Theaetetus
having no meaning. Man is to bring himself back as far as he is able to
the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit
of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation;--he is
to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable
sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the
opinions of the world.
Imagination has been called that 'busy faculty' which is always
intruding upon us in the search after truth. But imagination is also
that higher power by which we rise above ourselves and the commonplaces
of thought and life. The philosophical imagination is another name for
reason finding an expression of herself in the outward world. To deprive
life of ideals is to deprive it of all higher and comprehensive aims and
of the power of imparting and communicating them to others. For men are
taught, not by those who are on a level with them, but by those who rise
above them, who see the distant hills, who soar into the empyrean. Like
a bird in a cage, the mind confined to sense is always being brought
back from the higher to the lower, from the wider to the narrower view
of human knowledge. It seeks to fly but cannot: instead of aspiring
towards perfection, 'it hovers about this lower world and the earthly
nature.' It loses the religious sense which more than any other seems to
take a man out of himself. Weary of asking 'What is truth?' it accepts
the 'blind witness of eyes and ears;' it draws around itself the curtain
of the physical world and is satisfied. The strength of a sensational
philosophy lies in the ready accommodation of it to the minds of men;
many who have been metaphysicians in their youth, as they advance in
years are prone to acquiesce in things as they are, or rather appear to
be. They are spectators, not thinkers, and the best philosophy is that
which requires of them the least amount of mental effort.
As a lower philosophy is easier to apprehend than a higher, so a lower
way of life is easier to follow; and therefore such a philosophy seems
to derive a support from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to
principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a
generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the
world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To
follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining
after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as
is necessary to provide for the morrow, this is regarded by the greater
part of the world as the natural way of passing through existence. And
many who have lived thus have attained to a lower kind of happiness
or equanimity. They have possessed their souls in peace without ever
allowing them to wander into the region of religious or political
controversy, and without any care for the higher interests of man. But
nearly all the good (as well as some of the evil) which has ever been
done in this world has been the work of another spirit, the work of
enthusiasts and idealists, of apostles and martyrs. The leaders
of mankind have not been of the gentle Epicurean type; they have
personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the victims of them.
But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal of which they
fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their hopes that
they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they found
them. They have done little compared with their own visions and
aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to
do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.
The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified
conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a succession of
feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate
actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can
hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any
other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself
only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in
modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressions--not
the heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It
begins again with its own modicum of experience having only such vague
conceptions of the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language
and popular opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the
individual what can only be learned from the history of the world. It
has no conception of obligation, duty, conscience--these are to the
Epicurean or Utilitarian philosopher only names which interfere with our
natural perceptions of pleasure and pain.
There seem then to be several answers to the question, Why the theory
that all knowledge is sensation is allied to the lower rather than to
the higher view of ethical philosophy:--1st, Because it is easier to
understand and practise; 2ndly, Because it is fatal to the pursuit of
ideals, moral, political, or religious; 3rdly, Because it deprives us of
the means and instruments of higher thought, of any adequate conception
of the mind, of knowledge, of conscience, of moral obligation.
...
ON THE NATURE AND LIMITS Of PSYCHOLOGY.
O gar arche men o me oide, teleute de kai ta metaxu ex ou me
oide sumpeplektai, tis mechane ten toiauten omologian pote
epistemen genesthai; Plato Republic.
Monon gar auto legeiv, osper gumnon kai aperemomenon apo ton
onton apanton, adunaton. Soph.
Since the above essay first appeared, many books on Psychology have been
given to the world, partly based upon the views of Herbart and other
German philosophers, partly independent of them. The subject has gained
in bulk and extent; whether it has had any true growth is more doubtful.
It begins to assume the language and claim the authority of a science;
but it is only an hypothesis or outline, which may be filled up in many
ways according to the fancy of individual thinkers. The basis of it is
a precarious one,--consciousness of ourselves and a somewhat uncertain
observation of the rest of mankind. Its relations to other sciences
are not yet determined: they seem to be almost too complicated to be
ascertained. It may be compared to an irregular building, run up hastily
and not likely to last, because its foundations are weak, and in many
places rest only on the surface of the ground. It has sought rather to
put together scattered observations and to make them into a system than
to describe or prove them. It has never severely drawn the line between
facts and opinions. It has substituted a technical phraseology for the
common use of language, being neither able to win acceptance for the one
nor to get rid of the other.
The system which has thus arisen appears to be a kind of metaphysic
narrowed to the point of view of the individual mind, through which, as
through some new optical instrument limiting the sphere of vision, the
interior of thought and sensation is examined. But the individual mind
in the abstract, as distinct from the mind of a particular individual
and separated from the environment of circumstances, is a fiction only.
Yet facts which are partly true gather around this fiction and are
naturally described by the help of it. There is also a common type of
the mind which is derived from the comparison of many minds with one
another and with our own. The phenomena of which Psychology treats are
familiar to us, but they are for the most part indefinite; they relate
to a something inside the body, which seems also to overleap the limits
of space. The operations of this something, when isolated, cannot be
analyzed by us or subjected to observation and experiment. And there is
another point to be considered. The mind, when thinking, cannot
survey that part of itself which is used in thought. It can only
be contemplated in the past, that is to say, in the history of the
individual or of the world. This is the scientific method of studying
the mind. But Psychology has also some other supports, specious rather
than real. It is partly sustained by the false analogy of Physical
Science and has great expectations from its near relationship to
Physiology. We truly remark that there is an infinite complexity of
the body corresponding to the infinite subtlety of the mind; we are
conscious that they are very nearly connected. But in endeavouring to
trace the nature of the connexion we are baffled and disappointed. In
our knowledge of them the gulf remains the same: no microscope has ever
seen into thought; no reflection on ourselves has supplied the missing
link between mind and matter...These are the conditions of this very
inexact science, and we shall only know less of it by pretending to
know more, or by assigning to it a form or style to which it has not yet
attained and is not really entitled.
Experience shows that any system, however baseless and ineffectual, in
our own or in any other age, may be accepted and continue to be studied,
if it seeks to satisfy some unanswered question or is based upon some
ancient tradition, especially if it takes the form and uses the language
of inductive philosophy. The fact therefore that such a science exists
and is popular, affords no evidence of its truth or value. Many who have
pursued it far into detail have never examined the foundations on which
it rests. The have been many imaginary subjects of knowledge of which
enthusiastic persons have made a lifelong study, without ever asking
themselves what is the evidence for them, what is the use of them, how
long they will last? They may pass away, like the authors of them, and
'leave not a wrack behind;' or they may survive in fragments. Nor is it
only in the Middle Ages, or in the literary desert of China or of India,
that such systems have arisen; in our own enlightened age, growing up
by the side of Physics, Ethics, and other really progressive sciences,
there is a weary waste of knowledge, falsely so-called. There are sham
sciences which no logic has ever put to the test, in which the desire
for knowledge invents the materials of it.
And therefore it is expedient once more to review the bases of
Psychology, lest we should be imposed upon by its pretensions. The
study of it may have done good service by awakening us to the sense of
inveterate errors familiarized by language, yet it may have fallen into
still greater ones; under the pretence of new investigations it may be
wasting the lives of those who are engaged in it. It may also be found
that the discussion of it will throw light upon some points in the
Theaetetus of Plato,--the oldest work on Psychology which has come down
to us. The imaginary science may be called, in the language of ancient
philosophy, 'a shadow of a part of Dialectic or Metaphysic' (Gorg.).
In this postscript or appendix we propose to treat, first, of the true
bases of Psychology; secondly, of the errors into which the students of
it are most likely to fall; thirdly, of the principal subjects which
are usually comprehended under it; fourthly, of the form which facts
relating to the mind most naturally assume.
We may preface the enquiry by two or three remarks:--
(1) We do not claim for the popular Psychology the position of a science
at all; it cannot, like the Physical Sciences, proceed by the Inductive
Method: it has not the necessity of Mathematics: it does not, like
Metaphysic, argue from abstract notions or from internal coherence. It
is made up of scattered observations. A few of these, though they may
sometimes appear to be truisms, are of the greatest value, and free
from all doubt. We are conscious of them in ourselves; we observe them