We can hardly suppose that in the Whole this balance of pain and unrest could go on quite unperceived, shut off from the intellect in some by-world of mere feeling or sensation. And, if it were so, the intellect itself would by this have been made imperfect. For, failing to be all-inclusive, it would have become limited from the outside and so defective, and so by consequence also internally discordant. The pain therefore must be taken to enter into the world of perception and thought; and, if so, we must assume it to show itself in some form of dislike, aver- sion, longing or regret, or in short as a mode of unsatisfied desire. But unsatisfied desire involves, and it must involve, an idea which at once qualifies a sensation and is discordant with it. The reader will find this explained above in the Note to pp. 96-100, as well as in Mind, No. 49. The apple, for instance, which you want to eat and which you cannot reach, is a presentation together with an ideal adjective logically contrary thereto; and if you could, by a distinction in the subject of the inconsistent adjectives, remove this logical contradiction,1 the desire so far also would be gone. Now in a total Universe which owns a balance of pain and of unsatisfied desire, I do not see that the contradiction inherent in this unsatisfied desire could possibly 1 See Note A.
be resolved. The possibility of resolution depends (as we know) on rearrangement within the whole, and it presupposes that in the end no element of idea contrary to presentation is left outstanding. And if the Reality were not the complete identity of idea and existence, but had, with an outstanding element of pain, a necessary overplus of unsatisfied desire, and had so on the whole an element of outstanding idea not at one with sensation — the possibility of resolving this contradiction would seem in principle excluded. The collision could be shifted at most from point to point within the whole, but for the whole always it would remain. Hence, because a balance of pain seems to lead to unsatisfied desire, and that to logical collision, we can argue indirectly to a state at least free from pain, if not to a balance of pleasure. And I believe this conclusion to be sound.
Objections, I am well aware, will be raised from various sides, and I cannot usefully attempt to anticipate them, but on one or two points I will add a word of explanation. It will or may be objected that desire does not essentially involve an idea. Now though I am quite convinced that this objection is wrong, and though I am ready to discuss it in detail, I cannot well do so here. I will however point out that, even if conation without idea at a certain stage exists, yet in the Whole we can hardly take that to continue unperceived. And, as soon as it is perceived, I would submit that then it will imply both an idea and a contra- diction. And, without dwelling further on this point, I will pass on to another. It has been objected that whatever can be explained is harmonious intellectually, and that a miserable Universe might be explained by science, and would therefore be intellectually perfect But, I reply at once, the intellect is very far from being satisfied by a u scientific explanation," for that in the end is never consistent. In the end it connects particulars unintelligibly with an unintelligible law, and such an external con- nection is not a real harmony. A real intellectual harmony involves, I must insist, the perfect identity throughout of idea with existence. And if ideas of what should be, and what is not, were in the majority (as in a miserable Universe they must be), there could not then, I submit, be an intellectual harmony.
My conclusion, I am fully aware, has not been demonstrated (p. 534). The unhappincss of the world remains a possibility to be emphasized by the over-doubtful or gloomy. This possibility, so far as I see, cannot be removed except through a perfect understanding of, or, to say the least, about both pain and pleasure. If we had a complete knowledge otherwise of the world in system, such that nothing possible fell outside it, and if that complete system owned a balance of pleasure, the case would be altered. But since even then, so far as I can compre- hend, this balance of pleasure remains a mere external fact, and 6l2 EXPLANATORY NOTES.
is not and cannot be internally understood to qualify the system, the system would have to be in the completest sense all-inclusive and exhaustive. Any unknown conditions, such as I have admitted, on p. 535, would have to be impossible. But for myself I cannot believe that such knowledge is within our grasp; and, so far as pleasure is concerned, I have to end with a result the opposite of which I cannot call completely impossible.
/. 206. In what I have said here about the sense of Time, I am not implying that in my view it is there from the first. On the contrary I think the opposite is more probable; but I saw no use in expressing an opinion.
Chapter xviii. The main doctrines put forward in this Chapter and in Chapter iv, have been criticised incidentally by Professor Watson in the Philosophical Review for July and Sep- tember 1895. In these articles I have to my regret often found it impossible to decide where Professor Watson is criticising myself, or some other writer, and where again he is developing something which he takes to be more or less our common property. And where he is plainly criticising myself, I cannot always discover the point of the criticism. Hence what follows must be offered as subject to some doubt.
The main doctrine to which I am committed, and which Professor Watson certainly condemns, is the regarding Time " as not an ultimate or true determination of reality but a ' mere appearance.'"1 Professor Watson, with some other critics, has misunderstood the words 'mere appearance.'2 The point he wishes to make, I presume, is this, that everything determines Reality in its own place and degree, and therefore everything has its truth. And I myself have also laid stress on this point. But, agreeing so far, Professor Watson and myself seem to differ as follows. Though he agrees that as a determination of Reality time is inadequate and partial and has to be corrected by some- thing more true, Professor Watson objects to my calling it not an ultimate or true determination, and he denies that it is self- contradictory and false. Now here I have to join issue. I deny that time or anything else could possibly be inadequate, if it were not self-contradictory. And I would ask, If this or any other determination is a true and consistent one, how are we to take on ourselves to correct it? This doctrine of a merely external correction of what is not false, and this refusal to admit the internal inconsistency of lower points of view, though we have to attribute it to Professor Watson, is certainly not explained by him. I venture however to think that some explanation is required, and in the absence of it I must insist both that time is inconsistent, and that, if it were not so, it would also not be 1 Phil. Rev. p. 489. • See above pp. 557-8.
EXPLANATORY NOTES. 613 inadequate, and again that no idea can be inadequate if it is not more or less false. This is the main point on which Professor Watson and myself seem to differ.
In reply to detail it is hard for me to say anything where I so often fail to apprehend. As I do not hold " a pure continuous quantity " to be self-consistent, how, when time is regarded thus, am I affected? How is it relevant to urge that time " can be thought," when the question is whether it can be thought con- sistently, and surely not in the least whether it can be thought at all? And if it is so easy to understand that the idea of change is not really inconsistent, cannot Professor Watson formulate it for us in a way which is true and ultimate, and then explain what right he has to treat it as calling for correction? The objection — to turn to another point — raised against the doctrine of distinct time-series,1 I am unable to follow. Why and how does this doctrine rest on the (obviously false) view of time's independent reality? Why, because time is an aspect of the one reality, must all series in time have a temporal unity? Why again must there be only one causal order? Where again and why am I taken as holding that "pure time" has direction? With regard to these criticisms I can only say that I find them incom prehensible.
Nor do I understand what in the end Professor Watson thinks < about the ultimate truth of succession and change. The view of Reality as one self-consciousness realizing itself in many self- consciousnesses does not, so far as Professor Watson has stated it, appear to my mind to contain any answer whatever to this question. The many selves seem (we know) to themselves to be i \ a succession of events, past, present and future. By a succession I do not of course mean a mere succession, but still I mean a succession. Well, all this birth and death, arising and perishing \ of individuals, is it ultimately true and real or is it not? For myself, I reply that it is not so. I reply that these successive individuals are an appearance, necessary to the Absolute, but still an appearance, self-inconsistent, mixing truth with falsehood, and — if and so far as you offer it by itself as the truth — then not the truth but a mere appearance. And I have answered this question as best I could, because it seemed to me a question that must be answered by any one who undertakes seriously to deal with the Absolute and the Time -process. And I do not say that Professor Watson has not answered this question at all. But, if he has answered it, I am myself unable to discover what his answer means.
On the subject of time the reader may consult with advantage ■ paper by Mr. Bosanquet in the J'roceediti^s 0/ tfu Aristotelian Society^ Vol. iii, No. 2.
6 14 EXPLANATORY NOTES.
pp. 253-4. With regard to the window-frame the possible objection which I had in my mind was the reply, 'But a frame surely is at least as real as a window-pane.' That objection, so far as I know, has not yet been made. I have however seen this urged, that, when limited transparencies are gone, we are left with empty space. But I cannot, imagine why through my window should come nothing but white light, and I see nothing but blank space. Why must a transparent window, when I look through it, be a mere formless translucency?
p. 256. With regard to Redintegration — without wishing to commit myself to any decided view — I have assumed that to be fact which is generally taken to be so, viz., that among the members of a series there is reproduction only forwards, i.e. from a to b and not also from b to a. The first member in the series cannot therefore be recalled by any later member directly. This must be done indirectly and through the common character and the unity of the series. This character, because associated with the whole series inclusive of the end, can, given the end, recall the beginning. But in what this character and unity consists is a most difficult problem. It is a problem however which calls for treatment by any one who tries to deal systematically with the principles of psychology. It will be understood that in this Note I am speaking of mere serial reproduction, but that on the other hand I am not assuming that even reproduction forwards, from a to b, can be taken ultimately as merely direct. l Chapter xxi. In Part III, Chapter iii, of Mr. Hobhouse's work on the Theory of Knowledge, I find an argument against " subjective idealism " which it may be well to consider briefly. The same argument would appear also suited, if not directed, to prove the reality of primary qualities taken as bare. And though this is very probably not intended, and though I find the argument in any case difficult to follow, I will criticise it, so far as I understand it, from both points of view.
The process seems to consist, as was natural, in an attempt at removal by elimination of all the conditions of a relation A-B, until A-B is left true and real by itself. And A-B in the present case is to be a relation of naked primary qualities, or again a relation of something apart from and independent of myself. After some assertions as to the possibility of eliminating in turn all other psychical facts but my perceptive conscious- ness— assertions which seem to me, as I understand them, to be wholly untenable and quite contrary to fact — the naked independence of A-B appears to be proved thus. Take a state of things where one term of the connection is observed, and the other is not observed. We have still here to infer the existence of the term unobserved, but an existence, because unobserved, free (let us say first) from all secondary qualities.
EXPLANATORY NOTES. 615 But I should have thought myself that the conclusion which follows is quite otherwise. I should have said that what was proved from the premises was not that A-B exists naked, but that A-B, if unconditioned, is false and unreal, and ought never to have been asserted at all except as a useful working Action. In other words the observed absence of one of the terms from its place, i.e. the field of observation, is not a proof that this term exists elsewhere, but is rather here a negative instance to disprove the assumed universal A-B, if that is taken unconditionally. Of course if you started by supposing A-B to be unconditionally true, you would at the start have assumed the conclusion to be proved And, taken as directed against Solipsism, the argument once more is bad, as I think any argument against Solipsism must be, unless it begins by showing that the premises of Solipsism are in part erroneous. But any attempt at refutation by way of elimin- ation seems to me even to be absurd. For in any observation to find in fact the absence of all Ccenesthesia and inner feeling of self is surely quite impossible. Nor again would the Solipsist lightly admit that his self was co-extensive merely with what at any one time is present to him. And if further the Solipsist admits that he cannot explain the course of outward experience, any more than he can explain the sequence of his inmost feelings, and that he uses all such abstract universals as your A-B simply as useful fictions, how can you, by such an argument as the above, show that he contradicts himself? A failure to explain is certainly not always an inconsistency, and to prove that a view is unsatisfactory is not always to demonstrate that it is false. Mr. Hobhouse's crucial instance to prove the reality of A-B apart from the self could to the Solipsist at most show a sequence that he was unable to explain.1 How in short in this way you are to drive him out of his circle I do not see — unless of course he is obliging enough to contradict himself in advance by allowing the possibility of A-B existing apart, or being real or true independently and unconditionally.
The Solipsist, while he merely maintains the essential necessity of his self to the Universe and every part of it, cannot in my opinion be refuted, and so far certainly he is right For, except as a relative point of view, there is no apartness or independence in the Universe. It is not by crude attempts at elimination that 1 The position of the Solipsist I understand to be this, that no reality oc (act has any existence or meaning except the reality of his self. And when he is pressed as to an order of phenomena which he cannot explain, I do not see how on and from his own premises he is to be precluded from appealing to unknown conditions in his self. 'Surely,' he might rcnly, *on any view no one can actually explain everything, and merely for the sake of explaining things somewhat better I decline to assert what is demonstrable nonsense. And the only proper course is, as I have pointed out, to show that his premises arc partly mistaken.
6l6 EXPLANATORY NOTES.
you can deal with the Solipsist, but rather (as in this chapter I have explained) by showing that the connection which he maintains, though really essential, has not the character which he assigns to it. You may hope to convince him that he himself commits the same fault as is committed by the assertor of naked primary qualities, or of things existing quite apart from myself — the fault, that is, of setting up as an independent reality a mere abstraction from experience. You refute the Solipsist, in short, by showing how experience, as he has conceived it, has been wrongly divided and onesidedly narrowed.
p. 268. On the question whether and how far psychical states are extended, see an article in Mind, N.S. No. 14.
^.273. I would here request the reader's attention to the fact that, while for me "soul" and "finite centre" are not the same (p. 529), I only distinguish between them where it seems necessary.
p. 313. In the fourth line from the bottom of this page I have altered "the same. Or" into "the same, or." The full stop was, I presume, inserted by an error. In any case I have removed it, since it may lead some reader, if not careful, to take the words "we should call them the same" absolutely. This in fact I find has been done, but the meaning was not really, I think, obscure. I am in the first place not maintaining that no continuous existence at all is wanted for the individual identity of a soul or of anything else. On the contrary I have in several places asserted the opposite. I am speaking here merely of an interval and a breach in continuous existence. And I certainly am not saying that all of us would as a fact assert individual identity despite this breach or interval. I am pointing out that, whether we assert it or deny it, we are standing in each case, so far as I can see, on no defensible principle.
I am far from maintaining that my answer to the question, "What is the soul, especially during those intervals where there seems to be no consciousness," is wholly satisfactory. But willing and indeed anxious as I am to receive instruction on this matter from my critics, I cannot say that I have been able as yet to gain the smallest fresh light on it.
p> 333* Without entering here into detail, I will venture to make a remark which I cannot think quite uncalled-for. You cannot by making use of a formula, such as " psycho-physical parallelism" — or even a longer formula — absolve yourself from facing the question as to the causal succession of events in the body and the mind. When we say, for example, that the physical prick of a pin causes pain, is this assertion in any sense true or is it quite false? Is the pain not really to any extent, directly or indirectly, the effect of the prick? And, EXPLANATORY NOTES. 617 if it is not, of what else is it the effect, or can it again happen quite uncaused and itself be effectless? Clear answers to these questions are, I should say, more easily sought than found.
/. 348. On the question whether and in what sense difference depends on a relation, see Note B, and for a discussion of Resemblance, see Note C. The controversy, mentioned in the footnote to p. 348, was continued in Mind, N.S. Nos. 7 and 8, and I would venture to refer any reader interested in the matter to it /• 356. On the topic of Association holding only between universals the reader should consult Hegel, Encyklopddie, §§ //• 363-4- The argument in these pages, the reader will observe, depends on the truth of certain doctrines. (a) A merely external relation has no meaning or existence, for a relation must (at least to some extent) qualify its terms, (b) Relations imply a unity in which they subsist, and apart from which they have no meaning or existence, (e) Every kind of diversity, both terms and relations alike are adjectives of one reality, which exists in them and without which they are nothing. These doctrines are taken as having been already proved both in the body of this work and in the Appendix.
From this basis we can go on to argue as follows. Everything finite, because somehow together in one whole with everything else, must, because this whole is one above the level of bare feeling, co-exist with the rest at the very least relationally. Hence everything must somehow, at least to some extent, be qualified from the outside. And this qualification, because only relational (to put it here in this way), cannot fall wholly inside the thing. Hence the finite is internally inconsistent with and contradicts itself. And whether the external qualification is merely conjoined in some unintelligible way to its inner nature, or is connected with that intrinsically — may for our present purpose be ignored. For anyhow, however it comes about, the finite as a fact will contradict itself.
From the side of the Whole the same result is manifest For that is itself at once both any one finite and also what is beyond. And, because no 'together' can in the end be merely external, therefore the Whole within the finite carries that outside itself.
By an attempt to fall back upon mire feeling below relations nothing would be gained. For with the loss of the relations, and with the persistence of the unity, even the appearance of in- dependence on the part of the diversity is gone. And again feeling is self-transcendent, and is perfected mainly by way of relations, and always in a Whole that both is above them and involves them (p. 583).
6l8 EXPLANATORY NOTES.
The way to refute the above would be, I presume, to show (a) that merely external relations have in the end, and as ultimate facts, a meaning and reality, and to show (£) that it is possible to think the togetherness of the terms and the external relations— for somehow, I suppose, they are together — without a self-contra- diction, manifest directly or through an infinite process of seeking relations between relations and terms.
p. 366, footnote. I may remark here that I am still persuaded that there is in the end no such thing as the mere entertainment of an idea, and that I, for example, went wrong when in my book on Logic I took this to exist. It seems to be, on the contrary, the abstraction of an aspect which by itself does not exist. See Mind, N.S., No. 60.
p. 398, footnote. To the references given here add Mind, N.S., iv, pp. 20, 21 and pp. 225, 226.
Chapter xxiv. The doctrine of the Criterion adopted by me has in various quarters been criticised, but, so far, I venture to think, mainly without much understanding of its nature. The objections raised, for example, by Mr. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 495-6, I cannot understand in any sense which would render them applicable. I will however in this con- nection make some statements which will be brief, if perhaps irrelevant.
(i) I have never held that the criterion is to be used apart from, instead of on, the data furnished by experience, (ii) I do not teach that, where incompatible suggestions are possible, we must or may affirm any one of them which we fail to perceive to be internally inconsistent. I hold on the contrary that we must use and arrange all available material (and that of course includes every available suggestion) so that the reality qualified by it all will answer, so far as is possible, to our criterion of a harmonious system. On this point I refer specially to Chapters xvi, xxiv, and xxvii, the doctrines of which, I venture to add, should not be taken as non-existent where my views are in question, (iii) I do not think that where a further alternative is possible a disjunc- tion is complete. But I have always held, and do hold, J. S. Mill's idea of the Unmeaning as a third possibility to be the merest nonsense, (iv) I do not admit but deny the assumption that, if our knowledge could be consistent, it could then be made from the outside to contradict itself, (v) And I reject the idea that, so far as our knowledge is absolute, we can rationally enter- tain the notion of its being or becoming false. Any such idea, I have tried to show, is utterly unmeaning. And on the other hand, so far as our knowledge is liable to error, it is so precisely so far as it does not answer to the criterion, (vi) Finally I