sentation only a pointing or guiding, for which anything may serve. Whatever is experienced or felt can be represented in this sense, because it is necessary only that it should have a locus or context to which one may be directed. We may suppose, then, that what the anti-intellectualist attacks is not the idea as such, but a certain class of ideas; such, for example, as the logical and mathematical ideas, 'term,' 'line,' etc. But' term' and 'line' are ideas only when used in a certain way. In themselves they are simply characteristic bits of experience. They may be immediately known or presented, as well as used in discursive thought. Even 'abstractions' may be apprehended by a direct act of discrimination, and it is only in such direct apprehension that their specific character is revealed. It cannot be claimed that such bits of experience as 'term' and 'line' are peculiarly ill-fitted to serve as ideas, because, as we have seen, the content of an idea is irrelevant. Any bit of experience will do, as is best illustrated by the case of words. In short the fault, if there be any, cannot lie in the intellectual use of these elements; it must lie, not in their employment as ideas, but in their inherent character. The anti-intellectualist polemic must mean that reality is not such as 'term' and 'line'; or that these characters are somehow contradicted and overruled by the dominant characters of reality, such as continuity and life. The Con of Symbols and the Relations Symbolized 87. But this contention rests, I think, on another misunderstanding. There is an inveterate liability to confuse a symbolized relation with a relation of symbols. fusion between It is commonly supposed that when a complex the Relations is represented by a formula, the elements of the complex must have the same relation as that which subsists between the parts of the formula; whereas, as a matter of fact, the formula as a whole represents or describes a complex other than itself. If I describe a as "to the right of b," does any difficulty arise because in my formula a is to the left of b? If I speak of a as greater than b, am I to assume that because my symbols are outside one another that a and b must be outside one another? Such a supposition would imply a most naïve acceptance of that very "copy theory" of knowledge which pragmatism has so severely condemned. And yet such a supposition seems everywhere to underly the anti-intellectualist's polemic. The intellect is described as "substituting for the interpenetration of the real terms the juxtaposition of their symbols"; as though analysis discovered terms, and then conferred relations of its own. Whereas, as James himself has been at much pains to point out, terms and relations have the same status. Terms are found in relation, and may be thus described without any more artificiality, without any more imposing of the forms of the mind on its subject matter, than is involved in the bare mention of a single term.1 It is this misunderstanding which underlies the antiintellectualist's contention that continuity cannot be described. "For," says James, "you cannot make continuous being out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. The stages into which you analyze a change are states, the change itself goes on between them. It lies along their intervals, inhabits what your definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual explanation altogether." I can understand this argument only provided the author assumes that the intellectualist tries to explain continuity by adding concept to concept. The successive and discontinuous acts of conceiving are then held to be contrary to the continuity of the subject matter. But the assumption is incorrect. A line, for example, may be conceived as a class of positions possessing interrelations of direction and distance. This conception may be represented by the formula, a. . . b. . . c. . . n.... One may then add the statement that between any two posi 1 Bergson: Time and Free Will, trans. by F. L. Pogson, of Les données immédiates de la conscience, p. 134; James: A Pluralistic Universe, Appendix A. James: op. cit., p. 236. tions such as a and c, there is a third position b, which is after a and before c; thus expressly denying that there is the same hiatus between the positions of the line as between the symbols of the representation. The use of the symbols, a, c, etc., indicates the manifoldness and serial order of the positions, and the statement defines their compactness.'1 With such a formula and such a statement, one may mean continuity, despite the fact that the symbols and words are discrete. The word 'blue' may mean blue, although the word is not blue. Similarly, continuity may be an arrangement meant by a discontinuous arrangement of words and symbols. The Suppo- Concepts are § 8. In the third place, the anti-intellectualist polemic is based upon the misconception that whenever concepts are used they must be used "privatively," in James's sense. In other words, it is taken for granted that all intellectualism must be 'vicious," or blind to its own abstractness. James, as we have seen, distinguishes this view as one variety of intellectualism. To conceive a thing as a, and then assume that it is only a, is to be "viciously" intellectual. 2 But it is evident that provided one recognizes that to be a does not prevent a thing's being also b, c, etc., one may be innocently or even beneficently intellectual. And this possibility, Bergson, at any rate, appears to overlook. Thus he constantly argues as though the use of the relational logic involved the reduction of everything to it. The analytical method does imply that reality consists of terms and relations. It does not, however, imply that this bare termand-relation character is all there is to it. Thus, blue is different from red, which is a case of t (R) . But in the concrete case, the bare logical term-character t is united first with one quality and then with another; while R is not merely relation in general but the specific relation of 1 Cf. Russell: Principles of Mathematics, p. 296. See above, pp. 228-229. difference.' And similarly the formulas of mathematics, mechanics, physics, etc., while they are cases of logical systems, have each their special superadded and distinguishing characters. The abstract logical system is non-temporal; but a temporal system may nevertheless be a case of a logical system, provided the time character be introduced. Hence it is absurd to say, as Bergson says, that "when the mathematician calculates the future state of a system at the end of a time t, there is nothing to prevent him from supposing that the universe vanishes from this moment till that, and suddenly reappears. It is the t-th moment only that counts — and that will be a mere instant. What will flow on in the interval, that is to say, real time, does not count, and cannot enter into the calculation." I can make nothing of this unless the author is regarding t merely as a number. But as a matter of fact t is a number of units of time, hence an interval, or extended flow; and multiplying this factor into the formula means that the whole process has continued through that interval - it means that the lapse of time is counted, is expressly brought into the calculation. Or, consider the same author's contention that to conceive time is to spacialize it. Again he is misled by supposing that because time is conceived as orderly, it is therefore nothing but order. Such an intellectualism would indeed be vicious. Bare logical order is static; and can never of itself express time. But it is an utterly different matter to regard time, like space and number, as a case of order, having the specific time quale over and above the properties of order. 'Position,' 'interval,' 'before' and 'after,' are then to be taken in the temporal sense; and the terms of the series are to be taken, not as bare logical terms, still less as spacial points, but as instants possessing a unique time-character of their own. 1 Creative Evolution, p. 22. of time, cf. below, pp. 255-261. For a fuller discussion of Bergson's theory § 9. Radical anti-intellectualism betrays, in short, a misapprehension of the analytical method. This method The Misunder- means simply the discrimination and specificastanding Con- tion of the detail of experience. It has led to cerning Analysis the discovery of certain elements and relationships that possess a remarkably high degree of generality, such, e.g., as those of logic and mathematics. But while these elements and relationships, because of their generality, serve to make things commensurable on a comprehensive scale, and are consequently of a peculiar importance in knowledge, it does not follow that intellectualism aims to abolish everything else. That which has logical form is not pure form. Furthermore, it is entirely incorrect to suppose that analysis imposes the relational and orderly arrangement regardless of the subject matter. The analytical method is neither an accident nor a prejudice. It arises from the fact that the subject matter with which science and philosophy deal is complex. And this is virtually admitted in every reference to it which anti-intellectualistic writers make. 'Continuity,' 'duration,' 'activity' and 'life' present, even in the most immediate experience of them which it is possible to obtain, an unmistakable multiplicity of character. They may be divided, and their several characters abstracted and named in turn; and simply because they contain variety. The anti-intellectualist is apparently ready to admit their multiplicity, but balks at admitting their "distinct multiplicity." But "distinctness" and "indistinctness" are psychological and not ontological differences. An "indistinct multiplicity" is simply a multiplicity that is as yet but imperfectly known — a distinct multiplicity qualified by an incompleteness of discrimination. Or is the anti-intellectualist troubled by the consideration that the concepts of analysis are not exact enough; that they over-simplify nature by trying to express it in 1 Bergson: op. cit., p. είν. |