The Unity of Being
Part II Section 8
[127]
Section 8
The Implications of Quality
Thesis: Not only has every entity a nature or quality, but every quality has itself a nature, i.e., requires to be specified in its determinate difference from all other qualities by means of a further universal. In the end, since we cannot intuit every member of an infinite regress, we must be aware of one Quality which stands as the measure off all qualitative differences, a standard known only through itself while all else is known through it.
Argument 1. The nature of an entity cannot rationally be regarded as in simple identity with that entity — as a bare unity or “it.” For then the only nature the thing can have is just to be itself — and this leaves it in a relation of precise similarity with every other entity. Every entity is itself. At most one could hold to a numerical diversity of “itselfs,” but not to a qualitative disparateness of natures.
Every entity therefore is more than just its private self or bare identity. It possesses a “nature” which because it qualifies the entity is therefore something in some sense over and above or distinct from it. In short every that, as a particular, involves a what or universal. That the what must be universal is seen by considering [128] that if it remains simply enclosed within the particular entity or that as simply one with it we are just as much entitled to ask for its nature as for that of the original that. Again two things cannot be different in nature unless one possesses something not possessed by the other. But whatever either possesses cannot be simply itself over again — but becomes obviously something in addition. Leave this something a mere particular, and the question breaks out anew, the endless differentiation proceeding until we fall back upon the admission of a true nature in terms of a genuine universal-something both beyond and within the thing, its nature and more than its nature, a public not a mere private and unmediated essence or what.1
Argument 2. The nature of a thing is not adequately described as its inclusion in a given class. The only ground for the inclusion of “sky” in the class of blue objects is the presence in the sky, as part at least of its nature, of the intuitively apprehended quality called blueness, or the color blue. No one sees the “class blue” as present in the sky, but only the concrete factor of blueness.
In any case, if the universal is a class, it is internally related to its members, since no object could be what it is — if it were not “what” it is, if it were without its peculiar what or nature. To call the latter a class leaves its importance to the object unaffected.
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[[Note: there is no page 129 . . . manuscript skips from 128 to 130. This I believe is an error in pagination and not a missing page, since the sentence fragment at the top of page 130 seems to complete the fragment at the bottom of page 128. — HyC]]
Argument 3. If, with Professor Spaulding, we describe a quality as a relation of similarity between terms, this relation becomes likewise internal or constitutive.
Moreover, the awkward question remains for such a theorist: what is the possible meaning of similarity, if the old one of partial identity is to be rejected? Surely the relation of similarity is not one quite arbitrarily imposed upon two entities without regard to the natures of each. And how can the natures of each be the similarity between these natures?
Whatever factors in each entity, moreover, may be supposed to condition the relation of similarity (to save it from unconditionedness or arbitrariness) of these factors we once more ask, are they similar, at least in part, or wholly different? The second answer seems absurd, and the first gives rise to an endless regress.2 (Of the second we can say that it is self-contradictory. For two wholly dissimilar factors could not, on Professor Spaulding’s view, even belong alike to the class “factors” or “entities.”)
We conclude then, that the view of the universal as a mere relation leads to absurdity and in any case cannot remove the implication of the internality of such relation.
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Argument 1, 2, 3, summarized as Argument 4a.
No matter how the universal is regarded it cannot be enclosed within the particular thing as in bare identity with it, nor yet as a mere part of it, but must be admitted into a wider sphere of being — as, in truth, universal, something not merely private to the object concerned, but a more public property.
If it should be denied, however, that an object depends upon such a universal to measure its nature as different from that of other objects, on the ground that the object might perhaps be what it is even were there no further objects from which it could differ, we may reply thus: — Even in this case (consistently conceivable or not) the object would be what it would be, a nature would still remain to it. As just the thing over again3 this nature is an obvious absurdity. As a part of the thing it leads to a regress which hardly intensifies the inconsistency apparent at a glance in such a notion. The nature of a thing is somehow the entire thing, and yet more; for it is the thing as relative to something more than itself serving as the standard of its nature or quality, in a word as dependent upon a universal.
Moreover, even if the thing could exist alone and hence [132] differ from no other real thing, it must differ from every possible thing, must contain in itself conditions which together with conditions potential in the possible things, would guarantee its difference from them should they exist. If a thing were not different from other possible things (excepting the class of possibles exactly similar to it, if such be conceivable) surely it could not be regarded as in any sense a definite thing at all, or anything which could be in question as an entity.
Finally, even though this be denied, the entity must certainly differ from nothing at all — and must differ in a determinate manner. Suppress this determinate relation to non-entity and the thing is no more itself than it is nothing or a mere blank: just as in denying the relation to other things you reduce the thing to being no more itself than any other thing.
Thought means by a “thing,” we may thus see, essentially one thing as opposed to others actual or possible, and as opposed to nothing or sheer indeterminateness or absence of outline and form — means it in short, as an expression of a form- giving or determining universal, and as a member of a whole system of actual or possible such expressions.
Argument 4. If every entity involves a what which is universal to it as particular, in a relation which is essential to its being, cannot the same be said of the entitles [133] which are these universals. A universal, whether one be a nominalist or what not, is certainly not nothing. If it is a mere word then it follows from Argument 1 — 3, that the world is purely verbal. In any case the universal is an entity, an individual something which is itself as distinct from any other object of thought. Now precisely the arguments we have employed in regard to an entity as such, apply to those entities called universals. They are not mere thats — and yet they are definite particular thats, if we can discuss them at all — nor are they mere whats. Two qualities cannot differ merely numerically. The difference between blue and red is not simply a matter of number (we are talking of the psychologist’s blue and red). The difference between qualities is qualitative — as much as any other difference. Each quality, not merely is a quality, but — just because it is thus “a” particular object — also has a quality, i.e., is what it is in terms of a nature which is universal with respect to it, as it was with respect to the entity which it was taken to qualify. Thus, as Gentile vividly says, “The category is a category only so long as we do not stare it in the face.” As soon as we do so, as soon as we make an object of that which was used to qualify an object, our determining tool thus objectified becomes in its turn “encircled with the light of a predicate”4 — a further universal is seen to be involved in the definiteness or determinate nature of that which itself was required for [134] the definiteness of the initial particular.
Our whole present argument is that no halt can be called or justified in this process of analysis, that if anything is to be known as definite, a knowledge of an idle regressness must be assumed completed, — unless we lead the ascending series, which rises by inevitable logic from the particular as starting point to ever wider circles of universality, to its completion in a universal which can be what it is in its own terms precisely because it measures in its own terms all the differences between and upon all levels of the series — including its own.
It may be objected that such a completion contradicts the principle which was held to generate the series. This principle was that every entity, as one among others, and as different from them and from non-entity in a determinate fashion, must stand in essential relation to a. standard of such determinate and particular quality or, that this quality cannot be just the thing itself in its sheer self-identity, nor yet but a part of the thing. In arguing from this principle we were opposing above all the new-realist doctrine of atomic entities — which simply are themselves, devoid of all multiplicity or inner relations. If this doctrine be abandoned, we qualify our position so far as to admit that the nature of a thing can be self contained or in intrinsic terms, on two-conditions which in the end, as Mr. Bradley would say, are doubtless one. These conditions, [135] to defer “the end,” at least a moment, are, namely: (1) That the entity contain what qualities it has in an Infinite degree, and (2) That it contain in itself the measure of all other qualities, actual or possible. Let us endeavor to explain the need for these conditions.
(1) If the entity has a quality only in a certain degree of intensity, or of magnitude, then this degree as a determinate degree is relative to a standard of degree. In a self-qualified entity this standard must lie in the nature of the entity itself. As no finite degree can serve as a standard of degree, since to compare it with any other degree implies a third standard by reference to which both are compared, and the third if finite introduces the same problem (Cf. Section 10 for a fuller discussion) to render degrees conceivable at all we must admit an absolute standard to which all degrees are relatives. To say that the standard is the given quality in infinite degree may appear untenable. For an infinite magnitude, for instance, cannot measure a finite, all finite quantities being equally infinitesimal when set in ratio with an unlimited quantity. But this is simply one of the many roads to the perception of the fact that quantity is really dependent upon, and determined by, quality — and that the true infinite is one of perfection not of bigness. Absolute power is the standard of all degrees, if our view of the matter is true. (Section 12).
Self-qualification, then, involves infinite intensity [136] of quality — at least in the form of unlimited potency or power. Limits are definite with respect not to an unlimited quantity, but to an absolute power whose self-limitation is involved in the very being of such limits. The standard is the perfection of that power in its own self-realization — a perfection of a capacity which it can extend to limited beings in limited degree just because that capacity is not perfectible with reference to an absolute quantity, but with reference to an absolute of another order — a complete self-possession, or a full realization of all meanings present to such and absolute. Put in another way, the standard is absolute power exercised by a being over its own life, a power free from all discontent with itself and so possessed of a perfection of happiness and well-being. Again, we may attempt to express what is (we admit) only relatively and meagerly expressible by the concept of a perfect love — a realized power and willingness to rejoice only in the sharing of joy, hence a power employing itself in the creation and preservation of beings possessed in their degree of this same power of harmonious or social valuation.
Such values possess degree, there is implied in our hypothesis of reality, a standard of value which, on that hypothesis, is equivalent to, a measure of all qualities. Further discussion of the conception of such a standard must be deferred to the Section on Value.
Our second condition for a what completing the widening [137] circle of universals with a highest quality or what, is that this quality should characterize in its own terms the nature of all other whats, should possess them as differentiations of its own nature. For otherwise a still higher universal must be sought to measure the distinction between the highest nature and the lower.
The series of expanding universals, generated by the need, with any two distinct universals, of a quality not purely private to or in bare identity with either, in order that each may, in comparison with the other and also with non-entity, possess a nature not just its oneness or numerical distinctness, that each as a quality should possess its own peculiar kind or quality of quality, can thus reach its end only in a quality which is self-distinguished or self-qualified, and which at the same time contains in itself all distinctions of quality in the lower levels of the series.
Professor Spaulding’s argument, that this is a contradiction, errs — as we have noted (Section 3 (9) ) in failing to conceive the universal as concrete. “Animality” as defined by science does not include the qualities of two legs, or of four, but only of having members or organic parts of some kind. Nevertheless, conceiving the principle of organization, and of adjustment to circumstances with its implications of a scale of degrees of complexity and of success, we perceive a sense in which two legs and four [138] legs can be regarded as expressions of such a principle, which must be seen as what they are, in part at least, in essential relation to the principle as standard of the level of animal development attained. And if, further, we develop the suggestion of teleology or purpose involved in the idea of life of any sort, we attain a conception of degrees or kinds of value which on our own hypothesis, is capable of measuring all differences. Professor Spaulding, then, can not legitimately use — as he does — such biological conceptions as proof of the thinness of a comprehensive universal. He who sees in the animal kingdom nothing if not an expression of the Beneficence of God, cannot regard “animal” as a meaning devoid of the differentia of the species off animals. For since to be an animal is to express a Divine Interest or Plan, the difference between animals which is provided for in that Plan is immanent in the ultimate significance of the concept of animal. Of course “animal” is not “to be two-legged,” as “Ostrich” is to be so constructed; but to be an animal may be to be two-legged, and the character of two legs would be seen as part of the ultimate meaning and purpose of the organic world by anyone who really saw clearly what animal life ultimately is in terms of the World Life. “Animality,” as a department in the realm of values, would certainly not appear as simply without two-leggedness, but as possessing this quality inclusively and not exclusively — i.e., in a manner consistent with its [139] possession also of the character of four-leggedness. The significance of the difference between the two, finally, would likewise be provided for, in the nature of the value of “animality” in general.
Conclusion: Our argument is that a thing is not just an “it” or a “that” — but an it or that with a character or quality. This character or quality itself is one kind or quality of character rather than another. To know any quality thus becomes the knowledge of every member of an endless series of universals, unless we admit a universal which is self-characterized, i.e., is what it is solely in its own terms or relatively to itself. We have in such a universal a that whose what is distinguished from the that and yet one with it. Its character leads to no further kind of this character, for the quality of the quality in question is not only self-characterized but the character of this characterization is self-characterized5 — i.e., it is what it is to itself. Self-reflection is of its essence. What it is to itself — this being for or to self is its nature. The distinction of what and that is pervaded by an identity which lives in the very process of self-division and is that process. There is, moreover, no further regress of kinds of quality, for the reason that the highest quality must be conceived as distinguishing itself from other kinds.
The uniqueness of a kind of the [140] ultimate Nature is not a matter of a wider class including it as a member, but of a quality which contrasts itself as perfection with other kinds as inferior degrees or imperfect manifestations of itself. The meaning of kind, or quality of quality, is thus preserved with the highest Nature, as the contrast between itself and its partial reflections in its creatures, a contrast needing no further class or kind to mediate it because the highest Nature itself mediates and records all differences.
We have perhaps shifted rather confusedly from the requirement that a thing and its nature should not be in a pure identity — as this at once asserts and denies a distinction; and the requirement that, in comparison with other things, the nature of a thing must not be purely private to itself, itself over again, because then we cannot say that we have one kind or quality of quality rather than another, but only a numerically distinct quality, as to nature undifferentiated. The first requirement alone, we have said, suggests the self-reflection or inward duplication of mind. This process of being-for-self would then be regarded as the essential principle of the quality of a thing. The what which a thing is to itself is realized and characterized in terms of that relation of being or of meaning to self. Quality becomes self-meaning, self-realization, enjoyment, value. What this experience is in and for itself, is to be qualified only by this self-relation which is ultimate, and includes the [141] identity of self as a that or it, plus the nature of that self as self-intuited, and both the being and its quality are real essentially in and by virtue of the process of self- relation or self-realization. If, then, one asks finally, what now at last is the nature of this particular case of self-meaning the only answer must be, to know this fully you must make it your own, include it in your own experience, actual or imagined. The regress thus comes to an end6 by the remembrance that immediacy is the ultimate foundation of meaning and quality, and that the onlooking mind must not remain purely onlooking if it is to get to the end of approximating universals, which themselves need characterization endlessly. If you want to conceive anything by another fashion than endeavoring to complete such a series you must realize the thing in your own imaginative experience as an expression of the ultimate (since the thing rests upon and means the One Experience) standard and reference of all meaning, the last Self-Meaning, which is known only by having it immediately and the very nature of which is this immediacy of self-significance, or — for us — of value as self-realization or [142] enjoyment.
On any view of the what as independent of mind, every what leads to another, and the end cannot be reached, while without it all is determined only as something (a universal) which is undetermined. This inconsistency is avoided by admitting that while the thing and its nature may be distinguished, this is by the self-reflection of immediacy which itself has a nature no doubt but one expressible only in terms of immediacy itself. The realist holds that immediacy gives essences not further definable. Unfortunately he fails to see that this implies that such essences are of the stuff of immediacy — they have their what only as aspects of self-realized experience. If they had any other status the halt in the procession of universals could not be rendered legitimate. No determination could exist since any quality regarded as fixing or expressing the nature of a thing would itself remain a mere X until subject to its own determination, etc. The end is reached only by admitting what is implied by the relation of immediacy to the situation — on any theory. To know you must have or possess experientially, in the end, and to conceive you must likewise realize in ultimate materials of meaning as differentiations of that Self-Meaning which is the final reference of all things and is the inescapable and essential forever self-characterized and ultimate principle of thought. Only by admitting such a one ultimate Reference in terms of [143] which you compare all things, and which itself is known and experienced as determinate without a regress only because its self-characterizing quality or self-realization is always in a partial identity with our own as its embracing principle, and because by quality we mean always just phases of this one Supreme Quality.7
Finally, we note that, like Being and Individuality, Quality is, in itself, a wholly universal universal; thus one all-constitutive or concrete if fully understood. Remove the possession of quality from a thing and you suppress the thing. Subtract this and you subtract all. The just inference is that its possession-of-quality is all there is to the thing. Now subtract “quality” from this possession, and it becomes nothing. Hence “quality” is shown to be the all of things. It reveals itself as a concept referring ultimately to the all-embracing Life in terms of significance to which and in those terms essentially all qualities, as we hold, are real.
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Endnotes
1. Cf. Bosanquet: “The judgement of difference is never made apart from a standard of difference.” Logic, p. 117.
2. Cf. Lossky: “The conception of likeness in general must either involve the conception of numerical identity or lead to an infinite regress.” Also the quotation, following from Husserl. N.O. Lossky. The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge. London 1919, p. 308.
3. Every thing is a “the thing.” Its character is more than its being an instance of “thing” — the question is: what kind of a thing?
4. It must not be thought that this qualification of the category is superfluous to its significant use. The mind cannot tie predicates to things with its eyes shut to the predicates. If the predicate is nothing (has no character) to the mind, very well — it is nothing. And the result of predication also is for the mind — nothing.
5. I. e., Self-Characterization is of its essence and this essence is what it intuits as its own nature.
6. In immediacy the quality the thing has for us as an element in our conscious realization of meaning, since it is essentially a meaning to mind, provides for a distinction between the object and its nature as that between its meaning or value and the principle possessing or offering us this value. But the distinction thus gained is lost, unless meaning is admitted as equivalent to quality; and furthermore meaning must be regarded as self-qualified or essentially self-conscious and determined — or the meaning itself calls for a nature or quality — and so on.
7. On the idea of a monism of quality without ontological monism, in the form of an idealistic pluralism, see Section 11.
***
The Unity of Being
Part II Section 9
[144]
Section 9
Relations
A. External Relations.
Thesis: External or non-contributory relations imply an underlying reality to “mediate” these.
Argument 1. Let us consider the three factors: the term A, the relation R, and the relatedness or being- related of A by R. The third factor, the being-related is said to be a property of A but one not forming any part of its nature. Now “a property of,” apparently, can have either the usual meaning of a part of the nature of a thing, or else the exactly opposite meaning of something not contributing to the nature of the thing. In the first case a property is something which the thing is, in the second something which it precisely and absolutely is not.
The first objection then to relations which are both pluralistic and external is that this conception of them involves two contradictory definitions, claiming to represent the meaning of the single concept, property of. A property as what the thing is, is intelligible. A property of a thing as, whatever else it may be, not a part of the thing is unintelligible in the sense that we see no more reason for calling it the property of A than of any other [145] entity X.
Argument 2. If being-related by R is not a part of A, then — if it is to belong to A in any sense whatever — it must stand in some other relation than “part of” to A. In short it must, even if not in the manner usually denoted by “property of,” be related to A.
Thus, in addition to R, and related-by-R,we have a relation R1 between A and related-by-R such that it can be said that it is A and not B or X that is related-by-R. Now this further relation R1 simply repeats the problem. In short the attempt to define “property of” as compatible with “external to” leads to an empty endless regress, which however is only additional and not the primary evidence of the absurdity of the attempt.
For so long as the internal essence of a thing is regarded pluralistically as a purely private unmediated essence, so long all properties not so enclosed within the thing are absolutely without any status as properties, since no common element between their position and that of the genuine or internal properties can be found. Both, therefore, cannot be properties or predicates if that word has any identical meaning in the two cases. If it has not the whole structure of predication falls. Predicates absolutely internal and predicates absolutely external, is a conjunction of ideas that destroys itself.
[146]
Argument 3. The factor of being-related has really no chance even to exist or to be at all, upon the strictly pluralistic view. For if it is anything at all, it is an entity. So that, over and above the classes of relations and terms, we need a further class of entities, namely, a class of relatednesses. And then we have to bring entities into relation not only by means of relations but of relatednesses.
If it is objected: but relatedness is just the fact of being-related; it may be replied: the fact that A is related by R is merely the truth of the assertion that A possesses the property of being so related, and in any case the assertion A R (X) is nothing if not the ascription of a relation between A and R (and X). Predication surely asserts a relation between subject and predicate — in this case A and related-by R. It is denied that this relation is one of internal possession or logical inclusion. But in any case we have between A and its relatedness some relation such as to make the proposed predication true. Hence we have a new R1 between A and relatedness. This relation cannot be internal on the atomic view, and if it were the result would be that R must also be internal. (For being-related-by-R logically includes R). Therefore, we have to inquire of R1 as of R what it has to do with A — since it cannot claim to contribute to its nature as A. And the only possible defense of R1 is to ascribe some [147] peculiar relation between it and A, and thus to provide the third step of an unavoidable but clearly nonsensical regress.
Argument 4. Between the conception of A as related by R, and as not so related, there must clearly be a difference (Bradley, following Stout — Essays, 289). The difference cannot be a difference in A nor in R — on the purely atomic view. The only remaining possibility is to regard it as a difference in the relation between A and R.1 This is proof enough of the inevitability of the endless regress on the view in question. The difference between “A and R and B,” and “A R B” is manifestly nothing but a change in the relations holding among these entities. For surely it is not simply the rise of a further entity — i.e., simply one more factor requiring relatedness to the rest. The complex “A R B” may be a new entity but it is admittedly formed out of the aggregate — A, R, B, and clearly, if not admittedly, only by a certain organizing of this complex, i. e. introduction into it of new relations between its members.
Even if the strictly atomic view be given up, and an internal complexity of R be admitted; so that relating A could be regarded as a peculiar state of R, still since this state is nothing without A, A then becomes internal to R and falls within its being.
[148] Moreover the meaning of related-by-R as a property of A is still in the contradictory state referred to of a property which contributes nothing. What it contributes, it may be replied, is precisely an external relation. But the contradiction remains that this contribution leaves the object just as before within itself and, therefore, can consist solely in an external relating of the object to and the external relation. Aside from the endless series, the difficulty is also on our hands of indicating any difference to A which constitutes it and not some other object as the possessor of R.
Argument 5. A final objection to our reasoning might be this, Whether A or B externally possesses R, one might say, is a question to be settled not indeed by examining A as it is in. its internal nature — but by examining the total situation in which A appears at such and such a point. James, in The Pluralistic Universe, thus pleads that for actual experience and observation relations present themselves perfectly naturally and without any stress of experienced contradiction. Empirically taken, they are no more enigmatic than objects. With this latter statement James’ opponent, Bradley, night indeed agree. But the former’s plea is really an exposure of the external pluralist’s fallacy. Of course in a total situation the relations of the elements can be discriminated. But in this case the latter are identified as individuals through the [149] indispensable means of some at least of their relations. And we have not by such report of experience as James and others adduce, accomplished the task requisite for the pluralist; namely, the task of intellectually constructing a whole out of atomic entities and atomic relations. What we have done is to start with a whole of elements already organized by one common all-embracing relation, namely, that of being experienced or thought together, and then determined this general relation of experienced-together in a specific manner. The particular relations thus arising may perhaps be external, but the general relation of being together in an experience — whole may not be; and may indeed (it does for Mr. Bradley) constitute exactly that all-pervasive factor mediating the external relations which the present section seeks to defend.
What is given is a whole of distinguishable elements or aspects with distinguishable relations. What is not given is the pluralistic contention, which we specify as follows:
1. That the elements of experience are independent entities pervaded by no common life.
2. That what relates things is a relation.
In regard to (1) we repeat our suggestion that all elements of experience are, even manifestly, pervaded by a common principle, namely, that of all alike possessing meaning and meaning for one and the same apprehending mind.
[150] All are something-to-us, ultimately (we hold) of value to us and the unity of value and by implication of a reference or standard and a ground of value1 is no far-fetched conclusion from the empirical starting-point.
In regard to (2) we insist that though things are seen to be related in various fashions it is not seen that they are related simply by relations. In thinking of my house as higher than the street on which it is placed, what relates my image of ray house and of the street is not the relation higher than, but the comparing activity of myself as thinking mind. And in experiencing the house and its location, though I do not by thought create the relation between the two, neither can I be sure that it is the mere relation higher than which relates the two factors mentioned. Things stand in relations, i. e. They are related in one way or another. But there is really little more reason for holding that a relation is that which relates, than that an inference is that which infers, or a dream that which dreams — or, for that matter, a chopping that which chops, or music something that makes sweet sounds. Given things related, the result is a set of relations between them. The way in which they are related constitutes the kind of relation [151] holding between them.2
The way in which they are related constitutes the kind of relation [151] holding between them.3 In short to relate is a certain function, but like other functions it requires an agent — which agent is not just the function taken over again.
Conclusion of Section 9 A.
Our objection to external relations in conjunction with a fundamental pluralism has fallen mainly into two forms of statement.
1. A purely external property is an unmeaning or else contradictory conception.
2. Since the relation is not something the thing is, it can have nothing to do with the thing at all in preference to any other thing, except by virtue of a special (external) relation between the original relation and the thing. The result is an infinite regress which we take as the sign of the absurdity of the atomic view of relations. One is simply endeavoring to resuscitate a dead and functionless relation by multiplying effigies of its corpse.
How are these two difficulties met by a Valuational Monism. We take them in order.
(1) For our Monistic view, the internal nature of a thing is its value to the One — the value which it has directly, in and for its own sake (as another man may have to me an intrinsic worth through my love for him as a [152] fellow human being).
The external relations of a thing are aspects of its status to the One, not as directly valuable but as fulfilling a purpose in relation to a larger whole or unit of value. Thus I am of this or that worth in the universe in and for my self, as the possessor of intrinsic value. If a leaf falls in China my direct value may remain unaffected. But both the leaf and I are of interest to the One, not simply distributively and directly, but also as units in a whole, as the notes in a symphony have each a sweetness and value of their own, are also a contributory power in respect to the whole. On our view the human individuals, for instance, though they form notes in a symphony, result with other beings in a whole with its own unique beauty, still the notes are something in themselves, which something is not a mere function of their position in the symphony, and this intrinsic or internal quality they possess by virtue of their worth as individuals, as ends not simply as means, to the One.
Now we have not here split the meaning of property into two contradictory halves. In both cases, a predicate of a thing is an expression of its value to the whole,4 but in the one case of its intrinsic value, since it is valued and loved as an end; and in the other of its extrinsic value, as a means to the formation of a whole which is a1so [153] valued or loved.
True, intrinsic value could not be in isolation from such a whole. We can be loved only because we have a sphere in which to act in a fashion worthy of such regard — but our own subjective motives, our inner life thus expressing itself, has its immediate and inwardly centralized character5 and worth, on our view, essentially, in one aspect, worth to the Divine.
On the other hand, we may be valued together with other objects which, while not affecting our inner life or reality, still contribute with us to form a value —whole of some sort. From this arises our external relations.
The sum of our defense here then is that if the property of a thing is in any case to be something not located within the thing, then in all cases property must be relational to another, and not confined simply to the thing itself. Our Value-relation appears to us to be a relation which can account for both an internal and an external or environmental character of a thing without losing its own unity or identity of character as the root meaning of the concept of predicate or property.
(2) In regard to the regress, we observe that this encumbrance falls upon the pluralist because, reducing [154] that which relates to the relation, he has, to be sure, something to relate things, but no room for any such entity or operation as this actual relating of the things by the relation.
This third entity falls between the relation and the thing, requiring farther relations to bring all together into the one result of the thing related by R. But the regress also arises because of the impossibility of giving a consistent meaning to the notion of external property in a philosophy for which predicates are essentially and absolutely self-enclosed and private possessions of the entities to which they apply. Externality here leaves us without recourse save to go on endlessly affirming a relation of ownership between two perfectly separate things — each affirmation being inadmissible on the premisses, but stubbornly reasserting itself, — “but the thing just is related and that’s the end of it. Relations are indefinable, and being related is an indefinable unity of thing and relations.” So says Russell. But if a unity of things is not a relation between them nor yet a monistic pervading principle, a one in them as a many, it is nothing.6 Hence the second relation, and the rest of the self-generating series, are validly inferred by the Monist. We must therefore endeavor to escape this dilemma by employing our own principles.
On the other hand, conceiving relation not as a function which performs itself, but as a performance that includes the object in its own [155] being, we have no third entity — the actual relating7 to arise between the relation and the thing and thus generate further relations in an endless series. For us, what relates is the One, and what it makes real when it relates is a relation. The actual relating is what grips the things, and a given relation such as “between” is an abstracted concept of a certain manner of relating — as blueness is an abstracted aspect of a visual experience. Now if such logical abstractions are necessary to the world, are elements in it, then “between” for example is involved in relating two things in that fashion. But at least the fashion does not relate, the actual relating, characterized by the fashion as its quality, is what holds the object in its grip — and this real relating is simply a function of the living Ultimate One. Now, it can be urged, we have still the three entitles — the object, the “relation” or kind of relating, and the relating (which is inseparable from the supreme Relator.) Must not these elements be related together? It seems we can only reply in the affirmative. But our defense remains, as follows. The One Life differentiates itself, not in terms of concepts external to it, but in terms of its own self-differentiations as an ultimate fact. In our own experience this principle appears. I do not have to resort to a concept somewhere outside me in order to experience sugar as sweet.
The differentiation of my consciousness into a particular pleasant sensation is not [156] (on our view at least) a product of bringing a logical essence, namely pleasantness, into my experience. The diversification of experience is in terms of experience, of meaning to the self, and difference of meaning is itself a meaning and springs from the one principle of mind as the creator of meaning and of all diversity.
On this view betweenness is not something over and above actual relatings. It is simply one more actual relating or comparison between relatings. The fact of a relation is just the relating, in a given way to be sure, but such character or quality is a meaning self-differentiated in the actual being of the relating — not an external tertium quid — or else it is a result of a comparison afterward for a further purpose of classification.
We may remark further upon the regress, perhaps more clearly by observing that if to know is to value, then to experience the value of things is to grasp them completely, and therefore, even if it seems clear that between A and the relating of A by the One a relation can be predicated, and so on indefinitely, still it is not clear that the value of A or of anything else in any sense appears in such a series except perhaps in the potential infinity of further self-relations always involved in the life of mind at any point. Therefore we say, grasp A’s direct and indirect worth to the One and its indirect worth and you grasp the full truth.
[157] Because, in discursive predication (always but a surveying of an area of truth with a view to further possession, not that possession in full itself) thought can go on and affirm relation after relation between term and relation, since if it remains silent to a repeated question: is there any such relation? — its silence being taken as denial the bond between term and relation thus becomes severed. But the point seems to be that the mind in saying — the thing is related — has fully stated the bond implied, as simply an aspect of the relating which includes the thing in its own being as a Unity respective of differences. To raise the question of the inclusion of the thing in the relation is simply to ask all over again — was the thing held to be related or not? The relating is of course related to the thing, because ultimately the relating is the Reality which self-relates itself to all things — and for things to be and to be held in this self-relation are two aspects of the same fact.8 There is at any rate no gulf between related and relator which an infinite series alone could even pretend to cross. When you have said the thing is, you have already predicated the supreme Relating of it, and have no individual as so just in itself on one side and an equally separate Relation on the other. For this reason our defense of relation as gripping the object at once or the first time so to speak, no matter how many further relations may be invented as further differentiations of the unitary and living bond [158] first asserted, is not a defense open in the same manner to our pluralistic opponent.
For he starts with things which have their being as individuals with no essential reference to the relations called upon to relate them — and hence to say that the object is once for all gripped by the relation is an assertion in contradiction with the premiss that what the Relation is or does has no essential bearing on the object as that particular object. For nothing is implied by the reality or self-identity of the thing but the thing itself, at any rate the external Relation is not so implied, and, hence what the relation is or does can have nothing to do with what the term is or has as its predicates. The relation can relate, but this has no power to compel the term to get related. Any state or achievement of the relation cannot imply anything with reference to the object, because to imply9 is to include as part of the meaning or character of a thing. It means, there cannot be the one without the other — e.g., if the relation relates the term, it cannot be that the term is not related, does not possess the relation. But if one cannot be without the other the one is obviously a part of the other, otherwise it cannot be inseparable from it. Such an separate inseparability requires a link which repeats the problem.
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[[Note: there follows a passage, bracketed by Hartshorne, that runs from page 159 to 163 in the typewritten manuscript. His reason for doing this is explained in Endnote 10. — HyC]]
[159]
10 [No account of such an ultimate question as relations can be fully free from difficulties. But we hold to the view given as avoiding a contraction in respect to the meaning of “predicate,” and as avoiding an endless regress to a degree we may once more summarize as follows:
1. The notion of truth as grasp of value enables us to say that a series of relations between the term and the relation is untrue because no addition to the apprehension of value — while the initial relation was essential to this apprehension. On the other hand this series is true in the sense that, if you raise the question of the further relations it is essential and valuable to reply in the affirmative; but the fullest possession of the significance of the situation was already had prior to the question, which therefore can be dropped at any point.
2. On the other hand, for the pluralist, the absolute independence of the being of A and that which is to relate it, leads to an endless series precisely because the predication of R and A has to bring two entities not already essentially related into relation so that the duplication of R by R is the result of an attempt to get any truth out of the original assertion at all. For that assertion does nothing if it does not bring two elements, A and R, not before so related, into connection and relation with each other. This relation of relating or being related is a new entity between A and R, so that instead of the [160] unity which we seek we have simply increased the number of elements from two to three.
We can only say of the teleological Monistic view that it begins with A-related-by-the One, and in affirming a specific relation of A simply specifies the manner of the bond between A and its Ground; that, having started with unity in diversity as ultimate it does not face the hopeless task of uniting simply separate entities by means of relations which are more separate entities and merely increase the problem by calling to be connected with things as their relations without however being anything to the things by virtue of any logical bond between the state of a relation and the state of a thing. Each being what it is simply in itself nothing of either can be a property of the other, but at most can be in relation to that other. The regress is no gratuitous creation but the direct result of seeking to avoid the contradictions of a property which is not a property, and a kind of being-related which itself must do the relating. Once admit that any R, e.g., “between” is what relates A and B, and yet could be itself if it did not relate them, and you are asserting either a possible change in the internal state of R which change is to actually include A (the “relating of A”) or else a possible change in the relation between A and R. This dilemma, and the contradiction of the purely external property appear as plainly ruinous, whatever difficulties may beset an opposing view.
[161] Our own interpretation appears preferable both because it falls into no such manifest and unmitigated inconsistencies, and because it is more faithful to the empirical fact that all known relations are known as mediated by the unity of experience — in which a “this” or individual is always a this (actually or conceivably) given object, individual for us in virtue of this presence or relation to mind and under-going external relations only because of the preservation throughout of one constant relation of the following attention and recollection of mind — as the principle of individuality or identity in difference.
Thus, if it is said, as by Professor Spaulding (The New Rationalism, p. 181) or Professor Sheldon (Strife of Systems, etc.) that the empirical evidence seems wanting for the Underlying Reality view of relations; or even, as Professor Spaulding holds, that the empirical disproof of this theory is “remarkably easy,” the answer is clear — as we have already indicated. If the difference between a related and a not-related is not in a, nor yet in R (since if it were a in the one case must become part of R, nor yet a different relation between a and R because of the futility of answering a question by repeating it), where is it to be, — where, in experience is it found to be? The only answer is, in terms of the total situation as a pattern, as in spite of its multiplicity, possessed of a unity of character of its own. Relations change for us when the experience-[162]whole becomes altered and a partially new one takes its place. But if, to supply any room for difference between a related and a not related, we have to adduce a difference between two wholes, it is clear that we cannot conceptually construct such wholes out of mere independent entities (some of which are called relations). We might say that the becoming related of a and b by R is the appearance of a Rb, its coming into being in place of a not (Rb). But (1) we thus introduce Being as something which can be altered, can register in terms of a difference to itself the getting or being related of a and b. The relatedness thus is to get its meaning from the coming to be of a complex, not vice versa. So that we need, over and above terms be related a Being to register the rise of the complex whose being is the relatedness. We suggest that empirically, experience itself indisputably is such a unitary register. To conceive something as corning into being is to conceive it as coming into an experience — psychologically, at least, this would seem an empirical fact. (2) The coming to be of a R b clearly cannot be conceived without conceiving the being related of a and b in manner R. Hence this difference of being-related must be conceived in another fashion than as the mere appearance of a complex. It must in short, be conceived as an act or life which holds the things together in itself and measures the difference in terms of the difference in terms of the difference made to itself — not as a mere [163] complex but as a single self-identifying principle. You cannot say that mind does not do this in experience without simply assuming the atomistic view of mind.] [[ Note: the passage bracketed by Hartshorne ends here. — HyC]]
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Finally we may instance a representative objection to the Underlying Reality or Monistic view of relations. The objection is expressed by Professor Spaulding thus: (The New Rationalism, pp. 187-188) “If a first U is found to mediate the relation between a and non-a, then, since this U is related to the complex, a R non-a another U is in turn implied to mediate this relation, and so on in infinite series. Therefore, either an ultimate underlying U is never reached, or, if it is, then, although it is related to the complex of the preceding complexes, this relation does not demand an underlying reality to mediate it. But, if there is this one exception, the no relation need demand an underlying entity to mediate it, and the whole theory falls to the ground.”
This objection could only be made by a mind not actually conceiving the theory held by its opponents at all. If a relation is required between U and a R non-a, this relation needs no further underlying reality — U’ to mediate it. For it has neither been admitted nor proved that U cannot be conceived as self-relating, as mediating its own relations. Certainly in no other way does the monist regard his U. Professor Spaulding has fallen into the fallacy of conceiving U as simply another entity [164] “along side of” a and R; whereas, by hypothesis, U underlies a and R and therefore is its own mediator of relations between itself and a and R. Once more we beg to repeat: U can constitute the relations of a and R because it constitutes all their predicates, because the latter have in all cases a face of meaning turned toward the One, and whatever they are that they must be for the latter. To seek the truth about a is simply to seek an apprehension of what a is to the One. Obviously, with respect to an external property we must look beyond a to find such truth about it. But if beyond a, we cannot look to b or c. For these too do not own the R in question. We have left two alternatives. We can inquire as to the relation between R and a, whatever relation we suggest then becoming the problem exactly at its starting point — an unresolved contradiction between “property of” and “not property of.” Or else we can regard truth about a, b, c, etc., as essentially what these are to One Universal Standard Register, or Ground, of all truth and all being. A relation of a may then be external to a in the sense that it does not alter it as a contributor of direct value, but only as a contributor of indirect or — as it were instrumental value.
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[[Note: A passage follows, bracketed by Hartshorne, that goes from page 164 to page 167 in the typewritten manuscript. His reason for doing this is explained in Endnote 11. — HyC]]
11 [The conclusion then is that while we do not contest the view that “externality and relationality are compatible” we deny that they are compatible if externality means the [165] complete self-enclosure of terms, so that predicates are either purely privately owned or else not owned at all.
In short we deny that relations can be external unless there is a mediating Reality containing all predicates of the thing, internal or external.
On the valuational Monistic view we define all properties as modes of relatedness — i.e., of worth to the Mediating or All-relating Being — and thus to think a thing and to think it as related are not two things but one. The only question is how we are to conceive the thing to be related by the One to itself. We conceive this as falling into two types of relatedness — intrinsic value, and value as contributing to a complex itself of intrinsic value. In both cases “predicate” means — so related by the One, never imagining or pretending that things can truly be thought except as “in God” as elements-in-the-Divine Life and Plan, we have not to add or attach (i.e., relate) things as self-enclosed entities, to their relations as things additional to the being of things. The being of things, their very thinghood is for us to be thought or known solely by a partial possession in our own experience of the Divine Realization of the values things have to it, and to predicate relations is just to endeavor to fix and dwell upon aspects of the complete and embracing significant Life of which, as ultimate unity, things are essentially elements in or sharers of. Thus we have in the mere things no such [166] the inclusive reality of that which relates them, and to note the manner of such relating, is one with a recording of the status of things as having being at all. On the other side, since what relates, in this particular relating as in all cases, includes the thing related in the relating itself, so that the latter as a particular real relation or bond uniting the thing with another, is essentially the relating-of-the-thing, inclusive of it, and so requiring no further link to bring the two in connection. The pluralist met his regress owing to the fact that what relates is for him something which could be itself if it did not relate, as the thing likewise could be itself without the relating entity. The regress is justly inferred because thing and relation exclude each other in their respective realities or essential natures. Hence to predicate one of another is to connect them by a further bond or new relation. Things admitted conceivable without essential relation or overlapping of being, cannot be properties of each other without introducing a relation between them, which for the pluralist can only be a third self-enclosed factor, not essentially related to the first two, and so thought of as acquiring a (fourth) relation for the special occasion in question. The bond between two things, or their relation, being what it is equally when it does or does not relate them, only an external change in its status relatively to, or by another relation connecting it with, the things constitute it a [167] relation actually relating them.] [[The passage bracketed by Hartshorne ends here — HyC]]
With us, to repeat it once more and finally, we face no such equivocal definition of property as either what the thing is, or includes in its being, or in other cases as something the thing is not, or excludes from its being. For, to Monism, the being of the thing is a phase of the One Life, and as such can include predicates as relations of worth of two types, both expressing the common meaning denoted to the word property of value to the One Being. And secondly, we avoid the regress inasmuch as the actual relation or bond between things is essentially, in a given case, the relation-of-those-things, an activity of the one internally qualified by and inclusive of, the things, so that we do not need to add or relate the bond to the things, by the aid of a new relation, but regard the thought of the relation as the thought of a unity already in itself including the things as elements.12 From the side of the thing, correspondingly, to think the thing is to think it as included necessarily and as an aspect not different from its being as a thing, in a relating activity. Specific “relations” are but proclamations or labels of an appreciation of the manner in which the relating Life actually deals with the thing, and so endows it with relational predicates.
B. Internal Relations.
The subject of internal relations is so exceedingly elusive and also so complex and far-reaching in its ramifications, that — inasmuch as pluralism in the main is accustomed to rely upon the externalist view, we omit any effort to supply a demonstration for the Monistic thesis under the present heading. We merely observe that our view does not depend upon the assumption or theory of internalism, inasmuch as we are able to conceive external relations in Monistic terms. The character of the individual as of unique value to the One does not seem to us to depend upon all his relations but only upon some, such as his social relations with other individuals.
Whether this view can be maintained against all objections is too formidable a question to be considered here.
Conclusion to Section 9.
Externalism we have seen to imply the Monistic Thesis. The latter moreover does not rest upon the assertion that all relations are internal, whether or not it implies this view as a consequence. We have only been able to say, in the limits of the present work, that we do not see the consequence as necessary.
In concluding the present section we may recall that [169] in the discussion under argument the doctrine of relations as interpreted in Monistic terms was defended against the accusation of an endless regress in any fatal sense. For we urged, first, that the relation was conceived as essentially an aspect of the One Life, and as such inclusive in its being of the object — so that in conceiving the relation we already have it as relating the object, and not as a merely separate entity requiring a further relation to relate it to the object. In the second place, the object was seen as essentially a something related by the relating Activity, the predicating of a particular relation thus being merely the specifying of the phase this constitutive relating assumes.13 And finally, we urged that for us truth is the apprehension of the value of things, and we found that a realization of a value-relation of an object is not in the least enhanced by multiplying relations between term and the relation. For us truth is not at the last a matter of propositions but of possession, enjoyment, or harmony. From this point of view whatever regress remains uneliminated by the account offered of a relation as mediated by the Ultimate Being, is seen as no part of the truth of things as tested by the criterion of adequacy of value-revelation.
In all respects then, Valuational Monism appeared to avoid the difficulties encountered by the pluralist or at least the pluralist as external relationist.
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Endnotes
1. Or in the two objects taken together. The result is well indicated by Von Hartmann: “Die Beziehung gehört aber zweitens auch nicht der Summe beider Objecte an, weil eine solche Summe . . . selbst schon eine Beziehung ist, in welche die objecte durch das Denken gesetzt werden.” Kategorienlehre. Leipzig. 1896. p. 173.
2. Common to all minds.
3. This kind of relation is what is usually spoken of as the relation — but the real link or bond connecting things has this kind as its quality or description, but is itself that which has the quality — i.e., a genuine individual portion of reality, an instance of “between” and not between as such.
4. I.e., all predicates are relational, and reflect themselves beyond the privacy of the thing.
5. Which is not necessarily changed by every change in the world however distant, — so we suppose as at least a reasonable view.
6. Cf. Bradley: “On the one side . . . a strict pluralism in which nothing is admissible beyond simple terms and external relations. On the other . . . unities which are complex and which cannot be analyzed into terms and relations” (since declared indefinable). Essays, 281.
7. Since the relating is here real only as a relating-of-the-thing — needs no attaching to the thing because it already in part is the thing.
8. On the view that relations must be given up altogether see Bradley, Appearance, p. 33, and Cf. Hartmann: “Alles Sein ist Bezogensein, selbst das Uebersein des Absoluten, das über Dasein und Bewusstsein hinausleigt, aber eben darin sein Sein, hat dass es über und hinter diesen, d.h. zu ihnen in Beziehung ist. Mit dem Beziehen hört alles Reden und Denken auf; der Rest ist gedankenloses Schweigen. Dort das Sein zu suchen, wäre Thorheit.” Hartmann, Kategorienlehre, p. 178. Cf. also Ruggiero.
9. No other conception of implication is of any aid to the pluralist here. At most he must bring in “Truth,” as the mediating One after all required for any account of relations.
10. This restatement (to page 163) may appear unnecessary.
11. Bracketed passage (to p. 167) is unnecessary if the Section so far has made itself intelligible.
12. So that a change in external relations is simply a change in the continuum or relating life in which things are held or included — which inclusion coincides with their being.
13. In other words to conceive an object is to conceive an object — of a general value-relation to the One. This relation includes extrinsic values. That it should do so is a part of the being of the object. Hence the thought of the external relations is not an addition to the idea of the being of the object but merely the exact determination of it.
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The Unity of Being
Part II Section 10
[170]
Section 10
Space and Time
Argument 1. Thesis: Space and Time are not wholes merely in the sense of parts in external relations to each other.
This thesis follows a priori1 from the previous discussion of relations. But the problem may be taken more empirically as a pragmatic or concrete test of the externalist view.
In The New Rationalism of Professor Spaulding we find this phrase: “Points, defined as unextended elements of space . . .” Such a phrase suggests that a point after all is not something which can be conceived apart from the whole of space which it is held to form a part of — that it is a part, not in the externalist’s sense, but in the opposing sense of a phase or adjective or qualitative aspect of its whole. Yet Professor Spaulding assuredly does not intend to give up his view that the part is “prior” to the whole. We must therefore suppose that the definition of point in terms of space (and an instant of time) is not essential, except perhaps on account of human limitation. If we were omniscient we could accord to the point the true measure of its independence as an inviolable self-existent entity. Still the fact remains that for us human beings a point is a meaningless nothing except as a point-in-space.
[171] Aside from space, it is, if We would face matters — a position which is nowhere, and here without a there. For if a point is anything more than a position in which no other positions are included, an ultimate “where” not reducible to a collection of “wheres” we may challenge anyone to say what the “more” here refers to. In one of the most important of all cases, therefore, the empirical evidence for independent parts of wholes is lacking.
We are told, it is true, that a point has its peculiar quale, which makes it, for instance, a point and not an instant. But this quale is either an empty word, we urge, else it denotes precisely this quality as essentially belonging to the point: namely, the quality of being a position a “here” in space (really, in the whole of sense experience, a “this” exclusive of all others, a focus of attention with two aspects that of “now” and “here,” a “point-instant” in short).
Space thus is made up of points only if it is made up of positions in itself — the circularity evidencing a principle prior to the whole taken as simply parts in relation.
The relation of instants to time is of the same order, and in this case also no definition of the instants not involving time as a whole or as a principle involved in any thought of the instants is procurable.
[172]
Argument 2. Space and Time in reference to a Standard of Magnitude.
Thesis: Magnitude is relative to a standard which itself cannot be relative or finite but must be infinite or but must be infinite or absolute in the sense that its limitations depend, in the end, upon itself, and are measured or conceived through itself.
If the standard of degree is finite, itself a matter of degree, then we cannot employ the standard (since it will be nothing definite for us) until we are aware of its degree, and this implies a further standard. This second standard cannot be the object to be measured by the standard, for you cannot compare two degrees unless both are measured in terms of a common unit. If the object is put forward as the unit and called “one,” the reply is that to determine how many times the object goes into the standard, or vice versa, we must have the object (and the standard) determined not simply as “one” — for “one” does not measure anything. The foot rule is not 1/3 of a yardstick merely because it is “one,” but because it is 12 and the yardstick is 36. A further standard cannot be excluded if measurement is to take place.
The only alternative is to call attention to the fact of measurement by juxtaposition or coincidence. We do not, one may say, have to compare foot rule and yardstick by appealing to inches. We need only to bring the two together [173] and then move the ruler its own length along the yardstick and repeat, until the end of the latter is reached, counting the number of moves.
In his fascinating book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Professor Whitehead considers the relation of congruence to coincidence. Two footrules, he says, may be made to coincide. But how do we know that when they are separated again, they are still congruent? Or rather, what do we mean by this non-coincident congruence? Surely not the possibility of coincidence. For we assume that the ruler does not alter its length while it is being transported — and the question is as to the meaning of this constancy. The judgment of possible coincidence rests upon “a direct judgment of constancy. Without such a judgment in some form or other, measurement becomes trivial. . . .
“Again, in Einstein’s own example, there is the direct judgment of the uniformity of conditions for the uniform translation of light. Thus any ordinary event among the fixed stars does not affect this uniformity for the transmission from the sun to the earth. Apart from such presuppositions, so obvious that they do not enter into consciousness, the whole theory collapses.
“These judgments of constancy are based on an immediate comparison of circumstances at different times and at different places.
“This recognition of congruity between distinct cir-[174]cumstances has no especial connection with coincidence and extends far beyond the mere judgments of tine and space. Thus judgments of the matching of colors can be made without coincidence by most people to some slight extent, and by some people with surprising accuracy . . . complete accuracy is never obtained, and the ideal of accuracy shows that the meaning is not derived from the measurement. Our recognitions are the ultimate facts of nature for science, and the whole scientific theory is nothing else than an attempt to systematize our knowledge of the circumstances in which such recognitions will occur. The theory of congruence is one branch of the more general theory of recognitions.” (Italics mine).
In other words the size of an object can not be merely the ratio of an object to an other object. For when asked what we mean by such a ratio we either resort to measurement by coincidence, which presupposes constancy or the retaining of the same size during the operation,2 or else we admit that there is involved an “immediate judgment” of size, comparable to the perception of a given shadeof yellow. We cannot perceive one object to be brighter than another except by seeing one as this brightness and another as that. A mere “brighter than” cannot be seen. Unless we give each thing a character not simply relative to other things there are no definite things to relate.
But since the character of magnitude a thing possesses must necessarily be a matter [175] of degree, or ratios between magnitudes are meaningless, and all magnitudes as such indistinguishable, the character of extension an object possesses, while not fundamentally a ratio to the magnitude of another object, but the factor which with a similar factor in the other object determines that ratio, must nevertheless stand in essential relation to some standard of degree, which is determinate without. reference to anything further. We cannot think an infinity of standards distributively, and hence if we conceive natural magnitudes and ratios as determined, we conceive a standard as determined. If we conceive a ruler to remain constant in size, if the conception has meaning for us, this must be by virtue of a final and non-finite standard which in such a conception we conceive to apply. This conception, as Professor Whitehead says, involves a reference to a fact of experience which cannot be construed save in terms of experience. This fact is that which be calls recognition. He says of it that it need not involve pure memory — i.e., recollection beyond the specious present. For it also occurs within the specious present. This recognition is just the fact that a ruler may actually be found to, or may be conceived to look the same, as to its length, during the extent of the specious present, or during a longer time; to possess a self-identical character for experience although even within the specious present there is change or passage. In what terms is this experiential character, [176] which remains identical, measured by experience? What is the standard which applies? Whitehead does not say, but the answer is in part easy. All psychological judgments of magnitude proceed in terms of just noticeable differences. A ruler involves for geometry not necessarily a greater number of points, than any part of it. But to visual experience the ruler presents a larger number of discriminable features than a section of it. The smallest object given to vision is the one that is practically one out of the thousands of bits of visual differences occupying consciousness. A pinhead involves very little visual variety. An expanse of paper, though all white, presents a multitude of distinguishable heres and theres. Remove the paper to a distance and it appears as smaller.3 Our conception of it as not smaller involves the consideration that if we had moved along with the paper, keeping it the same distance in front of us, or if we now followed it up, its original apparent size would be found to remain. Thus objects with the same apparent size at the same apparent distance (involving similar optical sensations, a complex correlation of experience factors, indescribable in purely physical terms)4 are judged to be of the same actual size.
The actuality means non-subjectivity in the sense of uniformity for all [177] observers. It may even mean more than this, indeed it must mean the ground of the possible or actual experience of subjective equality. This ground is of course independent of human observation. But the point is that the proportional relations, relations of degree, which it involves are indeterminate except by means of a standard which cannot be that of an extensional magnitude, finite or infinite. The one is no standard, but just a further demand for a standard, and the other, the extensional infinite, holds the same proportional relation to all finites. All are in reference to it, equally infinitesimal, that is, equally indeterminate.
Natural magnitudes thus require a standard which nature itself as merely objective and extensional (even if one dimension of the extent is temporal) cannot supply. Since we obviously do apply a psychical standard in experience there is no way to render our findings according to this standard objective save by assuming an analogous, indeed at bottom the same standard, to actually belong to nature as its ordering principle. In so far as we deny this identity of the subjective or actually applied standard and the objective or real standard, just in so far we deny the significance of our whole quantitative concept of nature, which as Whitehead says, is simply a concept of the relations among possible recognitions, which uses those recognitions as the unit of proportionality. Aside from that unit nature is but a possibility — but a that which allows recognitions to occur. Either you define nature, that is, in its relation [178] to human mind, or else to a super-human mind, or else to a super-human factor of recognition, of discrimination of relative richness which is the standard really operating in human experience.
If the essence of nature is its teleological relation to minds, then the values we discover objects to possess in respect to magnitude, are a revelation of the real character of objects. If the essence of nature is to be discriminated and valued, then the psychological standard we employ is not irrelevant, If the essence of nature is just to be objective, yet somehow objective in an other sense than as object to mind (what this sense is no one knows) then our quantification of nature has nothing to do with it, except as a mere something which makes the quantification possible as an occurrence, but by definition as occurrence only, and not as truth.
Our choice, then, is between nature as just the unknown cause or ground of the ratios we experience; and nature as essentially experiential, and therefore as a reality to which the ratios which are thinkable only in terms of experience can be ascribed. This latter alternative could be true only if nature is ultimately an experience entirely its own measure, and so infinite or absolute. If what things are to mind is to correspond to what they are in themselves, they must we suggest have their being in terms of what they are to a completely self-discerned mind.
In this case our human measure of relativity, the scale of just noticeable differences, may stand in some func-[179]tional relation to the real nature. For nature may be viewed not merely as that which makes experiences of a determinate structure possible, but as that which makes them possible by virtue of an inherent purpose, which orders all things in a harmony or rational interdependence. The intelligible controllable character of our experience, its continuity in change, its coordination in diversity, its harmony and beauty in variety, are simply the glimpse we catch and the share we take, in the universal purposive system. The only alternative intelligible or semi-intelligible view seems to be positivism.
Such a carefully empirical and unbiased account as that of Professor Whitehead of the theory of science thus entirely illustrates the relativity of magnitudes, not merely to other magnitudes, but to the qualitative standard foundational to magnitude to be found only in mind.
The principle of relativity itself has no essential bearing upon the issue except to enable us to realize more vividly what we might know otherwise — namely, the impossibility of a magnitude not relative to the whole system of things.
In an article by Professor DeLaguna5 the conclusion of such a relativity is reached. The implication is at the least, that the part is a function of the whole in the case of space-objects. But, furthermore, the fact remains that it is impossible for us to definitely and completely conceive the space-system as a whole. If we then conceive or experience its parts as in determinate relations of magnitude, we must be aware of a differ-[180]ent standard than that whole.
And our conception of the latter, being built out of experience depends upon the standard with reference to which alone experience recognizes determinate reterminate relations of congruence.
We proceed next to consider more closely the idea of space as a whole.
Argument 3. Space cannot be conceived as a whole except as a teleological system.
Kant’s arguments against the conceivability of space seem to us to have weight. In the first place, we point out that space is either an object of actual or imagined perception, or else of intellectual construction or conception. Now as an object of perception or imagination we cannot attain to the completeness of the spatial-whole. Any imagined expanse recognizes a beyond bounding itself. This beyond is never exhaustively pictured, and in principle we see that it could not be. On the other hand, as a conceptual object, what is space? At most it is a rule for the endless extension of images forever recognized as inadequate. But the knowledge of the inadequacy of our images does not amount to a positive conception of the spatial whole. The negation of limits is not the conception of anything. Conception can never be anything except an organizing of perceptual elements in various relations to one another. Our question then is: what combination of sense data can we conceive as forming a whole out of them, a whole not relative to a [181] beyond, but including all space within itself? Merely to suppose a series of images each larger than the other, or again, of images set out end to end, proclaiming the series to have no limit, is not to conceive the whole we are seeking. For if the series of images of ascending magnitude has no last term, the whole becomes an ideal, by hypothesis unrealizable. And in the series of images strung out end to end, we likewise reach no limit and cannot conceive the series as simultaneously existing. We have merely the negative thought that no image is the last, not the thought of all the images in a totality. The series is merely a rule of procedure for us, as Kant saw; and as a genuine simultaneous whole we cannot realize it in thought.6
The mathematical definition of an infinite series as characterized by a relation of one to one correspondence between part and whole, is not a solution of our problem. We have here merely the conception of whole and part as in the same boat, so to speak, whatever that situation nay be like. Both part and whole, as infinite, are equal in a certain sense — but we have not discovered any way of simultaneously combining in thought into one coexistent whole, the infinite series of parts. We have only uncovered a method of successive correlation by a “one-to-one” correspondence relation. Until the simultaneous whole can be conceived as such, we can not pretend to have thought a genuine content for the term space-a-whole.
[182] The instant, however, we conceive space as the content, not of a finite sense-experience like ours, but of an all-embracing and sustaining experience or life, including the whole of nature as the scope of its purposive activity, or as the expression of its creative love, we have conceived a completeness in terms of simultaneity which does not wreck itself in passing ever into a beyond. An Absolute Experience calls for no beyond over and above the content of its own awareness. It requires only that within this life of significance there should be beings standing as objects of its interest and creative preservation. But as the inclusive experience of all beings, nothing falls without its circumference. We have a genuine whole. Whether the entities included attain to an infinite number is perhaps a different problem. For, taking the wholeness or unity of the whole as more than that of number, but rather of a Life or consciousness, we can leave it undetermined what the included number may be. Their form as a real totality or collection depends upon their being possessed together simultaneously.
Considering nature as a simultaneous whole in terms of space, we find that to be in space is to be in an ever widening series of imaginal areas, or in the law of such endlessness, in either case a mere abstraction and not an all-inclusive reality. Infinite space as infinite extension is simply space as extension without limit — a quality negatively absolute, but a quality, not a totality or embracing whole, and [183] a quality infected by a negation and lacking the positive character which alone could provide the basis for that negation. The infinite is not finite, and it is more than any finite, but this negation and this transcendence supply, neither of them, what the infinite positively itself is. If we ask, how much more than any finite is the infinite we see in the answer — “infinitely more” the essential deficiency of our definition.
The idea of endlessness taken temporally is likewise an incomplete or unstable conception taken by itself. “No end can be reached,” instructs us to give up the thought of cessation, but does not tell us what positive thought to substitute for it. If We pronounce the word “forever” we get a vaguely positive sense, — of what? One can only say of freedom, or of indestructible power, or conversely of an inexorable necessity. Absolute power or self-stability is the only type of infinity that is not rendered less than that which it claims to surpass, in virtue of the negativity inhering in its definition. That the world has had no beginning may be true, but to conceive the lack of a beginning is not to conceive a positive and super-finite whole, in its wholeness or as a single and for thought completed object. Only in the idea of a Life whose contents are the events of time do we get an idea of a past before which there could be nothing, since “before” has meaning only within the life in question. Instead of the conception of all past events as in time, as their inclusive whole, i.e., in something conceivable [184] only as either a definite lapse, with a beginning and end, or as a lapse greater than any conceivable lapse and so not conceivable as such, or finally as a mere category or character of events, which, being an abstraction, cannot include the wholeness of events, — we rather conceive all events in terms of the genuine whole of an embracing Spiritual Life, preserving its past within itself and generating the future in and for itself. If future events are real now, they fall in this Experience now; if “future events” is but a class with as yet no members, then the locus and definition of the class or status to be so occupied is in terms of a whole which either includes now or is to include events. The idea of “all events” thus remains within the scope of an inclusive unity conceivable as such, as a genuinely all-concrete and embracing reality.
The question of the mode of being belonging to the future is left without further development here. There seems, perhaps, no peculiar difficulty for the Monist in this Problem. Whatever reality or unreality belongs now to the future just that mode it possesses now to the One. The problem is too great to be dealt with — in brief discussion, however.
Argument 4. Thesis: Either space includes mind or mind includes and is the foundation of space. But space cannot include mind unless it is a spiritual unity or whole.
If we cannot think mind to be in space, in a given mode of thinking of space, then over and above the entire spatial [185] and natural world we have mind, a realm of existence by itself. There must then be an inclusive realm, embracing both space and mind. Such a realm, however, as something in which mind can be conceived is at least entirely unimaginable and indescribable, unless it is an inclusive mind, or an inclusive realm of experience or spirituality of some sort.
On the other hand, in the sense in which we commonly conceive the relation of in to space, we cannot conceive mental states to be in space at all. An object in space, means for us, one which can be seen or pictured there, or in some way experienced, without depending upon that experience for its existence in space. It is moreover an object common to many observers. With psychological elements, 7 such as pain, all these conditions are reversed. Pain may be experienced as in a sense extended, but we cannot conceive the pain as actually occupying a portion of space in a sense consistent with the physical type of occupation. And the idea of space itself is, rather manifestly perhaps, innocent of competing for any territory in which to lodge itself as filling up a portion of the continuum.
Experience itself embraces a portion of space, but it fills no portion. It occupies not a cubic centimeter at the expense of anything else. To be sure it is located at a point in space in the sense that the portion it embraces and the perspective given it of this portion are relative to the position of its body.
But in the sense in which its body is at a position, as crowding out other bodies, as an object [186] potentially given to all observers in substantially the same manner, and as a reality not dependent upon human experience, the experience itself is not an element in the space-world. Conceive the experience abolished, as in sleep, and the space-system as an extended reality, is altered not by the loss of the experience, but by alterations in bodies, a very different thing.
In short the ordinary merely physical view of space runs directly counter to the idea of a whole which is capable of losing or of acquiring mental occupants.
We are content to suggest that the two types of spatial existence must have a common element or there is a contradiction in our idea of the world as a whole. And the only common element conceivable at any rate is that of the mind itself, which already and always includes both so-called psychological and physical elements. If to be in space is to be in an inclusive experience, then finite experiences8 are conceivable as in the ultimate and in one aspect spatial whole. On any other view we have a paradox.
Note. That mind operates causally at points in space intensifies without solving the problem. For in order to effect space it must be included in the same whole somehow. And the causal effects of my thought on matter do not represent the full difference between my existence and non-existence in [187] the world.
When I come into being, something has changed. I have not, for there was no previous state of me to succeed to another. And the causal change to the physical world, a set of motions in matter,9 is an analytically distinct conception from the idea of the entrance into reality of an experience, with its pleasures, pains, and ideas.
Argument 5: Professor Alexander’s Monism.
Thesis: “Space-Time” omits qualitative differences.
There seems to be no one who denies the artificiality attending Professor Alexander’s nonetheless magnificent efforts to render an account of concrete experience in terms of the single reality or principle of Space-Time, pure motion, or changing extension. There is nothing in space-time but portions or “slabs” — to use Professor Whitehead’s word — of itself. Nothing moves but motion, nothing is extended but extension, unless time is to be regarded as capable of extension. Qualities appear, therefore, by what-to an onlooker — is obviously pure magic. As J. S. MacKenzie says (“Universals and Orders,” Mind, April, 1922), “each side has simply to be assumed.” We can see, indeed, that one cannot conceive Space-Time without qualities. But we cannot nevertheless see in those qualities modifications of Space-Time itself, as the principle is given to us, or in its pure abstractness. No doubt the ultimate principle of the spatial whole is capable of self-differentiation, but “space-time,” or “pure motion” are not words which [188] throw any light upon such a capacity.
We can conceive the same portion of space-time as presenting blue, or as presenting red, but how this alternate appearance alters the portion of space-time itself, and as much, remains a mystery. Extension is no less extended, and change no less change, in either case. Difference in rate of change is a difference in terms of mathematics, and is just such a difference in the rate of change. It is quite unnecessary to pronounce it as also a difference of quality — having stated the quantitative relations, all has been stated that the premisses provide for.
Yet it is clear that space-time is something capable of registering all differences in its own terms. For it is an all-inclusive whole, so far as the world of finite entities we know is concerned. They are all in it, and this inness is one with their existence. But how all their reality can thus spring from a relation to space-time, is precisely the mystery and until we have an answer, we can say no more than that Monism is somehow true. “Space-Time” really means, for Professor Alexander, “whatever this inclusive unitary principle of the world of nature is.”10 That is the fashion in which he uses the conception! That is what he makes it do for him, but as to what it is in order to be able to do this, certainly there should be more illuminating words than the old mysteries — “space,” “time,” or even than the two compounded and analytically interconnected in some fashion. The appearance of mind out of the compound, and the appearance of value introduce irreducible [189] concepts.
If, for example, as the acutest objection of all, we consider that worth of life as a whole, on Alexander’s view, we find that to say that a certain type of pure motion, wriggling in a certain way, is good, is merely to reiterate that in that way of wriggling — it wriggles. Nothing in the world of thought is more nonsensical, when seen starkly for what it is, than the reduction of value to bare fact. On the other hand, from one point of view, nothing is closer to the truth. Value and fact, the World Life and Space-Time are one. But which side of the equation has the most content and therefore determines the nature of the other and explains it?
Conclusion. The present section is rather in the manner of suggestion and of illustration than of complete proof for our thesis. But the following properties of space and time and of space-time have been pointed out.
1. Space and Time are not definable in terms of elements conceivable apart from them — or, at any rate, describable and demonstrably conceivable.
2. Magnitude implies a non-finite and qualitative standard, which can only be conceived in any definite fashion, as the organizing and comparing function of experience or mind. Proportionality and system are best conceived in terms of purpose, or of relative wealth and harmony of values.
3. The world-whole cannot be conceived in its simultaneous completeness in terms of extension. Only the rule for the endless extension of extension can be achieved in thought.
[190] Its endless expanse as complete, an inclusive whole of co-existing parts, cannot for thought appear as complete. We think it only as something more than any thought of it — so long as thought deals with extensiona1 magnitude.
An absolute or embracing experience can be thought as a unity. For this unity or completeness is not a function of the number of items — but rather of a single living principle in which i.e., as contributing to the self-realization of which, all items are to fall. No endless beyond is in question — except as the unlimited power to create further existences falling still within the one life. The variety of entities thus falls in one containing and for thought self-completed or genuine whole.
Viewing time, the same necessity for a positive ground of the negation of finitude, for a completeness which is yet without any external other, and so the inclusive reality, thinkable together or as one, made itself apparent. Qualitative infinity or absolute power belonging to an inclusive experience, were taken as the implication forced upon us, if we wished to give the idea of “all the past” or of “all time,” a content.
4. The world whole, conceived merely as extended, seems to omit mind altogether.11
Either we have two-world-wholes on [191] our hands, one physical the other mental — in which case the same problem repeats itself — or we accept the spiritual view of unity and wholeness as alone capable of comprehending in a genuine “in” relation, the whole of experience and its contents.
5. Professor Alexander’s Monism was arraigned on the score of abstractness — of leaving us with a too meager character ascribed to Being, from which the concrete world can be derived only by assuming it. And we accused him of reducing the worth of all life to the fact that it moves in a certain manner, the worth of a certain motion to its being that motion. The entire content of the conception of value is thus emptied out, and only the idea of mere change, or motion remains.
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Endnotes
l. It is the conclusion of the previous section that no whole can exist without an underlying reality to mediate its relations.
2. And thus does not answer the question.
3. Because it tends to become but one “there.”
4. Without assuming the point at issue.
5. Phil. Rev., 1913.
6. On the inability of “relativity” to solve the paradox, see J.E. Turner, Mind, 1922.
7. Humanly owned psychological elements — we do not commit ourselves to an ultimate division of physical and psychological.
8. And all their contents or objects.
9. Conceived merely as such, or merely as objects of our “external experience.”
10. The problem of argument 3 is, of course, not met by the concept of space-time. We have the instantaneous whole of space-time but cannot conceive its wholeness in mere space-time terms.
11. It might be thought that time is the whole embracing mind and matter. No doubt it is — but what inclusion in time means would turn out a paradox also. What difference does it make to time that we are in it? As time it seems ineffected. It is more understandable that time is in mind, as a character of its life, than that time is a container transcendent of mind. We find time in change and in experience not vice versa. It is an aspect of reality not an inclusive real whole.
***
The Unity of Being
Part II Section 11
[192]
Section 11
Knowledge
Argument 1. Thesis: Knowledge is not a collocation of objects, nor any relation between them simply. It is not reducible to terms that do not involve knowledge as essential to their being.
The mere statement of the proposition that mind is an arrangement of objects (or a law or “selective” relation between groups of objects or non-mental events) is sufficient to expose its error to most minds. If a certain state of things is exhaustively describable without employing the idea of mind or knowledge, except indeed to the extent of admitting that these words fall upon the air or appear upon paper in connection with the phenomena in question, then the existence of knowledge of objects-in-relation, is nothing over and above the existence of objects-in-relation, — nothing more than this except for a word or two (themselves but objects in relation). The difference between awareness and simply a set or grouping of objects is purely verbal. If the good is dependent upon awareness then the value of the entire grouping of objects is just — that they are so grouped. It is neither better nor worse than anything else that they should be. For the difference between one grouping and another can be adequately dealt with in neutral terms. To call the difference valuable is just to say — the difference, as neutrally described, is — just that difference, and also it is [193] called, good. But good only means that the difference is that difference it adds nothing to the neutral conception except a word. We shall consider this in the following chapter.
But, aside from the good, it is equally impossible to grant the reduction of (so to put it) mere knowledge to a verbal status in reality. Now to call two conceptions (that of a relation between objects and the knowledge of objects) identical implies that there is no evidence of difference between them. The burden of proof, where language and prevailing belief (even among philosophers) agree in perceiving differences, is overwhelmingly upon the identifier. To proclaim two conceptions as one is to suppose that when one is thought in all its meaning, the other will be found to contain no meaning not included. The objects and not the thought of the objects is impossible.
Our present argument is, simply in the main a declaration that where an identity is proclaimed, we at least — in common with most minds who have considered the question — plainly perceive the greatest difference in all the world, and therefore declare the proposed definition of mind as the definition of something quite else — namely the description of the law to which the appearance of objects to the mind is correlated with the states of the organism and the conditions of the environment. This never-questioned correlation (at least as an approximate or [194] relative uniformity) we cannot accent as a substitute for the actual appearance of the objects to an actual mind. If instead of “appearing” to the law in question, we are to be granted only, “being at a certain locus in the environment,” according to that law, we simply object, with for us certain finality, that by being at a locus and appearing there to us, we cannot significantly mean the same thing. Logically such substitution of phrase implies that “to be”1 and “to appear to us” are propositions without difference. If being and appearing are ever one, no non-atomist can find conclusive reason for supposing they are ever different. And if being and appearing were to be identified, the sacrifice of individual identity could not fall to the lot of the appearing. For, as pointed out in the Introduction, whether or not there is being without appearance or mind we cannot at the outset be sure; but that there is not simply being and no mind we must be sure if we are to pretend to philosophize. There may be only mind and its activity, or at least, there may be only minds and their activities, — short of a considerable inquiry the denial of this possibility is mere dogmatism.
But that reality is now composed simply of entities without mind or knowledge is [195] a proposition that immediately convicts its proclaimer of evident absurdity. Hence, in so far as the declared identity of being and appearing in a special case implies such identity in principle or throughout, it implies either nonsense or idealism.2
Argument 2. The principle just adduced, namely the existence of mental reality (not necessarily that of the finite subject by itself, a view leading to solipsism if to anything) as the sole initial certainly, may be used more directly against the materialistic, objective, or neutral view of mind. If the existence of mental being as such is indubitable, and that of neutral being a postulate requiring proof that is not only not immediately evident, but in the opinion of a most influential group of philosophers (including every variety of intellectual ability) has never been satisfactorily given, then it seems a clear inference that mental reality is not identical with any formation of neutral reality. If it were so identical the existence of this particular neutral complex, as such, could not be dubitable. In short the certainty of knowledge would thus be a purely [196] verbal assurance, meaning only that we know there is something real meant by the word “knowledge.”
Our knowledge that there is knowledge is not however such a verbal affair. It is not merely that when I think something, I am sure of my thinking, as being anything it may happen to be. I am sure of thinking because my assurance itself is a self-recording act of thought — I am thus sure of thinking as a self-verifying activity, the basis of all my knowledge. Anything else I am to be convinced of must be verified upon the same register. Whatever becomes so inscribed is certain only because the register itself is certain to itself, and records other things only in connection with its own self-recording activity — as objects present to or involved in that sphere of self-significance.3
Now if the self-certainty of an experience is the necessary support of all its certainty, it must be directly aware of itself, in its individuality, somehow. But if an experience is individualized only by its organism, it must know this in all its uniqueness in order to know itself as individual. But it cannot so know its organism. If you suppose that the individuality of the latter is a matter of space-time location, the reply you have to meet is that such location is relative to coordinates which in the end cannot be located save as “here” and “now” to mind; so that the knowledge of uniqueness is the support of the knowledge of locus,and not vice versa.
[197] Hence, if a neutralistic mind were aware of the certainty of awareness, it could only be of awareness in general. But from the existence of awareness in general, to which no particular objects could be present, no definite knowledge of details could be inferred.
The apparent duality between mind and objective situation thus proves to be genuine and to cover no pure identity. All objects are known to me only in so far as they become objects-to-me, and since parts of my organism, including the interior of the brain, is not so given — and might for aught I know certainly in any absolute sense be of a very different character than any theory holds them to be — such entities cannot constitute parts of the “my experience,” which, as individual and the basis for all my knowledge of individuality is absolutely certain.
Argument 3. The objectivistic view of Mind removes the only principle capable of consistently rendering reality, of interpreting science or life intelligibly, or of carrying us beyond contradictions on the one hand and agnosticism or an even more destructive position on the other.
In support of this thesis, we may in the first place instance the contradictions we have endeavored to exhibit as inherent in all views inconsistent with an ultimate Being or single Ground of Existence. And aside from mind as the living principle of a living world., as for us the Love which [198] endows all things with worth and value, no common Ground, or Immanent Universal has ever been suggested with any genuine plausibility. As Walter Pater says, the concept of a Universal Mind is in reality — however daring it may seem — “the most conceivable of all hypotheses” about the character of the world as a whole. If this be regarded as meaningless there is strictly no alternative that can be rendered equally definite without becoming far more manifestly false. Certainly no atomistic view, with its plain inconsistencies — as surely identifiable as its highly abstract principles are unambiguous and clear — can stand as a rival. That we suppose our previous discussions to have shown.
Secondly, if the self-differentiation of mind into a richness of contrasted meanings or values appears inexplicable (because it is the presupposition of explanation and of knowledge-being just the latter in its full self- possession, as its own ultimate register and ground) on the other hand the atomism of privately qualified entities is far worse than mysterious. The view that the difference between one meaning and another is to be rendered solely in terms of the nature and life of meaning itself, is to be contrasted with the situation of differences which obtain between objects having no qualities at all from a common or standard point of view — i.e., one not simply confined to each thing in itself. We must behold rational knowledge as knowing entities which remain to it pure thats — without any character that can be [199] revealed to it, certainly without any of which it can give any account. As rational beings we know “blueness” or “relation” or “entity” or “being” or “point” but what these things which we know are we simply do not know at all. Only their external relations are in our grasp — though relation itself remains a mystery, shrouded by the veil of Indefinablism, yet even so leading to contradictions when plain though forbidden questions are put whether affirmatively or negatively answered. Nor can the questions be convicted of irrelevance. If an external property has nothing in common with an internal it is quite fair to ask how both can be yet one, with respect to the property of being a property. “Property” thus becomes another mystery plus a contradiction, at most a word and one uniting two inconsistent or conflicting meanings. At every point then, the very principle of rational explanation, of knowledge in any form, seems squarely opposed to the atomistic view. All knowledge consists in ordering elements which together with the principles of ordering remain wholly opaque to thought, with the exception of a few doctrines which emerge by contrast into a favored position of stark clearness, — and of inconsistency. Aside from these doctrines, all is utter-darkness — since the natures of things remain shut in themselves, incapable of rendition or description or comprehension or even bare existence in any but the barren terms of self-identity or uniqueness-as-such, the thinnest of ab-[200]stractions. If such a view were true, truth were all the same as falsity. Thus radical is the objection of the idealist, of the monist, of all prophecy and poetry, of the chief fruitful currents of human thought, and certainly of the classical conceptions of philosophy, against the pulverizing or aggregate view of matter balanced by a neutral definition of mind.
[In the second place, the impossibility of founding faith in science on a view of entities as not internally or genuinely dependent upon causal relations, has been previously discussed.4 We merely mention it here.]
Thirdly, the difference between the goodness of a state of affairs representing the whole human spectacle in neutral terms, and merely that situation in the neutral character which it has, becomes, as we have maintained, simply and entirely verbal. It may be thought that since a situation cannot be more than it is, the goodness of any situation must inevitably be just its character, or some aspect of that character. But the difference is absolute and world-wide between viewing the character or aspect in question as essentially and solely a value-character, and in viewing it as adequately comprehended in other terms than those of value. In the latter case, value is a mere renaming; in the former all supposedly non-value terms are really specifications of degrees and kinds of value. Value is not verbal but is alone the essence of the real. It differs from other concepts [201] only as a more completely self-conscious meaning differs from a less.
On the opposite view life is at once reduced to the level of indifference. Love of the truth becomes love of the neutral. The circle is competed: philosophy is back at its starting point, without any starting point or foundation upon which to build. The value of the course run lies in the exhaustive discovery of alternatives, and of the questions a constructive view must endeavor to meet — questions seldom faced in their full difficulty by any philosophy.
The present conclusion is that we cannot think at all save by actually, whether we know it or not, regarding quality and being as public property, as relative to a unitary reference, and mind on the other hand as the source and measure of all meanings, as their creative principle, and so as just the Concrete Universal which is required. The Good then becomes no isolated meaning standing as shorthand for the merely and neutrally so, but of the essence of mind as in principle a self-realizing or enjoying life, and so of the essence of reality. The worth of life stands as the final foundation and reference of all philosophy, so that to be real is to contribute worth, while to have worth remains infinitely more than to acquire a second name for reality and the bare qualities of relation and sheer self-identity. The love of truth shines forth as the love of the order of things as the expression and self-maintenance of [202] the universal ultimate Good, in enjoyed harmony with or conscious participation in which, consists all finite goods.
Argument 4. Thesis: Objects are known only as objects-of-thought — no other status is knowable of them.
Since everything is known surely only as an object — to the primary self-assurance; since I can not be assured of my knowledge of X except through my assurance that my knowledge itself is real, it seems a warranted inference to conclude that I know X not as an independent entity but as something-given-to me. Take away this qualification and you take away all ground of certainty as to the object. What we know is our knowledge as containing such and such elements or subjects-of-knowledge. These objects, if they have an independent existence, cannot be known in respect to that existence. The being-in-themselves is no possible object of certainty. For the most we can ever infer is that our primary self-certainty includes or implies this or that existent. Now it may seem possible that our experience should imply entities wholly independent of it in their being. But such implication could only constitute a contradiction. What is implied is only necessitated by this implication as that-which-fulfills it.5
As something aside [203] from this relation of fulfillment or being implied it is obviously not implied. Hence anything we can infer from the contents of our knowledge is a certainty only as it is characterized by this relation to that knowledge. Only, therefore, in its character as an object-of-knowledge is anything known. And the consequence of this is that entities as known are defined in terms of the unitary and inclusive fact of knowledge, while this unity cannot therefore be defined as simply the entities in relation. The whole proves here prior to the parts in some sense.
Note. The foregoing argument may be regarded as dependent upon the position that only in so far as a thing is part of another thing can it be implied by that other thing. But we can employ this principle here in a sense more readily defensible. For whether or not A can imply B without including it in its ultimate being, we can certainly not know that this implication holds where we do not know that the inclusion holds. If A can be thought without B, then in knowing A we do not forthwith know B — and how can we know B is implied by A if we do not know B at all but only A, of which B is not an element? Therefore we know only things which are parts or elements in knowledge, in the reality of direct awareness. And we know of things only that they are such elements — we can neither know nor infer objects in any different status of being. What the circle of awareness is like, in all its [204] aspects, we may know or feel — but if such aspects imply any further being it can only be because such being is really a part of that experience-whole as such. (For it is of it as such that we are assured).
In brief, all being implied in awareness and hence all that is inferable from it, is so implied only as a part of its reality. As being-apart-from knowledge, it is not in the least implied, for all we can know.
Argument 5. Unmental Being unthinkable. If we cannot know that anything outside our awareness (in its ultimate Being) exists, then a conception of reality as not included in that awareness is a contradiction. For the concept of “all reality” implies all reality, or it is meaningless. But if we cannot know that our self-certainty of thought implies anything it is not known (in its ultimate Reality) to include, then we cannot know “all reality” implies all reality, unless all reality is included in our spiritual Being. And only as that-which-is-included in this whole, can we know reality is reality. The certainty that the “universe” we mean by this concept is the one we mean is the certainty that the Mind by which we think includes that universe as an element or aspect. It cannot be the certainty that it includes it as an independent reality. From the certainty that A is a whole embracing X and Y you cannot infer that X and Y could exist without [205] the whole. For their existence for us, as an object of certainty, is solely their function in the Mind or Awareness from which we must start. Any other status as existence is not anything we can be sure is what we mean by “status” or “existence” — and hence is contradictory and absurd.
Somehow all that is is present in our awareness, and it has no mode of being not exhaustively represented in terms of this relation.6 For if this were not so, what we mean might not be what we mean. And if the being of things is exhaustively covered by what they are in relation to mind, assuredly there is no independent existence left over to allow for neutralism. What things are to mind is all that they are to mind, and — if we are to speak for mind, and not as automatons, is thus all that they are. And things cannot be more to mind than the fulfillment of its meanings. That our thought should be true of its objects is all that we could ask and expect as that in which thought terminates and finds truth, reality is only a word. It has no further meaning than [206] that recognized by the careful idealist. Any such meaning can only claim more than it claims, and so claims nothing.
Have we, however, committed ourselves to solipsism in holding that our thought of “all reality” sweeps all that can be meant by that thought (as nothing more than what can be known to be implied by it, and so to be a part of its being) into its own reality and so into that of our own awareness? The answer will be indicated in the next Argument, but lies substantially in the recognition that “our awareness” as finite, includes, on the thesis of Monism, the activity of the Infinite Being, so that our thought of “all reality” is a partial realization on our part of the Embracing Thought and a reference to it for the determination of the exact reference of the thought in question. Knowing that the One Mind, in conjunction with our mind as the standard of its ultimate meanings, Includes all, we can be quite sure that our concept of Reality rests at its core upon a Meaning, which does include whatever that concept intends to refer to or imply.
There is really no relevance to the solipsistic except charge. We never in the least conceive a mind except as dealing with at least One other mind, which also is in intercourse with it.
Argument 5. Alternate Statement.
We endeavor to phrase the argument perhaps more clearly [207] as follows:
The mind, in ascribing reality to the objects of its thought, must know it is ascribing something, and something real. Thus we fall into a regress which must be completed if we are to know anything is real, and that this means something. The difficulty is avoided, only by admitting that the reality ascribed is the mind’s self-reality and thus is an essential identity with the ascribing process. “The object is real” becomes, is an expression of the ultimate Reality-Giving Principle or Perfect Mind to which all things (as realizations of value) have their reality (i.e., their worth). This Principle is real because by “reality” is meant its one all recording self-significant Life.7 But a reality independent of mind becomes to mind real in terms of a “realness” itself independent of mind, something more than its own life or being-for-self, and thus a regress is initiated which is evidence of the absurdity of the view. Any external element of “reality” becomes to mind a demand for its own reality, and so on. All thus is seen to be an inward reality — one of self-realization which is real for the mind in terms of this very relation itself — avoiding thus the regress. Since to be real means this relation of significance to mind, and therefore the reality which is [208] ascribed-significance-to the object, is itself real because the mind’s intuition of itself, its self-possession or enjoyment, permeates all its meanings.
The finite mind in recognizing the object as real does not in the least — on our view — endow it with its reality. But in this finite recognition, as dimly grasped and possessed by it in partial identification, is involved the Ultimate Foundation of Meaning, the Ultimate Evaluation according worth to all things in terms of a partial participation allotted to them, in its own final self-realization, which is best conceived as love or all-benevolent interest. Thus the finite recognition of reality is in touch with and employs the universal element of being-for-the-One-self which is reality.8
Argument 6. Mind can qualify objects only in terms of meanings which are relative to itself as their creative principle.
If I am to know X I must know it in terms of some nature or quality. It is a contradiction to know X and yet to be wholly unaware of what sort of a thing it is. Hence the knowledge of X is the knowledge of it as embodying a universal Y. But with respect to this Y, as already [209] pointed out in Section 8, (4) p. 132, the same question arises.
If I know X only but do not know anything about the nature of Y, I really do not know X — and have no idea what I am doing in qualifying X by Y. But if I do not so qualify it, if X does not present itself to me in the light of a definite character which I apprehend, then X is no object so far as I can ever know. But a definite character can shed no light for my seeing if I do not grasp the nature of that character — if for me it has itself no nature. To say, it is rather than has a nature, is not to alter the problem. For to distinguish it as one nature and not another is to behold it as qualitatively different from others, is to distinguish the nature of the nature. That with which we qualify must itself be qualified, if knowledge is to occur. It is useless for the mind to combine universal and particular in the dark, as it were, so that it is utterly ignorant of what it is doing. If it does not combine a known what and a known that it does nothing, and knows nothing as anything in particular.
We face here, from a slightly different angle, the regress indicated in the section on Quality. And in this case also the issue is not closed by the admission of an ultimate quality or Form of forms. If this be regarded as external to the mind in the sense that its nature is conceivable apart from the mature of mind, then the mind in knowing this independent nature can still find no rest [210] without a farther qualification. The Form of forms is no less a that without a what until we grasp it in terms of a what — and then we have this what to grasp, etc. We can not simply grasp the what in terms of itself, for we do not know what the itself-ness or qualitative identity of the what is until we have found its what. The nature of the what cannot be just the what over again, but must be something distinguished from it. But this something again is a quality not quite at one with itself as having the quality.
We see thus that so long as the nature of the object is not defined in terms of its relation to mind, that relation (of meaning) is incapable of supplying knowledge. The object means a given quality to the mind. But this is without value unless the quality means something. So that only if an infinite series is thought through, can anything be thought in its determinate character, — unless the meaning-to-mind is the nature of the object, and if this meaning is what it is in intrinsic terms of self-apprehension or consciousness then the search is ended and knowledge provided for. The mind’s intuition of itself, its self-significance, becomes the final and sole reference for all quality. Ultimately all meaning is in principle fully self-conscious since the essence of meaning is to be what it is to mind, but this need not be so in a finite mental state viewed only in its finite side, or as it is to itself. But the finite apprehension of meaning-to-self reveals the nature of the object [211] because — on our view of reality — it partially realizes in itself the meaning or value which the object bears to a supreme and fully self-discerning Mind, which registers all meanings in comparable terms because all are partial expressions of the riches of its own nature.
No further what is needed to characterize the given what because the seeing which registers it does so in terms of that seeing itself as a self-realizing process, whose qualities are its self-realization — which latter is characterizable or knowable simply by having or being it. Purely from without such a seeing is nothing. All comprehension is embracing as in an identity with ones own life of realization or enjoyment. There is no mere thought from without. Already in having an object as such we have it as fulfilling ourselves. And the noetic vision grasps the essence of things without endless regress of qualification because the manner of self-realization afforded by the object is a self-intuited meaning whose self-intuition is the very nature of that meaning and so is luminous to the mind which pervades and is in an identity with it. Moreover this self-meaning whose nature-to-itself is its nature can embrace the quality of the object as precisely such an instance of self-significance in the fully possessed and inwardly illuminated values or purposes of the Ultimate Mind. And the meaning in question, which as self-intuited is characterizable only by the self involved, is comparable to all other qualities, not as [212] a mere “it” or numerically distinct entity with respect to them, but as qualitatively different in a determinate fashion, because in all qualities or meanings the same Ultimate Self is involved, whose appreciation or enjoyment of its own life is, in its variety of differentiations or manifestations, the absolute fountain and measure of all meanings.
Thus our view compels us to resort to a single principle or Life which qualifies itself and all things by an inward illumination of being-for-self.
Once more, we are led to the Universal Living Ground of Reality as the sole escape from absurdity — this time that of a choice between complete knowledge of an endless series, or no knowledge of the character of anything.
Thesis: Knowledge rests upon a unity of direct awareness inclusive of objects and their actual natures. Objects, not copies or representations of objects, are given or printed.
Historical Resumé.9 In Descartes we have the beginnings of the modern abyss of epistemological dualism. We have given only our own states. Whether these represent any real objects other than just themselves we can only know as a result of a long inquiry. The logical result in Cartesianism was a cumbrous and artificial dualism in conflict with the remaining principles of the system.
In Leibniz, with the windowless monads, we have, in [213] a manner, the same result. All reality is reflected in the monad, but only by way of reproduction, not of actual grasp and possession.
Spinoza, however, suggests at least a return to a saner view in his “two aspect” view, of mind and matter, with the consequent implication that an idea or state of consciousness reaching no object except just itself as such a mental “affection,” is an essential and hopeless absurdity.
In Locke, Berkeley, and Hume we have the strange circumstance, as Reid says, of a theory (of “ideas” as objects of awareness) invented to explain knowledge of objects by a mind, but employed, first to banish objects, and then to banish also mind.
Kant founds his Critique on an idea in the opening sentence, namely, the notion of perception as provided with no object directly given save that presented to it in the form of an effect or modification exerted upon itself by a real but unintuited object.10 The proper objection is to ask what an effect upon a mind could possibly be except some consciousness or other of the nature of the object, or of its importance for us in terms of our own interests. Kant neglects both the objective and the valuational aspects, which alone are intelligible, and leaves but a sort of outer wall of the mind as its own object — on the whole a monstrous fabrication, an illegitimate though more or less shifting and unconscious metaphor.
The mind must not be assumed as a [214] mere thing, or process, capable of being formed into molds or affections which are neither genuinely objective or noetic nor yet primarily subjective reactions of pain or pleasure, liking or disliking. The idea of “state” or “activity” was left as a mere sort of waterfall, gradually seen to be permeated by organizing principles, but deprived of the two chief characters which intake a mental state mental: namely awareness of an object with some determinate nature, and object not just a piece or operation of the knowledge of it; and the sense of the good it is trying to realize. These two we take to be the grand blindnesses of Kant, paralleling his great insights and perverting them in an almost tragic manner.
The Post-Kantian Absolutists more or less equivocally recovered the noetic and valuational elements. But they did not hold the matter sufficiently clear, especially in the latter of its aspects.
Argument 7. Our contention is that to deny the direct givenness of genuine existents is in principle fatal to knowledge. Locke tried it, Hume tried it. The Critical Realists are trying it. The result has been clearly seen and pointed out on all sides. If only qualities of things are given, not things as having the qualities, then we draw the following inferences:
1. The quality is intuited but not in its essential [215] character as a quality-of-reality. A quality except as a quality of something is really a contradiction. The separate being of universals is a useless and in the end fatal status to pretend for it.
2. Even for thought no object can be given, can be an object. For if thought reaches objects, surely perception, which alone imparts the knowledge of there being any external objects, must reach them. The outcome is the impossibility of qualifying any object in thought because what is given is, in all cases, we suppose, but an essence, not an object as such.
We conclude that consciousness not of objects is either consciousness of its consciousness of . . ., etc., or else consciousness of a quality or nature not however as qualifying anything — i.e., of a quality not as it essentially is not; and that moreover, if knowledge embraces real objects it is highly inconsistent to suppose them excluded from the perceptual given-ness which supplies the knowledge. If they do not bodily enter consciousness then, how should they ever get in? 11
Finally if an awareness or thought of an object does not include the object, then the awareness could be known in all that it is without revealing itself as the awareness-of-the-object — i.e., it could be known in all that it is as less than what it is.
The inclusion of reality as known or thought in mind [216] is thus a primary requirement of knowledge.12 And the idealistic implication of an object of such a nature as to render it capable of forming an element in the living whole of self-meaning which is consciousness and in that very character reveal its own quality, is not to be escaped by any exclusion of the object from the sole realm of being in which it is a subject of reflection — namely the unitary sphere of knowledge.
Such a view of consciousness compels us to ask the question of Berkeley: how an element in our mind can be an object real in other connections than such inclusion in our minds. How even it can reveal anything outside our own awareness.
Our account is, in brief:
Mind is, for us, essentially concerned with valuation. The object’s meaning for us is its contribution to the worth of our existence. But such contribution need not be viewed (we shall argue must not be viewed — Section 12) as a mere subjective effect. The object offers value to consciousness because it possesses value in its own being. As appreciation of a noble character is not a mere subjective reaction or reaping of a pleasant effect upon ones nerves; but rather a sense of a worth which is essentially so in a manner objective to us, so — we hold — all consciousness involves an aesthetic element of disinterested enjoyment of the good because it is good or dislike of the bad because it is bad.
Thus, in Section 12, we shall attempt to account [217] for the dual character of awareness as immediately inclusive of reality yet transcending its merely private being. The known object, we shall try to show, can thus actually enter one’s consciousness, but appears there in its proper character, by virtue of the fundamental capacity of life or spirit to recognize a value realized in another being as of value also to oneself because of its value to that other. Its objectivity or otherness is an essential of its value to oneself. Such is the standpoint of sympathetic interest or love which we take to explain all relationships.
But the point here is the historic and notorious difficulty of preserving the directness of knowledge together with the objective existence of the object, — objective, that is, and transcendent to any finite mind considered in its finiteness, or leaving out of account the ultimate content of the Immanent Mind. The difficulty is better avoided, we will try to show; on a valuational view, than upon any other.
Conclusion. We have endeavored, first of all, to refute the reduction of mind by definition to objective or neutral categories. Such an attempt seemed to imply a non-existent certainty of the existence of the organic or bodily complex in its entirety, to parallel or represent the meaning of, the certainty of knowledge or awareness itself. It contradicted the fact that all knowledge is of [218] elements only as implications or elements in the self-registering consciousness aware of them. It asserted an identity of two conceptions, relation and mind, and thus implied that if one type of relation is a certain degree and type of mind, any type of relation is some corresponding manifestation of mind. And finally the atomistic or objectivist view abstracted from the true intuition of mind as essentially — self-intuition or self-realization, and in doing so ignored and failed to employ the sole fruitful principle of explanation orsynthesis, and the sole idea capable of giving a non-contradictory account of the fundamental relations of our ideas and of the aspects of reality.
Secondly we endeavored to prove the idealistic thesis that what is thought is thought as neither more nor less than such and such a something for thought — that the real is conceivable only in terms of what it is to mind, and as the successful termination and fulfillment of a thought.
In the third place we argued for the same conclusion from the endless regress which must be completed unless, either: we are to know things in terms of qualities that have themselves no known nature or character for us; or we are to admit that the quality of the object is known in an apprehension which qualifies the object and itself at once and in the same terms — i.e., of self-meaning. We suggested that the idea of self-realization or enjoyment of value, provides the best clue for conceiving such self-meaning as [219] the characterizer of all things.
Finally we surveyed at a glance the fortunes of the view of perception or knowledge as only indirectly attaining its objects, and summarily formulated its radical defects — adding the immediatist view appeared reconcilable with the transcendence of knowledge with respect to mere states of the knowing subject, on condition that the view of knowledge as appreciation or evaluation, be conceded. The necessity for this concession and its advantages are deferred for further discussion, to the following Section.
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Endnotes
1. In conjunction with the fact that our body is in such and such a manner. To coexist with a body according to a rule of correlation. and to be known are in every way distinguishable in conception.
2. Thus instead of banishing mind, new-realism really implies its universality. If a certain kind of grouping of objects is a certain kind of mind, then any such grouping should be some sort of a mind, and the whole universe as a functioning system of entities should perhaps be taken as an inclusive mind.
3. See A. Dorward on B. Russell’s “Analysis of Mind” for an analysis of Russell’s “Feeling of Belief” as implying a judgment in its very texture, thus — as a mere part of the mind — repeating the whole principle of mind and destroying itself as a mere part or atomic constituent. Mind, 1922.
4. The discussion has been omitted. The point is, of course, that the character of a whole of externally related parts is on the pluralist’s view just the parts in whatever relations — fortuitous to their being and nature — they happen to be. Therefore we cannot know the character of the whole as inclusive of future events until we know just those future events themselves. Hence the latter cannot be know beforehand.
5. As that which constitutes part of its meaning.
6. It may be objected that of course everything thought is thought, but that things may exist before and after they are thought outside of any mind. But in so saying we think the “before” and “after” states of the object and include them in our consciousness. Thus “all reality” proves from all time to be nothing for us except as object-of-thought. If our thought does not embrace the past in its very pastness, we do not think the past.
7. Real to itself because self-realized.
8. This mode of statement may perhaps appear too close to that of the following argument to deserve differentiation.
9. See Lossky’s “Intuitive Basis of Knowledge” for a brilliant and to our minds exceptionally fruitful analysis of historical epistemologies.
10. Cf. also on p. 762 (M. Müller. New York 1920) “I exist as intelligence which is solely conscious of its faculty of combining or synthesizing.” Combining what? What we deal with we do not see, — only our dealing with it, — a strange view of a conscious or intelligent synthesizing.
11. See J. E. Turner, “The Failure of Critical Realism,” Monist, 1922. Also Bosanquet — “Contemporary Philosophy.”
12. Cf. Lossky: “The validity of all knowledge depends upon the presence in the judgement of the reality to be known.” Lossky, op. cit., 388.
***
The Unity of Being
Part II Section 12
[220]
Section 12
Value
Thesis: Value is essentially social, a matter of co-enjoyment, willed and felt as such. Valuation, therefore, is always and in principle objective as well as subjective, — the value enjoyed belongs, as such or as enjoyed value, not simply to any one subject enjoying it. There is a transitive identification of one’s own self-realization or pleasure with that of another, in all experience of value. Valuation, therefore, is capable of accounting for the unity of subject and object, or for the immediacy yet objectivity of consciousness or awareness in general. There is always an other directly involved and thus solipsism or subjectivism is avoided, in so far as consciousness is viewed as a realization of values. On the other hand the inclusion of an object known in awareness, in or within the life of that awareness, an element in its unity of self-meaning, is not denied, and hence knowledge is not destroyed by a futile externality of object to the knowledge or awareness of it, logically a contradictory view of knowing, as has been argued.
In the second place, the view of consciousness as a realization of value will be defended as all-inclusive, as accounting for all functions of mind, and all qualities of objects known.
[221] The problems of the unity in multiplicity of knowledge and of reality, and the conceivability of the Monistic view of Being will thus receive, as it is hoped, comprehensive illumination from the nature of the value-experience, or — for us — of experience, as self-understood.
Argument 1. Thesis: Value not a shorthand term for a peculiar neutrally describable complex.
The point has already been discussed in more than one connection. We propose the following summarizing statement.
If a reality is adequately knowable in neutral terms, without reference to value-concepts, as such, it is clear that to know this reality to be valuable is to know nothing whatever about it, — except at most that the word value is applied to it. The difference between the presence and the absence of the good, as against the neutral, is a matter purely of words. It is as true to conceive the world as merely an organization of neutral entities or materials, as it is to consider it as inclusive of something not merely factual but good. It is perfectly manifest that to be good becomes thus, over and above mere neutral existence, wholly a matter of terms. He who says that life is empty of worth, but admits the fact that it is characterized by organisms composed of various neutral entities,in spatial relations to an environment of such entities, is open, on the neutralist [222] view, to the sole objection that the word “worth” as anything above such factual existence and wiggling or shuffling of relations, is without meaning anyhow. And thus it stands clear that instead of believing that life is good, we should be content to say that it moves: instead of saying we desire the good, should more modestly proclaim that we approach or run toward it, — as, though in less complicated and intricate fashion, the rivers tend toward the sea. As with the objectivist view of mind, the view really implies its opposite. If one relation of correlated movements identically is one type of good, the human, must not any correlation or grouping of changes, constitute some other sort of good? The identification of fact and value in one case carries logically all cases with it or contradicts itself in principle. And, in the second place, of the two equated terms, “neutrally constituted complex” and “value,” the second is the one whose specific meaning is the more important. For we do not need to know all about our organism in order to continue to live and to philosophize. But once convince us that “value” is but a word for the fact that there are entities or processes in certain relations to each other, and life and thought become important only in the sense that the word “importance” or “good” is pronounced, as a set of sounds, or written as a group of marks, in connection with the words “life” and “thought.” The complex called life is that complex. Is it good? — well, it is such a complex, what [223] further answer do you wish? We reply: an answer to the question asked, which was — not, is the complex the complex — but is it good, important, capable of attaining supreme well-being or satisfaction. This question has simply not been answered, and the attempt to suppress it by definition seems but an ingenious refinement of utter unreason.
Argument 2. Value not a merely subjective element or activity of pleasure. (By subjective is here meant, confined to the given subject experiencing the value).
The locus of value is admittedly in the direction of pleasure. The neutralist view derives its plausibility from the classification of pleasure as merely one peculiar arrangement of neutral elements. But the evident absurdity of value quite divorced from pleasure or enjoyed happiness, is indicative of the conclusion that it is not because pleasure is a mode of neutral being of a certain neutrally conceivable character, that it is good — but because it is pleasure or pleasing. Analysis from the neutral point of view reveals not a shred of connection between a thing and its value. If pleasure is essential to the good it is as viewed from another angle than that of pure objectivism — as something more, from any true point of view, than merely a set of entities or facts or neutral processes. The angle is rather that from which it is clear that pleasure is simply not thought as it is unless it is thought as in essential [224] relation to will, — not once more — to will, as a set of movements, — but as will; and pleasure remains itself only as conceived in an intrinsic relation to will or mind in its unity. Pleasure as satisfaction is good inasmuch as it cannot be thought without desiring it, that is without spontaneously affirming its goodness. This relation to desire is the essence of pleasure. Only while we retain the more than objective point of view, i.e., while we conceive the aspects involved in terms of their relations to the whole of mind as essentially qualifying their nature through and through, and therefore while we are unable to conceive the whole as but the parts in relation, do we consider pleasure as in any sort of genuine relation to value.1
Retaining, then, this whole point of view, from which will and its seeking characterizes all, rather than the factual endeavoring to characterize will and the good, we are relieved from the inconsistency of a good as essentially satisfaction of desire, which yet when seen by that desire in its real aspect is discovered to be but a combination of changes, (of which one aspect is itself) and from the contradiction of a satisfaction in organic processes which satisfaction is just the processes themselves. We no longer seek the good of change in just the change or movement, how-[225]ever intricate and steady in direction, themselves.
But our problem is as to the nature of pleasure. We offer the following propositions.
1. The axiom of Indefinability we herewith contradict (Section 4 (d)) and call for a definition of pleasure.
2. Pleasure must, we have seen, be defined as a satisfaction of the will. But what does the will desire or seek? If we reply, its own pleasure, then pleasure becomes merely: that which is attained by that which seeks pleasure.2 Our definition thus is so far of little use.
3. If the will seeks situations, not pleasure, but seeks the situations because they yield it pleasure, we then observe that the will has no motive to seek the situations except that which arises in connection with their pleasure-giving power. Then two questions arise:
(a) Can the will really seek something merely because the something will give itself pleasure, without despoiling or impoverishing the pleasure so attained? This is the ethical problem known as the hedonistic paradox. If a thing is good to me only because I expect pleasure from it, I become so intent on the pleasure that I fail to bestow real and adequate interest upon the thing. I do not “lose” myself in the thing, and so recover myself. Our whole life, in all its profoundest understandings, cries out against such a view.
(b) There is no reason apparent for the connection [226] between a situation and its bestowal of pleasure. If the situation is said to cause the pleasure, the criticism may be made that a cause is scarcely such for science until we are conceptually able to follow cause into effect, and view the latter as a state of the former.3 Now if the object valued is not itself inwardly of value, there is no such connection between my pleasure in it and the object.
4. The pleasure in the object cannot be simply its furthering of my purposes — of, say, biological adjustment. For the real question is, what is the value of adjustment, why do we take pleasure in that? If the reply is, there is no reply, we however insist: (a) The cause is not understood in its connection with the effect and (b) we are still seeking a definition of pleasure, which we have not found as yet because the definition in terms of will proved to introduce the further question of the nature of desire and its real object. Until we have discovered what the object of striving is, we cannot employ volition as a satisfactory interpreter of pleasure. If desire or volition is directed toward adaptation, where does pleasure come in?4 And if toward pleasure, how can it really be directed upon the adaptation.
[227]
5. The only account of the bond between desire and its object, — which, psychology has fairly well come to agree, is not simply the pleasurable satisfaction of that desire (the longing for the attainment of the fulfillment of the longing for —, etc.), — the only account capable of supplying an explanation in the spirit of science, or in terms of conceptually related elements, is an account which regards the object as essentially of the same nature as the value realized in the enjoyment of the object. Holding that pleasure in the object is a sense that the object is good — not merely because it gives pleasure, reducing the explanation to tautology, but because it is good in fundamentally the same sense that the pleasure is good, we can give a genuine account of the rise and of the nature of pleasure and of the good. We can say that the power of a situation to please is its intrinsic worth or embodiment of value, and at the same time we can regard this value as of a common nature with the value of the pleasure to which it gives rise thus preserving the consistency of the value-concept.
Is this a barren circularity of definition — pleasure is the sense of something in the object of the nature of pleasure? Our reply is:
(a) It is an empirical fact that many at least of our greatest pleasures are pleasures in pleasures, a rejoicing in the enjoyment of others. A healthy mind, not absorbed in any purpose in conflict with the well-being of his fellows, can scarcely view the pleasures of his neigh-[228]bor, of a child, or even of a dog, without rejoicing or himself deriving pleasure therefrom. Likewise do the sufferings of others enter into our consciousness, in general, only at the cost of becoming, in some measure at least, our own pain.
(b) The very conception of pleasure as essentially good, is a pleasure, is an assent of the will which makes the conception of the pleasant and the good inseparable, in some degree at least, from each other. If the conception of pleasure is inevitably of it as good, and if the sense of something as good is pleasant, is a pleasure, then clearly the mere awareness of pleasure or enjoyment must essentially be an affair of pleasure or of joy.5 Thus we can be sure that even if all pleasure is not pleasure in pleasure, yet certainly the apprehension of pleasure in principle is pleasure.
(c) If the apprehension of pleasure essentially is pleasure, this is a fact without rational explanation unless the converse is true — that pleasure is essentially and always the apprehension of pleasure, or pleasure in pleasure. The entire fact of genuine interest in others is here seeking explanation. Once admit that pleasure may be other than social or shared, that pure selfishness can be enjoyable, and the enjoyableness of unselfishness is a fact without any intelligible relation to such a view of pleasure. And we are left without any principle of mediation or arbitration between selfish and unselfish delights; except the concep-[229]tion of the greatest amount of delight to be gleaned in both ways; while if this is made the real object of the will, we have the hedonistic paradox of the relative unpleasantness of pleasure pursued for its own sake. Or if some principle outside that of pleasure, some Imperative be called in, we leave unresolved the conflict between pleasure and duty — and declare the right to be scarcely a matter of the emotions at all, as did Kant. The result is an open gulf between concrete desires and abstract right which destroys the effective harmony of the mind and is to be contrasted with the wiser command: to love God and thy neighbor as thyself, — a contrast in which it appears that the gulf between desire and the “ought” is, in fact, not a genuine and ultimate disparity, but that duty may become one with desire and that the highest duty is to orient one’s desires correctly. This orientation becomes tyrannical and impracticable, unless it means an essential realization of desire, unless desire can see the right as its own real meaning and true fulfillment. Now if unselfishness is merely one area of desire or of pleasure, and the right but a partial realization of the soul, then allegiance to the right and zeal for unselfishness meet in principle with a limit beyond which they cannot be called to go. How far unselfish joys overbalance selfish becomes an empirical and relative question, and therefore the motive for a fully generous point of view remains insufficient and uncertain.
[230] Thus both the fact of there being any unselfish delights, and the degree to which they should be cultivated and given the right of way, remain opaque to our understanding; unless we recognize in the value-experience an essential and inalienable principle of sociality or harmony of wills. If we are able to make this recognition, the fact of unselfish tendencies is wholly explicable, and the motive for encouraging them is rendered clear. It is simply, that the very essence of well-being is then regarded as to be sought in the sharing of interests and in the mutual trans-identification or loyalty of purposes.6
(d) On the other hand, the existence of selfish tendencies is regarded as the capacity of the subject to seek for itself the enjoyments of unselfishness with main emphasis upon the enjoyments, not upon their unselfish basis or meaning. One can seek to win the applause of people rather than to render them service, but the pleasure of the applause involves an element of sociality, of genuine unselfishness, nonetheless. The man may know he is a traitor, but while the applause of his country rings in his ears he allows himself to be warmed into at least a toying with the conception of himself as a hero.
[231] If he does not and is wholly disillusioned, the pleasure is lacking.
Again the desires and pleasures of sex may be viewed as an instinctive or inherited apprehension of the value of the propagation of the race. This value is not in the mere brute maintenance of the species. It is in the whole plan and harmony of life, with its enjoyments, passed on from generation to generation. The pleasures in question are, then, on the view under defense, a sense of the value of the whole life-scheme, as a process preserved through time and allowing for experiences of joy and happiness to others than merely oneself. They are, therefore, not essentially self-enclosed or selfish in their reference. However, they may perfectly well be pursued selfishly, for their own sake and not in the light of their meaning as an inherited, instinctive interest in the racial good. One may seek to experience an interest without seeking to ally oneself actively in the service of its object. Thus the sensualist may like good-fellowship and in some measure strive to attain the joys of affectionate, friendly, and even superficially loyal intercourse. But he is thinking above all of the joys that will accompany this mode of existence, while only his more intuitive and unexplicit consciousness retains a genuine, and in some degree ineradicable other-interest, without which the whole process would descend to insipidity.
[232] We therefore find no conflict between the view of all value as essentially objective as well as subjective, unselfish as well as, perhaps, in its degree, selfish; and the fact of wickedness and selfishness.
(e) The definition of pleasure as always referring to a further instance of itself is thus so far from a mere circularity or tautology in any sense of futility or barrenness, as to prove itself able to explain and illuminate fundamental facts and problems of ethics and psychology.
(f) Moreover in explaining the bond between the value of the object and of the experience appreciating it, as one of substantial identity of nature, we are no more committing a tautology than is science in explaining the interactions of chemicals in terms of identical qualities in each. If pleasure or enjoyment is irreducible to concepts neutral to value, then the only kind of reality whose interaction with pleasure we can understand is a reality substantially similar to pleasure itself. In explaining the consciously realized value afforded the subject, in terms of a similar process of realization in the object, we provide the sole conceivable explanation of this relation.
To deny that experience and object interact in the experience of value is to deny that the experience is really valuing the object. We have a “parallelism,” which is unable to give any intelligible account of how the mental process means or is aware of the non-mental.
[233] In any case we should still not escape the inversion of a rejoicing in an object which is not at all an implication that the object is good or possesses any quality rendering the enjoyment appropriate or accountable.
Argument 3. Thesis: Aesthetic experience is not a mere subjective reaction but implies worth in the object in substantially the same sense as the experience itself possesses worth.
Santayana admits that in aesthetic experience there is a seeming perception of pleasure in the object. The sun, when we behold it, seems an intensely joyous living activity. No sensitive mind but observes this. The word of the Hebrew singer: “Rejoices as a bridegroom” is genuine introspection with a decorative elaboration. Wordworth’s: “The moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare” is a similar more subtle report of sheer though delicate analysis of experience.
Pleasure is obviously felt in the sound of a merry voice, the song of a bird, or the movements of a face. In these cases objectivity is hardly questioned. The points where it is questioned are therefore no illustration of a universal rule, unless it is the rule that only organic beings represent any inner life or genuine value. But this is the great point at issue, usually in the main assumed as more or less obvious by subjectivists. To an unspoiled and sensitive appreciation of life the reverse is in fact [234] profoundly obvious or manifest.
Our points are as follows:
1. Variations in value-judgments are poor proofs of the idea that no objective value is the object of the judgments. Admittedly appreciation of aesthetic values involves exceedingly high and delicate insight. It would be strange if judgments did not vary widely.7 Moreover few people give their powers of disinterested contemplation and aesthetic enjoyment any chance of large development — their lives being too busy and often too occupied with certain specific purposes for which nature is a mere framework or forgotten background.
2. Value is not a thing either present or absent — at least on the objective view of it — but a thing present in degree and kind. Men may not agree on the prettiness of a face; but the important fact is that every face is pretty — compared to a stone or an ink-well. And every face reveals value. Some grace or harmony of feeling goes with every beauty of countenance. The harmony may not be moral or [235] spiritual.8 But some unusual capacity for delight, some exceptional sensitiveness to the richness and joy of life,9 is the possession by inheritance of the “beauty” and is the reason for her power to charm. Such is, at any rate, a personal belief on the matter.
In any case, disagreements about beauty imply no more logically the absence of objective worth than they do, rather, differences in the degree and kind of worth considered satisfying or worthy of special commendation, by each man. The second inference is at least as rational, and it would again be incredible if such differences did not exist. On our view nothing is wholly unbeautiful, and therefore things singled out for the term beauty are those affording a special degree of satisfaction, which is therefore noticed as such.
Even ugliness, as Bosanquet says, is impossible except as a conflict of elements possessing appeal — as in a discord of notes on an instrument. Ugliness as absolute absence of beauty is only conceivable as realized in a world of uniform blackness (even a gray day has its charm) — in short a visual world in which vision could not occur, a blank nonentity.
[236] Arguments about beauty, then, show only that the objective values involved are various in degree, the standard of noteworthy beauty being relative to other objects of a similar sort in mind (as in comparing landscapes), and to the sensitiveness and insight of the individual; and finally, they do indicate no doubt that we have no adequate comprehension of the full meaning of the value-glimpses we derive from our experience of nature. The moon may not be a goddess, and does not even look like a goddess. Such a view is an interpretation. On the other hand, the sense of calm delight which in vision, carefully reported, is actually identical, in our perception, with the shimmering glow of the moon, may very well be a faint but genuine breaking through into our experience of a real experience not our own but represented to us as in part at least the moon, — just as the agony of a dog penetrates our perception in the hearing of his whine, or the ecstatic delight of the oriole, in the sensation of his song.
All colors may be viewed as in essence valuations; occupying, however, in most cases such a slight degree of energy of thought and will, representing therefore such a minute fraction either of the satisfaction enjoyed at the moment or of that which is conceived as constituting a notable happiness or pleasure, that the name of value or satisfaction is not applied to it, even upon reflection. But it seems not incredible that what cannot be recognized [237] as fulfilling the concept “satisfaction” or “value” or “enjoyment” is judged as not an instance of such meanings merely because the typical enjoyments or values are realizations of so much more of our selves that a mere scarcely noted color value appears quite another thing. Moreover, in the case of intense and bright colors, the relation (of satisfaction) to the will becomes not only plausible but even apparent. A flashing red or yellow is as obviously, for introspected experience, a tiny thrill of pleasure, as each of the notes of the harp (as actual features in consciousness).
3. We can now suggest how the bold view of all-definablism (some degree of description or characterization possible with all natures) can be illustrated in practice. As yellow is essentially a simple pleasurable thrill so red is a sense symbol or faint apprehension of a more passionate delight or joy. Green is a calmer and deeper affair — the noble sense of steady living activities in a fertile landscape. Blue, as in the sky, is a veritable expression — not of delight simply — but, as poets have felt — of serene and harmonious love. There is a sensible caress in a really disinterested and absorbed apprehension of the sky. It is expressive of supreme and radiant benignity, as Coleridge indicates.
[238]
“For this: she knows . . .
That saints will aid if men will call
For the blue sky bends over all.” (Christabell)
Black is, except as a contrast or as shiny and so reflective of light, purely negative in aesthetic value. It is also, from the physical standpoint, essentially of the nature of a negation, or of non-vision.
Whiteness is sometimes highly pleasing, as in sparkling snow, and a brilliant glow of light is an intense thrill of pleasure. Indeed to conceive a supreme joy, is for some of us, in part to experience of a visual image of radiance. The very word “radiance” suggests the community between the good and light.10
4. If, finally, one conceives a blind man’s fate, he may realize, by contrast, that the misfortune of the blind man is not merely that he cannot get about, apprehend, and deal with objects readily, but that the joyousness and marvel of color as such is cut off from him. Any color, unless it involved a painful (and so a quality not neutral to value) conflict of colors, would be recognized as better than nothing. This dull expanse of dirt seems aesthetically neutral? — let some one cut off your vision an instant, and leave you a blank, no other ideas or objects of interest being conceived added, and the loss of value, the shrinking of the sense and satisfaction of living stands in clear [239] light.11
Plato’s idea of the sun as an embodiment and revelation of the good is thus no mere metaphor to us —, or, one would say, to any poet or artist.
5. Auditory, taste, and olfactory elements of experience, are also in many cases obviously at one with pleasures. As one cannot by any analysis separate the pleasantness of the smell of the rose, from the smell, so one cannot imagine the note of a bird as that sound and yet without value-meaning. One can imagine being so absorbed as not to note the meaning clearly; but attention and clearness result in the inevitable self-insistence of the meaning as the very essence of the sound or smell.
Thus the principle of continuity aids us here. If one sound can identically be a value-element or meaning, why not all sounds? If a beautiful shade of blue cannot be conceived as that shade and yet without its beauty, (the ugliness introduced by conflict with other colors is not an ugliness of the color itself: — and is still a value-character) then surely the beauty of the shade is the shade, of its essence, and any other shade should have its own degree and type of beauty. The inseparability of [240] the sweetness of the violin sound from the sound (the experiential, not the inferred object), for another example, proves that a certain sweetness and a certain sound in a particular case are one and identical. The inference is that any type of sound is a certain value-experience.12
The view, then, that in aesthetic experience the pleasure and the given objective elements are separable, seems both an undemonstrated and inconsistent, or an empirically false account. In experience of music, of faces, and voices, we certainly experience as objective value which is objective (i.e., the feeling of composer, and of player in so far as he really plays). Many of us are sure that many colors, sounds, and odors are in an identity incapable of conceptual dissolution, with their beauty. (In the question, how then do we speak of the latter as a separate aspect? — we reply: because, e.g., the color as “blueness” is identified by a word, not by a qualitative description. Located in this fashion, to analyze the color as essentially an element of experienced-value, is simply to realize to ourselves, in terms of explicit concepts, the relation of the datum tagged as blue to our will, a relation that is of its essence but not therefore necessarily explicitly seen as such, except upon reflection).13
[241] If data sometimes thus essentially are bits of our self-realization, it seems impossible to suppose that data, as such,can ever be without this principle.
5. What more or less a will can do than to realize its purposes and to behold the relations of things to its own interests, is, moreover, hard to be conceived. We must however consider the idea that there is therefore at least a degree of subjectivity in all experience and thus a degree of illusion. The sun may not be good, but only useful and pleasing to us, as men.14
The argument of the present “Outline” depends only upon the following conceptions in this regard:
(a) Whether colors, for example, really reveal the worth of things, the point is that, on the view defended, all elements of actual or imagined experience as such, are value-elements. Therefore, if we get any objectivity at all, perceptually or conceptually (since to think is but to extend and relate the matter of perception) we get it in terms of value.15
(b) Science, being a matter of relations between elements, primarily, is not affected by the valuational nature of the latter. But the veracity of the aesthetic aspect of experience is dependable as, at any rate, the only glimpse we get of concrete reality, and therefore as in principle significant at least of the universality of value-qualities (since a consciousness of objects merely as they are [242] not seems to us an unthinkable conception) — Cf. Section 11 page 214.
Argument 4. Thesis: The view of knowledge as essentially possessed of an aesthetic capacity solves the fundamental problem of Knowledge.
On such a view, we can avoid the Berkeleyan subjectivism, and yet retain the insight it somewhat confusedly involved. We define a perceived object, not as an idea or mere element of the subject, nor yet as simply outside the subject, in no genuine relation of inclusion within his knowledge. But we regard such an object as at once an element within the meaning whole of the perceiving mind, and nonetheless still itself as an object. The idealistic argument does not really rest upon the notion that the human subject creates his object. But that he finds it to have meaning or value for him in terms of the self-significance of his conscious life, and that if this self-significance is to reveal the quality of the object, the object must have its nature in comparable terms. The self-meaning of mind is ultimate to mind and not definable objectively. For to reach any objective thing is only to translate it into that subjective realm and language of self-meaning. The inconsistencies of any other interpretation have been urged in the previous section.
The common element, then, between the object as value-element in a mind, and as objective apart from that [243] mind can only be in terms of an ultimate Valuation or Self-significance realizing an identical phase of itself in both the mind and the object.
The supposed fallacy of denying the creativity of the finite mind, yet urging that of the infinite mind, in regard to the object, is thus met as follows.16 The finite subject creates in this way namely, that in identifying himself with the value of the object (to the Ultimate Mind) he makes it a value for him and so creates a new value, that of his experience. Thus mind is shown to be creative — namely, of value. On the other hand, the object’s own value, while independent of the finite valuation, yet since it is, as we hold, necessarily of the same nature as that valuation if (on a score of grounds) knowledge is to be possible, this objective value must depend upon a similar principle of creative interest as that which is essential to the finite value-experience. Inasmuch, in short, as the value realized by the subject, which is to represent the quality of the object, is essentially of the nature of self-realization or enjoyment the value of the object therefore must relate ultimately to a universal and standard Valuation including both the subject’s and the object’s values and comparing them in its own ultimate or Self-relative terms.
Put in a slightly different manner. The object bears a meaning in the subjects mind, — a meaning essentially relative to that mind as a self-qualifying, self-realizing [244] sphere of awareness. This relativity would destroy knowledge unless it were ultimately a relativity not merely to the finite mind as finite, but as the partial apprehension of the Infinite or perfect Consciousness. In that case there may be an element of our meaning belonging to the One Mind, not merely registered there in reference to our experience, but in other references or experiences, and therefore quite objective in so far as we are concerned.
The “object” then becomes an element of value-experience which can be appropriated by the human subject and become a part of his significant consciousness, but is not peculiarly his. Perhaps the Personalist account is correct, and each value-element attaches to some finite personality as its peculiar and full possession, shared by other subjects only in part by way of incomplete apprehension in perception. Or perhaps value-elements in nature are differentiations of the Divine Life, not fully owned by any finite being. But the essential points for valuational Monism are these:
(a) In our identifying ourselves with a value, in its coming to be so for us, we are occupying in some degree at least the point of view toward it of that Being whose realization in its own life of the value in question is that value. In accepting it as satisfying in a certain manner to ourselves we are enabling it to become to us what it is to its sustaining Ground, and thus its being for us [245] is so far one with its ultimate or objective reality.
It is to be observed, finally, that on a mere pluralism of minds, each mind becomes shut in to itself. For each renders all reality in terms of its own self-being, and, since this involves no standard or universal Self-Reality, publicity or identity of meaning from mind to mind is scarcely conceivable. It is only so if each mind is regarded as wholly relative or dependent upon and inclusive of every other. We append therefore a note upon the view of Dr. McTaggart, which is substantially such a conception.
[246]
Note on McTaggart’s Doctrine of The Absolute.
In the metaphysics of Dr. McTaggart, the view is offered, of a One which is essentially a harmony of perfect love enjoyed by the many. Love, it is declared is the Absolute Being, but love is differentiated into the many who share, each for himself, in the love of all for all. The problem is of course how Love is thus an identical Reality in all the beings enjoying it. Each must be held to love with the same love as is felt by all the others.
Now love is a manner of relation. It is real only as there are beings so related. Dr. McTaggart’s many are real only by virtue of their relation, and the relation derives its whole reality from them. Thus we derive their reality from a source which proves equally to demand it from them. On the genuinely Monistic view we do indeed derive the reality of the particular finite beings from their relation to the One, but we do not regard the reality of the latter as merely its relation to just those finite beings. For a different collection of such beings might, for all we know, do as well. This type of Monism appears, then, as more consistent in itself than the description of the reality of things as their possession of a relation to each other, and the definition of the things as essentially objects — of — this relation, with at the same time the definition of the relation as essentially the relation — between-these-objects. We cannot conceive a relation as differentiated, in [247] short, in terms of its own nature, into the objects at both of its ends. Only love taken as a genuinely single or self-identical Unique Personal Life can be conceived, to our thinking, as a plausible ground of a plurality of things, the all-reflecting register of their being. For here we have Being, not simply as a relation or attitude or enjoyment, but as a Being sustaining this relation and possessing the enjoyment. For such a Being to eternally express itself in the creation and preservation of objects of love becomes then a quite consistent conception — so far as our inquiry has thus far revealed
Argument 5. Thesis: Value as essentially a willed and felt sharing of satisfaction; as in principle some degree at least of an attitude and sense of love; solves in the fullest measure attainable the problem of Being as a concrete Universal or One-in-Many.
The point has been stressed in the Introduction. If to be is to be of value, and the valuable is the loved, then all being is conceivable as dependent upon a universal Beneficent Interest or Love. Our value cannot be merely our self-enjoyment as a purely self-relative or internally qualified affair. For then we become shut in ourselves and isolated in thought from all things and all things to us become mere objects-of-our interest. And thus the social, unselfish, or objective character inherent in valuation suffers contradiction. Secondly, we do not fully qualify our own self-enjoyment because we do not fully possess ourselves; our self-[248]realization is only partially carried out or inwardly illuminated. We do not fully realize what we are, or fully apprehend or enjoy the nature and meaning of our own valuations. Hence we are a contradiction of the unqualified view of mind as essentially what it is to itself, an essentially self-discerned, or as essentially a will engaged in expressing and satisfying itself. We are neither fully self-known nor capable of unlimited satisfaction of our desires. We do not even fully know the latter.17
Thus what we are appears to be relative to a standard not simply ourselves as self-qualifying and enjoying, but a standard which is fully itself to itself, and thus is the measure and register of its own and of our inferior reality.
Our sense of our value-experience as real is on the Monistic View we are outlining the sense of it as of value to an all-discerning Interest, which is possessed of fully realized perfection of value; or, it is the sense of ourselves as the objects of a perfect love. To be an object of love is certainly to be of worth, and if all worth is thus in the end relative to a single Love, we escape merely private, incommunicable or wholly disparate worth; and likewise the inconsistency of an experience in part essentially what it is to itself, and yet in part not wholly transparent to itself nor all its capacities fully enjoyed. The finite experience being always thought as on one aspect, a manifestation or element of the Supreme Experience, finds thus [249] from the finite side its incomplete, yet in principle essential self-relativity accounted for.
The effect of this view upon the conception of Unity in diversity, already discussed in the Introduction, is thus apparent. The Love which fully identifies itself with our fortunes, and registers them in its own consciousness, proves also essential to the conception of our being and nature. Monism is thus bestowed with a concrete and empirically intelligible interpretation.
Argument 6: The Problem of Evil. This forbidding and Haupt-Problem confronting a Perfectionist Monism cannot be dealt with in brief space, except by way of mere suggestion. In any case, all thought upon the subject is inadequate and fragmentary, when confronted with the empirical facts. Yet, if we can not be said to solve the problem, we can perhaps make it clear that a denial of the possibility of a consistency between the facts of evil and the view of Perfectionism cannot be made out as manifestly sound.
1. First, and above all, if we view the Supreme Good as conceivable only as a perfect Benevolence, — inasmuch as our word good seems to mean nothing if not a shared good or an interest in another, — such a Benevolence calls for objects of its regard. These objects, on our view of the good, are sufficient only if they are or include persons, capable [250] of genuine partnership with the Divine.
Now this, again, if many philosophers are not profoundly deceived,requires that such persons be possessed with freedom or power of self-determination. For, indeed, what a person, a thinker, a chooser, could be if not in part the determiner and creator of his thoughts and choices, some of us at least are wholly incapable of conceiving. Psychological atomism can give no meaning to its alleged togetherness of the atoms as one sphere of consciousness, without implying more than atomism; in short, without really introducing the single self who unifies the elements in one consciousness, by having, and, as we would say by enjoying them. Now to enjoy is to actively accept and to sustain an attitude toward. And certainly to compare value elements, to evaluate them in comparison with each other, is essentially an act. All psychological terms imply an active self who feels, who thinks, who reasons, and who penetrates all its states as their sustaining and molding principle. In any case value as willed or chosen harmony, as genuine fellowship and intercourse, implies active agents who can be valued as the cause of certain effects, as the determining source of their deeds. Now if the One Being determined all completely, all alleged thinkers, agents, wills, are really nothing but manifestations of the One Will, and are simply the One, seen truly and fully. This consequence results in Royce’s system, so far as we can see, almost as clearly as in Mr. Bradley’s.
[251] On the social view of the Good, no such outcome can be thought as consistent with the meaning of good, or with the requirement of a genuine many in a genuine One-the-fulfillment of which alone can give consistency to the idea of either plurality or unity. Therefore, we hold it a contradiction to suppose a Perfect Being who determines all. God is the Absolute Power upholding things, but his power to control personal beings is absolute in the only non-contradictory sense of being able to determine them in part,or not to have created any given one at all — or, we suppose, to destroy anyone; but not in the sense of being able to make persons not persons or their acts not their acts at all, but merely the Divine acts. On this ground we conclude thatno Being could guarantee the actions of created beings or determine them to be always good.
2. It is not manifest that the values of supreme generosity, heroism, or self-giving love, or the dignity of steadfast loyalty under stress, are conceivable in an all-agreeable and all-harmonious world. Nor, on the other hand, that these values are of secondary importance and could be sacrificed and leave the world satisfying.
3. Many who urge that Existent Perfection renders ethical impulses and aspirations absurd, and struggle superfluous, and who appear to dislike a world in which struggle would. thus become empty; are by such manner of expressions revealing their sense of the value of existent imperfections.
[252] These Existent Perfections not only, as we have seen, do not prevent but even demand. For created beings in some sense are necessarily imperfect or finite, and their liability to possible error cannot be wholly controlled by the Creator and leave them existent as persons at all.
4. Since we declare the entire prevention of evil impossible on a social (to us the only possible or consistent) view of reality, we are not obliged to regard all evil as in its given amount essential to or wholly and in compensating degree useful to the good, and therefore the struggle against evil remains a significant reality. No judgment of man as to the value of suffering can relieve him from the duty of alleviating it in the lives of his fellows, or even of himself. For we cannot know that the evil we have would not better undergo vast diminution and that the gain would not be immense and real.
5. What is good, then, in the complete sense is then, for Perfectionism, the Perfect, the Divine — and not the world He sustains.
Indeed a perfect world may be unmeaning at the end. Every child born into the world may be an increase — or, it seems, must be, an increase in its value (if there is also conservation of personality) and to the process an end or limit may not be necessary. And we have already argued that the world cannot be but one Person, and if there are to be many, all cannot — on most analyses of metaphysical [253] problems — be perfect.
Freedom, choice, responsibility, chance of error — all belong, is our contention, to any world, as capable of being consistently thought.
With these mere leading ideas the topic must be closed — so far as the present study is concerned.
Conclusion. Our first endeavor in the present section was to state the, to us, conclusive refutation of all-objectivism in the Theory of Value. In the second place we maintained that an account of the nature of pleasure, and of its relation to valued or pleasing objects and situations, is only possible if we consent to regard all value-experience as essentially the experience of something as valuable, but of something not just the experience, intrinsically as of value. In addition, to retain the significance of “value” as thus applied we must suppose an identity of meaning between the value of the experience and of the object. The resultant view of valuation as a self-realizing process involved in the object as apart from us, and also as in us and our experience, prove capable of empirical strengthening on the score of the centrality of comradeship and self-transcending or unselfish interest, in the consciousness of value.
The evidence for the objectivity of aesthetic valuation also harmonizes with the nature of value as defined. We quote here from an article by Dashiell:
They (the valued aspects of experience) stand over [254] against us in a genuinely objective sense — threatening, appealing, coercing, attracting, repelling. They appear as good, ugly, bad, magnificent, wrong, beautiful, upright. In fact, they are just these: they are goods, uglies, bads, magnificents, wrongs, beautifuls, uprights. As such and only as such are they there at all. The original material of all human experience presents itself in this intimate and face to face manner.
Moreover, if this be true of vague and novel moments, there is no warrant for maintaining that developed and intelligent moments are lacking in this character. The development and organization of the former into the latter involves no denial of the meaningful character, in fact, it requires the presence of it to furnish the very stimuli and clues to the development. This, now, is what we mean by the term “values.” Generalizing, we may say that the world as experienced is a world of appreciative qualities, of value aspects. It is not an impersonal casing that compasses us about, but a multiplicity of guide-posts that may serve our human purposes and become linked with our personal fortunes. In so far as content, “friendly or unfriendly, good or bad, attractive or repellant.”18
In harmony with this admirable statement, our view is that while critical interpretation may convince us that the world does not mourn when it rains, we cannot pass beyond the value-category, but can only, substitute more careful and cautious formulations of the value of the world. But [255] while interpretation is really dealing with the world at all — it must formulate in terms of worth. The details of such a critical and more or less agnostic (except on the general principle that the world is a realm of values) formulation of the implications of aesthetics, can not be considered here. As in science, it is a matter of assuming a disinterested attitude, forgetting private concerns (not translating or grief into the clouds [[???]]) and discovering what, in such an absorbed attitude, free from personal cares or desires and with normal sense organs, can be observed still, and even more insistently and uniformly, to impress itself upon us. In any case such applications are aside from the general point of our discussion.
Our entire view may be summarized in a quotation from Swedenborg — a man of high scientific attainments in spite of, (if one sees it so) his peculiar religious conceptions and expressions: —
“All delights of the world, resulting from its variety, are nothing unless the mind also partakes of them, for no human delights can be real without the participation of the soul, since the more refined delights are lacking: and the delights which the body and soul are capable of enjoying together are not genuine and true unless they have some further connection, and terminate in the veneration and love of God; that is, unless they have reference to this love and ultimate end, in a connection with which the sense of delight most [256] essentially consists.” (Quoted by F. Sewall in “Swedenborg and The Sapientia Angelica” — Philosophies Ancient and Modern Series, p. 27.)
We take the final clause together with the use of the words “real” and “genuine” above to indicate that the view is of the nature of pleasure as we have construed it — as in principle and inalienably, in some degree a felt and willed harmony with the Divine Self-Realization. Since this is also essentially love, and concerns itself with the welfare of a world of creatures, the knowledge of other minds and so of realities objective to us as knowers is explicable and consistently conceivable. For as the Divine Interest is inclusive of or in conscious identity with the value or the reality of all, in our own harmony or intuitive identity with the Divine we are participators in his knowledge of our fellows. As embracing something of the Life of God, we embrace also beings which that aspect of the divine life includes within itself.
Note. We may consider a final question before closing the topic of Value. If all is essentially love or unselfish Interest whence comes hate and pain and hostility. We have pointed out that a pleasure, which is at bottom not wholly self-enclosed, or capable of becoming wholly and explicitly egoistic without destroying itself, may not the less be made the object of a further pleasure, or pursued selfishly. Again we have that pleasure in pleasure which we held to be of the
[257]
essence of pleasure itself. But unless at bottom there is a pleasure in something beyond the self enjoying it, we reduce the self to an activity building pleasure upon pleasure, but the ground of the whole series absent — while in addition the empirical facts indicate that the foundation of the introverted pleasure is a genuine spontaneous interest, as of a child, in things beyond us or persons in relation to us. But, on this foundation self-seeking becomes applicable as we have argued. Hostility is a natural consequence of self-seeking.
But, how is it with rage, pain, and hatred. We can only point out that all, at any rate, are social, and betray interest in others. And, secondly, that inasmuch as love is a desire for the betterment of its object, or the service of it, it appears as a strengthening of such desire to endow it with a negative as well as a positive aspect of feeling.
There is, perhaps, detectable a propriety in the presence of a sense of rejection and of repudiation — (in the presence of the errors, self-seeking, etc., our view of reality implies) — of negative value — i.e., of pain or of rage.
In any case the essential objectivity of valuation is as much true of pain as of pleasure. We feel pain when damage is done to our bodies. A damage effecting not us alone but the race (we might desire to mutilate our bodies, but the pain would remain). And we feel grief in the grief [258] of others as naturally as we rejoice in their well-being.
No radical inconsistency appears, manifest upon this point, therefore.
——————————
Endnotes
1. The relation of this situation to the irreducibility of mind and knowledge (Section 11 (1) p.192) is clear.
2. This definition would advance us, however, if pleasure here meant not simply the pleasure taken by the particular will in getting what it wants, but an other-pleasure. Cf. p. 227.
3. As in a recombination of electrons.
4. Or, what is the attractiveness of the adaptation? The answer, the pleasure it gives leaves us, as before, with no explanation for the giving of pleasure, and with the hedonistic paradox.
5. Thus Perry’s dilemma is none for us. (Jour. of Phil.,1914, p.150). Interest both cognizes and constitutes value. It cognizes both its own value (“enjoys itself”) and the object’s. It (or it and the object together); and the second value interest also constitutes, but another interest.
6. What is sought, then, is not pleasure as simply our own; but other-pleasure as such, since only as such can it be also ours. Identity of well-being with another is the complete and harmonizing purpose.
7. On the other hand highly general uniformities of opinion as to the bare fact of significant beauty, — in, for example, a flaming sunset, a rose with its color and odor, or the blue sky, are obvious facts. A man who questioned many of these judgments in genuine honesty would hardly be thought sane — if his sense organs were thought to be healthy.
8. In any high or full sense. Any human delight has, we have seen, some native element of unselfish [[??? – review what may or may not be an erasure here]] interest. But there may be a large measure of deliberate turning in upon the subjective aspect of enjoyment.
9. And therefore sympathy in some respect however little realized in full consciousness, with other-life.
10. We may add, as illustrating the describability or definability of colors, that such a classification as “gay” colors is no mere label for bright colors, but actually describes what brightness is for experience — gives the very essence of difference between a tree trunk and an oriole for vision. And no trace of description on an other principle is available
11. It may be thought that the changes in bodily sensation caused by absence of visual stimulus is the real loss of value. To me it seems clear that the value of the color of the rose is not essentially felt as a feeling within the body, but is intuited as “out there” in the rose. The living outer wall of consciousness is permeated with its value and does not simply dump it into the bodily enclosed sphere of feeling.
12. Cf. page 236-237 above.
13. And, more generally, that sense-quality and feeling value-quality) are essentially and in principle one.
14. The pragmatist view, one supposes.
15. Cf. the striking analysis by J. F. Dashiell. Phil. Rev.,1913, p. 520.
16. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 162.
17. I.e., we cannot fully picture or enjoy their satisfaction in advance. “Know” here is not an extra-valuationa1 idea — since we take such to be impossible.
18. J. F. Dashiell, J. of Phil., 1914, p. 492-493.
***
The Unity of Being
Part II Section 13
[259]
Section 13
Perfection (The Ontological Argument)
This to our minds incomparably brilliant and cogent course of reasoning was initiated as is well known, by Anselm.1 We shall not consider its formulation at his hands, however, but pass at once to the famous criticisms of Kant upon this conception of the necessary existence of a Being conceived as Absolute or Perfect, that is as greater and better than any other that can be conceived. We list Kant’s objections as follows:
(a) Unconditional Necessity of existence is a necessity without conditions or grounds of necessity. Nothing can necessitate the existence of God, for that existence is necessary — if at all — upon no conditions, or in relation to nothing but God himself (478).2
(b) Necessity for thought is always hypothetical. If there are triangles, their angles are equal in sum to two right angles. If you conceive the necessarily existent (to exist) you conceive him to exist by necessity. Remove the conception of him altogether, however, and no contradiction remains. (479).
(c) The Proof begs the question. In trying to show that the mere hypothesis of God proves his existence, you [260] evidently are conceiving him not simply hypothetically, or as possible only, but already as actual. (481-2)
(d) Existence is not a degree or element in perfection. A conceived dollar is of the same quality as if it existed. Hamlet is no more imperfect in character because he is only an imaginary person. Hence the Perfect lacks no perfection even as non-existent. (483)
(e) How do we derive any meaning from the idea of necessary existence, and how do we test its consistency? (484, 541)3
We answer these points briefly here:
(a) The condition for the necessity of God’s existence for our minds is the fact that in conceiving him we must have an object, over and above our thought of an object, and that in this case, if the object is not God in his character of eternal and self-existent perfection, and as the sustaining ground of all who conceive and are in relation to him, then we are not conceiving God at all. The necessity is that we do not pretend to think the self-existent as having being as our object, and yet as having no being except that of being our object. For to conceive the self-existent as depending in this self-existence upon our thought of him is contradictory.
(b) The analogy of the triangles is irrelevant. In conceiving self-existence we cannot at the same time conceive non-existence, any more than we can conceive triangles as violating the two right angles rule.
And if we [261] do not conceive God at all, we are not considering the issue, any more than a savage. Having once seen the impossibility of conceiving God not to exist, we do not conceive him not to exist by not conceiving him at all. (Yet, in a sense, this would be so, if we could really cease in every sense to be aware of the presence of God. Our whole view is that this is impossible.)
(c) We do not argue that the hypothesis of God as merely possible implies that he exists. This, as Kant says, is a contradiction. But we argue rather that the attempt to conceive him as merely possible involves itself a contradiction; so that, either we give up the idea altogether as essentially a self-destructive conception, or we regard its object as existent. Either God is conceived as existent, or as that the truth about which is a contradiction, — namely, that the self-existent or self-sustained should be without his existence — which therefore is an element external to his nature (contradicting the hypothesis) or else is his nature but he must be conceived to lack his nature (again, a contradiction).
(d) Existence is an element in perfection,4 because the existence of the Perfect and his Perfection as Absolute Power or pure Self-Relativity and completeness, are one.
[262] Nothing more than the Perfect Nature of God can be conceived to constitute his existence. No external “there is such a being” can have anything to do with the matter. For “is” here is but God’s own encircling life, real only because and as it is realized by God himself and the creatures dependent upon him (they cannot be thought as otherwise related to him).
(e) We waive this point for the present.5
Since Kant. Hegel, Mr. Bradley, Bosanquet, Mr. C. J. Webb, Mr. H. Wildon Carr, and others have defended the argument. We preface our own discussion by a quotation from a theologian, Professor Flint:
“This reasoning (Anselm’s) found unfavorable critics even among the contemporaries of Anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. Yet it way fairly be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible. . . . There is no force, as Anselm showed, in the objection of Gaunilo, that the existence of God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such an island. There neither is nor can be an idea of such an island which is greater or better than any other that can ever be conceived. . . . Only one being — an infinite, independent necessary being [263] can be perfect in the sense of being greater and better than every other conceivable being.
The objection that the ideal can never logically yield the real — that the transition from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate — is merely the assertion that the argument is fallacious. It is an assertion which cannot be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted. The argument is that a certain thought of God is found necessarily to imply his existence. The objection that existence is not a predicate, and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and perfect than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate, but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable. Now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that existence in re can be distinguished from existence in conceptu, necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived existence. Specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated. That the exclusion of existence — which here means real and necessary existence — from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete idea of God, is not a position, I think, which can be maintained. Take away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being, and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of [264] an idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all. Thus, the argument of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms instead of three. Those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely realized that thought would be an imperfect being;6 but there is a vast difference between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an ideally perfect being.”7
The Ontological Argument.
Phase 1. Thesis: The conception of the non-existence of that which is to exist, if at all, only in and of itself, — as a self-sustained, or self-existent being, — involves a contradiction.
The contradiction may be exhibited in the following two aspects:
(a) The existence of an independent or self-maintaining being is just the identical nature or spontaneously exercised power of that being. It requires no status in a realm of existence not embraced and sustained by that power, [265] and any such mode of existence in a universe surpassing itself contradicts its absolute power over its relations and its own manner of being.
Therefore, if such a being exists, it exists only within and by virtue of its own reality or self-possessed unity of life and nature. But, on the other hand, it cannot be conceived except as possessing this internal nature, reality or existence. It cannot be conceived to lack its power of self-maintenance, for this is its essential quality. And, moreover, this is also its existence.
If it be said that it can be conceived as possessing its power but as not exercising it, we reply that a being possessed of the power to exist but not existing, is a being conceived as facing the alternative: to be or not to be; and deciding upon the latter. That which has the power to exist in itself is already a reality. In another mode of expression, we may say that even an absolute’s power to exist can be real, can be only as wholly independent in its being of any other being or external fact. Therefore, the self-existent, with its power to exist of itself, either simply is — as the ground and principle of this power — or there is in no sense any such power or entity. If there is no such entity, then there is nothing which we are thinking in thinking the self-existent, — our thought is solely of itself, and hence not of self-existence: in short is contradictory of what it pretends to be, a total [266] inconsistency destroys it.
In any case, the Perfection considered in the next Phase of the Argument can not be conceived as an unexercised power. Perfection is perfectly and eternally exercised power — is pure and inalienable actuality — actus purus. The power to create an infinite and eternal good unexercised is the reverse of goodness. Therefore if the Perfect be conceived as capable of self-existing and of maintaining in itself a world of values, it must be conceived as exercising this capability and as existing.
We repeat, then, that the essentially independent cannot be conceived as apart from its existence, since such separation could only indicate separation from self —which is an entire contradiction.
(b) Since the being or existence of the self-existent is one with its unitary nature or quality, and can have nothing to do with any “existence” external to itself, either our concept of “being” is nothing more and nothing less than the idea of the Self-existent Life, or the latter idea is without meaning, having no possible connection with being — and therefore not legitimately regarded as even a conceivable mode of being. The idea of the existence of the Ultimate Being cannot be that of a non-Ultimate “existence” happening to include the Ultimate. Any existence applicable to the latter must be wholly one with its nature, bearing no possible merely external reference. Hence the [267] mere hypothesis: God exists; is the hypothesis “existence” is an all-powerful Life, with no meaning except in terms of that life. Now the hypothesis God does not exist, or there is no God, becomes correspondingly: “the existence of God” is the identification of two disparates, and therefore a contradiction; or it becomes: God being one with existence, then, since God is not, there is neither God nor existence.
The critic rejecting of course the latter alternative may find no difficulty in the former. The hypothesis “God exists” may involve a contradiction, and if so, God does not exist. Why should this not be so?
The reply that any being, thus conceived as involving a contradiction in the mere notion of its existence (which we must think to be so of God, if our notion of existence is not one in the end with our notion of God) is conceived as essentially a self-contradictory idea. That which, to be, must become a contradiction is for thought already a contradiction. The consistent conceivability of existence, and consistent meaning are all one.
Put once more, To conceive anything, even as an hypothesis, is to conceive it as a hypothetical mode or instance of Being. With an Absolute Being or Power, the hypothesis becomes the sheer identification of being and [268] absolute power.8 All the meaning possessed by the word being is exhaustively emptied into and become indistinguishably one with, absoluteness. Thus if our word being does not already mean absoluteness it becomes entirely a new word with no possible relation to its previous meaning.
And if “Being” does not mean Absoluteness, then in thinking this truth we are at the same time thinking that for Absoluteness to be would be for Being to become not-Being, and hence that the idea of the Absolute Being is the joint assertion and denial of an identity.
In a final word. If being is not the Perfect, then the hypothetical being of the Perfect is the hypothesis of being as absolutely what it is not. If the register of fact or existence is not the One, then the One’s existence is meaningless — since only the One itself can register even hypothetically its own existence.9
The conclusion of Phase 1 is thus the alternative: either the self-existent must be regarded as existent and the ground of all existence, or it must be regarded as an [269] idea fundamentally meaningless and contradictory.
In all thought there must be an object not the thought itself — if the thought is of or about anything, if it is distinguishable from no thought. And with the Self-Sustaining One, the object is either that One itself, in its character as a self-maintaining being, and therefore as existent — or else we only pretend to conceive the self-existent One, and really conceive something else.10 If we know we conceive Self-existence, we know we cannot conceive it as unreal except by admitting that at the same time we conceive it as other than self-maintaining or existent — as identical with nothing, or as an essentially undetermined or characterless meaning — as something quite other than itself, or apart from itself, as thought to be what it is not thought to be.
Objections.
(a) That Necessity of thought and necessity of existence are not identical.
The argument has not infrequently been decisively refuted by the simple observation that because we must think something to be, it does not follow that it actually is. Put in these terms, without further qualification — as sometimes happens — the refutation is nothing but ridiculous.
[270] It amounts to saying that what we must (on pain of contradiction) think to be so, we nevertheless can suppose or think may not be so. In short the contradiction is accepted as inescapable yet urged as at least possible truth. Naturally, if we can think the contradictory as possible truth no proof can avail anything, in any sphere. The refutation so far, then, is a solemn indulgence in irrelevant nonsense.
If, however, it is meant (and still better, if it is said) that no self-existent God may exist because after all the idea of his existence may be no less contradictory or meaningless than the idea of his non-existence — the primary and most rational objection of Kant — the objection has entire relevance and cannot be dismissed as without weight. We reserve discussion of this point until, in the Third Phase of the argument, we have endeavored to produce rational evidence for a belief in the consistency of the idea of God, or of a perfect Spirit, Mind, or Personality.
(b) The difficulty of the alleged “leap from idea to reality.” We can only repeat that a mere idea, implying no reality other than just itself, is a most manifest contradiction.11 If we think Perfection, for example, we do not think merely our thought of Perfection — unless we are to admit that we regard that as perfect. If there were ever any consciousness not attaining reality, no leap across such a gulf and no knowledge of any kind could be expected.
We have [271] already criticized Kant on this score, and may remark also his limitation of human thought to its own contents as mere modifications of itself, is seldom accepted by those who so enthusiastically enlist his support against the Argument we are discussing.
(c) Dragons, Centaurs and Dollars. If we think a dragon, must there not be one, on our view? The answer is in reality simple, though Kant overlooked it altogether. After all, when we think of “a dragon,” the “a” here does not represent any particular individual. No finite individual in its qualitative uniqueness or inner individuality can be conceived. The most we can do is to initiate and carry to a certain stage of completion a process of determination (by universals or classes, including time and space location) which is capable of any one of an infinite number of completions. We conceive a class formed of intersecting classes. Since we cannot conceive in its individual essence any candidate for membership in this class there is no possibility of inferring such a member from our conception. Mr. Micawber need not exist because he is not altogether an individual (how long is his nose?). A finite object is a unique individual for us only as it sustains a unique relation to us — ultimately as an actual or hypothetical direct datum of perception. Short of this test its reality is uncertain because its individuality is not cer-[272]tain.12
The mad-man’s snakes are not mere nothings. Greenness, redness, organic life, all these elements of the experience are real in other references, are not mere products of delusion. Only they are wrongly combined and located. If there were no greenness, no mad-man could conceive it,13 and when he does he does not conceive but his own conceptions
With an Absolute Mind, however, we have not a combination of qualities, but the single principle of Mind taken in its full intension, not as combined with qualifications, but as unqualified except by the essential characters of self-knowledge and self-relativity or being — essentially — for — self.
We have a quality not referable to but one [273] individual, and conceivable only as nothing except in the life of that individual. Perfection is but a word, except as we conceive an infinite self-sustaining Life or Mind. The nature of the Perfect is not a universal with respect to the Perfect Being, as an instance of it. For it is the Life of that Being as uncharacterizable except by that Being itself; unmeaning apart from it.
We have, therefore, individuality already given in the thought of God. And we have individuality in terms of eternal, inalienable, essential self-existence. We have a Being whose reality is but his internal Life, thought without which he is thought as quite other than himself.
(d) Need the idea be thought meaningful or consistent. The answer to this constitutes the last or Phase 3 of the Argument. There is an intermediate step, however, which follows.
Phase 2. Thesis: A perfect Personality can only be conceived as a wholly self-controlled and self-existent Being.
The defects of human beings consist in the limitations of their knowledge, of their good-will, and of their [274] power to execute this good-will. A person unable to know, in full, what is best to be done; a person not wholly and with a single mind intent upon doing that best; and finally a person incapable of fully accomplishing all that it sees might be done for the best: in all of these respects such a person is not the full realization of what is implied in personality. A person is a being concerned above all with social intercourse. He has the desire to comprehend his fellows, to stand in a relation of good will toward them, and to be able to execute this will effectively and to the uttermost. A Person is admirable in proportion as his understanding, his loyalty, and his ability to aid others, makes itself felt. Good-intentions coupled with futility do not impress us wholly, nor does even physical weakness appear the happiest of personal endowments.
Looking at it biologically, the aim of living beings is complete adjustment to circumstances — i.e., an ability to control the course of one’s experience with reference to an inner harmony. Man, no matter how highly developed or robust may always be robbed almost if not quite of his very sanity by sufficient physical misfortune. He is, in inescapable fashion, in a degree of bondage to the mercy of fate. This bondage not only interferes with his happiness but even, at times, with the realization of his higher capacities of knowledge, fellowship and love. Spiritual expansion is not equally possible under all external con-[275]ditions, and these conditions man cannot wholly guarantee and control.
If we are to conceive a being all that human beings in their best moments at least would gladly be but are not, we can only form such a conception in terms of perfect penetration and comprehensiveness of insight, a complete direct vision of all beings; a perfect sympathy and good-will toward all; and an unlimited power to assist them. This is the ideal apparent in friendship. We mourn the relative futility of our good offices — the faults we can do so little to transform, the difficulties we can help so little to remove, or even — often — to really understand as they are to the other facing them.
It seems on the whole a justifiable formulation of the meaning of Personality, then, to conceive such a mode of being as, at least in its ideal of itself, enjoying a complete power of understanding and control of reality, and in itself essentially and purely controlled by its own aspiration for the welfare of all that lives and is capable of desire or hope. The conclusion is, that the Perfect Person is a mind who wills the good of all, embraces all in his sympathetic insight, and who contains the being of all in the circle of his own might. If creative productivity is the great gift of man, the highest personal gift must be conceived to lie in the capacity to create the highest product of all — a person. The power to endow [276]parents with a child is a capacity beyond that of man, but an expression of love entirely in harmony with man’s aspiration and spontaneous generosity — at their highest.
The Perfectionist View of Personality, the conception of it as in principle implying absolute power as its ideal of itself, is frequently subject to challenge. Thus Schiller (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 191914) refuses to admit the possibility of social relations at all in the case of an omnipotent being. He can have no interest in anything but himself, is the argument, since he is defined as lacking nothing in himself and therefore without motive to seek his own good in the welfare of finite beings. He can pursue no purposes, for his will and reality being one, everything he desires is already so.
That all this rests upon careless and loose thinking may, we submit, be seen if we consider the premisses of Schiller’s argument. These are:
1. That an Omnipotent and Perfect Being must possess all good merely in himself as a self-enclosed and solitary consciousness, and not rather in a love expressing itself in a world of creatures, not outside of their creator, yet not in mere identity with him either, but embraced in his sustaining and beneficent activity and understanding.
2. That absolute power is unable or unwilling to limit itself in a degree sufficient to endow created beings with a power or initiative of their own. We have discussed [277] this at previous points.
3. That consequently An Absolute Mind can have no purpose to realize in time. But only in time can relations with created personalities be sustained. And love for these surely involves the willingness to assist in their aspiration toward ever higher states of being.
On the whole it seems to us manifest that the essential nature of value as preeminently generous and comprehending social intercourse, renders quite clear the ideal of good as realizable only in an adequate all-generous and all-appreciative friendship, interest, or love. But this implies the Perfect Friend. A wholly satisfactory social relationship is not possible where there is no complete knowledge or unlimited power of generous and unreserved attention to the welfare of another. And few have succeeded in supposing that a society of many Perfect Persons is conceivable (Cf. however, Dr. McTaggart’s Studies in Hegelian Cosmology — discussed in Section 12).
We reach thus the conclusion that what we in principle mean by the good involves as its ideal and standard of realization the Perfect Lover to whom no life is alien, and by whom no aspirations are misunderstood, undervalued, or refused assistance so far as they are good — i.e., tend toward the development of a similar love and will to harmony in the being concerned and those about him. Such a Perfect Lover we can conceive as owing his existence to no [278] external something or “existence” — for all must exist only within the circle of his life and by existence must mean significance in that Life. The existence of the Perfect then must be for all remaining individuals just the immanent presence of its Power, as a richness and perfection only in outline conceivable and yet dimly felt in its character as perfect. And for the perfect itself its existence can only be its possession of itself and of all things in itself.
Any other view of the meaning of existence or being in relation to the Perfect contradicts his power over all reality and over himself, and introduces some thing alien and separable which is not at one with his power, nor dependent upon him, while yet he is quite dependent upon it. No place for such an element can be found in the Concept of Perfection.
On the view of mind developed in Section 11, and on any idealistic view, again, the meaning of all meanings are relative to the mind, and hence wholly relative to a completely self-determined mind or a Perfect Person. Hence existence as a meaning qualifying the Perfect,is at one with and analytically inconceivable apart from, the Perfect itself as the source of its own reality as a meaning or possible object of thought. Hence, also, so far at least, of the idea of such existence as meaning anything in regard to it — i.e., in so far as it, the perfect, is to be thought to mean anything.
[279] We proceed now to the final stage of the argument.
Phase 3. Thesis: The consistency of the idea of a Perfect Personality is implied in the rationality or consistency of thought in general or in any given case.
Our whole thesis has endeavored to demonstrate this. And in the foregoing discussion we have argued that the idea of Personality involves as its ideal and criterion of development, the concept of the Perfect and self-dependent Person.
If such a Personality is a contradiction, then no perfect good is conceivable. In that case life is in the service of no completely worthy ideal. It realizes no wholly satisfactory good because complete satisfaction is even less than none — because it is absurd. Life, then, could be conceived as a more worthwhile activity than it is, not merely because it is only of a given value, but because any value or worth must leave something to be desired. What then, is it living beings desire — since it is more than could conceivably be had. Any finite good is clearly seen to be defective — not all that the good implies. Yet this all is to be a contradiction.
Given any quantity, one may retort, there can be a greater. We have already argued that this proves that the standard of quantity is quality. But, in the present case, we are in the realm of quality. We do not argue for a perfect [280] account of good — but for a perfect quality of goodness or power.
It may appear plausible to view life as essentially a striving for a goal which cannot be reached, or as necessarily a pressing on to a future and therefore away from a present in some way defective. But this is no solution to the problem: what is the ideal with reference to which the incompleteness of the present is tested? The goal or standard may not be attainable, but if it is inconceivable or absurd, we are aiming at less even than nothing.15
Again, from the side of knowledge, we reach the same conclusion. To conceive our knowledge as defective (and only as conceiving it so do we strive to amend it by further reflection and effort) is to view it as lacking in something a perfect Knowledge would include. Knowledge is not all it wants to be, but what it wants to be is that to be, which, would be at the same time not to be anything. All thinking is thus oriented toward a contradiction if the Perfect Mind is not its Self-Sustaining Ground.
We can, once more, only conceive the nature of reality as that which knowledge reveals it to be, plus that which it would reveal it to be if it were perfect knowledge. Any being of the thing not in terms of knowledge can be, as we have argued, nothing for knowledge.
Finally, if our analysis of mind, as essentially self-significance, is sound, the partial obscurities of the [281] of the human mind in its own understanding of itself must be taken as negations, in their degree, of what mind essentially is.
We are incomplete minds because we are incompletely mind, because we are not all that the idea of mind implies. The full implication is of a being that knows, not partially, (part knows and part fails to know), its own nature, but that simply and without qualification, knows itself, — as self-realizing being real only in and through this self-apprehension. Absolute knowledge is only knowledge taken in the full and fundamental meaning of the term. Perfect Love is no more than love without any contrary tendencies or qualifications of apathy or hostility.
We leave the matter at this point. If Perfection is not self-consistent, degrees approaching perfection are approaches to the unmeaning. Things are good relative to purposes, themselves relative or imperfectly what they ought to be, and all this relativity has no criterion of comparison. Two relatives, as we have urged repeatedly, cannot measure each other — for neither is definite unless it is fixed by a determinate standard that is determinate by being self-determined, that is, in no essential relativity to a further measure because it is the very fullness of its own ideal.
Conclusion. We may repeat the argument in this form. Even if the object of an idea can be only in the mind, as Kant [282] held, it is or has being in that mind; and it is not the mere idea of which it is the object. Blueness may be an element in the mind conceiving it. But it is the object of the conception, not the conception. In like manner, in our conception of Perfection, Perfection may be an element in our minds. But that element is not simply our thought of that element — is not simply our idea of perfection (any more than blueness is our idea of blue when we have that idea), but is perfection. Otherwise we conceive but our thought of perfection. If we conceive rather perfection itself, then Perfection or the Divine, and not our concept of it merely, are elements in our minds. But this immanence of a Divine Perfection in the human mind, which cannot be thought to depend for its self-dependent and infinite being upon our happening to conceive it, but must therefore be allowed, if a consistent object of thought at all, an eternal and all-sustaining Existence, is precisely what the argument aims to show.
If “complete knowledge,” or “Perfect Good” are not consistent objects of thought, we further argued, then all thought and all life tests itself by thinking a contradiction. To strive to know more is to think, I do not know all that I want to know. Is then such a knowing all absurd? Then to think is to strive to alter a state because it is not what it would be absurd for it to be. No mere wish to know more, can be the basis of reflective effort. For no matter how much we knew, we should be dissatisfied if any-[283]thing were omitted. This is evidence that what urges us on is not merely that we desire to know a great deal more, but that we are aware of the full implications of the ideal of mind as all-knowing.
On the other side the “nature of reality” is really inconceivable as a criterion of thought, except as we conceive an ideal limit to the extension of our apprehension of reality.16 Thus what things finally are, a conception upon which all truth rests, depends upon the thought of the Ideal Mind.
The matter is similar in judgments of worth. The person who identifies himself with the life of others in sympathetic understanding, and cooperation, is so far good. But we forever recognize the incompleteness of such loyalty and understanding. This is manifestly because we possess an inalienable Ideal. It is not merely that we know we are misunderstood. Our very conception of our real nature and value is the conception of what we might be in relation to a wholly kind and understanding person. We do not know what we are in abstraction from fellowship. And a complete chance to see and know what we are capable of is imaginable only in relation to an all-comprehending friend, wholly loving us, and wholly worthy of our love in return. Thus even our judgment of the deficiencies of human understanding of ourselves is relative to a dimly conceived Perfect Understanding and wholly unselfish Interest.
[284] Once more, as with knowledge of reality in general, all thought about persons involves an apprehension or sense of the Ultimately Good, of that worthy of unqualified approval, delight, loyalty, and reverence — to emulate which, in our degree, all our effort is, though less fully than it might be, directed, and with reference to which essentially we conceive our own true character and value.
Thus, in brief, there seems cogent evidence for the conclusion that all life and all reasoning is oriented toward a contradictory yet necessary ideal, unless this Ideal is our apprehension of a Self-Existent Divine Being, upon whom we depend, and in whom we exist.
It is to be noted, therefore, that our view of things does not depend upon a hypothetical explanation of the world simply, — if it succeeds in its endeavor, — but upon a choice between the view of all thinking as the thinking of a contradiction (of a non-existent, Absolute and Self-Existent being), and the acceptance of that Being as real, — its Life as the very meaning of “to be.”
This result has perhaps been reached in another fashion in our discussion of Knowledge as implying a reference of all meanings to a Universal and fully self-discerned or self-realizing, and Perfect Mind. But it is at least of value to know that even if the existence of such a Being could not otherwise be proved, the necessity for the non-contradictoriness of the conception of it is one [285]
with the necessity for its existence. And that this necessity, if our reasoning is sound, is in its turn one with the necessity that thought as such should be regarded as capable in principle and in any case whatever of freeing itself from self-contradiction.17
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Endnotes
1. Though already implicit in Plato’s conception of the identity of Being as such with Perfection or Perfect Being.
2. Numbers refer to pages of M. Müller’s translation of the Critique of Pure Reason. N.Y. 1920.
3. Kant supposes that since concepts get content only from direct experience or intuition, the concept of God has no real content. But this assumes that Perfection is not felt in experience as that in contrast and in relation to which we as imperfect beings have our reality or worth. The ethical sense, e.g., is for us the sense of a Perfection we strive to emulate, out of loyalty or love toward that very Perfection. (See p. 283). If the idea of God had no content it would have no meaning, and if the content is not Perfection, we do not mean or think Perfection. In short thought — as in mathematics, e.g. — experience of reality as much as sense perception.
4. We shall see that existence is a predicate since it involves individualization, whereas the conceived is only a class, not a genuine individual.
5. Save for a quotation: “The idea of the Absolute is not reducible to a rule of synthesis” (as Kant held it to be in opposing the Ontological Argument). “Synthesis is one of the many innumerable predicates of God . . . the main criticism to bring against Kant in this connection is that he has terribly impoverished the idea of God.” Lossky, op. cit., p. 131.
6. It may be asked: how can God be more than what is meant by our (imperfect) idea — and so how can he be perfect? The answer is, of course, that our idea of God is not merely our imperfect conception, but involves the Immanent self-consciousness of God, and so is able to mean this perfect reality by the latter’s own aid — otherwise it could not; which is a form of the proof.
7. Quoted on page xxiii, The Open Court Volume of Translations of Anselm’s works (Chicago, 1903), from Robert Flint, Theism, New York (1893, seventh edition) p. 278 et seq.
8. Thus to imagine any separability of “Being” and “Absoluteness” is to deny that the latter is really qualified wholly in terms of Being-for-self, and that it is not conceivable as related to anything not dependent upon itself.
9. It should perhaps need no pointing out that we thus meet the supposition that the self-existence of the Absolute is only a that which “if it existed,” would exist of itself and necessarily; for this if it existed implies: if “existence” as such were an Absolute Life. But the idea of existence as what in fact it is not (if it is true God does not exist and conceive this truth) is the idea of there existing another fundamental meaning of existence. Since the first “existence” must retain its present meaning to render the hypothesis significant we have again a contradiction — the idea of existence as not existence or to be as not to be.
10. Cf. Spinoza’s Axiom: “The essence of that which can be conceived as not existing does not involve existence” — i.e., is not a self-existent nature, nor can be conceived as such. Here is the proof in a word.
11. Cf. Lossky, op. cit.: “To think of what is not, and is not recognized as standing over against us in the act of judging is utterly impossible . . . Expressed accurately, the meaning of the judgment ‘God exists’ is thus: ‘the existence of God’ is a real existence and not an existence in people’s imagination or in virtue of my subjective activity.” (p. 237) Now conceive the self-subsistent and perfect (not the conception of it but the object of the concept) as thinkable as a phase merely of our own dependent and imperfect activity!
12. The idea of Mr. Micawber thus is an imagined experience of him. We can suppose him not to exist because we can deny that our imagined perception is a genuine presence of an individuated or objectively determined object. In conceiving God, however, as an all immanent Reality present everywhere and in all experience in any way related to him, we have an idea which either has no object or else has as object a Being which is directly and universally given in some degree of awareness of its reality. We have, in short, the idea of a Being who is being, whose nature is the essence of existence; in short of a Being which is given if anything is given as real.
13. This seems the point of Descartes’ alternate form of the Argument, i.e., that we could not invent the idea of perfection. The point is not merely that we find in psychology the trail of perception in all imagination. But that to create an idea is not to create the object of that idea. If in producing the idea of perfection we produced the perfection of which we think we should be producing God. The objection that our idea of the perfect is not perfect and therefore could be produced by us is just what the argument wants. If in conceiving God the only objective mean is our own idea of God, then we conceive not the perfect but the imperfect. And if we mean perfection as more than our idea, which is imperfect, we cannot pretend at the same time to mean or conceive a pure non-entity as — to perfection, nor any thing separable in thought from its full existence or inner self-reality.
14. Supplementary, Vol. II
15. A perfect quantity of good is we admit absurd. But if the sole standard were quantitative then its employment would involve the completion of the regress indicated at previous points — Sections (8 and 10).
16. If for an idea to be false is meaningful, for it to be true might be supposed to be also. But to think a true idea in good earnest is to conceive a perfectly self-clear meaning embracing its object completely, i.e., to conceive an element of an ultimate or perfect mind.
l7. Or at least of falsity — the conception of the One as having reality for and in itself, and all things in and by means of it, when in fact it has no being or reality at all.
***
The Unity of Being
Part II Section 14
[286]
Section 14
Conclusion
The course which has been run was characterized in the Introduction as a progressive examination of ultimate categories of thought, from the abstract or implicit to the more concrete and explicit, with a view to discovering the relation of the initial category of Being to the subsequent categories. We saw that Being, or what is predicted in the words “to be” could not be regarded as a mere abstraction, in its ultimate content. For to abstract from this abstraction proved to be the removal of all. Hence we inferred that the full content of all falls within the nature of Being, or the root or minimum meaning, that which gives the concept its identity, of the word “is.” To take this meaning as a mere word for the collection of beings proved absurd, unless each thing is to be what it is in terms solely of the whole collection.
This was made more clear in the concept of individuality. Nothing could be except as distinct, definite, or a “this.” To make such a distinctness the whole of distinct entities is absurd, since such a whole presupposes the principle whose meaning is sought. Yet without “distinctness,” as such, nothing could be at all. In-[287] dividuality, thus proved to contain the full possibility of things in itself, to be the measure of the difference between all and nothing, and yet not simply the all, as a collection.
The meaning of a whole of parts showed itself likewise intractable to a pluralistic view of Being. The one formed out of many was yet not its many parts, but a result whose unity implied an including individual in terms of the unitary consequence to which, or as the product of its relating and embracing activity,1 the whole must be conceived.
Quality, we saw, led to a regress, i.e., of qualities or natures of the qualities; a regress halted, and so determinate knowledge rendered possible, only by a quality qualifying and differentiating all qualities out of its own self-differentiated nature. Such a quality suggested the power of mind.
Relations, as external, implied a ground or Relating Principle, — as relative to which all qualities are predicated, — internal in terms — on our hypothesis — of intrinsic worth or value (on the analogy, which was more than an analogy, of friendship); and external in terms of contributions of value to a larger whole. On a pluralist view predicates as such split into two wholly discordant and contradictory halves; and the difference, likewise, between a relation as just a relation and one as relating proved [288] to be nothing if not a new relation between relation and term — thus quite directly initiating a regress.
On the monistic view, all relations being regarded as aspects of the One Relating Life and nothing apart from it, therefore in the being of an actual relation the term is already thought, and a change from one relation to another involved a change in the relating activity itself, from one aspect to another. The difference thus between a relation relating and one not relating becomes the difference between a conceptually abstracted aspect of the capacity of the One, and that capacity in its actual functioning. The reality here is not the relation as an independent entity — this is a mere fiction of the mind — but the One inclusive of and relating the many. The many-as-related-by-the-One becomes the unit of thought and no regress of new relations is required to get from the meaning: “things and relations,” to “things-related,” for (as the first phrase indeed implies) things-related is what we mean by things. Since “real2-for-Being”and “real” are one; and therefore “things self-related to-by-and within Being” is the beginning of thought, not a result which must be achieved by interposing relations of being-related between what is to relate and the object.3
[289] Space and Time we saw appeared, both in their immanent or not merely collective unity embracing the parts, and in their character as concrete and inclusive wholes which nevertheless could only be thought as one or complete in abstract terms of spatiality or temporality; to imply a more concrete character of unity than they adequately supplied. In order to take account of minds, which must be included in the whole of things, we saw that wholeness as characterized by extension and temporality, was likewise insufficient. Extension and time were found in experience, but experience could not be thought as falling within a merely space-time whole. And finally magnitude implied an ultimate standard neither finite and relative, nor quantitatively infinite — but qualitatively ultimate or self-characterized — harboring and fulfilling its own ideal and measure of quantity and quality.4 Such a standard we suggested experience as a whole, with its self-comparison in terms of just noticeable or minimum significant differences, i.e., with its system of valuations of relative richness of content, seemed not only to offer but to actually employ as the foundation of science. We thought to derive support here from Professor Whitehead — following the example of Viscount Haldane, though with less emphasis upon the particular theory of relativity.
In the conception of knowledge we found the necessity for a characterization of all qualities, not only as before [290] in terms of one quality, but this time more definitely in terms of mind. And we argued that only as something-to-knowledge, or as meaningful to thought, could anything be an object of thought. The unity of mind and object proved ultimate, since only within or in terms of, the self-significant, self-qualifying, and to itself, certainly known existence of a knowledge-whole, could anything be known to be anything.5
Under the caption of Value we endeavored to show that an understanding of what value is, and of what its chief relations and laws are, could only be had satisfactorily and consistently in terms of an ultimate social relation of other — interest or love; of a valuation able and essentially concerned to appreciate a good not merely its own as good at once both for it and for another, with the other good an inseparable aspect of its own. Such a view seemed to make possible an escape from all the inconsistencies and fallacies charged upon idealism. The object becomes no mere creature of the human subject. Yet its meaning or value to him, in entering into his self-realization, and by the way of love, becoming one with it, must reflect or grasp the value, meaning, or quality which it has apart from him. This implied that it must involve the same creative principle of self-realization which constitutes the essence of the value of the subject’s experience. And thus mind as creative of the nature of things is consistently — it is thought and [291] hoped — set forth.
The creative principle of self-realization, however, which operates in the human self cannot be merely the human subject. For then the finitude of the latter is absurd — an activity measuring its own imperfections and yet imperfectly self-known. And, again, the social character of valuation prevents us from in any way inclining toward the pit-fall of solipsism. Hence the human valuation must involve a Perfect and Universal Valuation, which values the object as it is apart from the human subject, and is thus its inner essence or reality: and values also the subjectively enjoyed value (of the particular subject), — realizing a more or less identical value element as belonging both to the given subject’s experience and also as significant in other references,6 i.e., as the objects reality apart from the given subject.
We endeavored to show that aesthetic experience, carefully analyzed, exhibited the appreciatory aspect of experience as simply its essence or moving principle, and thus that all qualities, as matter for experience, and so, — on our view of the absurdity of a purely subjective or mutilating and distorting awareness of objects as they are not, and of the attempt to conceive qualities not in the least [292] revealed in experience, — to show that all qualities whatever, fall within the category of value.
The problem of the unity of Being received final notice. It seemed possible to conceive the Perfect Interest as registering all reality in terms of the differences made to or in the life of that Interest; and likewise to regard this inscription or inclusion within the survey of an all-benevolent regard, as essential to the reality of finite being as such. For only as valued does a person experience any full sense of value. And human valuations seemed insufficient, as too fluctuating and too inaccurate, to represent the complete and final ground of our worth to the universe. And, in any case, the need for a Standard Valuation in order to allow for objective experience of a real other, had already been formulated in the previous section. We thus have a One, embracing in its life of love, the natures of all things, in such a manner that apart from this Being, no finite beings can be conceived. This fulfills our definition of Monism — as the conception of a Being sustaining all things and qualifying them in terms of the forms assumed by its own unitary nature. A love which includes in its sense of value the values of all things, must thus differentiate its self-realized enjoyment or valuation into precisely the variety of objects or finite value-realizations which are recipients of its love — if, at least, the love is to be perfect or all-appreciating.
[293] In the final section we reviewed the questions arising in a connection with the Ontological Argument; concluding that it is sound in so far as it proves that whatever is conceivable as self-existent and self-individuated must be thought as identical with nothing, and so an empty absurdity, unless it, as an object of thought (which is not just the thought of which it is the object)7 is conceived as truly endowed with that self-realizing nature whose self-reality is that which alone can fundamentally be meant by its existence, and which must be thought as in no relation whatever to existence — again rendering it a sheer absurdity — unless it is thought as the essence of being, existence, and all other meanings applied to it.
In the second place we found that our ideal of personal worth can be adequately formulated, in outline, and only adequately formulated, as a Perfect Person; including all in the compass of his power, and dependent upon nothing; in order thus to be able to guarantee and effectively cherish the welfare of the whole. We saw no place in such a conception for any externally attachable existence, requisite for the reality of such a Person. Such a factor is a contradiction of complete power, and also of the complete [294] self-relativity of all the meanings employed by a fully self-determined Mind.
Finally, we urged that the conception of the Perfect Mind is thought implicitly in all thought; as the full meaning of our sense of insufficiency, both in regard to valuations of the type which, on our view, constitute knowledge; and in regard to good of all kinds. Any judgment of a more to be known about the object, implied a limit of knowledge as giving what the object altogether is, and such knowledge could only be conceived as possessed by a mind all of whose meanings were clear to it because its self-realization constituted the essence of the meanings. From the side of ethical judgments, and judgments of the degrees of perfection attained in relations of comradeship and social understanding, a standard again appeared in the form of the Ideal Personality, in relation to whom, as an all-appreciative socius our own real worth, as a dimly felt criterion of judgments about us, was felt; a worth conceived as worth to an Interest which if directed toward us would allow all our powers of social response full and perfect opportunity to realize themselves, and so reveal their exact character; and a worth also as tested by the ideal of a perfect social response, in comparison to which our own relative obtuseness and selfishness is judged.
Thus all life appeared to issue in a fundamental [295] and ineradicable idea, which, conceived together with the truth about it,8 constituted a self-contradiction, unless the Perfect Person was, throughout, in some degree of dim apprehension, felt and intended as real.
Such is the program, as we have tried to fulfill it. A few remarks may, perhaps, be added.
In the first place, it may be noted how our idea of all categories as inter-definitive of each other, is fulfilled. For quality, being, relation, space and time, knowledge — all these modes of realizing the world are caught up and explicitly and clearly seen as living elements within, a single Life of Significance or Value. “Quality” — what is of value is not featureless. “Relation” — value to us is essentially a relation of persons. “Space” — conceive a realm of finite and socially related beings, except in terms of an experience of unity in diversity substantially similar to spatial experience.
It is to be especially pointed out that the inclusion of categories in the good is not a mere imbedding of alien elements — as in conglomerate rock.9 He who realizes and enjoys the nature of love does not in the least depend upon a tagging of this experience as an instance of “relation” in order to grasp it.
To enjoy the [296] values of all things we need only to enjoy them — and knowledge is already attained if the values stand clear. The relation in the relation of love is of the essence of love itself — and all other instances of “relatedness” are to us degrees and aspects of love.
In respect to intellectual or abstract knowledge,10 the view of logic and mathematics as essentially a development of purposive relations among ideas or valuations, has appeared satisfactory to minds of the caliber of Royce, Bradley, James and Taylor. Valuational Monism incorporates in itself what seems the reasonable element in Pragmatism — the contention, namely, that to possess the (direct and indirect) values of things is to possess all. The indirect or truly instrumental values are revealed by science, on any philosophy except one undermining the rational justification for our belief in science. Our argument for the Being of God not depending upon science, but resting upon genuine support derived from a mere analysis of knowing and the criterion of reality employed — that of a Being not conceivable as non-existent without inconsistency — we can found faith in science upon faith in a Rational Orderer of things, whose will it is that steady growth in understand-[297]ing and control of the world should be the lot of living beings since such benevolence is the essence of God as we are able to conceive him.11
The intrinsic value of the world system as a teleological structure or revelation of an all-informing Plan, are also yielded by Monism of the type defended.
Beyond scientific and practical knowledge, which is a matter of what values to expect in relation to a given experience, without concerning ourselves about the nature of these values, no further instrumental values are apparent which are not provided for on our view. For if the world be not greatly good no enduring purpose could be served by knowing this. The loss to life would counterbalance any gain. Indeed, if the world is not, to be thought as in its principles, Perfect beyond any rival conception we might form, then so far we must view life as realizing or serving no good which might not be greater; and therefore so far must we regard existence as a more or less mediocre and only relatively attractive calling. In so far we must feel called to less than the utmost of devotion to life, since life is less deserving of our devotion than it would be in some other conceivable universe. The will to make the best of things which are [298] more or less bad is not a wholly single-hearted and satisfactory ground of enthusiasm. Thus even instrumental values lead us to a demand for a Truth supremely objective, though supremely valuable — the truth of the religious conviction of a Perfect Reality whom we are capable of loving with such entire devotion that His infinite Goodness and the Goodness of the Universe as a Divine Plan and Society, become sufficient to us, and as one with our own. The identification of wills leads to the view of all satisfaction of desire and all delight as adding to the worth of existence for us: because for the Divine, who is infinitely more to us than ourselves.
The questions about the problem of evil, call perhaps for one so far omitted reply. It has often seemed to men incredible that a Beneficient Being should create finite consciousnesses only to leave them in isolation and doubt, cut off — as has even been said — from any word as to their Creator’s reality and beneficence. One may give as an answer to this the instances of mystics of all degrees, of religious people generally, who have believed themselves aware not only of the existence, but of the Divine Love, of the One. But all such testimonies can conceivably be doubted. However, there is one special witness to the Benevolence of the ultimate forces whose word and revelation of faith stand unique. It is after all only just and the part of sanity to remember that it was precisely the [299] Greatest and Divinest of men who declared himself to be a messenger of God, a deliberate token of love, and that for the fact that this was the message given, and that forces more impressive than those ever allying themselves with any man operated to promote its promulgation, we have the unique testimony of a faith which has meant power in the face of every obstacle, from the early cases of the ostensibly forsaken apostles and the skeptic Paul, to the present day. This testimony, we believe, can reasonably be set as of some significance against the darker aspects of human life; and many there are, we may even add, who would not be found unwilling to die to emphasize their belief in its conclusiveness.
[300] We may finally add a last word upon the very different conclusiveness, if any, to be claimed for the present inquiry.
The confession was made in the Introduction that the primary aim of our discussion would be the attempted exhibition of the motives, on grounds of consistency versus contradiction, which lead men to accept the Monistic and Spiritual, or the Theistic, view of the universe. This aim therefore excluded any thoroughgoing examination of the important criticisms of the view in question; or of all the motives which on the grounds of at least apparent inconsistency, have led men to reject it. Here at the end of our discussion it is more than appropriate not only to recall this confession, which in a way may be thought as the admission of a failure to achieve or even to attempt, a wholly impartial or judicious examination of the ultimate questions involved on their entire merits, or on all significant aspects prior to any championship of a conclusion, not only do we reiterate this confession but wish to repeat it with added emphasis and explicitness. Certainly significant and in no way trifling or easily manageable objections are open to the Theistic view; objections of which not all have in our treatment received an attention adequate from any point of view — even as a mere outline of the alternatives involved. Chief among such problems are perhaps the questions of Time and its relation to the Divine Life; and certain aspects of the problem of freedom. As to the [301] first, we have not discussed the nature of the time aspects (and there must in some sense be such an aspect in any living and active reality) as qualifying the Divine Existence. It can only be said that the difficulties which can be set forth are perhaps not essentially novelties in philosophy, and that relative satisfaction has seemed possible to no mean intellects. That, also the accusation of contradictions in the account rendered of time is made in good earnest against all alternative views. On the matter of freedom, we have the old question of foreknowledge and “fixed-fate.” We find Royce denying foreknowledge but asserting an eternal knowledge, knowledge without a date but embracing all dates. And, on the other hand, we note Professor Ward12 repudiating such an eternal standpoint above time, and denying the reality of the future so long as it is future — except no doubt in its general pre-determined outline or plan. A Divine self-limitation of knowledge is supposed. But this problem we also do not discuss.
Again, we have left unattacked the view of “freedom” as unacceptable if we are to be loyal to the interests of science. This seems to us erecting a relative methodological demand into an absolute theoretical principle which is not justified or required upon the grounds adduced — if these are carefully considered. But we cannot enter the lists upon this question.
[302] As to the conceivability of creation, we believe this difficulty can be met, — on the grounds that as we cannot know experientially what it is to be a creator of a personal being, we cannot any better imagine such an act — to imagine being but to reproduce and to elaborate the elements given in direct experience. On the other hand if we could not in a genuine sense conceive it, it would remain a hopeless paradox that millions of men of highest as well as of all degrees of intelligence should have supposed that they were conceiving it. That such conception should be possible only because in a sense we do experience the process in question — in that continued creation by which we, as contingent beings, are sustained within a medium of reality not grounded in ourselves — experience it thus from our own side of the transaction, and thus and only from this cause, attain to the conception in question, appears to be a reasonable and just account of the matter.
But, in fine, we cannot pretend to have demonstrated the impossibility of cogent objections; or, from the standpoint of metaphysics as a science, to know with assurance that no serious objections can further be encountered. Metaphysics, though it determines upon final issues, is never in any full sense capable of finality. It cannot be shown by reason that everything has been considered and rendered satisfactory. As Mr. Bradley has remarked,13 there is only one type of skepticism which is so manifestly self-[303]destructive or inconsistent as to deserve the name of stupid; and there is another of quite a different order.
We can not intelligently say that it is a certainty that ultimate knowledge is out of the question. But we can with no such obvious absurdity allege that we, at least, have not as yet become assured that any proposed account is free from its difficulties, or that we can determine14 how far the conception in question might have to be altered in order to free it from some apparent or even some as yet purely hypothetical difficulties.
Metaphysics, thus, as a science of objective demonstration, rather than a completely final word, available for all capable of any considerable comprehension of its technique, is but a fair suggestion or hint, when tested by its own ideal. It is but a word of reasonable advice, weighty but not wholly imperious or commanding, which is offered to the reflective man. The entire emphasis of the great facts and experiences of life must impress itself upon heart and mind and soul of each individual — with the only genuine finality, or final lack of finality, which he can encounter.
Nonetheless may it be true that the great heroes of the strenuous struggle in the arena of logic, engaged therein with their whole living experience and its felt meaning, have been successful in seeing, for themselves at least here and there or in flashes at least if never on all sides and continuously, certain ultimate implications of life and thought.
It may perhaps be possible to see that an idea must be and is [304] substantially true and to see the sufficient reasons for this, without at the same time comprehending all aspects and the answers to all possible questions. In such a way, and in a fashion which the foregoing pages have sought to set forth, is it our belief that the greatest of thinkers and, multitudes of their humbler followers, lifted to the vision through sympathetic participation, have attained to a perception of true and profound relations among the elements and. meanings employed by the inquiring mind and so of the nature and significance of the universe.
Considering the matter thus both historically and on its own merits we find that our own conclusion cannot be less than that metaphysics appears plainly to offer genuine, and, in its sphere, unique rational grounds — whether or not they be thought sufficient, either alone or in connection with other evidence such as ethical or religious intimations, — for the acceptance as the true account of the universe, of that last sublime, and highest conception: that, namely, which trusts to find its object in a supremely Perfect, Rational, and Beneficent Being.
“In Whom” — or in whose love — “dwells the World.”
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Endnotes
1. Producing a whole in terms of a single object of interest or value to itself — on our view.
2. Or significant.
3. Change of relations becomes changing in the whole formed from the Parts by the One Relating.
4. The world as a whole of parts seems incapable of supplying a standard of quantity because we conceive it as determinate only by conceiving the parts already as determinate.
5. Even to be no more than what is meant by “all reality.”
6. I.e., as either an element in an other finite experience or possibly simply in the One’s own experience — owned primarily by it, and participated in by other subjects in so far as their experience is allowed to intuit or embrace it.
7. We saw, too, that if Perfection as object of our idea be regarded as an element or part of the idea, this proved only that Perfection or the Divine must be immanent in our conception of it, and no mere part of our thoughts.
8. Thus all thought either thinks a falsity or a contradiction — if it is true that God is not.
9. Viewed from the ordinary and provisional standpoint.
10. If the metaphysics which has been defended is sound, of course an understanding of abstract categories and relationships is shown to be realizable only and essentially in terms of an adequate appreciation of the Divine significance and value of life.
11. The sense that we are aware of a rational, reliable, and sublimely unified order of things is certainly too completely in harmony with the belief in Intelligent and Divine Unity not to receive an assurance from this harmony it could in no other way attain.
12. J. Ward, The Realm of Ends.
13. Essays, p. 445.
14. Or have succeeded in determining.
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