This objection is a common-sense one, and formid¬ able. But, like all philosophic skepticism, rightly understood it will be our best friend. Possibly, in¬ deed, we shall have to complete somehow our notion of the relation of the individual minds to the all-em¬ bracing mind; but meanwhile let us take the objec¬ tion in its worst form. What does it lead to when 372 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY carried to its fullest extent? It leads to absolute skepticism. It says: “ Perhaps then, after all, the relations of our individual thought are such that there is possible for us no foundation whatever for our postulates. They are all in the air. Everything is doubtful. We may be in error everywhere. Cer¬ tainty about the real world beyond is unattainable.” At this point then we are face to face with the utter¬ most theoretical skepticism. What shall we do with it? Why, just what we did with ethical skepticism in an earlier chapter. We must receive it in a friendly spirit, and must find out what it means and assumes. It will, in fact, transform this far-off ex¬ ternal world of the postulates into a true world of Spiritual Life.
One thing this skepticism implies, — one thing so simple as generally to escape notice among the as¬ sumptions of our thought. It implies that we can he in error about an external world. Therefore even this extreme skepticism assumes that there is a differ¬ ence between true and false statements about nature. But now what is involved in saying that a statement is either true or false? To affirm, to deny, to doubt, all imply a real distinction between truth and error; all three then involve in common the assumption that there is such a distinction. That which is in¬ volved alike both in the truth and in the falsity of a statement must itself be certainly true, and cannot be doubted. But what is this assumption implied in the very assertion that a statement about an external world is or may be false? This inquiry we must make if we are to understand our own skepticism.
IDEALISM IDEALISM If we begin this inquiry, we are met at once by a very vexatious paradox. There seems to be an as¬ pect in which all sincere judgments are true. Let us remember the fable of the knights and the shield. Each accused the other of lying. To each the oth¬ er’s account seemed deliberate falsehood. Yet each spoke the truth. Only neither expressed himself fully. Each should have said, “ The shield as it ap¬ pears from my side is golden ” or “ is silver.” But each left out the qualification. Each said the shield, simply. And hence the battle.
But this commonplace about the knights and the shield begins to worry us, when we reflect upon it, by becoming altogether too general in scope. Do we, in fact, ever make sincere assertions about things save as they appear to us? If I say, “ Sugar is pleas¬ ant to the taste,” and my neighbor says, “ Sugar is hateful to the taste,” is this a conflict of veracity? May we not both of us be sincere and truthful in what we say? And are color-blind men lying when they say that there is no difference in color between strawberries and the leaves of the strawberry plant when seen in certain lights? But why is it not just so with all the rest of the things that people say? If you are sincere in what you say, are you not al¬ ways in your assertions simply relating how your ideas appear to you and are grouped? If you say that nothing happens without a cause, do you not mean that what you conceive by the word cause is conceived by you as in connection with every event that you now have in mind? If you say that a straight line is the shortest distance between two 374 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY I points, do you not mean that what you now conceive under the name straight line agrees with what you now mean by shortest distance? Very well then, how can there be any direct opposition between two sincere statements? Your neighbor says that Dar¬ winism is absurd. You say that Darwinism is true. Where now is in fact the controversy? He says that he has two ideas in mind; namely, an idea of what he chooses to call Darwinism, and an idea of what he chooses to call absurdity. He says that these two ideas agree, just as the knight said that his shield (i. e. the shield as seen by him) was silver. You say that your idea of Darwinism agrees with your idea of truth, as the other knight said that the shield as seen by him was golden. Why fight about it? Thus all statements appear to be narratives of what goes on in our own minds. If they are sincere, if we mean them, who shall doubt that they are all true? Can any of us make assertions that are more than clear accounts of how we put our own ideas together? Why may not the thief before the judge sincerely say: “ O judge, my idea of what I call chicken-stealing agrees with my idea of what I call virtue ” And the judge may truthfully reply: “ O rascal, my idea of what I call your chicken-stealing agrees with my idea of what I call detestable petty larceny.” Are these two opinions really opposed, so that one is true, the other erroneous? Are these not rather different aspects of the universe? What is truth, moral or physical? Is not. every investiga¬ tion, every argument, every story, every anticipation, every axiom, every delusion, every creed, every de- IDEALISM nial, just a mere expression of a present union of ideas in somebody? Where do two assertions meet on common ground, so that one can be really true, the other really false? Have different judgments, in different minds or made at different times, any real common object at all? If they have not, how can there be any truth or falsity at all?
This paradox is wild enough if you look at it fairly. And yet many thinkers actually have main¬ tained it under various disguises as the doctrine of what is called the Total Relativity of Truth. Hav¬ ing himself passed through and long tried to hold and to rationalize this doctrine of Relativity, the author has some right to say something in opposition to it. What he has to say can be very briefly put. In its paradoxical form as above stated, the doctrine may be made plausible, and is a suggestive paradox, but it is certainly meaningless. If there is no real distinction between truth and error, then the state¬ ment that there is such a difference is not really false, but only seemingly false. And then in truth there is the distinction once more. Try as you will, you come not beyond the fatal circle. If it is wrong to say that there is Absolute Truth, then the statement that there is absolute truth is itself false. Is it how¬ ever false only relatively, or is it false absolutely? If it is false only relatively, then it is not false abso¬ lutely. Hence the statement that it is false abso¬ lutely is itself false. But false absolutely, or false relatively? And thus you must at last come to some statement that is absolutely false or absolutely true, or else the infinite regress into which you are driven 376 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY makes the very distinction between absolute and rel¬ ative truth lose all its meaning, and your doctrine of total Relativity will also lose meaning. “ No abso¬ lute truth exists,” — can you say this if you want to? At least you must add, “No absolute truth exists save this truth itself, that no absolute truth exists.” Otherwise your statement has no sense. But if you admit this truth, then there is in fact an absolute distinction between truth and error.
And when we here talk of an “ absolute ” distinc¬ tion between truth and error, we mean merely a “ real ” distinction between truth and error. And this real distinction the fiercest partisan of relativ¬ ity admits; for does he not after all argue for rela¬ tivity against “ absolutists,” holding that he is really right, and they really wrong.
Yet, sure though we feel of the distinction, the paradox and its plausibility remain. How have different judgments, made at different times, any real common object at all? If they have none, then where is the postulated distinction of truth and error? What shall we do with our paradox? In what sense can a private opinion of one man be a genuine error? There must be such a thing as real genuine error, or else even our very skepticism fails to have the least sense, and we fall back into the utterly irrational chaos of not being able with truth to say whether we doubt that we are doubting. But yet how shall we explain the possibility of error? For here is an unique and fundamental postulate.
The next chapter shall be devoted to a more special and detailed study of this problem. But already IDEALISM we shall venture to suggest our solution. It is one that needs possibly some little consideration, and the reader will pardon us if we already state it, although we shall repeat it in another form hereafter. In fact, it is a critical matter for our whole discussion. Here, in fact, will be the point where we shall pass from idealism as a bare hypothesis, expressing pos¬ tulates, to idealism as a philosophic doctrine, rest¬ ing upon the deepest possible foundation, namely, on the very difference between truth and error itself. Our logical problem will become for us a treasure- house of ideal truth. But just now we make only a suggestion, to which as yet we can compel no agree¬ ment.
When one says even the perfectly commonplace thing that not all assertions are equally true, that is, that not all of them agree with the objects with which they mean to agree, he really makes an assumption upon which all thinking, all controversy, all the postulates that we previously studied, all science, all morality depend; and, as we maintain, this assump¬ tion is: That the agreement or the disagreement of his judgments with their intended objects exists and has meaning for an actual thought, a con¬ sciousness, to which both these related terms are present, namely, both the judgment and the object wherewith it is to agree. So that, if my thought has objects outside of it with which it can agree or disagree, those objects and that agreement can have meaning, can be possible, only if there is a thought that includes both my thought and the object where¬ with my thought is to agree. This inclusive thought 378 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY must be related to my thought and its objects, as my thought is related to the various partial thoughts that it includes and reduces to unity in any one of my complex assertions. For only by some such unity as this can this higher thought compare my judgment with its object, and so constitute the relation that is implied in the truth or in the error of my thought. So, in the commonplace assump¬ tion that a statement of mine can agree or can fail to agree with its real object, when this object is wholly outside my thought, in this assumption, with¬ out which you can make no rational statement, is contained implicitly the assumption that all reality, spiritual and material, is present in its true nature to an all-embracing, intelligent thought, of which mine is simply one subordinate part or element. In truth, as we shall come to see, regarded in itself, my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas. That is the view of all so-called subjective idealism. But if my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas, then sincerity and truth are identical, truth and error will be alike impossible. What I talk about will be my ideas; their objects will be them¬ selves other ideas of mine, and meaning only these ideas when I make assertions, I cannot fail to make correct assertions about these, the objects that I mean. But thus controversy, progress towards truth, failure to get truth, error, refutation, yes, doubt itself, will all cease to have any meaning whatsoever. But if my thought is related to a higher thought, even as the parts of one of my thoughts are related to the whole thought, then IDEALISM truth and error, as objective truth and objective error, are possible, since my thought and its object, both as I think this object and as it is, are together in the universal thought, of which they form ele¬ ments, and in which they live and move and have their being. As my thoughts have a unity more or less complete in themselves, so all thoughts and ob¬ jects must be postulated as in unity in that thought for which is the whole imi verse. As I can say to myself with solely subjective truth, This line that I mentally picture is in truth shorter for me than that, and to say otherwise is to speak falsely / even so my statement, All straight lines are in all cases shortest lines between their extremities, is true ob¬ jectively, and its contradictory false only in case both the world of possible straight lines and my thoughts about this world are known to a higher thought, are in fact members of a higher thought, which, comparing what I cannot compare, making a synthesis of what is to me separate, unifying what is for me diverse, finds my thought really true or false.
This is the barest outline of a proof by which, in the next chapter, we shall try to reach the position which some call absolute or objective idealism. W e shall find this theory as just set forth a necessary assumption, which we shall make because we want to think clearly, and because we find nothing else that even suggests an answer to the critical questions that trouble us as to the nature of thought. We shall not substitute this conception of reality for the scientific conception. On the contrary, this concep- 380 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY tion will merely undertake, presupposing the scien¬ tific spirit, to include the scientific conception of the world in one that will, as a whole, better satisfy the needs of this scientific spirit itself. Our theory will give us no a 'priori account of facts of expe¬ rience, but a theory of that which makes experience, as a whole, possible. This theory, which we offer as the one rational account of the nature of truth, is the doctrine that the world is in and for a thought, all-embracing, all-knowing, universal, for which are all relations and all truth, a thought that estimates perfectly our imperfect and halting thoughts, a thought in which and for which are we all. No other view, as we shall affirm, offers any chance of a philosophy, nor any hope of even a rational sci¬ entific notion of things.
The reader may be impatient to see, in detail, the argument by which we undertake to establish such a thesis as the foregoing. Of that argument he shall get enough in another chapter. But we ask him to wait yet a moment, while we hint to him the conse¬ quences, for our religious theory, that will flow from our hypothesis when we have got it more certainly in our minds.
The ambiguous relation of the conscious individ¬ uals to the universal thought in the foregoing first statement of our idealism, will be decided in the sense of their inclusion, as elements, in the universal thought. They will indeed not become “ things in the dream” of any other person than themselves, hut their whole reality, just exactly as it is in them, will be found to be but a fragment of a higher IDEALISM reality. This reality will be no Power, nor will it produce the individuals by dreaming of them, but it will complete the existence that in them, as sep¬ arate beings, has no rational completeness. This will be our first result.
Then will follow other thoughts. In so far as there is any objective truth in moral conceptions, this truth is eternally known to this all-embracing thought. If there be moral or immoral acts, they are forever known and judged in and by this all- embracing conscious thought. And thus we shall have found Job’s longed-for, perfect, all -knowing judge. “ He knoweth the way that I take.” Here is an absolute estimate, objectively present in the world, an estimate of all your good and evil deeds. You are a part cf the universal life. Your thoughts are parts of the whole. Your acts form an element in the universe that the great Judge knows. All of you then is known and justly estimated by the ab¬ solute thought that embraces all possible truth, and for whom are all relations, present, past, and future of all possible beings, acts, and thoughts in all places. If there be any virtue, this virtue is known to the infinite thought of the universe. If there be any vice, that vice is estimated, in all its infinite base¬ ness, by the infinite consciousness. Inasmuch as ye do good unto the least of these, ye do it with the universal consciousness as onlooker; your work is all accomplished in the presence of the Absolute.
With this truth before us, we shall be ready to leave unsolved our problems about this or that Power, about this or that future state, about the 382 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY fallen angels, or about the historical justification of God’s ways. The world of Divine Life will be in deepest truth not a Power at all, but the Infinite Knowing One, for whom are all the powers, but who is above them all, beyond them all, — no striving good principle that cannot get realized in a wicked world, but an absolute J udge that perfectly estimates the world. In the contemplation of this truth we may find a religious comfort.
And then, by all this, we shall make the postu¬ lates of our previous chapter appear in a new light. The postulates, we said, express the conditions under which we are determined to do our work. They are expressions of the spirit of courageous devotion to the highest. They find and can find no perfect verification in experience. They dwell in part on the unseen. But they do not resist verifi¬ cation, if any can be offered from a higher source. But this, our new doctrine, if we truly get to it, will offer them their higher verification. Their office will not thereby be vacated or abolished. They will forever remain the maxims of our work. But they will no longer be just leaps in the dark. We shall see that when science assumes rationality, and religion assumes goodness, as at the heart of things, they have neither of them acted vainly. W e shall then have reason to go on assuming both, and to regulate our lives accordingly. Faith of some sort will continue to be our meat and drink; but it will be faith with a philosophical foundation.
The reader will pardon us for having detained him so long in the study of idealism as a bare postu- IDEALISM late, when we have a more serious doctrine behind. The inveterate prejudices and misunderstandings to which idealistic theories fall prey, furnish our excuse for trying to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect form of idealism as a mere postulate, before going on to set forth an absolute idealism as a demonstrable theory.
CHAPTER XI.
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR On ne sert dignement la philosophie qu’avec le meme feu qu’on sent pour une maitresse. — Rousseau, Nouvelle Heloise.
We have before us our theorem, and an outline of its proof. We are here to expand this argument. We have some notion of the magnitude of the is¬ sues that are at stake. We had found ourselves baffled in our search for a certainty by numerous difficulties. We had found only one way remaining so far quite clear. That was the way of postulat¬ ing what the moral consciousness seems to demand about the world beyond experience. For many thinkers since Kant, that way has seemed in fact the only one. They live in a world of action. “ Doubt,” they say, “ clouds all theory. One must act as if the world were the supporter of our moral demands. One must have faith. One must make the grand effort, one must risk all for the sake of the great prize. If the world is against us, still we will not admit the fact until we are crushed. If the cold reality cares naught for our moral efforts, so be it when we come to know the fact, but meanwhile we will act as if legions of angels were ready to sup¬ port our demand for whatever not our selfish inter¬ est, but the great interest of the Good, requires.”
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR 385 Such is the view of the men whose religion is founded upon a Postulate.
We, too, felt that such faith is religious. We were willing to accept it, if nothing better could be found. But we were not content with it. Life has its unheroic days, when mere postulates fail us. At such times we grow weary of toiling, evil seems ac¬ tually triumphant, and, worse than all, the sense that there really is any perfect goodness yet unat¬ tained, that there is any worth or reason in our fight for goodness, seems to desert us. And then it will indeed be well if we can get for ourselves some¬ thing more and better than mere postulates. If we cannot, we shall not seek to hide the fact. Better eternal despondency than a deliberate lie about our deepest thoughts and their meaning. If we are not honest, at least in our philosophy, then are we wholly base. To try once more is not dishonest.
So we did make the effort, and, in the last chap¬ ter, we sketched a result that seemed nearly within our reach. An unexpected result this, because it springs from the very heart of skepticism itself. We doubted to the last extremity. We let every¬ thing go, and then all of a sudden we seemed to find that we could not lose one priceless treasure, try as we would. Our wildest doubt assumed this, namely, that error is possible. And so our wildest doubt as¬ sumed the actual existence of those conditions that make error possible. The conditions that determine the logical possibility of error must themselves be absolute truth, that was the treasure that remained to us amid all our doubts. And how rich that treas- 386 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ure is, we dimly saw in the last discussion. That dim insight we must now try to make clearer. Per¬ haps our previous discussion has shown us that the effort is worth making.
Yet of one thing the reader shall be warned. The path that we travel is hereabouts very thorny and stony. It is a path of difficult philosophical inves¬ tigation. Nobody ought to follow it who does not desire to. We hope that the reader will skip the whole of this chapter unless he wants to find even more of dullness than the rest of this sleepy book has discovered to him. For us, too, the arid way would seem hard, were it not for the precious prize at the end of it.
I.
I.
The story of the following investigation shall first be very briefly told. The author had long sought, es¬ pecially in the discussions of Kant’s “ Kritik,” and in the books of the post-Kantians, for help in see¬ ing the ultimate principles that lie at the basis of knowledge. He had found the old and well-known troubles. Experience of itself can give no certainty about general principles. We must therefore, said Kant, bring our own principles with us to experi¬ ence. We know then of causation, because causa¬ tion is a fundamental principle of our thought, whereby we set our experience to rights. And so long as we think, we shall think into experience the connection of cause and effect, which otherwise would not be there. But hereupon the questions arose that have so often been asked of Kant and the Kantians THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR Why just these principles and no others? “ That is inexplicable,” replies Kant. Very well, then, suppose we give up applying to experience those ar¬ bitrary principles of ours. Suppose we choose to stop thinking of experience as causally connected. What then? “But you cannot stop,” says Kant, “ Your thought, being what it is, must follow this one fashion forever.” Nay, we reply, how knowest thou that, Master? Why may not our thought get a new fashion some day? And then what is now a necessary principle, for example, that every event has a cause, would become unnecessary or even non¬ sensical. Do we then know a priori that our a priori principles must always remain such? If so, how come we by this new knowledge?
So Kant leaves us still uncertain about any fun¬ damental principles upon which a sure knowledge of the world can be founded.
Let us, then, examine a little deeper. Are there any certain judgments possible at all? If one is skeptical in a thorough - going way, as the aut or tried to be, he is apt to reach, through an effort to revise Kant’s view, a position something like the fol¬ lowing,— a provisional position of course, but one that results from the effort to accept nothing with¬ out criticism: “ Kant’s result is that our judgments about the real world are founded on an union ot thought and sense, thought giving the appearance o necessity to our judgment, sense giving the materia. The necessity of any judgment amounts then on y o what may be summed up in the words: So the pres¬ ent union of thought and sense makes things opr 388 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY