The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this function in the
doctrine of substance; "If there be such a _substratum_," says Mill,
"suppose it at this instant miraculously annihilated, and let the
sensations continue to occur in the same order, and how would the
_substratum_ be missed? By what signs should we be able to discover
that its existence had terminated? Should we not have as much reason
to believe that it still existed as we now have? And if we should not
then be warranted in believing it, how can we be so now?" Truly
enough, if we have {81} already securely bagged our facts in a certain
order, we can dispense with any further warrant for that order. But
with regard to the facts yet to come the case is far different. It
does not follow that if substance may be dropped from our conception of
the irrecoverably past, it need be an equally empty complication to our
notions of the future. Even if it were true that, for aught we know to
the contrary, the substance might develop at any moment a wholly new
set of attributes, the mere logical form of referring things to a
substance would still (whether rightly or wrongly) remain accompanied
by a feeling of rest and future confidence. In spite of the acutest
nihilistic criticism, men will therefore always have a liking for any
philosophy which explains things _per substantiam_.
A very natural reaction against the theosophizing conceit and
hide-bound confidence in the upshot of things, which vulgarly
optimistic minds display, has formed one factor of the scepticism of
empiricists, who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of
possibilities alien to our habitual experience which the cosmos may
contain, and which, for any warrant we have to the contrary, may turn
it inside out to-morrow. Agnostic substantialism like that of Mr.
Spencer, whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the
absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently represented in thought,
it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of
rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the
ordinary philistine feels his security. But considered as anything
else than as reactions against an opposite excess, these philosophies
of uncertainty cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to {82}
come to rest in their presence, and will seek for solutions of a more
reassuring kind.
We may then, I think, with perfect confidence lay down as a first point
gained in our inquiry, that a prime factor in the philosophic craving
is the desire to have expectancy defined; and that no philosophy will
definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner denies the possibility
of gratifying this need.
We pass with this to the next great division of our topic. It is not
sufficient for our satisfaction merely to know the future as
determined, for it may be determined in either of many ways, agreeable
or disagreeable. For a philosophy to succeed on a universal scale it
must define the future _congruously with our spontaneous powers_. A
philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either of two
defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ultimate
principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our
dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle
like Schopenhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hartmann's
wicked jack-of-all-trades the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth
essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their
desires and active tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more
fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to
overcome the 'problem of evil,' the 'mystery of pain.' There is no
'problem of good.'
But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of
contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object
whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so
incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all {83}
relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one
blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. Better face the
enemy than the eternal Void! This is why materialism will always fail
of universal adoption, however well it may fuse things into an
atomistic unity, however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity.
For materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the
impulses which we most cherish. The real _meaning_ of the impulses, it
says, is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever.
Now, what is called 'extradition' is quite as characteristic of our
emotions as of our senses: both point to an object as the cause of the
present feeling. What an intensely objective reference lies in fear!
In like manner an enraptured man and a dreary-feeling man are not
simply aware of their subjective states; if they were, the force of
their feelings would all evaporate. Both believe there is outward
cause why they should feel as they do: either, "It is a glad world! how
good life is!" or, "What a loathsome tedium is existence!" Any
philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by
explaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no
emotional pertinency, leaves the mind with little to care or act for.
This is the opposite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely
brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In
nightmare we have motives to act, but no power; here we have powers,
but no motives. A nameless _unheimlichkeit_ comes over us at the
thought of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the
objects of those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies.
The monstrously lopsided equation of the universe and its {84} knower,
which we postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled
by the no less lopsided equation of the universe and the _doer_. We
demand in it a character for which our emotions and active propensities
shall be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the
cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his
reaction at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast
whole,--that he balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do
what it expects of him. But as his abilities to do lie wholly in the
line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reacting with such
emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the
like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or
doubt,--a philosophy which should only legitimate emotions of the
latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and
craving.
It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up
of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do
very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of
reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a
cross-section at a certain point, of what in its totality is a motor
phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that
cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. The
germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before
consciousness is not the theoretic 'What is that?' but the practical
'Who goes there?' or rather, as Horwicz has admirably put it, 'What is
to be done?'--'Was fang' ich an?' In all our discussions about the
intelligence of lower animals, the only test we use is that of their
_acting_ as if for a purpose. {85} Cognition, in short, is incomplete
until discharged in act; and although it is true that the later mental
development, which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied
cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity
over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice, yet
the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the active nature
asserts its rights to the end.
When the cosmos in its totality is the object offered to consciousness,
the relation is in no whit altered. React on it we must in some
congenial way. It was a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to
reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of
invective against the practical man and his requirements. No hope for
pessimism unless he is slain!
Helmholtz's immortal works on the eye and ear are to a great extent
little more than a commentary on the law that practical utility wholly
determines which parts of our sensations we shall be aware of, and
which parts we shall ignore. We notice or discriminate an ingredient
of sense only so far as we depend upon it to modify our actions. We
_comprehend_ a thing when we synthetize it by identity with another
thing. But the other great department of our understanding,
_acquaintance_ (the two departments being recognized in all languages
by the antithesis of such words as _wissen_ and _kennen_; _scire_ and
_noscere_, etc.), what is that also but a synthesis,--a synthesis of a
passive perception with a certain tendency to reaction? We are
acquainted with a thing as soon as we have learned how to behave
towards it, or how to meet the behavior which we expect from it. Up to
that point it is still 'strange' to us.
{86}
If there be anything at all in this view, it follows that however
vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum, he
cannot be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest
degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude toward it should
be of one sort rather than another. He who says "life is real, life is
earnest," however much he may speak of the fundamental mysteriousness
of things, gives a distinct definition to that mysteriousness by
ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called
seriousness,--which means the willingness to live with energy, though
energy bring pain. The same is true of him who says that all is
vanity. For indefinable as the predicate 'vanity' may be _in se_, it
is clearly something that permits anaesthesia, mere escape from
suffering, to be our rule of life. There can be no greater incongruity
than for a disciple of Spencer to proclaim with one breath that the
substance of things is unknowable, and with the next that the thought
of it should inspire us with awe, reverence, and a willingness to add
our co-operative push in the direction toward which its manifestations
seem to be drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but if it make
such distinct demands upon our activity we surely are not ignorant of
its essential quality.
If we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great
periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common,
we shall find, I think, simply this: that each and all of them have
said to the human being, "The inmost nature of the reality is congenial
to _powers_ which you possess." In what did the emancipating message
of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that {87} God
recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely
overlooked? Take repentance: the man who can do nothing rightly can at
least repent of his failures. But for paganism this faculty of
repentance was a pure supernumerary, a straggler too late for the fair.
Christianity took it, and made it the one power within us which
appealed straight to the heart of God. And after the night of the
middle ages had so long branded with obloquy even the generous impulses
of the flesh, and defined the reality to be such that only slavish
natures could commune with it, in what did the _sursum corda_ of the
platonizing renaissance lie but in the proclamation that the archetype
of verity in things laid claim on the widest activity of our whole