exposition of much of his thought, he takes a Schleiermacherian view of the _a priori_. He admits it to be founded in the universal conditions of cognition; but he thinks it is among the objective rather than the subjective conditions. This is an opinion to which Hamilton is also at times inclined. It is a weak conception, unless the whole distinction between the inward and the outward world be reformed in the light of agapastic and synechistic ontology. For to deny that the _a priori_ is subjective is to remove its essential character; and to make it both subjective and objective (otherwise than in the sense in which Kant himself makes it objective) is uncalled for, and is cut off by Ockham’s razor. But when synechism has united the two worlds, this view gains new life.

Another thing which has astonished me is Dr. Carus’s extravagant laudation (¶ 17) of Venn’s highly enlightened and remarkably bright-thinking, yet blundering little book, “The Logic of Chance.”[101] This is the way he speaks of it: “This admirable work, we will make bold to say, marks a new epoch in the study of logic.” He adds that it “paves the way which Mr. Peirce has actually followed.” But the question of the nature of probability had long before that publication engaged the attention of some of the most powerful intellects in England; and my opinion concerning it was fully made up before I saw the book. I do not think I learned anything from that except a classification of the philosophies of probability. However, after all his eulogy, Dr. Carus only uses the book to quote from it Mill’s rewording of Kant’s definition of causation, which he would better have quoted direct.

Let me say, not to Dr. Carus, but to the younger generation of readers, that if they imagine that Hamilton, because he is antiquated, is not worth reading, they are much mistaken. The Scotistic elements of his philosophy, and his method in the notes on Reid are especially worthy of attention. As for Mill, though his philosophy was not profound, it is, at least in his “Examination of Hamilton,” admirably set forth. Whoever wishes to appeal to the American philosophical mind needs to be quite familiar with the writings of these two men.

Dr. Carus himself accepts all that I hold for erroneous in Kant’s definition of causation as universal and necessary sequence. Mill merely substitutes the exacter words _invariable_ for “universal,” and _unconditional_ for “necessary.”[102] In giving his form of the definition, Mill shows why it is not applicable to the sequence of day and night, namely, that that is not necessary. Yet Dr. Carus writes (¶ 18) of this very same sequence as if it came under Mill’s definition![103]

Again, why should he make it “the immortal merit of the great Scotchman” (¶ 22), that is, of Hume, that he admitted the truth of Leibniz’s principle?

The famed puzzle of causation is peculiarly understood by Dr. Carus. The difficulties which the perusal of Hume suggested to the mind of Kant,[104] were such as belonged to all categories, or general conceptions of the understanding. The precritical Kant inherited a very decided nominalism from Leibniz and Wolf; and the puzzle for him was simply the usual difficulty that plagues nominalism when it finds itself confronted with a reality which has an element of generality. Necessity is, I need hardly say, but a particular variety of universality. But Dr. Carus (¶ 24) passes over this, to dwell upon an entirely different objection to causation, namely, that it seems to be a creation out of nothing, and a miracle.

I find myself equally at cross-purposes with him, when in ¶¶ 71-77, he speaks of the prevalent views of logicians concerning _comprehension_. This word, in logic, measures the amount of predicates or marks attached to a conception; but Dr. Carus’s criticisms seem to be based upon the idea that by comprehension is meant logical breadth, or the amount of subjects to which the conception is applicable.

I am simply gravelled by his remarks (¶ 95) concerning sundry English words.

No more do I know what to make of his praise (¶ 123) of the German translation of a French phrase used in the theory of functions, meaning _univocally determined_.

§ 4. One habit which goes far to obscure Dr. Carus’s meaning is that whenever he finds his opinion at variance with a familiar saying, instead of rejecting that formula, he retains it and changes the meaning. This is calculated to throw the whole discussion into confusion. Thus, nothing is more certain than that the so-called “law of identity,” or _A_ is _A_, was intended to express the fact that every term is predicable of itself. But Dr. Carus, simply because he finds that “meaningless and useless” (¶ 96), thinks himself authorised to confuse the terminology of logic by making this formula, _A_ = _A_, under the same old name, mean that things to which the same name is applicable are for some purpose equivalent.

In like manner, he changes the meaning of the word _freedom_ (¶ 165), so that the distinction between those who maintain and those who oppose the freedom of the will may, in words, disappear. It seems scarcely defensible for a thoroughgoing necessitarian, such as he is, to fly the flag of Free Will.

He, also, changes the meaning of _spontaneity_ so far that, according to him, “masses gravitate spontaneously” (¶ 191), and so pretends that his doctrine does not suppress the spontaneity of nature!

§ 5. There are other questions of terminology in which I am unable to agree with Dr. Carus. Thus, when I define necessitarianism as “the theory that the will is subject to the general mechanical law of cause and effect,” Dr. Carus (¶ 139) wishes to delete “mechanical.” But the result would be to define a doctrine to which the advocates of free will would generally subscribe, as readily as their opponents. In order properly to limit the definition, it is quite requisite to exclude “free causation.” By “mechanical” causation, I mean a causation entirely determinative, like that of dynamics, but not necessarily operating upon matter.

Dr. Carus mentions (¶ 84) that there are several different ideas to which the term necessity is applied. It seems to me that what lies at the bottom of all of them is the experience of reaction against one’s will. In the simplest form, this gives the sense of reality. Dr. Carus himself admits (¶ 46) that reality involves the idea of inevitable fate. Yet philosophical necessity is a special case of universality. But the universality, or better, the generality, of a pure form involves no necessity. It is only when the form is materialised that the distinction between necessity and freedom makes itself plain. These ideas are, therefore, as it seems to me, of a mixed nature. Dr. Carus (¶¶ 91-94) insists that by the necessary, he wishes to be understood to mean in all cases the _inevitable_. This is the idea of _fate_, and is not the conception which determinists usually attach to the term necessity. Yet he does not appear to be quite consistent. At one time (¶ 88), he carefully distinguishes necessity from fate. At another time (¶ 163), every element of compulsion is to be excluded from the conception of necessity.

§ 6. One important key to Dr. Carus’s opinions is the recognition of the fact that, like many other philosophers, he is a nominalist tinctured with realistic opinions.

He says (¶ 103), that “there is no need of discussing the truism that, properly speaking, there is no absolute sameness.” Now, upon the nominalistic theory, there is not only no absolute or numerical identity, but there are not even any real agreements or likenesses between individuals; for likeness consists merely in the calling of several individuals by one name, or (in some systems) in their exciting one idea. On the other hand, upon the realistic theory, the fact that identity is a relation of reason does not in the least prevent it from being real. On that theory, it is real unless it is _false_ that anything is itself. Thus, upon either theory, identity is just as real as similarity. But Dr. Carus, being a nominalist leaning toward realism, is inclined to make dynamical relations real, and second-intentional ones unreal. This opinion, I think, is a transitional one.

The declaration (¶ 198) that “natural laws are simply a description of nature as nature is,” and that “the facts of nature express the character of nature,” are nominalistic. But in another place (¶¶ 107-116), he says distinctly that uniformities are real.

He says (¶ 70), “Mr. Peirce attempts to explain natural laws as if they were concrete and _single facts_.” This is eminently nominalistic. The nominalist alone makes this sharp distinction between the abstract and the concrete,[105] which must not be confounded with Hegel’s distinction for which the same words are used. The nominalist alone falls into the absurdity of talking of “single facts,” or _individual generals_. Yet Dr. Carus says (¶ 68) that natural laws describe the facts of nature _sub specie aeternitatis_. Now I understand Spinoza to be a realist. In ¶117 he considers it “settled” “that there are samenesses.” This is realistic. But in ¶ 120, he holds “the whole business of science to be to systematise the samenesses of experience,” which is nominalistic.

§ 7. Dr. Carus seems to be in some doubt as to how far evolutionism ought to be carried. In ¶¶ 48-51, he seems to side with my contention that it should be thoroughgoing. In ¶116, he makes intellect an evolution from feeling. Yet he is sometimes (¶ 125) “inclined” to say the world never was a chaos; he sometimes (¶ 61) thinks it weak to suppose that real chance begets order; and he sometimes (¶ 68) goes so far as to pronounce eternity to be the _conditio sine qua non_ of natural law.

§ 8. Every reader of _The Monist_ knows that our good editor’s great word is “formal law.” The clearest statement he has ever made of this doctrine I find in the following two sentences (¶ 127):

“The _a priori_ systems of thought are ... constructions
raised out of the recognition of the formal, i. e. relational
samenesses that appear in experience. All possibilities of a
certain class of relations can be exhausted and formulated in
theorems.”[106]

This is perspicuous. For example, of pairs, we can easily show that there are but two forms _A_:_A_ and _A_:_B_. This proposition,—theorem if you will,—exhausts the possibilities. If we make believe there is no danger of falling into error in mathematical reasoning,—and one danger, though not, perhaps, a very serious one, _is_ eliminated,—then this proposition is absolutely certain. But I will say, at once, that such a proposition is not, in a proper sense, synthetic. It is a mere corollary from the definition of a pair. Moreover, its application to experience, or to possible experience, opens the door to probability, and shuts out absolute necessity and certainty, _in toto_.