"Accident is, in a wide sphere, such an every-day matter that we need not be surprised if it sometimes invades the territory where order is the rule. And one personification or another of the capricious power of chance easily helps us over the difficulties which further reflection might find in the exceptions. Yes, indeed, Exception has a peculiar fascination; it is a subject of astonishment, a θαῦμα, and the credulity with which in this first stage of pure association we adopt our supposed rules is matched by the equal credulity with which we adopt the miracles that interfere with them.
"The whole history of popular beliefs about nature refutes the notion that the thought of an universal physical order can possibly have arisen through the purely passive reception and association of particular perceptions. Indubitable as it is that all men infer from known cases to unknown, it is equally certain that this procedure, if restricted to the phenomenal materials that spontaneously offer themselves, would never have led to the belief in a general uniformity, but only to the belief that law and lawlessness rule the world in motley alternation. From the point of view of strict empiricism nothing exists but the sum of particular perceptions with their coincidences on the one hand, their contradictions on the other.
"That there is more order in the world than appears at first sight is not discovered till the order is looked for. The first impulse to look for it proceeds from practical needs: where ends must be attained, we must know trustworthy means which infallibly possess a property or produce a result. But the practical need is only the first occasion for our reflection on the conditions of a true knowledge; even were there no such need, motives would still be present to carry us beyond the stage of mere association. For not with an equal interest, or rather with an equal lack of interest, does man contemplate those natural processes in which like is joined to like, and those in which like and unlike are joined; the former processes harmonize with the conditions of his thinking, the latter do not; in the former his concepts, judgments, inferences apply to realities, in the latter they have no such application. And thus the intellectual satisfaction which at first comes to him without reflection, at last excites in him the conscious wish to find realized throughout the entire phenomenal world those rational continuities, uniformities, and necessities which are the fundamental element and guiding principle of his own thought." (C. Sigwart: Logik, ii. 380-2.)
[535] Cf. Hodgson: Philosophy of Reflection, book ii, chap. v.
[536] The aspiration to be 'scientific' is such an idol of the tribe to the present generation, is so sucked in with his mother's milk by every one of us, that we find it hard to conceive of a creature who should not feel it, and harder still to treat it freely as the altogether peculiar and one-sided subjective interest which it is. But as a matter of fact, few even of the cultivated members of the race have shared it; it was invented but a generation or two ago. In the middle ages it meant only impious magic; and the way in which it even now strikes orientals is charmingly shown in the letter of a Turkish cadi to an English traveller asking him for statistical information, which Sir A. Bayard prints at the end of his 'Nineveh and Babylon.' The document is too full of edification not to be given in full. It runs thus: "_My Illustrious Friend, and Joy of my Liver!_ "The thing you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But, above all, as to the previous history of this city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were unprofitable for us to inquire into it.
"O my soul! O my lamb! seek not after the things which concern thee not. Thou camest unto us and we welcomed thee: go in peace.
"Of a truth thou hast spoken many words; and there is no harm done, or the speaker is one and the listener is another. After the fashion of thy people thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou art happy and content in none. We (praise be to God) were born here, and never desire to quit it. Is it possible, then, that the idea of a general intercourse between mankind should make any impression on our understandings? God forbid!
"Listen, O my son! There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God! He created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto Him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of His creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years! Let it go! He from whose hand it came will guide and direct it.
"But thou wilt say unto me, Stand aside, O man, for I am more learned than thou art, and have seen more things. If thou thinkest that thou art in this respect better than I am, thou art welcome. I praise God that I seek not that which I require not. Thou art learned in the things I care not for; and as for that which thou hast seen, I spit upon it. Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou seek Paradise with thine eyes?
"O my friend! if thou wilt be happy, say, There is no God but God! Do no evil, and thus wilt thou fear neither man nor death: for surely thine hour will come!
"The meek in spirit (El Fakir) "IMAUM ALI ZADI."
[537] "Though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste which at another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of bitter in that man's mind would be as clear and distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall. Nor does it make any more confusion between the two ideas of sweet and bitter that the same sort of body produces at one time one and at another time another idea by the taste, than it makes a confusion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and round, that the same piece of sugar produces them both in the mind at the same time." Locke's Essay, bk. ii. ch. xi. § 3.
[538] Cf. Bradley, Logic, p. 226.
[539] This apprehension of them as forming a single system is what Mr. Bradley means by the act of _construction_ which underlies all reasoning. The awareness, which then supervenes, of the additional relation of which I speak in the next paragraph of my text, is what this author calls the act of _inspection_. Cf. Principles of Logic, bk. ii. pt. i. chap. iii.
[540] Realities fall under this only so far as they prove to _be_ the same. So far as they cannot be substituted for each other, for the purpose in hand, so far they are not the same; though for other purposes and in other respects they might be substituted, and then be treated as the same. Apart from purpose, of course, no realities ever are absolutely and exactly the same.
[541] A mind, in other words, which has got _beyond_ the merely _dichotomic_ style of thought which Wundt alleges to be the essential form of human thinking (Physiol. Psych., ii. 312).
[542] Said to be expressed by Grassman in the fundamental Axiom of Arithmetic (_a_ + _b_) + 1 = _a_ + (_b_ + 1).
[543] Compare Helmholtz's more technically expressed Essay Zählen u. Messen, in the Philosophische Aufsätze, Ed. Zeller gewidmet (Leipzig, 1887), p. 17.
[544] For the original statements, cf. J. S. Mill's Logic, bk. ii. chap. vi. §§ 2, 3; and bk. iii. chap. xxiv. § 5.
[545] The subdivision itself consumes none of the space. In all practical experience our subdivisions do consume space. They consume it in our geometrical figures. But for simplicity's sake, in geometry we postulate subdivisions which violate experience and consume none of it.
[546] Cf. A. de Morgan: Syllabus of a proposed System of Logic (1860), pp. 46-56.
[547] Cf. Locke's Essay, bk. ii. chap. xvii. § 6.
[548] Some readers may expect me to plunge into the old debate as to whether the _a priori_ truths are 'analytic' or 'synthetic.' It seems to me that the distinction is one of Kant's most unhappy legacies, for the reason that it is impossible to make it sharp. No one will say that such analytic judgments as "equidistant lines can nowhere meet" are _pure_ tautologies. The predicate is a somewhat new way of conceiving as well as of naming the subject. There is _something_ 'ampliative' in our greatest truisms, our state of mind is richer after than before we have uttered them. This being the case, the question "at what point does the new state of mind cease to be _implicit_ in the old?" is too vague to be answered. The only sharp way of defining synthetic propositions would be to say that they express a relation between _two data_ at least. But it is hard to find any proposition which cannot be construed as doing this. Even verbal definitions do it. Such painstaking attempts as that latest one by Mr. D. G. Thompson to prove all necessary judgments to be analytic (System of Psychology, ii. pp. 232 ff.) seem accordingly but _nugæ difficiles_, and little better than wastes of ink and paper. All philosophic interest vanishes from the question, the moment one ceases to ascribe to _any a priori_ truths (whether analytic or synthetic) that "legislative character for all possible experience" which Kant believed in. We ourselves have denied such legislative character, and contended that it was for experience itself to prove whether its data can or cannot be assimilated to those ideal terms between which _a priori_ relations obtain. The analytic-synthetic debate is thus for us devoid of all significance. On the whole, the best recent treatment of the question known to me is in one of A. Spir's works, his Denken und Wirklichkeit, I think, but I cannot now find the page.
[549] Book iv. chaps. ix. § 1; vii. 14.
[551] Kant, by the way, made a strange tactical blunder in his way of showing that the forms of our necessary thought are underived from experience. He insisted on thought-forms with which experience largely _agrees_, forgetting that the only forms which could not by any possibility be the results of experience would be such as experience _violated_. The first thing a Kantian ought to do is to discover forms of judgment to which _no_ order in 'things' runs parallel. These would indeed be features native to the mind. I owe this remark to Herr A. Spir, in whose 'Denken und Wirklichkeit' it is somewhere contained. I have myself already to some extent proceeded, and in the pages which follow shall proceed still farther, to show the originality of the mind's structure in this way.
[552] Yet even so late as Berkeley's time one could write: "As in reading other books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language: so in perusing the volume of nature methinks it is beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator," etc., etc., etc. (Principles of Human Knowledge, § 109.)
[553] Die Erhaltung der Kraft (1847), pp. 2-6.
[554] Perhaps the most influential of all these postulates is that the nature of the world must be such that sweeping statements may be made about it.
[555] Consider, e.g., the use of the axioms '_nemo potest supra seipsum_,' and '_nemo dat quod non habet_,' in this refutation of 'Darwinism,' which I take from the much-used scholastic compendium of Logic and Metaphysics of Liberatore, 3d ed. (Rome, 1880): "Hæc hypothesis...aperte contradicit principiis Metaphysicæ, quæ docent essentias rerum esse immutabiles, et effectum non posse superare causam. Et sane, quando, juxta Darwin, species inferior se evolvit in superiorem, unde trahit maiorem illam nobilitatem? Ex ejus carentia. At nihil dat quod non habet; et minus gignere nequit plus, aut negatio positionem. Præterea in transformatione quæ fingitur, nature prioris speciei, servatur aut destruitur? Si primum, mutatio erit tantum accidentalis, qualem reapse videmus in diversis stirpibus animantium. Sin alterum asseritur, ut reapse fert hypothesis darwiniana, res tenderet ad seipsam destruendam; cum contra omnia naturaliter tendant ad sui conservationem, et nonnisi per actionem contrarii agentis corruant." It is merely a question of fact whether these ideally proper relations do or do not obtain between animal and vegetable ancestors and descendants. If they do not, what happens? simply this, that we cannot continue to class animal and vegetal facts under the _kinds_ between which those ideal relations obtain. Thus, we can no longer call animal breeds by the name of 'species'; cannot call generating a kind of 'giving,' or treat a descendant as an 'effect' of his ancestor.
The ideal scheme of terms and relations can remain, if you like; but it must remain purely mental, and without application to life, which 'gangs its ain gait' regardless of ideal schemes. Most of us, however, would prefer to doubt whether such abstract axioms as that 'a thing cannot tend to its own destruction' express ideal relations of an important sort at all.
[556] Compare A. Riehl: Der Philosophische Kriticismus, Bd. ii. Thl. i Abschn. i. Cap. iii. § 6.
[557] As one example out of a thousand of exceptionally delicate idiosyncrasy in this regard, take this: "I must quit society. I would rather undergo twice the danger from beasts and ten times the danger from rocks. It is not pain, it is not death, that I dread,--it is the hatred of a man; there is something in it so shocking that I would rather submit to any injury than incur or increase the hatred of a man by revenging it...Another sufficient reason for suicide is that I was this morning out of temper with Mrs. Douglas (for no fault of hers). I did not betray myself in the least, but I reflected that to be exposed to the possibility of such an event once a year, was evil enough to render life intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word is to me overpowering." (Elton Hammond, quoted in Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, vol. i. p. 424.)
[558] Compare H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, bk. iii. chap. xiii. § 3.
[559] A gentleman told me that he had a conclusive argument for opening the Harvard Medical School to women. It was this: "Are not women human?"--Which major premise of course had to be granted. "Then are they not entitled to all the rights of humanity?" My friend said that he had never met anyone who could successfully meet this reasoning.
[560] You reach the Mephistophelian point of view as well as the point of view of justice by treating cases as if they belonged rigorously to abstract classes. Pure rationalism, complete immunity from prejudice, consists in refusing to see that the case before one is absolutely unique. It is always possible to treat the country of one's nativity, the house of one's fathers, the bed in which one's mother died, nay, the mother herself if need be, on a naked equality with all other specimens of so many respective genera. It shows the world in a clear frosty light from which all fuliginous mists of affection, all swamp-lights of sentimentality, are absent. Straight and immediate action becomes easy then--witness a Napoleon's or a Frederick's career. But the question always remains, "Are not the mists and vapors _worth_ retaining?" The illogical refusal to treat certain concretes by the mere law of their genus has made the drama of human history. The obstinate insisting that tweedledum is _not_ tweedledee is the bone and marrow of life. Look at the Jews and the Scots, with their miserable factions and sectarian disputes, their loyalties and patriotisms and exclusions,--their annals now become a classic heritage, because men of genius took part and sang in them. A thing is important if any one _think_ it important. The process of history consists in certain folks becoming possessed of the mania that certain special things are important infinitely, whilst other folks cannot agree in the belief. The Shah of Persia refused to be taken to the Derby Day, saying "It is already known to me that one horse can run faster than another." He made the question "_which_ horse?" immaterial. Any question can be made immaterial by subsuming all its answers under a common head. Imagine what college ball-games and races would be if the teams were to forget the absolute distinctness of Harvard from Yale and think of both as One in the higher genus College. The sovereign road to indifference, whether to evils or to goods, lies in the thought of the higher genus. "When we have meat before us," says Marcus Aurelius, seeking indifference to _that_ kind of good, "we must receive the impression that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird or of a pig; and again that this Falernian is only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish. Such, then, are these impressions, and they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and we see what kind of things they are. Just in the same way ought we to act through life, and where there are things which appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted." (Long's Translation, vi. 13.)
[561] "_An sich, in seinem eignen Wesen, ist jedes reale Object mit sich selbst identisch und unbedingt_"--that is, the "_allgemeinste Einsicht a priori_" and the "_allgemeinste aus Erfahrung_" is "_Alles erkennbare ist bedingt_." (A. Spir: Denken und Wirklichkeit. Compare also Herbart and Hegel.)
[562] Philosophie Zoölogique, 3me partie, chap. v., 'de l'Instinct.'
[563] It should be said that Mr. Spencer's most formal utterance about instinct is in his Principles of Psychology, in the chapter under that name. Dr. Romanes has reformulated and criticised the doctrine of this chapter in his Mental Evolution in Animals, chapter xvii. I must confess my inability to state its vagueness in intelligible terms. It treats instincts as a further development of reflex actions, and as forerunners of intelligence,--which is probably true of many. But when it ascribes their formation to the mere 'multiplication of experiences,' which, at first simple, mould the nervous system to 'correspond to outer relations' by simple reflex actions, and, afterwards complex, make it 'correspond' by 'compound reflex actions,' it becomes too mysterious to follow without more of a key than is given. The whole thing becomes perfectly simple if we suppose the reflex actions to be accidental inborn idiosyncrasies preserved.
[564] This account of acquisitiveness differs from our own. Without denying the associationist account to be a true description of a great deal of our proprietary feeling, we admitted in addition an entirely primitive form of desire. (See above, p. 420 ff.) The reader must decide as to the plausibilities of the case. Certainly appearances are in favor of there being in us _some_ cupidities quite disconnected with the ulterior uses of the things appropriated. The source of their fascination lies in their appeal to our æsthetic sense, and we wish thereupon simply to _own_ them. Glittering, hard, metallic, odd, pretty things; curious things especially; natural objects that look as if they were artificial, or that mimic other objects,--these form a class of things which human beings snatch at as magpies snatch rags. They simply fascinate us. What house does not contain some drawer or cupboard full of senseless odds and ends of this sort, with which nobody knows what to do, but which a blind instinct saves from the ash-barrel? Witness people returning from a walk on the sea-shore or in the woods, each carrying some _lusus naturæ_ in the shape of stone or shell, or strip of bark or odd-shaped fungus, which litter the house and grow daily more unsightly, until at last reason triumphs over blind propensity and sweeps them away.
[565] Review of Bain in H. Spencer: Illustrations of Universal Progress (New York, 1864), pp. 311, 315.
[567] Quoted (without reference) in Spencer's Biology, vol. i. p. 247.
[569] 'Adaptive' changes are those produced by the direct effect of outward conditions on an organ or organism. Sunburned complexion, horny hands, muscular toughness, are illustrations.
[570] For these and other facts cf. Th. Ribot: De l'Hérédité; W. B. Carpenter: Contemporary Review, vol. 21, p. 295, 779, 867; H. Spencer: Princ. of Biol. pt. ii. ch. v, viii, ix, x; pt. iii. ch. xi, xii; C. Darwin: Animals and Plants under Domestication, ch. xii, xiii. xiv; Sam'l Butler: Life and Habit; T. A. Knight: Philos. Trans. 1837; E. Dupuy: Popular Science Monthly, vol. xi. p. 332; F. Papillon; Nature and Life, p. 330; Crothers, in Pop. Sci. M., Jan. (or Feb.) 1889.
[571] [Because, being exhibited by neuter insects, the effects of mere practice cannot accumulate from one generation to another.--W. J.]
[572] Origin of Species, chap. vii.
[573] Princ. of Psychol., ii. 561.
[575] Ueber die Vererbung (Jena, 1883). Prof. Weismann's Essays on Heredity have recently (1889) been published in English in a collected form.
[576] Best expressed in the Essay on the _Continuitat des Keimplasmas_ (1885).