An Introduction to Philosophy Part 27

One of the forms taken by this doctrine is that alluded to above, that things are permanent possibilities of sensation.

I think it can hardly be denied that this sounds out of harmony with the common opinion of mankind. Men do not hesitate to distinguish between minds and material things, nor do they believe that material things exist only in minds. That dreams and hallucinations exist only in minds they are very willing to admit; but they will not admit that this is true of such things as real chairs and tables. And if we ask them why they take such a position, they fall back upon what seems given in experience.

Now, as the reader of the earlier chapters has seen, I think that the plain man is more nearly right in his opinion touching the existence of a world of non-mental things than is the idealistic philosopher. The latter has seen a truth and misconceived it, thus losing some truth that he had before he began to reflect. The former has not seen the truth which has impressed the idealist, and he has held on to that vague recognition that there are two orders of things given in our experience, the physical and the mental, which seems to us so unmistakable a fact until we fall into the hands of the philosophers.

But all this does not prove that we have a right simply to fall back upon "common sense," and refuse to listen to the idealist. The deliverances of unreflective common sense are vague in the extreme; and though it may seem to a.s.sure us that there is a world of things non-mental, its account of that world is confused and incoherent. He who must depend on common sense alone can find no answer to the idealists; he refuses to follow them, but he cannot refute them. He is reduced to dogmatic denial.

This is in itself an uncomfortable position. And when we add to this the reflection that such a man loses the truth which the idealist emphasizes, the truth that the external world of which we speak must be, if we are to know it at all, a world revealed to our senses, a world given in our experience, we see that he who stops his ears remains in ignorance. The fact is that the man who has never weighed the evidence that impresses the idealist is not able to see clearly what is meant by that external world in which we all incline to put such faith. We may say that he _feels_ a truth blindly, but does not see it.

Let us take another ill.u.s.tration. If there is one thing that we feel to be as sure as the existence of the external world, it is that there are other minds more or less resembling our own. The solipsist may try to persuade us that the evidence for such minds is untrustworthy. We may see no flaw in his argument, but he cannot convince us. May we ignore him, and refuse to consider the matter at all?

Surely not, if we wish to subst.i.tute clear thinking for vague and indefinite opinion. We should listen with attention, strive to understand all the reasonings laid before us, and then, if they seem to lead to conclusions really not in harmony with our experience, go carefully over the ground and try to discover the flaw in them. It is only by doing something like this that we can come to see clearly what is meant when we speak of two or more minds and the relation between them. The solipsist can help us, and we should let him do it.

We should, therefore, be willing to consider seriously all sorts of doctrines which may at first strike us as unreasonable. I have chosen two which I believe to contain error. But the man who approaches a doctrine which impresses him as strange has no right to a.s.sume at the outset that it contains error. We have seen again and again how easy it is to misapprehend what is given in experience. The philosopher may be in the right, and what he says may repel us because we have become accustomed to certain erroneous notions, and they have come to seem self-evident truths.

90. DO NOT HAVE TOO MUCH RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY.--But if it is an error to refuse to listen to the philosopher, it is surely no less an error to accord him an authority above what he has a right to demand. Bear in mind what was said in the last chapter about the difference between the special sciences and philosophy. There is in the latter field no body of doctrine that we may justly regard as authoritative. There are "schools" of philosophy, and their adherents fall into the very human error of feeling very sure that they and those who agree with them are right; and the emphasis with which they speak is apt to mislead those who are not well informed. I shall say a few words about the dangers of the "school."

If we look about us, we are impressed by the fact that there are "schools" of philosophy, somewhat as there are religious sects and political parties. An impressive teacher sets the mark of his personality and of his preferences upon those who come under his influence. They are not at an age to be very critical, and, indeed, they have not as yet the requisite learning to enable them to be critical. They keep the trend which has been given them early in life, and, when they become teachers, they pa.s.s on the type of thought with which they have been inoculated, and the circle widens. "Schools" may arise, of course, in a different way. An epoch-making book may sweep men off of their feet and make of them pa.s.sionate adherents. But he who has watched the development of the American universities during the last twenty-five years must be impressed with the enormous influence which certain teachers have had in giving a direction to the philosophic thought of those who have come in contact with them. We expect the pupils of a given master to have a given shade of opinion, and very often we are not disappointed in our guess.

It is entirely natural that this should be so. Those who betake themselves to the study of philosophy are men like other men. They have the same feelings, and the bending of the twig has the same significance in their case that it has in that of others. It is no small compliment to a teacher that he can thus spread his influence, and leave his proxies even when he pa.s.ses away.

But, when we strive to "put off humanity" and to look at the whole matter under the cold light of reason, we may well ask ourselves, whether he who unconsciously accepts his philosophy, in whole or in part, because it has been the philosophy of his teacher, is not doing what is done by those persons whose politics and whose religion take their color from such accidental circ.u.mstances as birth in a given cla.s.s or family traditions?

I am far from saying that it is, in general, a bad thing for the world that men should be influenced in this way by one another. I say only that, when we look at the facts of the case, we must admit that even our teachers of philosophy do not always become representatives of the peculiar type of thought for which they stand, merely through a deliberate choice from the wealth of material which the history of speculative thought lays before them. They are influenced by others to take what they do take, and the traces of this influence are apt to remain with them through life. He who wishes to be entirely impartial must be on his guard against such influences as these, and must distrust prejudices for or against certain doctrines, when he finds that he imbibed them at an uncritical age and has remained under their influence ever since. Some do appear to be able to emanc.i.p.ate themselves, and to outgrow what they first learned.

It is, as I have said, natural that there should be a tendency to form "schools" in philosophy. And there are certain things that make this somewhat uncritical acceptance of a doctrine very attractive.

In the first place, if we are willing to take a system of any sort as a whole, it saves us a vast amount of trouble. We seem to have a citadel, a point of vantage from which we can look out upon life and interpret it. If the house we live in is not in all respects ideal, at least it is a house, and we are not homeless. There is nothing more intolerable to most men than the having of no opinions. They will change one opinion for another, but they will rarely consent to do without altogether. It is something to have an answer to offer to those who persist in asking questions; and it is something to have some sort of ground under one's feet, even if it be not very solid ground.

Again. Man is a social creature, and he is greatly fortified in his opinions by the consciousness that others share them with him. If we become adherents of a "school," we have the agreeable consciousness that we are not walking alone through the maze of speculations that confronts those who reflect. There appears to be a traveled way in which we may have some confidence. Are we not following the crowd, or, at least, a goodly number of the pilgrims who are seeking the same goal with ourselves? Under such circ.u.mstances we are not so often impelled to inquire anxiously whether we are after all upon the right road. We a.s.sume that we have made no mistake.

Under such circ.u.mstances we are apt to forget that there are many such roads, and that these have been traveled in ages past by troops very much like our own, who also cherished the hope that they were upon the one and only highway. In other words, we are apt to forget the lesson of the history of philosophy. This is a serious mistake.

And what intensifies our danger, if we belong to a school which happens to be dominant and to have active representatives, is that we get very little real criticism. The books that we write are usually criticised by those who view our positions sympathetically, and who are more inclined to praise than to blame. He who looks back upon the past is struck with the fact that books which have been lauded to the skies in one age have often been subjected to searching criticism and to a good deal of condemnation in the next. Something very like this is to be expected of books written in our own time. It is, however, a pity that we should have to wait so long for impartial criticism.

This leads me to say a word of the reviews which fill our philosophical journals, and which we must read, for it is impossible to read all the books that come out, and yet we wish to know something about them.

To the novice it is something of a surprise to find that books by men whom he knows to be eminent for their ingenuity and their learning are condemned in very offhand fashion by quite young men, who as yet have attained to little learning and to no eminence at all. One sometimes is tempted to wonder that men admittedly remarkable should have fathered such poor productions as we are given to understand them to be, and should have offered them to a public that has a right to be indignant.

Now, there can be no doubt that, in philosophy, a cat has the right to look at a king, and has also a right to point out his misdoings, if such there be. But it seems just to indicate that, in this matter, certain cautions should be observed.

If a great man has been guilty of an error in reasoning, there is no reason why it should not be pointed out by any one who is capable of detecting it. The authority of the critic is a matter of no moment where the evidence is given. In such a case, we take a suggestion and we do the criticising for ourselves. But where the evidence is not given, where the justice of the criticism is not proved, the case is different. Here we must take into consideration the authority of the critic, and, if we follow him at all, we must follow him blindly. Is it safe to do this?

It is never safe in philosophy, or, at any rate, it is safe so seldom that the exceptions are not worth taking into account. Men write from the standpoint of some school of opinion; and, until we know their prepossessions, their statements that this is good, that is bad, the third thing is profound, are of no significance whatever. We should simply set them aside, and try to find out from our reviewer what is contained in the book under criticism.

One of the evils arising out of the bias I am discussing is, that books and authors are praised or condemned indiscriminately because of their point of view, and little discrimination is made between good books and poor books. There is all the difference in the world between a work which can be condemned only on the ground that it is realistic or idealistic in its standpoint, and those feeble productions which are to be condemned from every point of view. If we consistently carry out the principle that we may condemn all those who are not of our party, we must give short shrift to a majority of the great men of the past.

So I say, beware of authority in philosophy, and, above all, beware of that most insidious form of authority, the spirit of the "school." It cannot but narrow our sympathies and restrict our outlook.

91. REMEMBER THAT ORDINARY RULES OF EVIDENCE APPLY.--What I am going to say in this section is closely related to what has been said just above. To the disinterested observer it may seem rather amusing that one should think it worth while to try to show that we have not the right to use a special set of weights and measures when we are dealing with things philosophical. There was a time when men held that a given doctrine could be philosophically false, and, at the same time, theologically true; but surely the day of such twists and turnings is past!

I am by no means sure that it is past. With the lapse of time, old doctrines take on new aspects, and come to be couched in a language that suits the temper of the later age. Sometimes the doctrine is veiled and rendered less startling, but remains essentially what it was before, and may be criticised in much the same way.

I suppose we may say that every one who is animated by the party spirit discussed above, and who holds to a group of philosophical tenets with a warmth of conviction out of proportion to the authority of the actual evidence which may be claimed for them, is tacitly a.s.suming that the truth or falsity of philosophical dogmas is not wholly a matter of evidence, but that the desires of the philosopher may also be taken into account.

This position is often taken unconsciously. Thus, when, instead of proving to others that a given doctrine is false, we try to show them that it is a dangerous doctrine, and leads to unpalatable consequences, we a.s.sume that what seems distasteful cannot be true, and we count on the fact that men incline to believe what they like to believe.

May we give this position the dignity of a philosophical doctrine and hold that, in the somewhat nebulous realm inhabited by the philosopher, men are not bound by the same rules of evidence that obtain elsewhere?

That this is actually done, those who read much in the field of modern philosophy are well aware. Several excellent writers have maintained that we need not, even if there seems to be evidence for them, accept views of the universe which do not satisfy "our whole nature."

We should not confuse with this position the very different one which maintains that we have a right to hold tentatively, and with a willingness to abandon them should evidence against them be forthcoming, views which we are not able completely to establish, but which seem reasonable. One may do this with perfect sincerity, and without holding that philosophical truth is in any way different from scientific truth. But the other position goes beyond this; it a.s.sumes that man must be satisfied, and that only that can be true which satisfies him.

I ask, is it not significant that such an a.s.sumption should be made only in the realm of the unverifiable? No man dreams of maintaining that the rise and fall of stocks will be such as to satisfy the whole nature even of the elect, or that the future history of man on this planet is a thing to be determined by some philosopher who decides for us what would or would not be desirable.

Surely all truths of election--those truths that we simply choose to have true--are something much less august than that Truth of Evidence which sometimes seems little to fall in with our desires, and in the face of which we are humble listeners, not dictators. Before the latter we are modest; we obey, lest we be confounded. And if, in the philosophic realm, we believe that we may order Truth about, and make her our slave, is it not because we have a secret consciousness that we are not dealing with Truth at all, but with Opinion, and with Opinion that has grown insolent because she cannot be drawn from her obscurity and be shown to be what she is?

Sometimes it is suddenly revealed to a man that he has been accepting two orders of truth. I once walked and talked with a good scholar who discoursed of high themes and defended warmly certain theses. I said to him: If you could go into the house opposite, and discover unmistakably whether you are in the right or in the wrong,--discover it as unmistakably as you can discover whether there is or is not furniture in the drawing-room,--would you go? He thought over the matter for a while, and then answered frankly; No! I should not go; I should stay out here and argue it out.

92. AIM AT CLEARNESS AND SIMPLICITY.--There is no department of investigation in which it is not desirable to cultivate clearness and simplicity in thinking, speaking, and writing. But there are certain reasons why we should be especially on our guard in philosophy against the danger of employing a tongue "not understanded of the people."

There are dangerous pitfalls concealed under the use of technical words and phrases.

The value of technical expressions in the special sciences must be conceded. They are supposed to be more exact and less ambiguous than terms in ordinary use, and they mark an advance in our knowledge of the subject. The distinctions which they indicate have been carefully drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and results of investigation.

But we must never forget that we have not in philosophy an authoritative body of truth which we have the right to impose upon all who enter that field. A mult.i.tude of distinctions have been made and are made; but the representatives of different schools of thought are not at one touching the value and significance of these distinctions.

If we coin a word or a phrase to mark such, there is some danger that we fall into the habit of using such words or phrases, as we use the coins in our purse, without closely examining them, and with the ready a.s.sumption that they must pa.s.s current everywhere.

Thus, there is always a possibility that our technical expressions may be nothing less than crystallized error. Against this we should surely be on our guard.

Again. When we translate the language of common life into the dialect of the learned, there is danger that we may fall into the error of supposing that we are adding to our knowledge, even though we are doing nothing save to exchange one set of words for another. Thus, we all know very well that one mind can communicate with another. One does not have to be a scholar to be aware of this. If we choose to call this "intersubjective intercourse," we have given the thing a sounding name; but we know no more about it than we did before. The problem of the relation between minds, and the way in which they are to be conceived as influencing each other, remains just what it was. So, also, we recognize the everyday fact that we know both ourselves and what is not ourselves. Shall we call this knowledge of something not ourselves "self-transcendence"? We may do so if we wish, but we ought to realize that this bestowal of a t.i.tle makes no whit clearer what is meant by knowledge.

Unhappily, men too often believe that, when they have come into the possession of a new word or phrase, they have gained a new thought.

The danger is great in proportion to the breadth of the gulf which separates the new dialect from the old language of common life in which we are accustomed to estimate things. Many a philosopher would be bereft, indeed, were he robbed of his vocabulary and compelled to express his thoughts in ordinary speech. The theories which are implicit in certain recurring expressions would be forced to come out into the open, and stand criticism without disguise.

But can one write philosophical books without using words which are not in common use among the unphilosophic? I doubt it. Some such words it seems impossible to avoid. However, it does seem possible to bear in mind the dangers of a special philosophical terminology and to reduce such words to a minimum.

Finally, we may appeal to the humanity of the philosopher. The path to reflection is a sufficiently difficult one as it is; why should he roll rocks upon it and compel those who come after him to climb over them?

If truths are no truer for being expressed in a repellent form, why should he trick them out in a fantastic garb? What we want is the naked truth, and we lose time and patience in freeing our mummy from the wrappings in which learned men have seen fit to encase it.

93. DO NOT HASTILY ACCEPT A DOCTRINE.--This brings me to the last of the maxims which I urge upon the attention of the reader. All that has been said so far may be regarded as leading up to it.

The difficulty that confronts us is this: On the one hand, we must recognize the uncertainty that reigns in this field of investigation.

We must ever weigh probabilities and possibilities; we do not find ourselves in the presence of indubitable truths which all competent persons stand ready to admit. This seems to argue that we should learn to suspend judgment, and should be most wary in our acceptance of one philosophical doctrine and our rejection of another.

On the other hand, philosophy is not a mere matter of intellectual curiosity. It has an intimate connection with life. As a man thinks, so is he, to a great extent, at least. How, then, can one afford to remain critical and negative? To counsel this seems equivalent to advising that one abandon the helm and consent to float at the mercy of wind and tide.

The difficulty is a very real one. It presents itself insistently to those who have attained to that degree of intellectual development at which one begins to ask oneself questions and to reflect upon the worth and meaning of life. An unreflective adherence to tradition no longer satisfies such persons. They wish to know why they should believe in this or that doctrine, and why they should rule their lives in harmony with this or that maxim. Shall we advise them to lay hold without delay of a set of philosophical tenets, as we might advise a disabled man to aid himself with any staff that happens to come to hand? Or shall we urge them to close their eyes to the light, and to go back again to the old unreflective life?

Neither of these counsels seems satisfactory, for both a.s.sume tacitly that it does not much matter what the _truth_ is, and that we can afford to disregard it.