Disappointed once more in our efforts to under¬ stand how error is possible, we turn to another class of cases, which lie in a direction where, at least for this once, all will surely be plain. Errors about matters of fact or experience are certainly clear enough in nature. And as this class of errors is practically most important, the subtleties of our pre¬ vious investigation may be dismissed with light heart so soon as we have gotten rid of the few little ques¬ tions that will now beset us. It is to be noted that all errors about material objects, about the laws of nature, about history, and about the future, are alike errors about our actual or possible experiences. We expect or postulate an experience that at the given time, or under the given conditions, turns out to be other than it was postulated or expected to be. Now since our experiences not now present are objec¬ tive facts, and capable of clear definition, it would seem clear that error concerning them is an easily comprehensible thing.
But alas! again we are disappointed. That er¬ rors in matters of experience are common enough is 418 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY indubitable, but equally evident becomes the diffi¬ culty of defining what they are and how they are possible. Take the case of error about an expected future. What do we mean by a future time? How do we identify a particular time? Both these ques¬ tions plunge us into the sea of problems about the nature of time itself. When I say, Thus and so will it he at such and such a future moment, I pos¬ tulate certain realities not now given to my con¬ sciousness. And singular realities they are. For they have now no existence at all. Yet I postulate that I can err about them. This their non-existence is a peculiar kind of non-existence, and requires me to make just such and such affirmations about it. If I fail to correspond to the true nature of this non-existent reality, I make an error; and it is pos¬ tulated not merely that my present statement will in that case hereafter turn out false or become false, but also that it is now false, is at this moment an error, even though the reality with which it is to agree is centuries off in the future. But this is not all the difficulty. I postulate also that an error in prediction can be discovered when the time comes by the failure of the prediction to verify itself. I postulate then that I can look back and say: Thus and thus I predicted about this moment, and thus and thus it has come to pass, and this event con¬ tradicts that expectation. But can I in fact ever accomplish this comparison at all? And is the com¬ parison very easily intelligible? For when the event comes to pass, the expectation no longer exists. The two thoughts, namely, expectation and actual expo- THE POSSIBILITY- OF ERROR rience, are separate thoughts, far apart in time. How can I bring them together to compare them, so as to see if they have the same object? It will not do to appeal to memory for the purpose; for the same question would recur about the memory in its relation to the original thought. How can a past thought, being past, be compared to a present thought to see whether they stand related? The past thought lived in itself, had its own ideas of what it then called future, and its own interpretation thereof. How can you show, or intelligently affirm, that the conception which the past expectation had of its future moment is so identical with the conception which this present thought has of this present mo¬ ment, as to make these two conceived moments one and the same? Here in short we have supposed two different ideas, one of an expected future, the other of an experienced present, and we have supposed the two ideas to be widely separated in time, and by hypothesis they are not together in one consciousness at all. Now how can one say that in fact they relate to the same moment at all? How is it intelligible to say that they do? How, in fine, can a not-given future be a real object of any thought; and how, when it is once the object thereof, can any subse¬ quent moment be identified with this object?
A present thought and a past thought are in fact separate, even as were John and Thomas. Each one means the object that it thinks. How can they have a common object? Are they not once for all different thoughts, each with its own intent? But in order to render intelligible the existence of error 420 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY about matters of fact, we must make the unintelligi¬ ble assumption, so it would seem, that these two dif¬ ferent thoughts have the same intent, and are but one. And such is the difficulty that we find in our second great class of cases.
VII.
So much for the problem, both m general and in some particular instances. But now may not the reader insist, after all, that there can be in this wise no errors whatever? Contradictory as it seems, have we not, after all, put our judgments into a position whence escape for us is impossible? If every judg¬ ment is thus by its nature bound up in a closed cir¬ cle of thought, with no outlook, can any one come afterwards and give it an external object? Perhaps, then, there is a way out of our difficulty by frankly saying that our thoughts may be neither truths nor errors beyond themselves, but just occurrences, with a meaning wholly subjective.
We desire the reader to try to realize this view of total relativity once more in the form in which, with all its inherent absurdities, it now comes back to us for the last time. It says, “ Every judgment, A is B, in fact does agree and can agree only with its own object, which is present in mind when it is made. W ith no external object can it agree or fail to agree. It stands alone, with its own object. It has neither truth nor error beyond itself. It fulfills all its inten¬ tions, and is true, if it agrees with what was present to it when it was thought. Only in this sense is there any truth or falsity possible for our thought.’'
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR But once more, this inviting way out of the diffi¬ culty needs only to be tried to reveal its own contra¬ dictions. The thought that says, “ No judgment is true beyond itself,” is that thought true beyond it¬ self or not? If it is true beyond itself, then we have the possibility of other truth than the merely subjec¬ tive or relative truth. If it is false, then equally we have objective falsity. If it is neither true nor false, then the doctrine of relativity has not been affirmed at all as a truth. One sets up an idea of a world of separate, disorganized thoughts, and then says, “ Each of them deals only with its own object, and they have no unity that could make them true or false.” But still this world that one thus sets up must be the true world. Else is there no meaning in the doc¬ trine of relativity. Twist as one will, one gets not out of the whirlpool of thought. Error must be real, and yet, as common sense arranges these judgments and their relations to one another, error cannot be real. There is so far no escape.
The perfectly general character of the argument must be understood. One might escape it if it ap¬ plied to any one class of errors only. Then one would say: “ In fact, the class of cases in question may be cases that exclude the possibility of both truth and error.” But no, that cannot be urged against us, for our argument applies equally to all possible errors. In short, either no error at all is possible, or else there must be possible an infinite mass of error. For the possibilities of thought being infinite, either all thought is excluded once for all from the possibility of error, or else to every possi- 422 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ble truth there can be opposed an infinite mass of error. All this infinite mass is at stake upon the issue of our investigation. Total relativity, or else an infinite possibility of truth and error; that is the alternative before us. And total relativity of thought involves self-contradiction.
Every way but one has been tried to lead us out of our difficulty. Shall we now give up the whole matter, and say that error plainly exists, but baffles definition? This way may please most people, but the critical philosophy knows of no unanswerable problem affecting the work of thought in itself con¬ sidered. Here we need only patience and reflection, and we are sure to be some day rewarded. And in¬ deed our solution is not far off, but very nigh us. We have indicated it all along. To explain how one could be in error about his neighbor’s thoughts, we suggested the case where John and Thomas should be present to a third thinker whose thought should include them both. We objected to this sug¬ gestion that thus the natural presupposition that John and Thomas are separate self -existent beings would be contradicted. But on this natural presupposition neither of these two subjects could become object to the other at all, and error would here be impossible. Suppose then that we drop the natural presuppo¬ sition, and say that John and Thomas are both actu¬ ally present to and included in a third and higher thought. To explain the possibility of error about matters of fact seemed hard, because of the natural postulate that time is a pure succession of separate moments, so that the future is now as future non-ex* THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR istent, and so that judgments about the future lack real objects, capable of identification. Let us then drop this natural postulate, and declare time once for all present in all its moments to an universal all-inclusive thought. And to sum up, let us over¬ come all our difficulties by declaring that all the many Beyonds, which single significant judgments seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are pres¬ ent as fully realized intended objects to the unity of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or false, are but fragments, the whole being at once Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. Then all our puzzles will disappear at a stroke, and error will be possible, because any one finite thought, viewed in relation to its own intent, may or may not be seen by this higher thought as successful and adequate in this intent.
How this absolute thought is to be related to in¬ dividual thoughts, we can in general very simply de¬ fine. When one says: “ This color now before me is red, and to say that it is blue would be to make a blunder,” one represents an including consciousness. One includes in one’s present thought three distinct elements, and has them present in the unity of a sin¬ gle moment of insight. These elements are, first, the perception of red; secondly, the reflective judg¬ ment whose object is this perception, and whose agreement with the object constitutes its own truth; and, thirdly, the erroneous reflection, This is blue, which is in the same thought compared with the per¬ ception and rejected as error. Now, viewed as sep- 424 THE RELIGIOUS ASrECT OF PHILOSOPHY arate acts of thought, apart from the unity of an in¬ cluding thought, these three elements would give rise to the same puzzles that we have been considering. It is their presence in a higher and inclusive thought that makes their relations plain. Even so we must conceive the relation of J ohn’s thought to the united total of thought that includes him and Thomas. Real John and his phantom Thomas, real Thomas and his phantom J ohn, are all present as elements in the including consciousness, which completes the in¬ complete intentions of both the individuals, con¬ stitutes their true relations, and gives the thought of each about the other whatever of truth or of error it possesses. In short, error becomes possible as one moment or element in a higher truth, that is, in a consciousness that makes the error a part of itself, while recognizing it as error.
So far then we propose this as a possible solution for our puzzles. But now we may insist upon it as the only possible solution. Either there is no such thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contra¬ diction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is present all possible truth. For suppose that there is error. Then there must be an infinite mass of error possible. If error is possible at all, then as many errors are possible as you please, since, to every truth, an indefinite mass of error may be opposed. Nor is this mere possibility enough. An error is possible for us when we are able to make a false judgment. But in order that the judgment should be false when made, it must have been false before it was made. An error is possible only when THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR the judgment in which the error is to be expressed always was false. Error, if possible, is then eter¬ nally actual. Each error so possible implies a judg¬ ment whose intended object is beyond itself, and is also the object of the corresponding true judgment. But two judgments cannot have the same object save as they are both present to one thought. For as separate thoughts they would have separate sub¬ jects, predicates, intentions, and objects, even as we have previously seen in detail. So that every error implies a thought that includes it and the corre¬ sponding truth in the unity of one thought with the object of both of them. Only as present to an in¬ cluding thought are they either true or false. Thus then we are driven to assume an infinite thought, judging truth and error. But that this infinite thought must also be a rational unity, not a mere aggregate of truths, is evident from the fact that error is possible not only as to objects, but as to the relations of objects, so that all the possible relations of all the objects in space, in time, or in the world of the barely possible, must also be present to the all-including thought. And to know all relations at once is to know them in absolute rational unity, as forming in their wholeness one single thought.
What, then, is an error? An error, we reply, is an incomplete thought, that to a higher thought, which includes it and its intended object, is known as having failed in the purpose that it more or less clearly had, and that is fully realized in this higher thought. And without such higher inclusive thought, an assertion has no external object, and is no error.
426 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY yin.
yin.
If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there would be hereabouts an interruption from some im¬ patient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who would have been watching us, threatening and mut¬ tering, during all of the latter part of our discussion. At last, perhaps, crucrTpci^as iavrov wcnrep Orjplov, he would spring upon us, and would say: “ Why, you nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of the alternative that represents the reality in this question of yours? Namely, an error is an error, neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a poss £■ ble critical thought that should undertake afterwards to compare it with its object. An error is a thought such that if a critical thought did come and compare it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And it has an object for such a critical thought. This critical thought need not be real and actually include it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth. Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a logical possibility; and your insight amounts to this, that if all were known to an all-knower, he would judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what he would perceive to be error. What does all that amount to but worthless tautology? ” This argument of our Thrasymachus is the only outwardly plausible objection that we fear to the foregoing analysis, because it is the only objection that fully expresses the old-established view of com¬ mon sense about such problems. Though common THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR sense never formulates our present difficulty, com¬ mon sense still dimly feels that to some possible (not actual) judge of truth, appeal is made when we say that a thing is false not merely for us, but in very truth. And this possible judge of common sense we have now unhesitatingly declared to be an Infinite Actuality, absolutely necessary to constitute the relation of truth and error. Without it there is for our view no truth or error conceivable. The words, This is true, or This is false, mean nothing, we declare, unless there is the inclusive thought for which the truth is true, the falsehood false. No barely possible judge, who would see the error if he were there, will do for us. He must be there, this judge, to constitute the error. Without him nothing but total subjectivity would be possible; and thought would then become purely a pathological phenome¬ non, an occurrence without truthfulness or falsity, an occurrence that would interest anybody if it could be observed; but that, unfortunately, being only a momentary phantom, could not be observed at all from without, but must be dimly felt from within. Our thought needs the Infinite Thought in order that it may get, through this Infinite judge, the privilege of being so much as even an error.
This, it will be said, is but reassertion. But how do we maintain this view against our Thrasymachus? Our answer is only a repetition of things that we have already had to say, in the argument for what we here reassert. If the judgment existed alone, without the inclusive thought to judge it, then, as it existed alone, it either had an object, or had none.
428 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY But if it had none, it was no * error. If it had one, then either it knew what its object actually was, or it did not know what its object was, or it partially knew and partially did not know what its object actually was. In the first case the judgment must have been an identical one, like the judgment A 'pain is a pain. Such a judgment knows its own object, therefore can¬ not fail to agree with it, and cannot be an error. If the judgment knew not its own object at all, then it had no meaning, and so could not have failed to agree with the object that it had not. If, however, this separate judgment knew its object enough to intend just that object, but not enough to insure agreement with it, all our difficulties return. The possible judge cannot give the judgment its complete object until he becomes its actual judge. Yet as fair judge he must then give it the object that it already had without him. Meanwhile, however, the judgment re¬ mains in the unintelligible attitude previously stud¬ ied at length. It is somehow possessed of just the object it intends, but yet does not know in reality what it does intend, else it would avoid error. Its object, in so far as unknown to it, is no object for it; and yet only in so far as the object is thus un¬ known can it be erred about. What helps in all this the barely possible judge? The actual judge must be there; and for him the incomplete intention must be complete. He knows what is really this judgment’s object, for he knows what is imperfectly meant in it. He knows the dream, and the inter¬ pretation thereof. He knows both the goal and the way thither. But all this is, to the separate judgment as such, a mystery.
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR 429 In fact, the separate judgments, waiting for the possible judge to test them, are like a foolish man wandering in a wood, who is asked whether he has lost his way. “ I may have lost it,” he answers. “But whither are you going?” “That I cannot tell? ” “ Have you no goal? ” “I may have, but I have no notion what it is.” “ What then do you mean by saying that you may have lost the way to this place that you are not seeking? For you seem to be seeking no place; how then can you have lost the way thither? ” “I mean that some possible other man, who was wise enough to find whither I am trying to go, might possibly, in his wisdom, also perceive that I am not on the way to that place. So I may be going away from my chosen goal, although I am unaware what goal it is that I have chosen.” Such a demented man as this would fairly repre¬ sent the meaningless claim of the separate judgment, either to truthfulness, or to the chance of error.
In short, though the partial thought may be, as such, unconscious of its own aim, it can be so uncon¬ scious only in case it is contained in a total thought as one moment thereof.
It will be seen that wherever we have dealt in the previous argument with the possibility of error as a mere possibility, we have had to use the result of the previous chapter concerning the nature of possibil ity itself. The idea of the barely possible, in which there is no actuality, is an empty idea. If anything is possible, then, when we say so, we postulate some¬ thing as actually existent in order to constitute this possibility. The conditions of possible error must 430 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY be actual. Bare possibility is blank nothingness. If the nature of error necessarily and with perfect gen¬ erality demands certain conditions, then these con¬ ditions are as eternal as the erroneousness of error itself is eternal. And thus the inclusive thought, which constitutes the error, must be postulated as existent.
So, finally, let one try to affirm that the infinite content of the all-including mind does not exist, and that the foregoing idealism is a mere illusion of ours. He will find that he is involved in a circle from which there is no escape. For let him return to the position of total relativity and so say: “ The infi¬ nite thought is unreal for me, and hence you are wrong.” But then also he admits that we are right, for in affirming this infinite we affirm, according to this doctrine of total relativity itself, something that is just as true as it seems to us to be true. The op¬ posing argument is thus at each moment of its prog¬ ress involved in a contradiction. Or again, let him insist that our doctrine is not only relatively, but really false. Then however he will fail to show us what this real falsity is. In fact he says what all our previous examination shows to mean, this, namely, that an infinite thought does exist, and does expe¬ rience the truth, and compares our thought with the truth, and then observes this thought of ours to be false, that is, it discovers that itself is non-existent Whoever likes this result may hold it if he can.
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR IX.
Now that our argument is completed as an inves¬ tigation, let us review it in another way. We started from the fact of Error. That there is error is in¬ dubitable. What is, however, an error? The sub¬ stance of our whole reasoning about the nature of error amounted to the result that in and of itself alone, no single judgment is or can be an error. Only as actually included in a higher thought, that gives to the first its completed object, and compares it therewith, is the first thought- an error. It re¬ mains otherwise a mere mental fragment, a torso, a piece of drift-wood, neither true nor false, objectless, no complete act of thought at all. But the higher thought must include the opposed truth, to which the error is compared in that higher thought. The higher thought is the whole truth, of which the error is by itself an incomplete fragment.
Now, as we saw with this as a starting-point, there is no stopping-place short of an Infinite Thought. The possibilities of error are infinite. Infinite then must be the inclusive thought. Here is this stick, this brickbat, this snow-flake: there is an infinite mass of error possible about any one of them, and notice, not merely possible is it, but actual. All the infinite series of blunders that you could make about them not only would be blunders, but in very truth now are blunders, though you personally could never commit them all. You cannot in fact make a truth or a falsehood by your thought. You only find one. From all eternity that truth was true, that falsehood 432 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY