Notes

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_ LECTURE I

Note 1, page 5.--Bailey: _op. cit._, First Series, p. 52.

Note 2, page 11.--_Smaller Logic_, Sec. 194.

Note 3, page 16.--_Exploratio philosophica_, Part I, 1865, pp. xxxviii, 130.

Note 4, page 20.--Hinneberg: _Die Kultur der Gegenwart: Systematische Philosophie_. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907.

LECTURE II

Note 1, page 50.--The difference is that the bad parts of this finite are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had not been.

Note 2, page 51.--Quoted by W. Wallace: _Lectures and Essays_, Oxford, 1898, p. 560.

Note 3, page 51.--_Logic_, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181.

Note 4, page 52.--_Ibid._, p. 304.

Note 5, page 53.--_Contemporary Review_, December, 1907, vol. 92, p. 618.

Note 6, page 57.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 69 ff.

Note 7, page 62.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. i, pp. 131-132.

Note 8, page 67.--A good illustration of this is to be found in a controversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in _Mind_ for 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that 'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute identity and absolute non-comparability.

Note 9, page 75.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 184.

Note 10, page 75.--_Appearance and Reality_, 1893, pp. 141-142.

Note 11, page 76.--Cf. _Elements of Metaphysics_, p. 88.

Note 12, page 77.--_Some Dogmas of Religion_, p. 184.

Note 13, page 80.--For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley's intellectualism, see Appendix A.

LECTURE III

Note 1, page 94.--Hegel, _Smaller Logic_, pp. 184-185.

Note 2, page 95.--Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of contradiction in his _Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. ii, sec. 1, chap, ii, C, Anmerkung 3.

Note 3, page 95--_Hegel_, in _Blackwood's Philosophical Classics_, p. 162.

Note 4, page 95--_Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap, ii, B, a.

Note 5, page 96--Wallace's translation of the _Smaller Logic_, p. 128.

Note 6, page 101--Joachim, _The Nature of Truth_, Oxford, 1906, pp. 22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them.

Note 7, page 115.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 385, 386, 409.

Note 8, page 116.--The best _un_inspired argument (again not ironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins's excellent book, _The Persistent Problems of Philosophy_, Macmillan, 1902.

Note 9, page 117.--Cf. Dr. Fuller's excellent article,' Ethical monism and the problem of evil,' in the _Harvard Journal of Theology_, vol. i, No. 2, April, 1908.

Note 10, page 120.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 79.

Note 11, page 121.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, secs. 150, 153.

Note 12, page 121.--_The Nature of Truth_, 1906, pp. 170-171.

Note 13, page 121.--_Ibid._, p. 179.

Note 14, page 123.--The psychological analogy that certain finite tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together, cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential elements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable parts.

Note 15, page 128.--Judging by the analogy of the relation which our central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving of other human contents.

LECTURE IV

Note 1, page 143.--_The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 227.

Note 2, page 165.--Fechner: _Ueber die Seelenfrage_, 1861, p. 170.

Note 3, page 168.--Fechner's latest summarizing of his views, _Die Tagesansicht gegenueber der Nachtansicht_, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I understand, in process of translation. His _Little Book of Life after Death_ exists already in two American versions, one published by Little, Brown & Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago.

Note 4, page 176.--Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted from my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of non-human consciousness in his _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 269-272.

LECTURE V

Note 1, page 182.--Royce: _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 379.

Note 2, page 184.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 58-62.

Note 3, page 190.--I hold to it still as the best description of an enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They demonstrably do not _contain_ the lower states that know the same objects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the _Psychological Review_ for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp. 119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,' leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case.

Note 4, page 194.--I abstract from the consciousness attached to the whole itself, if such consciousness be there.

LECTURE VI

Note 1, page 250.--For a more explicit vindication of the notion of activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic critics.

I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no insight?

To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _What he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. He but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a freedom before?

By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order, with particular relations between them. These relations are just as much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. To know all this truth is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing _happens_ in the realm of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic gain fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right in turning us away from conception and towards perception.

By combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the distribution_ of other percepts in distant space and time. To know this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists.

But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new _values_ into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to touch--Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement of life's value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused.

Abstractness _per se_ seems to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S 'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE contends, in his _Philosophy of Loyalty_, appears another thing altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. It transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a 'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling successes.' (_Op. cit._, Lecture VII, especially Sec. v.)

Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new _value_ to be regarded as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for altho a value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, so here again Bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own vital careers differently. It doesn't necessarily follow that they understand other vital careers more intimately.

Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not, of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. This surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called a theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson's criticisms hold good. Much as conception may tell us _about_ such invisible objects, it sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed, our definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned in such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about among our sensible experiences.

We see from these considerations how easily the question of whether the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into a logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to recognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is certain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right in contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the _whats_ as well as the _thats_ of reality, relational as well as terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. Yet the remoter unperceived _arrangements_, temporal, spatial, and logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need, according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of what we ought to know.

Note 2, page 266.--Gaston Rageot, _Revue Philosophique_, vol. lxiv, p. 85 (July, 1907).

Note 3, page 268.--I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly as I could, in my _Psychology_, and talked truly (as I believe) in certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly comes back.

LECTURE VII

Note 1, page 278.--_Introduction to Hume_, 1874, p. 151.

Note 2, page 279.--_Ibid._, pp. 16, 21, 36, _et passim_.

Note 3, page 279.--See, _inter alia_, the chapter on the 'Stream of Thought' in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius, _Psychologie_, 1897, chaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, _Idees Generales de Psychologie_, 1906, _passim_.

Note 4, page 280.--Compare, as to all this, an article by the present writer, entitled 'A world of pure experience,' in the _Journal of Philosophy_, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905).

Note 5, page 280.--Green's attempt to discredit sensations by reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already _named_, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism is dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green as synonymous with the unreal.

Note 6, page 283.--_Philosophy of Reflection_, i, 248 ff.

Note 7, page 284.--Most of this paragraph is extracted from an address of mine before the American Psychological Association, printed in the _Psychological Review_, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in the fact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present bergsonian position.

Note 8, page 289.--The conscious self of the moment, the central self, is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. It is the present _acting_ self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be 'subconscious' to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also exerts an active function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, over our heads.

On the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson's _Matiere et Memoire, passim_, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in Muensterberg's _Grundzuege der Psychologie_, chap, xv; those in my own _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W. McDougall's _Physiological Psychology_, chap. vii.

Note 9, page 295.--Compare _Zend-Avesta_, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165 ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; _Die Tagesansicht_, etc., chap, v, Sec. 6; and chap. xv.

LECTURE VIII

Note 1, page 330.--Blondel: _Annales de Philosophie Chretienne_, June, 1906, p. 241. _

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