CHAPTER XXI
PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER SCIENCES
78. THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND NON-PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES.—We have seen in the preceding chapters that certain of the sciences can scarcely be cultivated successfully in complete separation from philosophy. It has also been indicated in various places that the relation of other sciences to philosophy is not so close.
Thus, the sciences of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry may be successfully prosecuted by a man who has reflected little upon the nature of numbers and who has never asked himself seriously what he means by space. The assumptions which he is justified in making, and the kind of operations which he has the right to perform, do not seem, as a rule, to be in doubt.
So it is also in the sciences of chemistry and physics. There is nothing to prevent the chemist or the physicist from being a philosopher, but he is not compelled to be one. He may push forward the investigations proper to his profession regardless of the type of philosophy which it pleases him to adopt. Whether he be a realist or an idealist, a dualist or a monist, he should, as chemist or physicist, treat the same sort of facts in the same sort of a way. His path appears to be laid out for him, and he can do work the value of which is undisputed by traveling quietly along it, and without stopping to consider consciously what kind of a path it is. There are many who work in this way, and they succeed in making important contributions to human knowledge.
Such sciences as these I call the non-philosophical sciences to distinguish them from the group of sciences I have been discussing at length. What marks them out is, that the facts with which the investigator has to deal are known by him with sufficient clearness to leave him usually in little doubt as to the use which he can make of them. His knowledge is clear enough for the purpose in hand, and his work is justified by its results. What is the relation of such sciences as these to philosophy?
79. THE STUDY OF SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND METHODS.—It is one thing to have the instinct of the investigator and to be able to feel one's way along the road that leads to new knowledge of a given kind, and it is another thing to have the reflective turn of mind that makes one clearly conscious of just what one has been doing and how one has been doing it. Men reasoned before there was a science of logic, and the sciences made their appearance before what may be called the logic of the sciences had its birth.
"It may be truly asserted," writes Professor Jevons,[1] "that the rapid progress of the physical sciences during the last three centuries has not been accompanied by a corresponding advance in the theory of reasoning. Physicists speak familiarly of Scientific Method, but they could not readily describe what they mean by that expression. Profoundly engaged in the study of particular classes of natural phenomena, they are usually too much engrossed in the immense and ever accumulating details of their special sciences to generalize upon the methods of reasoning which they unconsciously employ. Yet few will deny that these methods of reasoning ought to be studied, especially by those who endeavor to introduce scientific order into less successful and methodical branches of knowledge."
Professor Jevons suggests that it is lack of time and attention that prevents the scientific investigator from attaining to a clear conception of what is meant by scientific method. This has something to do with it, but I think we may also maintain that the work of the investigator and that of the critic are somewhat different in kind, and require somewhat different powers of mind. We find a parallel to this elsewhere. Both in literature and in art men may be in the best sense productive, and yet may be poor critics. We are often wofully disappointed when we attend a lecture on poetry by a poet, or one on painting by an artist.
It may be said: If what is maintained above regarding the possibility of prosecuting scientific researches without having recourse to reflective thought is true, why should the man of science care whether the principles and methods of the non-philosophical sciences are investigated or are merely taken for granted?
I answer: It should be observed that the statements made in the last section were somewhat guarded. I have used the expressions "as a rule" and "usually." I have spoken thus because one can work in the way described, without danger of error, only where a beaten track has been attained and is followed. In Chapter XVI it was pointed out that even in the mathematical sciences one may be forced to reflect upon the significance of one's symbols. As I write this, a pamphlet comes to hand which is concerned to prove that "every cause is potentially capable of producing several effects," and proves it by claiming that the square root of four ([square root symbol]4) is a cause which may have as effect either two (2) or minus two (-2).
Is this mathematical reasoning? Are mathematical relations ever those of cause and effect? And may one on the basis of such reasonings claim that in nature the relation of cause and effect is not a fixed and invariable one?
Even where there is a beaten track, there is some danger that men may wander from it. And on the confines of our knowledge there are fields in which the accepted road is yet to be established. Science makes constant use of hypotheses as an aid to investigation. What hypotheses may one frame, and what are inadmissible? How important an investigation of this question may be to the worker in certain branches of science will be clear to one who will read with attention Professor Poincaré's brilliant little work on "Science and Hypothesis." [2]
There is no field in art, literature, or science in which the work of the critic is wholly superfluous. "There are periods in the growth of science," writes Professor Pearson in his deservedly popular work, "The Grammar of Science," [3] "when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to examine carefully its foundations. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts of modern science, and as such finds its justification in the motto placed upon its title-page." The motto in question is a quotation from the French philosopher Cousin: "Criticism is the life of science."
We have seen in Chapter XVI that a work on logic may be a comparatively simple thing. It may describe the ways in which men reason when they reason correctly, and may not go deep into metaphysical questions. On the other hand, it may be deeply metaphysical.
When we approach the part of logic which deals with the principles and methods of the sciences, this difference is forced upon our attention. One may set forth the assumptions upon which a science rests, and may describe the methods of investigation employed, without going much below the plane of common thought. As a type of such works I may mention the useful treatise by Professor Jevons cited earlier in this chapter.
On the other hand, our investigations may be more profound, and we may scrutinize the very foundations upon which a science rests. Both the other works referred to illustrate this method of procedure.
For example, in "The Grammar of Science," we find our author discussing, under the title "The Facts of Science," such problems as the following: the Reality of Things; Sense-impressions and Consciousness; the Nature of Thought; the External Universe; Sensations as the Ultimate Source of the Materials of Knowledge; and the Futility of "Things-in-themselves." The philosophical character of such discussions does not need to be pointed out at length.
[1] "The Principles Of Science," London, 1874, Preface.
[2] English translation, New York, 1905.
[3] Second edition, London, 1900.
VI. ON THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER XXII
THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY
80. THE QUESTION OF PRACTICAL UTILITY.—Why should men study philosophy? The question is a natural one, for man is a rational being, and when the worth of a thing is not at once evident to him, he usually calls for proof of its worth. Our professional schools, with the exception of schools of theology, usually pay little attention to philosophical studies; but such studies occupy a strong position in our colleges, and a vast number of persons not students in the technical sense think it worth while to occupy themselves with them more or less. Wherever liberal studies are prosecuted they have their place, and it is an honored place. Is this as it should be?
Before we ask whether any given study is of practical value, it is wise to determine what the word "practical" shall be taken to mean. Shall we say that we may call practical only such learning as can be turned to direct account in earning money later? If we restrict the meaning of the word in this way, we seem to strike a blow at liberal studies in general.
Thus, no one would think of maintaining that the study of mathematics is not of practical value—sometimes and to some persons. The physicist and the engineer need to know a good deal about mathematics. But how is it with the merchant, the lawyer, the clergyman, the physician? How much of their algebra, geometry, and trigonometry do these remember after they have become absorbed in the practice of their several callings, and how often do they find it necessary to use anything beyond certain simple rules of arithmetic?
Sometimes we are tempted to condemn the study of the classics as unpractical, and to turn instead to the modern languages and to the physical sciences. Now, it is, of course, a fair question to ask what should and what should not be regarded as forming part of a liberal education, and I shall make no effort to decide the question here. But it should be borne well in mind that one cannot decide it by determining what studies are practical in the sense of the word under discussion.
If we keep strictly to this sense, the modern languages are to the majority of Americans of little more practical value than are the Latin and Greek. We scarcely need them except when we travel abroad, and when we do that we find that the concierge and the waiter use English with surprising fluency. As for the sciences, those who expect to earn a living through a knowledge of them, seek, as a rule, that knowledge in a technical or professional school, and the rest of us can enjoy the fruit of their labors without sharing them. It is a popular fallacy that because certain studies have a practical value to the world at large, they must necessarily have a practical value to every one, and can be recommended to the individual on that account. It is worth while to sit down quietly and ask oneself how many of the bits of information acquired during the course of a liberal education are directly used in the carrying on of a given business or in the practice of a given profession.
Nevertheless, we all believe that liberal education is a good thing for the individual and for the race. One must not too much restrict the meaning of the word "practical." A civilized state composed of men who know nothing save what has a direct bearing upon their especial work in life is an absurdity; it cannot exist. There must be a good deal of general enlightenment and there must be a considerable number of individuals who have enjoyed a high measure of enlightenment.
This becomes clear if we consider the part played in the life of the state by the humblest tradesman. If he is to be successful, he must be able to read, write, and keep his accounts, and make, let us say, shoes. But when we have said this, we have summed him up as a workman, but not as a man, and he is also a man. He may marry, and make a good or a bad husband, and a good or a bad father. He stands in relations to his neighborhood, to the school, and to the church; and he is not without his influence. He may be temperate or intemperate, frugal or extravagant, law-abiding or the reverse. He has his share, and no small share, in the government of his city and of his state. His influence is indeed far-reaching, and that it may be an influence for good, he is in need of all the intellectual and moral enlightenment that we can give him. It is of the utmost practical utility to the state that he should know a vast number of things which have no direct bearing upon the making and mending of shoes.
And if this is true in the case of the tradesman, it is scarcely necessary to point out that the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, and the whole army of those whom we regard as the leaders of men and the molders of public opinion have spheres of non-professional activity of great importance to the state. They cannot be mere specialists if they would. They must influence society for good or ill; and if they are ignorant and unenlightened, their influence cannot be good.
When we consider the life of man in a broad way, we see how essential it is that many men should be brought to have a share in what has been gained by the long travail of the centuries past. It will not do to ask at every step whether they can put to direct professional use every bit of information gained. Literature and science, sweetness and light, beauty and truth, these are the heritage of the modern world; and unless these permeate its very being, society must undergo degeneration. It is this conviction that has led to the high appreciation accorded by intelligent men to courses of liberal study, and among such courses those which we have recognized as philosophical must take their place.
81. WHY PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES ARE USEFUL.—But let us ask a little more specifically what is to be gained by pursuing distinctively philosophical studies. Why should those who go to college, or intelligent persons who cannot go to college, care to interest themselves in logic and ethics, psychology and metaphysics? Are not these studies rather dry, in the first place, and rather profitless, in the second?
As to the first point, I should stoutly maintain that if they are dry, it is somebody's fault. The most sensational of novels would be dry if couched in the language which some philosophers have seen fit to use in expressing their thoughts. He who defines "existence" as "the still and simple precipitate of the oscillation between beginning to be and ceasing to be" has done his best to alienate our affections from the subject of his predilection.
But it is not in the least necessary to talk in this way about matters philosophical. He who is not a slave to tradition can use plain and simple language. To be sure, there are some subjects, especially in the field of metaphysics, into which the student cannot expect to see very deeply at the outset of his studies. Men do not expect to understand the more difficult problems of mathematics without making a good deal of preparation; but, unhappily, they sometimes expect to have the profoundest problems of metaphysics made luminous to them in one or two popular lectures.
Philosophical studies are not dry, when men are properly taught, and are in a position to understand what is said. They deal with the most fascinating of problems. It is only necessary to pierce through the husk of words which conceals the thoughts of the philosopher, and we shall find the kernel palatable, indeed. Nor are such studies profitless, to take up our second point. Let us see what we may gain from them.
Let us begin with logic—the traditional logic commonly taught to beginners. Is it worth while to study this? Surely it is. No one who has not tried to introduce the average under-graduate to logic can realize how blindly he uses his reasoning powers, how unconscious he is of the full meaning of the sentences he employs, how easily he may be entrapped by fallacious reasonings where he is not set on his guard by some preposterous conclusion touching matters with which he is familiar.
And he is not merely unconscious of the lapses in his processes of reasoning, and of his imperfect comprehension of the significance of his statements; he is unconscious also of the mass of inherited and acquired prejudices, often quite indefensible, which he unquestioningly employs as premises.
He fairly represents the larger world beyond the walls of the college. It is a world in which prejudices are assumed as premises, and loose reasonings pass current and are unchallenged until they beget some unpalatable conclusion. It is a world in which men take little pains to think carefully and accurately unless they are dealing with something touching which it is practically inconvenient to make a mistake.
He who studies logic in the proper way is not filling his mind with useless facts; he is simply turning the light upon his own thinking mind, and realizing more clearly what he has always done rather blindly and blunderingly. He may completely forget the
"Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque prioris,"
and he may be quite unable to give an account of the moods and figures of the syllogism; but he cannot lose the critical habit if he once has acquired it, and he cannot but be on his guard against himself as well as against others.
There is a keen pleasure in gaining such insight. It gives a feeling of freedom and power, and rids one of that horrid sense that, although this or that bit of reasoning is certainly bad, it is impossible to tell just what is the matter with it. And as for its practical utility, if it is desirable to get rid of prejudice and confusion, and to possess a clear and reasonable mind, then anything that makes for this must be of value.
Of the desirability that all who can afford the luxury of a liberal education should do some serious reading in ethics, it seems hardly necessary to speak. The deficiencies of the ethics of the unreflective have already been touched upon in Chapter XVIII.
But I cannot forbear dwelling upon it again. What thoughtful man is not struck with the variety of ethical standards which obtain in the same community? The clergyman who has a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of his flock is sometimes accused of not sufficiently realizing the importance of a frank expression of the whole truth about things; the man of science, whose duty it seems to be to peer into the mysteries of the universe, and to tell what he sees or what he guesses, is accused of an indifference to the effect which his utterances may have upon the less enlightened who hear him speak; many criticise the lawyer for a devotion to the interests of his client which is at times in doubtful harmony with the interests of justice in the larger sense; in the business world commercial integrity is exalted, and lapses from the ethical code which do not assail this cardinal virtue are not always regarded with equal seriousness.
It is as though men elected to worship at the shrine of a particular saint, and were inclined to overlook the claims of others. For all this there is, of course, a reason; such things are never to be looked upon as mere accident. But this does not mean that these more or less conflicting standards are all to be accepted as satisfactory and as ultimate. It is inevitable that those who study ethics seriously, who really reflect upon ethical problems, should sometimes criticise the judgments of their fellow-men rather unfavorably.
Of such independent criticism many persons have a strong distrust. I am reminded here of an eminent mathematician who maintained that the study of ethics has a tendency to distort the student's judgments as to what is right and what is wrong. He had observed that there is apt to be some divergence of opinion between those who think seriously upon morals and those who do not, and he gave the preference to the unthinking majority.
Now, there is undoubtedly danger that the independent thinker may be betrayed into eccentricities of opinion which are unjustifiable and are even dangerous. But it seems a strange doctrine that it is, on the whole, safer not to think, but rather to drift on the stream of public opinion. In other fields we are not inclined to believe that the ignorant man, who has given no especial attention to a subject, is the one likely to be right. Why should it be so in morals?
That the youth who goes to college to seek a liberal education has a need of ethical studies becomes very plain when we come to a realization of the curious limitations of his ethical training as picked up from his previous experience of the world. He has some very definite notions as to right and wrong. He is as ready to maintain the desirability of benevolence, justice, and veracity, as was Bishop Butler, who wrote the famous "Analogy "; although, to be sure, he is most inarticulate when called upon to explain what constitutes benevolence, justice, or veracity. But the strangest thing is, that he seems to place some of the most important decisions of his whole life quite outside the realm of right and wrong.
He may admit that a man should not undertake to be a clergyman, unless he possesses certain qualifications of mind and character which evidently qualify him for that profession. But he does not see why he has not the right to become a wearisome professor or an incompetent physician, if he chooses to enter upon such a career. Is a man not free to take up what profession he pleases? He must take the risk, of course; but if he fails, he fails.
And when he is asked to consider from the point of view of ethics the question of marriage and its responsibilities, he is at first inclined to consider the whole subject as rather a matter for jest. Has a man not the right to marry or remain single exactly as he pleases? And is he not free to marry any one whom he can persuade to accept him? To be sure, he should be a little careful about marrying quite out of his class, and he should not be hopelessly careless about money matters. Thus, a decision, which may affect his whole life as much as any other that he can be called upon to make, which may practically make it or mar it, is treated as though it were not a matter of grave concern, but a private affair, entailing no serious consequences to any one and calling for no reflection.
I wish it could be said that the world outside of the college regarded these matters in another light. But the student faithfully represents the opinions current in the community from which he comes. And he represents, unhappily, the teachings of the stage and of the world of current fiction. The influence of these is too often on the side of inconsiderate passion, which stirs our sympathy and which lends itself to dramatic effect. With the writers of romance the ethical philosophers have an ancient quarrel.
It may be said: But the world gets along very well as it is, and without brooding too much upon ethical problems. To this we may answer: Does the world get along so very well, after all? Are there no evils that foresight and some firmness of character might have obviated? And when we concern ourselves with the educated classes, at least, the weight of whose influence is enormous, is it too much to maintain that they should do some reading and thinking in the field of ethics? should strive to attain to clear vision and correct judgment on the whole subject of man's duties?
Just at the present time, when psychological studies have so great a vogue, one scarcely feels compelled to make any sort of an apology for them. It is assumed on all hands that it is desirable to study psychology, and courses of lectures are multiplied in all quarters.
Probably some of this interest has its root in the fallacy touched upon earlier in this chapter. The science of psychology has revolutionized educational theory. When those of us who have arrived at middle life look back and survey the tedious and toilsome path along which we were unwillingly driven in our schoolboy days, and then see how smooth and pleasant it has been made since, we are impelled to honor all who have contributed to this result. Moreover, it seems very clear that teachers of all grades should have some acquaintance with the nature of the minds that they are laboring to develop, and that they should not be left to pick up their information for themselves—a task sufficiently difficult to an unobservant person.
These considerations furnish a sufficient ground for extolling the science of psychology, and for insisting that studies in it should form some part of the education of a teacher. But why should the rest of us care for such studies?
To this one may answer, in the first place, that nearly all of us have, or ought to have, some responsibility for the education of children; and, in the second, that we deal with the minds of others every day in every walk in life, and it can certainly do no harm to have our attention called to the way in which minds function. To be sure, some men are by nature tactful, and instinctively conscious of how things strike the minds of those about them. But even such persons may gain helpful suggestions, and, at least, have the habit of attention to the mental processes of others confirmed in them. How often we are impressed at church, at the public lecture, and in private conversations, with the fact that the speaker lives in blissful unconsciousness of what can be understood by or can possibly interest his hearers! For the confirmed bore, there is, perhaps, no cure; but it seems as though something might be done for those who are afflicted to a minor degree.
And this brings me to another consideration, which is that a proper study of psychology ought to be of service in revealing to a man his own nature. It should show him what he is, and this is surely a first step toward becoming something better. It is wonderful how blind men may be with regard to what passes in their own minds and with regard to their own peculiarities. When they learn to reflect, they come to a clearer consciousness of themselves—it is as though a lamp were lighted within them. One may, it is true, study psychology without attaining to any of the good results suggested above; but, for that matter, there is no study which may not be pursued in a profitless way, if the teacher be sufficiently unskilled and the pupil sufficiently thoughtless.
82. METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.—Perhaps it will be said: For such philosophical studies as the above a good defense may perhaps be made, but can one defend in the same way the plunge into the obscurities of metaphysics? In this field no two men seem to be wholly agreed, and if they were, what would it signify? Whether we call ourselves monists or dualists, idealists or realists, Lockians or Kantians, must we not live and deal with the things about us in much the same way?
Those who have dipped into metaphysical studies deeply enough to see what the problems discussed really are; who have been able to reach the ideas concealed, too often, under a rather forbidding terminology; who are not of the dogmatic turn of mind which insists upon unquestioned authority and is repelled by the uncertainties which must confront those who give themselves to reflective thought,—these will hardly need to be persuaded that it is desirable to give some attention to the question: What sort of a world, after all, is this world in which we live? What is its meaning?
To many men the impulse to peer into these things is over-powering, and the pleasure of feeling their insight deepen is extremely keen. What deters us in most instances is not the conviction that such investigations are not, or should not be, interesting, but rather the difficulty of the approach. It is not easy to follow the path which leads from the world of common thought into the world of philosophical reflection. One becomes bewildered and discouraged at the outset. Sometimes, after listening to the directions of guides who disagree among themselves, we are tempted to believe that there can be no certain path to the goal which we have before us.
But, whatever the difficulties and uncertainties of our task, a little reflection must show that it is not one which has no significance for human life.
Men can, it is true, eat and sleep and go through the routine of the day, without giving thought to science or religion or philosophy, but few will defend such an existence. As a matter of fact, those who have attained to some measure of intellectual and moral development do assume, consciously or unconsciously, some rather definite attitude toward life, and this is not independent of their conviction as to what the world is and means.
Metaphysical speculations run out into the philosophy of religion; and, on the other hand, religious emotions and ideals have again and again prompted men to metaphysical construction. A glance at history shows that it is natural to man to embrace some attitude toward the system of things, and to try to justify this by reasoning. Vigorous and independent minds have given birth to theories, and these have been adopted by others. The influence of such theories upon the evolution of humanity has been enormous.
Ideas have ruled and still rule the world, some of them very abstract ideas. It does not follow that one is uninfluenced by them, when one has no knowledge of their source or of their original setting. They become part of the intellectual heritage of us all, and we sometimes suppose that we are responsible for them ourselves. Has not the fact that an idealistic or a materialistic type of thought has been current at a particular time influenced the outlook on life of many who have themselves devoted little attention to philosophy? It would be interesting to know how many, to whom Spencer is but a name, have felt the influence of the agnosticism of which he was the apostle.
I say this without meaning to criticise here any of the types of doctrine referred to. My thesis is only that philosophy and life go hand in hand, and that the prying into the deeper mysteries of the universe cannot be regarded as a matter of no practical moment. Its importance ought to be admitted even by the man who has little hope that he will himself be able to attain to a doctrine wholly satisfactory and wholly unshakable.
For, if the study of the problems of metaphysics does nothing else for a given individual, it, at least, enables him to comprehend and criticise intelligently the doctrines which are presented for his acceptance by others. It is a painful thing to feel quite helpless in the face of plausible reasonings which may threaten to rob us of our most cherished hopes, or may tend to persuade us of the vanity of what we have been accustomed to regard as of highest worth. If we are quite unskilled in the examination of such doctrines, we may be captured by the loosest of arguments—witness the influence of Spencer's argument for the "Unknowable," in the "First Principles"; and if we are ignorant of the history of speculative thought, we may be carried away by old and exploded notions which pose as modern and impressive only because they have been given a modern dress.
We can, of course, refuse to listen to those who would talk with us. But this savors of bigotry, and the world will certainly not grow wiser, if men generally cultivate a blind adherence to the opinions in which they happen to be brought up. A cautious conservatism is one thing, and blind obstinacy is another. To the educated man (and it is probable that others will have to depend on opinions taken at second hand) a better way of avoiding error is open.
Finally, it will not do to overlook the broadening influence of such studies as we are discussing. How dogmatically men are in the habit of expressing themselves upon those obscure and difficult problems which deal with matters that lie on the confines of human knowledge! Such an assumption of knowledge cannot but make us uncomprehending and unsympathetic.
There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical attitude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not assume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry.
CHAPTER XXIII
WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
83. THE PROMINENCE GIVEN TO THE SUBJECT.—When one reflects upon the number of lecture courses given every year at our universities and colleges on the history of philosophy, one is struck by the fact that philosophy is not treated as are most other subjects with which the student is brought into contact.
If we study mathematics, or chemistry, or physics, or physiology, or biology, the effort is made to lay before us in a convenient form the latest results which have been attained in those sciences. Of their history very little is said; and, indeed, as we have seen (section 6), lectures on the history of the inductive sciences are apt to be regarded as philosophical in their character and aims rather than as merely scientific.
The interest in the history of philosophy is certainly not a diminishing one. Text-books covering the whole field or a part of it are multiplied; extensive studies are made and published covering the work of individual philosophers; innumerable historical discussions make their appearance in the pages of current philosophical journals. No student is regarded as fairly acquainted with philosophy who knows nothing of Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Spinoza, Berkeley and Hume, Kant and Hegel, and the rest. We should look upon him as having a very restricted outlook if he had read only the works of the thinkers of our own day; indeed, we should not expect him to have a proper comprehension even of these, for their chapters must remain blind and meaningless to one who has no knowledge of what preceded them and has given birth to the doctrines there set forth.
It is a fair question to ask: Why is philosophy so bound up with the study of the past? Why may we not content ourselves with what has up to the present been attained, and omit a survey of the road along which our predecessors have traveled?
84. THE ESPECIAL IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TO REFLECTIVE THOUGHT.—In some of the preceding chapters dealing with the various philosophical sciences, it has been indicated that, in the sciences we do not regard as philosophical, men may work on the basis of certain commonly accepted assumptions and employ methods which are generally regarded as trustworthy within the given field. The value both of the fundamental assumptions and of the methods of investigation appear to be guaranteed by the results attained. There are not merely observation and hypothesis; there is also verification, and where this is lacking, men either abandon their position or reserve their judgment.
Thus, a certain body of interrelated facts is built up, the significance of which, in many fields at least, is apparent even to the layman. Nor is it wholly beyond him to judge whether the results of scientific investigations can be verified. An eclipse, calculated by methods which he is quite unable to follow, may occur at the appointed hour and confirm his respect for the astronomer. The efficacy of a serum in the cure of diseases may convince him that work done in the laboratory is not labor lost.
It seems evident that the several sciences do really rise on stepping stones of their dead selves, and that those selves of the past are really dead and superseded. Who would now think of going back for his science to Plato's "Timaeus," or would accept the description of the physical world contained in the works of Aristotle? What chemist or physicist need busy himself with the doctrine of atoms and their clashings presented in the magnificent poem of Lucretius? Who can forbear a smile—a sympathetic one—when he turns over the pages of Augustine's "City of God," and sees what sort of a world this remarkable man believed himself to inhabit?
It is the historic and human interest that carries us back to these things. We say: What ingenuity! what a happy guess! how well that was reasoned in the light of what was actually known about the world in those days! But we never forget that what compels our admiration does so because it makes us realize that we stand in the presence of a great mind, and not because it is a foundation-stone in the great edifice which science has erected.
But it is not so in philosophy. It is not possible to regard the philosophical reflections of Plato and of Aristotle as superseded in the same sense in which we may so regard their science. The reason for this lies in the difference between scientific thought and reflective thought.
The two have been contrasted in Chapter II of this volume. It was there pointed out that the sort of thinking demanded in the special sciences is not so very different from that with which we are all familiar in common life. Science is more accurate and systematic, it has a broader outlook, and it is free from the imperfections which vitiate the uncritical and fragmentary knowledge which experience of the world yields the unscientific. But, after all, the world is much the same sort of a world to the man of science and to his uncritical neighbor. The latter can, as we have seen, understand what, in general, the former is doing, and can appropriate many of his results.
On the other hand, it often happens that the man who has not, with pains and labor, learned to reflect, cannot even see that the philosopher has a genuine problem before him. Thus, the plain man accepts the fact that he has a mind and that it knows the world. That both mental phenomena and physical phenomena should be carefully observed and classified he may be ready to admit. But that the very conceptions of mind and of what it means to know a world are vague and indefinite in the extreme, and stand in need of careful analysis, he does not realize.
In other words, he sees that our knowledge needs to be extended and rendered more accurate and reliable, but he does not see that, if we are to think clearly and consciously, all our knowledge needs to be gone over in a different way. In common life it is quite possible to use in the attainment of practical ends knowledge which has not been analyzed and of the full meaning of which we are ignorant. I hope it has become evident in the course of this volume that something closely analogous is true in the field of science. The man of science may measure space and time, and may study the phenomena of the human mind, without even attempting to answer all the questions which may be raised as to what is meant, in the last analysis, by such concepts as space, time, and the mind.
That such concepts should be analyzed has, I hope, been made clear, if only that erroneous and misleading notions as to these things should be avoided. But when a man with a genius for metaphysical analysis addresses himself to this task, he cannot simply hand the results attained by his reflections over to his less reflective fellow-man. His words are not understood; he seems to be dealing with shadows, with unrealities; he has passed from the real world of common thought into another world which appears to have little relation to the former.
Nor can verification, indubitable proof, be demanded and furnished as it can in many parts of the field cultivated by the special sciences. We may judge science fairly well without ourselves being scientists, but it is not possible to judge philosophy without being to some extent a philosopher.
In other words, the conclusions of reflective thought must be judged by following the process and discovering its cogency or the reverse. Thus, when the philosopher lays before us an argument to prove that we must regard the only ultimate reality in the world as unknowable, and must abandon our theistic convictions, how shall we make a decision as to whether he is right or is wrong? May we expect that the day will come when he will be justified or condemned as is the astronomer on the day predicted for an eclipse? Neither the philosophy of Locke, nor that of Descartes, nor that of Kant, can be vindicated as can a prediction touching an eclipse of the sun. To judge these men, we must learn to think with them, to survey the road by which they travel; and this we cannot do until we have learned the art.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we must admit, if we are fair-minded and intelligent, that philosophy cannot speak with the same authority as science, where science has been able to verify its results. There are, of course, scientific hypotheses and speculations which should be regarded as being quite as uncertain as anything brought forward by the philosophers. But, admitting this, the fact remains that there is a difference between the two fields as a whole, and that the philosopher should learn not to speak with an assumption of authority. No final philosophy has been attained, so palpably firm in its foundation, and so admittedly trustworthy in its construction, that we are justified in saying: Now we need never go back to the past unless to gratify the historic interest. It is a weakness of young men, and of older men of partisan temper, to feel very sure of matters which, in the nature of things, must remain uncertain.
Since these things are so, and since men possess the power of reflection in very varying degree, it is not surprising that we find it worth while to turn back and study the thoughts of those who have had a genius for reflection, even though they lived at a time when modern science was awaiting its birth. Some things cannot be known until other things are known; often there must be a vast collection of individual facts before the generalizations of science can come into being. But many of the problems with which reflective thought is still struggling have not been furthered in the least by information which has been collected during the centuries which have elapsed since they were attacked by the early Greek philosophers.
Thus, we are still discussing the distinction between "appearance" and "reality," and many and varied are the opinions at which philosophers arrive. But Thales, who heads the list of the Greek philosophers, had quite enough material, given in his own experience, to enable him to solve this problem as well as any modern philosopher, had he been able to use the material. He who is familiar with the history of philosophy will recognize that, although one may smile at Augustine's accounts of the races of men, and of the spontaneous generation of small animals, no one has a right to despise his profound reflections upon the nature of time and the problems which arise out of its character as past, present, and future.
The fact is that metaphysics does not lag behind because of our lack of material to work with. The difficulties we have to face are nothing else than the difficulties of reflective thought. Why can we not tell clearly what we mean when we use the word "self," or speak of "knowledge," or insist that we know an "external world"? Are we not concerned with the most familiar of experiences? To be sure we are—with experiences familiarly, but vaguely and unanalytically, known and, hence, only half known. All these experiences the great men of the past had as well as we; and if they had greater powers of reflection, perhaps they saw more deeply into them than we do. At any rate, we cannot afford to assume that they did not.
One thing, however, I must not omit to mention. Although one man cannot turn over bodily the results of his reflection to another, it by no means follows that he cannot give the other a helping hand, or warn him of dangers by himself stumbling into pitfalls, as the case may be. We have an indefinite advantage over the solitary thinkers who opened up the paths of reflection, for we have the benefit of their teaching. And this brings me to a consideration which I must discuss in the next section.
85. THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW.—The man who has not read is like the man who has not traveled—he is not an intelligent critic, for he has nothing with which to compare what falls within the little circle of his experiences. That the prevailing architecture of a town is ugly can scarcely impress one who is acquainted with no other town. If we live in a community in which men's manners are not good, and their standard of living not the highest, our attention does not dwell much upon the fact, unless some contrasted experience wakes within us a clear consciousness of the difference. That to which we are accustomed we accept uncritically and unreflectively. It is difficult for us to see it somewhat as one might see it to whom it came as a new experience.
Of course, there may be in the one town buildings of more and of less architectural beauty; and there may be in the one community differences of opinion that furnish intellectual stimulus and keep awake the critical spirit. Still, there is such a thing as a prevalent type of architecture, and there is such a thing as the spirit of the times. He who is carried along by the spirit of the age may easily conclude that what is, is right, because he hears few raise their voices in protest.
To estimate justly the type of thought in which he has been brought up, he must have something with which to compare it. He must stand at a distance, and try to judge it as he would judge a type of doctrine presented to him for the first rime. And in the accomplishment of this task he can find no greater aid than the study of the history of philosophy.
It is at first something of a shock to a man to discover that assumptions which he has been accustomed to make without question have been frankly repudiated by men quite as clever as he, and, perhaps, more critical. It opens the eyes to see that his standards of worth have been weighed by others and have been found wanting. It may well incline him to reexamine reasonings in which he has detected no flaw, when he finds that acute minds have tried them before, and have declared them faulty.
Nor can it be without its influence upon his judgment of the significance of a doctrine, when it becomes plain to him that this significance can scarcely be fully comprehended until the history of the doctrine is known. For example, he thinks of the mind as somehow in the body, as interacting with it, as a substance, and as immaterial. In the course of his reading it begins to dawn upon his consciousness that he has not thought all this out for himself; he has taken these notions from others, who in turn have had them from their predecessors. He begins to realize that he is not resting upon evidence independently found in his own experience, but has upon his hands a sheaf of opinions which are the echoes of old philosophies, and whose rise and development can be traced over the stretch of the centuries. Can he help asking himself, when he sees this, whether the opinions in question express the truth and the whole truth? Is he not forced to take the critical attitude toward them?
And when he views the succession of systems which pass in review before him, noting how a truth may be dimly seen by one writer, denied by another, taken up again and made clearer by a third, and so on, how can he avoid the reflection that, as there was some error mixed with the truth presented in earlier systems, so there probably is some error in whatever may happen to be the form of doctrine generally received in his own time? The evolution of humanity is not yet at an end; men still struggle to see clearly, and fall short of the ideal; it must be a good thing to be freed from the dogmatic assumption of finality natural to the man of limited outlook. In studying the history of philosophy sympathetically we are not merely calling to our aid critics who possess the advantage of seeing things from a different point of view, but we are reminding ourselves that we, too, are human and fallible.
86. PHILOSOPHY AS POETRY, AND PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE.—The recognition of the truth that the problems of reflection do not admit of easy solution and that verification can scarcely be expected as it can in the fields of the special sciences, need not, even when it is brought home to us, as it is apt to be, by the study of the history of philosophy, lead us to believe that philosophies are like the fashions, a something gotten up to suit the taste of the day, and to be dismissed without regret as soon as that taste changes.
Philosophy is sometimes compared with poetry. It is argued that each age must have its own poetry, even though it be inferior to that which it has inherited from the past. Just so, it is said, each age must have its own philosophy, and the philosophy of an earlier age will not satisfy its demands. The implication is that in dealing with philosophy we are not concerned with what is true or untrue in itself considered, but with what is satisfying to us or the reverse.
Now, it would sound absurd to say that each age must have its own geometry or its own physics. The fact that it has long been known that the sum of the interior angles of a plane triangle is equal to two right angles, does not warrant me in repudiating that truth; nor am I justified in doing so, and in believing the opposite, merely because I find the statement uninteresting or distasteful. When we are dealing with such matters as these, we recognize that truth is truth, and that, if we mistake it or refuse to recognize it, so much the worse for us.
Is it otherwise in philosophy? Is it a perfectly proper thing that, in one age, men should be idealists, and in another, materialists; in one, theists, and in another, agnostics? Is the distinction between true and false nothing else than the distinction between what is in harmony with the spirit of the times and what is not?
That it is natural that there should be such fluctuations of opinion, we may freely admit. Many things influence a man to embrace a given type of doctrine, and, as we have seen, verification is a difficult problem. But have we here, any more than in other fields, the right to assume that a doctrine was true at a given time merely because it seemed to men true at that time, or because they found it pleasing? The history of science reveals that many things have long been believed to be true, and, indeed, to be bound up with what were regarded as the highest interests of man, and that these same things have later been discovered to be false—not false merely for a later age, but false for all time; as false when they were believed in as when they were exploded and known to be exploded. No man of sense believes that the Ptolemaic system was true for a while, and that then the Copernican became true. We say that the former only seemed true, and that the enthusiasm of its adherents was a mistaken enthusiasm.
It is well to remember that philosophies are brought forward because it is believed or hoped that they are true. A fairy tale may be recited and may be approved, although no one dreams of attaching faith to the events narrated in it. But a philosophy attempts to give us some account of the nature of the world in which we live. If the philosopher frankly abandons the attempt to tell us what is true, and with a Celtic generosity addresses himself to the task of saying what will be agreeable to us, he loses his right to the title. It is not enough that he stirs our emotions, and works up his unrealities into something resembling a poem. It is not primarily his task to please, as it is not the task of the serious worker in science to please those whom he is called upon to instruct. Truth is truth, whether it be scientific truth or philosophical truth. And error, no matter how agreeable or how nicely adjusted to the temper of the times, is always error. If it is error in a field in which the detection and exposure of error is difficult, it is the more dangerous, and the more should we be on our guard against it.
We may, then, accept the lesson of the history of philosophy, to wit, that we have no right to regard any given doctrine as final in such a sense that it need no longer be held tentatively and as subject to possible revision; but we need not, on that account, deny that philosophy is, what it has in the past been believed to be, an earnest search for truth. A philosophy that did not even profess to be this would not be listened to at all. It would be regarded as too trivial to merit serious attention. If we take the word "science" in the broad sense to indicate a knowledge of the truth more exact and satisfactory than that which obtains in common life, we may say that every philosophy worthy of the name is, at least, an attempt at scientific knowledge. Of course, this sense of the word "science" should not be confused with that in which it has been used elsewhere in this volume.
87. HOW TO READ THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.—He who takes up the history of philosophy for the first time is apt to be impressed with the fact that he is reading something that might not inaptly be called the history of human error.
It begins with crude and, to the superficial spectator, seemingly childish attempts in the field of physical science. There are clever guesses at the nature of the physical world, but the boldest of speculations are entered upon with no apparent recognition of the difficulty of the task undertaken, and with no realization of the need for caution. Somewhat later a different class of problems makes its appearance—the problems which have to do with the mind and with the nature of knowledge, reflective problems which scarcely seem to have come fairly within the horizon of the earliest thinkers.
These problems even the beginner may be willing to recognize as philosophical; but he may conscientiously harbor a doubt as to the desirability of spending time upon the solutions which are offered. System rises after system, and confronts him with what appear to be new questions and new answers. It seems as though each philosopher were constructing a world for himself independently, and commanding him to accept it, without first convincing him of his right to assume this tone of authority and to set up for an oracle. In all this conflict of opinions where shall we seek for truth? Why should we accept one man as a teacher rather than another? Is not the lesson to be gathered from the whole procession of systems best summed up in the dictum of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things"—each has his own truth, and this need not be truth to another?
This, I say, is a first impression and a natural one. I hasten to add: this should not be the last impression of those who read with thoughtful attention.
One thing should be emphasized at the outset: nothing will so often bear rereading as the history of philosophy. When we go over the ground after we have obtained a first acquaintance with the teachings of the different philosophers, we begin to realize that what we have in our hands is, in a sense, a connected whole. We see that if Plato and Aristotle had not lived, we could not have had the philosophy which passed current in the Middle Ages and furnished a foundation for the teachings of the Church. We realize that without this latter we could not have had Descartes, and without Descartes we could not have had Locke and Berkeley and Hume. And had not these lived, we should not have had Kant and his successors. Other philosophies we should undoubtedly have had, for the busy mind of man must produce something. But whatever glimpses at the truth these men have vouchsafed us have been guaranteed by the order of development in which they have stood. They could not independently have written the books that have come down to us.
This should be evident from what has been said earlier in this chapter and elsewhere in this book. Let us bear in mind that a philosopher draws his material from two sources. First of all, he has the experience of the mind and the world which is the common property of us all. But it is, as we have seen, by no means easy to use this material. It is vastly difficult to reflect. It is fatally easy to misconceive what presents itself in our experience. With the most earnest effort to describe what lies before us, we give a false description, and we mislead ourselves and others.
In the second place, the philosopher has the interpretations of experience which he has inherited from his predecessors. The influence of these is enormous. Each age has, to a large extent, its problems already formulated or half formulated for it. Every man must have ancestors, of some sort, if he is to appear upon this earthly stage at all; and a wholly independent philosopher is as impossible a creature as an ancestorless man. We have seen how Descartes (section 60) tried to repudiate his debt to the past, and how little successful he was in doing so.
Now, we make a mistake if we overlook the genius of the individual thinker. The history of speculative thought has many times taken a turn which can only be accounted for by taking into consideration the genius for reflective thought possessed by some great mind. In the crucible of such an intellect, old truths take on a new aspect, familiar facts acquire a new and a richer meaning. But we also make a mistake if we fail to see in the writings of such a man one of the stages which has been reached in the gradual evolution of human thought, if we fail to realize that each philosophy is to a great extent the product of the past.
When one comes to understand these things, the history of philosophy no longer presents itself as a mere agglomeration of arbitrary and independent systems. And an attentive reading gives us a further key to the interpretation of what seemed inexplicable. We find that there may be distinct and different streams of thought, which, for a while, run parallel without commingling their waters. For centuries the Epicurean followed his own tradition, and walked in the footsteps of his own master. The Stoic was of sterner stuff, and he chose to travel another path. To this day there are adherents of the old church philosophy, Neo-Scholastics, whose ways of thinking can only be understood when we have some knowledge of Aristotle and of his influence upon men during the Middle Ages. We ourselves may be Kantians or Hegelians, and the man at our elbow may recognize as his spiritual father Comte or Spencer.
It does not follow that, because one system follows another in chronological order, it is its lineal descendant. But some ancestor a system always has, and if we have the requisite learning and ingenuity, we need not find it impossible to explain why this thinker or that was influenced to give his thought the peculiar turn that characterizes it. Sometimes many influences have conspired to attain the result, and it is no small pleasure to address oneself to the task of disentangling the threads which enter into the fabric.
Moreover, as we read thus with discrimination, we begin to see that the great men of the past have not spoken without appearing to have sufficient reason for their utterances in the light of the times in which they lived. We may make it a rule that, when they seem to be speaking arbitrarily, to be laying before us reasonings that are not reasonings, dogmas for which no excuse seems to be offered, the fault lies in our lack of comprehension. Until we can understand how a man, living in a certain century, and breathing a certain moral and intellectual atmosphere, could have said what he did, we should assume that we have read his words, but not his real thought. For the latter there is always a psychological, if not a logical, justification.
And this brings me to the question of the language in which the philosophers have expressed their thoughts. The more attentively one reads the history of philosophy, the clearer it becomes that the number of problems with which the philosophers have occupied themselves is not overwhelmingly great. If each philosophy which confronts us seems to us quite new and strange, it is because we have not arrived at the stage at which it is possible for us to recognize old friends with new faces. The same old problems, the problems which must ever present themselves to reflective thought, recur again and again. The form is more or less changed, and the answers which are given to them are not, of course, always the same. Each age expresses itself in a somewhat different way. But sometimes the solution proposed for a given problem is almost the same in substance, even when the two thinkers we are contrasting belong to centuries which lie far apart. In this case, only our own inability to strip off the husk and reach the fruit itself prevents us from seeing that we have before us nothing really new.
Thus, if we read the history of philosophy with patience and with discrimination, it grows luminous. We come to feel nearer to the men of the past. We see that we may learn from their successes and from their failures; and if we are capable of drawing a moral at all, we apply the lesson to ourselves.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOME PRACTICAL ADMONITIONS
88. BE PREPARED TO ENTER UPON A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS.—We have seen that reflective thought tries to analyze experience and to attain to a clear view of the elements that make it up—to realize vividly what is the very texture of the known world, and what is the nature of knowledge. It is possible to live to old age, as many do, without even a suspicion that there may be such a knowledge as this, and nevertheless to possess a large measure of rather vague but very serviceable information about both minds and bodies.
It is something of a shock to learn that a multitude of questions may be asked touching the most familiar things in our experience, and that our comprehension of those things may be so vague that we grope in vain for an answer. Space, time, matter, minds, realities,—with these things we have to do every day. Can it be that we do not know what they are? Then we must be blind, indeed. How shall we set about enlightening our ignorance?
Not as we have enlightened our ignorance heretofore. We have added fact to fact; but our task now is to gain a new light on all facts, to see them from a different point of view; not so much to extend our knowledge as to deepen it.
It seems scarcely necessary to point out that our world, when looked at for the first time in this new way, may seem to be a new and strange world. The real things of our experience may appear to melt away, to be dissolved by reflection into mere shadows and unrealities. Well do I remember the consternation with which, when almost a schoolboy, I first made my acquaintance with John Stuart Mill's doctrine that the things about us are "permanent possibilities of sensation." To Mill, of course, chairs and tables were still chairs and tables, but to me they became ghosts, inhabitants of a phantom world, to find oneself in which was a matter of the gravest concern.
I suspect that this sense of the unreality of things comes often to those who have entered upon the path of reflection, It may be a comfort to such to realize that it is rather a thing to be expected. How can one feel at home in a world which one has entered for the first time? One cannot become a philosopher and remain exactly the man that one was before. Men have tried to do it,—Thomas Reid is a notable instance (section 50); but the result is that one simply does not become a philosopher. It is not possible to gain a new and a deeper insight into the nature of things, and yet to see things just as one saw them before one attained to this.
If, then, we are willing to study philosophy at all, we must be willing to embrace new views of the world, if there seem to be good reasons for so doing. And if at first we suffer from a sense of bewilderment, we must have patience, and must wait to see whether time and practice may not do something toward removing our distress. It may be that we have only half understood what has been revealed to us.
89. BE WILLING TO CONSIDER POSSIBILITIES WHICH AT FIRST STRIKE ONE AS ABSURD.—It must be confessed that the philosophers have sometimes brought forward doctrines which seem repellent to good sense, and little in harmony with the experience of the world which we have all our lives enjoyed. Shall we on this account turn our backs upon them and refuse them an impartial hearing?
Thus, the idealist maintains that there is no existence save psychical existence; that the material things about us are really mental things. 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 assure 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 illustration. 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 substitute 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 assume 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 pass 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 passionate 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 passes 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 circumstances as birth in a given class 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 emancipate 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.