Chapter XXXI: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (21)

Fatalism and determinism must not be confounded. We define determinism as that view, according to which every event is determined by its conditions. The decision of a man whose liberty is not curtailed by any compulsion, so that he can act as he pleases exactly in agreement with his character, is determined objectively by the motive and subjectively by his character. A man of a certain character in a given situation will act in a way that is perfectly determinable.

Determinism, as I take it, does not exclude free-will. Nor does it exclude such chance as is, for instance, the incidental turning up of the various faces of a die.

Determinism is the basis of science, and also of ethics as a science. If the decision of a free will were merely the result of chance, why should our teachers and preachers take so much trouble to form character?

While determinism is a sound doctrine, fatalism is a superstition. Fatalism excludes the idea of free will. We define fatalism as that view which regards the fate of a man, whatsoever he may do, as fixed. For instance, we call the orthodox Mohammedan a fatalist; he looks at the flame without quenching it, because he argues, “if it is Allah’s will that my house burn down, it will burn down, whatever I may do.”

In my reply to Mr. Peirce (_The Monist_, Vol. II, p. 572) I approvingly quoted from him a passage containing the word “fate,” adding that here “the word ‘fate’ must be understood as Mr. Peirce understands it.” In spite of this warning, Mr. Peirce employs this quotation made from _his_ writings as if it were mine, and calls attention to the inconsistency involved in the different application of the word. This charge of inconsistency is neither judicious nor fair!

We define “necessary” as “that which is determined.”

Determined means describable. Necessity is that feature of things which makes it possible that we can, in proportion to our knowledge, describe beforehand or predict the course of events.

Kant’s definition of “necessary,” as given in his “Critique of Pure Reason,” is narrower. He says:

“That the coherence of which with the real is determined
according to universal conditions of experience is necessary,
or exists necessarily.”

This means in our phraseology, “that feature of the real which is determined by the laws of form.”

The word “determinism” has been inappropriately used in the sense of fatalism, in which sense it has to be condemned as a superstition. The term is needed, however, to denote a basic principle of great value. “Determinism,” if used in the sense which the word literally indicates, means “that view which regards all events as determined by its conditions.” Determinism does not mean that everything is decreed by some fate, that some Deity or other power has determined the course of events. It means that definite conditions produce definite results, and that the results can be ascertained and described, if _all_ the conditions are known.

Fatalism is a peculiar kind of determinism, and, indeed, an obviously erroneous one. Fatalism rests upon a dualistic conception, regarding necessity as a foreign force residing outside and above things and compelling them to act in a special way. It is the Moira of the ancients and the Kismet of the Mohammedans. The monistic view knows nothing of a foreign force or supermundane _fatum_ enacting a special course of affairs. Necessity, in the monistic conception, simply denotes the determinedness of results by its conditions; it signifies that _Gesetzmässigkeit_, or regularity according to law, is a feature of reality. We need not repeat again that the monistic view of determinism excludes neither chance nor free-will. It only excludes “absolute” chance and that indeterminable arbitrariness which is sometimes said to be free-will.

If events were not determined, if under the very same conditions the same causes could bring about different results, so that no regularities formulable in laws existed, the world would be a chaos and no cosmos, absolute chance would prevail, and science would be impossible.

Mr. Peirce not only confounds fate and necessity, but he also identifies them with resistance, and with reality. My idea of necessity has as little to do with the experience of, reaction as, for instance, with the idea of density, or with pleasure and pain. To confound such heterogeneous concepts must be productive of confusion. No wonder that Mr. Peirce makes the confession that these ideas seem to him “of a mixed nature.”

That my presentation of the case of Determinism _versus_ Free-will results in “a doctrine to which the advocates of free-will will generally subscribe as readily as their opponents,” is used as a reproach; but I do not take it as such, for my intention is not to side with one party, but to bring out the truth of both views.

3. NATURAL LAWS, DESCRIPTIONS.

Mr. Peirce makes the following allegation of inconsistency. He says of me:

“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.” (P. 531.)

I am unable to detect any inconsistency in these expressions. The gist of these three statements is this: the formulas usually called natural laws describe certain uniformities of reality.

The expression “description of nature” is by no means nominalistic. If law is said to be a description, it is not a mere name, but presupposes the existence of some objective reality for the description of which it has been formulated.

4. CAUSATION.

Mr. Peirce’s usage of the word “cause” is very unsettled. He says (p. 538):

“The original idea of an efficient cause is that of an agent,
more or less like man.”

The original idea of “cause” is the struggle of reaching an end or bringing about a certain state of things. The Latin _causa_ means “a lawsuit.”

In a similar way, the German _Ursache_ does not mean the original thing, but a “seeking.” _Sache_ is the English _sake_ and Gothic _sakjô_, meaning “struggle,” or “quarrel.” It is derived from the same root as the verb “to seek.”

Like _causa_, the word _Ursache_ was used as a legal term.

Mr. Peirce further states:

“The modern mechanical conception, on the other hand, is
that the relative positions of particles determine their
accelerations at the instants when they occupy those
positions.” (P. 538.)

“In dynamics, it is the fixed force, gravitation, or whatever
else, together with those relative positions of the bodies that
determine the intensity and direction of the forces, that is
regarded as the cause.” (P. 540.)

“The practice which I endeavor to follow in regard to the
word _cause_ is, to use it in the Aristotelian sense of an
_efficient cause_ in all its crudeness.” (P. 541.)

“When my idea is a more general and logical one, I prefer to
speak of the explanation.” (P. 541.)

No wonder that some causes are prior to their effects, others simultaneous, and that effects may even be prior to their causes! Using the word in various senses, Mr. Peirce becomes so entangled about causation, that in mustering the ideas force, position, reason, law, cause, and explanation, he no longer knows which is which.

* * * * *

Mr. Peirce being unable to bring any consistency into the usage of the term “cause,” drops it entirely as a philosophical word. This is Dr. Ironbeard’s method, who kills his patient to save him pain.

There was a time when I felt inclined to follow that plan of dealing with words in this predicament. But I found out very soon that there is not one difficult word in philosophical language which is not or was not at some time or other almost universally maltreated by the professional thinkers of mankind. What, then, is to be done? Shall we eradicate all old terms that are erroneously used and create a philosophical Volapük, which will have the advantage of being unincumbered with the errors of a long historical inheritance, but the disadvantage of being nowhere spoken and nowhere understood, except by its inventors?

Dr. Ironbeard’s method of dealing with terms is radical. It imitates the method of the social reformers who, on finding something wrong in society generally, propose to tear down the entire social structure, and begin the world over again from its beginning.

Most of the terms which have been in use for centuries and even millenniums, I have found to correspond to a special want of expressing some definite reality or constant group of realities or important relation among realities. The misuse of different words almost invariably has its origin in a consideration of the name alone, to the neglect of the reality denoted by the name. And misuses can be mended only by carefully investigating the realities themselves for the denotation of which the words have been invented. If we were to make a clean sweep of the “superstitions,” soul, God, cause, natural law, etc., because in many minds there are superstitious notions connected with these ideas, we should soon have to invent new terms for the realities which necessitated the formation of the old ones. The great bulk of religious and philosophical words originated because in each case there was an actual want of a phrase to denote some specific reality. The errors of the various terms arise because our ideas concerning the nature of these realities have not as yet been matured, and it is the office of the philosopher to contribute his mite toward their clarification.

Causation, in my conception, is transformation. Take any system of conditions and let it somehow be changed. The event which starts the change is called the cause, the new configuration produced, the effect. The various factors of the system are the conditions or circumstances.

Taking this view, I _do not say_ that the effect is the cause transformed. The total effect is the cause plus all the circumstances transformed. The effect is something radically different from the cause. The cause is always an event, that is a motion of some kind; the effect, a new arrangement, a new formation, a new state of things, or perhaps the dissolution of an old state of things.

While cause and effect are different, the whole process of causation, including cause, circumstances, and effect, is to be viewed as one fact, or, rather, as one system of facts; and a process of causation is explained, (as we have seen above) as soon as it is so described that we recognise it as a transformation.[137]

There is a popular usage which calls the cause of the falling stone gravitation. This kind of cause is not an event, not a motion, but a law of nature, and I prefer to call it “the reason” for the stone’s fall.

Mr. Peirce defines a reason as follows:

“A reason, in one sense, is the replacement of a
multiple-subject of an observational proposition by a general
subject, which by the very conditions of the special experience
is predicable of the multiple subject.” (P. 558.)

This somewhat stilted definition seems upon the whole to agree with what I also call “a reason.” All the reasons by which we comprehend nature are formulated in statements which describe those general features of reality which we call “laws of nature.”

Who does not see that causes (i. e., events which produce effects) and reasons (i. e., the formulas by which we comprehend the uniformities of nature) are two radically different ideas, and who can deny that the denotation of these two radically different ideas, by one and the same term, must and actually does bring about lamentable confusion in the minds of philosophers! Accordingly, let us call them by different names; never mind what we call them, but let us distinguish them. I regard the usage stated here as the most appropriate. We call “the cause” of the stone’s fall that event which removed its support; but when we inquire after the reason why the stone falls, we want to know the law of nature which describes in a general formula that quality of stones which makes them fall.

5. THE FUTURE IN MENTAL CAUSATION.

It seems as if some evil genius had caused Mr. Peirce to cross my position everywhere, even where I should expect to find him in perfect agreement.

Concerning mental and mechanical causation he first startles me with an italicised proposition which declares:

“_There is no mechanical truth in saying that the past
determines the future rather than the future the past._” (P.
539.)

Mr. Peirce apparently intends to discredit the belief that the past determines the future. He adds:

“We continue, for convenience, to talk of mechanical phenomena
as if they were regulated, in the same manner in which our
intentions regulate our actions, (which is essentially a
determination of the future by the past,) although we are quite
aware that it is not really so.” (P. 539.)

In other words, Mr. Peirce contends that our view of mechanical causation is based upon an analogy with mental causation; the latter being a determination of the future by the past, we conclude that the former is regulated in the same manner.

This is an old error which rests on the supposition that cognition begins with introspection or self-knowledge. The truth is that all cognition begins with objective observation.

We have to say, (1) that man’s view of mechanical causation has not been fashioned after the model of mental causation, and (2) that the future actually enters as a factor in mental causation. We do not believe that the future determines the past, but it does determine the present.

Should we judge of the causation of mechanical motions from our own mental experience, we should certainly reach other conclusions than we do, for the most characteristic feature of mental causation, that which essentially distinguishes it from mechanical causation, is the fact that the future actually enters into it as the main factor.

We as rational beings, and the lower animals also on a smaller scale, do know to some extent the future. We know by experience the effects of certain actions. This fact of the future’s being partly known, makes it possible for the future to enter as a factor in mental causation. I go so far as to maintain that there is no mental causation except some consideration of the future be contained in the motive cause. The presence of a plan, of an end kept in view, of an aim to be reached in the future, is exactly what distinguishes the purposive action of thinking beings from mechanical events.

6. MENTAL CAUSATION.

Mr. Peirce has discovered in my expositions of mechanical and mental action what he believes to be a flagrant contradiction, and, as if it were the exhibition of my scalp, displays it triumphantly (§ 27) in capitals and italics. “No objection can be made,” I said, “to the possibility of explaining the motions ... of the brain by the laws of molar and molecular mechanics.” And “yet the simplest psychical reflexes cannot be explained from mechanical or physical laws alone.”

Is this really a contradiction, or is it Mr. Peirce’s inability to discover the agreement between the two statements? Let us see.

Take a little toy fish of tin with a small iron rod in its snout, floating in the water, and push the fish so that it shoots forward with a certain velocity in a straight line. Now take a magnet and hold it at a short distance from the prolonged path of the fish. The fish at once changes its course; it now describes a curve which according to the laws of mechanics is determined (omitting any other possible modifying circumstances) by the momentum of the push, the velocity of which is gradually diminished by the friction of the water, and the attraction of the magnet. These are the data, and from these data the motion of the fish is unequivocally determined by the laws of mechanics.

Now, when we speak of the motion of the fish, we mean the motion, and not the iron rod, or the qualities of the iron rod, in its snout. While speaking of motion or the laws of motion, and while calculating the curve of a motion, our ideas move in a perfectly defined sphere of abstraction from which all other things and considerations are excluded. This method of abstraction which is the essence of human thought and also of that special kind of human thought called science, is the way by which alone we are enabled to arrive at clear distinctions and lucid explanations. We have to keep our various abstractions stored in an orderly manner in our mind, each one in a special box. If we do not distinguish the different spheres of abstraction and their limits, we shall soon confound all issues in a hopeless chaos.

But we find, on further examination, that in this limitation of the description to the abstract sphere of pure motion only a part of the process before us is described. The description explains fully, exhaustively, and satisfactorily the mechanical aspect of the case, but it does not explain why the magnet attracts iron. The attraction of the magnet consists in the definite qualities of (1) the magnet, (2) the iron, and (3) the medium between them. When we inquire after an explanation of the physical qualities of things, we enter into another sphere of abstraction, viz., that of physics. That physics will have to be explained as a domain of molecular mechanics may be mentioned incidentally.

Take another and simpler instance: the fall of a stone. The motion of the stone, its increasing velocity during the fall can be explained according to the laws of mechanics; but that quality of the stone called gravity, which is the reason of its fall, cannot be deduced from the laws of mechanics. The gravity of a mass is treated in mechanics as the given fact or datum, an investigation into the nature of which is excluded from the sphere of mechanics. He who demands of mechanics an explanation of gravity searches in the wrong box.

When we come to the investigation of psychical phenomena, we strike a feature which is entirely absent in mechanics, physics, and chemistry. It is the appearance of feeling. Feelings vary according to the various impressions made by surrounding objects. The same objects making the same impressions, special kinds of feelings come to stand for or to represent their respective kinds of objects, and thus feelings acquire meaning, feelings become ideas. This peculiarity of sentiency, that it has acquired meaning, is the characteristic feature of “mind.”

When speaking of mind I refer to all those phenomena of meaning-freighted feelings which ensoul thinking beings; and the domain of psychology is thus again quite a distinct domain of abstraction.

Now let us return to the contradiction of which Mr. Peirce accuses me.

An idea which physiologically considered is a special brain-structure or combination of brain-structures, reacts upon a given stimulus, which, let us say, is the sound of a certain word. The word is a sound-symbol and the word possesses a certain meaning. The word spoken having the same meaning as a special idea that is thought, while its brain-structure is agitated, possesses a quality comparable to chemical affinities. This peculiar word will serve as a stimulus for this peculiar idea. It will not (at least not directly) stimulate other ideas—as little as a chemical that has no affinity for the ingredients of another chemical will cause a reaction. Why the motion takes place calls for a psychical explanation, but the motion itself takes place in strict accord with the laws of mechanics.

But are not the laws of mechanics annulled by the laws of physics, and those of physiology by the laws of psychology?

No, they are not annulled, but modified.

A piece of iron that falls to the ground with the same velocity as a stone of equal weight will be held up by a magnet strong enough to hold it. This is not an annulment of the gravity of the iron; it is not a reversion of the law of gravitation; gravitation holds in this case as good as in any other. It is only a modification and a complication. We must remember that the law of gravity does not say, the non-supported piece of iron or stone will drop, it says that all bodies are attracted by the earth with a definite force depending upon their mass and position. And this attraction takes place in our example; the iron supported by the magnet retains all its inherent gravity, which is constantly asserting itself, although counteracted by the force of the attraction of the magnet.

Since the mechanical, chemical, psychical, etc. qualities represent reality in various abstract aspects, we should know that there are no purely mechanical, no purely chemical, no purely psychical phenomena. Every real phenomenon, i. e. the original whole from which the abstractions have been made, presents a complex state of things of which many various aspects can and must be taken.

I repeat now without fear of contradiction or miscomprehension, that brain-motions are perfectly explainable by the laws of molar and molecular mechanics, while psychical reflexes, not being purely mechanical processes, cannot be explained by mechanical laws. The properly psychical and the properly mental are other elements of an entirely different nature from the mechanical and the physical. They belong to a radically different sphere of abstraction. He who tries to explain the psychical by the mechanical, looks for his explanation in the wrong box. And he who regards the proposition that the mechanical laws hold good for all motions without any exception, but that they cannot be called upon to explain that which is not motion, as a contradiction, has not as yet learned practically to apply the method of abstraction.

It is strange that we have to give this little lesson in the elements of abstraction lore to so prominent a logician as Mr. Peirce. We feel inclined to exclaim: “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?”

STRAY SHOTS.

There are a number of incidental comments aimed at scattered points of my position. I call them “stray shots”; they have exploded without harm. While going over the battle-field I shall pick them up and will throw some of them back into Mr. Peirce’s camp, whence they came.

Mr. Peirce is in the habit of calling every approach to his views “deep,” while divergencies are branded as “shallow.”—

Hume’s scepticism is called Leibnitz’s principle, by which latter Mr. Peirce apparently means that innumerable single cases of experience alone do not constitute certainty. Why Mr. Peirce demands that Hume’s conclusion which Leibnitz never would have countenanced, should be identified with Leibnitz’s principle from which it is derived is not apparent.—

How easily Mr. Peirce changes his opinion! Venn’s “Logic of Chance,” which Mr. Peirce so much admired formerly, has become “a blundering little book.”—

Synechism and agapasticism, viz., the principle of continuity and the idea of love as main factors of evolution are nothing new. I have always defended them, although not in the peculiar way that Mr. Peirce does.[138] In his article “Evolutionary Love” he appears to me unjust toward Darwin. I do not think that I should improve my propositions, which are in their way synechistic as well as agapastic, by adopting either Mr. Peirce’s terms or his presentation of these principles.—

Mr. Peirce says, he does not doubt that my idea of mental causation was intended to be an improvement on his molecular theory of protoplasm. I can assure Mr. Peirce that I had no such intentions. I held my view long before I ever had a chance of knowing Mr. Peirce’s molecular theory of protoplasm. Moreover, I am unable to discover any similarity between his views and mine.—

I took pains to explain that, if we disregard the notion of form, every transformation, that is, every case of causation, will appear as a most miraculous and inexplicable event. To illustrate my view I said that “_supposing we had no idea of the laws of form or only an incoherent and fragmentary knowledge of them_,” it would be “a very wonderful thing” that two congruent regular tetrahedrons when put together will form a hexahedron—a body which is something new. And I added to this statement, “_but the laws of form do perfectly and satisfactorily explain it_.” How great was my astonishment to see Mr. Peirce with great complacency take up the problem and explain it! Indeed, it is true. That the combination of two congruent regular tetrahedrons will make a hexahedron, is wonderful _only_ to him who does not understand the laws of form. Otherwise, it is not wonderful. I was amused at Mr. Peirce’s ingenuity to prove to me that it is a case of 8-2=6.—

There is a difference between the combination of two tetrahedrons and of the atoms _H₂O_. Mr. Peirce tells me, that the one is ideal, the other real—“a difference which to his Scotistic mind is very important.” Did Mr. Peirce think, indeed, that I was not aware of this difference, or does he mean to establish a rule never to compare the relations as developed in the sciences of pure forms to the relations that obtain in reality?—

Says Mr. Peirce in one passage, there is a difference between the ideal and the real, which to his Scotistic mind is very important. In another passage he declares that “the nominalist alone makes a sharp distinction between the abstract and the concrete.”—

Mr. Peirce smiles at the endeavor of reconciling religion with science. For he thinks:

“It is a thing which will come to pass of itself when time is
ripe, and that our efforts to hasten it have just that slight
effect that our efforts to hasten the ripening of apples on a
tree may have.” (P. 545.)

Mr. Peirce forgets that the religious fruits of the conciliation between religion and science are our own sentiments. He who says that man should be indifferent about working out the truth, on the plea that truth will take care of itself, is comparable to the apple-tree, that refuses to work out the ripening of the apples. The proposition to let religion and science work out their destinies, one of which is their mutual agreement, of themselves, is irreligious and also unscientific. Truth will not take care of itself if we do not strain all our efforts to find truth; and the kingdom of heaven will never come unless (as Christ taught, Matt. 11, 12) “it suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”—

The same Mr. Peirce who says that our efforts to hasten the conciliation of religion with science are useless, believes in miracles and proposes a theory that prayer can work miracles.—

Several philosophers, such as Locke and Hegel, have complained of the uselessness of the logical law of identity _A_ = _A_, and also of its barrenness for any practical purpose. The law of identity has been invented nevertheless, because there is a want for it; and this want, in my opinion, was felt because the statement of sameness (as set forth in _The Monist_, Vol. III, p. 70, et seqq.) is one of the most elementary and important forms of reasoning, being indispensable, for instance, in mathematics where it appears as equations. We may simply laugh at the old logicians

“Who whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails.”

We may impatiently discard the whole proceeding as empty talk, yet I submit that we had better try to understand the meaning of their unprofitable exertions and the drift of their apparently meaningless argumentations. If we regard the principle of absolute identity as the formula of sameness (in the sense explained in the quoted passage, _The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 70, et seqq.) emptied of its contents we shall understand why logicians wasted so much energy on an entirely barren subject. We shall readily condone their mistakes in consideration of the importance of the subject. It is difficult to say how much we have profited by their blunders.—

Mr. Peirce uses the terms analytical and synthetical in a new sense for reasons which he explains at greater length in his “Theory of Probable Inferences.” He says, “analytical reasoning depends upon associations of similarity; synthetical reasoning upon associations of contiguity.” I willingly grant to the scientist and the philosopher the liberty to change the historical meaning of terms if the traditional usage is not helpful in our dealings with the facts which they were invented to describe. However, we must not change a term without good and sufficient reasons. In the present case, I still prefer the traditional usage of the terms “analytical” and “synthetic.”—

Mr. Peirce takes the liberty of changing terms for himself, but he resents it in others.—

Mr. Peirce disapproves of the usage of the word “construction” in the sense of systems of formal thought, such as the decimal system, etc., etc. “Because,” he says, “the word is imperatively required in the theory of cognition to denote a mathematical diagram framed according to a general precept.” On the strength of this argument we might as well disapprove of calling churches, mosques, houses, cottages, or any kind of edifice, “building,” because the word “building” is imperatively required to denote business-buildings.—

Mr. Peirce says that according to my statement (in ¶ 163) “every element of compulsion is to be excluded from the conception of necessity.” Having never made such a statement, I looked up the passage, which is the last but one paragraph in _The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, page 86, and find that Mr. Peirce must have misread the sentence, “compulsion excludes free will, and necessity does not,” which, of course, has an entirely different meaning.—

Mr. Peirce identifies evolution with real growth, regarding it as opposed to the law of the conservation of energy. He regards everything as a product of such growth, or _Erzeugung_, and adds, “I fancy it is this cautious reflectiveness of my procedure which especially displeases Dr. Carus.” Mr. Peirce does not use the word “bold.” He says, “cautious reflectiveness.”—

I did not say that causation is to be explained from the law of the conservation of matter and energy. I said (_The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, p. 566) that the law of the conservation of matter and energy throws light upon the problem of causation. The law of the conservation of matter and energy and the law of causation describe the same thing under two different aspects. If we understand the one, it will help us to understand the other.—

Kant’s chapter on the Architectonic of Pure Reason is well known to me, but I think that Kant was possessed of a peculiar love of architectonic which has contributed not a little to rendering the system of his philosophy unnecessarily labyrinthine.—

It is surprising to find a man whom I always regarded as a Kant scholar of first degree saying that “Kant makes space a necessary form of thought.” Now, as a matter of fact, Kant does not make space a form of _thought_, but of _Anschauung_ or intuition. We cannot understand Kant unless we understand this distinction.[139]—

Kant conceives of causation as a necessary sequence. Mill, who objects to the idea of necessity, replaces Kant’s words “universal” and “necessary” by “invariable” and “unconditioned,” a substitution which was made with the outspoken intention of radically changing the meaning of the phrase. Mill’s terms are _not_ “more exact,” as Mr. Peirce says, but different. They are worse than less exact to a Kantian, and can appear more exact only to those who take Mill’s view, which is nominalistic. And this substitution of Mill’s is regarded by realistic Mr. Peirce as a mere “rewording of Kant’s definition”!—

Mr. Peirce makes too much of the idea of “_Erzeugung_, which,” as he correctly says, “is Kant’s word for the sequence of effect from cause.” Yet Kant’s idea of _Erzeugung_ does not conflict with “the modern mechanical doctrine.” Kant says in that very same chapter, “_Aller Wechsel (Succession) der Erscheinungen ist nur Veränderung_,” i. e., “All change (succession) of phenomena is only transformation.” (!) Does not Mr. Peirce know that Kant calls every world-conception that stands in contradiction to the mechanical principle “a philosophy of indolence,” or “_faule Weltweisheit_”?—

The same Kant who proposed a mechanical explanation of the evolution of the starry heavens, objected very strongly to that kind of explanations “which derive all order from chance”; and speaking of Epicurus’s “absolute chance”(!) he adds: “Epicurus was even so reckless (_so unverschämt_) as to demand that the atoms should deviate from their straight course without any cause.” Mr. Peirce has either overlooked in Kant these passages, or, if he has read them, he has never taken them to heart.—

Mr. Peirce objects to my statement that according to his philosophy the domain of mind is characterised by absence of law. He argues: “Is not one of my papers entitled ‘The Law of Mind?’” Yet this law of mind, he states two lines further on, “requires its own violation.” (P. 552.)—

The “sporting” of the primeval chance, Mr. Peirce says on page 552 of this number, is “not undetermined and indeterminable,” because “its ultimate result must be an entire elimination of chance from the universe.” Shall we understand that the “arbitrary sporting” of the primeval chaos, with which Mr. Peirce (according to _The Monist_, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 175) begins his cosmogony, was determined? If absolute chance is determined, why not call such a philosophy “determined Indeterminism”? We try hard to understand Mr. Peirce, but sometimes we really have to give it up.—

Physiology teaches that memory alone changes feeling into consciousness, but the consciousness of Mr. Peirce’s original Chance is without memory and habit.—

Chance, a being living and conscious, has, according to Mr. Peirce, created the world, but the ultimate result of evolution must be an entire elimination of Chance from the universe. Thus it appears that the creation of the world is an act of divine suicide. The world-process is a slow degeneration of God, finally ending in his complete annihilation.

RETROSPECT.

In summing up the result of the whole battle, we find that there is not a single question on which we have to yield or even modify our position. Our position remains the same, while Mr. Peirce’s position has become glaringly untenable. There is one point, however, in which justice demands that we should recognise that he is right. I should not have called Hamilton “Mr.,” but “Sir William.” I can, however, assure Mr. Peirce that this mistake of mine (which in all my allusions to Hamilton occurs only once) was a mere slip of the pen; it was not ignorance on my part and still less was it any disregard of the rules of politeness.

We are obliged to reject the favorite ideas of Mr. Peirce, and have only to add that our esteem for him has not been lessened, in spite of all disagreements, and notwithstanding the flaws we have detected in his reasoning. On the contrary, our admiration for him as a dialectitian has been greatly increased, for, in truth, we have never before seen propositions so untenable in their nature, so odd and almost bizarre, as those of “absolute chance,” of “matter as effete mind,” of “feeling as being the inner aspect of chance,” and of “real growth as opposed to the conservation of energy,” defended with greater adroitness.

Mr. Peirce is unusually familiar with certain branches of learning, of which he has made a specialty, and also with general philosophy; but he has original ideas, and he prizes them too highly. Where he makes no use of his originality, he does extraordinarily good Work. Thus, most of his papers on logic, published in sundry magazines, are, in their critical as well as constructive parts, strictly scientific and almost free from apocryphal speculations. Only slight hints in them have been a puzzle to me and other readers of his essays. Of late, however, Mr. Peirce has come out more explicitly with his peculiar philosophy, and we regret to say that the more he allows his original ideas to enter into his thoughts, the more warped are his theories.

While we regard Mr. Peirce’s original ideas as erroneous, we must say that they are nevertheless highly interesting and stimulating. His propositions are presented so vigorously, so attractively, so brilliantly, that while perusing his articles, we find them remarkably suggestive; we enjoy them as we do poetry. They read like a romance of the origin of the world or a fairy-tale of metaphysics.

Mr. Peirce’s views should receive the consideration of all earnest students of philosophy; for he goes to the root of its main problems, and his very errors are instructive.

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[125] Kepler’s scheme is, that all the regular solids, icosahedron, dodecahedron, octohedron, tetrahedron, and cube should be placed one within the other at such distances that spheres could be described between them so as to touch the corners of each respective interior and the planes of each respective exterior solid. He found, by placing the sun in the centre and allowing the planets to move in great circles on the spheres, (making the circle between the icosahedron and dodecahedron equal to the orbit of the earth,) that then the distances between the planets would, upon the whole, agree with astronomical observations.

This theory is as ingenious, as fascinating, and as original as Mr. Peirce’s propositions. It has only one little fault; it does not agree with facts. And Kepler afterwards abandoned his original theory.

[126] Like Mr. Peirce, Kepler had, in his days, too, thought of the possibility of making the world evolve from chance. When, in 1604, a new and brilliant fixed star suddenly appeared in Ophiuchos, he took up the problem of star-evolution. We will let Kepler tell the story in his own words as it appears in his treatise on the new star:

“Yesterday, while pondering over the problem, I was called to dinner, and my young wife served the salad. ‘Do you think,’ I asked her, ‘if since the origin of creation, pewter platters, salad leaves, oil and vinegar, and also hard-boiled eggs had been flying in a chaotic mixture through space that _Chance_ would have been able to collect them to-day in a salad?’ ‘Certainly not in such a good mixture as this is,’ was the reply of my beautiful wife.”

Kepler rejected the idea that the world could have evolved by chance.

[127] The philosophical articles of the _Century Dictionary_ do not seem to be free of party spirit. An extraordinary amount of praise is given to the mediæval realists which, considering the vagaries of their propositions, they do not deserve. On the other hand, the blame for the discredit into which scholasticism has fallen is heaped upon the nominalists.

[128] I said in _Fundamental Problems_, page 142, “The introduction of the word positivism into philosophy is the merit of M. Auguste Comte. Although we cannot accept much of M. Comte’s conception of positivism we gratefully adopt the name.” There are plenty of other passages in which my usage of the term positivism, as distinguished from the French positivism, is set forth, so that there could be little danger of being misunderstood.

[129] My main objection to the term Absolute is to forestall any hypostatising of a vague abstract notion which can only serve the purpose of mystification. I suffer the term Absolute in a loose sense when it is understood that it is used loosely. I do not say, as Mr. Peirce seems to believe, “absolutely universal” or “absolutely necessary.” The words universal and necessary are sufficiently significant to me without any additional emphasis.

Reality is relative throughout. Absolute existences are, if the term is taken seriously, nonentities; and the expression “The Absolute” for the whole of existence or for those features of existence which are universal and necessary is, to say the least, misleading. These are my reasons for rejecting the Absolute as a philosophical term. There is, of course, no objection to the term in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and other sciences, where it has acquired technical meanings.

[130] Mr. Peirce correctly says that the axioms of geometry are now exploded. This, however, does not overthrow the reliability of formal mathematics; on the contrary, it places it on a safer basis than that of unprovable assumptions, which must be taken for granted.

We look upon the whole system of geometry as a _product of mental operations_. We perform some operations and note what their products are. We do something and mind the consequences of what we do. The problem of modern geometry is to invent a method by which we can construct in the simplest manner possible a straight line and a plane. Euclid still presupposes the existence of the plane and assumes it to be such that parallel lines do not meet. When we are able to construct the plane of Euclidean geometry, we can dispense with the axiom of parallels, for, in that case, the plane will possess the qualities it has by construction. We can very well execute other constructions in which parallel lines possess other qualities, and we shall on the basis of such an altered plan of operation be able to produce entirely different systems of geometry.

We must distinguish between the space of our mathematicians and real space. Experience teaches us that real space has three dimensions which means that from a given point every other point is determinable by three magnitudes. We might doubt (although I think there is little occasion to do so) whether the real space of our experience is truly three-dimensional, but we cannot doubt that the truths developed in the one-dimensional system of numbers, in the two-dimensional system of plane geometry, in the three-dimensional system of solid geometry, and also in _n_-dimensional systems each in their respective domain are perfectly reliable, for they are unequivocally determined, they are _eindeutig bestimmt_. There is no application of the theory of probabilities in a field where the products are not due to chance but result with certainty.

[131] I wonder why the _Century Dictionary_ does not mention the scholastic usage of the word _univocus_ as the root of univocal. Similarly we are not told that the word _incompossibilitas_ is an invention of the schoolmen. Duns Scotus, Mr. Peirce’s favorite philosopher, uses the terms _univoce_ and _incompossibilitas_ freely.

[132] We accept in this argument Mr. Peirce’s solutions, which, however, are his own. A simpler example would have been more appropriate.

[133] The belief in a duality of truth appears quite rational from the dualistic standpoint of the middle ages, and the arguments of Scotus are cleverly devised, being based upon the supposition that the fall of man had changed the entire order of the world, so that the laws of nature prior to the Fall were different to those which obtain now.

[134] Duns Scotus was a very zealous advocate of ecclesiastical supremacy, even advising, for instance, the prosecution of the Jews in order to convert them. It is a strange irony of fate that the author of the _Fons vitæ_, upon whose authority Scotus so largely depends and from whom he derived some of his most important ideas was an Israelite. Scotus did not know that Avicebron was a pseudonym of the Spanish Jew Salomon ben Gebirol.

[135] I omit here a discussion as to whether or not the conservation of energy is true or not. I need not mention that the views of our physicists, such men as Helmholtz, Mach, Maxwell, Tait, and others differ widely from Mr. Peirce’s presentation of the subject. Mr. Peirce rejects the law of the conservation of energy, but retains the conservation, or (as he prefers to say) perduration of matter. I waive the question, whether this is consistent, and call attention only to another, most flagrant contradiction. Mr. Peirce states that, “not only the total amount [of matter] remains constant, but all the different parts preserve their identity”; and yet he says that “matter is effete mind.” Thus when mind becomes effete, the amount of matter increases; however, when the habits of matter are broken up, mind originates, and the amount of matter decreases. This, it seems, would make any perduration of matter and of the identity of its different parts impossible.

[136] That my view of the _a priori_, as Mr. Peirce claims, is “Schleiermacherian” is new to me.

[137] It is a matter of course that frequently several events coöperate to bring about an effect. In that case we have our choice, either to speak of several causes, or to treat the coöperation of all of them as _the_ cause, or to select one of them to be called the cause, while the others may be counted among the conditions.

The limitation of a system of causation depends entirely upon the purpose of our inquiry, and we must here, as in many other things, use discretion.

Mr. Peirce concludes, that according to my view of causation we can, in a relatively uniform motion, such as the flight of a cannon ball, regard the motion of every moment as the cause for the motion of the next moment. I say “relatively,” for absolutely uniform motion does not exist. I grant this, but I do not grant what Mr. Peirce regards as a contradiction of mine, that in that case the cause would be equal to the effect. A man who knows the artifices of the hair-splitting Eleates and the other conundrums of logic, should know that every second of time is different from every other second; 12 o’clock is different from 1 second past 12. He who denies this, has only to miss a train in order to be converted. And how much more different than the moments of time are the various moments of real motion, for in every moment the moving body is in another place, with changed relations; and if that does not constitute a difference, we should have to deny the existence of motion.

[138] See my article on “The Continuity of Evolution” in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No 1; and also “Monism and Meliorism,” p. 73, where “the struggle for the ideal” is contrasted with “the struggle for life.”

[139] For details see, in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, page 518, et seqq., and 527, et seqq., my articles, “Mr. Spencer on the Ethics of Kant,” heading iv, and “What Does Anschauung Mean?”

I now forgive Mr. Spencer; for if a Kant scholar like Mr. Peirce can fall into this unpardonable mistake, why should not Mr. Spencer, whose knowledge of Kant’s writings is, as he confesses himself, extremely limited, have the same privilege?

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THEISM.

I. THE REALISM OF THEISM.

It is commonly alleged that there is deeply seated in the human mind a belief in the existence of a supreme being, and that the prevalence of such belief is evidence that it has a basis in supernatural revelation. It is urged in reply to this assertion, that this belief is not universal, and that in any case its presence cannot be regarded as satisfactory evidence that is well founded. It is known that the disposition to worship is aroused by grand and beautiful objects; and as Darwin well remarks in one of his letters, the natural sentiments of the sublime and the beautiful easily assume a personal direction. Scientific explanations, moreover, push a personal source of things ever further from us, and it is becoming apparently more easy to doubt or deny any such source whatever.

Prevalent human instincts and intuitions are, however, the result of experience imperfectly or perfectly digested, as the case may be. In most instances they yield to analysis something of value. A more plausible explanation of the theistic instinct is the anthropomorphic one. Man knows that he originates many movements, both of his own body and of other material things, and he knows of no other real source of such movements. He therefore, in his primitive state, before scientific explanations are attained, naturally refers motions in nature to an original personal source. This, it may be supposed, is the natural habit of the unsophisticated mind, and is at the bottom of theistic belief, whether as unexplained in consciousness, and therefore an instinct, or as a distinctly formulated belief. The phenomena of nature must have originated somehow, and there is no other conceivable source of motion than a personal one.

Facts developed by scientific research tend to weaken this anthropomorphism. The indestructibility of matter means that it has never been created. The conservation of energy states that matter has always been in motion. The law of organic evolution is supposed to do away with the necessity for creative intervention in the origination of plants and animals. Finally, the observed facts of the evolution of mind show that this, the light of the world, grew like the organic beings which it inhabits. Nothing higher than man has been found, and there seems to be no ground for suspecting the existence of any higher mind. And man himself dies and undergoes dissolution, like other organic bodies. The result of this use of the facts of science is agnosticism, at least. We know of nothing beyond what they teach, and some agnostics go so far as to say, “ignorabimus,” we shall never know. Agnostics, however, have their faces set in different directions. Some rest in it as a relief from mental toil, as persons more theologically inclined join a church. Others, believers in the progressive evolution of knowledge as of other phenomena, set themselves to explore the unknown country, believing that our opportunities in this direction are practically unlimited.

Let us look again at this anthropomorphism which is so deeply seated and so widely spread. Its essence is the fact that we control our own bodies in a great degree and that our material organs obey the behests of our mind. We do things for, to us, satisfactory reasons, and for satisfactory reasons we leave many things undone, which we could readily do. What has science done towards explaining this most ordinary phenomenon? We may truthfully say, absolutely nothing. It remains a fact that a majority, if not all animals, move their bodies in their entirety or in part, because they have sensations. In the lower animals these sensations are merely either sense-impressions from without, or they are from within, being produced by their physical condition. We rise but little in the scale, when effects of memory are evident, for we find that many actions are due to experience of the result of former actions. With still higher development, mental organisation becomes more apparent, and the reasoning and emotional states have more and more distinct outcome in intelligent acts. But the mechanism by which the act is called forth by the mental state, has never been explained.

The difficulty lies here. A sensation, or a state of mind, weighs nothing. A material body, let it be a cell or a mass of cells, as a muscle, weighs something. How then can the former move the latter? From a mechanical point of view, it cannot be done. For that which has no weight to set in motion anything which has weight, is to violate the law of the conservation and correlation of energy. And this law is not only an _a priori_ necessity, but it has been demonstrated _a posteriori_ in so many cases that exceptions cannot be thought of. So a school of physiologists say that _it is not done_. No animal eats because it is hungry, or drinks because it is thirsty. The man does not direct the muscle of his arm when he writes, nor those of his tongue when he speaks. But it is easy to see why such a school of physiologists includes but an infinitesimal part of mankind.

There is a school of evolutionists who account for the whole matter in harmony with the views of the physiologists above mentioned. I refer to the Post-Darwinians, who account for evolution by natural selection exclusively. That is, animals originally moved aimlessly in all directions. Those whose movements were beneficial to them, survived, while those whose movements were not beneficial, or which were injurious, perished. As frequent motions in a given direction lead to habits, so were inaugurated movements which were habitually beneficial to the actors, which have therefore persisted and multiplied. Thus were established the multifarious habits of animals and men. Consciousness had nothing to do with the process. It merely acted the part of the onlooker, being simply aware of what went on. “Like the locomotive whistle,” says Huxley, “it made considerable noise, but did none of the work.”