Creative Intelligence Part 10

As long as we confine ourselves to a given color, shape or temperature, as experienced focally, we are not dealing with consciousness, but with objects. An a.n.a.lysis of such facts that does not bring in the marginal is not an a.n.a.lysis of consciousness, but an a.n.a.lysis of physical reality. Even if we consider non-physical objects, such as mathematical or economic concepts, we find that our a.n.a.lysis is not psychological as long as the marginal is left out. The consideration of the margin, however, brings us into the presence of facts which are of a distinctive kind and which warrant a new science. Let the margin be eliminated and psychology disappears at the same time.

The psychological doctrine of focus and margin, then, is a matter of fundamental importance. On the interpretation of this doctrine depend our systems of psychology and of philosophy. What, then, is meant by focus and margin? If we turn to our psychologies, we seem to be confronted once more with something that everybody knows and n.o.body can define. But since we have to do with a distinction, the obligation to differentiate cannot be wholly ignored. Consciousness is sometimes likened to a visual field and sometimes to the waves of the sea. Like the visual field it has a foreground and a background, a near and a remote, a center and a margin or periphery. The contents of consciousness are vivid or clear in the center of this field and fade away into vagueness or obscureness in proportion to their approach to the periphery. Or, to take the other comparison, the focus may be represented by the crest of a wave and the margin by what we may call its base. This ill.u.s.tration has the advantage that it indicates the difference between higher and lower degrees of concentration. As concentration increases, the crest of the wave rises higher and its width decreases, while the reverse is true where the concentration of attention is less intense. All consciousness possesses the distinction of focus and margin in some degree; however much we may be absorbed in an object or topic, there is always an indirect mental vision that informs us of other facts, which for the time being are in the background of our consciousness.

For purposes of description a metaphor is at best a clumsy device. It has a tendency to subst.i.tute itself for the thing to be described and thus to conceal its limitations and inaccuracies. The present case is no exception. I am forced to think that the visual field in particular is a thoroughly vicious metaphor when employed to body forth the distinction of focus and margin. Whatever this distinction may in the end turn out to be, it is not such as this comparison would lead one to suppose.

Objects seen in indirect vision appear obscure and blurred precisely because they are in the focus of consciousness. We get pretty much the same sort of obscureness or blur on a printed page when we look at it in indirect vision as we do when we look at it from a distance that is just too great to make out the words or characters. What the ill.u.s.tration shows is that things look different according as the circ.u.mstances under which we see them are different, but what bearing this has on marginal consciousness is not at all obvious to an unsophisticated intelligence.

When we speak of a focus and margin in consciousness, we are presumably dealing with conscious fact. Now this ill.u.s.tration of the visual field does not represent conscious fact. Ordinary perception carries with it no sense of obscureness at all, and when it does we have exactly the same kind of situation as when an object is too distant or in some other way inaccessible to satisfactory perception. That is, the object perceived is in the 'focus' and not in the margin. The obscureness of objects when seen with the margin of the retina has no more to do with the margin of consciousness than the obscureness caused by an attack of dizziness or by a morning fog.

It will be said, perhaps, that consciousness may be unclear even though there be no sense of unclearness, that there is such a thing as intrinsic clearness, quite apart from obstacles and problems. In other words, the same sensation is capable of realizing various degrees of clearness. It is not at all obvious, however, why the different experiences that are concerned in such a comparison should be called the same sensation. As long as we abstract from objective reference, each sensation is just what it is and there is no opportunity to make comparisons on the basis of clearness. A sensation as such--if we are bound to speak of sensations--can by no possibility be an obscure sensation, for the trait that we call obscureness or vagueness const.i.tutes the intrinsic being of that sensation. If we permit ourselves to speak of clearness at all, we should rather say that it possesses a maximum of clearness, since it has managed to express or present its whole nature with not one trait or feature lacking. What more could be demanded, in the way of clearness, of any conscious fact than that it should body forth every detail that it possesses?

If sensations or states of consciousness possess degrees of clearness, it seems to follow that we may scrutinize them for the purpose of discovering characteristics that were present though scarcely perceived, in much the same way that the polishing of old furniture brings out the grain in the wood. But such a parallel, I submit, is plain nonsense. The supposition that consciousness is something that in due time and with good fortune may attain consciousness is too absurd for discussion, even though it is a supposition that plays a considerable role in present-day psychology.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, has not been to deny the validity of the distinction between focus and margin, but to insist upon the necessity of reconsidering the meaning of this distinction, if we are to attain to a workable definition of consciousness and a fruitful or even intelligible conception of the problem of psychology. I have endeavored to show, in the first place, that the doctrine of focus and margin involves the _raison d'etre_ of psychology. Apart from this doctrine we have no task or problem that psychology can claim as its distinctive possession. The a.n.a.lysis of what is in the focus of consciousness is adequately provided for in the other sciences; it is only with the introduction of what is called the margin that an enterprise of a different kind becomes necessary. But, secondly, this distinction of focus and margin cannot be drawn on the basis of the experienced contrast between clearness and obscureness. The very fact that anything is experienced as obscure means that it is an object of attention, or, in other words, that it is in the focus of consciousness and not in the margin. The comparison of focus and margin with direct and indirect vision is misleading, because it suggests that experiences are marginal in proportion as they are felt as obscure. And, thirdly, if we undertake to distinguish between focus and margin on the basis of a difference in clearness or vividness of which no note is taken at the time, we encounter the difficulty that experience or consciousness, taken abstractly, does not admit of such variations in degree, and so this criterion likewise goes by the board.

The situation is indeed peculiar. That there is a realm of psychological fact is universally conceded. As a consequence of this conviction a great body of fact and of doctrine has been built up. It would be folly to deny either the distinctiveness or the significance of this achievement. And yet James's description of psychology as "a string of raw facts; a little gossip and wrangle about opinions; a little cla.s.sification and generalization on the mere descriptive level; a strong prejudice that we _have_ states of mind and that our brain conditions them,"[42] is not wholly untrue even today. It is even possible for a present-day critic to outdo James and maintain that the legitimacy of psychology as a separate inquiry is a matter of faith rather than of sight. The 'raw facts' of which James speaks resolve themselves into physical and physiological material on the one hand and metaphysical dogmas on the other; the gossip and wrangle are largely over fict.i.tious problems; the cla.s.sifications and generalizations as a rule involve trespa.s.sing on other fields; the prejudice that we have states of mind has less standing-ground today than it had twenty years ago. In other words, there is still plausible ground for James's pessimistic comment: "This is no science, it is only the hope of a science." A situation such as this carries with it the insistent suggestion that the trouble lies, not primarily in the nature of the subject-matter, but in our conception of the problem. "The matter of a science," as James says, "is with us." And if the distinction of focus and margin const.i.tutes the starting-point and justification for a science of psychology, a better understanding of this distinction will mean a more adequate appreciation of the problem with which psychology has to deal.

As a starting-point for a reconsideration of focus and margin, we may take those experiences in which the distinction of clearness and obscureness is presented as an experienced fact. Let us then turn once more to the familiar ill.u.s.tration of the visual field. "When we look at a printed page, there is always some one portion of it, perhaps a word, which we see more clearly than we do the rest; and out beyond the margin of the page we are still conscious of objects which we see only in a very imperfect way."[43] That is, we appreciate the distinction between what lies in the center of our visual field and what is more remote, just because in this experiment we are trying to see what lies beyond the center without turning our eyes in that direction. We set ourselves the task of seeing what is on the page, and at the same time we interpose an artificial obstacle. Hence the sense of effort, and the contrast between what is clear and what is obscure. The present experience is obscure, not inherently, but only with reference to a certain problem or question. It is inadequate as an antic.i.p.ation of further experience. The contrast between clear and obscure is created by our attempt to overcome the difficulty, and is therefore absent from ordinary, un.o.bstructed visual perception.

The situation described in the following familiar quotation from James is an ill.u.s.tration of the same thing: "Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term."[44]

'I met this man on the train, and later at the reception; but what is his name?' The struggle rends our consciousness in twain. The occasions of our meeting, his appearance, his conversation, are solid fact, yet all suffused with the pervasive, evanscent "wraith" that tantalizes us with glimpses which half reveal and half conceal the name we seek to grasp.

To account for such experiences simply in terms of half-submerged "sensations" and "images" is to do violence to all the requirements for clear thinking. If we rule out explanations of this kind, we are evidently forced to the conclusion that these experiences are obscure, not in themselves or in the abstract, but with reference to the function of putting us in possession of the name to which they are inadequate clues. It is the subsequent, satisfactory experience of the name which furnishes our standard for clearness; in other words, the implications of obscureness are of a functional, and not of a static or structural, kind. The marginal character of an experience is simply a reference to its function as a clue or cue to some further experience, i.e., a reference to its character as a changing stimulus. Or we may say that the distinction between focus and margin is just another aspect of the distinction between the conditions for further activity and the incompleteness which leads to further adjustment. The transfer of the future into the present gives us a fact, here and now, and in this respect the experience is entirely focal in character, and as such it is subject-matter for the various sciences. Whatever the nature of the experience, it is just what it is, and not something else. With respect to the further experience, however, which it conditions or for which it prepares the way, the present experience is entirely marginal, i.e., in its character as a changing stimulus it is subject-matter for psychology. The distinction of focus and margin, then, is based ultimately upon the function of experience in the control of behavior.

The given situation is a present fact and is in functional change; or, in terms of our present discussion, it has both a focus and a margin. As present fact it is a reality which requires recognition in the form of adjustment; as in functional change it provides opportunity for bringing the adjustment to fruition. That is, the experience both sets a task or makes a demand and it points the way. The distinction is a distinction of function, not of static existence, and it is this distinction which is represented by the contrast of focus and margin.

If we compare this interpretation of focus and margin with that of traditional psychology, we find that the latter construes the relation of the present to the future experience wholly in static terms, the functional relation being left out of account. The later experience is read back into its predecessor in the form of dim or marginal images, which need but show themselves more completely to make the two identical. If these sensations were intended only as symbols of a functional relationship, it would perhaps be scarcely worth while to enter a protest against them. But when the functional relationship is quite overlooked, the explanation that is given becomes exceedingly dubious. The ticking of the clock, for example, that is present, though unnoticed, the overtones of the note that suffuse the whole without diverting attention to their individual qualities,--in what precise way are facts of this kind concerned in the description of the experience which they modify? A study of the clock or of the overtones can hardly pa.s.s as an a.n.a.lysis of consciousness; it is too obviously an affair of physics. Such a study becomes merely an excuse for repeating the a.n.a.lyses of physics and reading them off in terms of sensations and images. Moreover, the transfer of all this material to consciousness looks suspiciously like a transaction in mental chemistry. Where, then, is psychology to gain a foothold? What is the meaning of these uncanny sensations and images, which n.o.body experiences, unless it be their character as symbols of adjustment? They have no legitimate status, and psychology, by consequence, has no legitimate problem, except in so far as they represent those possible acts of adaptation which are the sole and proper concern of psychology.

It remains to point out briefly the bearing of these results on what is called "the method of introspection." We are sometimes a.s.sured that introspection has discarded the belief in a separate mental stuff or subject-matter, but there is ground for the suspicion that such protestations are made in the same spirit that we affirm our belief in the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, with no thought of being taken seriously. At all events, without a literal "looking within" it seems to become exceedingly difficult to differentiate introspection from ordinary observation as practised in the other sciences. The reason for this difficulty is that there is nothing left in introspection by which it can be differentiated. The term introspection properly designates, not a method but a problem; the problem, namely, of interpreting given facts with reference to their function in the control of behavior. If psychology is to justify its claim to the status of a science, it is in duty bound to secure for itself both an objective criterion for the adjudication of disputes which otherwise are of necessity interminable, and a subject-matter that is not simply a heritage of metaphysical prejudice, but a realm of fact that is attested by everyday observation and experience.

III

Within recent years the doctrine that psychology is a science of behavior has acquired a certain prominence. It is presupposed, of course, that the behavior with which psychology is concerned is of a distinctive sort; but the differentia is unfortunately the very thing that the "behaviorist" has. .h.i.therto left out of account. In his revolt against introspectionism, which has been accustomed to give to its subject-matter a subjectivistic and "psychic" interpretation, he goes to the other extreme and relies on behavior pure and simple. Being without a serviceable differentia, he is unable to mark off the field of psychology from contiguous territory. The selection of certain problems within the general range of behavior, with no recognition of any distinctive trait to guide and justify the selection, is hardly enough to warrant a new science. Even an arbitrary principle of selection is better than none, and it would, therefore, be quite as reasonable to subdivide the field of botany in the interests of a new science, and group together for separate botanical study those flowers which have enabled poets to give symbolic expression to the beauty of women.

That the principle of selection is, in the end, the ability to modify behavior through the antic.i.p.ation of possible consequences, appears from the fact that the category of stimulus and response is otherwise found to be unworkable. It is true that in the simpler forms of behavior stimulus and response may be correlated without practical difficulty.

But when we deal with what has been called "delayed overt response,"

the matter becomes more complicated and the theoretical difficulty becomes more prominent. The behaviorist would not seriously undertake to record everything that happens between stimulus and response. He proceeds selectively, taking the relation of stimulus and response as his clue. He is properly interested in the movements which result from the application of the stimulus only in so far as they const.i.tute response. Otherwise his study is not a study of behavior, but a study of movements. But when does a movement const.i.tute a response? Do we label as stimulus the spoken word which results in overt action a week later, or the visual perception which sets a complicated and long-drawn-out problem, for no other reason than that it appears somewhere as an antecedent in the causal chain of events? If so, there is no obvious reason why the event which occurred just before or immediately after the _soi-disant_ stimulus should not be regarded as the true stimulus.

Unless a satisfactory reason is forthcoming, it would seem better to subst.i.tute cause and effect for stimulus and response and to drop the term behavior from our vocabulary. Psychology then becomes a study of certain causal relationships, but is still without a principle for the selection of those causal events which are supposed to const.i.tute its peculiar subject-matter.

Even if we manage to become reconciled to this situation, however, our troubles are not yet at an end. There still remains the difficulty in certain cases of showing that the event which is selected as stimulus or cause bears any significant relationship to the event which figures in our scheme as the response. The stimulus is supposed to have a causal connection with the response, but how are we to know that this is the fact? How are we to know that the engineer who solves a problem for me at my request might not have done so anyway? No behaviorist can possibly show that the air waves set in motion by my vocalization were an indispensable stimulus. We doubtless believe that the spoken word was in fact the spark which lit the fuse and finally exploded the mine, but this belief involves a complication of causes which it is wholly beyond our power to control or to verify.

It is true, of course, that we are able, as a matter of fact, to correlate stimulus and response. I know that it was the spoken word which caused the commission to be executed, for the expert reminds me of the fact and presents a bill. But neither of us makes any pretense that his belief is derived from a scrutiny of the causal sequence. Memory furnishes us with a shortcut to the result. While our present acts are doubtless connected with the past through causation, we do not regard them as simply the effects of antecedent causes. They are rather responses to present stimuli. The expert presents his bill, being moved thereto by a stimulus which may be indicated by saying that it is the spoken-word-const.i.tuting-a-commission-now-completed-and-ent.i.tling-me- to-compensation. That is, the stimulus cannot be pushed back and anch.o.r.ed at a fixed point in the past, but is a present factor at the moment of response and is operative by virtue of its antic.i.p.ation of future events.

If, then, psychology is to be regarded as a study of behavior, it is plainly necessary to reinterpret the category of behavior. For example, a purely mechanical response to a light-stimulus may properly be viewed as response to the ether-vibration or wave-length upon which it follows in temporal sequence. But if this stimulation results in what is commonly called consciousness, a different kind of response ensues. The light-stimulus becomes a cause or occasion for the act of looking. But why look, unless it be to secure a new stimulus for further response? We stop to look, precisely because the first stimulus does not run smoothly off the reel. The response will not go forward, but is halted and expends itself in the effort to secure a further stimulus. This is the moment of attention, in which the stimulus undergoes a process of transformation, concomitantly with the process of reorganization in the motor responses, and in the direction of ends or results that are foreshadowed in it. This change in the stimulus takes place under certain specifiable conditions, and the study of these conditions is a study of such processes as perceiving, attending, remembering, and deliberating, which are distinctively psychological in their nature.

Processes of this kind, if taken as changes in stimuli, find an objective criterion in the adaptive behavior for the sake of which they occur, and they provide psychology with a distinctive task and subject-matter.

As against the introspectionist, then, the behaviorist is justified in his contention that psychological procedure must be objective and experimental in character. The danger to which he has exposed himself is the failure to differentiate his problem from that of physiology and physics. It is only by a proper recognition of both the objective and the distinctive character of conscious behavior that psychology can free itself of the reproach which is heaped upon it by members of its own household and take the place that rightfully belongs to it in the community of the sciences.

IV

According to the preceding exposition, the current psychological doctrine of focus and margin is an attempt to reduce the changes in the stimulus to terms of static ent.i.ties denominated sensations and images.

By abstracting from change we convert the new stimulus that is already on the way into inert sensory material, which lends itself to purely a.n.a.lytic treatment. In this way the suggested hardness of the rock becomes a "centrally aroused sensation" of a stubbed toe, the heat of the candle becomes an image of a burn, etc. As was said before, the sensations are not existences, but representatives or symbols of our nascent activities; they are the static equivalents of this foreshadowing or reference to the future. The explanation of experience that we find in James and Bergson approximates this view so closely in one respect and departs from it so widely in another as to warrant a brief discussion.

A prominent characteristic of the doctrine advocated by James and Bergson is the emphasis given to the foreshadowings or antic.i.p.ations of the future. Experiences of conflict, such as the struggle to recall a name, take on their peculiar coloring, so these writers contend, from their relationship to a beyond, to something which is yet to be. If we are to understand experience as it really is, we must guard against the besetting temptation to translate everything into spatial equivalents.

This forward reference is usually read off as a distinction and contrast between simultaneously existing components. Some const.i.tuent is first set apart as the nucleus or focus and is then enveloped with an elusive, intangible wraith of meaning, which is called the margin. We have been taught to think of the focus as made up of sensory material of some sort and silhouetted against a background lit up by the fitful, inconsequential heat-lightning of meaning. But this is a perversion of the facts. When we are engaged in a problem it is precisely these unformed meanings that are of interest and importance. They are in the focus of consciousness, in so far as we can speak of a focus at all.

They absorb our attention and direct our energies. They inform us of a margin, not by refusing to compete for our attention with more important or more interesting facts, but by bodying forth the _unfinished_ character of the situation. Hence this beckoning, this tingling with the sense of closeness, this sinking back when our efforts meet with defeat.

Focus and margin, in short, have to do with movement, with transition, and not with a static field. These situations are felt as inherently unstable and in process of reconstruction. There is a peculiar sense of activity, of "something doing," of a future knocking on the door of the present. What is thus on its way to the present we can designate only in terms of the object as it is after it has arrived. To call it marginal is to immerse the object in this temporal flux, which embodies perfectly the characteristics of Bergsonian duration.

But this is only a first step. If we turn now to those experiences from which this inner diremption of fact and meaning is absent, we find a process that is essentially the same in kind. They likewise const.i.tute a temporal flow, even though there be no sense of duration or of change as such. The different moments of these experiences are not mechanically juxtaposed, but blend together in much the same way as when the process is experienced as a process. In principle we have the same transition, the same becoming, the same growth from less to more, the same activity of continuous reconstruction. Conscious life, we find, is a continuous adjustment; each of its moments is a "transitive state." The more evenly flowing experiences are likewise endowed with a focus and margin, not in the form of static elements, but as a dynamic relationship of what is with what is to be.

Such an interpretation of experience, moreover, opens the way for a proper valuation of the psychologist's procedure. The concept of sensation is methodology pure and simple. Granted that focus and margin are such as was indicated a moment ago, how are they to be described, unless we resort to some _Hilfsbegriff_ such as sensations? James's description of the effort to recall a forgotten name is not description at all in a scientific sense, since the "wraith of the name" that we are trying to recover is of too unearthly a fabric to be weighed and measured by accepted scientific standards. It makes us "tingle," it lets us "sink back," but such portrayal is literature rather than science.

Our first step must be to resolve our material into components. These components we identify with genuine elements if we can, with pious fictions if we must; but until this is done there can be no exact description. There can be no precision in our statement of the facts and no formulation of the laws that govern their changes.

This view undeniably has a certain plausibility. As long as the results are attained which the psychologist sets out to reach, we need not be hypersensitive on the score of methods. In the field of natural science, at all events, this Jesuitical principle is not incompatible with respectability. If it be true, however, that sensation is but a tool or artifact, a means to an end, what is the end that is to be attained by this device? It is at this point that we come to the parting of the ways. According to the view previously elaborated, the antic.i.p.ations of the future have to do with the results of our possible acts, and sensations are simply symbols for the various elements in our complex motor responses. In the case of Bergson and James, however, the clue that is furnished by response is discarded. The reference to the future, being dissociated from behavior, is taken as evidence of an abstract or metaphysical duration, so that experience is somehow other than it seems; and sensation is regarded as the translation of duration into the language of s.p.a.ce. a.s.sociationism is justified in its belief that reality is different from its appearance in our experience, but is criticized for attempting to interpret the real in terms of s.p.a.ce rather than time. In both cases the lead of the subject-matter is abandoned in favor of an explanation that is derived from a fourth-dimensional plane of existence.

The suspicion that these two positions have a deep-seated affinity is strengthened if we call to mind that the concept of sensation was originated, not in the interests of methodology, but as the expression of a historic preconception that mistook fiction for fact. The fundamental error back of it was the preposterous notion that consciousness consists of subconscious or unconscious const.i.tuents, which by their mechanical or chemical combinations make our experience what it is. The question which it raises and which has afflicted us even to the present day is not primarily the question of fact, but the question of intelligibility, as the controversy over mindstuff abundantly attests. Whether we regard experience as made up of sensory material, however, or as const.i.tuted in a Bergsonian fashion, is a matter of detail; the primary question is whether a distinction between consciousness as it appears and as it "really" is has any meaning. In so far as this distinction is maintained, we are beating the thin air of mythology, despite our reinterpretations and justifications. True conversion does not consist in a renaming of old G.o.ds, but demands a humble and a contrite heart. To call sensation an artifact, a methodological device, without a surrender of the metaphysical a.s.sumption that lies back of a.s.sociationism is not to correct the evil, but is more likely to be treated as an indulgence for sins that are yet to be committed.

This fundamental ident.i.ty is presumably the reason for certain other similarities, which would perhaps not be readily antic.i.p.ated. Both doctrines undertake to tell us what is going on behind the scenes, what consciousness or experience "really" is. The descriptions present an astonishing difference of vocabulary, but if we take care not to be misled by superficial differences, we find an equally astonishing agreement as to content. From the one side consciousness is explained as a juxtaposition of elements; from the other as an interpenetration of elements so complete that the parts can be neither isolated nor distinguished from the whole. On the one hand we find a multiplicity without unity, on the other a unity without multiplicity. In the one account the temporal unit is a sensation devoid of internal temporal diversity; in the other duration as such is a unity in which past, present, and future blend into an undifferentiated whole. The one position gathers its facts by a mystifying process called introspection; the other obtains its results from a mystical faculty of intuition. The difference in language remains, but both accounts lead us away into a twilight region where words subst.i.tute themselves for facts.

As was suggested a moment ago, the contrast between ordinary experience and something else of which it is the appearance is the result of the failure to give proper recognition to the facts of behavior. If we connect the forward reference of experience with the operations of our nascent activities, we have no need of a pure duration or of bridging the gulf between reality and its appearances. In the same way, if we construe sensations as just symbols of our responses, we rid ourselves of problems that are insoluble because they are unintelligible. Such problems const.i.tute metaphysics in the bad sense of the word, whether they show themselves in the domain of science or of philosophy. To describe experience by reference to such a real is to explain what we know in terms of what we do not know. The question what is real is absolutely sterile. Our descriptions and explanations must remain on the same plane as the experiences with which they deal, and not seek after a real of a different order. If we are to have an explanation of consciousness at all, the explanation must not take us back to hypothetical sensations that are almost but not quite experienced, nor to a duration in which all distinctions are swallowed up, but must be rendered in terms of other facts that dwell in the light of common day.

By way of conclusion I venture to urge once more that a proper consideration of the facts of behavior will furnish us with a key that will unlock many a door. The conception of stimulus and response gives us a differentia for experience and also enables us to distinguish within experience between consciousness and object. If, however, we disregard behavior, we are bound to lose our way. The distinction between the experienced and the unexperienced is either wiped out or else is permitted to convert itself into a distinction between appearance and reality that leads nowhere and explains nothing. The significance of truth as the successful guidance of behavior, in accordance with the program laid down in the organization of stimulus and response, is lost to sight and recourse is had to a fourth-dimensional truth or reality for the miracle of breathing life into the dead bones of our philosophic abstractions. The study of behavior const.i.tutes a mode of approach that holds out the hope of deliverance from questions that should never have been asked. We are on a different and, let us hope, a higher level when we cease to ask how consciousness can lay hold of pa.s.sive objects, or how knowledge _uberhaupt_ is possible, and concern ourselves rather with the wondrous activity whereby this plastic dance of circ.u.mstance that we call the universe transcends the domain of mechanism and embodies itself in the values of conscious life.

THE PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST

HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART

-- 1. In the logic of Instrumentalism, truth has been identified with usefulness and the good with the satisfactory. Cla.s.sifying critics have seen in this the damaging mark of Utilitarianism, certain of them deeming "Amerikanismus" an even shrewder and more specific diagnosis.

The a.s.sociation of these terms together and the aptness of either to express what the critics have in mind are matters of small interest. It is of more importance to discover, behind the reproach implied, the a.s.sumptions which may have made the reproach seem pertinent. One cannot, of course, suppose it to express a sheer general aversion to the useful or an ascetic abhorrence of all satisfaction on principle. Puritanism, aestheticism, and pedantry should be last resorts in any search for an interpretative clue.

The distrust of Utilitarianism need be ascribed to none of these. It comes instead from a conception of the true Utilitarian as a dull and dogmatic being with no interests beyond the range of his own uninquiring vision, no aspiration beyond the complacent survey of his own perfections and no standards beyond the inventory of his own _bourgeois_ tastes and prejudices. The type is indeed not yet extinct in our day: but is it plausible to charge a "new" philosophy with conspiring to perpetuate it? Is Instrumentalism only philistinism called by a more descriptive name? It professes at least to be a logic of hypothesis and experiment, whereas for the perfect philistine there are no ultimate problems and hence no logic but the logic of self-evidence. When Instrumentalism speaks of needs and interests in its a.n.a.lysis of truth and goodness does it then mean the needs and interests that define the individual in what is sometimes invidiously termed a "biological"

sense--interests that control him before his conduct becomes in any way a problem for himself? Quite as a matter of course, just this has been the a.s.sumption. The satisfactoriness of prompt and cogent cla.s.sification has had a hand in the vindication of truth's supremacy over satisfaction. In the view of instrumentalism this ready interpretation of its meaning is nothing less than the thinking of the unthinkable and the bodying-forth of what is not. The man who has solved a problem simply _is_ not the man he was before--if his problem was a genuine one and it was he who solved it. He cannot measure and judge the outcome by his earlier demands for the very good reason that the outcome of real deliberation empties these earlier demands of their interest and authority for him.

Can the conception thus suggested of personal growth through exercise of creative or constructive intelligence be in any measure verified by a general survey of the economic side of life? Has it any important bearings upon any parts of economic theory? These are the questions to which this essay is addressed.

I

-- 2. How have the real or fancied needs of the average person of today come to be what they are? For all sorts and conditions of men, the ways and means of living have, during the past century or two--even during the past decade or two--undergone revolutionary changes. It is true that many of these changes have been relatively superficial, touching only certain externalities and entering in no important way into life's underlying and dominant motives. Others, no doubt, may fairly be held to confuse and disperse the energies of men, instead of making for wholeness, sanity and development of human interest and power. And critics of industrial and social progress who have felt the need for reservations of this sort fall easily into a certain mood of historic homesickness for the supposed "simplicity" of an earlier age. But our interest, in this discussion, is in the genesis, the actual process of becoming, of our present "standards of living," not their value as rated by any critical (or uncritical) standard. And accordingly we shall take it for a fact that on the whole the average person of today is reasonably, perhaps unreasonably, well satisfied with his telephone, his typewriter, and his motor-car; with his swift and easy journeyings over land and sea; with his increasingly scientific medical attendance and public sanitation; with his virtually free supplies of literature and information, new and old, and with his electric light or his midnight oil (triple distilled) to aid in the perusal. More than this, he is so well satisfied with all these modern inventions that, historical or aesthetical or other "holidays" apart, he would never for a moment dispense with any one of them as a matter of free choice. Grossly material and humbly instrumental though they are, these things and their like const.i.tute the framework sustaining the whole system of spiritual functions that make up the life we live today, as a society and as individuals. And our present problem simply is the way in which they were first received by those who were to use them, and pa.s.sed into their present common acceptance. To put the matter in general terms, how is it that novel means of action or enjoyment, despite their novelty, are able to command fair scrutiny and hearing and can contrive to make their way, often very speedily, into a position of importance for industry and life?

There is an easy and not unnatural way of thinking of this process as we see it going on about us that may keep us long unmindful of even the possibility of such a question. In every field of action, we habitually look back upon accomplished changes from some present well-secured vantage-point, and as we trace the steps by which they have come to pa.s.s it is almost inevitable that we should first see the sequence as an approach, direct or devious but always sure, to the stage on which we happen to have taken our stand. It seems clear to us that what we have attained is better than aught that has gone before--if it were not distinctly satisfactory on its own merits we should not now be taking it as the standpoint for a survey. But once it is so taken, our recognition of its appreciable and satisfying superiority pa.s.ses over insensibly into metaphysics. What we now find good we find ourselves perceiving to have been all the while predestined in the eternal scheme of things! We pause in retrospect like the wayfarer who has reached the turning of a mountain road or the man of middle age who for the first time feels that his professional position is a.s.sured. This, we say, justifies the effort it has cost, _this_ at last is really living! And the next step in retrospective reconstruction follows easily; this was my true goal from the first, the dim and inexpressible hope of which would not let me pause and kept me until now dissatisfied. The end was present in the beginning, provoking the first groping efforts and affording progressively the test and measure by which their results were found ever wanting.

This retrospective logic may explain the presence and perennial charm of those panoramic pages in our encyclopaedias purporting to show forth the gradual perfecting of great instrumentalities upon which our modern life depends. We survey the "evolution" of printing, for example, from the wooden blocks of the Chinese or of Laurens Coster down to the Hoe press, the stereotype plate, and the linotype machine. Or we see the forms of written record from pictured papyrus, cuneiform brick, and ma.n.u.script scroll down to the printed book and the typewritten page; the means of carriage by land from the ox-cart of the patriarchs to the stage-coach, the Cannonball Limited, the motor-truck, and the twelve-cylinder touring-car. And as one contemplates these cheerfully colored exhibits there is in each case an almost irresistible suggestion of a constant and compelling need of "universal man" seeking in more and more marvellously ingenious ways an adequate expression and satisfaction.

This need seems never to have lapsed or changed its nature. All along both driving power and direction, it has been the one fixed factor in a long process in which all else has been fluctuating, contingent, and imperfect--all else except the nature of the materials and the principles of mechanics, which, too, are seen in the end to have been mutely conspiring toward the result. Essential human nature, it seems clear, does not and happily cannot change. Spiritual progress, in this ultimate optimism, means simply clearer vision, completer knowledge, and a less petulant and self-a.s.sertive habit of insistence upon the details of particular purposes as individual "impulse" and "idiosyncrasy" define them. We fortunate beings of today have available, in the various departments of our life, certain instrumentalities, and to these our interests attach. These interests of ours in their proportional strength (so the argument runs) express our native and generic const.i.tution in so far as this const.i.tution has been able as yet to achieve outward expression and embodiment. And accordingly, in interpreting the long history of technological evolution, we take what we conceive ourselves now to be as normative and essential. We project back into the lives of primitive man, of our own racial ancestors, or of our grandfathers, the habits and requirements which we acknowledge in ourselves today and we conceive the men of the past to have been driven forward on the ways of progress by the identical discontent that would presumably beset ourselves if we were to be suddenly carried back to their scale and manner of existence.